During Embryogenesis, the harbinger of germ layer formation is the primitive streak (PS), a transient structure oriented along the embryonic anteroposterior axis, through which epiblast cells egress to form mesoderm and endoderm. Hematopoietic and vascular lineages arise in multiple sites and at different times during embryogenesis from extra embryonic and lateral plate mesoderm, derivatives of the posterior and mid regions of the PS. In vitro differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) has been demonstrated to recapitulate aspects of vertebrate development, and we have established an in vitro hESC differentiation system to study the initiation of gastrulation as well as the development of early hematopoietic mesoderm in a defined, serum-free medium, showing that exogenously added TGFb family molecules induce primitive streak-like cells that subsequently differentiate into mesodermal and endodermal lineages. In order to ascertain the precise isolation of mesodermal precursors, a targeted hESC line in which GFP was inserted by homologous recombination in the locus of the MIXL1 homeobox gene (MIXL1GFP/W) was generated and used as guidance for the identification of viable, PS-like, cells. In this study, microarray-based transcriptional profiling was used to examine gene expression during mesoderm induction from MIXL1GFP/W hESCs in isolated mesodermal populations. The aim of this study was to identify novel cell surface markers and growth factors that would facilitate the identification and generation of hematopoietic lineages from hESCs. During this study, transcriptional profiling method was also used to assist the characterization of hESCs derived cell phenotypes, such as neuronal, endothelial, cardiac and endodermal pancreatic progenitor cells.


Abstract This article presents the development of the improvisation piece Transformation for electric violin and live electronics. The aim of the project was to develop an "invisible" technological setup that would allow the performer to move freely on stage while still being in full control of the electronics. The developed system consists of a video-based motion-tracking system, with a camera hanging in the ceiling above the stage. The performer's motion and position on stage is used to control the playback of sonic fragments from a database of violin sounds, using concatenative synthesis as the sound engine. The setup allows the performer to improvise freely together with the electronic sounds being played back as she moves around the "sonic space." The system has been stable in rehearsal and performance, and the simplicity of the approach has been inspiring to both the performer and the audience.


A near-optimal design of a log-periodic dipole array (LPDA), suitable for digital video broadcasting-terrestrial (DVB-T) reception (470–790 MHz), is presented. The LPDA is required to provide low standing wave ratio as well as high-gain radiation pattern with sufficient gain flatness over the entire passband, and concurrently achieve low gain for frequencies above 800 MHz to reject LTE800 signals and thus improve the reception quality in the DVB-T band. All the above requirements are better satisfied by applying a novel particle swarm optimization (PSO) variant, called PSO with velocity mutation (PSOvm). PSOvm induces mutation on the velocities of those particles, which are unable to improve their fitness. As shown in this paper, PSOvm comes closer to the above requirements compared to four well-known optimization methods and outperforms the traditional LPDA design method proposed by Carrel. The LPDA geometry chosen for optimization is not the conventional one, and therefore the dipoles are not considered to be included inside a specified angle as proposed by Carrel. Thus, the dipole lengths and distances as well as the boom dimensions are independently optimized. The PSOvm-based LPDA sufficiently meets all the above requirements and thus is suitable for DVB-T reception without the use of an external LTE-band rejection filter.


The impact of integrated reproductive health and HIV services on HIV testing and counseling (HTC) uptake was assessed among 882 Kenyan family planning clients using a nonrandomized cohort design within six intervention and six "comparison" facilities. The effect of integration on HTC goals (two tests over two years) was assessed using conditional logistic regression to test four "integration" exposures: a training and reorganization intervention; receipt of reproductive health and HIV services at recruitment; a functional measure of facility integration at recruitment; and a woman's cumulative exposure to functionally integrated care across different facilities over time. While recent receipt of HTC increased rapidly at intervention facilities, achievement of HTC goals was higher at comparison facilities. Only high cumulative exposure to integrated care over two years had a significant effect on HTC goals after adjustment (aOR 2.94, 95%CI 1.73‐4.98), and programs should therefore make efforts to roll out integrated services to ensure repeated contact over time.


Wilderness has played an invaluable role in the development of wildland fire science. Since Agee's review of the subject 15 years ago, tremendous progress has been made in the development of models and data, in understanding the complexity of wildland fire as a landscape process, and in appreciating the social factors that influence the use of wilderness fire. Regardless of all we have learned, though, the reality is that fire remains an extraordinarily complex process with variable effects that create essential heterogeneity in ecosystems. Whereas some may view this variability as a management impediment, for others it provides a path forward. As research has shown, embracing fire in all its complexity and expanding its use can help reduce fuels, restore resilient landscapes, and contain costs. Wilderness fire science will continue to play an important role in understanding opportunities for using fire, its role in ecosystems, its risks and benefits, and the influence of risk perception on decisionmaking.


The performance of microfabricated piezoresistive cantilever array sensors has been evaluated using various vapors of volatile organic compounds including alkanes with different chain length from 5 (n-pentane) to 14 (n-tetradecane). We demonstrate that piezoresistive microcantilever array sensors have the selectivity of discriminating individual alkanes in a homologous series as well as common volatile organic compounds according to principal component analysis. We developed a new method to evaluate the sensitivity, taking advantage of the low vapor pressures of alkanes with longer chains, such as n-dodecane, n-tridecane and n-tetradecane, under saturated vapor conditions. This method reveals sub-ppm sensitivity and the cantilever response is found to follow the mass of evaporated analytes as calculated using a quantitative model based on the Langmuir evaporation model.


Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in U.S. politics, yet they have been largely unstudied. Across 16 measures in a large web-based sample that included 11,994 self-identified libertarians, we sought to understand the moral and psychological characteristics of self-described libertarians. Based on an intuitionist view of moral judgment, we focused on the underlying affective and cognitive dispositions that accompany this unique worldview. Compared to self-identified liberals and conservatives, libertarians showed 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle, and weaker endorsement of all other moral principles; 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style; and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. As predicted by intuitionist theories concerning the origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent relationships with libertarian emotional dispositions and social preferences. Our findings add to a growing recognition of the role of personality differences in the organization of political attitudes.


This article explores On Safety And Security Measures Of Women Employees In It Sector, Chennai., Health and Safety initiatives are part of a strategic approach to HRM. No longer just a "thing" that companies have to comply with, health and safety is being used as part of a company's overall strategy for talent retention, overall objectives, and loss-time prevention. Consider the benefits of loss-time prevention: the most obvious benefit is to the bottom line. Healthy employees are productive employees, and productive employees have very positive effects on the company's bottom line. When employees start to feel that their work is unsafe or that their employers does not care about their health or well -being, productivity may start to slip.The software industry started in the early 1960s, almost immediately after computers ('mainframes') were first sold in a more or less standardized way. Universities and businesses began to use these computers and to seek out programs to do certain computing tasks. Many of these programs were written in-house by full-time staff programmers.After collecting research data, it is necessary to analyze and interpret them. The purpose of analysis is to build up a sort of empirical model where relationships are carefully brought out so that some meaningful inferences can be drawn. Data has to be analyzed with reference to the objectives of the study. The following statistical tools are used to analyze data. Percentage analysis method., Interval estimation method., Chi – square test analysis.,Pearsons' correlation test., Weighted arithmetic mean., ANOVA.


We have used Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) imaging microscopy to quantify alterations in the fibrillar collagen assembly in ex vivo human malignant and normal ovarian tissues. We integrate 3D imaging measurements, bulk optical parameter measurements, and Monte Carlo simulations to isolate the structural factors that are different in these tissues.


Three biomass-to-liquid process steps (volatilization of cellulose, tar-cleaning of organic products, and water-gas-shift of the gaseous effluent) have been integrated into a single autothermal catalytic reactor for the production of high quality synthesis gas at millisecond residence times (∼30 ms). Particles of cellulose (∼300 μm) were directly impinged upon the hot, catalytic bed of Rh–Ce/γ-Al2O3 catalyst on 1.3 mm α-Al2O3 spheres in the presence of O2, N2, and steam in a continuous flow fixed-bed reactor at 500–1100 °C. Complete conversion to gases was observed for all experimental parameters including N2/O2, S/C, the total flow rate of cellulose, and the fuel-to-oxygen ratio (C/O). The addition of steam increased the selectivity to H2 and decreased the selectivity to CO in agreement with water-gas-shift equilibrium. Optimal conditions produced a clean gaseous effluent which exhibited ∼80% selectivity to H2 at a synthesis gas ratio of H2/CO = 2.3 with no dilution from N2 at a fuel efficiency of ∼75%. Carbon-free processing was explained by relating the domain of experimental parameters to the thermodynamic prediction for the formation of solid carbon, CS.


The purpose of this paper is to obtain an optimum thickness distribution of an inflatable membrane reflector which consists of two circular membranes attached at their edges. The deflection analysis of the membrane is based on the large deflection theory of plate. In numerical simulation, the finite element method is used. In the optimization, the objective function is the surface profile error between the paraboloid and the inflated shape of membrane, and the discrete distribution of optimum thickness is obtained. In addition, the simulation for experiment is performed under a restricted condition in thickness. Based on this result, a circular membrane with optimized thickness profile is produced and the shape measurement experiment is performed.


A configuration is presented for a low-cost Micro-Satellite Launch Vehicle (MSLV), the Mini-Sprite. This 3-stage configuration exploits Scorpius ® technology that is largely developed: all-composite cryogenic tanks; pressure-fed, ablative, LOX/kerosene engines; a High Performance Pressurization System; and a GPS-based, "plug-and-play" avionics system. The Preliminary Design Review has been completed for the larger Sprite, a Small Launch Vehicle (SLV). Indeed, the SR-M suborbital rocket, essentially a "pod" of Sprite, has already been built; it is a larger version of a "pod" of the Mini-Sprite. Performance estimates show that the Mini-Sprite can deliver payloads well into the micro-satellite payload range of 10 to 100 kg and completely covers the nano-satellite payload range of 1 to 10 kg to modest orbits. The Mini-Sprite delivers about 100 kg to LEO. The potential market for CubeSats and other SmallSats has been estimated to be as much as 30 to 70 satellites per year. The Scorpius ® micro-satellite launch vehicle will provide a cost effective means for delivering these payloads to orbit. The DoD's Space Experiments Review Board (SERB) list alone has dozens of payloads that could be accommodated by micro- or nano-satellites launched on the Mini-Sprite MSLV. This vehicle will demonstrate both the feasibility and utility of launch on-demand, which will have applicability to military tactical, science, technology, and educational missions for commercial, DoD, NASA, and university users. Recurring price for the launch of the Mini-Sprite vehicle is $3M. Development time is 20 months. Development costs are also very low. The low cost of the vehicle permits a production line and establishment of an inventory of vehicles, if desired. Assuming progress in lowering the time and cost of range operations, launch from ready inventory of the low-cost Mini-Sprite is achievable in less than 24 hours. The Mini-Sprite is scalable to small- through medium-lift launch vehicles, Sprite, Liberty, and Exodus, which exhibit the same technologies, design, and responsiveness at a correspondingly low cost. This paper addresses the capabilities and launch missions of the Mini-Sprite.


Experimental studies demonstrating that nitrogen (N) enrichment reduces plant diversity within individual plots have led to the conclusion that anthropogenic N enrichment is a threat to global biodiversity. These conclusions overlook the influence of spatial scale, however, as N enrichment may alter beta diversity (i.e., how similar plots are in their species composition), which would likely alter the degree to which N-induced changes in diversity within localities translate to changes in diversity at larger scales that are relevant to policy and management. Currently, it is unclear how N enrichment affects biodiversity at scales larger than a small plot. We synthesized data from 18 N-enrichment experiments across North America to examine the effects of N enrichment on plant species diversity at three spatial scales: small (within plots), intermediate (among plots), and large (within and among plots). We found that N enrichment reduced plant diversity within plots by an average of 25% (ranging from a reduction of 61% to an increase of 5%) and frequently enhanced beta diversity. The extent to which N enrichment altered beta diversity, however, varied substantially among sites (from a 22% increase to an 18% reduction) and was contingent on site productivity. Specifically, N enrichment enhanced beta diversity at low-productivity sites but reduced beta diversity at high-productivity sites. N-induced changes in beta diversity generally reduced the extent of species loss at larger scales to an average of 22% (ranging from a reduction of 54% to an increase of 18%). Our results demonstrate that N enrichment often reduces biodiversity at both local and regional scales, but that a focus on the effects of N enrichment on biodiversity at small spatial scales may often overestimate (and sometimes underestimate) declines in regional biodiversity by failing to recognize the effects of N on beta diversity.


In order to make computers proactive and assistive, we must enable them to perceive, learn, and predict what is happening in their surroundings. This presents us with the challenge of formalizing computational models of everyday human activities. For a majority of environments, the structure of the in situ activities is generally not known a priori . This thesis therefore investigates knowledge representations and manipulation techniques that can facilitate learning of such everyday human activities in a minimally supervised manner.
A key step towards this end is finding appropriate representations for human activities. We posit that if we chose to describe activities as finite sequences of an appropriate set of events, then the global structure of these activities can be uniquely encoded using their local event sub-sequences. With this perspective at hand, we particularly investigate representations that characterize activities in terms of their fixed and variable length event subsequences. We comparatively analyze these representations in terms of their representational scope, feature cardinality and noise sensitivity.
Exploiting such representations, we propose a computational framework to discover the various activity-classes taking place in an environment. We model these activity-classes as maximally similar activity-cliques in a completely connected graph of activities, and describe how to discover them efficiently. Moreover, we propose methods for finding concise characterizations of these discovered activity-classes, both from a holistic as well as a by-parts perspective. Using such characterizations, we present an incremental method to classify a new activity instance to one of the discovered activity-classes, and to automatically detect if it is anomalous with respect to the general characteristics of its membership class. Our results show the efficacy of our framework in a variety of everyday environments.


Across the world, universities are more numerous than they have ever been, yet at the same time there is unprecedented confusion about their purpose and skepticism about their value. "What Are Universities For?" offers a spirited and compelling argument for completely rethinking the way we see our universities, and why we need them. Stefan Collini challenges the common claim that universities need to show that they help to make money in order to justify getting more money. Instead, he argues that we must reflect on the different types of institution and the distinctive roles they play. In particular we must recognize that attempting to extend human understanding, which is at the heart of disciplined intellectual enquiry, can never be wholly harnessed to immediate social purposes - particularly in the case of the humanities, which both attract and puzzle many people and are therefore the most difficult subjects to justify. At a time when the future of higher education lies in the balance, "What Are Universities For?" offers all of us a better, deeper and more enlightened understanding of why universities matter, to everyone.


When it comes to discovering glitches inherent in complex systemsbe it a railway or banking, chemical production, medical, manufacturing, or inventory control systemdeveloping a simulation of a system can identify problems with less time, effort, and disruption than it would take to employ the original. Advantageous to both academic and industrial practitioners, Discrete and Continuous Simulation: Theory and Practice offers a detailed view of simulation that is useful in several fields of study. This text concentrates on the simulation of complex systems, covering the basics in detail and exploring the diverse aspects, including continuous event simulation and optimization with simulation. It explores the connections between discrete and continuous simulation, and applies a specific focus to simulation in the supply chain and manufacturing field. It discusses the Monte Carlo simulation, which is the basic and traditional form of simulation. It addresses future trends and technologies for simulation, with particular emphasis given to .NET technologies and cloud computing, and proposes various simulation optimization algorithms from existing literature. Includes chapters on input modeling and hybrid simulation Introduces general probability theory Contains a chapter on Microsoft Excel and MATLAB/Simulink Discusses various probability distributions required for simulation Describes essential random number generators Discrete and Continuous Simulation: Theory and Practice defines the simulation of complex systems. This text benefits academic researchers in industrial/manufacturing/systems engineering, computer sciences, operations research, and researchers in transportation, operations management, healthcare systems, and humanmachine systems.


Debby Yaffe discusses her childhood, schooling and family life in California, including gendered family roles, expectations of femininity in the 1950s, university, marriage and life in Europe, her feminist consciousness raising experience in London, teaching high school in London, the differences between English and American societies, sex discrimination, radical feminist activities, restructuring of sexual relationships, life in Canada and involvement in the Women's movement in Victoria, Status of Women Action group, Everywomen's Books, disordered eating as feminist issue, work as a fitness instructor, abortion rights, impact on feminist awareness of the December 6, 1989 killings at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, radical feminism, women's lives in Canada and England, life as a lesbian, resisting dominant domestic relationship constructs, teaching Women's Studies, feminist theory, and the Victoria Women's Movement Archives. The Debby Yaffe interview was conducted by Joy Fisher as a research project in the course History 358A, "Women in Canada," taught by Dr. Lynne Marks, which covered histories of women in Canada from the era of New France to the present. Fisher's resulting essay is entitled "Riding the Wave/ Watching the Wave: A Second Wave Feminist Talks about Gender Ideologies and her Life." Digitized 2009/10 (originally recorded 2 February 2009, 1:23.34; 17 February 2009, 1:34:29 and 41:14) 3 MP3 sound recordings


Zinc and vitamin A supplementation in children has been associated with reduction in the incidence and severity of diarrheal diseases, acute respiratory infections and malaria. However, studies have shown little evidence of zinc supplementation on reduction of morbidity and malaria. The aim of this study was to identify the possible association between serum retinol and zinc levels and susceptibility to malaria infection in school children. This was a case-control study. A finger prick was done to obtain blood from school children aged between 6 – 10 years to screen for malaria. In total, 55 children with malaria parasitaemia and a similar number without were enrolled in the study. Venous blood was drawn from the children and analyzed for serum levels of zinc retinol and haemoglobin. Atomic Absorption Spectrometry, and High performance liquid chromatography [HPLC] were used in determination of serum zinc and retinol respectively. Anthropometric measurements and clinical signs of malaria were taken. A questionnaire on demographic data, dietary practices, use of anti-vector measures and relevant medical history was administered on the children's parents/guardians.Data was cleaned and entered into a database using SPSS version 11.5. Epi Info v 6.04 was used to classify anthropometric indices. Descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, median and range were used to indicate the average value and spread of these values. Independent T-test was used to test for mean comparison on the continuous variables between malaria positive and malaria negative children. Pearsons correlation coefficient was used to measure relationships between two continuous variables. Cross tabulations between all categorical variables and malaria status was performed to uncoverthe distribution patterns. Pearson chi-square test was used to test for association between malaria status and individual categorical variables.Children with and those without malaria had similar serum zinc (P=0.762) and retinol (P=0.402) values although those with malaria had slightly higher levels of both serum zinc and retinol. However, children without malaria had higher mean blood count (304.8) than those with malaria (257.6), significant at P=0.001. Although not statistically significant, children without malaria had higher mean iron levels than children with malaria. The study confirms other findings that the link between serum zinc and retinol and malaria is not clear. Interestingly, children without malaria had significantly higher frequencies of feeding per week compared to those with malaria. More in depth investigations are needed to conclusively establish the relationship between serum zinc and retinol levels and malaria parasitaemia.


Purpose:To assess image quality and capability of stone differentiation between UA-containing and non-UA-containing uroliths with the latest dual-energy (DE) computed tomography (CT) system equipped with a tin filter (TF) using various data acquisition parameters in a work bench model. Methods and Materials:One hundred ten urinary stones (4.2 ± 3.0 mm, 0.4–12 mm) of 15 compositions were examined in an ex vivo phantom, using DE dual-source CT (Definition Flash, Siemens Healthcare) equipped with a TF. Phantom was scanned in a water tank and contained stones in acrylic elliptic spheres filled with a parenchyma substitute. Scans were performed at 3 different settings: at 80 and 140 kVp without TF, at 80 and 140 kVp with TF, and at 100 and 140 kVp with TF. Tube current time products were adapted to yield constancy in CT dose indices (CTDIvol = 18.84 mGy, 18.95 mGy, and 18.90 mGy, respectively). CT numbers of urinary stones and image noise were electronically measured by placing regions of interest. DE indices (DEI) were calculated and compared using analysis of variances for repeated measures and paired t tests; image noise (IN) using the Friedman test. The stones were classified as UA-containing or non-UA-containing on color-coded images based on the DEI. Diagnostic accuracy was calculated using crystallographic analysis as standard of reference. Results:Of the 110 stones (60%), 65 contained UA; 45 stones (40%) contained no UA. DEI was greatest at 80 and 140 kVp when using the TF (DEI80 kVp/TF140 kVp = 0.038 vs. DEI80 kVp/140 kVp = 0.028, DEI100 kVp/TF140 kVp = 0.025; P < 0.01). IN of high kVp acquisitions were similar (P = 0.15), whereas IN of low kVp acquisitions were significantly (P < 0.001) different being lowest at 100 kVp. The semiautomated DE software correctly classified all stones at all settings with a diagnostic accuracy of 100% (95% confidence interval: 97%–100%). Conclusion:DECT with TF and 80–140 kVp tube voltage settings significantly improves the discrimination between UA-containing and non-UA containing urinary stones as compared with DECT without using the TF on the basis of DEI. The 100/140 kVp setting with TF is associated with lower IN but demonstrates similar discrimination abilities as compared with 80/140 kVp setting without the use of the TF.


ABSTRACT The European countries have a long history of exposure to large-scale trauma. In the early 1990s the increasing awareness of the consequences of trauma within the mental health community led to the foundation of local societies for psychotraumatology across Europe and the European Society of Traumatic Stress Studies (ESTSS), which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2018. The focus of this article is to describe the current state of care for survivors of trauma in the 15 European countries where ESTSS member societies have been established. Brief descriptions on the historical burden of trauma in each country are followed by an overview of the care system for trauma survivors in the countries, the state-of-the-art of interventions, current challenges in caring for survivors and the topics that need to be most urgently addressed in the future. The reports from the different countries demonstrate how important steps towards a better provision of care for survivors of trauma have been made in Europe. Given the cultural and economic diversity of the continent, there are also differences between the European countries, for instance with regard to the use of evidence-based treatments. Strategies to overcome these differences, like the new ESTSS training curricula for care-providers across Europe, are briefly discussed.


You can see line plots or line graphs in any quality newspaper most days, presenting business data. Even the downmarket papers use them occasionally to illustrate trends. They are so common that we might assume that they are well understood. Most spreadsheets and statistical packages can produce them with ease. But all is not as it seems. R. Allan Reese explains the pitfalls.


A considerable amount of research has been conducted on the effects of certain conta- minants that have the potential to impact the endocrine systems that regulate vital life processes in freshwater and marine fishes. There is, however, a relative paucity of information on aquatic and especially benthic marine invertebrate species, many of which could be seriously impacted by sewage effluent and industrial discharges. The present study used a combination of end-points to assess possible endocrine disruption in a marine crustacean, the shore crab Carcinus maenas. These included pheromonally mediated sexual behaviour, exoskeletal morphological measures, quantities of steroid moulting hormones (i.e. ecdysteroids) and the presence of the egg yolk protein, vitellin in male crabs. Crabs were collected from sites known to elicit high oestrogenic responses in vertebrates and also from coastal reference sites. The results suggest that shore crabs around the coast of the Great Britain show effects consistent with pollutant-mediated endocrine disruption. These include a reduced behavioural response to the female sex pheromone, morphometric abnormalities such as reduced pleopod-length ratios and enlarged abdomen width, enhanced steroid moulting-hormone (ecdysone equivalent) levels and the detection of vitellin-like proteins in the hepatopancreas of male crabs. This multilevel approach may have significant potential for investigating endocrine disruption in marine crustaceans.


One of the most noticeable transformations in children's oral reading that occurs as they become skilled readers is the development of good reading prosody. We discuss research carried out in our laboratories that describes the nature of these changes in reading prosody. We describe the consistent patterns observed across studies in spectrographically measured prosody features. We discuss where reading prosody fits theoretically in the general development of reading skills. We discuss how researchers have translated their understanding of reading prosody into the development of reading fluency rating scales, and evaluate the validity of the scales. Finally, we discuss open questions in our understanding of reading prosody, particularly with regard to the place of prosody in classroom assessment of reading skill.


One of the features included in version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) was a requirement, in certain circumstances, to provide 'Installation Information.' This was a new addition to the licence to address a 'loophole' that existed in version 2 of the licence (GPLv2); a loophole that was perceived as being exploited, at the time, by certain device vendors. Recently, it has been asserted that this requirement was inherent, or explicitly called for, in GPLv2. This paper examines the historical record around the time that the 'Installation Information' requirement was proposed, and eventually ratified, in GPLv3, to show that this requirement was understood to be both new, and not a part of GPLv2. A textual analysis of GPLv2 yields an identical result.


Including a tutorial on how to use data structures and algorithms and a reference for implementation using VB.NET and the .NET Framework Class Library, this is the first Visual Basic.NET book to provide a comprehensive discussion of the major data structures and algorithms. Michael McMillan presents arrays and arraylists, linked lists, hash tables, dictionaries, trees, graphs, sorting and searching as well as more advanced algorithms, such as probabilistic algorithms and dynamic programming in an object-oriented fashion. Finally, the professional or student VB.NET programmer has a dedicated reference instead of having to translate material on C++ or Java.


In this paper we present an approach to rapid prototyping of advanced signal processing techniques for future wireless applications currently being adopted within Bell Labs Research. The aim of the "Bell Labs Algorithm Development and Evaluation" (BLADE) initiative is to devise a design framework specifically targeting the needs (and capabilities) of high-level algorithm designers (viz. communication engineers), which enables them to quickly "translate" a research idea into a working real-time system for practical experimentation purposes. The mixed DSP/FPGA implementation of a WCDMA testbed is used as an example to describe our initial experience with the proposed design methodology, which is based on a set of commercially available software tools and a platform consisting of off-the-shelf hardware modules.


. In this paper, we first describe the skew-Laplace distribution and its properties. We then introduce a goodness of fit test for this distribution according to the density-based empirical likelihood ratio concept. Asymptotic consistency of the proposed test is demonstrated. The critical values and Type I error of the test are obtained by Monte Carlo simulations. More-over, the empirical distribution function (EDF) tests are considered for the skew-Laplace distribution to show they do not have acceptable Type I error in comparison with the proposed test. Results show that the proposed test has an excellent Type I error which does not depend on the unknown parameters. The results obtained from simulation studies designed to investigate the power of the test are presented, too. The applicability of the proposed test in practice is demonstrated by real data examples.


The ecological importance and diversity of pico/nanoplanktonic algae remains poorly studied in marine waters, in part because many are tiny and without distinctive morphological features. Amongst green algae, Mamiellophyceae such as Micromonas or Bathycoccus are dominant in coastal waters while prasinophytes clade VII, yet not formerly described, appear to be major players in open oceanic waters. The pigment composition of 14 strains representative of different subclades of clade VII was analyzed using a method that improves the separation of loroxanthin and neoxanthin. All the prasinophytes clade VII analyzed here showed a pigment composition similar to that previously reported for RCC287 corresponding to pigment group prasino‐2A. However, we detected in addition astaxanthin for which it is the first report in prasinophytes. Among the strains analyzed, the pigment signature is qualitatively similar within subclades A and B. By contrast, RCC3402 from subclade C (Picocystis) lacks loroxanthin, astaxanthin, and antheraxanthin but contains alloxanthin, diatoxanthin, and monadoxanthin that are usually found in diatoms or cryptophytes. For subclades A and B, loroxanthin was lowest at highest light irradiance suggesting a light‐harvesting role of this pigment in clade VII as in Tetraselmis.


The objective of this study was to investigate the affective experiences, attitudes to work, and job application behaviour of unemployed people. A survey design was used and samples (N = 381) were drawn from unemployed people in the North West Province. The Experiences of Unemployment Questionnaire was administered. Regarding affective experiences, being unemployed was described as very unpleasant and it was associated with boredom, loneliness, uncertainty about the future, concerns about financial matters, emptiness and conflict. When it came to the participants' attitudes to work, the results showed that almost 96 per cent of them regarded work as important, particularly because it provides meaning. Regarding job application behaviour, the results showed that most of the participants would like to find a job within the month, and they expected to do so. Almost 78 per cent of the participants were asking people for a job at least once a week or more often. Most of them asked friends and acquaintances for employment information, but unemployed people also reported that they looked out for advertisements. People with poor education had the most negative experiences of unemployment and saw work as more important than did those with better education.


An algorithm to create difficult Sudoku puzzles is proposed. An Ising spin-glass like Hamiltonian describing difficulty of puzzles is defined, and difficult puzzles are created by minimizing the energy of the Hamiltonian. We adopt the replica exchange Monte Carlo method with simultaneous temperature adjustments to search lower energy states efficiently, and we succeed in creating a puzzle which is the world hardest ever created in our definition, to our best knowledge. (Added on Mar. 11, the created puzzle can be solved easily by hand. Our definition of the difficulty is inappropriate.)


Depression is a common chronic psychiatric disorder that often reappears in sufferers. However, the cause of depression is still not clear. It is generally considered to be a complex cause. An increasing number of studies have shown that vitamin D deficiency plays an important role in the occurrence and development of depression. In this review, the role and possible mechanisms of vitamin D as a potential antidepressant are discussed.


Marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are facing unprecedented pressures
in the Anthropocene, with climate change being a primary stressor. To understand the biological
response mechanisms along coastlines, the international scientific community requires coordinated
action, integrating obervations through observatory networks and spatially extensive
experiments using standardized approaches over broad geographic scales. Currently, however, a multinational, integrated approach is lacking, with little application of standard methodologies or data sharing across countries. Changes in the abundance, distribution and competitive dominance of rocky intertidal organisms are useful sentinels of climate change because these communities are easy to observe and long-term time series exist. Europe is in a prime position to lead by example, building on the extensive history of sustained observations and experimental research to establish an integrated network of studies and monitoring programmes. These will improve our understanding of how organismal responses translate into biogeographic range shifts, and generate more biologically realistic predictions of future climate change impacts with which to design mitigation, adaptation and conservation strategies


Due to recent developments in modeling software and advances in acquisition techniques for 3D geometry, large numbers of shapes have been digitized. Existing datasets include millions of real-world objects, cultural heritage artifacts, scientific and engineering models, all of which capture the world around us at nano- to planetary scales. As large repositories of 3D shape collections continue to grow, understanding the data, especially encoding the inter-model similarity and their variations, is of the utmost importance.
In this dissertation we address the challenge of deriving structure from a large, unorganized, and diverse collection of 3D polygonal models. By structure we refer to how objects correspond to each other, how they are segmented into semantic parts, and how the parts deform and change across the models. While previous work has generally dealt with small and relatively homogeneous datasets, in this dissertation we concentrate on diverse and large collections.
Our contribution is three-fold. First, we present an algorithm for establishing correspondences between pairs of shapes related by a non-uniform deformation. Second, we develop a robust and efficient algorithm for computing per-point similarities between all shapes in a collection of 3D models using only a small subset of all pairwise alignments. And third, we describe an algorithm for finding structure in an unorganized, unlabeled collection of diverse 3D shapes, which is achieved by jointly optimizing for point-to-point correspondences, part segmentations and an explicit model of part deformations.
These algorithms enable finding correspondences in large diverse datasets where models are related by non-uniform deformations and model parts have different multiplicity and geometry. These methods also make it possible to segment large collections into consistent sets of parts and to represent most prominent geometric variations in the entire collection.


Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is currently a reportable infection in a growing number of states, which makes it possible to track patterns of spread according to demographic characteristics, risk behavior, and geographic region. Lee and Fleming analyzed HIV surveillance results from 1994 to 1998 among women age 15 to 44 from the first 25 states to initiate this program. They found that new diagnoses increased each year among women who were 15 to 19 in 1994, largely in association with heterosexual activity and, to a lesser but increasing extent, with injection drug use. HIV infections in older women declined. HIV increased during this period in the South, in contrast to the West, Central states, and Northeast. This paper suggests that now, even in areas not previously identified as HIV epicenters, discussions about HIV and methods to prevent transmission need to find their way into the routine care we provide.


Fish have inspired artists for thousands of years. They are present in the work of many Dutch and Flemish old masters, as well as French, English and American painters. Yet until now the social and cultural significance of fishes' representation in art has been overlooked. In Fish in Art, Christine E. Jackson surveys a large number of paintings from 2000BC to the present day, examining the evolution of fish representation, as well as its preparation, cooking, eating and storage, and fish-specific kitchen- and tableware. Jackson also explores a diverse range of social and historical issues that have engaged artists, including religious decrees on when to eat fish, the legacies of 'cod wars', and the rise and fall of particular ports. Considering elements such as the ethics of catching fish alongside wider industrial changes in the canning, ice, and salt industries, Fish in Art is attentive to the relative importance of species to different nations. Offering a study of fish in art that is grounded in the physical conditions of fishing and the fish trade, the book will be of interest to fishermen, natural historians and art students alike. Fish in Art provides an original and unique perspective on the artistic legacy of fish and the fishing industry.


The Ethereum Decentralized Autonomous Organization ("The DAO"), a decentralized, smart contract-based, investment fund with assets of $168 million, spectacularly crashed when one of its members exploited a flaw in the computer code and stole $55 million. In the wake of the exploit, many argued that participants in the DAO could be jointly and severally liable for the loss as partners in a general partnership. Others claimed that the DAO evidenced an entirely new form of business entity, one that current laws do not contemplate. Ultimately, the technologists cleaned up the exploit via technological means, and without engaging in any further legal analysis, many simply concluded that the DAO, other decentralized autonomous organizations, and the Ethereum protocol itself signify opportunities to do away with legal business organizational forms as they presently exist. In this Article, I argue that precisely the opposite is true. Instead of creating a new type of corporate entity through computer code, The DAO and other smart contract-based organizations may resurrect a very old, frequently forgotten, business entity—the business trust, which Rockefeller first used to solve the technology-business organization law divide of his time.

This Article offers the first analysis of blockchain-based business ventures under business organization law at three separate levels of the technology: protocols, smart contracts and decentralized autonomous organizations. The Article first reveals the practical and theoretical deficits of using partnership as the only default entity option for blockchain-based business ventures. The Article then demonstrates that incorporation and LLC formation will also pose both practical and doctrinal difficulties for some such businesses. When faced with a similar conundrum in the nineteenth century, Rockefeller turned to the common law business trust as a substitute business entity. This Article argues that if Rockefeller were a coder building a blockchain-based business, he would again turn to the business trust as an additional choice of entity. The Article concludes by considering, in light of Rockefeller's history, whether the law should anticipate any challenges with the rise of blockchain-based business trusts.


In this paper, we consider the problem of merging partial occupancy grid environment maps, which are extracted independently by individual robot units during search and rescue (SAR) operations in complex disaster environments. Moreover, these maps are combined using intensity-based and area-based features without knowing the initial position and orientation of the robots. Our proposed approach handles the limitation of existing studies in the literature; for example, the limited overlapped area between partial maps of robots is enough for good merging performance and unstructured and complex partial environment maps can be merged eciently. These abilities allow multirobot teams to eciently generate the occupancy grid map of catastrophe areas and localize buried victims in the debris as soon as possible. The simulation results support the potential of the proposed multirobot map fusion methodology for SAR operations in unstructured, complex, and completely unknown disaster environments.


We empirically study the determinants of intra-household decision power with respect to economic and financial choices using a suitable direct measure provided in the 1989-2010 Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth. Focusing on a sample of couples, we evaluate the effect of each spouse's characteristics, household characteristics, and background variables. We find that the probability that the wife is in charge is affected by household characteristics such as family size and total income and wealth, but more importantly that it increases with the difference between hers and her husband's characteristics in terms of age, education, and income. The main conclusion is that decision-making power over family economics is not only determined by strictly economic differences, as suggested by previous studies, but also by differences in human capital and experience. Finally, exploiting the time dimension of our dataset, we show that this pattern is increasing over time.


This article explores the future for lawyers and law firms in the light of the changes that Artificial Intelligence ("AI") is already bringing to the universe of legal services. Part I briefly describes some of the ways AI is already in use in ordinary life – from facial recognition, through medical diagnosis to translation services. Part II describes how AI is transforming what it means to provide legal services in six primary areas: litigation review; expertise automation; legal research; contract analytics; contract and litigation document generation; and predictive analytics. Part III explores who are the providers of these AI driven legal services – often non-lawyer legal service providers – and how these providers are replacing at least some of what clients have traditionally sought from lawyers. Part III also discusses the implications of all these changes both for the future role of lawyers individually, and in particular what services will clients still need lawyers to perform: judgment, empathy, creativity and adaptability. In turn, this Part examines what will these changes mean for the size, shape, composition and economic model of law firms, as well as the implications of these changes for legal education and lawyer training. Part IV identifies the principal legal, ethical, regulatory and risk management issues raised by the use of AI in the provision of legal services. Finally, in Part V the article considers who will be the likely providers of AI based services other than law firms: legal publishers, major accounting firms and venture capital funded businesses.


We applied a communication as constitutive of organizing (CCO) perspective in a case study to examine Twitter's influence on the leadership dynamics in the 2019 Hong Kong Protests. We argue that Twitter is a powerful nonhuman leadership actor by demonstrating how it coordinates a plenum of co-participating agencies to construct meaningful narratives. In addition, we show that while many social movements call themselves leaderless, because of Twitter's co-participation, they are not leadership-less. Using digital methods, we first harvested movement-relevant tweets based on hashtags and retweet counts from a key event of the protests, and then analysed the video content in the three most-retweeted tweets. Our analysis shows that Twitter's various mechanisms dictate how online conversations unfold, and that Twitter therefore influences how "authoritative text" is established. Our study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, we contribute to critical leadership studies by showing that Twitter is a leadership actor that enacts sociomaterial leadership, which further challenges the dominant human-centric and masculine views of leadership. In doing so, we reveal that the persistent leaderless movement narrative is a fantasy. Second, by illustrating how Twitter's authorship mechanisms generate authority and polarity, we contribute to a stream of CCO studies showing that platforms influence power dynamics. Third, by attending to multivocality and dissensus, where a myriad of voices could speak up against the established and perceived injustice, we assert that Twitter as a leadership actor dictates specific modes of communication with performative effects.


In neural abstractive summarization field, conventional sequence-to-sequence based models often suffer from summarizing the wrong aspect of the document with respect to the main aspect. To tackle this problem, we propose the task of reader-aware abstractive summary generation, which utilizes the reader comments to help the model produce better summary about the main aspect. Unlike traditional abstractive summarization task, reader-aware summarization confronts two main challenges: (1) Comments are informal and noisy; (2) jointly modeling the news document and the reader comments is challenging. To tackle the above challenges, we design an adversarial learning model named reader-aware summary generator (RASG), which consists of four components: (1) a sequence-to-sequence based summary generator; (2) a reader attention module capturing the reader focused aspects; (3) a supervisor modeling the semantic gap between the generated summary and reader focused aspects; (4) a goal tracker producing the goal for each generation step. The supervisor and the goal tacker are used to guide the training of our framework in an adversarial manner. Extensive experiments are conducted on our large-scale real-world text summarization dataset, and the results show that RASG achieves the stateof-the-art performance in terms of both automatic metrics and human evaluations. The experimental results also demonstrate the effectiveness of each module in our framework. We release our large-scale dataset for further research1.


Workplaces are crucial sites for language use within society, where language is linked to economic matters and specific organizational frames. When it comes to multinational businesses, communication is often embedded into multilingual contexts. Against this backdrop, it is very remarkable that the "multilingual workplace" has been considered an "underresearched strategic site" (see Roberts, 2007). This thesis accounts for multilingualism as a societal phenomenon and considers the mechanisms of multilingualism and language choice in a particular organizational setting. It is examined how the phenomenon of multilingualism can affect the domain of workplace interaction, and how multilingualism is reflected in the language practices occurring in multinational corporations. From this perspective, an exploratory case study is conductedwith employees of four Germany-basedmultinationals. The semi-structured interviews resulted in a collection of employees' personal accounts and experiences with multilingualism in the workplace. A qualitative analysis of the data collected revealed employees' degree of awareness toward language use, their reports on their language practices, their perceptions towards language(s), which functions they ascribe to language, and how multilingualism affects employees' working lives. The results of this study include a survey on dominant expressions of multilingualism in the workplace that have emerged from the data, particularly the themes of multilingualism and its interplay with migration, group dynamics, motivation, intercultural encounters, and English as a lingua franca. As the study was conducted within Germany-based multinationals, the role of German for professional life within specific corporate contexts is discussed in greater detail. This thesis emphasizes the prominence of current multilingualism in society in order to further the understanding of language in our ever-globalizing world.


ABSTARCT Background Mental disorders and alcohol misuse are often comorbid, and this comorbidity is more common in those who develop mental disorders following exposure to traumatic events. Aims To investigate the relationship between combat exposure and operational role (support versus combat) with mental disorders and associated comorbidity in a UK military cohort. Methods 4896 participants from a UK military cohort reported their operational role and frequency of exposure to combat events during deployment. Outcome measures included self-reported post-traumatic stress disorder, common mental disorder and alcohol misuse. Results Personnel reporting higher levels of combat exposure were more likely to meet criteria for two or more co-occurring mental disorders (odds ratio [OR] 3.90, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.73–5.58). While having a combat role increased the risk of developing co-occurring disorders compared to having a support role (OR 1.67, 95% CI 1.26–2.23), this effect diminished following adjustment for variables including combat exposure (OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.62–1.27). Conclusions Combat exposure may play a greater role in the development of comorbid mental disorders than operational role, i.e. job title. Clinicians treating military personnel should be alert to the increased risk of comorbid mental disorders and alcohol misuse among those with a history of combat exposure.


Introduction. Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) has been widely studied and the effects of injury can be long term or even lifelong. This research aims to characterize the sleep problems of patients following acute mTBI. Methods. A total of 171 patients with mTBI within one month and 145 non-mTBI controls were recruited in this study. The questionnaire, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), was used to evaluate seven aspects of sleep problems. A propensity score method was used to generate a quasirandomized design to account for the background information, including gender, age, Beck's Anxiety Index, Beck's Depression Index, and Epworth Sleepiness Scale. The effect was evaluated via cumulative logit regression including propensity scores as a covariate. Results. Before adjustment, about 60% mTBI patients and over three quarters of control subjects had mild sleep disturbance while one third mTBI patients had moderate sleep disturbance. After adjusting by the propensity scores, the scores of sleep quality and duration were significant between mTBI and control groups. Conclusion. Our study supports that sleep problem is common in mTBI group. After adjusting the confounders by propensity score, sleep duration and subjective sleep quality are the most frequently reported problems in mTBI patients within one month after the injury.


This dissertation uses selected works of Grant Wood's art as a touchtone to investigate a broader visual culture surrounding agriculture in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By doing so I argue that Wood engaged with pressing social questions, including the phenomenon now referred to as agribusiness. Although agribusiness is often associated with the Green Revolution of the 1940s and 1950s, its beginning dates to the nineteenth century. Indeed, Wood's lifetime was an era when land was consolidated, production and distribution were vertically integrated, and breeding became scientifically informed. To access the power dynamics of this transition, I begin each chapter with work by Wood, and then analyze it in conjunction with imagery produced by or for individuals with diverse cultural agendas. This wide range of voices includes government officials, members of socialist farm organizations, newspaper publishers, plant breeders, owners of large and small farms, auction house managers, and university educators. To show precedents for and the legacy of Wood's work I begin my analysis of visual culture before his birth and end after his death. The dissertation thus begins in 1862—the year that land in the Midwest began to be parceled out for grain farming as small 160-acre homesteads and gargantuan bonanza farms thousands of acres in size. The dissertation ends in 1957—the year that the term agribusiness was coined by the Harvard-based economists John Davis and Ray Goldberg. I take an interdisciplinary approach anchored most fully within the norms of art history, but also engage with strategies from visual, cultural, and agricultural studies. My argument, ultimately, is that agribusiness is a cornerstone of modern thinking, and that Grant Wood was not only aware of the experiences, debates, institutions, and theories of agribusiness emerging in his midst but engaged with them in his fine art. More broadly, by using a wide range of imagery, including photography, advertising, penmanship, film stills, crops, cartoons, architecture, and diagrams I show that the way Americans came to understand and accept agribusiness as the basis of their food system was negotiated, in part, through visual materials.


The flotation version of restricted environmental stimulation technique (REST) has been shown to improve perceptual-motor skills in sports and creativity in the sciences. We examined whether these effects would extend to jazz improvisation—an activity involving perceptual-motor coordination and creativity. College students enrolled in an intermediate-level jazz improvisation class (N 1⁄4 8) floated for one hour per week for 4 consecutive weeks. The comparison group (N 1⁄4 5) consisted of student volunteers enrolled in the same class who did not engage in flotation. The dependent variables were (a) blind ratings of improvised pieces collected before and after treatment, (b) instructors' ratings of perceived change in improvisational ability, and (c) final class grades. Both blind and perceived change measures demonstrated higher scores on technical ability in the flotation group. The flotation group also had higher final class grades. The results suggest that flotation REST can improve perceptual-motor skills in jazz improvisation.


Abstract This study examines the spatial representation of Nigerian women politicians in the news media of Africa's most populous country. Through a content analysis of newspaper coverage of four high-profile women politicians during the 2015 electoral cycle, the study investigates the visibility of the women in three national newspapers. The analysis shows that women do not only occupy limited space in the news media but are also marginalised in political news despite decades of advocacy for gender equality. Although women have become more active politically since the end of military dictatorship in 1999, their participation and engagement in politics is not reflected in media coverage. The study argues that the degree of visibility of women in political news entrenches marginalisation and reinforces assumptions that 'only men do politics.' From this standpoint, the study illustrates how newspapers reinforce patriarchal understanding of politics and consequently highlights the manifest and latent obstacles that women encounter in the political arena. It comes to the conclusion that the relative absence of women in media spaces is emblematic of public perception of their political status.


Pattern matching is a programming language construct considered essential in functional programming. Its purpose is to inspect and decompose data. Instead, object-oriented programming languages do not have a dedicated construct for this purpose. A possible reason for this is that pattern matching is useful when data is defined separately from operations on the data – a scenario that clashes with the object-oriented motto of grouping data and operations. However, programmers are frequently confronted with situations where there is no alternative to expressing data and operations separately – because most data is neither stored in nor does it originate from an object-oriented context. Consequently, object-oriented programmers, too, are in need for elegant and concise solutions to the problem of decomposing data. To this end, we propose a built-in pattern matching construct compatible with object-oriented programming. We claim that it leads to more concise and readable code than standard object-oriented approaches. A pattern in our approach is any computable way of testing and deconstructing an object and binding relevant parts to local names. We introduce pattern matching in two variants, case classes and extractors. We compare the readability, extensibility and performance of built-in pattern matching in these two variants with standard decomposition techniques. It turns out that standard object-oriented approaches to decomposing data are not extensible. Case classes, which have been studied before, require a low notational overhead, but expose their representation, making them hard to change later. The novel extractor mechanism offers loose coupling and extensibility, but comes with a performance overhead. We present a formalization of object-oriented pattern matching with extractors. This is done by giving definitions and proving standard properties for a calculus that provides pattern matching as described before. We then give a formal, optimizing translation from the calculus including pattern matching to its fragment without pattern matching, and prove it correct. Finally, we consider non-obvious interactions between the pattern matching and parametric polymorphism. We review the technique of generalized algebraic data types from functional programming, and show how it can be carried over to the object-oriented style. The main tool is the extension of the type system with subtype constraints, which leads to a very expressive metatheory. Through this theory, we are able to express patterns that operate on existentially quantified types purely by universally quantified extractors.


A THOUGHT-PROVOKING LOOK AT THE BIG BUSINESS AND IMMORAL PRACTICES BEHIND PROFESSIONAL SPORTS BY ACCLAIMED SPORTSWRITER DAVE ZIRIN, HAILED AS THE CONSCIENCE OF AMERICAN SPORTSWRITING ("THE WASHINGTON POST ") The fastest-growing sector of today s sports audience is the alienated fan. Complaints abound: from inflated ticket prices, $6 hot dogs, and $9 beers to owners endlessly demanding new multimillion-dollar stadiums funded by public tax dollars. Those sitting in the owners boxes are increasingly placing profit over players performances and fan loyalty. "Bad Sports "cuts through the hype and bombast to zero in on tales of abusive, dictatorial owners who move their teams thousands of miles away from their fan base, use their stadiums as religious and political platforms, or hold communities ransom for millions of dollars of taxpayer money to fund their gargantuan stadiums. As the multibillion-dollar sports-industrial complex continues to lumber along, Dave Zirin is the voice in the wilderness, speaking out for the common fan with a tough, passionate, and intelligent voice that will remind readers that there is more to sportswriting than glowing athlete profiles. "


Learning representations that accurately capture long-range dependencies in sequential inputs --- including text, audio, and genomic data --- is a key problem in deep learning. Feed-forward convolutional models capture only feature interactions within finite receptive fields while recurrent architectures can be slow and difficult to train due to vanishing gradients. Here, we propose Temporal Feature-Wise Linear Modulation (TFiLM) --- a novel architectural component inspired by adaptive batch normalization and its extensions --- that uses a recurrent neural network to alter the activations of a convolutional model. This approach expands the receptive field of convolutional sequence models with minimal computational overhead. Empirically, we find that TFiLM significantly improves the learning speed and accuracy of feed-forward neural networks on a range of generative and discriminative learning tasks, including text classification and audio super-resolution.


Plumbing the trajectory of the essay entails discussion of an intellectual history that spans five centuries. Nevertheless, the essay is a genre defined a contrario. This study begins with a discussion of the status of the essay as a genre, providing an overview of its historical development as well. The sum of this analysis will help to redefine the essay through its essential characteristics. The principal corpus deals grosso modo with the last fifty years of Mexican life. It starts in the year 1950 (El laberinto de la soledad, Octavio Paz), and it finishes in the year 2000. Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Sergio Pitol, Carlos Monsivais, Elena Poniatowska and Roger Bartra are the impetus behind this study. Critical recurrent themes that haunt these essayists, such as la Malinche, the Mexican Revolution, October 1968, the masques and the death, are reformulated so that the authors' points of view are related to one another as if they were in dialogue. The "physiognomy" of the texts is also elicited because of the presence of paratextual attributes that have not been previously studied. The genetical criticism of paratext can provide unique information that cannot be obtained otherwise. Since writing and reading are part of the dialectic between author and reader, the notion of the other, the alterity, is examined. The author considered as the other of the reader and vice versa, forms a dialectic that motivates the writer to speak with the Other. The inter- and intra- textuality are also studied, taking care to distinguish between two kinds of intratextuality never before separated. The rapport between authorship and a modicum of distance armor against worldly power on women's essays fighting for power through their pens is explored. This material is fertile ground for theorists and critics to explore.


Widows by the Thousand: The Civil War Letters of Theophilus and Harriet Perry, 1862-1864. Edited by M. Jane Johannson. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000. Pp. xxiv, 333. Acknowledgments, list of illustrations, series editors' preface, introduction, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.) Theophilus and Harriet Perry had been married just over two years when Theophilus joined the Confederate Army. Theophilus was a twentynine-year-old college-educated lawyer and a member of the slave-owning elite, who had avoided service for a more than a year before he determined to go. He left his pregnant wife and young daughter and joined the 28th Texas Cavalry. His first several months of war were relatively quiet. He was on detached service, filling various staff positions. In 1864, however, he became a field officer, commanding Company F in the 28th Texas Cavalry. Within four months, Theophilus was dead, mortally wounded at the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana, during the Red River Campaign. Captain Theophilus Perry's wartime record was relatively unimpressive and of little note. But the letters to and from his wife, Harriet, that were left behind make his story riveting. Editor M. Jane Johannson has done a masterful job of assembling and editing these letters-ninety-one exchanged between husband and wife, and an additional twelve from or to other family members-into a single volume. Arranged chronologically, the letters are divided into ten chapters, each detailing a different campaign or phase of Perry's service. Clear, easy-to-read maps chart Perry's movements and military exploits in the trans-Mississippi theater (including Arkansas); a handful of photographs picture Theophilus and other family members. Johannson's editing strikes just the right balance of being informative but not overly intrusive. She introduces the letters and the major players and starts each chapter with a helpful summary of essential events and issues. Her extensive footnotes identify the people and places mentioned in the correspondence, and she consults secondary literature to place the couple's actions and feelings into larger context. But readers can peruse the letters for themselves and gain significant insights into a Texas soldier and his wife's separate and intertwined wartime experiences. The Perrys confided their deepest fears and worries to each other in these missives. Husband and wife repeatedly proclaimed their love and yearning for one another. "You are my life, it is all I can do to live separated from you," she told him in August 1862 (p. …


IS managers are being put under increasing pressure to justify the value of corporate IT/IS expenditure. Their constant quest for the 'holy grail' continues, as existing methods and approaches of justifying IT/IS expenditure are still failing to deliver. The decision making process is not as objective and transparent as it is claimed or intended to be. This paper discusses seven commonly used tactics used by business managers to influence IT appraisals. The paper takes a 'devil's advocate' position and adopts some irony when looking at the area of power and politics in IT evaluation. Rather than promoting the use of these techniques, this article aims to raise awareness that IT evaluation is not as rational as most IT evaluation researchers/practitioners would want it to be or indeed claim it to be. It is argued that rationalisation or counter tactics may counteract influence techniques in an attempt to get behind the cloak and dagger side of organisational power and politics, but politics and power in decision-making cannot and should not be filtered out. Due to dissimilarities of objectives, limitations of time and information, influence techniques will always be used. However, rather than being counterproductive, these techniques are essential in the process of decision making of IT projects. They help organisations reach better decisions, which receive more commitment than decisions that were forced to comply with strictly rational approaches. Awareness of the influence and manipulation techniques used in practice will help to deal with power and politics in IT evaluation and thereby come to better IT investment decisions.


Background: Decline immune function is well documented after spaceflights. Microgravity is one of the key factors directly suppressing the function of immune system. Though T cell immune response was inhibited by microgravity, it is not clearly whether activation would be inhibited after a pre-exposure of microgravity on T lymphocytes at the resting state. Methods: We herein investigated the response ability of resting CD4+ and CD8+ T cells experiencing pre-exposure of modeled microgravity (MMg) for 0, 8, 16 and 24 hrs to concanavalin A (ConA) stimulation. The phenotypes and subsets of immune cells were determined by flow cytometry. Results: Both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells with an MMg pre-exposure exhibited decreased expressions of activation-markers including CD25, CD69 and CD71, inflammatory cytokine secretion and cell proliferation in response to ConA compared with T cells with 1g controls in an MMg exposure time- dependent manner. Moreover, short term MMg treatment caused more severe decreased proliferation in CD4+ T cells than in CD8+ T cells. Conclusions: MMg can directly impact on resting T cell subsets. CD4+ T cells were more sensitive to the microgravity inhibition than CD8+ T cells in respect of cell proliferation. These results offered new insights for the MMg-caused T cell functional defects.


The aim of this study was to explore the structures of socially shared representations of the Israel-Palestine conflict among conflict outsiders. The sample included Swiss residents with differing levels of self-positioning and engagement in the conflict (N = 31). We expected a 'spillover effect' of conflict representations from parties in conflicted societies to conflict outsiders. To assess these representations, a Q-methodological approach was used. The analysis revealed four distinct conflict representations, labeled as (1) a hawkishreligious pro-Israeli view; (2) a dovish pro-Israeli view; (3) a conciliatory view; and (4) a pro-Palestinian view. These representations provide evidence for a partial spillover of beliefs to conflict outsiders. The study contributes to the literature on discourses about the Israel-Palestine conflict by empirically discovering its socially shared, systematic structures.


The first Statement on Standards for Consulting Services (SSCS), Definitions and Standards, being issued this month by the American Institute of CPAs to supersede the current statements on standards for management advisory services (SSMASs), contains guidance that affects virtually every public practitioner. Its most significant impact is its definition of the broad range of functions considered CPA consulting services, not the establishment of new performance requirements. The statement also defines and describes the CPA's responsibilities on consulting engagements. The SSCS (see page 164) establishes in the professional literature that CPAs also are consultants who provide a wide range of business and management services for clients. CPAs have always served as consultants to their clients. However, the terms used by the Institute for those services--management services and then management advisory services--did not communicate to clients and the public the full range of the CPA's consulting services. The new SSCS supersedes the SSMASs on January 1, 1992. When the SSMASs were developed, MAS was viewed as a consulting service concerned solely with providing advice and technical assistance to management. Over the past decade, the changing marketplace has caused as steady evolution in the scope and mix of consulting services. Today, these services often go beyond the assistance envisioned in the original SSMASs. The current range of CPA firm consulting services is reflected in the six functions described in the new SSCS. AN IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION The new standards will help solve a significant problem. In the years since the SSMASs were issued, many members did not recognize that their business consulting services, often rendered informally, were either MAS consultations or MAS engagements as described in the SSMASs--and therefore subject to those standards. The term "management advisory services" often is misunderstood as referring to a narrow set of services apart from those most CPAs in general practice provide to clients. The services frequently are thought to require training in disciplines not related to accounting. The service most widely recognized as MAS is computer consulting. However, members often don't realize other frequently provided consulting services (such as informal business advice, assistance to clients in securing loans, budgeting, business planning, business valuation, financial ratio analysis, cash and inventory management) are subject to the SSMASs. The new statement makes it clear that all these services are consulting services. The statement applies to every member in public practice who provides a client with any of the services it describes. For example, one of the six practitioner consulting functions is to provide consultations (informal advice) on business and management matters. Therefore, an auditor or tax practitioner will be subject to the consulting services standards when providing such informal advice (unless it is excluded as being part of an excluded audit, tax or other service)--as well as any of the other, more formal, consulting functions identified in the SSCS. Of the seven standards in the SSCS applicable to all consulting services, four come directly from Rule 201 of the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct and apply to all professional services, as does the entire code unless otherwise stated. The remaining three are very similar to the SSMAS standards. What is new is a clear statement of what kinds of services the SSCS covers, so practitioners will more easily identify the areas to which it does and does not apply. WHAT ARE CONSULTING SERVICES? Consulting services are defined as professional services that employ the practitioner's technical skills, education, observations, experiences and knowledge of the consulting process. The statement names and describes six functions subject to the SSCS. …


Peak detection is a pivotal first step in biomarker discovery from MS data and can significantly influence the results of downstream data analysis steps. We developed a novel automatic peak detection method for prOTOF MS data, which does not require a priori knowledge of protein masses. Random noise is removed by an undecimated wavelet transform and chemical noise is attenuated by an adaptive short‐time discrete Fourier transform. Isotopic peaks corresponding to a single protein are combined by extracting an envelope over them. Depending on the S/N, the desired peaks in each individual spectrum are detected and those with the highest intensity among their peak clusters are recorded. The common peaks among all the spectra are identified by choosing an appropriate cut‐off threshold in the complete linkage hierarchical clustering. To remove the 1 Da shifting of the peaks, the peak corresponding to the same protein is determined as the detected peak with the largest number among its neighborhood. We validated this method using a data set of serial peptide and protein calibration standards. Compared with MoverZ program, our new method detects more peaks and significantly enhances S/N of the peak after the chemical noise removal. We then successfully applied this method to a data set from prOTOF MS spectra of albumin and albumin‐bound proteins from serum samples of 59 patients with carotid artery disease compared to vascular disease‐free patients to detect peaks with S/N≥2. Our method is easily implemented and is highly effective to define peaks that will be used for disease classification or to highlight potential biomarkers.


Nowadays we are seeing how countries that during the Cold War did not show great symptoms of growth, today are on their way to becoming the world's largest economies during the period 2030-2045. These countries, "marginalized" by the Western powers in the process of implementing a global economic system, aspire to form an economic order in which they have the decision-making power. This is why South-South alliances among formerly "marginalized" countries predominate, and will continue to prevail in the future. Among these, the ZOPACAS (of which I already wrote about in another article), the IBSA dialogue forum or the BRICS group stand out. Throughout this article, special mention will be made to this last group and how the political and economic interests of the great powers within it, mainly of China, prevail when it comes not only to deciding and coordinating the agreed policies, but also to interceding to accept or not the inclusion of a certain country in the group. In this way, China tries to increase its political and economic ties with the African continent which is crucial in China ́s strategy to become the leading nation by 2049 (coinciding with the 100 anniversary of its creation).


Providing rapid but detailed teaching feedback is a significant problem in distance education, especially for large population courses of short duration, when hand-marking is costly and assignments sent through the postal services cannot be turned round sufficiently quickly. Online assignments with automatic teaching feedback are a possible solution, providing the feedback can be well targeted to individual students. This chapter discusses the online assessment of a 'maths for science' course, in which meaningful feedback was given in response to student answers on both summative and purely formative exercises. Students were allowed three attempts at each question, with an increasing amount of teaching feedback being given after each attempt, so encouraging students to engage with the feedback, to learn from it, and to correct their answers if necessary. The mark awarded on the summative assessment reflected the amount of help that had been given. The designers' concerns included producing a fair test of the course's learning outcomes within the constraints imposed by the online format and with only minimal use of multiple choice, writing questions that might help to uncover common student misunderstandings coupled with feedback that would address these problems, and tying answer-matching to specific feedback comments. Evidence from statistical analysis of submitted work, and from student responses to questionnaires, has provided insights into the impact of this kind of feedback on the student learning experience. While the majority of students were happy with the online nature of the assessment, a significant proportion appeared to value it more for the immediate indication of their overall performance than for the detailed teaching feedback, and some were put off by the technology or their perception of it. Students were considerably more likely to submit the summative assessment if they had previously engaged online with the practice formative exercises.


In this work, a novel configuration that enhances the selectivity of quasi-elliptic microstrip bandpass filters is presented. The filter topology is based on pentagonal open-loop resonators and it yields more flexibility regarding the cross coupling between the resonators. The filter topology has the advantage of being easily adjustable to permit low insertion loss in the passband, and it has high and wide rejection in the stop band. The full-wave simulator Microwave Studio was used to design the resonator and to calculate the coupling coefficients. The proposed filter was designed, fabricated and tested. The results of the tests showed that responses had a good agreement with the theoretical predictions.


This paper presents an overview of the dramatic changes in the understanding of the quality of fruits and vegetables during the past years. The national and international agricultural reformation, the aggravation of competition and surplus production of many horticultural crops as well as the rising awareness of environmental, nutritional and health concerns of the society have led to an alteration process in the view of quality being indicated by alterations of the purchasing behaviour of consumers increasingly demanding only highest quality standard products. Several definitions of quality were already developed considering mainly product attributes or product characteristics (market quality, technological quality, biological quality). Recently, various attempts are ongoing to define quality more comprehensively in developing either quality indices, quality models or quality management systems in which the step from a view of product-oriented quality over process-oriented quality to consumer-oriented quality has been conducted. However, new laws and orders (e.g. residue law, HACCP-concept) as well as new trends (e.g. functional food, gene-food) have to be implemented into these new approaches. Thus, quality is not a fixed value, but a time, product, and consumer dependent dimension. With this new and comprehensive understanding of the quality dynamics it will be possible to face increasing and alterations in consumer requirements as well as to improve the competitiveness on the European and international trade markets.


In this paper, a modified version of the African Buffalo Optimization algorithm with emphasis on global search is proposed. Two different equations with the values of their upper and lower boundaries are selected to be tested. The experimental result illustrates the difference in performance between the modified and the original ABO algorithm toward the optimum solution. At the end of all experimental procedures, it was observed that the Global African Buffalo Optimization (GABO) converges very quickly towards the optimal solution with a few buffalos. However, the experimental result show that GABO convergence still needs improvement as it tends to have unpromising convergence towards the end of a large iteration. In any case, GABO is a promising optimization method. Keywords: African Buffalo Optimization, Global African Buffalo Optimization, Convergence Speed, Sphere Function, Rosenbrock Function


This article provides a detailed study of the annotations in the two Winchester College copies of Robert Lowth's (1710–1787) Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) which R. C. Alston used for his facsimile edition (1968). Alston believed that one of the copies belonged to Lowth and that the other copy was used for the second edition of the grammar in 1763. My article, however, demonstrates that this was not the case. It present arguments that serve to identify the owner of the second copy, and it demonstrates that there is one feature in his language the historical development of which was very likely due to influence from Lowth's grammar. From a wider perspective, this article will highlight the extent to which contemporary readers responded to books they owned by including annotations in them.


Understanding factors affecting the risky injection practices among people who inject drugs (PWIDs) are critical toward identifying the transition from initial injecting to HIV seropositivity. Increasingly HIV prevention programs have been focusing on targeted interventions in such high-risk groups, which include addressing some of these factors. We reviewed the literature on factors associated with HIV-related high-risk injection behavior among PWIDs using electronic databases such as Pubmed and Google scholar. This was supplemented by manual search for non-indexed and grey literature. The factors studied include age and age of initiation, duration of use, concurrent alcohol use, social networks, stigma, and impact of the intervention. In general, there is a lack of studies from developing countries, and most of the literature are from western settings. Across studies, the risky injection practices have been consistently associated with early age of initiation and social network characteristics such as family member using injections, using injections with the sexual partner. However, studies have shown inconsistent association with current age, duration, and exposure to interventions for substance use disorders. Despite strong theoretical underpinning of a positive association, there is inadequate literature on factors such as alcohol abuse and stigma. This narrative review highlights the need for high-quality studies addressing factors associated with HIV-related high-risk injection behavior.


Family demographics in France are currently undergoing a process of change, as they are in other Western cultures. The conventional nuclear family is in decline, and different arrangements are taking its place: single-parent families, post-divorce blended families, homosexual family groupings. Elisabeth Roudinesco (2002) suggests that same-sex parenting – or homoparentalite to use the term increasingly in use in France – may be the source of new models of the family of the future. Yet Roudinesco, among others, also points to the dynamics between sameness and difference, normality and transgression, operating on same-sex parenting. In wanting to have children, to what extent do gay men and lesbians (wish to) integrate themselves into society as 'normal', or how far do they desire to assert their difference? Are same-sex families simply part of a general evolution in the family or are they forging new social formations? Questions such as these take on particular resonance in the French context, given the eschewal of identity politics and the hetero-normative family laws of the French Republic. This paper engages with these debates, drawing on a group of narratives of lesbian mothering, both autobiographical temoignages and novels, which, between them, cover a variety of family arrangements and projets d'enfants: Claire Altman's 'Deux femmes et un couffin' (2005), Myriam Blanc's 'et elles eurent beaucoup d'enfants…' (2005), Laurence Cinq-Fraix's 'Family Pride' (2006) and Eliane Girard's 'Mais qui va garder le chat?' (2005). The discussion interrogates key issues – the question of the father, reproductive technologies, the role of the 'second' mother – and evaluates to what extent these narratives of lesbian mothering uphold new paradigms of parenthood.


Armed forces are currently in the environment with moral ambiguity and multiple cultures. In face of the chaos, corruption, and wasteful trend in current social value system, continuous conflict is bothering the cultivation and atmosphere of military character. Under the situation, officers and soldiers could easily fall into bad belief and become indifferent to surrounding affairs with apathy. Various military discipline events appear in domestic armed forces in past years; besides, the exaggeration and report of print media and electronic media, and even some officers and soldiers spilling, smearing, and slandering each other to defile others' innocence destroy the image of armed forces. Military character presents close relations with integrity building action. Aiming at military personnel in Ministry of National Defense, total 420 copies of questionnaire are distributed, and 347 valid copies are retrieved, with the retrieval rate 83%. The research results are summarized as below. Factors in the effectiveness of armed forces personnel's anti-corruption governance contain micro aspects of lack of legal and disciplinary ideas and value deviation of armed forces personnel as well as macro aspect of complicated approval operation and rules resulting in lobbying interfering businesses. The effectiveness of armed forces personnel's anti-corruption governance not being affirmed by the society is related to the engagement of supervisors at all levels in anti-corruption work, as armed forces personnel are restricted to the political environment and aging senior customs personnel that the director's engagement in anti-corruption work is not manifested. Armed forces personnel involving in internal anti-corruption problems are minimized to largely reduce the effectiveness of anti-corruption governance. According to the results, suggestions are proposed, expecting to improve problems resulted from military discipline and to promote the armed forces' image of integrity, being close to the people, and loving the people.


With increasing acceptance of followership as a counterpart of leadership, the study of followership within graduate-level leadership and business curricula should be equally considered. Further, an understanding of andragogy, or adult education theory, is of benefit with the inclusion of creativity within a followership curriculum. By developing creative capacity within followership education, graduate students are better equipped to influence the business world with innovative thinking skills that enhance problem solving in an increasingly competitive work environment.