Background: Considering the high incidence and prevalence of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in the Iranian society and the limited number of studies to investigate its associated risk factors, the current study was designed to identify any relevant risk factor of this disease. Methods: The present case-control study was performed among 150 nonalcoholic fatty liver disease patients and 150 normal liver participants who attended to gastroenterology clinics in Ilam city, Iran during 2014-2015. All demographic data, clinical trials and health behaviors associated with lifestyle such as nutritional status, smoking, physical activities were collected and compared between two groups. Results: Among a total of 300 participants in the current study, the male female ratio was 46.54 and the mean±standard deviation of all participants was 42.13±12.15 years. The mean values of total cholesterol, triglycerides (TG), low density lipoprotein (LDL), alanine transaminase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) were significantly higher in cases than controls group (P< 0.0001). A significant relationship was revealed between positive familial history, marriage, and low physical activities with NAFLD (P< 0.05). In the patient's group, consumption of red meat was significantly higher and dairy intake was significantly lower compared to the control group (P< 0.05). Using the multivariate logistic regression analysis, the adjusted odds ratio for variables of waist circumference, triglyceride, ALT and body mass index (BMI) were statistically significant 1.11, (1.04-1.18); 2.58, (1.01-6.67); 5.34, (1.84-15.52) and 7.28, (1.89-27.99) respectively (P< 0.05). Also, a significant association was observed among the variables of ALT, AST and BMI with the severity grade of NAFLD (P< 0.05). Conclusion: The results of this study showed that waist circumference, BMI, serum level of ALT and TG concentrations can predict the occurrence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. BMI, ALT, and AST seem to be associated with the ultrasonography staging of liver in NAFLD. Therefore, these parameters could be used to predict the ultrasonography staging of liver in these patients. © 2016, Tehran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved.


In Wal-Mart v. Dukes and AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, the Supreme Court revamped the law concerning the Federal Arbitration Act and Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, allowing businesses to insulate themselves from class action suits by employees and consumers. Each decision has significant implications within its field (employment discrimination law and consumer law, respectively). Together, the two decisions allow companies to opt out of class action liability through contract and make it more difficult to bring class actions against corporations that do not use such contracts. Collectively, they reflect the belief of the five conservative Justices in the majority that companies must be protected from litigation that is large simply because companies are large. Big companies, like Wal-Mart and AT&T Mobility, that deal with thousands or millions of consumers and employees enjoy certain strategic advantages because of their size. Similarly, class actions pose certain strategic advantages because of their size. The current Court majority has used its power to protect companies from big litigation. In so doing, the Court has abdicated its responsibility to interpret federal laws on employment, arbitration, and class actions consistently with Congress's intent to balance the interests of employees and consumers with those of large corporations. This article examines what Wal-Mart and AT&T mean for future employment class actions.


Background An association between education and dementia is well-established but it is unclear whether education is associated with dementia after accounting for early life cognitive ability and whether there is a joint effect, such that the risk associated with one of the exposures depends on the value of the other. We examined separate and joint associations of adolescent cognitive ability and educational attainment with risk of dementia among Danish men born between 1939 and 1959. Methods Men (N = 477,421) from the Danish Conscription Database were followed for dementia from the age 60 for up to 17 years via patient and prescription registry linkages. Exposure measures included cognitive ability assessed at the conscript board examination around age 18 and highest educational level (low: 0–10 year, medium: 10–13 years, high: ≥13 years) at age 30 from registry records. Associations with dementia diagnosis were estimated in Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for birth year and age at conscript board examination. Interaction was assessed on the multiplicative scale by including a product term between the two exposure measures and on the additive scale by calculating relative excess risk due to interaction (RERI) between different levels of the exposure measures. Results Compared to men in the high education group hazard ratio [HR] for men in the medium and low group were 1.21 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.13, 1.30) and 1.34 (95% CI: 1.24, 1.45), respectively when not adjusting for cognitive ability. Additional adjustment for cognitive ability attenuated the magnitude of the associations, but they remained significant (education medium: HR = 1.10, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.19 and education low: HR = 1.12, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.22). A 10% higher cognitive ability score was associated with a 3.8% lower hazard of dementia (HR = 0.962; 95% CI: 0.957, 0.967), and the magnitude of the association only changed marginally after adjustment for education. Men in the low education group with relatively low cognitive ability were identified as a high-risk subgroup for dementia. The increased risk associated with exposure to both risk factors did, however, not significantly depart from the sum of risk experienced by men only exposed to one of the risk factors (estimates of RERI were not significantly different from 0) and no significant evidence of either additive or multiplicative interactions was found. Conclusions In conclusion, the results suggest that education and cognitive ability protect against the risk of dementia independently of one another and that increases in educational attainment may at least partially offset dementia risk due to low cognitive ability.


Diagnostic tasks require determining the differences between a model of an artifact and the artifact itself. The differences between the manifested behavior of the artifact and the predicted behavior of the model guide the search for the differences between the artifact and its model. The diagnostic procedure presented in this paper is model-based, inferring the behavior of the composite device from knowledge of the structure and function of the individual components comprising the device. The system (GDE — General Diagnostic Engine) has been implemented and tested on examples in the domain of troubleshooting digital circuits.

This research makes several novel contributions: First, the system diagnoses failures due to multiple faults. Second, failure candidates are represented and manipulated in terms of minimal sets of violated assumptions, resulting in an efficient diagnostic procedure. Third, the diagnostic procedure is incremental, reflecting the iterative nature of diagnosis. Finally, a clear separation is drawn between diagnosis and behavior prediction, resulting in a domain (and inference procedure) independent diagnostic procedure.


Background: MM is an incurable disease with an anticipated overall survival ranging from months to decades. Novel therapies like bortezomib have activity in both the relapsed/refractory and up front settings. There are sparse data on whether novel therapies may overcome high risk features.

Methods: Patients with newly diagnosed high-risk myeloma (beta-2 microglobulin [B2M] >= 5.5., plasma cell labeling index [PCLI] >= 1, or deletion 13q) were eligible. Patients were treated with bortezomib 1.3 mg/m2 day 1, 4, 8, and 11 every 21 days for 8 cycles as induction. After induction, patients received bortezomib 1.3 mg/m2 every other week indefinitely. Patients relapsing on maintenance schedule resumed full induction schedule. Responses were defined by the EBMT criteria. The primary end-point was the response rate (90% power to detect a response rate of >=50% ).

Results: Between March 15, 2004 and March 10, 2005, 44 patients enrolled. Among the 43 eligible patients, median age was 63; 51% were male. All had high risk disease: deletion 13q (6/41); PCLI >=1% (17/33); t(4:14) (4/27) and B2M >= 5.5 (34/43). Response data are available for 37 of the 43 eligible patients. The overall response rate was 49% (95% CI: 0.32, 0.66) (0 patients with CR, 1 VGPR, 15 PR, 2 MR, and 11 inevaluable). The response rate allowing for use of serum monoclonal protein levels when a measurable urine monoclonal protein was unavailable at follow-up was 59.5% (1 patient with CR, 1 VGPR, 18 PR, 2 MR, and 6 inevaluable). The median progression free survival is 9.4 months. Thirty-three percent of patients completed the 8 cycles of planned induction therapy and moved to maintenance. Reasons for discontinuing therapy have included progression or death (n=18), adverse events (n=6), and other (n=14). Only 12% of patients remain on active therapy: 0% of deletion 13q patients; 25% of t(4:14) and 12% each of high B2M and high PCLI patients. Of the 14 patients who entered the maintenance phase of treatment, 3 have progressed. Of these 3, 2 took re-induction, and neither responded. Median time to progression for those entering maintenance was12.4 months from the time of starting maintenance. The most common adverse events of grade 3 or higher included neutropenia (33%), diarrhea (31%), hyponatremia (21%), anemia (19%), thrombocytopenia (16%), fatigue (14%). Grade 1–2 sensory peripheral neuropathy occurred in 53% of patients, with only 2% having grade 3 sensory neuropathy. One patient had grade 3 peripheral neuropathy. One patient died after receiving 2 doses of protocol treatment due to heart block and asystole. Updated results on the full study population will be presented at the meeting.

Conclusions: In high risk patients, upfront bortezomib appears to result in comparable response rates to those reported for unselected cohorts of newly diagnosed myeloma patients. Continued follow-up of these patients will provide information about whether this will translate into better overall outcomes.

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 [1]: pending:yes


This study examines the innovation management practices of small firms in Australia, France and Switzerland. The focus was on how firm size, age and growth influence the commercialisation process. A sample of 143 firms was surveyed across the three countries. Findings from the study suggest that the size of the firm, its age and pace of growth are important determinants in influencing how firms behave. Consistent with the findings from earlier studies the need for greater formalisation and external assistance as firms grow, and the need for customer research and independent testing when innovations are in their early stages were found.


The majority of corrugated boxes are transported and stored on pallets where the reduced support area due to deckboard gaps has an adverse effect on the strength of the corrugated boxes Therefore, an adjustment factor is used to adjust the box compression strength to account for the lack of support, but these factors were developed for a limited range of deckboard gaps, box sizes, and box orientations. In addition, there is no predictive model that can estimate the reduction in compression strength based on the size of the box and the size of the gap. The main objective of this study was to investigate and predict the loss in compression strength produced by top deckboards with a wide range of gaps between them using empirical data from two different corrugated box sizes. Results indicated that corrugated box compression strength decreased as the gap between the pallet deckboards increased. Larger boxes (305mm wide) were far less susceptible to the effect of gaps than the smaller boxes. A decrease in strength was observed when the location of the gap was relocated within 10 mm of the box corner. Gaps were found to produce the same reduction in compression strength when subdivided into two smaller gaps. Finally, a modification of the McKee equation was put forth and the analysis found the equation to be capable of predicting the loss in compression strength produced by gaps. The predictive accuracy was similar to the original McKee equation, and thus equally limited by the inherently large variation in corrugated boxes.


With wide deployment of optical transport networks and the emergence of bandwidth-intensive applications, the idea of multicasts and groupcasts in optical networks stems from the ability to set up optical point-to-multipoint (multicast) and multipoint-to-multipoint (groupcast) sessions in wavelength-routed networks. As the technology for intelligent optical networks grows, optical groupcast applications (such as grid computing, distributed interactive simulations, multimedia-rich interactive services, virtual private network services, personal-customized content authoring services, and Ethernet LAN services) will become widely popular. In this paper we introduce the concept of groupcast routing and wavelength assignment (GC-RWA) and evaluate the performance of GC-RWA for light-forests corresponding to the groupcast sessions, when these light-forests are composed of lightpaths and light-trees.


As law-school clinicians, we take pride in creating a dynamic learning environment where students from virtually any background or perspective can learn lawyering skills and judgment in and through supervised live-client representation. And among the central lessons we aim to teach and model is the collaborative, in-person development of a lawyer's professional identity—across the class, between instructor and student, and in partnership with others. By framing the practice and profession through peer-to-peer learning we broaden and deepen the experience for our students far beyond what an isolated project could offer, and, in so doing, instill in them an abiding appreciation for the benefits of such learning in their careers. But do we do this for ourselves as clinical instructors? Indeed, if first-hand comparative learning on a continuing basis is such an essential professional norm, should we not also engage in it for our own work with students and clients? And even if some of us already do this, could we do more, or in a more deliberate, reflective, and comprehensive way? After all, surely none of us is above improving ourselves through the example of others. We are all works in progress. No matter our current approach for enhancing our teaching through peer engagement, this essay shares a relatively straightforward yet innovative idea that a colleague recommended to me a few years ago: on-site visits to clinicians at other law schools. And although the suggestion was particularly salient to me as a new clinician building a new clinic at the time, it is one that can benefit any clinical teacher dedicated to self-improvement. Having taken the suggestion, I write to share the experience and its promise—for new and seasoned clinicians alike.


Background: Neurodegenerative diseases like diabetes can significantly impair patients' postural balance and gait. These negative alterations in balance and gait coupled with peripheral neuropathy (PN) can dramatically reduce patients' ability to perform activities of daily living and also put them on high fall-risk. The purpose of this study is to treat balance deficit due to diabetes and PN using a home wearable technology based on plantar electrical stimulation. Methods: An innovative and low-cost therapeutic electrical stimulation (ES) device initially designed for pain management (SENSUS, NEUROMetrix Inc, MA, USA) was customized to deliver electrical stimulation to plantar regions of interest, Figure 1. Since neuropathy patients lack plantar sensations, the intensity of stimulation was set based on perception on senate skin. The therapy session was performed at home for 2 hours a day per week on each foot (at night before sleep and morning). The effect of ES was quantified by measuring changes in sway of ankle, hip and center of mass (CoM) and gait changes using body-worn sensors (LegSySTM, Biosensics LLC, MA, USA). Results: Five patients were recruited so far (Age 53.8±5.7, BMI=30±5 Kg/m2) with average vibration perception threshold score of 26.2±5.3V. Preliminary data analysis included baseline measurements on 5 patients and follow up on 3 after a period of one week. On average we observed a reduction of 23% (1.39±0.67deg to 1.07±0.78deg), 25% (1.08±0.85deg to 0.82±0.4deg) and 22% (0.25±0.16cm2 to 0.19±0.08 cm2) in ankle, hip and body sway during eyes open assessment. For gait we observed reduction in gait velocity (11%), increase in CoM sway (9.4%) and increase in double support (17.5%) during steady state gait. Interestingly, there was 34% decrease in gait unsteadiness during steady state gait. There was no changes in knee range of motion and stride length. Conclusion: The preliminary results from this study have demonstrated that plantar electrical stimulation may be beneficial for patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathy in improving postural stability. Immediate improvements in balance are more prominent than gait. The reductions in gait unsteadiness are promising; it seems that patients are walking more cautious post therapy. Follow up measurements after continued use of device for months will reveal significant changes in gait and balance.


The selection of resources, particularly VMs, in current public IaaS clouds is usually done in a blind fashion, as cloud users do not have much information about resource consumption by co-tenant third-party tasks. In particular, communication patterns can play a significant part in cloud application performance and responsiveness, specially in the case of novel latency-sensitive applications, increasingly common in today's clouds. Thus, herein we propose an end-to-end approach to the VM allocation problem using policies based uniquely on round-trip time measurements between VMs. Those become part of a user-level `Recommender Service' that receives VM allocation requests with certain network-related demands and matches them to a suitable subset of VMs available to the user within the cloud. We propose and implement end-to-end algorithms for VM selection that cover desirable profiles of communications between VMs in distributed applications in a cloud setting, such as profiles with prevailing pair-wise, hub-and-spokes, or clustered communication patterns between constituent VMs. We quantify the expected benefits from deploying our Recommender Service by comparing our informed VM allocation approaches to conventional, random allocation methods, based on real measurements of latencies between Amazon EC2 instances. We also show that our approach is completely independent from cloud architecture details, is adaptable to different types of applications and workloads, and is lightweight and transparent to cloud providers.


One of the largest archaeological projects ever undertaken in North America, Peabody Coal Company's Black Mesa Archaeological Project conducted investigations in northeastern Arizona from 1967 to 1983. This mammoth undertaking recognized and recovered the remains of ephemeral camps, early agricultural sites, Puebloan villages, and Navajo settlements stretching over nearly ten millennia of human occupation. Now a single comprehensive work summarizes the results of this intensive survey, excavation, and analysis. Prehistoric Culture Change on the Colorado Plateau offers the only complete synthesis of Kayenta-area archaeology as well as the single most intensive study of the ancestral Puebloan and Navajo occupation of the Four Corners region. It also provides the human context for more than two decades of theoretical, methodological, and empirical work. The authors all associated with the Black Mesa project synthesize previous analyses of faunal, lithic, ceramic, chronometric, and human osteological data, weaving a coherent and compelling story of the prehistory and ethnohistory of northern Arizona. Through these data, they provide a summary of culture history which emphasizes that organizational variation and other aspects of culture change are largely a response to a changing natural environment. The volume provides a systematic overview of human occupation on and around Black Mesa through time, beginning with the Paleoindian period, moving through the Archaic and Basketmaker periods, considering the Puebloan dispersion and the magnificent remains of the Pueblo III period, and culminating with Hopi and Navajo perspectives on their history. The authors examine relationships among population density, subsistence strategies, and social organization, and use these data to identify the regional context within which the Black Mesa people may have operated during different time periods. Broad in scope with a wealth of supporting detail, Prehistoric Culture Change on the Colorado Plateau offers a basic reference on this important project that collects twenty years of analysis into one volume. It is a unique touchstone in Southwest archaeology that will stand as the last word on Black Mesa.


Ecosystem evapotranspiration (ET) has been quantified around the world by different methodologies to understand the energy balance, especially to control the evolution of climate change. It is known that the vegetation of the pampa biome is natural grasslands, it has a large variety of species (flora and fauna), however is it different in the environmental aspects related to the energy balance when compared to the grassland cultivated? In this study the objective was to analyze the environmental differences of the Pampa Biome related to the energy balance in comparison with the pastures cultivated in Barrax, Spain. In the first one the minimum daily ET is 0.99 mm/day, while in the second is 1.57 mm/day. However, the highest differences between the sites occur during the summer period, in the maximum daily ET, the maximum is 16.25 mm/day in Pampa and in Barrax is 7. 31mm/day. The results of this study have indicated that the characteristics of the Pampa biome, both in terms of soil and climatic issues and land use, generate differences in the energy balance when compared to similar vegetation in other regions of the world.


As chief executives of schools, head teachers are often called upon to make demands or issue orders to staff members. Sometimes they need to resort to power to back up their demands and orders. The degree to which teachers listen and carry out head teachers'demands or orders is dependent, to some degree, on the perceived power bases.
The purposes of this study were to examine (i)the profile of high school head teachers of Swaziland, (ii) the power bases perceived by high school head teachers of Swaziland to be very effective in influencing staff members to comply with the head teachers'demands and orders; (iii) the extent to which high school head teachers felt satisfied or dissatisfied with the headship job, salary car loan, and housing allowance; (iv) the relationship between the background variables of high school head teachers and their level of satisfaction with the headship job, salary car loan and housing allowance; and (v) the relationship between the head teachers' background characteristics and the perceived use of the power bases to influence staff members to comply with the head teachers' orders and demands.
Data for this study were collected by a survey questionnaire mailed to 105 high schools in Swaziland. A self-addressed stamped envelope was enclosed for returning the completed questionnaire. Out of 105 mailed questionnaires, 63 (60%) were returned, of which 4 questionnaires were incomplete and therefore excluded from the analysis. In essence, the results of the present study are based on information provided by 59 (56%) high school head teachers out of a total of 105.


Coordinator: bambang soelaksono researchers: bambang soelaksono, asri yusrina, rika kumala dewi, armand arief sim, rahmitha, rachma indah nurbani, herry widjanarko, rina rozana advisor: widjajanti i. suharjo editor: stephen girschik abstract the tamadera insurance program is a female-targeted multifunctional micro-endowment saving plan with integrated life insurance and critical illness coverage that was launched in october 2010. given the pioneering nature of the program, this study is being carried out as the first stage of an impact assessment study of tamadera. the study is conducted in Jakarta timur and Jakarta utara. using quantitative and qualitative surveys, the study found that sampled household heads are generally well educated as most of them are graduates from senior high school. family size of the sampled households is higher than the bkkbn's ideal family size. family size is found to have a positive correlation with the position of the household within the quintile per capita expenditure. health and education are found to be important aspects in influencing a household's financial position. in accessing funds for medical treatment and their children's education, sampled households tend to be dependent on the availability of their own money. indeed, Jakarta utara is found to be lagging behind Jakarta timur. large household sizes, high numbers of households receiving raskin, and low education levels of household heads are some of the conditions found commonly in Jakarta utara. meanwhile, a widely held perception among households in Jakarta timur about their ability to finance their children's education shows that they regard this more highly than households in Jakarta utara. the level of financial knowledge and ability of the community remains low. respondents in the first quintile have the lowest percentage score in a financial literacy test compared to respondents in the other quintiles. moreover, the respondents' educational attainment and age are statistically significant in regard to their financial literacy score. most of the respondents are interested in a savings program that provides health insurance and a death benefit. amongst those who are interested in the program, the first priority for their tamadera savings would be to provide finance for their children's education. however, one of the rules of the program is that savings accounts can only be withdrawn from after five years and that there is a 15% reduction penalty if they decide to withdraw their savings before the end of the five year term. this penalty has shown to discourage respondents from joining the program. keywords: baseline survey, life insurance, poverty reduction program


In this study, the ensemble classifier presented by Caruana, Niculescu-Mizil, Crew & Ksikes (2004) is investigated. Their ensemble approach generates thousands of models using a variety of machine learning algorithms and uses a forward stepwise selection to build robust ensembles that can be optimised to an arbitrary metric. On average, the resulting ensemble out-performs the best individual machine learning models. The classifier is implemented in the WEKA machine learning environment, which allows the results presented by the original paper to be validated and the classifier to be extended to multi-class problem domains. The behaviour of different ensemble building strategies is also investigated. The classifier is then applied to the spam filtering domain, where it is tested on three different corpora in an attempt to provide a realistic evaluation of the system. It records similar performance levels to that seen in other problem domains and out-performs individual models and the naive Bayesian filtering technique regularly used by commercial spam filtering solutions. Caruana et al.'s (2004) classifier will typically outperform the best known models in a variety of problems.


This study had the primary objective of identifying the advantages and disadvantages of online learning for a group of students studying in New Zealand. The study was conducted using a survey and interviews to delve into an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of online education from the student's perspective. The intended audience for the research are academics, instructors, and the designers of online course modules, as well as those involved in the design of institutional educational learning systems. It was seen that although research on the definition and various facets of online learning is numerous, the literature regarding the advantages and the disadvantages of online learning was very limited. The study identified that the role of technical infrastructure and internet connectivity is paramount in ensuring the success of the online learning. Also, content and technology providers need to provide portable, highquality, inter-operable solutions so that the same content can be delivered across the different institutions and different departments within the same institution. Further, the advantages can be leveraged to increase the popularisation of online education and inform best practice in using online learning platforms.


One of the most frequent complaints minorities have about the criminal justice system is bias-based policing—the use of race as a basis for law enforcement decisions. Although racial bias and cultural stereotypes depicting African Americans as criminals set the stage for biased policing, they also likely have effects on Black citizens that ultimately and ironically contribute to the unwarranted disparate treatment of racial groups. I examined whether social psychological theory on stereotype threat provides an explanation for why police officers are more likely to suspect Black than White individuals. I theorized that, unlike Whites, innocent Black individuals experience stereotype threat in police encounters, which in turn causes Blacks to experience greater arousal related to anxiety, self-regulatory efforts, and cognitive load, and consequently, to display more nonverbal behaviors associated with deception. These racial differences in nonverbal behaviors, in turn, contribute to police officers' decisions to target Blacks as suspects disproportionately more often than Whites. I tested the former mediational hypotheses in two studies. Study 1 revealed that, as predicted, Blacks were significantly more likely than Whites to agree that they experience stereotype threat in police encounters in general. Study 2 showed that this effect generalized to a staged encounter with a White security officer. As hypothesized, Blacks experienced more stereotype threat than Whites. Further, this effect was found only when the security officer was portrayed as investigating a crime, not when he was asking for directions to a diversity training meeting (i.e., only when the criminal stereotype was relevant to the situation). Although stereotype threat did not translate into racial differences in a variety of quantifiable nonverbal behaviors (e.g., frequency of smiles, gestures, etc.), it did lead Blacks to appear more nervous overall as compared to Whites. Further, all participants appeared more nervous when the security officer was investigating a crime than when he was asking for directions. This research extends stereotype threat theory to the new domain of police encounters, and suggests that it could influence behavior in ways that ironically increase the likelihood that Blacks in particular will be perceived by police suspicious.


Metal-halide based perovskite solar cells have rapidly emerged as a promising alternative to traditional inorganic and thin-film photovoltaics. Although charge transport layers are used on either side of perovskite absorber layers to extract photogenerated electrons and holes, the time scales for charge extraction and recombination are poorly understood. Ideal charge transport layers should facilitate large discrepancies between charge extraction and recombination rates. Here, we demonstrate that highly enriched semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) films enable rapid (sub-picosecond) hole extraction from a prototypical perovskite absorber layer and extremely slow back-transfer and recombination (hundreds of microseconds). The energetically narrow and distinct spectroscopic signatures for charges within these SWCNT thin films enables the unambiguous temporal tracking of each charge carrier with time-resolved spectroscopies covering many decades of time. The efficient hole extraction by the SWCNT layer also improves electron extraction by the compact titanium dioxide electron transport layer, which should reduce charge accumulation at each critical interface. Finally, we demonstrate that the use of thin interface layers of semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes between the perovskite absorber layer and a prototypical hole transport layer improves device efficiency and stability, and reduces hysteresis.


Computer software is constantly increasing in complexity; this requires more developer time, effort, and knowledge in order to correct bugs inevitably occurring in software production. Eventually, increases in complexity and size will make manually correcting programmatic errors impractical. Thus, there is a need for automated software-debugging tools that can reduce the time and effort required by the developer. The performance of previously developed debugging techniques can be greatly improved by combining them with machine-learning. Our research focuses on the application of neural networks within the domain of statistical debugging. Specifically, we develop methods to mine statistical debugging data that can then be used to train neural networks; these generated multi-layered neural networks can then be used to identify suspicious programmatic entities. Our developed networks are generated on a per program basis in order to leverage specific programmatic properties. In our empirical evaluation we compare our proposed approach with a state-of-the-art automated debugging technique. The results of the evaluation indicate that, for the cases considered, our approach is more effective than the considered technique.


The three-compartment (3-C) model of physique assessment (fat mass, fat-free mass, water) incorporates total body water (TBW) whereas the two-compartment model (2-C) assumes a TBW of 73.72%. Deuterium dilution (D2O) is the reference method for measuring TBW but is expensive and time consuming. Multifrequency bioelectrical impedance spectroscopy (BIS SFB7) estimates TBW instantaneously and claims high precision. Our aim was to compare SFB7 with D2O for estimating TBW in resistance trained males (BMI >25kg/m2). We included TBWBIS estimates in a 3-C model and contrasted this and the 2-C model against the reference 3-C model using TBWD2O. TBW of 29 males (32.4 ± 8.5 years; 183.4 ± 7.2 cm; 92.5 ± 9.9 kg; 27.5 ± 2.6 kg/m2) was measured using SFB7 and D2O. Body density was measured by BODPOD, with body composition calculated using the Siri equation. TBWBIS values were consistent with TBWD2O (SEE = 2.65L; TE = 2.6L) as were %BF values from the 3-C model (BODPOD + TBWBIS) with the 3-C reference model (SEE = 2.20%; TE = 2.20%). For subjects with TBW more than 1% from the assumed 73.72% (n = 16), %BF from the 2-C model differed significantly from the reference 3-C model (Slope 0.6888; Intercept 5.093). The BIS SFB7 measured TBW accurately compared with D2O. The 2C model with an assumed TBW of 73.72% introduces error in the estimation of body composition. We recommend TBW should be measured, either via the traditional D2O method or when resources are limited, with BIS, so that body composition estimates are enhanced. The BIS can be accurately used in 3C equations to better predict TBW and BF% in resistance trained males compared with a 2C model.


We describe the design background of the mathematics game Fingu for iPad aimed at 4 to 8 year old children. We first describe how Fingu theoretically can support children's development of fundamental arithmetic skills, focusing on conceptual subitizing, the embodiment of numerosity, and finger gnosis. Then we present the results of an exploratory micro-longitudinal study of the game with 11 5- and 6-year old children playing the game for several weeks and being filmed at three occasions. We discuss how their behavior with the game develops over time and can be related to the development of arithmetic skills. Finally we discuss how we will proceed testing the effectiveness of Fingu in a larger controlled study.


A linear, zonally averaged model of the interaction between the tropical Atlantic (TA) atmosphere and ocean is presented. A balance between evaporation and meridional heat advection in the mixed layer determines the sea surface temperature tendency. The atmosphere is a fixed‐depth, sub‐cloud layer in which the specific humidity anomaly is determined by a steady‐state balance between evaporation, meridional advection, and a parameterized humidity exchange with the free atmosphere. When the model is integrated, forced with observed surface wind anomalies from 1965 to the present, its simulation of the observed sea surface temperature (SST) is realistic and comparable to a simulation with a full ocean GCM. A statistical representation of surface winds and their relationship to the SST gradient across the equator is used to formulate and test a coupled model of their regional variability. Forced on both sides of the equator, in the trade‐wind regions, with "white‐noise" windspeed perturbations, the SST‐wind relationship in the near‐equatorial region feeds back positively on existing SST anomalies and gives rise to decadal variability.


Socially responsible technologies promise to help address health care inequalities Artificial intelligence (AI) has demonstrated great progress in the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases. Deep learning, a subset of machine learning based on artificial neural networks, has enabled applications with performance levels approaching those of trained professionals in tasks including the interpretation of medical images and discovery of drug compounds (1). Not surprisingly, most AI developments in health care cater to the needs of high-income countries (HICs), where the majority of research is conducted. Conversely, little is discussed about what AI can bring to medical practice in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where workforce shortages and limited resources constrain the access to and quality of care. AI could play an important role in addressing global health care inequities at the individual patient, health system, and population levels. However, challenges in developing and implementing AI applications must be addressed ahead of widespread adoption and measurable impact.


Problem. I became pastor of the Owen Sound Seventh-day Adventist Church in 2005. Since then, the church has grown from 67 members to 86 members in 2009. In spite of the numerical growth the regular Sabbath worship service attendance has stayed the same. Pastoral observation suggested that this was due to a lack of unity and spiritual coherence in the church. The primary contributing factor to this lack of unity and spiritual coherence was in the unsynchronized work of the new converts who have undertaken leadership roles and the existing leadership in creating an atmosphere of unity and concord in the work of fulfilling the Great Commission. Additionally, the church representation at the board was skewed. More than 60% of the church population was under 60 and yet 80% of the board members were over the age of 65. Disputes and the lack of balance in power sharing have been evidenced through the many conflicts the church has dealt with, that seemed mostly rooted in the control issues of those who have been in the church since its beginning in 1987. As the journey through the project continued I was persuaded more and more that disunity in the church was not primarily an issue of church governance but rather the core problem was one of discipleship. Looking at the problem as one of discipleship led to a further discovery that the problem in the church was mirrored in me. The fires of disunity in the church have been instrumental in bringing to the surface the disunity dross in my own heart and life and centered at its core was an issue of personal discipleship. Task. The main task of this project is to work out a biblical solution to the ways newcomers into the church will be accepted, trained as leaders, and work harmoniously together with the existing leaders in fulfilling the Great Commission. When I began this project I naively believed that the simple solution to this issue was to establish, teach and enforce biblical principles of fair church governance. However, as I described in the statement of the problem I discovered that church governance was not the core issue; rather the core issue was discipleship. Thus the task morphed into developing a strategy for discipling both new and previously existing leaders and members. This move toward discipling led me to a problem and a task even closer to home. Looking at the problems out there even in my own church, I saw myself as in a mirror. I realized that change and improvements come only out of a changed agent. Results. As I reflect on my experience in working with the OSSDAC, I would conclude that going through crises has helped me figure out my own heart issues as well as developing better leadership qualities. It has also helped all of the church leaders to mature and to know and understand the purpose of having an Adventist church in the area. I have discovered as well that I naturally tend to lean toward idealism and have a strong sense of fairness. After the first major conflict and many battles later, I realized I needed to spend more time with the leaders and members helping them find a biblically relevant church that can mature and grow as stated in the Great Commission. Conclusion. Through my experiences at the OSSDAC the Lord used the fiery furnace flames to reform the failings of his own follower. Looking at the problems of OSSDAC as one of discipleship led to an awakening in my own life. The problem in the church was mirrored in me. Thus the fires of disunity in the church have been instrumental in bringing to the surface the disunity dross in my own heart and life centered at its core as an issue of personal discipleship. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit through prayer and Christian counseling, I have dealt with my fears, bitterness, rebellion, pride, past abuse, moral failure, pursuit of temporal values, hypocrisy, harboring negative thoughts, an argumentative competitive spirit and have recaptured ground that was given up to the enemy. I hope this project encourages you to face your own heart issues through prayer and Christian counseling.


Using a panel of 3,572 households in the Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF) region interviewed in 2004 and in 2008, the paper provides new evidence on chronic poverty in Uganda. While progress in reducing poverty rates has been impressive from 64.6 percent to 52.2 percent, the levels remain high with a significant number of persistently poor households. Four in every ten households are chronically poor of which 44.9 percent are living in extreme chronic poverty. About 37.8 percent of the households are living in transient poverty of which 67.4 percent escaped poverty during the panel period. The substantial movements out of poverty can perhaps be explained largely by the relative return of peace in the region that enabled households to engage in agricultural activities. While at the aggregate level chronic poverty is significantly more prevalent than transient poverty, a mixed picture is observed at disaggregated level. The picture at aggregate level mirrors itself in the sub-regions of West Nile and Karamoja; but the reverse is observed in Lango sub-region. Chronic poverty is as equally prevalent as transient poverty in Acholi and Teso sub-regions. Overall, chronic poverty is disproportionately high among the Karamajongs. This calls for different kinds of anti-poverty interventions and public support. The paper further demonstrates that the characteristics and determinants of chronic and transient poverty are not always the same. The chronically poor households suffer from multidimensional deprivation including low incomes, low human capital development, inadequate access to infrastructure (especially input markets, trunk roads etc), and inability to access non-agricultural employment. On the other hand, the findings have demonstrated that ensuring peace in this part of the country is necessary for sustainable poverty reduction. The key policy messages: first, the on-going anti-poverty interventions such the Peace, Recovery and Development Plan (PRDP) and NUSAF II, among others, need to be refocused and targeted to ensure that the dynamic nature of poverty in this part of the country is taken into account. This will go a long way in improving the effectiveness of these interventions. Second, agriculture, whose productivity is low, remains the main source of income and employment to the households especially the chronically poor households. With the return of peace in the region, addressing the low agricultural productivity is likely to play a key role in the fight against chronic poverty. On the other hand, creation of employment outside the agricultural sector should be supported. There should be a deliberate strategy for investment in the poorest through asset accumulation – e.g. livestock re-stocking programme. The paper makes a case that chronic poverty should be recognized as a distinct dimension of poverty in government's strategy against poverty if Uganda is to achieve MDG 1 by 2015.


While the pentameric ligand-gated ion channel ELIC has recently provided first insight into the architecture of the family at high resolution, its detailed investigation was so far prevented by the fact that activating ligands were unknown. Here we describe a study on the functional characterization of ELIC by electrophysiology and X-ray crystallography. ELIC is activated by a class of primary amines that include the neurotransmitter GABA at high micro- to millimolar concentrations. The ligands bind to a conserved site and evoke currents that slowly desensitize over time. The protein forms cation selective channels with properties that resemble the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. The high single channel conductance and the comparably simple functional behavior make ELIC an attractive model system to study general mechanisms of ion conduction and gating in this important family of neurotransmitter receptors.


An overview of one anthropological view of culture, including how it works and what it buys us, takes culture as a set of collective — differentially distributed — cognitive structures. Pragmatics is distinguished from semantics, and shown to seamlessly extend to non-linguistic knowledge. "Culture" is (flexibly and variably applied) shared differentially distributed pragmatic knowledge. Next come the role culture plays in regard to society and social living, and the role social groups play in culture. Our social universe is shown to be made up of a multiplicity of overlapping social groups. Prototype-extension is offered as the basis of the application of shared concepts to the experienced and imagined world. Types of cultural knowledge systems include: cultural modes of thought, cultural conceptual systems, and cultural models of action. The paper concludes with the approach's practical implications for analysis, including two concrete examples: Old and Middle English watercourses, and alternative Fanti kinship terminological systems.


ABSTRACT Despite the extensive empirical literature on aid effectiveness, existing studies have not addressed directly how political ideology affects the use of foreign aid in the recipient country. This study, therefore, uses a unique dataset of 12 democratic countries in Africa to investigate the impact of political ideologies on aid effectiveness. Our results indicate that each political party uses aid differently in peruse of their political, ideological orientation. Further analyses suggest that rightist capitalist parties are likely to use aid to improve the private sector environment. Leftist socialist on the other hand, use aid effectively on pro-poor projects such as short-term poverty reduction, mass education and health services. Our additional analysis on the lines of colonialisation shows that the difference in the use of aid by political parties is much stronger in French colonies than Britain colonies. The study provides insight on how the recipient government are likely to use foreign aid.


In this paper, we propose a new method that uses multiple SOMs for estimating values lacking in data analysis. Recently, development of information technology grows the importance of data analysis. In actual data, however, some values will be sometimes missing, and then dealing with such insufficient data has become one of the important subjects in data analysis. Estimating and completing the empty values are required to applying various data analysis techniques. Such an estimation method is also applicable to data prediction problems. In the former methods that use SOM, many empty values would have caused the lack of data for learning process. Our system can achieve effective learning by using multiple SOMs even for data that includes many missing values. Moreover, the system is still available for nonlinear data because of using SOMs. We performed some numerical simulation using the proposed and other methods. By the simulation results, we showed the advantages of our method over some traditional techniques including a technique that uses single SOM.


The distribution of sodium emission over the surface of Mercury is non-uniform, and changes over time. These non-uniformities and time-dependent changes give clues to the processes that produce the sodium. However, observations of the distribution of sodium on Mercury are hampered by the bad seeing that accompanies the need to observe either in daytime, or at extremely large air masses in twilight. In an effort to improve this situation, we have developed an image stabilizer utilizing a piezoelectric driven tip-tilt correction mirror for daytime spectral imaging of Mercury. The system is a modification of one that was originally developed for solar observations at the McMath-Pierce solar telescope. Use of image stabilization results in a noticeable improvement in spatial resolution of our Mercury sodium images. A series of sodium images taken over an eight-day period show changes in which an emission peak in high southern latitudes disappears, and is replaced by an emission peak at high northern latitudes. Further systematic observations and improvements are planned for the image stabilizer system, as well as experimental observations with a low-order adaptive optics system incorporating a commercially available 37-actuator deformable mirror.


Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problems provide a natural mechanism for multiagent coordination and agreement. To date, algorithms for Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problems have tended to mirror existing non-distributed global-search or local-search algorithms. Unfortunately, existing distributed global-search algorithms derive from classical backtracking search methods and require a total ordering over agents for completeness. Distributed variants of local-search algorithms (such as distributed breakout) inherit the incompleteness properties of their predecessors, or depend on the creation of new communication links between agents. This paper presents an algorithm in which a global ordering is not required, while avoiding the problems of existing local-search algorithms.


From finding food to choosing mates, animals must make intertemporal choices that involve fitness benefits available at different times. Species vary dramatically in their willingness to wait for delayed rewards. Why does this variation across species exist? An adaptive approach to intertemporal choice suggests that time preferences should reflect the temporal problems faced in a species's environment. Here, I use phylogenetic regression to test whether allometric factors relating to body size, relative brain size and social group size predict how long 13 primate species will wait in laboratory intertemporal choice tasks. Controlling for phylogeny, a composite allometric factor that includes body mass, absolute brain size, lifespan and home range size predicted waiting times, but relative brain size and social group size did not. These findings support the notion that selective pressures have sculpted intertemporal choices to solve adaptive problems faced by animals. Collecting these types of data across a large number of species can provide key insights into the evolution of decision making and cognition.


We draw on administrative data from the country of Colombia to assess differences in student learning in online and traditional on-campus college programs. The Colombian context is uniquely suited to study this topic, as students take a compulsory exit examination at the end of their studies. We can therefore directly compare the performance on the exit exam for students in online and on-campus programs both across and within institutions, degrees, and majors. Using inverse probability weighting methods based on a rich set of background characteristics coupled with institution–degree–major fixed effects, our results suggest that bachelor's degree students in online programs perform worse on nearly all test score measures (including math, reading, writing, and English) relative to their counterparts in on-campus programs. Results for shorter technical certificates are more mixed. While online students perform significantly worse than on-campus students on exit exams in private institutions, they perform better in SENA—the main public vocational institution in the country.


Introduction: Medical registries are valuable stores of data for research and public health monitoring purposes. This review aims to identify the benefits of medical registries to healthcare, determine the components of effective registries, assess concerns with patient privacy, and develop guidelines for designing quality medical registries.
Method: Pubmed was screened for articles related to medical registries, data management, and patient privacy. Thirty-seven articles adhered to the selection criteria and were included in this review.
Results: Benefits of medical registries: Registries facilitate health outcomes research and can improve patient prognosis by identifying effective care protocols. Data quality and error reduction: Data quality control rests upon clear and standardized processes for data collection and input. Error reduction can be achieved by reducing manual text input and automating data transfer between sources. Automatic feedback features in registries are the most feasible methods of identifying data error. Privacy: Patient privacy must be preserved by anonymizing or pseudonymizing registry data. The preservation of public trust is important to maintain participation in opt-out registries.
Discussion and Conclusion: Registries can be designed to promote high quality data collection and storage by reducing systematic and random error. This review presents a framework for designing effective medical registries that fulfil research and health monitoring purposes while respecting patient privacy.


Background
Evidence from observational studies of telomere length (TL) has been conflicting regarding its direction of association with cancer risk. We investigated the causal relevance of TL for lung and head and neck cancers using Mendelian Randomization (MR) and mediation analyses.

Methods
We developed a novel genetic instrument for TL in chromosome 5p15.33, using variants identified through deep-sequencing, that were genotyped in 2051 cancer-free subjects. Next, we conducted an MR analysis of lung (16 396 cases, 13 013 controls) and head and neck cancer (4415 cases, 5013 controls) using eight genetic instruments for TL. Lastly, the 5p15.33 instrument and distinct 5p15.33 lung cancer risk loci were evaluated using two-sample mediation analysis, to quantify their direct and indirect, telomere-mediated, effects.

Results
The multi-allelic 5p15.33 instrument explained 1.49-2.00% of TL variation in our data (p = 2.6 × 10-9). The MR analysis estimated that a 1000 base-pair increase in TL increases risk of lung cancer [odds ratio (OR) = 1.41, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.20-1.65] and lung adenocarcinoma (OR = 1.92, 95% CI: 1.51-2.22), but not squamous lung carcinoma (OR = 1.04, 95% CI: 0.83-1.29) or head and neck cancers (OR = 0.90, 95% CI: 0.70-1.05). Mediation analysis of the 5p15.33 instrument indicated an absence of direct effects on lung cancer risk (OR = 1.00, 95% CI: 0.95-1.04). Analysis of distinct 5p15.33 susceptibility variants estimated that TL mediates up to 40% of the observed associations with lung cancer risk.

Conclusions
Our findings support a causal role for long telomeres in lung cancer aetiology, particularly for adenocarcinoma, and demonstrate that telomere maintenance partially mediates the lung cancer susceptibility conferred by 5p15.33 loci.


Efficient delivery of anticancer drugs to increase the intracellular drug concentration in targeted tissues is urgently needed in cancer chemotherapy, since clinical drugs usually have serious side effects on normal tissues. In this paper, we developed a new method to fabricate multi-functional porous magnetic nano-cargos by grafting PEG/folate onto the surface and storing doxorubicin in the pores of magnetic supraparticles for accurate delivery of anticancer drugs. The anticancer drug doxorubicin was fixed into the porous magnetic cores with acid-sensitive linkers, which can be broken in acidic intracellular environments or organelles; the superficial PEG chains on the magnetic cores not only enhanced the dispersion stability of the nano-cargos but also immobilized folate modified α-cyclodextrin by inclusion complexation, and the α-cyclodextrin derivatives could be flexibly replaced as needed. Remarkable proliferation inhibition of cancer cells and minor side effects on normal cells were achieved due to the controlled drug release manner of the nano-drug system, indicating that this kind of nano-cargo has great potential in cancer chemotherapy for personalized and accurate treatment.


Because the time series of financial econometrics has feature of nonlinearity and is nongaussian as well as the latent variable and time-varying parameters. The standard quantitative analysis model in the practice is very difficult. This thesis manages to base on the theory of recurrence Bayes filtering theory and integrate the state space model of modern statistical calculation. The thesis studies the theory and algorithm of state space model, and through the comparison and check in the simulation experiment we find that the application of state space model in financial econometrics is the best.


In today's world of rapid technological development one cannot deny the importance of collaborative writing systems. Besides many advantages of a collaborative writing system the major one is to allow its end users to work in collaboration with each other without having to physically meet. In the past various researches has been carried out for the usability evaluation of collaborative writing systems using the think aloud protocol method however there is no study conducted on the comparison of different usability evaluation methods in the context of collaborative writing systems. In this thesis work the authors have tried to find the limitations and capabilities of think aloud protocol and co-discovery learning methods in the context of a collaborative writing system called ZOHO, as well as the usability evaluation of ZOHO using think aloud protocol and co-discovery learning methods. The authors found various usability errors in ZOHO. Apart from this the authors also observed the two usability evaluation methods when they were used for usability evaluation of ZOHO. The authors found that both the methods have its' own benefits and drawbacks. While the co-discovery learning method was fast enough, it was expensive in terms of human resource. On the other hand think aloud protocol method was slow to perform but there was less human resource used. Both the usability methods found almost the same usability errors.


Understanding the metabolic fate of drug candidates in vitro and in vivo is a key component of drug development. Structural characterisation of drug candidate metabolites is important early in drug discovery to identify unwanted metabolic liabilities such as reactive, active, toxic or human specific metabolites. Reactive metabolite (RM) liability is a major concern for pharmaceutical companies during drug design, with most of the industry running primary RM trapping screens.This thesis investigates Fenclozic acid, homopiperazine reactivity, homomorphyline reactive aldehyde and methanol adduct formation, where RMs were not detected through routine glutathione/cyanide trapping assays.Fenclozic acid was withdrawn from clinical development due to hepatotoxicity; the mechanism of hepatotoxicity was never determined. In vitro covalent binding studies indicated phase I bioactivation in human liver microsomes, however no RMs were identified from in vitro experiments. As a part of this PhD thesis the metabolism of Fenclozic acid was investigated in bile duct cannulated rats using modern analytical techniques. Several new metabolites including glutathione related adducts formed through an epoxide RM were identified.A series of homopiperazine compounds were found to react with endogenous formaldehyde during rat in vivo studies. This thesis describes a detailed investigation into the identification and mechanism of formation of the resulting product, a bridged homopiperazine formed through a reactive Schiff base intermediate.A cysteineglycine conjugate observed for a series of homomorpholine compounds trapped by glutathione in human liver microsomes has been investigated in this thesis. NMR, detailed MS and methoxyamine trapping confirmed formation of a thiazolidine glycine product via a reactive aldehyde and subsequent glutathione rearrangement.A compound series in an early drug discovery programme formed unusual methanol adducts post incubation in human liver microsomes. The work undertaken in this thesis revealed the generation of a reactive aldehyde metabolite that did not form an adduct with glutathione, but reacted with the methanol mobile phase to form a pair of hemiacetal diastereoisomers.These examples would not have been detected using routine glutathione RM screening assays, this thesis highlights limitations of a screening approach, and where detailed metabolite identification studies employing modern LC-MS techniques are critical in understanding RM formation.


This work presents a hierarchical, parallel, dynamic dependence analysis for inferring run-time dependencies between recursively parallel tasks in the OmpSs programming model. To evaluate the dependence analysis we implement PARTEE, a scalable runtime system that supports implicit synchronization between nested parallel tasks. We evaluate the performance of the resulting runtime system and compare it to Nanos++, the state of the art OmpSs implementation, and Cilk, a high performance task-parallel runtime system without implicit task synchronization. We find that i) PARTEE is able to handle more fine grained tasks than Nanos++, ii) PARTEE's performance is comparable to that of Cilk, iii) in cases where task dependencies are irregular, PARTEE outperforms Cilk by up to 103%.


Peru is facing serious social and environmental water challenges. Experts and policy makers are trying to better understand the social and economic impacts of an increasing rate of glacial melt and a consequential prospect of water scarcity. Currently there is a great deal of strain put on the water resources originating from Andean glacial melt because these sustain most economic and social growth taking place at the coastal desert. At the same time, the country's neoliberal development policies are changing the management of resources such as water. The gradual expansion of extractive industries along with the growing influence of nonstate actors is introducing new discursive representations of the environment and facilitating important changes in the spatial, administrative, and political relations of governing nature. Among the most prominent changes are the recent restructuring efforts to the Peruvian institutional and legal structure for water governance. In this context, the forms of access, control, and exploitation of water in the Andes have become more contested than ever. This thesis explores the struggle for water at Paron, one of such Andean communities. This decadelong struggle for water perfectly demonstrates how local groups, government agencies, and a private corporation negotiate their access to water. This thesis explores how organizational structures, institutional arrangements, and decision-making processes shape and are shaped by access, use, management, and regulation of water in a conflictive environment. Particularly, it analyzes how politics informs water management, and consequentially affects access to the resource. But also, given the uniqueness of this conflict, this thesis further incorporates a risk and vulnerability factor to its analysis. While this conflict comprises the socioeconomic, political, historical, cultural, and environmental components of most environmental struggles in Peru, it also presents very unique characteristics. The contested water source is managed not only for downstream water use, but also for glacial risk mitigation. As such, this thesis examines how water governance and vulnerability are co-produced in a conflictive environment. For this, I explore specific moments or instances – such as water flows and management, technology, institutions, discourses, and negotiations – that I recognize as embodying this relationship. In this analysis, I pay special attention to the impact of water technologies. I argue that a new, more convoluted, form of water politics – introduced to the watershed with hydropower technology – have created a new set of social relations that reinforce social vulnerability upon local water users, producing a transformation in vulnerability. Water Politics: Governance, Conflict, and Vulnerability in Andean Peru by Flavia Rey de Castro Pastor B.S. University of North Alabama, 2006


Background The largest terrestrial species in the order Carnivora are wide-ranging and rare because of their positions at the top of food webs. They are some of the world's most admired mammals and, ironically, some of the most imperiled. Most have experienced substantial population declines and range contractions throughout the world during the past two centuries. Because of the high metabolic demands that come with endothermy and large body size, these carnivores often require large prey and expansive habitats. These food requirements and wide-ranging behavior often bring them into conflict with humans and livestock. This, in addition to human intolerance, renders them vulnerable to extinction. Large carnivores face enormous threats that have caused massive declines in their populations and geographic ranges, including habitat loss and degradation,persecution, utilization, and depletion of prey. We highlight how these threats can affect theconservation status and ecological roles of this planet's 31 largest carnivores. Ecologically important carnivores. Seven species of large carnivores with documented ecological effects involving (A) "tri-trophic cascades" from large carnivores to prey to plants, (B) "mesopredator cascades" from large carnivores to mesopredators to prey of mesopredators, and (C) both tri-trophic and mesopredator cascades. [Photo credits: sea otter (N. Smith), puma (W. Ripple), lion (K. Abley), leopard (A. Dey), Eurasianlynx (B. Elmhagen), dingo (A. McNab), gray wolf (D. Mclaughlin)] Advances Based on empirical studies, trophic cascades have been documented for 7 of the 31 largest mammalian carnivores (not including pinnipeds). For each of these species (see figure), human actions have both caused declines and contributed to recovery, providing "natural experiments" for quantifying their effects on food-web and community structure. Large carnivores deliver economic and ecosystem services via direct and indirect pathways that help maintain mammal, avian, invertebrate,and herpetofauna abundance or richness. Further, they affect other ecosystem processes and conditions, such as scavenger subsidies, disease dynamics, carbon storage, stream morphology, and crop production. The maintenance or recovery of ecologically effective densities of large carnivores is an important tool for maintaining the structure and function of diverse ecosystems. Outlook Current ecological knowledge indicates that large carnivores are necessary for the maintenanceof biodiversity and ecosystem function. Human actions cannot fully replace the role of large carnivores. Additionally, the future of increasing human resource demands and changing climate will affect biodiversity and ecosystem resiliency. These facts, combined with the importance of resiliente cosystems, indicate that large carnivores and their habitats should be maintained and restored wherever possible. Preventing the extinction of these species and the loss of their irreplaceable ecological function and importance will require novel, bold, and deliberate actions. We propose a Global Large Carnivore Initiative to coordinate local, national, and international research, conservation, and policy. Preserving Predators Large-bodied animals play essential roles in ecosystem structuring and stability through both indirect and direct trophic effects. In recent times, humans have disrupted this trophic structure through both habitat destruction and active extirpation of large predators, resulting in large declines in numbers and vast contractions in their geographic ranges. Ripple et al. (10.1126/science.1241484; see the Perspective by Roberts) review the status, threats, and ecological importance of the 31 largest mammalian carnivores globally. These species are responsible for a suite of direct and indirect stabilizing effects in ecosystems. Current levels of decline are likely to result in ecologically ineffective population densities and can lead to ecosystem instability. The preservation of large carnivores can be challenging because of their need for large ranges and their potential for human conflict. However, the authors demonstrate that the preservation of large carnivores is ecologically important and that the need for conservation action is immediate, given the severity of the threats they face. Large carnivores face serious threats and are experiencing massive declines in their populations and geographic ranges around the world. We highlight how these threats have affected the conservation status and ecological functioning of the 31 largest mammalian carnivores on Earth. Consistent with theory, empirical studies increasingly show that large carnivores have substantial effects on the structure and function of diverse ecosystems. Significant cascading trophic interactions, mediated by their prey or sympatric mesopredators, arise when some of these carnivores are extirpated from or repatriated to ecosystems. Unexpected effects of trophic cascades on various taxa and processes include changes to bird, mammal, invertebrate, and herpetofauna abundance or richness; subsidies to scavengers; altered disease dynamics; carbon sequestration; modified stream morphology; and crop damage. Promoting tolerance and coexistence with large carnivores is a crucial societal challenge that will ultimately determine the fate of Earth's largest carnivores and all that depends upon them, including humans.


Total cross section (TCS) measurements for positron scattering from nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are presented in the energy range 0.2–40 eV. The TCS, the elastic integral and differential cross sections, and the integral cross section accounting of all the inelastic processes (including positronium formation) have also been computed using the independent atom model with screening corrected additivity rule (IAM-SCAR) for incident energies from 1 to 1000 eV. A qualitative level of agreement is found between the present TCS experiment and theory at the common energies. As no previous measurements or calculations for positron–NO2 scattering exist in the literature, we also computed the TCS for electron collisions with NO2 employing the IAM-SCAR method. A comparison of those results to the present positron cross sections and the earlier electron-impact data and calculations is provided. To investigate the role that chemical substitution plays in positron scattering phenomena, we also compare the present positron–NO2 data with the TCSs measured at the University of Trento for positron scattering from N2O and CO2.


Rapid convergence between the Eurasian plate and the Philippine Sea plate in the northern Longitudinal Valley near the city of Hualien in eastern Taiwan has produced prominent fault scarps and large earthquakes (M≥7). This study attempts to more thoroughly understand the surface deformation activities near the faults and their relation to earthquakes near Hualien City using a stable target, multi-temporal radar interferometry method to extract the surface deformation information in this area. Our results indicate that the extracted deformation signals were comparable with those in our leveling data and have a very high spatial density (exceeding 70 point km^(-2)). Additionally, all faults in the northern Longitudinal Valley and Hualien City were not deformed monotonically. Rather, deformation time series are complex and frequent activities affected the general trends wherein, for example, 2005 earthquake swarm produced more than 10 mm of displacement near the Milun fault. Moreover, deformation rates in the study area generally ranged from around 10-20 mm yr^(-1) of relative displacement rates along the radar line of sight between the western part of Hualien City near the Central Range and the eastern part during the decade, while only the Mingyi fault displayed monotonic fault activities with change of displacement rates of approximately 5-10 mm yr^(-1) across the fault.


This paper presents a method for modelling relationship between road segments using feed forward back-propagation neural networks. Unlike most previous papers that focus on travel time estimation of a road based on its traffic information, we proposed the Neighbouring Link Inference Method (NLIM) that can infer travel time of a road segment (link) from travel time its neighbouring segments. It is valuable for links which do not have recent traffic information. The proposed method learns the relationship between travel time of a link and traffic parameters of its nearby links based on sparse historical travel time data. A travel time data outlier detection based on Gaussian mixture model is also proposed in order to reduce the noise of data before they are applied to build NLIM. Results show that the proposed method is capable of estimating the travel time on all traffic link categories. 75% of models can produce travel time data with mean absolute percentage error less than 22%. The proposed method performs better on major than minor links. Performance of the proposed method always dominates performance of traditional methods such as statistic-based and linear least square estimate methods.


Author(s): Romero, Mindy; Puza, Jennifer | Abstract: In 2014, California passed the Ballot Initiative Transparency Act (SB 1253, or BITA) which provided some of the biggest changes to California's ballot initiative process in recent decades. BITA went into effect for the first time during the 2016 election cycle and was designed to provide more opportunities for legislative compromise and to allow for more public involvement in the ballot initiative process. Our study examines BITA and its impact on the ballot initiative process. Specifically, we sought to understand the extent of BITA's impact on influencing the state legislature and the initiative proponents to seek legislative compromise. Furthermore, we examine the implementation of the new mechanisms BITA put in place and offer suggestions for how to potentially improve their effectiveness for future elections.


The pattern of misdemeanor marijuana arrests in New York City since the introduction of "broken windows" policing in 1994 is remarkable. By the year 2000, arrests on misdemeanor charges of smoking marijuana in public view (MPV) had reached 51,267 for the city, up 2,670 percent from 1,851 arrests in 1994. In 2000, misdemeanor MPV arrests accounted for 15 percent of all felony and misdemeanor arrests in New York City and 92 percent of total marijuana-related arrests in the State of New York. In addition, the pattern of arrests disproportionately targeted African-Americans and Hispanics. In this paper, we analyze the MPV arrest data. Building on our previous research on broken windows policing and, using a number of different statistical approaches on the MPV arrest data, we find no good evidence that the MPV arrests are associated with reductions in serious violent or property crimes in the city. As a result New York City's marijuana policing strategy seems likely to simply divert scarce police resources away from more effective approaches that research suggests is capable of reducing real crime. One reform that we discuss concerns the legal standard of review in cases involving such pronounced racial or ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system: Courts reviewing claims of racial or ethnic discrimination in policing, where the prima facie evidence of discrimination cuts across several layers of outcomes (arrest, detention, conviction, and additional incarceration) should relax the requirement that the complainant prove actual discriminatory intent on the part of a particular actor, and instead allow for an inference of intent where the government has failed to justify or explain a number of those disparities. This change would effectively shift the burden of explaining gross disparities on the party with the most complete information.


Lockpicking has become a popular topic with many in the security community. While many have chosen to learn the fine art of opening locks without keys, few people explore the fascinating methods of attack that are possible WITH keys. Keys to the Kingdom addresses the topics of impressioning, master key escalation, skeleton keys, and bumping attacks that go well beyond any treatment of these topics in the author's previous book, Practical Lock Picking.

This material is all new and focuses on locks currently in use as well as ones that have recently emerged on the market. Hackers and pen testers or persons tasked with defending their infrastructure and property from invasion will find these techniques uniquely valuable. As with Deviant Ollam's previous book, Practical Lock Picking,? Keys to the Kingdom includes full-color versions of all diagrams and photographs. Check out the companion website?which includes instructional videos that provide readers with a full-on training seminar from the author.

Excellent companion to Deviant Ollam's Practical Lock Picking.
Understand the typical failings of common security hardware in order to avoid these weaknesses.
Learn advanced methods of physical attack in order to be more successful with penetration testing.
Detailed full-color photos in the book make learning easy, and companion website is filled with invalualble training videos from Dev!

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Key Impressioning

Chapter 2. Foil Key/Soft Key Attacks

Chapter 3. Master Key Privilege Escalation

Chapter 4. Key Bumping

Chapter 5. Skeleton Keys

Chapter 6. Cast and Mold Attacks

Chapter 7. Set-Up Keys

Chapter 8. Sight Decoding of Keys from Photos or in Real Life

Chapter 9. Decoding & Attacking User Re-Keyable Locks

Chapter 10. Construction Keying

Appendix - Indentifying Locks Based on Key Bow or Keyway Profile


On behalf of the University of South Dakota School of Law, the South Dakota Law Review, and myself, I would like to welcome you to the annual Symposium issue of the Law Review. Each year, the South Dakota Law Review selects a topic based on timeliness, importance to legal scholarship, a lack of significant scholarship on the topic, and the importance of the topic to South Dakota and the region. This year, the chosen topic merges the worlds of antitrust law and agriculture, bringing together legal scholars and practitioners from both fields to discuss "Antitrust and Competition in America's Heartland." An academic discussion on antitrust in agriculture and new approaches to antitrust could not happen at a better time. Farmers and ranchers throughout South Dakota and the rest of America's heartland increasingly are experiencing feelings of economic powerlessness. At the Symposium event, David Balto distributed a National Farmers Union handout showing that a farmer today receives only $0.18 for a loaf of bread that retails for $2.99; $2.00 for a pound of top sirloin steak that sells for $7.99; and $1.67 for a gallon of milk that sells for $4.12 at the grocery store. Bill Bullard similarly showed how by 2010, four firms had come to control 85% of America's meatpacking industry. One result has been a precipitous loss of independent livestock operators. Seemingly responding to these pressures on farmers and ranchers, in 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Justice held five joint public workshops on agriculture and antitrust enforcement. (1) The two agencies set out to the heartland to listen to comments from stakeholders on competition in agriculture markets. Unfortunately, these public workshops did not lead to any firm changes in policy from the Department of Agriculture or the Department of Justice. One of the goals of this Symposium is to continue to push for reevaluation of antitrust law and policy, particularly in the area of agriculture. The University of South Dakota School of Law is the perfect venue for such a symposium. South Dakota played a leading role in the progressive agricultural revolution in the late nineteenth century that led to the passage of the Sherman Act in 1890 and the Clayton and Federal Trade Commission Acts in 1914. Indeed, South Dakota passed its own state antitrust law during the first month of its statehood. (2) Today, South Dakota's agricultural producers continue to contribute impressively to America's economy. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting collectively accounted for 10.88% of South Dakota's gross domestic product in 2011. (3) This amounts to $4.368 billion in annual economic activity. (4) Consequently, discussing antitrust and competition in agriculture and antitrust policy has significant implications for the well-being of South Dakotans and Midwesterners. The importance and need for timely legal scholarship on the subject is illustrated by the quality of people we have been privileged to work with on the Symposium. In conjunction with this issue, a day of lectures was presented on March 15, 2013 at the School of Law. The first panel was on Antitrust and Competition Issues in America's Heartland. I moderated the panel, which included David A. Balto, a public interest lawyer in Washington, D.C.; Bill Bullard, CEO of Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America; Peter C. Carstensen, Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School; and Dr. Diana Moss, Vice President and Director of the American Antitrust Institute. (5) Topics of discussion included the intersection of antitrust and intellectual property, especially with genetically modified crops, issues of market control and price manipulation by major agricultural firms and meatpackers, and the current state of antitrust law in relation to agriculture in America's heartland. …


Alexander Herzen's own brilliance and the extraordinary circumstances of his life combine to place his memoirs among the great testimonies of the modern era. Born in 1812, the illegitimate son of a wealthy Russian landowner, he became one of the most important revolutionary and intellectual figures of his time - as theorist, polemicist and political actor; and fifty years after his death Lenin pronounced him 'the father of Russian socialism'."My Past and Thoughts" uniquely assimilates the personal to the historical, and is both a classic of autobiography an an unparalleled record of his century's remarkable life. His account of a privileged childhood among the Russian aristocracy is illuminated with the insight of a great novelist; his friends and enemies - Marx, Wagner, Mill, Bakunin, Garibaldi, Kropotkin - are brought brilliantly to life; and as a sceptical and free-thinking observer, he unerringly traces the line of revolutionary development, from the earliest stirrings of Russian radicalism through the tumultuous ideological debates of the International.'His power of observation is extraordinary. He tells a story with the economy of a great reporter. His gift is for knowing not only what people are, but how they are historically situated. Somewhere in the pages of this hard, honest observer of what movements do to men, we shall find ourselves' - V. S. Pritchett.


Liquid and gas pipelines cannot be properly designed with consideration of steady flow analysis techniques alone due to the possibility of pipeline failure resulting from uncontrolled pressure transients. A pipeline with all related equipment and control systems can be dynamically simulated by computer modeling. The computer model is used to simulate the pressure-flow response of the pipeline to transient inducing events such as valve closure, pump or compressor start-up and shutdown, load change, or a pipeline leak. This paper contains representative case studies of pipeline system hydraulic transient analysis. The use of transient analysis techniques to determine the design criteria for leak detection systems is also explained.


Dry fruits predominate in Apocynaceae species, especially the follicle type reported for Aspidosperma parvifolium A.DC., Mesechites mansoana (A.DC.) Woodson and Prestonia coalita (Vell.) Woodson. Anatomical analysis of intact and open fruits was carried out to compare characteristics with those of other species of this family. We found that the fruit of P. coalita is a bicarpellary septicidal capsule, showing that this genus has two types of fruits instead of one as previously thought. Capsules may be found in other Prestonia species and in other Apocynaceae genera reported as having follicles. For Apocynaceae, some taxonomic characters should be considered such as thickness and number of pericarp layers and sublayers; presence of aerenchyma, sclereids, non-lignified fibres, secretory idioblasts in the mesocarp; vascular-bundle position in the mesocarp; endocarp thickness and fibre orientation; presence of internal ribs in the pericarp. Furthermore, the role of the internal ribs of the pericarp, as well as the non-lignified mesocarp fibres for the xerocastic mechanism are discussed. A total dehydration test was developed to determine maximum pericarp curvature and its implications for the dehiscence process.


BACKGROUND: To determine the short-term impact of air pollution on the mortality in the city of Valencia throughout the 1994-1996 period by employing the Spanish multicenter study analysis method with regard to the relationship between air pollution and the death rate (EMECAM Project). METHODS: The daily levels of black smoke, sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide (CO) and ozone (O3) were obtained from by the Valencia air pollution monitoring network. The deaths indicators analyzed were the daily number of deaths due to all causes, except the external ones, the death rate of those over age 70, and the deaths resulting from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Following the methods of the EMECAM Project, autoregressive Poison regression models were built up, controlling the different confunding factors (seasonality, trend, calendar, weather variables and flu impact). RESULTS: For the totla mortality except the external ones, a significant impact of black smoke (RR 10 m g/m3: 1.013; CI95% 1.003 to 1.023) and for CO 24 h (RR 1 mg/m3: 1.024; CI95% 1.003 to 1.046) was found. For the mortality of those individuals over 70, the estimated impact was somewhat greater than for black smoke (RR 10 m g/m3: 1.017; CI95% 1.005 - 1.029), as well as for CO2 1h (RR 10 m g/m3: 1.007; CI95% 1.001 - 1.013). No significant relationship was found with the death rate due to respiratory or cardiovascular diseases for the entire period. CONCLUSIONS: The current levels of pollution in the city of Valencia show a significant impact on the daily mortality. These findings are consistent with the previous research and are coherent with those obtained on analyzing the relationship between air pollution and morbidity indicators.


Background Patients at increased risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs)/HIV acquisition are advised to reattend for retesting. A previous study showed that 'generic' text reminders did not improve reattendance. Aim To assess if a personalised text message with increased contact information would increase reattendance rates of at-risk patients. Methods Patients who are at risk of future STIs, defined by having a current acute STI, attending for emergency contraception, commercial sex workers (CSWs) or men who have sex with men (MSM), were sent a text reminder to reattend for retesting 6 weeks after initial visit. Reattendance rates were measured for September to December 2012 (control group who received a generic text message) and February to May 2014 (intervention 'personalised message' group who received a text message containing their first name and ways to contact the clinic). Reattendance was counted within 4 months of the end of the initial episode of care. Results The reattendance rate was significantly higher for the intervention group: 149/266 (56%) than the control group: 90/273 (33%) (p=0.0001) and was also significantly higher in the intervention group than the control group in patients with the following risks: recent chlamydia (64/123 (52%) vs 43/121 (36%)) (p=0.03), recent gonorrhoea (41/64 (64%) vs 4/21 (19%)) (p=0.0003) and MSM (26/45 (58%) vs 3/18 (16%)) (p=0.006). New STI rates in the reattending intervention group and controls were 26/ 149 (17%) and 13/90 (14%) (n.s), respectively. Conclusions Sending a personalised text message with increased contact information as a reminder for retesting increased reattendance rates by 23% in patients who are at higher risk of STIs.


Within the management of patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease (CAD), non-invasive coronary atherosclerosis imaging techniques are gradually gaining their position in addition to the more traditional functional imaging techniques. Coronary artery calcium scoring (CACS) in particular has been studied for almost two decades, initially by means of electron beam computed tomography (EBCT), while more recently multidetector row computed tomography (MDCT) is being used. Although CACS was heavily disputed at first, a wealth of data are currently available supporting its value as a non-invasive marker for atherosclerosis. Both prospective studies and retrospective systematic meta-analyses have demonstrated that the likelihood of cardiovascular events is strongly related to the extent of coronary calcium. Recent long-term observations from a large registry of 25 253 patients confirmed that 10-year survival (after adjustment for risk factors, including age) decreased from 99.4% in the absence of calcium to 87.8% for a CACS exceeding 1000 (p<0.0001).1 Moreover, it has been consistently shown that CACS provides incremental prognostic information over traditional risk stratification tools.2 3 Accordingly, these observations have led to the notion that the patient with (extensive) calcium is a patient at risk requiring more intensive antiatherosclerotic management with possible invasive evaluation and intervention. On the other hand, the low event rates observed in patients without any evidence of calcium may suggest a relatively low risk of cardiovascular events and may obviate the need for aggressive therapeutic intervention. Indeed, in patients with no or limited calcium, risk factor modification may be sufficient, and no further testing is required. Following these observations, CACS has been proposed to serve not only as a tool for risk stratification but also as a diagnostic tool. In patients presenting with suspected CAD, absence of calcium may exclude the presence of obstructive CAD …


Coastal dunes are a unique and dynamic habitat, containing fauna that have adapted to life in harsh maritime conditions. While these species have managed to thrive in such a habitat, human influences may undermine their continued success. Beach layia (Layia carnosa), a small annual herb, is one example of a species which has become isolated by habitat loss from human expansion. Endemic to California, it exhibits a patchy distribution along the coast, and occurs in two dunes systems on the Monterey Peninsula, Asilomar State Beach and Indian Village Dunes. Previous estimates at these two sites indicate a small population size, less than 200 plants at Asilomar State Beach and unknown numbers at Indian Village Dunes. A complete census conducted at both sites in March 2009 revealed a total population of 1,973 plants. Density estimates at Indian Village Dunes showed less than one plant per square meter. Staggered germination timing was also discovered from late January to March, and most plants did not reach reproductive maturity until late March early April. Understanding basic population biology and timing, along with an accurate census, is essential for protection and management of this species. Assessment of Layia carnosa


People will remember Professor Jerome Culp for his booming laugh, his expressive gestures, his passion for basketball, his love of books, and his generosity towards students, friends, and colleagues. Those qualities, however, do not fully capture the essence of this wonderful man. Anyone who spent more than ten minutes in Jerome's presence knows that within this warm, soft-spoken, gentle giant was a person of integrity and principle. Jerome brought these qualities, along with his fierce intellect, to everything he touched and especially to his work on behalf of dis-empowered and oppressed groups everywhere. Jerome was born in 1950 in Clarksville, Pennsylvania, a small coal-mining town near West Virginia. His mother was a domestic worker and a house parent for delinquent children (not her own). Jerome's father and both of his grandfathers were coal miners. Due to his union activity, Jerome's paternal grandfather was blackballed from the mines in the late 1920s. Consequently, his paternal grandfather, grandmother, and their children (including Jerome's father) were forced to migrate from place to place in order to mete out a living. This history never left Jerome. It influenced both his strong support of unions and his commitment to economic justice. It made him always remember that the law is ultimately about real people and real lives. Jerome left western Pennsylvania to study economics at the University of Chicago, where he earned his undergraduate degree in 1972. He subsequently earned a masters degree in that field from Harvard University in 1974. Having come of age during the civil rights era and having witnessed the efforts of Thurgood Marshall and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. among others, Jerome decided to try to effectuate change through the law. He received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1978 and began his professional career with the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, working on youth employment and affirmative action. In 1980, he clerked for Judge Nathaniel R. Jones of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and in 1981 he worked as an economist in the Carter Administration. Later in 1981, he became an Assistant Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School. He joined the Duke University Law School faculty in 1985 and became the first tenured law professor of color at that school in 1989. While at Duke Law, Jerome was a sought-after visiting professor at such prestigious schools as the University of Michigan, New York University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Miami. He was also the MacArthur Distinguished Visiting Scholar at what was then the Joint Center for Political Studies in Washington, D.C., and director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at Duke from 1989-1993. In 1999, he held the Charles Hamilton Houston Chair at North Carolina Central University. Internationally known and highly acclaimed for his work in race and the law, Jerome was a prolific scholar, authoring numerous books and articles on the subjects of critical race theory, justice and equality, law and economics, labor economics, and sexuality issues. …


Now virtually all the world's regions have private higher education in the large majority of their countries and pre-existing private sectors have grown strikingly. Only with the 1989 fall of communism did private higher education emerge in modern eastern and central Europe and it spread like wild fire in the first half of the 1990s. Private institutions (old and new) continue to be overwhelmingly financed privately (tuition and fees), more hierarchical governance, and mostly in commercial areas. The growth of for–profit sectors are notable. The development of "semi-elite" private institutions, while majorities are demand-absorbing, are the trend.