A vast amount of computing resources are available throughout the world today. These are distributed worldwide, and are heterogeneous in platform, origins, motivations, ownership and control. Many large computational challenges also exist, which if addressed, would require a great amount of computing resources, often too much to be addressed by one single type of computing resource. In attempting to assemble enough resources to address these large challenges, two difficulties present; interoperability, and the diversity found in the social and economic backgrounds that both the work and resources may have. Multiple distributed agents offer an interoperability solution by wrapping services which need to interact with each other. Agents can represent computing resources and work, modelling and executing the types of interactions needed to make resource allocation decisions. In an ever changing resource allocation environment, agents need to be easy to create, configure and reconfigure. Social Grid Agents (SGAs) are designed to address resources allocation in grid computing. Being able to operate and communicate in a distributed heterogeneous environment, they offer a solution for interoperability. SGAs interact with one another and enforce the work allocation policies of the resources they represent. This is done using the Boolean matching features of the Classad language. But matching of subtle and nuanced social and economic backgrounds presents a challenge to Boolean matching mechanism. To overcome this challenge, agents need a mechanism which can describe and differentiate between the social and economic differences among the resources and work which they are allocating. This thesis extends previous research in Social Grid Agents. It enhances existing SGA technology to become more scalable and configurable. It also proposes using textual descriptions in unstructured language to describe the social and economic outlooks that computing resources and workloads may have. To measure the similarity between these descriptions, search technology is integrated into the agents. These descriptions are called 'social profiles'. This thesis provides novel mechanisms to improve scalability, configurability and programmability of SGAs. Serialisation and class loading techniques are employed to achieve dynamic configurability of 'live' agents. An extensible and versatile format for the social profiles is developed. This thesis also provides mechanisms to exchange social profiles using distributed search technology and serialisation. Embedded search technology in SGAs allows quantitative similarity measurements to be determined for social profiles, yielding information useful in resource allocation decisions. An extensive set of experimental case studies demonstrate the efficacy of these techniques.


The contribution of neural vasomotor reflexes to the control of cerebral blood flow (CBF) was investigated in 30 cats lightly anesthetized with pentobarbital. CBF was measured both by kinetic analysis and by the initial slope technique of the washout curve of a bolus of 113Xe. Autoregulation (10 cats) and responsiveness to alteration in arterial Pcos (Paco2) (10 cats) and arterial Po2 (Pao2) (five cats) were assessed both before and after bilateral intracranial division of the 9th and 10th nerves. In an additional group (five cats), related changes in CBF to alteration of Paco2 were recorded before and after unilateral section of the 7th and 8th nerves. Autoregulation was preserved after division of the 9th and 10th nerves and there was no significant change in the Paco2 response curves. Section of the 7th and 8th cranial nerves did not produce conclusive results in the small number of cats studied. A conclusion that the facial nerves are not dominant in responses to hypercapnia seems justified, but a modulating role for these nerves is possible. These studies do not exclude a physiological role for these nerves in the autoregulation of CBF, but do indicate that the cerebral vascular bed apparently is capable of functioning normally after their division.


Heterotrophic bacteria of the genus Vibrio are indigenous in the marine environment although environmental cues regulate their growth and distribution. The attention brought to this genus is due to its many species/strains that are pathogenic to humans and other organisms. Vibrio abundances are strongly coupled to water temperature and salinity but abundance dynamics occur even where these hydrographical parameters are stable. In this thesis, I have studied Vibrio dynamics in relation to other organisms such as phytoplankton (papers I, II and III) and a bivalve host-organism (paper IV) in a changing environment where increasing temperature (paper III) and ocean acidification (paper IV) may influence survival and proliferation of these bacteria. In particular paper I showed that in a tropical coastal area, where the water temperature and salinity were stable across seasons, abundances of Vibrio were tightly coupled to phytoplankton biomass and community composition. A diatom bloom during December seemed to support high numbers of vibrios in waters with otherwise low levels of dissolved organic carbon. Paper II further supports that some phytoplankton can favor Vibrio growth while others seem to have a negative influence on Vibrio abundances. For instance, Skeletonema tropicum, a common diatom in Indian coastal waters, easily eradicated Vibrio parahaemolyticus from sea water in our experiments. In temperate marine areas culturable Vibrio predominantly occurs in the water column during the warmer months. Sediments are suggested to be potential reservoirs when conditions in the water-column are harsh. Accordingly, in paper III we showed that cold-water sediments from geographically separate areas in a boreal region of Scandinavia all contained relative high abundances of total Vibrio spp. and that all sediments also included culturable Vibrio. In agreement with paper I, the fresh input of organic material from phytoplankton blooms, for which chlorophyll a was used as a proxy, seemed to positively influence Vibrio abundances also in the sediments (paper III). Therefore, the pelagic-benthic coupling which can supply the sediments with biomass from the primary production could influence the abundance of Vibrio spp. Increasing temperature had variable influence on sediment-associated Vibrio abundance, with a significant increase in abundances in sediments originating from one area when the temperature reached over 21°C and a generally negative influence of increasing temperature on abundances in sediments originating from another area (paper III). This suggests that the sediments contained different Vibrio communities with varying temperature tolerance traits. Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not only lead to higher water temperature through the green house effect, but also to acidification of the oceans. Paper IV illustrated how a common bivalve pathogen, Vibrio tubiashii, can be favored in the interaction with a calcifying bivalve host, Mytilus edulis, when this host-pathogen combination was exposed to levels of ocean acidification projected to occur by the end of the 21 century. Thus, global environmental changes may enhance the probability of Vibrio infections in


Some components of plant-based meals, such as saponins and vegetal proteins, have been proposed as inducers of intestinal inflammation in some fish. However, the molecular and cellular bases for this phenomenon have not been reported. In this work, zebrafish were used as a model to evaluate the effects of individual soybean meal components, such as saponins and soy proteins. Zebrafish larvae fed a fish meal feed containing soy components were assessed according to low and high inclusion levels. The granulocytes associated with the digestive tract and the induction of genes related to the immune system were quantitated as markers of the effects of the dietary components. A significant increase in the number of granulocytes was observed after feeding fish diets containing high saponin or soy protein contents. These dietary components also induced the expression of genes related to the innate immune system, including myeloid-specific peroxidase, as well as the complement protein and cytokines. These results reveal the influence of dietary components on the stimulation of the immune system. These observations could be significant to understanding the contributions of saponin and soy protein to the onset of enteritis in aqua-cultured fish, and this knowledge may aid in defining the role of the innate immune system in other inflammatory diseases involving dietary components in mammals.


The aquifer of Manukan Island of Borneo, Malaysia had been found to be affected by seawater intrusion associated with excessive groundwater exploitation. This research attempted to characterize the chemistry of an impacted zone in the island using factor analysis (FA), cluster analysis (CA) and a hydrochemical model package (PHREEQC). The factor scores were used to plot the spatial map and to group the relationships among the monitoring wells using CA. The results of FA analysis revealed that the three main processes associated with the seawater intrusion event are aquifer salinization, cation exchange process and redox sequences. Output from the PHREEQC simulation was used to support the findings from the multivariate analysis.


This issue highlights knowledge generated through research and translates that knowledge into actions that school-based teachers can take to benefit your practice. As I worked closely with these authors included in this issue, I gave pause to the impact that our larger enterprise of research has had upon practice. This led me to think more deeply about how we might improve the impact of our research enterprise, and thus motivated me to place some of those ideas down in writing, which I share with you below.First, impactful research takes time. There is a natural time lag between selecting a problem, fitting the problem into a larger body of knowledge through existing or emerging theories, collecting and analyzing data, vetting findings through our scientific community, and then pilot testing these new discoveries through field trials in school-based programs. Although there are those who would like to discover that 'magic bullet' to revolutionize instruction, the current reality is, that the process takes time, dedication, and focus. This reality is no different for our field of study, than it is in medical research, plant breeding, livestock breeding, or natural resources management.Second, research priorities change. The agricultural sciences and natural resources issues that attract funding are social constructions that politicians and our stakeholder community deem important. Without casting judgment, and often for good reason, these priorities change over time. Issues such as food security and hunger, climate change, sustainable energy, childhood obesity, and food safety are current priorities for USDA's National Institute for Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA, 2012). It is common for university-based agricultural educators to participate on multidisciplinary teams addressing these issues. The great news is that participation in these projects support graduate education and often includes the development of a school-based curriculum or professional development component for school-based teachers. However, these grants seldom provide sustained funding for a focused research effort related to the long-term resolution of school-based issues. For a more comprehensive look at the scope of research in our field, I would encourage you to peruse the American Association for Agricultural Education's 2011-2015 National Research Agenda (Doerfert, 2011).Third, more stakeholder dialogue is needed. A substantial dialogue between university- and school-based faculty and industry partners is needed for the identification of high priority school-based issues and related research priorities. Once agreed upon, there is a need to identify long-term funding strategies so that our very best and brightest scholars can focus their time and energy in contributing to solutions. Perhaps we need to reestablish a national center approach to support rigorous long-term research and translation projects. This idea is not a new one. In the early 1960's, a National Center for Advanced Study and Research in Agricultural Education was established through federal funds. Over time, the Center's focus was broadened to include career and technical education. Thus, the Center's priorities changed over time.Fourth, we need to reexamine the preparation of researchers. A number of noted scholars in our field have called for modifications in the way in which we prepare faculty at the doctoral level (Shinn & Baker, 2010; Shinn, Briers, & Baker, 2009; Shinn, Wingenbach, Briers, Linder, & Baker, 2009). However, to improve the research skills and conceptual ability of the future professorate, perhaps our faculty preparation model should include a postdoctoral experience. According to the National Postdoctoral Association (n.d.), "a postdoctoral scholar ("postdoc") is an individual holding a doctoral degree who is engaged in a temporary period of mentored research and/or scholarly training for the purpose of acquiring the professional skills needed to pursue a career path of his or her choosing" (para. …


The marine prawn resources of the country are functionally related to the vast brackish water ecological
system constituted by the various estuaries, inland bays, lalces and backwaters along the entire coastline.
This leport summarises the knowledge concerning the association of prawns of marine origin with the
brackish water environment. The questions of continued productivity of prawn stocks in the face of man's
steady incursion of estuaries and the effect of increased prawn fishing activities for the juveniles in brackish
water areas on the adults from marine environment are considered. The need for further studies on the
above aspects to enable measures to be taken to counteract adverse effects, if any, owing to the rapid agroindustrial
development taking place in and around estuaries and backwaters in the countiy is emphasised.


The low quality of education in Indonesia, has been widely recognized by variousparties, especially by education observers. Based on the necessary effort to improve the quality ofeducation, one to carry out the study based on analysis of problems in the field. This study aims toobtain a clear picture of (a) to identify the competency standard / basic competencies that have notmastered high school students in Bengkalis discussion on any subject Maths subjects tested on the UN,(b) identify the factors that cause students not master the competency standard / basic competencies, (c)design and develop a model for solving the problem. Study sample was held at SMAN SMAN 1Bengkalis and High Cliff. The focus of research is the management system, teachers, educationalfacilities, which refers to the national standards of education and culture. Data were collected throughclassroom observations, interviews, questionnaires, and documentation. This research resulted inalternative solutions to problems (1) Training for teachers of mathematics-based subjects MGMP. (2)Guidance and stabilization of materials for teachers of educational background do not fit. (3) Trainingfor school management and administrative staff. All activities ready to be implemented in concreteterms through community service activities through cooperation with the Department of HigherEducation D2PM Bengkalis.


Abstract. A new helminthomorph millipede, Sinosoma luopingense new genus new species, from the Triassic Luoping biota of China, has 39 body segments, metazonites with lateral swellings that bear a pair of posterolateral pits (?insertion pits for spine bases), and sternites that are unfused to the pleurotergites. This millipede shares a number of characters with nematophoran diplopods, but lacks the prominent dorsal suture characteristic of that order. Other "millipede" material from the biota is more problematic. Millipedes are a rare part of the Luoping biota, which is composed mainly of marine and near-shore organisms. Occurrences of fossil millipedes are exceedingly rare in Triassic rocks worldwide, comprising specimens from Europe, Asia, and Africa, and consisting of juliform millipedes and millipedes that are either nematophorans or forms very similar to nematophorans.


Towards the end of November 2009, west Cumbria in northwest England experienced severe flooding which caused extensive damage and disruption throughout the region. The flooding was triggered by an exceptional rainstorm during which a record 316.4 mm of rainfall was recorded at Seathwaite Farm, Borrowdale over the 24-hour period up to 00:00 on 20th November. Drawing on the results of a recent project which has developed a new model of point rainfall depth-duration-frequency (DDF) for the UK, return periods are estimated for the highest point rainfall observations available for the Cumbrian event and compared with frequency estimates derived from the Flood Estimation Handbook rainfall model (Faulkner 1999). The spatial and temporal characteristics of the storm event are examined using data from the Environment Agency's raingauge network. For the two most affected rivers, the Derwent and the Leven, return periods of catchment rainfall are estimated for durations up to 96 hours.


This paper studies the dynamic construction of a blockchain by competitive miners. In contrast to the literature, we assume a finite time horizon. It is shown that popular mining strategies such as adherence to conservative mining or to the longest-chain rule constitute pure-strategy Nash equilibria. However, these equilibria are not subgame perfect.


This paper presents an overview of the various methodologies for estimating potential output at the macroeconomic level. Emphasis was laid on the production function approach which is used together with the univariate statistical HP filter method to produce potential output estimates for the US and the EU15 economies (as well as the individual EU Member States) from 1966-2002. The paper also assesses the role of "new" economy influences on potential growth and provides estimates of the likely contribution to past and future output capacity from this source. Finally, potential growth scenarios are given for the EU15 as a whole and the US for the period 2001-2010, with the central scenario pointing to annual average growth rates of 2 ¾% for the EU15 and 3% for the US over the next ten years.


Poetry is an important challenge for semiotics, and a special area of study for the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school, since the first volume of Sign Systems Studies was Juri Lotman's monograph Lectures on Structural Poetics (1964). From then on the concept of poetry as one of the secondary modelling systems has evolved, since in relation to poetry, the primary modelling system is natural language. In this paper, the concept of semiotic system has been re-examined and the treatment of primary and secondary semiotic systems has been significantly revised. A semiotic system can be characterized not only by its internal structure and other systems to which it is related, but also by the field upon what it is realized. The latter aspect has gained almost no attention in any treatment of semiotics; the execution of a sign is understood in the spirit of Saussure and Hjelmslev as a material realization of an abstract element (for instance, a chess piece knight can be realized with wood or plastic, but it can also remain purely virtual). At first, distinction is made between language and sign system. Every sign system consists of language and field. There are three different kinds of fields: 1) just a background – footprints on sand are a sign on the background of sand; 2) a material structured field (a football ground or a chess board in the game called Chapayev) and 3) an abstract structured field, which in its turn consists of other fields (for instance, the chess board which consists of 64 fields). Differently from a football ground, a chess board can be a purely virtual one on which virtual pieces are moved (for instance, in case of blindfold or correspondence chess). The field in its turn can be language and one language can use another language as its field. In this case we speak of primary and secondary sign systems. For instance, the prosodic system of language is a field for a verse metre, while the semantic system of language is a field for a narrative.


In the 2017 case Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the U.S. Supreme Court discussed several safeguards that are in place to assist the trial court in identifying racial bias among jurors. These safeguards include voir dire examination regarding racial bias, observation of juror demeanor and conduct that might demonstrate racial bias, reports of racially biased comments or actions by jurors during trial, and non-juror evidence of racial bias after trial. The Court acknowledged that these safeguards may be insufficient at times and therefore added a fifth one, holding that trial courts may review evidence suggesting that racial bias was a motivating factor in a juror's decision to convict a criminal defendant even when the evidence of bias rears its head during otherwise non-impeachable jury deliberations.

This Article demonstrates that the safeguards identified by the Court must be improved if they are to assist trial courts in ferreting out juror bias. Social science research has made clear that a majority of Americans carry some level of subconscious or implicit bias against racial minorities and that this bias manifests itself in the application of racial stereotypes. These stereotypes can influence many aspects of the jury's functions. Until courts and legislatures are willing to craft safeguards that will address the impact of bias head-on, the jury system will continue to be infiltrated with bias.

I believe that the first step in ridding the jury system of racial bias is to tell the truth about the prevalence and effect of bias. This includes naming the stereotypes that are at play whenever a person of color enters a courtroom. Through honest, open dialogue, we can begin to chip away at the justice system's tradition of discrimination. I acknowledge that these truths may make us uncomfortable, but the truth and reconciliation process tells us that we can heal only after we have sat in the discomfort.

Section I of this Article explores the prevalence and impact of racial bias among jurors. This Section reviews the social science research establishing that bias, whether conscious or unconscious, affects the way we perceive those who are different from us. This Section also names many widely known stereotypes about minorities and discusses how those stereotypes affect the jury's core functions of character assessment, witness credibility assessment, and fact interpretation and recall. Section II briefly reviews the facts of Pena-Rodriguez and discusses the two preemptive safeguards that purportedly protect parties from racial discrimination in the courtroom. This Section demonstrates that those two safeguards, voir dire and jury instructions, are not universally available to criminal defendants and, when used, are not always effective. Finally, Section III details my proposals for improving voir dire and jury instructions in a way that places the truth at the forefront and moves our system toward an open discussion of racial bias in the courtroom.


China faces major challenges in generating viable and inclusive agricultural and rural development. However, rapid economic growth provides new opportunities to meet the challenges. In particular, the development of higher value agrifood chains provides opportunities for rural households to increase their levels of specialisation, scale and incomes, and for rural areas to broaden their employment and tax bases. While an agricultural and rural development strategy based on upgrading agrifood chains is widely described and prescribed, it has not proceeded without problems and has been the subject of little rigorous scrutiny. This book presents an industry case study that draws on a novel methodological framework and reliable micro-level data to provide a nuanced, grounded and diachronic analysis of China's efforts to upgrade agrifood chains. While China seeks to fast-track the development of high value agrifood chains through interventionist policies, a more viable and inclusive modernisation strategy is to incrementally develop mid-value agrifood chains through facilitative policies. This and other findings of the book will be of interest to policy makers, researchers and development agencies working on agricultural and rural development in China and other developing and transition countries.


Nowadays, open access (OA) in its diverse forms constitutes the most interesting and promising model for the research output of an academic or research institution. The purpose of the present study is to discuss the situation of OA in the developing world, with a focus on Bangladesh. The study also addresses why OA is important for developing countries and which initiatives have been taken in Bangladesh. Finally, we discuss some challenging issues of OA and suggestions on how to overcome these issues. It is rather obvious that developing countries have always faced a lack of research information and were unable to afford sufficient subscriptions to journals. The other side of the picture is the poor dissemination of the research outcome in the developing world. In Bangladesh, only three organizations have their institutional repository and have a reasonable number of local OA journals. We will identify some problems that impede the process of building open access IR, or more generally an OA environment in Bangladesh. We are convinced, however, that we will witness in the near future a sustainable growth of open access initiatives, with more open access literature and digital repositories.


Smoking negatively affects individuals' health, and health problems caused by tobacco products are an important burden on the economy. Thus, struggle against cigarette is a topic of interest for governments. Turkish Health Ministry has mandated to place 14 different textual and pictorial health warnings (graphic warning label - GWL) on cigarette packs since 2010. However, the extent of GWLs effectiveness is not fully known. Therefore, this research aims to investigate 14 GWLs in terms of their effectiveness. During research, participators were asked to evaluate each GWL which they considered effective; the most effective 3 GWLs were determined by frequency analysis. Besides, the relations between the most effective 3 GWLs, gender, age and smoking levels were tested. Results revealed that the fact that GWLs were considered effective is not independent of gender and smoking levels. In this respect, the amount of female participants who considered GWLs as effective was proportionately higher than male respondents. In a similar vein, along with the decrease in smoking frequency, more respondents indicated that GWLs are effective. However, findings illustrated that there was no relation between age and the fact that whether GWLs are perceived as effective.


As integrated circuit technology as well as intelligent computing technology advances, sensor networks which can monitor environments, systems, and complicated interactions in a range of applications are becoming widespread. Wireless Body Area Network(WBAN), which can provide medical, assisted living, sports and entertainment functions for human being, is now enabled and is gradually matching the needs of society. The realization of the WBAN sensor nodes requires ultra-low power wireless communication capability and small area cost. In order to optimize sensor nodes lifetime in WBAN, a duty cycle controlled wake up receiver is proposed in this paper. The receiver is designed to operate with low accuracy frequency references, enabling low power and low cost wireless sensor nodes. Envelope detection architecture is used here to demodulate the on-off keying signal due to its low power consumption. The receiver front end is duty cycled at pulse level, by which the power consumption decreases dramatically. This paper presents the design of a duty cycled wake up receiver with minimized power consumption while keeping adequate sensitivity to detect the input signal. The circuit is designed using 90nm CMOS and the simulation result shows a sensitivity of about -64dBm at 400MHz with a power consumption of 30uW at 0.5V power supply.


ABSTRACT
THE MOUSE WHO WOULD BE KING:
INNOVATING TRADITION IN THE STATE OF CHAMBA
Mandavi Mehta
Michael W. Meister
The mountain kingdom of Chamba in Himachal Pradesh is believed to be one of the oldest kingdoms in continuous existence in India, from its putative foundation in the sixth century until the 20th century. The basis of this contention is the genealogical roll of the ruling family, the Chamba Vaṃśāvalī, a text whose only existing copy was composed in the 17th century. Positioning itself at this key moment in the 17th century, this dissertation attempts to trace and problematize the process of state formation in the kingdom over the longue duree, by analyzing the Vaṃśāvalī's historical narrative in the context of extant inscriptional records, the construction of both wooden and stone Nāgara temples at the two centers of Chamba and Bharmaur, and the introduction in the 17th century of a new visual vocabulary based on painting.
A close study of the shifts and transitions in the material culture of the kingdom across the mediums of architecture, sculpture and painting sheds new light on the processes by which the rulers of Chamba formulated their ideas of kingship and identity and sought legitimacy from the past in the context of social and political developments both within their immediate neighborhood as well as North India more broadly. The 17th century in Chamba is revealed to be a period both of looking back in time to locate an 'ancient' and authentic past for the royal lineage of Chamba, as well as looking forward, to project an image of statehood that was in keeping with current political and cultural norms. Exploring the inconsistencies between the official history of the Chamba royal family – who claimed their descent from a Mūṣa (mouse) clan – and the visual and inscriptional evidence reveals the motivations behind the positioning of the rulers of Chamba at particular historical moments, during which they drew on both the past and the contemporary to create artistic vocabularies to give form to their aspirations and to survive.


Summary. The term "migratory" refers to animals performing yearly round-trips between breeding grounds and post-breeding areas, whereas the term "sedentary" refers to those remaining the whole year in their breeding grounds. However, migration is a complex and varying phenomenon governed by genetic and environmental factors, particularly in species with wide distribution ranges. Here we describe and classify the seasonal movement patterns of 71 little bustards Tetrax tetrax, an endangered Palearctic steppe bird, radio- and satellite-tracked in the Iberian Peninsula. Four major movement patterns were identified, with 89% of little bustards behaving as migrants, among which 75% (summer migrants and summer-winter migrants) performed their first movement after breeding during the summer (mainly between May and July), whereas 14% (winter migrants) left their breeding sites in autumn (mainly between September and November). The remaining 11% were strictly sedentary. On average, summer migration started on June 14th, and winter migration on October 3rd, while pre-breeding migration started on March 23rd. Summer migration occurred in most Iberian regions, although it was mainly found in semiarid Mesomediterranean areas. Winter migration occurred only in the northern half of the Peninsula, being the only pattern found in Subatlantic and highland areas. All winter migrants wintered in Thermomediterranean localities of southern Iberia. The sedentary pattern was found only in the Semiarid Mesomediterranean and Thermomediterranean sectors. This is a good example of complex intraspecific variation in the migratory behaviour of a species that occupies a diverse range of environments. The variability of movement patterns of Iberian little bustards is much greater than previously thought and should be taken into account in conservation programmes for the species.


Marine actinomycetes sediment samples were collected from Gulf of Mannar costal region, Kayalpatinam, located at Tuticorin district, Tamilnadu, India. Marine actinomycetes were isolated and evaluated for activity of L-asparaginase production. A total of 10 marine actinomycetes strains were isolated. Among 10 isolates, six were belongs to Streptomyces sp, three were belongs to Micromonospora sp and one was to Micropolyspora sp. Based on phenotypic characteristics, actinomycetes strains were screened for L-asparaginase production. Streptomyces sp KPMS5 and Micromonospora sp KPMS10 were showed large pink coloration on L-asparaginase production medium. The strains were further studied for maximum production and characterizations of culture condition of L-asparaginase enzyme were evaluated. Effect of substrate on L-asparaginase production was evaluated by enzyme assy. Maximum enzyme assay (1.4 mM) was observed on glucose followed by starch (1.12Mm) by Micromonospora sp KPMS10. In Streptomyces sp KPMS5 showed maximum of 1.25mM of enzyme assay on glucose substrate followed by lactose 1.17mM. Yeast extract was effectively used as substrate for maximum production of L-asparaginase by submerged fermentation. Further studies on purification and characterization are required to support the application of enzyme. The finding concludes isolates belongs to non- Streptomyces sp like Micromonospora sp is a potential novel source for L-asparaginase production. Int J Appl Sci Biotechnol, Vol 4(4): 452-457


Monitoring (currently invasive) of cerebral venous blood oxygenation is a key to avoiding hypoxia-induced brain injury resulting in death or severe disability. Noninvasive, optoacoustic monitoring of cerebral venous blood oxygenation can potentially replace existing invasive methods. To the best of our knowledge, we report for the first time noninvasive monitoring of cerebral venous blood oxygenation through intact scalp that was validated with invasive, "gold standard" measurements. We performed an in vivo study in the sheep superior sagittal sinus (SSS), a large midline cerebral vein, using our novel, multi-wavelength optoacoustic system. The study results demonstrated that: 1) the optoacoustic signal from the sheep SSS is detectable through the thick, intact scalp and skull; 2) the SSS signal amplitude correlated well with wavelength and actual SSS blood oxygenation measured invasively using SSS catheterization, blood sampling, and measurement with "gold standard" CO-Oximeter; 3) the optoacoustically predicted oxygenation strongly correlated with that measured with the CO-Oximeter. Our results indicate that monitoring of cerebral venous blood oxygenation may be performed in humans noninvasively and accurately through the intact scalp using optoacoustic systems because the sheep scalp and skull thickness is comparable to that of humans whereas the sheep SSS is much smaller than that of humans.


This overview of the role played by the precautionary principle in international trade law, European law and national law compares how precautionary considerations have been applied in the fields of pesticide regulation and the regulation of base stations for mobile telephones in Sweden, the UK and the USA. A number of problems in the current application of the precautionary principle are identified and discussed. For example, it is shown that a firm reliance on a wide and open-ended precautionary principle may lead to problems with the consistency, foreseeablility, effectiveness and efficiency of measures intended to reduce environmental or health risks. It is suggested that the precautionary principle indeed may be an important tool but in order to be acceptable it must be coupled with strong requirements on the performance of risk assessments, cost–benefit analyses and risk trade-off analyses.


For many decades, researchers have tried to develop materials that could be used just like autogenous bone. The editors of this book have assembled experts to showcase recent developments in tissue engineering and to demonstrate the basic biologic phenomena of bone repair using dentin grafts, growth factors, stimulating factors, inductive factors, and other factors in clinical applications. The research gathered in this book underscores the excellent outcomes based on sound science and pioneering clinical applications. New techniques using the tooth materials provide realistic and practical regenerative treatments for all patients.


Static leakage currents in advanced CMOS processes have become the main source of power consumption in many of today's systems. This is especially true for systems with a large number of devices that are in a stable state for most of their operation time, such as image sensors and memory arrays. This paper introduces an improved adaptive bulk biasing control (AB2C) scheme for reduction of leakage currents during these "standby" periods in serially accessed arrays, while enabling device acceleration during active cycles. We provide a theoretical analysis of the AB2C operation, showing its advantages and limitations. The proposed scheme has been integrated with a test-case advanced wide dynamic range (WDR) image sensor with an on-chip memory. The scheme was applied to both the pixel and bitcell arrays, providing configurable leakage reduction and performance enhancement. An 80 nm test chip was fabricated with a 10 k pixel/bitcell test-case system and successfully tested, showing a 21% power reduction compared to a standard system and up to 44% compared to an accelerated system.


This study looks at how, over a period of several years, unemployment in two genres (speeches and Presidency Conclusions) generated in organizations of the European Union (EU) is constructed both as a `problem' and a `fight' and how these formulations can be viewed as closely connected under an overarching metaphor of `struggle'. A synthesis of discourse analytic and cognitive-semantic analyses, this article begins by demonstrating how struggle is invoked and then proceeds to decompose the notion into several categories, using statistical analysis to show their distribution. Ultimately, it is demonstrated that the differences between the two genres are connected to their respective purposes and target audiences, with Presidency Conclusions examples of internal organizational discourse and commissioners' speeches as external organizational discourse. The similarities between the two genres reflect the functions of the struggle metaphor in EU discourses of unemployment in general, the ways in which its dimensions serve various legitimizing functions in these genres' capacity as political discourse, and the connection between discourses on unemployment and the prevailing EU economic philosophy.


This genus was erected by Emery (1912) to include seven species, of which six had been originally descriptionbed as belonging to the genus Atopomyrmex E.Andre. Recently I received two specimens of an ant from Dr. J. C. Faure, collected at Marieps, E. Transvaal, which appeared to have some of the characters of both Terataner and Atopula, and therefore led me to examine more closely the characters of those genera as set forth by Emery in the Genera Insectorum (1922). The conclusion arrived at is that Terataner bottegoi Em. and the new species transvaalensis descriptionbed be!ow should be placed in a new subgenus Tranetera.


Automatic music genre classification is a task that has attracted the interest of the music community for more than two decades. Music can be of high importance within the area of assistive technologies as it can be seen as an assistive technology with high therapeutic and educational functionality for children and adults with disabilities. Several similarity methods and machine learning techniques have been applied in the literature to deal with music genre classification, and as a result data mining and Music Information Retrieval (MIR) are strongly interconnected. In this paper, we deal with music genre classification for symbolic music, and specifically MIDI, by combining the recently proposed novel similarity measure for sequences, SMBGT, with the k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) classifier. For all MIDI songs we first extract all of their channels and then transform each channel into a sequence of 2D points, providing information for pitch and duration of their music notes. The similarity between two songs is found by computing the SMBGT for all pairs of the songs' channels and getting the maximum pairwise channel score as their similarity. Each song is treated as a query to which k-NN is applied, and the returned genre of the classifier is the one with the majority of votes in the k neighbors. Classification accuracy results indicate that there is room for improvement, especially due to the ambiguous definitions of music genres that make it hard to clearly discriminate them. Using this framework can also help us analyze and understand potential disadvantages of SMBGT, and thus identify how it can be improved when used for classification of real-time sequences.


Ensemble.

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Design house's label inside: "Mingolini Gugenheim / Piazza di Spagna 9-91- Roma"

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We designed a two-alternative forced choice experiment in which the by-trial reaction times could be fraction-ated into pre-motor (PMT) and motor times (MT), based on the onset of muscular activity from the electromyo-graphic (EMG) recordings (Figure 2c). We then compared this empirical decomposition to the decomposition performed by the Drift Diffusion Model (DDM, Ratcliff, 1978). Using these two decompositions, we show that the non-decision time parameter of the DDM is highly correlated with the Motor Time that was recorded when the participants stressed Accuracy over Speed. Furthermore, we show that fitting the by-trial Pre-Motor Time with the DDM mainly modulated the non-decision time parameters. The relative contribution of decision time and motor time components in the overall Reaction Time (based on speed versus accuracy instructions) was observed. Correlation analyses between speed instructions on empirical data suggest that their could be a change in the architecture of cognitive processes rather than a quantitative change between Speed-Accuracy tradeoff (SAT) levels.


Given a programming language, can we give a monadic denotational semantics that is stable under language extension? Models containing only a single monad are not stable. Models based on type-and-effect systems, in which there is a monad for every set of operations in the language, are. Cartwright and Felleisen, and Wadler, conjectured such monadic semantics can be generated. We describe a new general method of constructing stable models from standard monadic models, based on factorizations of monad morphisms. We show that under certain conditions factorizations induce a monad for every set of operations, and explain why the conditions usually hold. We also describe preliminary work using fibrations for logical relations generated from these factorization systems for proving the correctness of the resulting model.


Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of L-Arginine on speech and language development in pediatric patients with hypoxic–ischemic encephalopathy (HIE). Methods: The oral language skills of 24 pediatric patients with HIE using L-Arginine were classified and the impact of L-Arginine on language skills was evaluated retrospectively. While there is no standard dose of L-Arginine, the usual dosage is 2.5 g orally for children younger than 5 years of age and 5 g orally for children older than 5 years of age. Results: The study enrolled 24 pediatric patients with a mean age of 3.9 years (range: 1.25–12 years). A pre-treatment median rating of 1 for oral language development increased to 3 post treatment, according to the results of a Wilcoxon signed-rank test used to examine the statistical significance of the difference between 2 variables. The difference was statistically significant. Conclusion: Although the exact pathophysiology of HIE has not been fully elucidated, it is associated with diffuse cerebral damage that leads to impaired motor and language development; moreover, HIE has no cure. In this study, L-Arginine therapy had a positive and significant impact on language development in children affected by HIE. Additional, larger series are needed to confirm these preliminary findings.


California's prisons are dangerously and unconstitutionally overcrowded; as a result of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Plata v. Schwarzenegger, the state must act to reduce its prison population or face court-ordered prisoner releases. The state's plans to reduce overcrowding are centered around what it calls criminal justice "realignment", whereby California will divert some sentenced offenders away from state facilities towards county facilities. The plan faces opposition from county officials, who argue that the state is pushing its problem onto the counties.But what if the counties are actually responsible for state prison overcrowding? I argue that California's prison overcrowding is due in large part to county decisions about how to deal with crime. Using data from 2000-2009, I will show that California's counties use state prison resources at dramatically different rates, and, moreover, that the counties which use state prisons the most have below-average crime rates. Viewed this way, the state is simply returning the problem to its source, and forcing counties to pay for their sentencing decisions.The contribution the Article makes, then, is twofold. First, it suggests that incarceration in state prisons is one policy choice among many, not an inexorable reaction to violent crime. Counties can and do make different choices about how to respond to violent crime, including the extent to which they use state prison. Second, the Article demonstrates why localities are crucial—and critically underexamined—contributors to state prison populations. Decisions are made at local levels about prosecution, investigation, plea bargaining, and sentencing, and these decisions are made by officials who are either elected locally (such as DA's, judges, and sheriffs) or appointed locally (police and probation officers). Local policies and policymakers affect the state's corrections budget, even though the state has no say in designing or implementing these policies. State officials must take these local differences into account, and create incentives for counties to behave differently. The problem is that it is difficult to distinguish between justifiable, crime-driven incarceration and optional, policy-driven incarceration. I propose a new metric for distinguishing between these two types of incarceration, one which defines justified incarceration in terms of violent crime. This would allow the state to manage local usage of state prison resources without either penalizing crime-ridden areas or rewarding prison-happy ones. This Article is the first of two articles dealing with the state/county prison relationship. While this Article quantifies the ways in which the extent of local prison admissions is not necessarily a function of the violent crime rate, a second Article will examine whether, given these differences, it makes sense for the state to subsidize county commitments to prison.


For more than fifty years, Geoffrey Hartman has been a pivotal figure in the humanities. In his first book, in 1954, he helped establish the study of Romanticism as key to the problems of modernity. Later, his writings were crucial to the explosive developments in literary theory in the late seventies, and he was a pioneer in Jewish studies, trauma studies, and studies of the Holocaust. At Yale, he was a founder of its Judaic Studies program, as well as of the first major video archive for Holocaust testimonies.Generations of students have benefited from Hartman's generosity, his penetrating and incisive questioning, the wizardry of his close reading, and his sense that the work of a literary scholar, no less than that of an artist, is a creative act. All these qualities shine forth in this intellectual memoir, which will stand as his autobiography. Hartman describes his early education, uncanny sense of vocation, and development as a literary scholar and cultural critic. He looks back at how his career was influenced by his experience, at the age of nine, of being a refugee from Nazi Germany in the Kindertransport. He spent the next six years at school in England, where he developed his love of English literature and the English countryside, before leaving to join his mother in America.Hartman treats us to a biobibliographyof his engagements with the major trends in literary criticism. He covers the exciting period at Yale handled so controversially by the media and gives us vivid portraits, in particular, of Harold Bloom, Paul de Man, and Jacques Derrida.SEND GEOFFREY COVER COPY All this is set in the context of his gradual self-awareness of what scholarship implies and how his personal displacements strengthened his calling to mediate between European and American literary cultures. Anyone looking for a rich, intelligible account of the last half-century of combative literary studies will want to read Geoffrey Hartman's unapologetic scholar's tale.


How do we know where objects are in the environment and how do we use this information to guide our actions? Recovering the three-dimensional (3D) structure of our surroundings from the two-dimensional retinal input received from the eyes is a computationally challenging task and depends on the brain processing and combining ambiguous sources of sensory information (cues) to depth. This thesis combines psychophysical and computational techniques to gain further insight into (i) which cues the brain uses for perceptual judgments of depth and motion-in-depth; and (ii) the processes underlying the combination of the information from these cues into a single percept of depth. The first chapter deals with the question which sources of information the visual system uses to estimate the time remaining until an approaching object will hit us; a problem that is complicated by the fact that the variable of interest (time) is highly correlated to other perceptual variables that may be used (e.g. distance). Despite these high correlations we show that the visual system recovers a temporal estimate, rather than using one or more of its covariates. In the second chapter I ask how extra-retinal signals (changes in the convergence angles of the eyes) contribute to estimates of 3D speed. Traditionally, extra-retinal signals are reputed to be a poor indicator of 3D motion. Using techniques to isolate extra-retinal signals to changes in vergence, we show that judgments of 3D speed are best explained on the basis that the visual system computes a weighted average of retinal and extra-retinal signals. The third and fourth chapters investigate how the visual system combines binocular and monocular cues to depth in judgments of relative depth and the speed of 3D motion. In chapter three I show that differences in retinal size systematically affect the perceived disparityde defined depth between two unfamiliar targets, so that a target with a larger retinal size is seen as closer than a target with a smaller retinal size at the same disparity-defined distance. This perceptual bias increases as the retinal size ratio between the targets is increased but remains constant as the absolute sizes of the targets change concurrently while keeping the retinal size ratio constant. In addition, bias increases as the absolute distance to both targets increases. I propose that these findings can be explained on the basis that the visual system attempts to optimally combine disparity with retinal size cues (or in the case of 3D motion: changing disparity information with looming cues), but assumes that both objects are of equal size while they are not. In chapter 4 these findings are extended to 3D motion: physically larger unfamiliar targets are reported to approach faster than a smaller target moving at the same speed at the same distance. These findings cannot be explained on the basis of observers' use of a biased perceived distance, caused by differences in the retinal size (as found in chapter 3). I conclude that, in line with contemporary theories of visual perception, the brain solves the puzzle of 3D perception by combining all available sources of visual information in an optimal manner, even though this may lead to inaccuracies in the final estimate of depth.


It is acommonplace that the internet is one of the most powerful tools at the disposal of contemporary societies; it is also one of the most dynamically developing ways of information transfer. Access to information is the most important and desirable aim of human aspirations. The internet is still developing very dynamically, thus defying any efforts at determining the limits of its advancement; it creates infinite opportunities in various areas, while its great potential affects all aspects of human existence. For years the internet has also been the medium for financial transactions involving electronically regulated cash flow. Many of these transactions are carried out with the use of payment cards, which for many people constitute anobvious alternative to traditional transactions involving cash. The history of payment cards elsewhere in the world goes back to the beginning of the previous century, but in Poland they came into use much later, i.e. in the mid-1990s. The development of the internet, and especially the speed of data transfer which it offers, have greatly facilitated the transactions involving payment cards. This fact poses aquestion concerning the security of such transactions. The popular and universal character of online payments, not necessarily with the use of payment cards, resulted in the emergence of crime involving identity theft and conducting illegal transactions.


This article reports on the development, implementation, and evaluation of a decision support system (DSS), a hybrid of a statistical model (regression equation) and expert rules, to support this decision. The study focused on the decisions made by social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists serving as military mental health officers to recommend discharge from compulsory duty in the Israeli army because of mental or emotional difficulties. The process involved three consecutive steps: modeling decisions by statistical analysis of past and current decisions and by eliciting expert rules, developing o hybrid decision support system, and evaluating the DSS through empirical validation and a user survey. The validity of this hybrid DSS was established. The DSS was able to predict 86.5 percent of new decisions made by mental health officers and 70 percent of post decisions. User acceptance, on the other hand, was low. This article discusses these findings and their implications for practice. Key words; clinical judgment; decision support systems; expert rules; mental health officers; military Social workers and other helping professionals make clinical judgments on a routine basis. Many of these decisions have important consequences for clients. Relying on clinical judgment and expertise, practitioners make daily decisions whether to accept clients for treatment, render services, hospitalize, discharge, or commit to involuntary care; such decisions can be of immeasurable significance to people's lives. Our empirical study of these important judgments and decisions made in the helping professions revealed how these professions are fallible and prone to error (Gambrill, 1990; Gibbs & Gambrill, 1996; Nisbett & Ross, 1980). Almost all clinical decisions are made under some degree of uncertainty (Hogarth, 1980). Many factors in the decision-making process, such as incomplete or unreliable information relevant to the decision, and errors or inconsistencies in the application of decision-making rules introduce uncertainty. Much of the uncertainty results from the probabilistic nature of the outcomes of decisions. Decisions made under what seem to be identical situations lead to different outcomes (Cooksey, 1996). Fallibility, therefore, is an inseparable feature of clinical judgment under uncertainty. Our study focused on the decisions made by social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists serving as military mental health officers (MHOs) to recommend discharge from compulsory duty in the Israeli military services because of mental or emotional difficulties. This decision has significant consequences for the individual soldier, as well as for the soldier's social environment. Compulsory service in the military is a major duty and right of all Jewish citizens in Israel (most non-Jewish citizens are exempt from compulsory service). A discharge on the basis of psychiatric dysfunction stigmatizes the individual in civilian life. Consequences range from difficulties in obtaining a driver's license or in securing employment to less blatant discriminatory attitudes in Israeli society. On the other hand, a misguided decision not to discharge a dysfunctional soldier may lead to dire outcomes such as psychotic breakdown, suicide, and violent behavior within the unit, which in turn could lead to failure in battle (Benbenishty, Zirlin-Shemesh, & Kaplan, 1993). Military MHOs, the majority of whom are social workers, assess the soldier and decide whether or not to lower the soldier's medical rating on psychiatric grounds, thereby causing an immediate dismissal from the military. This decision is based on clinical judgment and not on any preset requirements or guidelines. Thus, it is open to the same problems in judgment identified in so many other contexts. Furthermore, given the consequences of the decision, the need to maintain consistency among MHOs making the decision is of special importance. …


The endocannabinoid system (ECS) is a highly versatile signaling system within the nervous system. Despite its widespread localization, its functions within the context of distinct neural processes are very well discernable and specific. This is remarkable, and the question remains as to how such specificity is achieved. One key player in the ECS is the cannabinoid type 1 receptor (CB1), a G protein–coupled receptor characterized by the complexity of its cell-specific expression, cellular and subcellular localization, and its adaptable regulation of intracellular signaling cascades. CB1 receptors are involved in different synaptic and cellular plasticity processes and in the brain's bioenergetics in a context-specific manner. CB2 receptors are also important in several processes in neurons, glial cells, and immune cells of the brain. As polymorphisms in ECS components, as well as external impacts such as stress and metabolic challenges, can both lead to dysregulated ECS activity and subsequently to possible neuropsychiatric disorders, pharmacological intervention targeting the ECS is a promising therapeutic approach. Understanding the neurobiology of cannabinoid receptor signaling in depth will aid optimal design of therapeutic interventions, minimizing unwanted side effects.


The focus of this proposal is to identify unexplored areas of research in the field of packaging science, specifically related to the incorporation of Nanocrystalline Cellulose (NCC) as a functional material in fiber based packaging, as well as to highlight some of potential risks and unknowns in the product lifecycle. This research hypothesizes that incorporating NCC into wood fiber-based c-flute corrugated packaging medium will show a sufficient performance improvement to justify additional research. Nanomaterials, as a whole, are still being understood, including those using naturally occurring bases such as NCC. Further incremental testing with NCC will help provide a performance and safety baseline for the necessary future research prior to mass production. NCC holds great promise for the future: a commonly available, naturally occurring material that's easily recyclable and biodegradable, yet has the strength of steel. Due diligence is required for this material to come to market in a safe and sustainable manner. NCC AS A PACKAGING MATERIAL 4 Table of


Single crystals of synthetic CaMgSi 2 O 6 (diopside) doped with different amounts of Fe and Na were produced under water- and silica-saturated conditions at 20 kbar using a piston-cylinder apparatus. All samples were investigated by FTIR spectroscopy and electron microprobe, and some crystals were characterised by Mosbauer spectroscopy. IR spectra recorded on pure diopside show one OH absorption band at 3360 cm −1 . In Na-doped diopside an additional band centred at 3428 cm −1 is observed. Crystals containing Na as well as Fe exhibit either an additional prominent peak at 3428 cm −1 or one at 3443 cm −1 except for one sample showing also a band at 3651 cm −1 . The 1:1 dependency between incorporated Na and H in samples doped with only Na suggests that all sodium is coupled to hydrogen in the range of Na-content investigated in this study. In contrast, crystals doped with Fe and Na contain very different amounts of hydrogen, which is interpreted to be caused by several interacting mechanisms: in one mechanism the hydrous defect is replaced by an anhydrous aegirine compound, in another one the aegirine compound is replaced by the combination of a hydrous Fe-associated defect and an anhydrous Na-associated defect. The Fe-related hydrous defects could also be destroyed by a third mechanism, which allows the incorporation of ferric iron without being coupled to monovalent cations. The band at 3428 cm −1 can be assigned to a Na-related OH-defect. Bands at 3360 and 3443 cm −1 showing very similar behaviour may both be related to M-site vacancies, and the band at 3443 cm −1 seems to be caused by replacement of two coordinating Mg by a ferric iron and a proton. For the 3651 cm −1 peak no distinct assignment can be proposed. The results of this study show that different hydrous defects may transform into anhydrous defects, reducing hydrogen solubility in the crystal structure. Thus, water content in clinopyroxene is not a simple function of the total amount of mono- and trivalent cations. In natural clinopyroxene crystals from upper-mantle peridotites, which are Na- and Fe-bearing, neither the Na-associated band at 3428 cm −1 nor the Fe-associated band at 3443 cm −1 is observed. This fact suggests that other mechanisms, e.g. interactions between hydrous defects and other cations, most probably Al, could have influence on OH incorporation in natural clinopyroxenes.


Abstract This article reports some of the key findings from a practitioner-action research study that analyzed the impact of co-construction on students' quantitative literacy (QL) and attitudes towards mathematics. Co-construction is a process where students work alongside their teachers to plan units, lessons, and assessments, and this approach was chosen because of its potential to help students advocate for the specific mathematical contexts that would best develop their QL. This yearlong study took place in a public high school, with forty-five students in two different classes participating. Students formally contributed to the development of the course by completing written questionnaires and participating in large-and small-group discussions, and they contributed informally through their participation in class, performance on assessments, and reflections on various assignments, which I considered in field notes and a research journal. I used the constant comparative method to analyze these data, and I arrived at three key themes: (1) co-construction recast traditional roles in the classroom, while still serving as an important form of instruction in itself; (2) developmentally appropriate assignments triggered students' situational interest, while individualized co-construction proved somewhat effective at developing individual interest; and (3) the co-construction process challenged the way I used to think about mathematics teaching, as students and I reconsidered the content, technology, and classroom practices that would best develop students' QL. This study fills an important gap in the QL and co-construction literature, and it also has important implications for mathematics practitioners, and for practitioners who want to give students more of a voice in the classroom.


This article estimates the poverty reducing impact of land access in rural Uganda. Using balanced panel data for 309 households in 2001, 2003, and 2005, models that control for unobserved household heterogeneity and endogeneity of land acquisition and disposition are employed to measure the poverty-reduction effect of land on household expenditure per adult equivalent. Significant poverty reduction effects of increased land access in form of owned, operated and market-accessed land were found. The poverty reduction effect for land accessed through the market was significantly larger than the poverty reduction effect of land accessed through inheritance. (JEL Q24, Q15, and O12)


Abstract The construction sector faces the challenge of mitigating climate change with urgency. Life cycle assessment (LCA), a widely used tool to assess the climate impacts of buildings, is seldom used for bridges. Material-specific phenomena such as concrete carbonation and biogenic carbon storage are usually unaccounted for when assessing the climate impacts from infrastructure. The purpose of this article is to explore the effects these phenomena could have on climate impact assessment of road bridges and comparisons between bridge designs. For this, a case study is used of two functionally equivalent design alternatives for a small road bridge in Sweden. Dynamic LCA is used to calculate the effects of biogenic carbon storage, while the Lagerblad method and literature values are used to estimate concrete carbonation. The results show that the climate impact of the bridge is influenced by both phenomena, and that the gap between the impacts from both designs increases if the phenomena are accounted for. The outcome is influenced by the time occurrence assumed for the forest carbon uptake and the end-of-life scenario for the concrete. An equilibrium or 50/50 approach for accounting for the forest carbon uptake is proposed as a middle value compromise to handle this issue.


The main objective of this study is an application of short-term prediction method by chaos theory to vibration control. In this paper, we proposed two predictive control methods for mechanical systems. The input time series or the output time series of a mechanical system in the near future was predicted by the short-term prediction method based on chaos theory and we used the obtained time series effectively to get the control force. The algorithm of the short-term prediction method, which is based on Takens's theorem, used in this study and a condition to have sufficient precision of prediction were discussed from practical engineering points. The effectiveness of the proposed control methods was shown by numerical results and experimental results.


We present the first event-horizon-scale images and spatiotemporal analysis of Sgr A* taken with the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017 April at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. Imaging of Sgr A* has been conducted through surveys over a wide range of imaging assumptions using the classical CLEAN algorithm, regularized maximum likelihood methods, and a Bayesian posterior sampling method. Different prescriptions have been used to account for scattering effects by the interstellar medium toward the Galactic center. Mitigation of the rapid intraday variability that characterizes Sgr A* has been carried out through the addition of a "variability noise budget" in the observed visibilities, facilitating the reconstruction of static full-track images. Our static reconstructions of Sgr A* can be clustered into four representative morphologies that correspond to ring images with three different azimuthal brightness distributions and a small cluster that contains diverse nonring morphologies. Based on our extensive analysis of the effects of sparse (u, v)-coverage, source variability, and interstellar scattering, as well as studies of simulated visibility data, we conclude that the Event Horizon Telescope Sgr A* data show compelling evidence for an image that is dominated by a bright ring of emission with a ring diameter of ∼50 μas, consistent with the expected "shadow" of a 4 × 106
 M
 ⊙ black hole in the Galactic center located at a distance of 8 kpc.


The goal of this thesis is to account for distributional patterns of given and new items in Czech, especially their word order. The system proposed here has four basic components: (i) syntax, (ii) economy, (iii) interpretation, and (iv) reference set computation. The approach belongs to the family of interface driven approaches. The syntactic part of the thesis introduces a free syntactic movement (G-movement). The movement causes very local reordering of given elements with respect to new elements in the structure. G-movement is licensed only if it creates a syntactic structure which leads to a semantic interpretation that would not otherwise be available. The economy condition interacts with the way givenness is interpreted. I introduce a recursive operator that adds a presupposition to given elements. The distribution of the operator is regulated by the Maximize presupposition maxim of Heim (1991). The reference set for purposes of this evaluation is defined as the set of derivations that have the same numeration and the same assertion. Finally, I argue that the licensing semantic conditions on givenness in Czech are not identical to the licensing conditions on deaccenting in English. The givenness licensing conditions are stronger in that they require that for an element to be given it must not only have a salient antecedent but also satisfy an existential presupposition. Thesis Supervisor: Danny Fox Title: Associate Professor of Linguistics Thesis Supervisor: Sabine Iatridou Title: Professor of Linguistics Thesis Supervisor: Alec Marantz Title: Professor of Linguistics Thesis Supervisor: David Pesetsky Title: Professor of Linguistics


The thermodynamic state of sea ice is important to accurately and remotely monitor in order to provide improved geophysical variable parameterizations in sea ice thermodynamic models. Operationally, monitoring the thermodynamic state of sea ice can facilitate eased ship navigation routing. SeaWinds/QuikSCAT (QuikSCAT) dual-polarization [i.e., horizontal (HH) and vertical (VV)] active microwave data are available at a sufficiently large spatial scale and high temporal resolution to provide estimates of sea ice thermodynamics. This analysis evaluated the temporal evolution of the backscatter coefficient (/spl sigma//spl deg/) and VV/HH copolarization ratio from QuikSCAT for estimating sea ice thermodynamics. QuikSCAT estimates were compared against RADARSAT-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery and the Canadian Ice Service (CIS) prototype operational ice strength algorithm. In situ data from the Collaborative Interdisciplinary Cryospheric Experiment (C-ICE) for 2000, 2001, and 2002 were used as validation. Results indicate that the temporal evolution of /spl sigma//spl deg/ from QuikSCAT is analogous to RADARSAT-1. The QuikSCAT /spl sigma//spl deg/ temporal evolution has the ability to identify winter, snow melt, and ponding thermodynamic states. Moreover, the copolarization VV/HH ratio of QuikSCAT could provide a second estimate of the ponding state in addition to identifying the drainage state that is difficult to detect by single-polarization SAR. QuikSCAT detected thermodynamic states that were found to be in reasonable agreement to that of in situ observations at the C-ICE camp for all years. Operational implications of this analysis suggest QuikSCAT is a more effective and efficient medium for monitoring ice decay compared to RADARSAT-1 and can be utilized to provide more robust modeled ice strength thresholds.


In recent years many large scale demonstrators and prototypes of superconducting fault current limiters have been successfully developed and tested. Within the European Project ECCOFLOW (www.eccoflow.org), it is the first time that a resistive-type superconducting fault current limiter is developed for two different locations and that a permanent installation is foreseen. The limiter has a rating of 20 kV and 1 kA and will be tested in a busbar and transformer feeder application. The paper summarizes the conceptual design of this innovative limiter and reports in detail about the development of the super- conducting limiting elements, their integration into a cryostat and the design of the whole limiter including cooling and grid integration. As a main result it can be summarized that the ECCOFLOW limiter fulfills all requirements according to the two different specifications. Approximately 3 km of 12 mm wide YBCO tape will be used to realize a three phase system.


The celebrated Paxos protocol implements a reliable service as a state machine replicated over several machines. Replication provides reliability against permanent failures and availability against temporary crash failures. Whereas, in theory, Paxos can tolerate any number f of crash failures using 2f + 1 replicas, in practice, it is often appealing to use it in order to tolerate a single failure using three replicas for the probability of two simultaneous failures is sometimes considered low enough. We show in this paper how, in this particular case of three replicas, we can increase the throughput of Multi-Paxos, which is an efficient variation of Paxos used in deployed systems [4, 2], by a factor of 2 by using a new protocol we call OneAcceptor. In short, OneAcceptor changes Multi-Paxos to use only a single acceptor role and to switch it with another acceptor in the case of failure. The number of exchanged messages between replicas reduces considerably, without trading, however, neither the consistency nor the availability of Multi-Paxos.


Two Fragments on Water and Light explores a communal ensemble paradigm made possible through the implementation of customized technologies. The work is for solo voice and two additional performers who use controllers built, and in some cases designed, by the composer. These controllers operate either synthesis or effects processing algorithms which generate sound, modify existing sounds, or both. The arbitrary mapping between controller data and synthesis algorithm and the way that some of the synthesis algorithms function as both sound generators and sound processors allow multiple performers to create or modify the same sound. This permits the possibility of a communal performance environment in which the sonic identity of each performer, or the way in which the performer's physical actions directly translate into sonic result, blur into a common, ensemble sonic identity. This document shows how technology enables this communal ensemble paradigm. It first discusses the operation of the physical models and controllers. It illustrates specifically how the use of technology allows for the dissolution of the sonic identity of each performer. This document then explains how technology and the performance environment it facilitates are used to highlight themes seen in the medieval texts set in these songs. After a few remarks evaluating the effectiveness of the songs, I present a performance score.


Abstract The Krishna Godavari Basin is located in the East Coast Indian Peninsula containing 5 to 7 km of Cretaceous through Cenozoic terrigenous clastic sediments. The Miocene-Pliocene section in the offshore is known as the Ravva Formation, a major argillaceous facies with sandstone beds from which oil and gas are being produced. In this sequence, some cutting samples studied from four offshore wells were found to be rich in agglutinated benthic foraminifera, while planktic foraminifera were absent at these levels. These samples were studied in much detail for agglutinated foraminifera. A total of fifty-nine agglutinated foraminiferal species belonging to thirty-five genera have been identified. Two new species, Alveolophragmium indicum Govindan n. sp and Liebusella krishna Govindan n. sp., are described. All these species are reported for the first time from this region. The agglutinated benthic foraminiferal taxa bear close resemblance to those of Miocene agglutinated foraminifera assemblages reported from South Trinidad, the Falcon Basin of Venezuela, and offshore West Africa. The present report of alveolar genera, Alveovalvulina, Alveovalvulinella and Guppyella, and compressed, inner partitioned alveolar genera Pavonitina and Spiropsammia, together with other genera having complex reticulate inner structure as Cyclammina, Reticulophragmium and Alveolophragmium in this region are of great importance for the evaluation of biostratigraphy, paleoecology, paleobiogeography and burial history. Paleoecological analysis reveals three agglutinated foraminiferal biofacies/groupings, which characterize beyond outer shelf through bathyal slope (500 to 1500m) depth regimes in an oxygen minimum deep water setting for the deposition of these turbidite/debris flow sediments. A major marine transgression at the close of the Oligocene probably caused a moderately rich, more uniform distribution of deep water agglutinated species over this deep basin. Additional observations on the agglutinated benthic assemblage such as deformation of the tests, coloration of the tests and stratigraphic markers are also dealt with briefly.


Author(s): Chambers, Katherine Lindsey | Advisor(s): Herman, Barbara | Abstract: Advancements in reproductive technology have expanded the influence that parents can have on their children. Pre-implantation screening and selection, prenatal screening and selective abortion, and fetal gene therapy now make it possible for parents to select features of their children, even before those children are born. Reproductive selection has most frequently been used to select against disabilities. However, procreators have now begun to use reproductive selection to select for disabilities, such as deafness and dwarfism. Though parents are often afforded a special moral permission to determine many aspects of their children's lives, that permission does not obviously include a permission to select for disabilities in their future children. I argue for a role-based framework to address the morality of using reproductive selection to select for disabilities. Procreators are not unrelated to their offspring; they are often the prospective parents of their offspring. Insofar as procreators procreate in order to become parents, they assume the role of parent and its subsequent obligations. The parental role has a moral end, namely, the facilitation of the child's future autonomy. Parental obligations are keyed to this end. As prospective parents, procreators are also obligated to facilitate the autonomy of their future children. Procreators are prohibited, then, from selecting traits for their children that would impose obstacles to their children's autonomy. Insofar as a disability is an impediment to autonomy, it is not a trait that procreators have a permission to choose on behalf of their offspring.


Reticulin stains are commonly used in surgical pathology to assess mass lesions for the possibility of hepatocellular carcinoma. The loss of normal reticulin staining can help support a diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma, and this stain has proven to be particularly helpful on limited biopsies and fine-needle aspirates. However, an underappreciated diagnostic pitfall is that non-neoplastic liver tissue can also show reticulin loss when there is fatty change. To further characterize this important diagnostic pitfall, reticulin staining was studied in cases of nonalcoholic steatosis, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, and hepatic adenomas with fatty change. A total of 112 cases with varying degrees of steatosis were collected from 4 academic centers, including 49 cases of steatosis, 49 cases of steatohepatitis, and 14 hepatic adenomas with fatty change. Steatosis was graded as mild (5% to 30% macrovesicular steatosis), moderate (31% to 60%), and marked (>60%). Reticulin stains were scored as the number of foci with diminished reticulin staining in 10 hpf. A focus of diminished reticulin was scored when the extent of reticulin loss was similar to that seen in hepatocellular carcinomas. In the total study set, 28 cases showed mild steatosis, 40 cases showed moderate steatosis, and 44 cases showed marked steatosis. Interestingly, increasing amounts of fat were associated with decreased reticulin staining. For mild steatosis, reticulin loss was rare, with the number of foci of reticulin loss per 10 hpf averaging 0.8 (range, 0 to 3); however, this increased for moderate steatosis, which showed a mean of 3.0 foci per 10 hpf (range, 0 to 5), and was most prominent with marked steatosis, which showed an average of 5.8 foci of reticulin loss per 10 hpf (range, 5 to 8). An almost identical pattern was seen in cases of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Overall, reticulin loss was not associated with the degree of inflammation or with the presence or absence of balloon cell change. Reticulin loss also did not correlate with fibrosis stage. In hepatic adenomas, reticulin loss was seen only in areas of fatty change, and decreased reticulin again paralleled the amount of steatosis, with more prominent reticulin loss in those cases with marked steatosis. In conclusion, reticulin loss that reaches levels seen in hepatocellular carcinoma can be seen focally in benign liver tissues with fatty change. Overall, loss of reticulin is more common and more extensive with marked fatty change and does not seem to be linked to inflammation or fibrosis stage. Loss of reticulin can also be seen in hepatic adenomas with fatty change. Increased awareness of this important diagnostic pitfall will help prevent overcalling of reticulin loss when evaluating biopsies and resections of hepatic neoplasms with fatty change.


This paper describes a case-based approach to knowledge acquisition for natural language systems that simultaneously learns part of speech, word sense, and concept activation knowledge for all open class words in a corpus. The parser begins with a lexicon of function words and creates a case base of context-sensitive word definitions during a humansupervised training phase. Then, given an unknown word and the context in which it occurs, the parser retrieves definitions from the case base to infer the word's syntactic and semantic features. By encoding context as part of a definition, the meaning of a word can change dynamically in response to surrounding phrases without the need for explicit lexical disambiguation heuristics. Moreover, the approach acquires all three classes of knowledge using the same case representation and requires relatively little training and no hand-coded knowledge acquisition heuristics. We evaluate it in experiments that explore two of many practical applications of the technique and conclude that the case-based method provides a promising approach to automated dictionary construction and knowledge acquisition for sentence analysis in limited domains. In addition, we present a novel case retrieval algorithm that uses decision trees to improve the performance of a k-nearest neighbor similarity metric.


Millions
 have gone online in the past five years but not all have completely
adopted the Internet. This research employed Q methodology to classify
Internet users and explore reasons why some users are more inclined to
embrace Internet technology than others. The respondents were forty
college students who sorted a 46-statmetn Q sample. Results revealed
three distinct viewpoints toward the adoption of the Internet.
"Assimilators" absorb and incorporate the Internet into their thinking
and lifestyle. "Convenience Users," seeking instant gratification, move
quickly on the Internet; they hop on to get what they want when they
want it and they hop out. "Reluctant Users" prefer real-life experiences
 to the virtual ones offered on the Internet. They like face-to-face
interaction with other people and have a fear that the seductive power
of the Internet might change their lifestyle. A usage survey that
accompanied the Q sort also showed that three groups are different in
the purposes of their Internet use. Communication was the most important
 purpose of Internet use except with the Reluctant Users, who valued
information gathering more than communication. Respondents' gender and
level of perceived Internet savvy seemed to be factor predictors.


Document Type Audio Recording Publication Date 2016 Abstract The purpose of this oral history report is to inform readers about the time in James Cruz's life when he was in the military. He was not only a medic in the Vietnam war, but also a conscientious objector. As the interviewer and author of this interview it is Britani Brown's goal to expose Mr. Cruz's experience and stories to those who wish to learn more about these experiences or the man himself. She hopes readers will appreciate and find use or interest in this report. Recommended Citation Brown, Britani P., "Oral History: James CruzMedic During Vietnam" (2016). Vietnam. 18. https://knowledge.e.southern.edu/vietnam/18  Download


Scientific communities have proven to be extremely successful at solving problems. They are inherently parallel systems and their macroscopic nature makes them amenable to careful study. In this paper the character of scientific research is examined drawing on sources in the philosophy and history of science. We maintain that the success of scientific research depends critically on its concurrency and pluralism. A variant of the language Ether is developed that embodies notions of concurrency necessary to emulate some of the problem solving behavior of scientific communities. Capabilities of scientific communities are discussed in parallel with simplified models of these capabilities in this language.


We report on electron phonon interactions in bulk layered graphene (GRA) and its oxide (GO) under bias when exposed to 1° or 2° alcohol vapors, where we have focused on the change of Raman intensity of G and D bands as a function of the bias across the device. In addition to the softening of phonons we have observed a systematic variation in the intensity for D and G bands which is directly related to guest molecules and intrinsic surface nature of GRA and GO. Although the guest molecules withdraw electrons from GRA or GO, the intrinsic nature of the host material has caused mutually contrasting behaviour in IV-characteristics, where the conductance of the former decreases while it increases for the latter. The results from IV-spectra and the intensity maps of D and G bands are juxtaposed and the changes are analyzed with respect to surface and functional group interactions. In the context of doping, it is interesting to see that under equilibrium molecular charge transfer (top-gate like), the intensity ratios of 2D and G bands are not constant in contrast to a previous study [Phys. Rev. B., 2009, 80, 165413] in which such a ratio is invariant in the field effect configuration.


Objectives To develop, implement and evaluate a training programme for senior doctors to become faculty leaders for patient safety training. Methods Senior doctors were recruited from across 20 hospitals in the North Western Deanery, England, UK. The intervention comprised a half-day course in patient safety theory, root cause analysis and small-group facilitation, following which participants were invited to sign up as faculty for a region-wide patient safety training programme for trainees 'Lessons Learnt'. Course evaluation comprised a prospective longitudinal study conducted in 2010–2012. Patient safety knowledge, attitudes and skills were evaluated pre and post course and retention further evaluated 8 months post course. Results 216 senior doctors volunteered as faculty of whom 122 were appointed. Participants reported high levels of satisfaction with the course. Objective scores of patient safety knowledge significantly improved immediately post course (MedianPre course=70%, MedianPost course=80%, p<0.001) and were sustained at 8 months (Median8 month post course=90%). Similarly, measures of attitudes and self-reported safety skills also significantly improved post course and were sustained. Upon completion of the course, 88/122 (72%) participants facilitated 213 'Lessons Learnt' sessions from January 2011 to July 2012 (mean 2, range 1–8 sessions per faculty member). Trainee satisfaction with faculty was high. Conclusions There is considerable appetite for senior doctors to engage with training in patient safety as teachers and learners. Training senior doctors in patient safety is feasible, acceptable and effective as a means of building capacity and capability for delivering training in this rapidly emerging field.


This thesis presents work done investigating methods for constructing patterns on the nanometer scale. Various methods of nanolithography using atomic force microscopes (AFMs) are investigated. The use of AFMs beyond their imaging capabilities is demonstrated in various experiments involving nanografting and surface electrochemical modification. The use of an AFM to manipulate a monolayer of thiols deposited on a gold substrate via nanografting is shown in our work to enable chemical modification of the surface of the substrate by varying the composition of the monolayer deposited on it. This leads to the selective deposition of various polymers on the patterned areas. Conditions for enhancing the selective deposition of the self-assembled polymers are studied. Such conditions include the types of polymers used and the pH of the polyelectrolyte solutions used for polymer deposition. Another method of nanolithography is investigated which involves the electrochemical modification of a monolayer of silanes deposited on a silicon substrate. By applying a potential difference and maintaining the humidity of the ambient environment at a certain level we manage to change the chemical properties of select areas of the silane monolayer and thus manage to establish selective deposition of polymers and gold nanoparticles on the patterned areas. Parameters involved in the patterning process using surface electrochemical modification, such as humidity levels, are investigated. The techniques established are then used to construct circuit elements such as wires.


In spring 2013, the Life Sciences Data Services Librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign gave a data management presentation to early-career, agricultural faculty members participating in a selective program designed to help them succeed in the tenure process. After the presentation, the participants were invited to complete an online survey that included questions on how well informed and prepared they feel about funding agencies' data requirements, what data challenges they face, and how the library can help with new or improved services in this area. The presentation discussion and survey responses suggested value in offering data training specifically for agricultural graduate students and research assistants and compiling examples of data management plans from successful grant proposals. Despite the small number of participants, the feedback provides an interesting glimpse into data management from the perspective of early-career faculty.


UNLABELLED
PURPOSE To improve on current standards for breast cancer prognosis and prediction of chemotherapy benefit by developing a risk model that incorporates the gene expression-based "intrinsic" subtypes luminal A, luminal B, HER2-enriched, and basal-like. METHODS A 50-gene subtype predictor was developed using microarray and quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction data from 189 prototype samples. Test sets from 761 patients (no systemic therapy) were evaluated for prognosis, and 133 patients were evaluated for prediction of pathologic complete response (pCR) to a taxane and anthracycline regimen.

RESULTS
The intrinsic subtypes as discrete entities showed prognostic significance (P = 2.26E-12) and remained significant in multivariable analyses that incorporated standard parameters (estrogen receptor status, histologic grade, tumor size, and node status). A prognostic model for node-negative breast cancer was built using intrinsic subtype and clinical information. The C-index estimate for the combined model (subtype and tumor size) was a significant improvement on either the clinicopathologic model or subtype model alone. The intrinsic subtype model predicted neoadjuvant chemotherapy efficacy with a negative predictive value for pCR of 97%. CONCLUSION Diagnosis by intrinsic subtype adds significant prognostic and predictive information to standard parameters for patients with breast cancer. The prognostic properties of the continuous risk score will be of value for the management of node-negative breast cancers. The subtypes and risk score can also be used to assess the likelihood of efficacy from neoadjuvant chemotherapy.


This thesis explores how task parallelness might be established; this is of fundamental importance to any discussion in the areas of language testing and task-based research, where the equivalence of tasks is a prerequisite. Five pilot studies were conducted using two spoken narrative tasks from an ongoing speaking test of English in Japan, the Standard Speaking Test, including two feasibility studies using several linguistic variables to analyse candidate performances, a study of expert judgements of the two tasks, a study of the linguistic performance of native speakers of English, and a study to identify an appropriate pair of tasks for the main study. The main study examined the parallelness of two spoken narrative tasks by Hill (1960) in terms of the ratings calculated by MFRM analysis, the linguistic performances of 65 Japanese candidates and 11 native speakers of English, expert judgements by Japanese teachers of English, and perceptions of the Japanese candidates and native speakers of English. The validity of the linguistic variables was also examined. The results of analyses demonstrated that the two tasks were not actually parallel, despite the effort to ensure a priori parallelness via the pilot studies. The findings were extensively discussed in relation to the theories of task complexity from Robinson (2001) and Skehan (1998), and raised several questions regarding the variables for quantifying the accuracy and syntactic complexity of linguistic performance. Taken together, the findings of this thesis add significantly to the understanding of task parallelness and the results of my work can be applied not only to the design and selection of tasks but also to the investigation of linguistic performance in the fields of language testing and task-based research.


This paper presents G.W.F. Hegel's theory of painting after the lectures on aesthetics he gave at the Berlin University during the winter semester 1828-1829. While testimonies for the lectures given in 1820-1821, 1823 and 1826 are now published, the reader can furthermore have an overview of Hegel's theory of painting as it appears in the last lecture given by the philosopher. I refer to the unpublished transcript of Adolf Heimann's Nachschrift. I will show how the empirical encounter with painting and works of art relates to his general philosophical theory. Philosophy of art begins here with speculative considerations on the nature of ideal, of the beautiful, of the idea. This may seem to be an obstacle to a 'non-metaphysical' reading of the aesthetics similar to the 'non-metaphysical' reading of Hegel's philosophy in general. This 'speculative' approach could, however, be taken as a resource for aesthetics as art theory which can not be dissociated to the phenomenal attitude towards the works of art. The experience of painting is, more specifically, not only determined by a magic encounter with works of art: it is furthermore determined by the encounter with theories which provide a scientific framework to the experience that allows us to speak of an aesthetic experience.