The advent of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and the Internet has created significant opportunity for online education. Research on this topic has addressed its effectiveness, but as yet little attention has been given to the technology appropriation process in this context. This thesis adopts a social constructivist perspective. To enhance the understanding of online education, the study argues for abandoning the notion of technology as a passive tool and, instead, for considering the contextual issues which surround it. In order to understand how learning and technology appropriation takes place, the organisational and cultural setting needs to be considered. From this underlying conceptual position, the thesis constructs a theoretical framework using theories of collaborative and situated learning in combination with technological frames analysis. Applying this framework, an empirical study is performed on the implementation of an online education system at a traditional U.K. university. Research findings suggest that student perception and interpretation of technology and of online education are strongly influenced by their understanding of the institution, and these perceptions alter students' subsequent behaviour towards technology during the learning process. Furthermore, the study reveals that student appropriation of technology changes in accordance with the surrounding context and their realisation of the educational value which emerges from their interaction with the system over time. The theoretical contribution arises from applying to the study of online education the social constructivist approach to information systems. The methodological contribution lies in demonstrating the value of the interpretive approach for understanding online education on campus. Empirically, the thesis has significant value for educationalists by highlighting the contextual issues that affect student appropriation of technology and the consequent learning outcomes.


We present a model of the yield curve in which the central bank can provide market participants with forward guidance on both future short rates and on future Quantitative Easing (QE) operations, which affect bond supply. Forward guidance on short rates works through the expectations hypothesis, while forward guidance on QE works through expected future bond risk premia. If a QE operation is expected to be undone in the near term, then its announcement will have a hump-shaped effect on the yield and forward-rate curves; otherwise the effect may be increasing with maturity. Humps associated to QE announcements typically occur at maturities longer than those associated to short-rate announcements, even when the effects of the former are expected to last over a shorter horizon. We use our model to re-examine the empirical evidence on QE announcements in the US.


Abstract Recent experimental studies have suggested that colloidal silica can form in high-T (300 to >700°C) hydrothermal fluids (Wilkinson et al., 1996). Natural evidence in support of this was found by Williamson et al. (1997) who proposed a colloidal (gel) silica origin for <50 μm irregularly-shaped inclusions of quartz contained in greisen topaz fromsouthwest England. Confocal and microprobe studies, presented here, strengthen this argument although rather than forming a gel in the hydrothermal fluid, it is suggested that the colloidal silica aggregated as a viscous coagulated colloid, with much of its volume (<10 to 30 vol.%) consisting of metal (mainly Fe) -rich particles. This is evident from the largely solid nature of metal-rich shrinkage bubbles contained at the margins of the inclusions of quartz which shows that the material forming the inclusions contained much less liquid than would be expected in a silica gel. These findings may have important implications for models of ore formation since the precipitation of a coagulated colloid could inhibit hydrothermal fluid transport and cause co-deposition of silica and entrained ore-forming elements. The mode of formation of the colloidal silica and further implications of the study are discussed.


Fishing is considered to be the most important among the many uses of Laguna Lake, the largest lake in the Philippines and second largest in Southeast Asia. Using primary data gathered through focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and a household survey together with secondary data on revenue and cost estimates for aquaculture and catch fisheries, this paper discusses the lake's role in the economic life of two fishing communities located along the shoreline. The study, which uses a microscopic lens to look at issues from the perspective of small fisher households instead of from that of policymakers and non-government organizations, finds that households in these lakeshore communities are engaged primarily in open fishing, which has been threatened of late by poor water quality and the consequent proliferation of water hyacinths. Only the few well-off residents of these lakeshore communities are able to construct and operate small-scale fish cages while corporations and non-resident individuals own and operate large-scale fish pens. Moreover, while open fishing contributes more to fish production value and employment than does aquaculture, the latter generates more resource rent which accrues to the very few aquaculture capitalists from outside these communities. Some suggestions for redistributing the huge fishing resource rents to poor fishing households in these lakeshore communities are thus presented in this study. The need to address the issue of lake water quality and competing uses, with a view to sustainability and poverty alleviation, is also discussed.


A stable society requires a stable economy, and that requires the foundation of a stable money and currency system. In order to understand many of the typical problems facing a society it is important to go beyond social, political and general economic issues to investigate the essence of the whole system, the stock it is based on: the money. The aim of this study is to trace the basic dysfunctional structures ingrained in the current global financial and monetary system and to present the consequences of those structures' existence. The conclusion of the research suggests that there is a considerable correlation between the actual operation of money and most of the serious threats societies and humanity as a whole face nowadays: The regularly occurring economic crisis, the record levels of debt, the increasing level of unemployment, inflation, the growing gap between rich and poor, and the environmental degradation are all examples of the negative effects the study highlights as inevitable consequences of our monetary system. In its conclusion, this report introduces an alternative money system that could help solve economic problems for the communities faced with such problems.
Keywords: debt, interest, inflation, unemployment, community currency


Accessible online at: www.karger.com/jvr The Editors and the members of the editorial board would like to thank the following individuals for their expert assistance in acting as reviewers for the Journal of Vascular Research in the period of September 2003 to September 2004. Our aim of establishing the journal as a leading journal in the field of vascular science is to a large extent in the hands of our reviewers and we, together with our authors and readers, much appreciate the time which they have freely given.


A nurse is the first person who comes in contact with the patients and the family members, with whom she shares information by means of verbal and non-verbal communication with the goal of establishing a good relationship and focusing her attention on the patient as a whole person. Nurse's sincere thoughts and feelings are the best precondition for creating a sense of security and open communication, which are a prerequisite for providing healthcare and inclusion of the family in the decision making. A nurse who spends her time by the endangered patient's side is planning, implementing, evaluating and documenting the changes in the patient's condition, and the healthcare is then focused on meeting the physiological needs and maintaining of stable condition of the patient. Struggle for life does not leave any time for the family to adjust to the new situation. Establishing a partner relationship patient – family – nurse is important not only in the beginning, but also during the whole treatment and decision-making. When the relationships within the family are stable, the family has an irreplaceable role in developing the sense of security and belonging for the patient. Providing care for the patient is a priority for the healthcare team, and the most significant for the family are sincere and correct information about the current condition, the effect of the applied therapy and the possible outcome of the treatment. Developing of care philosophy which is focused on the family and the holistic approach includes assessment of family needs and impact of the disease on its overall functioning. Cultural factors have a significant role in the ability to understand the patient's but also the family's point of view. Medical, ethical, legal and a whole range of other problems connected to the receiver and provider of services are avoided by means of effective communication. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of partner relationship, focusing on the family and essential role of the nurse in decision making. Keywords : patient; family; nurse; partner relationship; decision-making


The development of an interference microscope designed to quantify optical thickness of biological samples has created the need for a more robust phase unwrapping algorithm to process the data. A survey of several traditional phase unwrapping techniques including a gradient of first failure test was completed. The results showed that quality-guided path-following algorithms tend to be the most robust breaking down at higher slopes and greater noise levels. A comparison of modulation and slope as quality metrics for this algorithm was performed on real datasets from a cylindrical mirror and biological samples. It was found that quality-guided path-following unwrapping methods using modulation data as a quality metric provides consistent and improved phase unwrapping of complex biological interference measurements.


The increasing use of litigation as a tool to influence land management decisions has been documented within the Forest Service. The Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), which allows successful litigants to recover attorney fees and other legal expenses from the federal government, has come under much scrutiny in discussions surrounding Forest Service litigation. In spite of increasing interest surrounding the relationship between litigation directed at land management agencies and the EAJA, no empirical research had ever attempted to examine this issue. This two part exploratory study used records obtained from land management agencies through the Freedom of Information Act and publicly available tax return records to examine several aspects of the Equal Access to Justice Act's role in land management litigation. According to agency records, the Forest Service paid out over $6 million in EAJA awards from 1999 through 2005. Agency records also showed that the Bureau of Land Management paid over $2.5 million dollars in EAJA awards from 1991 through 2005. The National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were unable to provide usable records regarding the amount of fees paid by each respective agency. The study also found that the entities receiving the largest number of EAJA awards were all tax-exempt environmental organizations. Interestingly, ten of the fourteen organizations that were examined for having received multiple EAJA awards also appear on Gambino et al.'s (under review) list of frequent Forest Service litigators. While this finding suggests that the EAJA may be providing a monetary incentive for these organizations to institute litigation against land management agencies, further research is needed to understand the degree to which this is happening.


Summary Large resequencing projects require a significant amount of storage for raw sequences, as well as alignment files. Since the raw sequences are redundant once the alignment has been generated, it is possible to keep only the alignment files. We present BamHash, a checksum based method to ensure that the read pairs in FASTQ files match exactly the read pairs stored in BAM files, regardless of the ordering of reads. BamHash can be used to verify the integrity of the files stored and discover any discrepancies. Thus, BamHash can be used to determine if it is safe to delete the FASTQ files storing raw sequencing reads after alignment, without the loss of data. Availability and Implementation The software is implemented in C++, GPL licensed and available at https://github.com/DecodeGenetics/BamHash Contact firstname.lastname@example.com


The dramatic decrease in price and increase in availability of hobbyist electronics has led to a wide array of embedded and interactive devices. While electronics have become more widespread, developing and prototyping the required circuitry for these devices is still difficult, requiring knowledge of electronics, components, and programming. In this paper, we present Trigger-Action-Circuits (TAC), an interactive system that leverages generative design to produce circuitry, firmware, and assembly instructions, based on high-level, behavioural descriptions. TAC is able to generate multiple candidate circuits from a behavioural description, giving the user a number of alternative circuits that may be best suited to their use case (e.g., based on cost, component availability or ease of assembly). The generated circuitry uses off-the-shelf, commodity electronics, not specialized hardware components, enabling scalability and extensibility. TAC supports a range of common components and behaviors that are frequently required for prototyping electronic circuits. A user study demonstrated that TAC helps users avoid problems encountered during circuit design and assembly, with users completing their circuits significantly faster than with traditional methods.


Not then, men and their moments. Rather, moment and their men, writes Erving Goffman in the introduction to his groundbreaking 1967 Interaction Ritual , a study of face-to-face interaction in natural settings, that class of events which occurs during co-presence and by virtue of co-presence. The ultimate behavioural materials are the glances, gestures, positionings, and verbal statements that people continuously feed into situations, whether intended or not. A sociology of occasions is here advocated. Social organisation is the central theme, but what is organized is the co-mingling of persons and the temporary interactional enterprises that can arise therefrom. A normatively stabilized structure is at issue, a "social gathering", but this is a shifting entity, necessarily evanescent, created by arrivals and killed by departures. The major section of the book is the essay "Where the Action Is", drawing on Goffman's last major ethnographic project observation of Nevada casinos. Tom Burns says of Goffman's work "The eleven books form a singularly compact body of writing. All his published work was devoted to topics and themes which were closely connected, and the methodology, angles of approach and of course style of writing remained characteristically his own throughout. Interaction Ritual in particular is an interesting account of daily social interaction viewed with a new perspective for the logic of our behavior in such ordinary circumstances as entering a crowded elevator or bus." In his new introduction, Joel Best considers Goffman's work in toto and places Interaction Ritual in that total context as one of Goffman's pivotal works: oHis subject matter was unique. In sharp contrast to the natural tendency of many scholars to tackle big, important topics, Goffman was a minimalist, working on a small scale, and concentrating on the most mundane, ordinary social contacts, on everyday life.o


Microbial permafrost communities play an important role in carbon cycling and greenhouse gas fluxes. Despite the importance of these processes, there is a lack of knowledge about how environmental and climatic changes affect the abundance and composition of microorganisms. Here, we investigated the changing distribution of permafrost microorganisms in response to climate and lake‐level changes. The permafrost core was drilled at the near shore of Lake El'gygytgyn, Far East Russian Arctic, and a combined microbiological and lipid biomarker approach was applied. The lower part of the permafrost core, deposited under subaquatic conditions, contains only small amounts of microbial signals; total organic carbon (TOC) content is sparse. After exposure of the site to subaerial conditions during the Allerød, the abundance of Bacteria and Archaea started to increase and the lake‐level change is especially evidenced by the relative proportion of archaeal biomarkers. This increase is supported by rising bacterial and archaeal 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) gene copy numbers and significant amounts of TOC during the late Allerød. After a small decrease during the colder Younger Dryas, the TOC content and the microbial signals strongly increase during the Holocene, presumably stimulated by pedogenesis. The occurrence of intact phospholipids indicates the presence of living microorganisms in these deposits. Our data suggest that methane formation is mainly expected for the subaerial interval, especially the Holocene where methanogens were identified by fingerprinting. This study emphasises the role of the uppermost permafrost deposits as a hotspot of carbon cycling in arctic environments, especially in the light of expected future global warming. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Malaria is a parasitic disease that remains a global health burden. The ability of the parasite to rapidly develop resistance to therapeutics drives an urgent need for the delivery of new drugs. The Medicines for Malaria Venture have compounds known for their antimalarial activity, but not necessarily the molecular targets. In this study, we assess the ability of the "MMV 400" compounds to inhibit the activity of three metalloaminopeptidases from Plasmodium falciparum, PfA-M1, PfA-M17 and PfM18 AAP. We have developed a multiplex assay system to allow rapid primary screening of compounds against all three metalloaminopeptidases, followed by detailed analysis of promising compounds. Our results show that there were no PfM18AAP inhibitors, whereas two moderate inhibitors of the neutral aminopeptidases PfA-M1 and PfA-M17 were identified. Further investigation through structure-activity relationship studies and molecular docking suggest that these compounds are competitive inhibitors with novel binding mechanisms, acting through either non-classical zinc coordination or independently of zinc binding altogether. Although it is unlikely that inhibition of PfA-M1 and/or PfA-M17 is the primary mechanism responsible for the antiplasmodial activity reported for these compounds, their detailed characterization, as presented in this work, pave the way for their further optimization as a novel class of dual PfA-M1/PfA-M17 inhibitors utilising non-classical zinc binding groups.


A substantial literature has developed models of optimal consumption and asset allocation based on the assumption that stocks and bonds have fixed returns, with normal independent, identically distributed disturbances. Households optimally rebalance from stocks to bonds as they age, reflecting the declining proportion of their wealth that is represented by low-risk human capital. Using annual return data for large-capitalization stocks and corporate bonds covering the period 1926 through 2011, the paper calculates optimal consumption and asset allocation over the life cycle for a household with Social Security benefits and uncertain labor market earnings. It considers the alternative assumptions that stock and bond returns 1) are normally distributed, 2) follow a vector autoregressive path (VAR) with normally distributed disturbances, and 3) follow a VAR with disturbances drawn from a stable distribution. The assumptions have a significant effect on asset allocation. At age 65, the optimal stock allocation is 52 percent, 68 percent, and 55 percent, respectively, for the three alternatives. When returns follow a VAR with stable disturbances, a household with a constant relative risk aversion assuming a coefficient of risk aversion of 2 would require a 1 percent increase in lifetime consumption to compensate it for assuming that the disturbances to returns follow a normal distribution. Households with a coefficient of risk aversion of 5 would require less than 0.1 percent, reflecting their lower accumulation of wealth and smaller stock allocations.


Dutch building regulation is under construction. After the report of the commission "Fundamentele Verkenning Bouw" in 2008, several studies have been done on the principals that the commission outlined in its report. Local authorities and parties in construction were invited to start experiments with a more privatized system of building control. But this faced a lack of participation, partly due to the impact of the crisis. The minister responsible for housing and construction invited in 2011 a "Bouwteam" to develop an agenda for action for construction. In 2012, 17 action teams started to focus, speed up and simplify the planning and development of construction. Recently, the two teams related to building regulation presented their plans. The first was a roadmap towards private building control, the second, a proposal for an independent body to answer questions on constructions plans that do intrinsically but not legally meet the standards of building regulation. There is considerable controversy regarding the way that this implementation team is paving its path towards private building control. While the minister for housing conformed himself to a subsidized private implementing team, the Dutch Parliament has expressed its own priorities for regulation: insured guarantee to protect users and owners, a role for local authorities regarding safety and acceptance of buildings and simplification of building regulation and control for simple construction works. The parliament held a round-table conference to get informed about private building control. Recently, a proposal by the minister for housing was discussed. Further debate will be needed to decide about the next steps in innovation building regulation, which will take place in the upcoming months. ERB/RIGO (Foundation Expert Centre Regulations in Building/Research Institute for Real Estate) have developed own proposals for the public-private relation regarding development and construction of buildings. They expect that their proposals might be of help. The proposals are laid down in several publications and partly realized in experimental development of "to be approved" technical solutions. This paper reflects on the differences between their proposals and these of the roadmap, on the possible outcome of the ongoing debate and its implications, legal and technical, on building regulation and on legal and contractual liability. This paper tries to give an inside view on the development of regulation and the pros and cons of the proposals, starting from a theoretical outline of building regulation.


In order to investigate shear behavior of granular materials due to excavation and associated unloading actions, load-controlled plane strain compression tests under decreasing confining pressure were performed under drained conditions and the results were compared with the conventional plane strain compression tests. Four types of granular material consisting of two quartz sands and two glass beads were used to investigate particle shape effects. It is clarified that macro stress-strain behavior is more easily influenced by stress level and stress path in sands than in glass beads. Development of localized deformation was analyzed using photogrammetry method. It was found that shear bands are generated before peak strength and shear band patterns vary during the whole shearing process. Under the same test condition, shear band thickness in the two sands was smaller than that in one type of glass beads even if the materials have almost the same mean particle size. Shear band thickness also decreased with increase of confining pressure regardless of particle shape or size. Local maximum shear strain inside shear band grew approximately linearly with global axial strain from onset of shear band to the end of softening. The growth rate is found related to shear band thickness. The wider shear band, the relatively lower the growth rate. Finally, observed shear band inclination angles were compared with classical Coulomb and Roscoe solutions and different results were found for sands and glass beads.


Cardiac catheterisation is an essential tool to evaluate patients who require ECMO support for severe haemodynamic impairment. In the first part of this chapter, we describe the equipment, teamwork, expertise, techniques and precautions that are necessary to carry out safe and effective cardiac catheterisation on ECMO. We have moved on from an early pioneering era to a stage where the multidisciplinary team approach has been worked out in detail, using operational procedures that deal with the technical challenges and minimise the risks of ECMO catheterisation and interven‐ tion. In the second part of the chapter, we explain in detail how cardiac catheterisa‐ tion and intervention on ECMO contribute to the management of (1) post-operative congenital heart disease patients, (2) cardiac patients who suffer sudden haemodynam‐ ic deterioration, (3) patients with low cardiac output who require left heart decompres‐ sion because of extracorporeal support, (4) patients with haemodynamically unstable arrhythmias and (5) haemodynamically unstable patients who require percutaneous coronary intervention. We also provide state-of-the-art information on the elective use of ECMO to support congenital and structural catheter interventions. Acute survival and long-term outcome are now related to the underlying conditions rather than complications of the catheterisation procedure itself.


Contract interpretation remains the most important source of commercial litigation and the most contentious area of contemporary contract doctrine and scholarship. Two polar positions have competed for dominance in contract interpretation. In a textualist regime, generalist courts cannot consider context; in a contextualist regime, they must. Underlying this dispute are contrary assumptions about the prototypical contract each interpretive style addresses. For modern textualists, contracts are bespoke, between legally sophisticated parties who embed as much or as little of the contractual context as they wish in an integrated writing, and prefer to protect their choices against judicial interference by an interpretive regime including parole evidence and plain meaning rules. For contextualists in contrast, contracts are between legally unsophisticated parties in two prototypical settings. The first is the mass market, standardized contract between sophisticated sellers and unsophisticated consumers, who cannot bargain over contractual terms; the second involves commercial parties doing business in a deeply nuanced world where formal and informal understandings mix and the meaning of a particular contract can be illuminated by the parties' course of dealings. For the contextualist, willfully restricting a court's access to information bearing on the parties' real relationship in both cases degrades judicial interpretation. We argue that the narrow focus on which prototype should apply universally has erroneously framed discussion of the parties' choices and led to an inconclusive and limited debate about the role of courts in contract interpretation. The range of options for parties and generalist courts is much more diverse and variegated than the choice between ex ante party autonomy and ex post adjudication. We present a typology of transactional settings — the design space for contract — sufficiently rich to capture the breath of current contractual experience but sufficiently parsimonious to clarify the central relationship between the factors that shape the design of any given contract and the role of courts in interpreting it. We show that design and judicial response depends, first, on the level of uncertainty and, second, on the thickness of the market — whether there are many traders or few engaged in a similar class of transactions. The higher the level of uncertainty, the less workable complete, state-contingent contracts become, and the more parties develop interpretive mechanisms based on rich and regular exchange of information on a project's progress that allows each to gauge the other's capacity to define and produce a product. The greater the number of traders engaged in a transaction, the more likely that the interpretive regime — terms adapted to current need — will be provided by a trade association or, given collective action problems, a public regulator. The interplay of uncertainty and scale illuminates new forms of contracting among legally sophisticated parties unanticipated in discussions of textualist prototypes, and recasts the contextualist prototypes as special cases that demand novel institutional responses, including generalist courts sufficiently versed in the parties' practices that they resemble early courts of equity. More generally, our analysis reveals a surprising complementarity between public regulation and common law adjudication in a variety of settings. Contractual interpretation today should attend to today's contracts and courts: Our aim is to escape the stalemate between textualists and contextualists and open the way for doctrine and debate to support the novelty of contemporary contracting practices.


The European Commission's communication of December 2010 outlining persistent double taxation problems in the EU has at last generated widespread discussion on how to finally resolve this apparently intractable matter. Despite the conclusion of tax treaties and despite the enactment of several directives, double taxation continues to occur within the EU, causing severe obstacles for cross-border trade, for the provision of services and capital, and for the free movement of persons. Extending ten contributions presented at a conference in April 2010 at the University of Luxembourg, this book represents the expert analysis and considered recommendations of twelve outstanding scholars of European taxation. Among the elements covered are the following: * the reasons for the existence (and persistence) of juridical and economic double * taxation * double burdens in criminal law * constitutional limits for double taxation * the Lisbon Treaty's abolition of Article 293 EC, which had required Member States * to conclude tax treaties in order to abolish double taxation * whether double taxation can be avoided by the application of the four freedoms * prospects for an EU-wide multilateral tax treaty * the proposed Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base and * use of arbitration clauses in tax treaties. With the discussion now vitally reinforced by the Commission's study, this timely book makes a strong contribution to expediting a viable solution to the problem of double taxation in the EU. It will be warmly welcomed by lawyers, officials, and other professionals working in the field of European taxation policy and practice. Preface and Acknowledgment Chapter 1 Double Taxation Alexander Rust Chapter 2 Economic Double Taxation as an Obstacle to Cross-Border Investments Olivier Remacle & Samantha Nonnenkamp Chapter 3 Double Jeopardy in Criminal Law: Conflicts of Competence and Possible Solutions Stefan Braum Chapter 4 Double Burdens within the European Union: Solutions in other Areas of Law: Constitutional Law Hanno Kube Chapter 5 Double Tax Agreements: Between EU Law and Public International Law Herwig Hofmann Chapter 6 The Abolition of Article 293 EC: Comments on Hofmann's Analysis Ekkehart Reimer Chapter 7 Double Taxation and European Law: Analysis of the Jurisprudence Georg Kofler Chapter 8 How European Law Could Solve Double Taxation Alexander Rust Chapter 9 Passing the Buck Around: Who Is Responsible for Double Taxation?-Comments on Profs. Kofler and Rust's Analysis Peter J. Wattel Chapter 10 Avoiding a Double Burden within the European Union: Comments on Kofler and Rust's Analysis Servaas van Thiel Chapter 11 Double Taxation: Selected Issues of Compatibility with European Law, Multilateral Tax Treaties and CCCTB Pasquale Pistone Chapter 12 MAP and Arbitration as Remedies for Double Burdens: Evolutionary Law-Making through Procedural Rather Than Substantive Rules? Roland Ismer Index


The problem of adaptive array beamforming using a uniform circular array (UCA) under mutual coupling situation is considered. The well-known robust Capon beamformer (RCB) has been shown to be effective in dealing with many array uncertainties. However, it suffers from the mutual coupling (MC) between array sensors. We present a simple eigenspace-based (ESB) method to effectively mitigate the MC effects. The novelty of the proposed method is that it finds a weight vector which lies in the signal subspace of the data correlation matrix to alleviate the MC effects. Simulation examples show that the proposed method is more robust than the RCB.


ABSTRACT We examined the incremental yield of stool culture (with toxin testing on isolates) versus our two-step algorithm for optimal detection of toxigenic Clostridium difficile. Per the two-step algorithm, stools were screened for C. difficile-associated glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) antigen and, if positive, tested for toxin by a direct (stool) cell culture cytotoxicity neutralization assay (CCNA). In parallel, stools were cultured for C. difficile and tested for toxin by both indirect (isolate) CCNA and conventional PCR if the direct CCNA was negative. The "gold standard" for toxigenic C. difficile was detection of C. difficile by the GDH screen or by culture and toxin production by direct or indirect CCNA. We tested 439 specimens from 439 patients. GDH screening detected all culture-positive specimens. The sensitivity of the two-step algorithm was 77% (95% confidence interval [CI], 70 to 84%), and that of culture was 87% (95% CI, 80 to 92%). PCR results correlated completely with those of CCNA testing on isolates (29/29 positive and 32/32 negative, respectively). We conclude that GDH is an excellent screening test and that culture with isolate CCNA testing detects an additional 23% of toxigenic C. difficile missed by direct CCNA. Since culture is tedious and also detects nontoxigenic C. difficile, we conclude that culture is most useful (i) when the direct CCNA is negative but a high clinical suspicion of toxigenic C. difficile remains, (ii) in the evaluation of new diagnostic tests for toxigenic C. difficile (where the best reference standard is essential), and (iii) in epidemiologic studies (where the availability of an isolate allows for strain typing and antimicrobial susceptibility testing).


Too frequently, the media and politicians cast Mexican immigrants as a threat to American society. Given America's increasing ethnic diversity and the large size of the Mexican-origin population, an investigation of how Mexican immigrants and their descendants achieve upward mobility and enter the middle class is long overdue. Barrios to Burbs offers a new understanding of the Mexican American experience. Vallejo explores the challenges that accompany rapid social mobility and examines a new indicator of incorporation, a familial obligation to "give back" in social and financial support. She investigates the salience of middle-class Mexican Americans' ethnic identification and details how relationships with poorer coethnics and affluent whites evolve as immigrants and their descendants move into traditionally white middle-class occupations. Disputing the argument that Mexican communities lack high quality resources and social capital that can help Mexican Americans incorporate into the middle class, Vallejo also examines civic participation in ethnic professional associations embedded in ethnic communities.


Abstract Functional behavior assessment (FBA) incorporating a functional analysis is emerging as an effective model used to assess classroom behavior problems. However, conducting an FBA in a classroom presents challenges for school psychologists such as determining which environmental variables to evaluate in the assessment. Because teacher attention is often delivered at the same time a child is escaping academic tasks, a functional analysis might be conducted to determine which specific variable (escape or attention) is responsible for reinforcing the behavior. Currently, no published studies have evaluated functional analysis conditions designed to determine if the combination of multiple variables (i.e., escape and attention) presented together lead to differences in the level of problem behavior compared to when they are presented separately. This case study presents a classroom-based functional analysis in which an escape-to-attention condition was used. All data were collected during an actual consultation case and used for clinical decision making in a public school. A school-based behavioral consultant collected data and a paraprofessional conducted the analyses. Future research in this area, benefits of including the new analysis conditions in classrooms, and limitations of consultant-collected data are discussed.


By the mid-19th century, in order to combat the threat of colonisation by western
powers, the Thai king and the country's social elite decided to adopt and implement
western notions and technology as a superior ways to develop Thailand into a
civilised nation, since it was believed that a new modern image of Thai cultural
identity would help the country to be regarded as equal to Europe. At the same
time, traditional Thai beliefs – especially the values of 'pure' Buddhism – were left
behind as they were seen to be entirely different from the new western notions.
Ever since then westernised modes of thinking have been supported by several
generations of Thai rulers through a series of examples of imposed 'top-down'
planning. This inappropriate and failed harmonisation of modern culture with
Thai tradition, a process which is increasingly influenced by globalisation, has
resulted in a contemporary cultural crisis that creates many problems in different
aspects of the Thai built environment.
The objective of this doctoral study is therefore to observe the results of these
cross-cultural conflicts, and to find new ways to use architectural design to focus
on a different approach from the westernised notions embodied in globalisation.
The ideals of eco-Buddhism and of localised, 'bottom-up' planning – together
with architectural participation by local people – thus become the inspirational
ideas behind this study. The framework of the thesis chooses to investigate two
different dimensions of the cultural conflicts caused by unsuccessful hybridisation
in Thailand: firstly, the extreme physical changes to the built environment caused
by the western influences; and secondly, the specific Thai pheonmena that
illustrate the negative impact of cultural hybridisation on the mentality of local
people. The cities of Bangkok and Chiang Mai have thus been chosen as the two
main case studies because each exemplifies particular problems.
This thesis, as a PhD by Design will propose various small-scale architectural
projects which are expressed differently according to their background problems.
These often simple projects – seen as 'small changes' introduced by architects
– are presented in the hope that their impacts would then be scaled up through
local participation and the latent creativities of the residents of these urban areas
in Thailand's two main cities.


Cytokines bind to the receptor gp130 and activate a variety of intracellular responses. Chow et al. have determined a 2.4 angstrom-resolution structure of the ligand-binding and activation domains of gp130 bound to Karposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus interleukin-6 (IL-6). A tetrameric signaling complex is formed by interactions between viral IL-6 and the activation domain of human gp130. This assembly reveals why the activation domain is required for formation of a competent signaling complex. The tetramer provides a template to model the hexameric signaling complexes formed between gp130 and human cytokines and shows how the viral cytokine achieves molecular mimicry. D.-c. Chow, X.-l. He, A. L. Snow, S. Rose-John, K. C. Garcia, Structure of an extracellular gp130 cytokine receptor signaling complex. Science 291, 2150-2155 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Anthropogenic CO 2 is a major driver of the present ocean acidification. This latter is threatening the marine ecosystems and has been identified as a major environmental and economic menace. This study aims to forecast from the thermodynamic equations, the acidification variation (ΔpH) of the Mediterranean waters over the next few decades and beyond this century. In order to do so, we calculated and fitted the theoretical values based upon the initial conditions from data of the 2013 MedSeA cruise. These estimates have been performed both for the Western and for the Eastern basins based upon their respective physical (temperature and salinity) and chemical (total alkalinity and total inorganic carbon) properties. The results allow us to point out four tipping points, including one when the Mediterranean Sea waters would become acid (pH<7). In order to provide an associated time scale to the theoretical results, we used two of the IPCC (2007) atmospheric CO 2 scenarios. Under the most optimistic scenario of the "Special Report: Emissions Scenarios" (SRES) of the IPCC (2007), the results indicate that in 2100, pH may decrease down to 0.245 in the Western basin and down to 0.242 in the Eastern basin (compared to the pre-industrial pH). Whereas for the most pessimistic SRES scenario of the IPCC (2007), the results for the year 2100, forecast a pH decrease down to 0.462 and 0.457, for the Western and for the Eastern basins, respectively. Acidification, which increased unprecedentedly in recent years, will rise almost similarly in both Mediterranean basins only well after the end of this century. These results further confirm that both basins may become undersaturated (< 1) with respect to calcite and aragonite (at the base of the mixed layer depth), only in the far future (in a few centuries).


In recent months, rare cases of thrombosis at unusual sites associated with thrombocytopenia, occurring within a typical risk window (i.e., 4-28 days) after receiving SARS CoV2 vaccines, have been reported. Healthcare professionals should be prepared to detect these cases on time. The Expert Panel of the Knowledge Management and Transfer Network conducted a free search of the related literature. With the available information and the clinical expertise of the working group, we formulated, reviewed, and endorsed recommendations for the timely suspicion, diagnosis (case definitions, the use of initial laboratory and imaging tests, specific tests), and management of these thrombotic conditions. This document is considered a living document that will be updated as new evidence emerges, and recommendations may change over time.


This article examines events on the ground in several localities where climate change is lowering property values and analyzes how those changes in value can be reckoned with by regulators. The article merges practices and principles of real estate transactions and finance with those of land use and environmental regulation.Climate change is a planetary phenomenon whose environmental implications are far-reaching. Reports on climate change consequences increasingly focus on what is happening locally and presently, while speculation continues about long-term global consequences. In numerous communities, property values are declining because of repeated flooding, continued threats of storm surges, sustained high temperatures, constant fear of wildfires, lack of water in residential, commercial, and agricultural areas, and real concerns with mudslides in vulnerable areas. Cumulatively, these changes are causing a reverse economic bubble associated with land use that mirrors the effect of the infamous housing bubble of 2008, but is potentially much more harmful to the nation. Much of the article consists of local case studies demonstrating these adverse economic effects. It then points out that these effects are being accounted for in the private sector while public regulation is stunted by concerns over the per se takings doctrine established in the case of Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council. The article examines the lawyer's role in assisting real estate purchasers with their due diligence duties under the historical doctrine of caveat emptor. It argues that this duty includes the consideration of present but also emerging property conditions and how those conditions are accounted for in the casualty insurance and mortgage industries and by real estate appraisers. As the private market adapts to climate change, new building techniques and locational preferences for new construction are emerging, evidencing strategic adaptation to increasingly evident risks associated with climate change. The article concludes with a reflection on how these private market realities should influence land use and environmental regulation, particularly local land use controls.


OBJECTIVE
To quantify disparities in accessibility and availability of pediatric primary care by modeling interventions across multiple states that compare publicly insured versus privately insured children, and urban versus rural communities.

DATA SOURCES
Secondary data sources include 2013 National Plan and Provider Enumeration System, 2009 MAX Medicaid claims, 2012 American Community Survey.

STUDY DESIGN
The study models accessibility and availability of care for all children in seven states.

METHODS
Optimization modeling with access constraints is used to estimate access. Statistical hypothesis testing is used to quantify systematic disparities.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS
California has the best accessibility for privately insured children and Minnesota for publicly insured children. Mississippi has the lowest availability for both populations. Overall, the disparities in availability for pediatric primary care are not as significant as in accessibility. Both rural and urban communities are in need of improvement in accessibility to primary care for publicly insured children, although at varying levels across states.

CONCLUSIONS
Disparities in availability are not as significant as disparities in accessibility. Opportunities to improve access to pediatric primary care vary by state. Generating specific recommendations for small areas is critical to enabling health policy decision makers to improvement access.


The location of farmsteads and petty gentry villages in the poviat of Gniezno at the turn of the 15th century (Summary) The farmsteads and petty gentry villages of the poviat of Gniezno situated in Kalisz voivodeship are concentrated in three main areas. The first and, at the same time, the largest such concentration was found in the territory located south of Gniezno – on a strip between Gniezno, Witkowo and Czerniejewo. The second was situated in the west of the poviat (Popowo, Łubowo parishes), whereas the last, small, complex comprised several villages in the parish of Trląg. The chronological scope of the study covered the years from the turn of the 15th century, while the source base was constituted by court records regarding the lands of Greater Poland (Wielkopolska), as well as the "Liber beneficiorum of the archidiosece of Gniezno" by Jan Łaski and – for comparative purposes – the 16th-century tax registers. The villages were divided into parts, each provided with a binomial name – the first component being the proper name of the village, whereas the second was derived from a nickname or a name of its owner – heir. The farmstead villages inhabited by yeomen included: Grzybowo (initially an independent parish, later belonging to the parish in Gozdowo) consisting in the 15th century of 13 divisions, Malachowo – sources inform of 6 existing divisions of this village; Jelitowo – with 2 divisions; Żolcz with 2 divisions; Cielmowo 5 divisions; Mikolajewice – 3 divisions; Drachowo – 5 divisions; and Bojenice, Skiereszewo and Gurowo. Nearby the above enlisted farmstead villages one could also encounter petty gentry villages managed by single peasants (e.g. Gulczewo). Local heirs often were owners of divisions in the neighbouring villages. The petty gentry and farmstead villages in the poviat of Gniezno were inhabited by noblemen of various coats of arms, with the only exception of Strzyzewo, where the landowners were the noblemen of the Poraj coat of arms. In the vicinity of Gniezno it is possible to come across numerous names of no longer existing settlements. It is a direct result of partition of those villages – quite commonly the source name of a village was constituted by the name of a division absorbed in time by its mother village. The 15th and 16th centuries constituted the period of the most intense division of petty gentry and farmstead villages in the poviat of Gniezno.


This paper review on impact study of steel wire composites. Composites are one of the most widely used materials because of their adaptability to different situations and the relative case of combination with other materials to serve specific purposes and exhibit desirable properties. The impact test is a method for evaluating the toughness and notch sensitivity of engineering materials. This paper presents some basic research results for the application of the steel wire embedded composites structural systems. The research and development in steel wire composites are highly highlighted in this article.


Punctured extinct cave bear femora were misidentified in southeastern Europe (Hungary/Slovenia) as 'Palaeolithic bone flutes' and the 'oldest Neanderthal instruments'. These are not instruments, nor human made, but products of the most important cave bear scavengers of Europe, hyenas. Late Middle to Late Pleistocene (Mousterian to Gravettian) Ice Age spotted hyenas of Europe occupied mainly cave entrances as dens (communal/cub raising den types), but went deeper for scavenging into cave bear dens, or used in a few cases branches/diagonal shafts (i.e. prey storage den type). In most of those dens, about 20% of adult to 80% of bear cub remains have large carnivore damage. Hyenas left bones in repeating similar tooth mark and crush damage stages, demonstrating a butchering/bone cracking strategy. The femora of subadult cave bears are intermediate in damage patterns, compared to the adult ones, which were fully crushed to pieces. Hyenas produced round–oval puncture marks in cub femora only by the bone-crushing premolar teeth of both upper and lower jaw. The punctures/tooth impact marks are often present on both sides of the shaft of cave bear cub femora and are simply a result of non-breakage of the slightly calcified shaft compacta. All stages of femur puncturing to crushing are demonstrated herein, especially on a large cave bear population from a German cave bear den.


During the 2001-2008 period, the employment rate of people with a disability remained remarkably low in most western economies, hardly responding to better macro-economic conditions and favourable anti-discrimination legislation and interventions. Continuing health and productivity improvements in the general population are leaving people with disabilities behind, unable to play their role and have their share in the increasing productive capacity of the economy. This paper combines dynamic panel econometric estimation with longitudinal data from Australia to show that vocational education has a considerable and long-lasting positive effect on the employment participation and productivity of people with disabilities.


This paper examines the governance of regional tourism organisations (RTOs) and relates governance to the principle of subsidiarity. The principle maintains that tasks and responsibilities should be accomplished by the lowest and most basic elements of any social organisation, and it is an injustice to assign to a larger and higher association what the lesser and subordinate associations can do. There is little research on understanding RTO governance, on how governance may contribute to RTO instability or on the application of the principle of subsidiarity in a tourism context. A New Zealand case study demonstrates a series of fundamental problems with typical RTO governance structures, linked to problems found in many tourism partnerships. Data collection methods for the case study of the Waikato RTO included observation, interviews, focus groups and document analysis. The paper concludes that the principle of subsidiarity can underpin an RTO governance system if the RTO adopts an ethos of service to the tourism sector and the wider community. This governance style requires open communication and consultation, must foster trust and legitimacy and contribute to securing the RTO's ongoing required resources. Such a governance structure would align well with the principles of sustainable tourism.


Diabetes mellitus is affecting a wide range of people around the world. There is no cure, therefore people need to live with that disease for a long time. Suffering from diabetes mellitus means that the insulin regulation inside the body is not working correctly and must therefore be monitored very carefully ending up with documenting the blood glucose level and the complete nutrition intake. This is still very often a paper based and not really motivating or diversified process with the help of so called diabetes diaries. Today's society also delivers mobile solutions even with gamification elements, but the combination of monitoring blood glucose level and a complete independent/not directly related game was not yet the State of The Art focus. As a result, the authors of this publication present a game, where people get benefits from entering their blood glucose measurements and nutrition intake in an included digital diabetes diary. By including 21 people suffering from type 1 or 2 diabetes it was shown, that such a solution poses a motivating aspect in their daily lives and differs from current software solutions. Throughout different iterations, 29 functional requirements were identified and described. Within a five week test phase, the participants played 178 game sessions and entered 1102 diary entries.


Abstract. Our knowledge on trends in surface solar radiation (SSR) involves uncertainties due to the scarcity of long-term time series of SSR, especially with records before the second half of the 20th century. Here we study the trends of all-sky SSR from 1885 to 2010 in Switzerland, which have been estimated using a homogenous dataset of sunshine duration series. This variable is shown to be a useful proxy data of all-sky SSR, which can help to solve some of the current open issues in the dimming/brightening phenomenon. All-sky SSR has been fairly stable with little variations in the first half of the 20th century, unlike the second half of the 20th century that is characterized also in Switzerland by a dimming from the 1950s to the 1980s and a subsequent brightening. Cloud cover changes seem to explain the major part of the decadal variability observed in all-sky SSR, at least from 1885 to the 1970s; at this point, a discrepancy in the sign of the trend is visible in the all-sky SSR and cloud cover series from the 1970s to the present. Finally, an attempt to estimate SSR series for clear-sky conditions, based also on sunshine duration records since the 1930s, has been made for the first time. The mean clear-sky SSR series shows no relevant changes between the 1930s to the 1950s, then a decrease, smaller than the observed in the all-sky SSR, from the 1960s to 1970s, and ends with a strong increase from the 1980s up to the present. During the three decades from 1981 to 2010 the estimated clear-sky SSR trends reported in this study are in line with previous findings over Switzerland based on direct radiative flux measurements. Moreover, the signal of the El Chichon and Pinatubo volcanic eruption visible in the estimated clear-sky SSR records further demonstrates the potential to infer aerosol-induced radiation changes from sunshine duration observations.


Worldwide developments in the sciences have changed human lives radically.  Science education has an important role in enabling school learners to understand something of what the sciences have found and how the findings were made, along with an awareness of the place of the sciences in any modern society.  The objectives of this analytical document study were to review and draw from a wide range of national education polices reports of commissions and conferences and to explore and summarize the issues that need to be addressed, since independence of Pakistan in 1947.  These policy documents and reports identify a lack of progress and other studies suggest why.  In the light of the findings as well as studies set in other countries, it is suggested that a coherent approach is needed where the curricula in the sciences, the resources to be made available and the assessment systems to be employed are all focusing on the wider aims of science education. In this, there can be a move away for the dominance of memorization and recall towards wider educational goals.  The training of science teachers also needs major overhaul.  In this way the evidence suggests that a rich and effective provision in science education can be developed and implemented.


An efficient multi-channel hybrid fiber-radio scheme for both down and up-link paths is demonstrated based on digitized RF-over-fiber technique, where the frequency translation stages are implemented using a single analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC) instead of mixers and local oscillators. The simultaneous transmission of GSM, UMTS and WiMAX services is demonstrated with error-free reception. With a minimum sampling rate of 50 MHz and an overall optical data rate of 400 Mb/s, all the three wireless services can be successfully recovered in a full-duplex transmission. In the downlink direction, the performance is dependent on the amount of amplification required for the wireless signal at the desired carrier frequency. The amount of amplification on the other hand is dependent on the location of the wireless signal within the Nyquist zone which increases significantly with the order of the Nyquist zone. In the uplink direction, the performance is limited by inter-channel interference as a result of spectra aliasing of the regenerated IF signals which limits the signal-to-noise-ratio. With proper system design that optimizes downlink amplification and minimizes inter-channel interference, simultaneous multi-service transmission using digitized RF-over-fiber technique is able to improve spectral efficiency and minimize hardware count.


Anatomical and karyological features were investigated in four populations of Acinos alpinus subsp. meridionalis (Nyman) P. Ball., an Ibero-Maghreban species. Plant material was collected in the field during flowering stage, in contrasting bioclimatic conditions. Fresh material was used for analysis of trichomes morphology with light microscopy. Young meristems and flower buds were fixed for karyological analysis. Two types of capitate glandular, one type of peltate glandular, and four types of non-glandular trichomes were observed on different parts of the plants, including the stems, leaves and flowers. Trichomes distribution and density showed variability among organs, but no intraspecific variability was found. The chromosome number 2n = 2x = 18 is reported for the first time for Algerian populations. Furthermore, aberrant meiotic behavior in the form of cytomixis was observed in one population of A. alpinus subsp. meridionalis – cytoplasmic strand was formed between more than two cells at different stages of meiosis. Other types of abnormalities such as lagging chromosomes, and formation of triads with microcytes were also discovered. Results are discussed in comparison with literature.


The 2-amino-2-deoxy--D-glucopyranosyl moiety (ring I) of paromomycin was replaced by a 2,4-diamino-2,4-dideoxy--D-glucopyranosyl, 2,4-diamino-2,4-dideoxy--D-galactopyranosyl, 2-amino-2-deoxy--D-galactopyranosyl, or 3,4,5-trideoxy-4-aza--D-erythro-heptoseptanosyl moiety to investigate the effect of the substituent at C(4) on the interaction with ribosomal RNA. The triflate 6 was prepared from the key intermediate pentaazido 3,6-dibenzyl ether 5, and the hexosulose 10 was obtained by oxidation of 5 with Dess-Martin's periodinane. Stereoselective reduction of 10 with NaBH4 gave the alcohol 11 that was transformed into the triflate 12. The epimeric hexaazides 7 and 13 were obtained by treating the triflates 6 and 12, respectively, with tetrabutylammonium azide. Periodate cleavage of glycol 2 yielded the dialdehyde 24 that was reductively aminated with aniline and benzylamine to give the 3,4,5-trideoxy-4-aza--D-erythro-heptoseptanosides 25 and 26, respectively. Standard azide reduction and debenzylation yielded 9 (2,4-diamino-2,4-dideoxy--D-galactopyranosyl ring I), 13 (2-amino-2-deoxy--D-galactopyranosyl ring I), 17 (2,4-diamino-2,4-dideoxy--D-glucopyranosyl ring I), and 27 and 28 (3,4,5-trideoxy-4-aza--D-erythro-heptoseptanosyl ring I). The derivatives 9 and 13 possessing a D-galacto-configured ring I were less active than the corresponding D-gluco-analogues 17 and paromomycin (1), respectively. The C(4)-aminodeoxy derivative 17 (D-gluco ring I) and the known 4-deoxyparomomycin (23), prepared by a new route, displayed slightly lower antibacterial activities than paromomycin (1). Cell-wall permeability is not responsible for the unexpectedly low activity for 17, as shown by cell-free translation assays. The results evidence that the orientation of the substituent at C(4) is more important than its nature for drug binding and activity.


The rapid pace of Globalisation has led to the increasing interdependence of member states of the United Nations to achieve sustainable development objectives, including the eradication of extreme poverty, environmental protection, access to basic services and livelihoods and the promotion of economic growth and opportunities. The book attempts to examine the changing roles of civil society in global and national governance. It identifies factors that influence the effectiveness of civil society in promoting democratic governance by addressing how the rapid pace of Globalisation has increased the interdependence of governments, the private sector, and civil society organisations.


Workplace bullying is an area that has attracted significant press attention throughout the last decade. A variety of well publicized surveys have revealed that this is an issue endemic in working life in Britain; and, at a conservative estimate, over half the working population can expect to experience bullying at work (either directly by being bullied, or through witnessing it) at some stage in their careers. This is now seen to be a disturbing event, with something like a fifth of witnesses and a quarter of direct targets leaving their organizations.This serious damage to individuals has been accorded little direct research in Britain, although it has resulted in court cases brought under health and safety and equal opportunities legislation. The recognition of the problem and the emergence of court cases, have both served to focus employers on the need to deal with the issue. The recent strike vote at Ford in Dagenham, asking the employer to enforce existing anti-harassment policies, highlights the fact that having paper policies is not enough. Workplace Bullying is derived from the largest survey ever carried out on workplace bullying, supported by the CBI, TUC, Federation of Small Businesses, IPD, and the HSE among others. This study covered 5,500 people, but the book goes beyond it to explore all the issues associated with what is becoming a major issue in organizations.


The Federal Reserve's "balance-sheet normalization," which reduced aggregate reserves between 2017 and September 2019, increased repo rate distortions, the severity of rate spikes, and intraday payment timing stresses, culminating with a significant disruption in Treasury repo markets in mid-September 2019. We show that repo rates rose above efficient-market levels when the total reserve balances held at the Federal Reserve by the largest repo-active bank holding companies declined and that repo rate spikes are strongly associated with delayed intraday payments of reserves to these large bank holding companies. Intraday payment timing stresses are magnified by early-morning settlement of Treasury security issuances. Substantially higher aggregate levels of reserves than existed in the period leading up to September 2019 would likely have eliminated most or all of these payment timing stresses and repo rate spikes.


In this paper, we perform an in-depth study of the properties and applications of aligned generative models. We refer to two models as aligned if they share the same architecture, and one of them (the child) is obtained from the other (the parent) via fine-tuning to another domain, a common practice in transfer learning. Several works already utilize some basic properties of aligned StyleGAN models to perform image-to-image translation. Here, we perform the first detailed exploration of model alignment, also focusing on StyleGAN. First, we empirically analyze aligned models and provide answers to important questions regarding their nature. In particular, we find that the child model's latent spaces are semantically aligned with those of the parent, inheriting incredibly rich semantics, even for distant data domains such as human faces and churches. Second, equipped with this better understanding, we leverage aligned models to solve a diverse set of tasks. In addition to image translation, we demonstrate fully automatic cross-domain image morphing. We further show that zero-shot vision tasks may be performed in the child domain, while relying exclusively on supervision in the parent domain. We demonstrate qualitatively and quantitatively that our approach yields state-of-the-art results, while requiring only simple fine-tuning and inversion.


In this article we provide a critical analysis of the role of market-based approaches to poverty reduction in developing countries. In particular, we analyse the role of microfinance in poverty alleviation by conducting an ethnographic study of three villages in Bangladesh. Microfinance has become an increasingly popular approach that aims to alleviate poverty by providing the poor new opportunities for entrepreneurship. It also aims to promote empowerment (especially among women) while enhancing social capital in poor communities. Our findings, however, reflect a different picture. We found microfinance led to increasing levels of indebtedness among already impoverished communities and exacerbated economic, social and environmental vulnerabilities. Our findings contribute to the emerging literature on the role of social capital in developing entrepreneurial capabilities in poor communities by highlighting processes whereby social capital can be undermined by market-based measures like microfinance.


In this paper, we focus on managerial characteristics of micro and small-sized firms. Using linked employer-employee data on the Portuguese economy for the 2010-2018 period, we estimate the impact of management teams' human capital on the probability of firms becoming financially distressed and on their subsequent recovery. Our estimates show that the relevance of management teams' formal education on the probability of firms becoming financially distressed depends on firms' size and the type of education. We show that management teams' formal education and tenure reduces the probability of micro and small-sized firms becoming financially distressed and increases the probability of their subsequent recovery. The estimates also suggest that those impacts are stronger for micro and small-sized firms. Additionally, our results show that functional experience previously acquired in other firms, namely in foreign-owned and in exporting firms and in the area of finance, may reduce the probability of micro firms becoming financially distressed. On the other hand, previous functional experience in other firms seems to have a strong and highly significant impact on increasing the odds of recovery of financially distressed firms. We conclude that policies that induce an improvement in the managerial human capital of micro and small-sized firms have significant scope to improve their financial condition, reducing the likelihood of firms entering a state of financial distress.


Background: The true benefit of iron supplementation for nonanemic menstruating women with fatigue is unknown. We studied the effect of oral iron therapy on fatigue and quality of life, as well as on hemoglobin, ferritin and soluble transferrin receptor levels, in nonanemic iron-deficient women with unexplained fatigue. Methods: We performed a multicentre, parallel, randomized controlled, closed-label, observer-blinded trial. We recruited from the practices of 44 primary care physicians in France from March to July 2006. We randomly assigned 198 women aged 18–53 years who complained of fatigue and who had a ferritin level of less than 50 ug/L and hemoglobin greater than 12.0 g/dL to receive either oral ferrous sulfate (80 mg of elemental iron daily; n = 102) or placebo (n = 96) for 12 weeks. The primary outcome was fatigue as measured on the Current and Past Psychological Scale. Biological markers were measured at 6 and 12 weeks. Results: The mean score on the Current and Past Psychological Scale for fatigue decreased by 47.7% in the iron group and by 28.8% in the placebo group (difference –18.9%, 95% CI −34.5 to −3.2; p = 0.02), but there were no significant effects on quality of life (p = 0.2), depression (p = 0.97) or anxiety (p = 0.5). Compared with placebo, iron supplementation increased hemoglobin (0.32 g/dL; p = 0.002) and ferritin (11.4 μg/L; p < 0.001) and decreased soluble transferrin receptor (−0.54 mg/L; p < 0.001) at 12 weeks. Interpretation: Iron supplementation should be considered for women with unexplained fatigue who have ferritin levels below 50 μg/L. We suggest assessing the efficiency using blood markers after six weeks of treatment. Trial registration no. EudraCT 2006–000478–56.


Two contrasting hypotheses about what motivates Dominican migrants to send remittances to their rural parents in the Sierra are tested: (1) an investment in potential bequests and (2) an insurance contract between parents and migrant children. Remittances from young migrants, males, and migrants who want to return to the Sierra follow a pattern consistent with investment. In contrast, female migrants with no intention of returning to the Sierra play the role of insurers. The gender composition of the migrant siblings affects this remittance task-sharing, since women with no remitting brothers show interest in inheritance, while men with no sisters offer insurance.


 Abstract—This article aims to study the effect of reinforcement inclusions (geogrids) on the sand dunes bearing capacity under strip footings. In this research experimental physical model was carried out to study the effect of the first geogrid reinforcement depth (u/B), the spacing between the reinforcement (h/B) and its extension relative to the footing length (L/B) on the mobilized bearing capacity. This paper presents the numerical modeling using the commercial finite element package (PLAXIS version 8.2) to simulate the laboratory physical model, studying the same parameters previously handled in the experimental work (u/B, L/B & h/B) for the purpose of validation. In this study the soil, the geogrid, the interface element and the boundary condition are discussed with a set of finite element results and the validation. Then the validated FEM used for studying real material and dimensions of strip foundation. Based on the Experimental and numerical investigation results, a significant increase in the bearing capacity of footings due to an appropriate location of the inclusions in sand. The optimum embedment depth of the first reinforcement layer (u/B) equal to 0.25. The optimum spacing between each successive reinforcement layer (h/B) equal to 0.75 B. The optimum Length of the reinforcement layer (L/B) equal to 7.5 B. The optimum number of reinforcement is equal to 4 layers. The study showed a directly proportional relation between the number of reinforcement layer and the Bearing Capacity Ratio BCR, and an inversely proportional relation between the footing width and the BCR.


Injection of medications such as corticosteroids, local anaesthetics and viscosupplements are becoming increasingly important means of diagnosis and local, targeted treatment of various hip pathologies, in particular, osteoarthritis.1 ,2 Obtaining needle access to the hip joint is challenging due to its deep anatomic location and proximity to neurovascular structures, and therefore, imaging guidance is often advocated. Fluoroscopy has been the traditional method of choice for needle placement; sonography offers additional benefits in visualisation of neurovascular structures, lack of ionising radiation, portability and possibly decreased cost. In the typical practitioner office setting, ultrasound-guided injection is the only alternative to landmark-guided injection. Comparisons of accuracy between these two methods, however, have not been directly evaluated. Hoeber et al 's3 meta-analysis compares the accuracy of these two injection methods.

Ultrasound-guided procedures have shown substantial growth in the last decade, increasing by 100.8% from 2004 to 2010, with non-radiologists accounting for 72.2% of this growth.4 Yet the …


The Soviet blockade of western Berlin between the 23 June 1948 and 12 May 1949 - and the airlift that was organized to defeat it - was the first major confrontation between the Soviet Bloc on the one side and the United States and its allies on the other. It was at the point where the shared cooperation arising from common interests during the Second World War finally dissolved and became the Cold War with the potential to develop into a hot war. Yet for all its acknowledged importance in the history of the Cold War, no historian has hitherto investigated the British component of the Berlin Airlift to discover how it worked in practice and if British involvement was actually necessary to the success of the Allied operation as a whole, or whether the Airlift could have been undertaken more effectively by different approach.
Given its acknowledged importance, the Airlift has been poorly served by its historiography. It forms a very minor part in the post-war histories of Germany; and even in the more specialist scholarly literature on the early stages of the Cold War, it receives scant attention. Insofar as it has received any detailed scrutiny, the Airlift of 1948-9 is presented regularly as a sub-plot in the wider drama of the Berlin Blockade, and it is the US dimension of the Airlift which has produced the best historiography. The American aspect, Operation VITTLES, predominates in the current literature and there is no equivalent on the RAF side to the USAF professional historians' output. Beyond this US dimension, there is a general dearth of academic papers in journals and of scholarly monographs. Popular books exist in quantity providing narrative overviews for the general public but this literature can be based on assumptions about the British dimension to the Airlift that do not stand up when tested against the surviving evidence.
This study seeks to address its principal questions - examining the scale and extent of the British participation, and gauging its utility and significance in
iii
relation to the broader multi-national endeavour to defeat the Blockade - by a close study of the rich and plentiful primary archival sources held in Britain, the United States and elsewhere using the combined methodologies of the historian and the logistician. The thesis evaluates British participation in the Berlin Airlift and reveals that her aircraft were demonstrably indispensable logistically. However, performance - and that of the Royal Air Force especially - was substantially lower than that of the American task force. At the time, the official explanation given to the public was that the USA operated more and larger aircraft. The thesis reveals that there were additional causes. It examines how the Americans might have replaced the British, as was feared within the Foreign Office and the RAF and as they had the French. Redistribution of the whole American task force to bases nearer to Berlin in the British Zone of Germany would have increased the tonnage delivered but the thesis finds it would not have been sufficient. Deploying more US resources is the other possibility investigated and the limitations of American capability to do so are revealed and the potential impact on the plans to continue the Airlift into 1951 identified.


The effect of fault rupture characteristics on near-fault strong ground motions is investigated using a kinematic modeling approach in an attempt to identify physical processes that lead to specific ground-motion patterns. The shear-stress distribution on the causative fault plane of four well-documented seismic events (i.e., 1979 Imperial Valley, 1985 Michoacan, 1989 Loma Prieta, and 1999 Izmit) is calculated based on fault slip models available in the literature using the methodology proposed by Bouchon (1997) for stress field computations. In order to associate the fault rupture characteristics (i.e., slip, rupture velocity, state of stress) of the investigated earthquakes with near-fault ground motions generated by the events, forward ground-motion simulations are performed using the discrete wavenumber representation method and the concept of the S -wave isochrones is exploited. The results indicate that the seismic energy radiated from the high-isochrone-velocity region of the fault arrives at the receiver within a time interval that coincides with the time window of the long-period ground-motion pulse recorded at the site. Furthermore, the near-fault ground-motion pulses are strongly correlated with large slip on the fault plane locally driven by high stress drop. In addition, the local rupture velocity seems to be inversely correlated to the spatial distribution of the strength excess over the fault plane confirming findings of previous studies. For various events the area of the fault that contributes to the formation of the near-fault pulse encompasses more than one patch of significant moment release (subevent) (e.g., 1979 Imperial Valley, 1989 Loma Prieta). This observation explains why a dislocation model with average properties (i.e., slip, rise time, etc.) reproduces successfully near-fault ground motions for strike-slip faults and for dip-slip faults with intermediate-to-large earthquake magnitudes (Aki, 1979). However, for very large earthquakes, such as megathrust events on subduction zones (e.g., 1985 Michoacan), the fault region that contributes to the pulse formation encompasses individual subevents and, consequently, cracklike slip functions (rather than dislocation models) may be more appropriate for the simulation of the near-fault ground motions.


This chapter reviews intellectual property developments in China in its first decade of WTO membership, focusing primarily on developments within the organization. It shows how China has transformed from a passive taker of international intellectual property norms to one that has slowly assumed the additional roles of both a norm shaker and a norm maker. The chapter begins by providing an overview of reforms China undertook in the run-up to the accession. It examines the low profile China maintained in the WTO in the first few post-accession years. It also acknowledges China's limited interest in international intellectual property norm-setting, including its rare submission to the Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade. The chapter then examines the recent U.S.-China WTO dispute over the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights and its high-profile intervention in the June 2010 meeting of the TRIPS Council. It concludes with a discussion of China's increased assertiveness in the international intellectual property arena, including the WTO.


Page 1 of 5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect Dunning–Kruger effect From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately. Their research also suggests corollaries: highly skilled individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.[1] The bias was first experimentally observed by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University in 1999. They postulated that the effect is the result of internal illusion in the unskilled, and external misperception in the skilled: "The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."[1]


We consider small-amplitude deformations of a long thin-walled elastic tube having an initially axially uniform elliptical cross section. The tube is subject to an axial pre-stress, and the deformations result from an applied transmural pressure. An approximate tube law (linking the transmural pressure with the cross-sectional area and its axial derivatives) is derived from shell theory in the distinguished asymptotic limit in which the tube's behaviour is dominated by the restoring forces from the axial pre-stress and azimuthal bending. This is possible because the deformations of the tube induced by both the transmural pressure and the axial forces can be described, to very good approximation, by a single azimuthal mode of deformation of axially varying amplitude. The resulting tube law is compared with numerical solutions of the full shell equations and good agreement is found (provided the tube is sufficiently long and the wall not too thin so that in-plane shearing is negligible). We discuss the applications of our results to the modelling of flow in collapsible tubes.


We consider the goodness-of-fit testing problem of distinguishing whether the data are drawn from a specified distribution, versus a composite alternative separated from the null in the total variation metric. In the discrete case, we consider goodness-of-fit testing when the null distribution has a possibly growing or unbounded number of categories. In the continuous case, we consider testing a Lipschitz density, with possibly unbounded support, in the low-smoothness regime where the Lipschitz parameter is not assumed to be constant. In contrast to existing results, we show that the minimax rate and critical testing radius in these settings depend strongly, and in a precise way, on the null distribution being tested and this motivates the study of the (local) minimax rate as a function of the null distribution. For multinomials the local minimax rate was recently studied in the work of Valiant and Valiant. We re-visit and extend their results and develop two modifications to the chi-squared test whose performance we characterize. For testing Lipschitz densities, we show that the usual binning tests are inadequate in the low-smoothness regime and we design a spatially adaptive partitioning scheme that forms the basis for our locally minimax optimal tests. Furthermore, we provide the first local minimax lower bounds for this problem which yield a sharp characterization of the dependence of the critical radius on the null hypothesis being tested. In the low-smoothness regime we also provide adaptive tests, that adapt to the unknown smoothness parameter. We illustrate our results with a variety of simulations that demonstrate the practical utility of our proposed tests.


To understand how variations in climate, land use, and land cover will impact water, ecosystem, and natural resources in snow-dominated regions, we must have access to long-term hydrologic and climatic databases. Data from watersheds that include significant human activities, such as grazing, farming, irrigation and urbanization, are critical for determining the signature of human induced changes on hydrologic processes and the water cycle. One of the primary components of effective watershed research is a sustained, long-term monitoring and measurement program. Such an effort was undertaken when the Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed (RCEW) was added to the USDA Agricultural Research Service watershed program in 1960. The RCEW, a 239 km drainage in the Owyhee Mountains near Boise, Idaho, has been continuously monitored since the early 1960's and continues to the present. The vision for RCEW as an outdoor hydrologic laboratory in which watershed research would be supported by sustained, long-term monitoring of basic hydro-climatic parameters was described in 1965 in the first volume of Water Resources Research. Research at the RCEW continues to be supported by monitoring at 9 weirs, 21 primary and 4 secondary meteorological measurement stations, 24 precipitation stations, 8 snow courses, 5 snow study sites, 14 soil temperature profiles, 4 soil moisture profiles and 3 sub-surface hill-slope hydrology sites. These support a wide range of experimental investigations including snow hydrology and physics, cold season hydrology, water quality, model development and testing, water and carbon flux experiments, ecosystem processes studies, grazing effects, and mountain climate research. Active watershed manipulation allows research on fire ecology and hydrology, vegetation-climate interaction, watershed restoration, grazing and wildlife management, and invasive plants. All data are ingested into a computer database, and available to the public via both web-based and on-line ftp access. ___________________________________________________________________________________


Abstract Objectives: To investigate whether poorer survival of breast cancer among deprived women compared with affluent women is related to their NHS care. Design: Retrospective review of hospital and general practice case records. Setting: Greater Glasgow Health Board area. Subjects: Women diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992-3 who lived in the most affluent (deprivation categories 1 and 2) and the most deprived areas (deprivation categories 6 and 7) of Glasgow (Carstairs and Morris deprivation index). Main outcome measures: Breast cancer treatment, time from general practice consultation to clinic visit and surgery, and details of hospital admissions and follow up in primary and secondary care. Results: The access to care and surgical and oncological treatment of women from affluent and deprived areas were similar. Admissions to hospital for problems not related to breast cancer were more common in those living in deprived areas (number admitted once or more: 51 (24%) v13 (10%), P=0.001). Consultation patterns in general practice by the second year after diagnosis showed women in deprived areas consulting more frequently than women in affluent areas (median (interquartile range) number of consultations (5 (2-10) v 7 (4-13), P=0.01). Conclusion: Women living in affluent areas did not receive better NHS care for breast cancer than women in deprived areas. However, women from deprived areas seem to have greater comorbidity, and poorer outcomes from breast cancer among these women is probably due to factors which result in deprived communities having poorer health outcomes rather than to management of their breast cancer.


I. Policy Motivation for Research: There is increasing evidence that labor market imperfections are critical impediments to development in rural areas, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. In rural Ghana, agriculture is the main economic activity for the vast majority of households. Most practice subsistence farming, employing family labor and growing food for consumption, and few people participate in wage labor as an important income-generating activity. However, when family labor is valued at market prices to calculate profits, farm profits are generally negative. Why don't more people engage in paid labor, and what consequences does this have for household welfare? This project explores two categories of questions that aim to understand the underpinnings of rural labor markets imperfections. First, if people did have access to paid labor, what factors would affect their decisions to participate or not? Second, why are labor markets in Sub-Saharan Africa so thin, and what roles might anti-poverty programs play in improving them?


Dynamic binary analysis is a prevalent and indispensable technique in program analysis. While several dynamic binary analysis tools and frameworks have been proposed, all suffer from one or more of: prohibitive performance degradation, a semantic gap between the analysis code and the execution under analysis, architecture/OS specificity, being user-mode only, and lacking flexibility and extendability. This dissertation describes the design of the Dynamic Executable Code Analysis Framework (DECAF), a virtual machine-based, multi-target, whole-system dynamic binary analysis framework. In short, DECAF seeks to address the shortcomings of existing whole-system dynamic analysis tools and extend the state of the art by utilizing a combination of novel techniques to provide rich analysis functionality without crippling amounts of execution overhead. DECAF extends the mature QEMU whole-system emulator, a type-2 hypervisor capable of emulating every instruction that executes within a complete guest system environment. DECAF provides a novel, hardware event-based method of just-in-time virtual machine introspection (VMI) to address the semantic gap problem. It also implements a novel instruction-level taint tracking engine at bitwise level of granularity, ensuring that taint propagation is sound and highly precise throughout the guest environment. A formal analysis of the taint propagation rules is provided to verify that most instructions introduce neither false positives nor false negatives. DECAF's design also provides a plugin architecture with a simple-to-use, event-driven programming interface that makes it both flexible and extendable for a variety of analysis tasks. The implementation of DECAF consists of 9550 lines of C++ code and 10270 lines of C code. Its performance is evaluated using CPU2006 SPEC benchmarks, which show an average overhead of 605% for system wide tainting and 12% for VMI. Three platformneutral DECAF plugins Instruction Tracer, Keylogger Detector, and API Tracer are described and evaluated in this dissertation to demonstrate the ease of use and effectiveness of DECAF in writing cross-platform and system-wide analysis tools. This dissertation also presents the Virtual Device Fuzzer (VDF), a scalable fuzz testing framework for discovering bugs within the virtual devices implemented as part of QEMU. Such bugs could be used by malicious software executing within a guest under analysis by DECAF, so the discovery, reproduction, and diagnosis of such bugs helps to protect DECAF against attack while improving QEMU and any analysis platforms built upon QEMU. VDF uses selective instrumentation to perform targeted fuzz testing, which explores only the branches of execution belonging to virtual devices under analysis. By leveraging record and replay of memory-mapped I/O activity, VDF quickly cycles virtual devices through an arbitrarily large number of states without requiring a guest OS to be booted or present. Once a test case is discovered that triggers a bug, VDF reduces the test case to the minimum number of reads/writes required to trigger the bug and generates source code suitable for reproducing the bug during debugging and analysis. VDF is evaluated by fuzz testing eighteen QEMU virtual devices, generating 1014 crash or hang test cases that reveal bugs in six of the tested devices. Over 80% of the crashes and hangs were discovered within the first day of testing. VDF covered an average of 62.32% of virtual device branches during testing, and the average test case was minimized to a reproduction test case only 18.57% of its original size. SELECTIVE DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF VIRTUALIZED WHOLE-SYSTEM GUEST ENVIRONMENTS by Andrew W. Henderson B.S., Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, 1999 M.B.A., Jacksonville University, 2004 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Syracuse University December 2016 Copyright c © Andrew W. Henderson 2016 All Rights Reserved


ABSTRACT Uterine leiomyomas (fibroids) are the most common benign tumors in women of reproductive age. These tumors are three to four times more prevalent in African American women, who also have a 10 times higher incidence of hypovitaminosis D than white women. Recent studies have demonstrated the antitumor effects of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 on several cancers, but its effects on uterine leiomyomas are still unknown. To determine the antitumor and therapeutic effects of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 on uterine leiomyomas, female Eker rats (14–16 mo old) harboring uterine leiomyomas were randomized into control and experimental groups and were given vehicle versus 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (0.5 μg/kg per day) subcutaneously for 3 wk, respectively. At the end of the experiment, the rats were euthanized, and the leiomyoma tumors were analyzed. Treatment with 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 significantly reduced leiomyoma tumor size in Eker rats. It also reduced leiomyoma size by suppressing cell growth and proliferation-related genes (Pcna, cyclin D1 [Ccnd1], Myc, Cdk1, Cdk2, and Cdk4), antiapoptotic genes (Bcl2 and Bcl2l1 [Bcl-x]), and estrogen and progesterone receptors. Additionally, immunohistochemistry revealed decreased expression of PCNA and MKI67 (a marker of proliferation) and increased expression of caspase 3 in 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3-treated Eker rat leiomyomas. Toxicity analyses using serum samples showed similar levels of SGOT, SGPT, calcium, and total bilirubin in 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3-treated and vehicle-treated control Eker rats. These results support that 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 is an antitumor agent that may be a potential safe, nonsurgical therapeutic option for the treatment of uterine leiomyomas.


This paper extends the standard New Keynesian model by incorporating labor adjustment costs and overtime work. I show that labor frictions help reconcile the frequent price changes found in the microdata with the degree of sluggishness in inflation adjustment to output changes at the macro level. The introduction of labor frictions affects the dynamic behavior of economic variables (particularly employment and inflation) and implies that firms marginal costs should be measured in overtime costs. Marginal costs measured in overtime hours are procyclical and are predicted by inflation as suggested by theory.