Participants at the international conference on policies for water and food security in the dry areas, held in June 2013, agreed that, given the fast pace of depletion of groundwater, the issue of water valuation in the dry areas is no longer one of whether or not, but rather of how. Policies that have been or are perceived to have adverse effects on the cost of agricultural production or food prices in the dry areas are often not well received and have historically led to popular uprisings. As a result, despite clear evidence of misuse of irrigation water by many farmers, governments have been avoiding the idea of water pricing. This government stance is mainly based on the assumption that policies that aim at valuing water will necessarily affect farmers negatively. Using a case study from Syria and applying a simple optimization model, this paper provides empirical evidence that a policy which introduces a penalty for excessive application of irrigation water would compel farmers to adopt water saving technologies. By so doing, the policy will not only lead to groundwater conservation but also to Pareto-optimal distribution of benefits (i.e., a situation where nobody loses and at best some or all gain).


Background and Objectives: Monitoring of nursing performance on a regular basis is crucial for continuous improvement of nursing services management. The aim of this study was to propose an assessment model for the monitoring and evaluating the performance of the nursing services by nursing services managers. Methods: A Delphi-based qualitative research method was adopted. Based on the literature data, 120 questions were formulated. Three Delphi rounds were held and eight experts were referred to for their opinions in each Delphi round. The data derived from experts' opinions was analyzed using of the content validity index. Findings: The assessment form comprises of 63 indicators related to patient care, nursing services, and nurse qualification. The visit form allows inquiring not only on the quality of services, but the process of services delivery, as well. Conclusions: The evaluation model developed in this study can facilitate continuous monitoring and assessment of nursing services performance.


A picosecond, widely tunable, optical parametric generator–amplifier system can be constructed with barium borate and lithium triborate crystals pumped by third- or second-harmonic output of an active–passive mode-locked Nd:YAG laser. A tunable output of several hundred mirojoules per pulse with a conversion efficiency as high as 30% has been obtained. The tuning range covers from 0.4 to 2.0 or from 0.6 to 2.5 μm and can be extended by sum- and difference-frequency generation to near 0.2 μm in the UV and to near 8 μm in the IR. The output linewidth can be narrowed to near the transform limit with the help of frequency selection by a grating.


Volume 8 in the series, appearing in two parts, A and B, deals with the systematics of cyst nematodes of the subfamily Heteroderinae. Cyst nematodes are important pathogens causing extensive damage and significant yield loss to many crops in both temperate and tropical regions. Part A presents summarised information on various aspects of morphology, biology, ecology, pathology, biogeography, control measures and diagnostics of these nematodes. Molecular diagnostic tables and comprehensive tabular and dichotomous keys for species identification, together with descriptions of protocols for extraction, light and electron microscopy studies, and molecular diagnostics are also included. The taxonomic section of part A provides diagnoses for six genera, viz., Globodera, Punctodera, Cactodera, Dolichodera, Betulodera and Paradolichodera, and includes descriptions and morphometrics of 30 valid species. The work is illustrated by 101 drawings and photos. The genus Heterodera is mainly covered in part B, complete descriptions and morphometrics of the 80 known valid species being provided and the species illustrated by 159 line drawings and photos. Identification of the species using morphological and molecular techniques is also covered. Each part includes an extensive bibliography.


Genotype by environment interaction (G×E) obstructs breeding by persuading variations in genotype performance in different environments and thereby complicating selection. The aim of the present study was to determine the stability and yield performance of desi type chickpea varieties and advanced lines at multiple growing environments of western Ethiopia, using genotype-by-environment interaction (GGE) biplot analysis and AMMI model to find stable high yielding cultivar(s) and ratify for wider production. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replicates. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated highly significant differences (P≤0.01) for environments, genotypes and importantly genotype by environment interaction (G×E). Additive main effects and multiplicative interactions (AMMI) and GGE biplot, AMMI Stability Value (ASV) and Genotype Selection Index (GSI) indices indicate that Natoli (G8) variety and DZ-2012-CK-20113-2-0042 (G16) advanced lines showed better grain yield with better stability across environments and thus are recommended for wider production in test locations and similarly agro-ecologies in Ethiopia.

 Key words: Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), genotype-by-environment interaction (GGE) biplot, Additive main effects and multiplicative interactions (AMMI), AMMI stability value (ASV), genotype selection index (GSI), stability.


In order to improve thermal efficiency of spark ignition engine under super-lean burn conditions (excess air ratio λ ≈ 2 . 0 ), thermal stratification technique by in-cylinder water injection toward piston surface (stratified water insulated combustion architecture), in which low temperature water vapor layer is formed on the surface, is proposed. From the water spray visualization using the optically accessible engine, injected water is distributed near the piston top surface at ignition timing and thermal stratification can be achieved in the case that water injection timing (SOIw) is set at earlier stage of a compression stroke. In addition, heat flux on the piston surface measured at the same time is reduced by water injection. The 0.5-L single-cylinder engine test at λ = 2.0 at a constant ignition timing also shows that water injection at earlier stage of a compression stroke makes it possible to mitigate knock without significant increase in combustion instability. On the other hand, part of water is distributed near the spark plug at ignition timing with the water injection at SOIw = −60 °ATDC, resulting in unstable combustion. In addition, the engine test at λ = 2.0 and water/fuel ratio(W/F) = 18% shows that knock mitigation by water injection enables spark advance and following combustion enhancement. As a result, combustion period becomes short and cooling loss decreases, followed by the 1.0-pt improvement of gross indicated thermal efficiency. Moreover, the engine can be operated at minimum spark advance for best torque by increasing W/F up to 35%. Finally, stratified water insulated combustion architecture concept is applied at λ = 1.9 with a higher compression ratio of 17, showing that water injection at SOIw = −120 °ATDC and W/F = 50% enables minimum spark advance for best torque operation, and remarkably high gross indicated that thermal efficiency of 52.63% can be achieved with a sufficiently low knock level and coefficient of variation of indicated mean effective pressure.


Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has progressed within the last 10–15 years from being a cancer that was almost universally fatal to one that is potentially curable in the majority of cases. However, for this to happen it is essential that the HCC is found early. Patients at risk for HCC have to undergo regular surveillance with ultrasound. Lesions detected during surveillance have to be aggressively investigated and aggressively treated. If HCC can be diagnosed when the lesion is 90%.1 2 Treated patients remain at risk for the development of a second primary, but the treated HCC can be completely cured.

Ultrasound surveillance identifies many small lesions in the liver that may or may not be HCC. These include dysplastic nodules, cirrhotic nodules and haemangioma. Making the distinction between HCC and haemangioma is usually not difficult, but distinguishing between cirrhotic nodules, dysplastic nodules and HCC can be difficult. The tools available include contrast-enhanced radiological imaging, or biopsy. It is possible to diagnose HCC without biopsy. Indeed, if the typical radiological features are present, the diagnostic accuracy is almost 100%. The highly characteristic features are that in the arterial phase of a dynamic contrast-enhanced study the HCC shows hypervascularity—that is, it gives a brighter signal that the surrounding liver. In the portal venous phase of the study and in the delayed phase ∼3 min …


Critiques of Whiteness Studies paradoxically focus on embodiment whether this is whiteness as an embodied identity that has realist properties or the inscription of labouring bodies through a process of racialization. In this article I consider the ways in which whiteness may be best understood as a prosthetic that can situationally be attached/detached from white bodies. Paradoxically, this flexibility of whiteness increases white people's powers of symbolic and material control over environments and the bodies of people of colour. In earlier work I have considered prosthetic whiteness to be mostly associated with ruling class masculinities. However, in certain contexts this ruling class discourse may become generalized. To examine how situationally this might be the case I examine survivalist and preparedness literature ('disaster education') that considers the racialized other to be embodied, mindless, bodies ('zombies') and surviving whites to be disembodied, primal, heroic agents. Using popular culture, public information films and the recent preparedness information in the UK on 'swine flu' I show how people of colour are positioned as non-agentic, static and (most significantly) as immobile and risky bodies as opposed to the portrayal of 'white' subjects in preparedness as mobile and able subjects whose genetic survival is at stake.


Atmospheric pressure plasma (APP) jets or plasma plumes have recently shown the potential for applications such as plasma surface modification and plasma medicine. These applications need insight into their plasma chemistry and discharge behavior, which are strongly influenced by the plasma parameters. In contrast to conventional APP jet devices, the present study utilizes a combination of six electrodes, and the outer ground electrodes are separated by Teflon to form a moderate-sized plasma column of nearly 10 mm. This atmospheric pressure plasma jet can be used to generate non-thermal plasma bullets away from the plasma generation region. The characteristics of the plasma plume were extensively diagnosed using current–voltage measurements, ICCD camera, and optical emission spectroscopy (OES). The APP plasmas, excited by a relatively low-pulsed dc voltage, were characterized in terms of discharge power, gas temperature, electron excitation temperature, electron temperature, and electron density. With simplified assumptions, these discharge parameters were determined from the OES measurements. Electron densities of the orders of magnitude of 1014 and 1015 cm−3 relevant to the electron temperature from ∼1.5 to 1.8 eV were obtained for the center regions in the jet discharge when the discharge power was varied from ∼10 to 55 W. Moreover, the effect of various operating parameters on the APP jet propagation was studied, and it was observed that the applied voltage plays a crucial role in the propagation of the plasma jet. Additionally, experiments involving APP plasma treatment on deionized water demonstrate noticeable effects of the He gas flow rate on the discharge behavior near the liquid surface. With the increase in the gas flow rate, the plasma column diameter on the liquid surface increases. Further, the deionized water treated with the APP jet shows the signatures of various active species such as oxygen and nitrogen, which are attributed to the transfer of the charged particles to the liquid. Moreover, due to a relatively low gas temperature (∼310–330 K) along with a high plasma plume, the possibility for the plasma application of this device was realized.


The science of the solid state has joined nuclear science and molecular biology as a field of major importance in the latter half of the 20th century. It took particular shape during the genesis of solid-state electronics and the post-transistor era of integrated circuits for telecommunications, computers, and digital signal machines. However, these developments were soon joined by techniques from the ancient fields of metallurgy and ceramics and contributions from the more current fields of synthetic polymers, rubbers, plastics, and modified bioorganic substances. This vast realm was characterized by a National Academy of Sciences study of the 1970's as "materials science and engineering." The public, as well as the scientific and engineering community, are currently concerned about the uses of research and development and the applications of knowledge for national progress. Consideration is given here to how well we are using the science of materials for industrial strength and such governmental objectives as national security and energy economy.


Detection, identification, and tracking (DIT) problems that arise in applications such as the protection of people and the environment against radiational, biological, and chemical plumes, can be solved by combining the modalities of sensor and cyber networks. The sensor network provides information about physical space activities, such as the locations and movements of plume sources and targets. The cyber network provides storage and computational resources to analyze and infer, based on realistic dispersion models of plumes with respect to physical phenomena (e.g., terrain and weather effects), where the plume originated, the trajectory of its movement (speed and direction), and the prediction of its future movement. The cyber network also makes decisions about where to task and activate plume sensors regarding their future sensing and communciation activities.


This article reports on secondary school students' perspectives of participating in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) related extracurricular activities in six secondary schools in Scotland. The extracurricular activities aimed at supporting students in developing knowledge of STEM subjects and confidence in their preparation for high school examinations, post-secondary schooling and the world of work. The study used a mixed-methods design. This entailed collecting data using qualitative semi-structured interviews, focus group discussion and a quantitative questionnaire. Findings indicate that students viewed extracurricular activities positively. They felt that the activities they participated in made a difference in their overall development. STEM related extracurricular activities provided students with relevant subject knowledge, wider learning opportunities and confidence in their own abilities, thereby contributing towards academic and social development. Students also reported increased knowledge of post-schooling opportunities. The activities resonated with the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), thereby complemented formal learning.


Western literature has repeatedly indicated a strong relationship between living alone and depression among the aged population, however, studies among the Chinese population are scarce. In this paper, we examine whether the association between living alone and depression is independent of health status, social support and financial strain among Chinese older adults, and subsequently assess whether such association persists after adjusting these variables. Cross-sectional data drawn from the Hong Kong Population Census consisting of 2,003 Chinese elderly people aged 60 or over were analyzed. Chi-square tests and logistic regression analyses revealed that living alone results in higher levels of depressive symptoms for older women but not for older men. This relationship remained significant even when socio-demographic variables, health indicators, social support, and financial strains were adjusted; yet, the impact of living alone with depression disappeared when all variables were controlled. In summary, this paper is the first to report that living alone is an independent risk factor contributing to depression among Chinese older women, as well as identifying certain significant factors including social support and health indicators that can affect and explain the link between living alone and depression. Preventive measures and related issues were discussed.


We discuss the implications of two price zones, i.e. one northern and southern bidding area, on the German electricity market. In the northern zone, continuous capacity additions with low variable costs cause large regional supply surpluses in the market dispatch while conventional capacity decreases in the southern zone. As the spatial imbalance of supply and load is increasing, the current single bidding area results more often in technically infeasible market results requiring curative congestion management. Additional bidding zones would enable better market integration of scarce transmission capacities in a system exposed to structural regional imbalances. Using a line sharp electricity sector model, this paper analyzes the system implications and the distributional effects of two bidding zones in the German electricity system in 2012 and 2015, respectively. Results show a decrease in cross-zonal re-dispatch levels, in particular in 2015. However, overall network congestion and re-dispatch levels increase in 2015 and also remain high for both bidding zones. Results are very sensitive to additional line investments illustrating the challenge to define stable price zones in a dynamic setting. With two bidding areas, prices in the model results increase in the southern zone and decrease in the northern zone. The average price deviation grows from 0.4 EUR/MWh in 2012 to 1.7 EUR/MWh in 2015 with absolute values being significantly higher in hours with price differences. Stakeholders within zones are exposed to the price deviations to a different extent. Distributional effects are surprisingly small compared to the wholesale price or different network charges.


Unstructured information in electronic health records provide an invaluable resource for medical research. To protect the confidentiality of patients and to conform to privacy regulations, de-identification methods automatically remove personally identifying information from these medical records. However, due to the unavailability of labeled data, most existing research is constrained to English medical text and little is known about the generalizability of de-identification methods across languages and domains. In this study, we construct a varied dataset consisting of the medical records of 1260 patients by sampling data from 9 institutes and three domains of Dutch healthcare. We test the generalizability of three de-identification methods across languages and domains. Our experiments show that an existing rule-based method specifically developed for the Dutch language fails to generalize to this new data. Furthermore, a state-of-the-art neural architecture performs strongly across languages and domains, even with limited training data. Compared to feature-based and rule-based methods the neural method requires significantly less configuration effort and domain-knowledge. We make all code and pre-trained de-identification models available to the research community, allowing practitioners to apply them to their datasets and to enable future benchmarks.


Metal stable isotopes are now being used to trace metal contaminants in the environment and as indicators of human systemic function where metals play a role. Stable isotope abundance variations provide information about metal sources and the processes affecting metals in complex natural systems, complementing information gained from surrogate tracers, such as metal abundance ratios or biochemical markers of metal metabolism. The science is still in its infancy, but the results of initial studies confirm that metal stable isotopes can provide a powerful tool for forensic and biomedical investigations.


BP/Chevron well 14/6–1 drilled in the East Orkney Basin has penetrated Devonian sedimentary rocks which can be dated palynologically as within the latest Givetian to early Frasnian interval. This microflora contains the first substantiated record in Western Europe of Archaeoperisaccus, a spore hitherto regarded as restricted to northern Laurasia. Three grey-green intervals within the well contain marine microfossils which provide the first direct evidence for the movement of marine waters into the northern part of the Old Red Sandstone continent. Onshore an Eday Marls section in the Bay of Berstane, Orkney contains a marine microfauna which demonstrates the presence of a marine incursion of mid––late Givetian age. This is the first record of a Devonian marine incursion in Scotland. Combination of this palaeontological data with sedimentological studies of the Eday Marls and Upper Old Red Sandstone suggests that a wide flat sabkha plain extended eastwards from the onshore Orcadian Basin during the later stages of its infill, and was subjected to episodic marine incursions. These incursions are tentatively linked with marine transgressions into the Argyll area of the Central North Sea. Two orders of cyclicity occur within the dated Devonian interval of 14/6–1, and are interpreted as resulting from orbital cyclicity (at periodicities of 39.5 and 413.9 ky). This indicates that the control on the Devonian sea level maxima may have been orbital cyclicity. These marine incursions are speculatively correlated to high-stands on the Devonian sea-level curve. The Bay of Berstane marine incursion representing the Taghanic Onlap whilst those in 14/6–1 are the Rhinestreet, Middlesex and Genundewa transgressions. Reconsideration of the palaeogeography of the northern margin to the marine Devonian indicates that the sea entered the Orcadian Basin from the east along the Tornquist Zone at the margin of the Fenno-Scandian High.


ABSTRACT Multiple accounts have been proposed to explain category-specific recognition impairments. Some suggest that category-specific deficits may be caused by a deficit in recurrent processing between the levels of a hierarchically organized visual object recognition system. Here, we tested predictions of interactive processing theories on the emergence of category-selective naming deficits in neurologically intact observers and in patient GA, a single case showing a category-specific impairment for natural objects after a herpes simplex encephalitis infection. Fragmented object outlines were repeatedly presented until correct naming occurred (maximum 10 times), and the fragments increased in length with every repetition. We studied how shape complexity, object category, and fragment curvature influence the timing of correct object identification. The results of a survival analysis are consistent with the idea that deficits in recurrent processing between low- and high-level visual object representations can cause category-selective impairments.


A simple improved structure is designed to trap and launch two cold atomic
 balls vertically at the same time, which works like "two fountains", but is more
 compact since most components of the "two fountains" are shared. It is expected to
 improve the stability of the fountain markedly.


Casting into the indeterminate future and projecting visions of so-called killer robots, The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots (The Campaign) has incited moral panic in an attempt to stimulate a discussion and ultimately a ban on lethal autonomous weapons (LAWS). Their efforts have been superficially successful but come at a self-defeating substantive cost. In the hope of shifting the dialogue from the hyperbolic to a constructive dialogue on the interaction between human and machine abilities in both current and future weapon systems, this article explores the conceptual paradox implicit in The Campaign and proposes an alternative. Having provoked the international community to envision potential, future and dire harm from LAWS, the called for ban would include not only future "fully autonomous" weapons systems which don't (and may never) exist but some unspecified portion of current weapon systems. That's because the real issue, the real concern, is (or should be) autonomy in certain functions, notably selecting and engaging targets, essentially determining what to fire at and then firing. But weapon systems that select and engage targets without further human intervention have been in use by over thirty countries since 1980. Having rallied the world to worry about possible future harms, The Campaign is unable to differentiate and specify which current system should be included in the ban. The result is that the LAWS debate at the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) has stagnated. This article explains autonomy in general and as applied to weapon systems. From there the article examines The Campaign's two primary source documents, reports on LAWS by Human Rights Watch and also a United Nations Special Rapporteur. After explaining the conceptual and practical flaws with The Campaign's approach, I propose an alternative, a moratorium on LAWS primary designed to lethally target personnel.


Tremendous research efforts have been invested in exploring and designing so-called shortcuts to adiabaticity. These are finite-time processes that produce the same final states that would result from infinitely slow driving. Most of these techniques rely on auxiliary fields and quantum control, which makes them rather costly to implement. In this Perspective we outline an alternative paradigm for optimal control that has proven powerful in a wide variety of situations ranging from heat engines over chemical reactions to quantum dynamics —thermodynamic control. Focusing on only a few, selected milestones we seek to provide a pedagogical entry point into this powerful and versatile framework.


Natural disasters occur all over the world in different degrees and levels, by the frequency of events, the intensity of processes, and the vulnerability of population groups. Brazil has always been discursively and popularly considered a safe country regarding the occurrence of natural disasters. This interpretation is due to its geographical localization, which prevents earthquakes' occurrence, volcanic activity and tropical cyclones in its territory. On the other hand, it is one of the countries that registered the highest number of natural disasters, especially those associated with geological and hydrologic processes. According to the United Nations, in 2008, Brazil was the 13 th most affected country by natural disasters. The Brazilian Atlas of Natural Disasters indicates that the record of natural disasters occurrence in the country reported a positive increase of 268% in the last ten years. After the disaster in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro in 2011, the government sought to structure itself in order to prevent new disasters. Thus, different organizations that are part of the National System of Protection and Civil Defense (NSPCD) were created, such as: The National Center for Monitoring and Warning of Natural Disasters (CEMADEN), The System of Urban Occupation Monitoring proposed by the Ministry of Cities (MCid), The Integrated System for Information about Disasters (S2iD), and others. The aim of this study is to analyze the evolution of systems for protections and disasters risk in Brazil, as well as to evaluate knowledge gained by the departments of protection and civil defense.


ABSTRACT This paper investigates the epistemic powers of democratic institutions through an assessment of three epistemic models of democracy: the Condorcet Jury Theorem, the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem, and Dewey's experimentalist model. Dewey's model is superior to the others in its ability to model the epistemic functions of three constitutive features of democracy: the epistemic diversity of participants, the interaction of voting with discussion, and feedback mechanisms such as periodic elections and protests. It views democracy as an institution for pooling widely distributed information about problems and policies of public interest by engaging the participation of epistemically diverse knowers. Democratic norms of free discourse, dissent, feedback, and accountability function to ensure collective, experimentally-based learning from the diverse experiences of different knowers. I illustrate these points with a case study of community forestry groups in South Asia, whose epistemic powers have been hobbled by their suppression of women's participation.


From the outset, providing support for parents has been a key feature of New Labour's policy agenda, but 'good' parenting, and child health and well-being are often undermined by the stresses associated with poverty. Moreover, there may be a gap between policy aims, and the perceptions and motivations of those intended to benefit. Drawing on a systematic review of qualitative studies of low-income parents, the present paper explores their experiences of informal and formal support networks, considering their strengths and weaknesses in the context of poverty. Traditional systematic review methods were used to locate and critically appraise 12 UK qualitative studies, which took as their focus parents' subjective experiences of caring for children in impoverished circumstances. Meta-ethnographic methods were then used to produce a qualitative meta-synthesis of findings. Exploring the similarities and differences in parents' accounts across studies identified positive and negative aspects of social support as a resource for poor parents. The review suggests that naturally occurring support systems do provide both material and emotional help to parents, but that such support has certain inherent drawbacks. It is not universally available and, in some circumstances, carries negative associations for poor families. Low-income lone mothers in particular enjoy smaller support networks, and are more reliant on mutual support than those in two-parent families. Paradoxically, it is the most socially isolated women who are least willing to seek professional help. Overall, low-income parents' experiences of formal health and social welfare agencies are mixed, and not invariably positive. In conclusion, this paper suggests that formal support services have the potential to fill gaps in informal support systems for poor families, but only if these are provided in ways which are sensitive to their needs. Therefore, parents' perspectives are essential to informing service design, development and evaluation in health and social care.


BACKGROUND
A recent study demonstrated that patients treated with amputation and those treated with reconstruction had comparable functional outcomes at two years following limb-threatening trauma. The present study was designed to determine whether those outcomes improved after two years, and whether differences according to the type of treatment emerged.

METHODS
Three hundred and ninety-seven patients who had undergone amputation or reconstruction of the lower extremity were interviewed by telephone at an average of eighty-four months after the injury. Functional outcomes were assessed with use of the physical and psychosocial subscores of the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP) and were compared with similar scores obtained at twenty-four months.

RESULTS
On the average, physical and psychosocial functioning deteriorated between twenty-four and eighty-four months after the injury. At eighty-four months, one-half of the patients had a physical SIP subscore of > or = 10 points, which is indicative of substantial disability, and only 34.5% had a score typical of a general population of similar age and gender. There were few significant differences in the outcomes according to the type of treatment, with two exceptions. Compared with patients treated with reconstruction for a tibial shaft fracture, those with only a severe soft-tissue injury of the leg were 3.1 times more likely to have a physical SIP subscore of 5 points (p < 0.05) and those treated with a through-the-knee amputation were 11.5 times more likely to have a physical subscore of 5 points (p < 0.05). There were no significant differences in the psychosocial outcomes according to treatment group. Patient characteristics that were significantly associated with poorer outcomes included older age, female gender, nonwhite race, lower education level, living in a poor household, current or previous smoking, low self-efficacy, poor self-reported health status before the injury, and involvement with the legal system in an effort to obtain disability payments. Except for age, predictors of poor outcome were similar at twenty-four and eighty-four months after the injury.

CONCLUSIONS
The results confirm previous conclusions that reconstruction for the treatment of injuries below the distal part of the femur typically results in functional outcomes equivalent to those of amputation. Regardless of the treatment option, however, long-term functional outcomes are poor. Priority should be given to efforts to improve post-acute-care services that address secondary conditions that compromise optimal recovery.


An emphasis on marketing ethics instruction in higher education may be needed now more than ever. The Ethics Resource Center (ERC) reports that employees of the millennial generation are less cognizant of unethical practices in the workplace than previous generations, and suggests that the millennials' exposure and frequency to social media contributes to their disregard of unethical workplace behavior (―2011 National Business Ethics Survey,‖ 2012). Social media communication is popular among the millennial generation and is a requirement for modern-day businesses; yet, the nature of social media seems to be affecting this new generation of employees negatively. Could social media be used positively in marketing ethics instruction to enhance inductive learning of the millennial generation and encourage ethical workplace behavior? This quasi-experimental study sought to answer that question through a control and treatment group research design. Both groups received the same marketing ethics instruction, but the treatment group engaged in instruction through social media while the control group's instruction was delivered in class. A comparison of preand post-surveys of both groups sought to evaluate if social media could be used to make a positive impact on millennials' ethical workplace behavior. Noteworthy findings of the study included: (1) The preference of a closed Facebook page for academic use rather than other social media formats; (2) The tendency of frequent YouTube users to respond unethically to workplace behavior and marketing ethics scenarios; and (3) The support for marketing ethics instruction as a standalone course.


Summary. Although it has been widely accepted since the 1960s that smoking cigarettes carries a substantial health risk, worldwide mortality from tobacco‐related diseases is increasing rapidly at the beginning of the 21st century. To provide the motivation to control this epidemic there is a continuing and pressing need for information on the risks of tobacco consumption that is accurate, up to date, locally relevant and imaginatively presented.


Intestinal perforations by fish bones are very rare. Most of the foreign bodies that are ingested advance through the intestinal tract without causing complications, especially if they pass the oesophagus. Only less than 1% causes intestinal perforation and is often long, sharp objects such as toothpicks, spines, chicken bones, or needles. They can occur at any point in the digestive tract, but are more common in segments with a closed angle such as pylorus, Treitz angle, distal ileum, and recto-sigmoid junction.


A description is given of the general architecture of the sensory epithelia of the labyrinth of the elasmobranch fish Raja clavata, including an electron-microscopic study of the ultrastructural organization of the sensory hair cells and their hair processes, as well as of the supporting cells. The innervation of the hair cells and the associated synaptic structures are also described. The hair cells are found to be of uniform shape and cytological appearance. However, there exists a pronounced dimorphism so far as the sensory hair processes are concerned. These consist in each cell of a varying number of stereocilia with which a single kinocilium is associated. This has the typical structure of a cilium with 9 + 2 longitudinal filaments. Two widely different diameters of stereocilium are encountered in neighbouring hair cells, and it is suggested that this may point to a fundamental dimorphism among the sensory cells. The topographic arrangement of the kinocilia appears to be of functional significance and it is postulated that their position within each hair bundle is related to the direction of excitatory and inhibitory displacement of the hair bundle in the course of mechanical stimulation of the sensory cell. This situation is explored and analyzed for all sensory epithelia of the labyrinth, and the findings are related to what is known about their mode of function. The root structures of the kinocilia are described and it is shown that they, too, appear to be functionally polarized. Each supporting cell bears a single rod-like hair process which resembles the kinocilia in so far as it has at least 9 longitudinal filaments, but differs from it in certain aspects of its root structure. The question of the functional significance of this ciliary rod is discussed. Three types of nerve endings are found. They differ in the size and cytoplasmic contents of their terminal structure and are described as non-granular, granular, and small electrondense nerve endings. Whether the third type resembles the ending of an independent nerve supply cannot be decided.


UNLABELLED
Water hardness has been associated with atopic eczema (AE) prevalence in two epidemiologic studies carried out on schoolchildren in England and Japan.

OBJECTIVE
To estimate the association between the prevalence of AE and domestic water hardness.

METHODS
The prevalence of AE was obtained from The International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood, carried out in six towns in the province of Castellón on schoolchildren 6-7 and 13-14 years of age, using a standard questionnaire in 2002. Three zones were defined according to domestic water hardness of the six study localities: <200 mg/l, 200-250 mg/l, and >300 mg/l. A logistic regression analysis was performed.

RESULTS
The lifetime prevalence of AE in schoolchildren 6-7 years of age was higher with the increment of water hardness, 28.6, 30.5 and 36.5% respectively for each zone; between zone 1 and zone 3, the adjusted odds ratios (ORa) were 1.58 (95% Confidence Intervals [CI] 1.04-2.39) (adjusted tendency test p=0.034). Prevalence of symptoms of AE within the past year were 4.7, 4.5, and 10.4%, respectively by zone; between zone 1 and zone 3, the ORa was 2.29 (95% CI 1.19-4.42) (adjusted tendency test p=0,163). For 13-14 year-old schoolchildren, tendencies to lifetime prevalence of AE at any time or in the past year were not significant.

CONCLUSIONS
This study suggests that in 6-7 year-old schoolchildren, water hardness in the area where they live has some relevance to the development of the disease.


\Information politics" INGOs such as Amnesty International have incentives to maintain their credibility by carefully vetting information about rights abuses committed by governments. But they are also strategic actors that may inate allegations of abuse to full organizational imperatives. This raises an intriguing question: when are INGOs more likely to exaggerate their allegations? In answer to this question, we argue that news media reporting pressures INGOs to comment for organizational reasons, even if the information available to them is poor. On the other hand, higher numbers of domestic human rights NGOs increase the quality of available information, and INGOs will nd more credible information provided about states as the winning coalition to the selectorate rises. Yet, an incentive to exaggerate allegations under certain conditions does not imply that INGOs will always do so. Indeed, there exists signicant observed variation in INGO reports about government abuse. To test our hypotheses we employ a Zero-inated Ordered Probit model with correlated errors that permits us to model an unobservable probability (the probability that the INGO exaggerates its allegations) and correct for potential bias. Results provide support for our hypotheses, and suggest that Amnesty International adheres to its credibility criterion, rarely succumbing to incentives to exaggerate abuse.


Company takeovers continue to be a common corporate practice. Where these involve the acquisition of similar businesses the speed of integration is regarded as a contributory factor to the success of the acquisition. In this paper the contribution of the implementation of the acquirer's ERP system to integration is explored. ERP implementation may impose the acquirer's business procedures, processes, data formats, values and underlying culture and has the potential to be a powerful tool to drive the level of integration being sought. In this qualitative study the authors explore a series of ERP implementations in the Asia Pacific region that appear to have successfully contributed to the integration of a global company's business in this region, and contrast these findings against other conflicting outcomes reported in the literature. Implementation strategies that are considered to have contributed to this success were developed. These strategies were based on an appreciation of the cultural dimensions predominant in the region, and included emphasis on the strategic aim, sharing leadership between Head Office and the local business, project teams comprising a mix of Head Office analysts and regional business people, and strong communication practices in which a sense of community was developed.


Methods have been presented for detailed studies of railway vibration and for the fast prediction of train-induced ground vibration. The ground vibration is generated by static or dynamic loads. The main purpose of this contribution was to show the influence of inhomogeneous soils on the different vibration components.

Layered soils, namely a soft layer on a stiffer half-space, yield a quite specific transmission behavior. The low-frequency and sometimes also high-frequency cut-off of the transfer function of the soil is demonstrated in theory and by experiments at many sites of which the soil model is approximated from dispersion and transfer function measurements. The layer frequency divides the frequency range in a low-frequency range, where the stiff half-space rules the low amplitudes, and a high amplitude high-frequency range which is mainly determined by the softer top layer. A thick soft layer yields a very low layer frequency, so that the higher soft soil amplitudes have a wider range down to low frequencies. A thin layer yields a high layer frequency, so that the high frequencies above this layer frequency are dominant. The higher the contrast between the stiff half-space and the soft layer is, the stronger the increase between the half-space and layer amplitudes, the more characteristic are the spectra of the soil transfer function. The range of measured soils has been from vS1 down to 125 m/s, vS2 up to 1000 m/s and the layer frequencies are within 10 Hz < f0 < 75 Hz. Moreover, during this measuring campaign in Switzerland, all 11 sites showed clearly the layer-on-half-space behaviour. The transfer functions of inhomogeneous soils have been used to predict the ground vibration due to dynamic axle loads which is usually thought to be the most important component.

The passage of static loads, in the contrary, results in very small vibration amplitudes for low train speeds, which can only be found at near distances and at low frequencies. They attenuate very rapidly with distance and lose very rapidly the higher frequency content. The passage of static axle loads can be included in the prediction of railway vibration just for completeness.

Special attention should be given to the case if the train runs with the Rayleigh-wave speed of the soil (Rayleigh train). The Rayleigh-train effect is strongest for a homogeneous half-space: At the near-field of the track the amplitudes are raised strongly compared to normal trains, and in addition, little attenuation with distance is observed. In case of a layered soil, the low-frequency cut-off reduces the frequency range and the amplitudes of the homogeneous quasi-static ground vibrations. Therefore, the Rayleigh-train effects are clearly reduced by a layered soil and they disappear if the layer frequency (for example for a thin layer) is higher than the frequency band of the axle impulse. The Rayleigh-train effect could completely disappear in a randomly inhomogeneous soil, but this has not been analysed so far.

The axle impulses from static loads can have an additional, quite different effect. They can be scattered by a randomly inhomogeneous soil so that a part (the scattered part) of the axle impulse can reach further distances from the track. This can establish a certain mid-frequency component of the ground vibration which becomes dominant in the far-field, and this important component exists for all train speeds. Experimental results from BAM and international measurements show the importance of the corresponding frequency range.

The mitigation of train induced ground vibration by elastic and stiff track elements has been analysed threefold. The vehicle-track interaction yields the reduction at high frequencies above the vehicle-track resonance. This is the standard effect. The filtering of trackbed errors by the bending stiffness of the track yields a certain mid-frequency effect. An even stronger mid-frequency effect is predicted for the mitigation of the scattered axle impulses by the bending stiffness and elastic elements of the track.


The formation of 10-40 μm composite gel microparticles (CGMPs) comprised of ∼100 nm drug containing nanoparticles (NPs) in a poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) gel matrix is described. The CGMP particles enable targeting to the lung by filtration from the venous circulation. UV radical polymerization and Michael addition polymerization reactions are compared as approaches to form the PEG matrix. A fluorescent dye in the solid core of the NP was used to investigate the effect of reaction chemistry on the integrity of encapsulated species. When formed via UV radical polymerization, the fluorescence signal from the NPs indicated degradation of the encapsulated species by radical attack. The degradation decreased fluorescence by 90% over 15 min of UV exposure. When formed via Michael addition polymerization, the fluorescence was maintained. Emulsion processing using controlled shear stress enabled control of droplet size with narrow polydispersity. To allow for emulsion processing, the gelation rate was delayed by adjusting the solution pH. At a pH = 5.4, the gelation occurred at 3.5 h. The modulus of the gels was tuned over the range of 5 to 50 kPa by changing the polymer concentration between 20 and 70 vol %. NP aggregation during polymerization, driven by depletion forces, was controlled by the reaction kinetics. The ester bonds in the gel network enabled CGMP degradation. The gel modulus decreased by 50% over 27 days, followed by complete gel degradation after 55 days. This permits ultimate clearance of the CGMPs from the lungs. The demonstration of uniform delivery of 15.8 ± 2.6 μm CGMPs to the lungs of mice, with no deposition in other organs, is shown, and indicates the ability to concentrate therapeutics in the lung while avoiding off-target toxic exposure.


Continually solving new, unsolved tasks is the key to learning diverse behaviors. Through reinforcement learning (RL), we have made massive strides towards solving tasks that have a single goal. However, in the multi-task domain, where an agent needs to reach multiple goals, the choice of training goals can largely affect sample efficiency. When biological agents learn, there is often an organized and meaningful order to which learning happens. Inspired by this, we propose setting up an automatic curriculum for goals that the agent needs to solve. Our key insight is that if we can sample goals at the frontier of the set of goals that an agent is able to reach, it will provide a significantly stronger learning signal compared to randomly sampled goals. To operationalize this idea, we introduce a goal proposal module that prioritizes goals that maximize the epistemic uncertainty of the Q-function of the policy. This simple technique samples goals that are neither too hard nor too easy for the agent to solve, hence enabling continual improvement. We evaluate our method across 13 multi-goal robotic tasks and 5 navigation tasks, and demonstrate performance gains over current state-of-the-art methods.


europathic pain is defined as pain that originates due to a lesion, dysfunction or disease, e.g. diabetes, human immunodeficiency virus infection, herpes zoster, chemotherapy or surgery, and which affects the peripheral or central nervous system. This results in abnormal neural function, often presenting in an individual as sensory pain-related symptoms which are either positive, i.e. hyperaesthesia or hyperalgesia; or negative, i.e. hypoaesthesia or anaesthesia. Patients often describe neuropathic pain as numbness or as a shooting, stabbing, burning, electric, tingling or "pins and needles" sensation. The quality of life of patients with neuropathic pain is often compromised as many have difficulty sleeping, lack energy, and experience drowsiness and altered concentration, and this can potentially progress to a stage in which the patient is physically and psychologically distressed.


In
this study, any change in fingerprint performance, image quality and minutiae
count for infants in three different age groups was evaluated (0-6, 7-12, and >12
months). This was done to determine whether there is a difference in performance
between infant age groups for a fingerprint recognition system.

The purpose of this
research was to determine whether there is a difference in infant fingerprint
performance and image quality metrics, between three different age groups (0-6,
7-12, and >12 months old), using the same optical sensor? The data used for
this secondary analysis was collected as part of a longitudinal multimodal
infant study, using the Digital Persona U.are.U 4500. DET curves, zoo analysis,
and image quality metrics were used to evaluate performance and quality
factored by infant age group.This
study found that there was a difference in image quality and minutiae count,
genuine and impostor match scores, and performance error rates (EER) between
the three age groups. Therefore, quality and performance were dependent on age.
While there was a difference in performance between age groups, there was
generally stability for subjects who overlapped between multiple age groups.
Difference in performance was most likely due to the difference in physical
characteristics between subjects in each age group, rather than individual
instability. The results showed that it could potentially be feasible to use
fingerprint recognition for children over the age of 12 months.


The Poseidonian chora encompasses the plain South of the Sele River, which formed the ancient boundary between the Greek lands and the Etruscan territory to the North, East to the Alburnus Mountains and South to the Punta Licosa. The aim of this study is to understand the nature of the relationship between the Greek settlers of Poseidonia, founded at the turn of the sixth century BC in the Sele Plain (in modern Campania), and the Italic peoples indigenous in the plain. The Greek city flourished from its foundation until about 400 BC when it came under the control of Lucanians from the nearby Apennines. Recent attention has focused on its three well-preserved temples, the rich cemeteries, and the sanctuaries outside the walls. This present study examines the hypothesis that not only was the relationship cordial during the 200-year tenure of the Greeks, but that the indigenous groups actually collaborated in the founding of the city.


Injuries are an inherent risk of sport participation. Roughly 68% of athletes experience an athletic injury during their college career, with over half being injuries to the lower extremity (Hootman, Dick & Agel, 2007). While much attention has been given to the physical effects of an injury, the psychological ramifications can also affect an athlete's recovery from injury. According to Quinn & Fallon (2008), an athlete can physically recover from an injury however they may not attain a complete psychological recovery. An athlete's performance can be affected negatively if they return to sport participation without recovering psychologically from their injury, which can also lead to a risk of re-injury or receiving additional injuries (Quinn & Fallon, 2008). Two variables related to psychological recovery include reestablishment of confidence and a decrease in fear of re-injury (Magyar & Duda, 2000; Walker & Heaney, 2013). Additionally, an athlete may feel reluctance to perform skills that require the site of injury to be used which affects subsequent performance. An athlete's fear of re-injury can negatively affect athletes' performance by undermining an athlete's confidence in obtaining their pre-injury sport performance (Arden, Taylor, Feller & Webster, 2012). The purpose of this study was to determine how psychological responses to injury, namely sport resumption confidence, fear of re-injury, and injury perception change throughout the rehabilitation process. These variables were examined in relation to performing a strenuous isokinetic dynamometer task on an injured joint (e.g., knee, ankle). Participants (N=21; 62% female) completed psychometrically sound measures designed to assess confidence, fear and injury perception across three groups of athletes: healthy (n = 9), injured (n = 6), and rehabilitated (n = 6). All subjects were told they would be completing a maximal isokinetic contraction task on the lower extremity that had been injured before completing the survey. Only healthy and rehabilitated athletes actually performed the task at the completion of the survey. ANOVA was utilized to compare group differences on study variables. There was a significant difference between groups with regard to fear (healthy=1.62 ± 0.03; injured=4.09 ± 0.10; rehabilitated=3.17 ± 0.61; p < .05) and confidence (healthy=5.82 ± 0.68; injured=2.99 ± 0.06; rehabilitated=4.06 ± 0.58; p < .01) where healthy athletes reported the highest confidence and lowest fear across groups. Additionally, injured athletes reported the lowest confidence and highest fear across groups. There were no group differences found with regard to injury perception (healthy=0.00 ± 0.00; injured=1.01 ± 0.41; rehabilitated=0.07 ± 0.09). This study extends the current sport injury research base by identifying changes in key psychological variables across the healthy-injuredrehabilitated continuum of the collegiate sport experience.


First published in 1951 Arnold Hausers commanding work presents an account of the development and meaning of art from its origins in the Stone Age through to the Film Age. Exploring the interaction between art and society, Hauser effectively details social and historical movements and sketches the frameworks in which visual art is produced. This new edition provides an excellent introduction to the work of Arnold Hauser. In his general introduction to The Social History of Art, Jonathan Harris asseses the importance of the work for contemporary art history and visual culture. In addition, an introduction to each volume provides a synopsis of Hausers narrative and serves as a critical guide to the text, identifying major themes, trends and arguments.


This paper illustrates the main features of the Labour Module of the CompNet dataset which provides indicators of firm growth over the period 1995-2012 across 17 EU (13 euro area) countries and 9 macro-sectors. It also includes information on a large set of micro-aggregated characteristics of firms growing at different speed such as their financial position and labour and total factor productivity. The paper shows that during the Great Recession the share of shrinking firms sharply increased in countries under stress, while firm growth slowed down in non-stressed countries. In the former, the construction sector suffered the most, while in the latter manufacturing and services related to transportation and storage were mainly affected, possibly as a result of the trade collapse. While we find that, all else equal, more productive firms had a higher probability of growing, the process of productivity-enhancing reallocation was muted during the Great Recession.


We report on a perception experiment in which Czech participants rate the perceived emotional state of Dutch speakers. These speakers could either display a positive or a negative emotion, which was either real or acted. The Czech participants were confronted with these utterances, which they could not understand, in a bimodal (audio-visual) or a unimodal (audio- or vision-only) condition. It was found that acted emotional speech leads to significantly more extreme perceived emotion scores than non-acted emotional speech, where the difference between acted and real emotional speech is larger for the negative than for the positive conditions. Interestingly, the largest overall differences between acted and non-acted emotions were found for the audio-only condition, which suggests that acting has a particularly strong effect on the spoken realization of emotions.


Halloysite is a nanostructured clay mineral with hollow tubular structure, which has recently found an important role as delivery system for drugs or other active molecules. One of these is curcumin, main constituent in the rhizome of the plant Curcuma Longa, with a series of useful pharmacological activities, hindered by its poor bioavalaibility and solubility in water. In this study, Halloysite clay nanotubes (HNTs) were characterized in terms of both structure and biocompatibility and they were used for curcumin delivery to cancer cells. The performed 3-(4, 5-dimethythiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyl-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay showed that HNTs have a high biocompatibility, also when coated with polymers, while curcumin is highly toxic for cancer cells. The release kinetics of curcumin from HNTs was investigated by the dialysis bag method, showing a slow and constant release of the drug, which can be further controlled by adding layers of polyelectrolytes to the external surface of the tubes. Successful polymer coating was followed by Zeta potential. The Trypan Blue assay showed a cytotoxic effect of loaded HNTs, proportional to the concentration of tubes and the incubation time. Successful HNTs uptake by breast cancer cells was demonstrated by Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy images. All results indicate that HNTs are a promising carriers for polyphenol delivery and release.


The cumulative CO2 emissions in the atmosphere are causing serious changes in climate via global warming because of continuous burning of fossil fuel. However, the scientific community has identified the means to alleviate the environmental burden through carbon capture and storage, and utilisation of CO2 for synthesis of value added chemicals. The latter greener approach for utilising CO2 as a C1 feedstock for organic chemical synthesis is extremely beneficial not only for the chemical industry but also for contributing to limit its emissions. The direct synthesis of butylene carbonate (BC) through cycloaddition reaction of CO2 to butylene oxide (BO) is of a great commercial interest. BC is an excellent reactive intermediate material used in industry for the production of surfactant, plasticisers, polymers and can also be used as a solvent for wood binder resins, degreasing, paint remover, lubricants and the foundry, sand binders as well as lithium battery because of its high polarity property. Several reaction routes have been attempted for BC production, e.g. phosgene, oxidative carboxylation, direct synthesis using homogeneous catalyst and direct synthesis using a heterogeneous catalyst. The latter being the most attractive route due to the inexpensive raw material, ease of catalyst recovery and avoidance of corrosive reagents, such as phosgene. In the present work, a facile and environmentally benign method has been developed for the synthesis of highly efficient graphene-inorganic heterogeneous catalyst, represented as Cu–Zr/GO inorganic composite. The graphene-inorganic heterogeneous catalyst has been characterised using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and nitrogen adsorption/desorption method (for measuring BET surface area and pore size distribution). Copper-zirconia/graphene inorganic composite catalyst (Cu–Zr–GO) as heat treated at 723 K exhibited high catalytic activity as compared to other reported heterogeneous catalysts in the absence of any organic solvent with 71% yield of BC, and 87% selectivity towards BO at the reaction conditions of 423 K, 80 bar in 12 h. The use of Box-Behnken Design (BBD) from Response Surface Methodology (RSM) has been employed to investigate the single and interactive effect of several independent reaction variables that include temperature, pressure, catalyst loading, heat treatment and time, on the conversion of BO and yield of BC. Two quadratic regression models have been developed representing an empirical relationship between each reaction response and all the independent variables. The predicted models have been validated statistically and experimentally, where very high agreement has been observed between predicted and experimental results with approximate relative errors of ±1.25% for BO conversion and ± 0.75% for BC yield. Acknowledgments We acknowledge the financial support from London South Bank University and The British University in Egypt.


Military professionals and theorists have long understood the relevance of morale in war. Montgomery, the victor at El Alamein, said, following the battle, that 'the more fighting I see, the more I am convinced that the big thing in war is morale'. Jonathan Fennell, in examining the North African campaign through the lens of morale, challenges conventional explanations for Allied success in one of the most important and controversial campaigns in British and Commonwealth history. He introduces new sources, notably censorship summaries of soldiers'mail, and an innovative methodology that assesses troop morale not only on the evidence of personal observations and official reports but also on contemporaneously recorded rates of psychological breakdown, sickness, desertion and surrender. He shows for the first time that a major morale crisis and stunning recovery decisively affected Eighth Army's performance during the critical battles on the Gazala and El Alamein lines in 1942.


We examine the effect of initial public offering (IPO) characteristics on seasoned equity offering (SEO) decisions in relation to governmental intervention in China. Our results confirm the process of underpriced IPOs in promoting earlier and larger SEOs in the Chinese context. The study examines three channels through which the Chinese government intervenes in equity issuance activities, namely state ownership, politically connected executives and economic development areas. We find that the connection between IPOs and SEOs becomes less apparent in government‐intervened firms. We attribute these results to the conflict between the state and minority shareholders, which leads to high uncertainty and risk in government‐intervened firms.


Abstract In this study, Chebyshev polynomial method has been applied in the acceleration of the outer iterations for the numerical solution of the two dimensional neutron diffusion equation by the boundary element method. Boundary element discretization of the diffusion equation results in a full and nonsymmetric coefficient matrix which is quite different than the sparse and symmetrical matrices of the finite element and finite difference methods to which Chebyshev acceleration has been classically applied. To assess the merit of the Chebyshev method in the case of boundary element discretization of the multigroup diffusion equation constitutes the main objective of the study. Numerical experimentation has established that the Chebyshev acceleration is effective also in case of boundary element discretization despite the dissimilarity of the coefficient matrices compared to the more conventional methods.


Proceedings of the Geo-Shanghai 2014 International Conference, held in Shanghai, China, May 26-28, 2014. Sponsored by the Geo-Institute of ASCE. These eight Geotechnical Special Publications contain 410 papers on a broad range of geotechnical engineering topics including soil dynamics, rock mechanics, ground improvement, and tunneling and underground construction. The collections the following GSPs. GSP 236, Soil Behavior and Geomechanics, contains 81 technical papers on recent advances in unsaturated soil mechanics, experimental study of soil behavior, and constitutive, numerical, and multi-scale modeling of soil behavior. GSP 237, Rock Mechanics and Its Applications in Civil, Mining, and Petroleum Engineering, contains 24 technical papers on recent advances in rock mechanics and its applications. GSP 238, Ground Improvement and Geosynthetics, contains 54 technical papers on pile/column technology as foundation or embankment support, chemical, electrical or biological technology for soil stabilization, ground improvement with other technology, geosynthetic reinforcement for roads, slopes, walls, and foundations, and geosynthetics for other applications, such as the use of geofoam. GSP 239, Pavement Materials, Structures, and Performance, contains 42 technical papers on paving material characterization and modeling, pavement evaluation, analysis, and construction, and pavement base and subgrade. GSP 240, Advances in Soil Dynamics and Foundation Engineering, contains 61 technical papers on soil dynamics, deep foundations, and shallow foundations, retaining walls, and slopes. GSP 241, Geoenvironmental Engineering, contains 25 technical papers on latest developments in geoenvironmental remediation, municipal solid waste properties and behavior, landfills, and characterization and beneficial reuse of waste and recycled materials. GSP 242, Tunneling and Underground Construction, contains 99 technical papers on latest developments in research and practical applications in tunneling, deep excavations, retaining structures, drilled shafts, and ground improvement. GSP 243, New Frontiers in Geotechnical Engineering, contains 22 technical papers on on beahvoir of biotreated geomaterials and foundations, energy-related geotechnics, and sustainability, geoinformatics, and case studies. These papers will be of interest to practitioners, researchers, students, and policymakers working in the area of geotechnical engineering.


In the 1920s, Germany was in the grip of social and political turmoil: its citizens were disillusioned by defeat in World War I, the failure of revolution, the disintegration of their social system, and inflation of rampant proportions. Curiously, as this important book shows, these years of upheaval were also a time of creative ferment and innovative accomplishment in literature, theatre, film, and art. "Glitter and Doom" is the first publication to focus exclusively on portraits dating from the short-lived Weimar Republic. It features forty paintings and sixty drawings by key artists, including Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, and George Grosz. Their works epitomize Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), in particular the branch of that new form of realism called Verism, which took as its subject contemporary phenomena such as war, social problems, and moral decay. Subjects of their incisive portraits are the artists' own contemporaries: actors, poets, prostitutes, and profiteers, as well as doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and other respectable citizens. The accompanying texts reveal how these portraits hold up a mirror to the glittering, vital, doomed society that was obliterated when Hitler came to power.


This paper considers mobility in and explanation of the position of children in the distribution of ability at different ages. Using the sub-samples of the BCS Cohort, it is found that 42 month ability rank provides a fairly stable guide to position in the distribution at age ten and that for girls, even the 22 month score is fairly stable. The paper then considers the question of the association of ability rank with the social background of children. It is found that children of women with degrees are substantially higher in the distribution than other children even at 22 months. By 42 months SES is also important, becoming still more important by age ten. A forecast equation for household income is developed. This is also found to be strongly associated with pre-school ability rank.


The Kievan Caves Monastery was for centuries the most important Ukrainian monastic establishment. It was the outstanding center of literary production, and its monks served throughout the territory of Rus' as bishops and monastic superiors. The most detailed source for the monastery early history is its Paterik, a thirteenth-century compilation containing stories reaching back to the monastery's foundation in the mideleventh century. Muriel Heppell now makes available the first complete English translation of the Paterik. With an introduction, map, and several appendices, Muriel Heppell discusses the work's Byzantine background and also sets it in its historical context. The Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature is one portion of the Harvard Project in Commemoration of the Millennium of Christianity in Rus'-Ukraine sponsored by the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University. The Library encompasses literary activity in Rus'-Ukraine from its beginning in the mid-eleventh century through the end of the eighteenth century. Included are ecclesiastical and secular works written in a variety of languages, such as Church Slavonic, Old Rus', Ruthenian (Middle Ukrainian), Polish, and Latin. This linguistic diversity reflects the cultural pluralism of Ukrainian intellectual life in the medieval and early-modern periods. The Library consists of three parts: Texts, which publishes original works, in facsimile whenever appropriate; English Translations; and Ukrainian Translations. Each volume begins with an introductory essay by a specialist. The two translation series also include maps, appendices, and indices. A cumulative index to the entire Library is planned.


Objective: Excess nutrients can cause insulin resistance in skeletal muscle in vivo. However, the response of white adipose tissue is less clear. In a chronic glucose infusion model (1 and 4 days), distinct adaptations in muscle and white adipose tissue have been described. Muscle developed sustained insulin resistance after 1 day of glucose infusion but adipose tissue did not. Exactly what distinguishes adipose tissue from muscle in response to glucose oversupply remains to be determined. The aim of the present study was to investigate the early (3-8 h) metabolic and signaling changes that take place in epididymal fat pads, and to a lesser extent, red quadriceps muscle, using an acute glucose infusion model.
Methods: Hyperglycemia (~11 mM) and hyperinsulinemia were generated by infusing glucose into rats for 3, 5, or 8 h.
Results: We found that similar to red quadriceps muscle, AMPactivated protein kinase (AMPK) activity was diminished in epididymal fat pads of the glucose infused rats. Yet, both glucose uptake and triglyceride synthesis were increased in epididymal fat whereas muscle showed a progressive decrease in glucose utilization and glycogen synthesis after 5 h. Insulin signaling, as determined by Akt phosphorylation (Ser473), remained intact in epididymal fat but not in red quadriceps muscle. Furthermore, unlike muscle, there was no evidence of PKC activation in epididymal fat.
Conclusion: The results confirmed and extend findings that suggest white adipose tissue responds very differently than muscle when exposed to sustained elevated concentration of glucose.


The available scientific data suggest that existing technologies and procedures can improve indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in a manner that significantly increases productivity and health. While there is considerable uncertainty in the estimates of the magnitudes of productivity gains that may be obtained, the projected gains are very large. For the U.S., the estimated potential annual savings and productivity gains are $6 to $14 billion from reduced respiratory disease, $2 to $4 billion from reduced allergies and asthma, $10 to $30 billion from reduced sick building syndrome symptoms, and $20 to $160 billion from direct improvements in worker performance that are unrelated to health. Productivity gains that are quantified and demonstrated could serve as a strong stimulus for energy efficiency measures that simultaneously improve the indoor environment.


This study examines problems facing Islamic education in Nigeria. Primary and Secondary methods of data collection are used. Survey research design is adopted in this study. Self-structure questionnaire is raised and used to acquire information from the respondents relevant for testing hypothesis of the study. Chi – square (x2) technique was adopted for data analysis and hypothesis testing which revealed the findings of the study that Islamic education has been confronting with the challenges of acceptability, resources and enlightenment among nominal Muslims and Christians. Islamic education has not promotes Islamization of knowledge aims at reshaping all the branches of human knowledge; humanities, pure and applied sciences in accordance with the Islamic view and reality. The study recommended that there should be vigorous enlightenment campaign showing the merits of this exercise and fruits of its success. Systematic campaign and enlightenment programme should be given priority attention otherwise the idea would be misconstrued and negatively presented to members of the public. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2013.v3n9p165


Systems development needs to reconcile views from many roles, such as domain experts and engineers. A particular challenge is the multitude of models for requirements and quality, which can get time consuming and error prone to trace, change, and verify.
 In this paper we introduce an ontology-supported component-based systems engineering approach for the production automation domain that describes explicitly stakeholder quality requirements and traces design decisions to generate new system and software versions that implement these requirements. The ontology approach is expected to allow continuous modeling and extracting model views for all roles involved to a) improve the quality assurance of system requirements; b) support more explicit feedback on the quality of intermediate models during systems development; and c) provide better auditing capabilities of the systems development process.
 Based on an industry case study, we describe the ontology concept of the system, the development process, and how software quality can be measured and improved.


This paper combines tax, survey, and national accounts data to estimate the distribution of national income in the United States since 1913. Our distributional national accounts capture 100% of national income, allowing us to compute growth rates for each quantile of the income distribution consistent with macroeconomic growth. We estimate the distribution of both pre-tax and post-tax income, making it possible to provide a comprehensive view of how government redistribution affects inequality. Average pre-tax national income per adult has increased 60% since 1980, but we find that it has stagnated for the bottom 50% of the distribution at about $16,000 a year. The pre-tax income of the middle class—adults between the median and the 90th percentile—has grown 40% since 1980, faster than what tax and survey data suggest, due in particular to the rise of tax-exempt fringe benefits. Income has boomed at the top: in 1980, top 1% adults earned on average 27 times more than bottom 50% adults, while they earn 81 times more today. The upsurge of top incomes was first a labor income phenomenon but has mostly been a capital income phenomenon since 2000. The government has offset only a small fraction of the increase in inequality. The reduction of the gender gap in earnings has mitigated the increase in inequality among adults. The share of women, however, falls steeply as one moves up the labor income distribution, and is only 11% in the top 0.1% today.


Nowadays a more and more tightly integrated world generally favors the spread of English. Academics all over the world are concerned about the problem of English infiltration and anxious about its consequences, for lexical borrowing is said to be the first sign of language shift and extinction. In China such sentiments and fears are usually demonstrated in language planning programs. The Chinese language has a tradition of purism due to its long history. This paper focuses on the tradition of linguistic purism in lexical borrowing in the Chinese language as well as language planning and language policy towards the infiltration of English words into the Chinese language.


A profile is a vector of scores for one examinee. The mean score in the vector can be interpreted as a measure of overall profile height, the variance can be interpreted as a measure of within person variation, and the ipsatized vector of score deviations about the mean can be said to describe the pattern in the score profile. A within person pattern interpretation of orthogonal factor loadings is developed. A statistic is proposed to index the amount of within person variation accounted for by an orthogonal factor. The statistic can be used to determine whether a factor warrants a within person pattern interpretation. A factor model with a random coefficient intercept is proposed for the study of within person score patterns accounting for within person variation. Two examples, one involving items from the Life Orientation Test and the other involving subscales of the Strong Vocational Interest Inventory, illustrate application of the factor model with an intercept, the within person variation statistic, and the profile pattern interpretation of factor loadings. With empirical support from the examples, it is conjectured that theoretically important traits often manifest themselves through within person score patterns.


Improving project performance by means of ensuring successful management, development and delivery of Information Technology / Information System (IT/IS) projects remains the top priority of most organisations and project communities. As a way of addressing this, Project Management Methodologies (PMMs) are regularly employed with the aim of increasing project efficiency and effectiveness. Public and private sector organisations worldwide invest significant resources into efforts ranging from a review and tailoring of the current practices to the adoption or development of a new PMM. However, despite these efforts, the contribution of these methodologies towards improving project performance and increasing successful delivery of IT/IS projects has rarely been examined or articulated. With a plentiful variety of PMMs and approaches (Traditional, Structured, and Agile) promoted as "must have" and "must do", each claiming to be "the way to success" there is limited empirically underpinned research fathoming the role which PMMs play towards successful management of IT/IS projects.
The aim of this research is therefore to gain a deeper understanding of the selection and usage of PMMs in practice. This study looks beyond evaluating PMMs purely based on their traits and characteristics and investigates PMMs in their operational context: where PMMs originate from, how they support practitioners and why their implementation can cause difficulties that impact on project management, and hence ultimately influence performance in ways that can support or jeopardise project success. Through first-hand investigation of PMMs in use in their business context this study obtains a firm grasp of how PMMs ultimately facilitate or impede IT/IS project management. The research paradigm is phenomenological with the purpose of study being exploratory. An inductive approach and reasoning is employed given the scarcity of other research on this complex subject. No pre-conceived hypothesis or conceptual models were used although the research questions were validated and fully informed by the existing literature. The investigation, data organisation and data analysis were organised around the research questions. The research strategy employed is that of a multiple case study approach focusing on PMMs as the unit of investigation. Four case studies spanning disciplines, project contexts and types of PMM provide anchorage into front-line management of IT/IS projects. Case One focused on PRINCE2, a widely used structured PMM. Case Two concerned an in-house structured PMM. Case Three employed a gate-phased PMM. Case Four hosted a gate-phased PMM in the process of being phased out and replaced by agile approaches.
Data was collected through semi-structured interviews. Practitioners were interviewed (48), each being in different roles with varied levels of accountability in design, development and management of projects. Some of these practitioners were key decision makers of PMM development and application. The collected data was qualitative. A combination of interpretative and content analysis was employed using a general inductive approach for qualitative data analysis. A transparent step-by-step approach to data organisation and categorisation was established. The data analysis was strongly informed by the existing research and literature. All these steps sustained the dependability and conformability of research with the research methodology and against the literature background.
Overall, this research demonstrates that top-down selection and implementation of PMMs leads to four primary findings, which contribute to our understanding of the role of PMMs in the management of IT/IS projects. 1) Type-agnostic, context-free application of PMMs occurs with insufficient consideration given to IT/IS specific traits and characteristics, which in turn impedes management of projects. 2) Misalignment arises between the intended benefit of PMMs at the strategic level and the reported benefits by project managers at the project level. Additionally practitioners" expertise, accountability and attitude all have a direct influence on the extent to which PMMs contribute and benefit management of projects. 3) Reliance is placed on project managers to tailor the PMMs at the project level. Subsequently, informal tailoring at the project level often results in their inconsistent application. 4) In the case studies examined the organisations" definition of project success was predominantly efficiency-oriented (time and cost) underplaying effectiveness and business benefit. Hence the definition of project success shapes the selection and usage of PMMs. Findings 2 and 3 are new and original contributions to knowledge, whilst findings 1 and 4 provide further empirical evidence in extending our understanding of this subject.


Soldiers who play video games to varying degrees were solicited to fill out a survey on dreams and gaming. A prescreening filtered out those who were not soldiers, who did not game and who were suffering from various psychological problems in the last six months. The remaining soldiers filled out these inventories; general and military demographics, history of video game play, Emotional Reactivity and Numbing Scale (ERNS), and a Trauma Inventory. They were then asked to provide two dreams, one recent and one that was impactful from their military service. Following the military dream they filled out Impactful Dreams Questionnaire (IDQ) about that dream only. Dream content analysis was conducted using threat simulation, war content and lucid/control/gaming content. High and low end frequency gamer groups were identified and compared on these dream content scales. Because the nightmare literature shows that affect load and distress are predictors of nightmare suffering. ERNS and Trauma history were covariates in the ANCOVA's on gamer group x dream type. It was found that the high end gaming group exhibited less threat and war content in their military dreams than the low end group.


Contents Foreword Demetrios G. Papademetriou / Kathleen Newland (MPI) Part I: Talent Abroad and Institutional Dynamics at Home: Conceptual Issues 1. Introduction and Overview, Yevgeny Kuznetsov (World Bank) 2. Passions Fuelling Interests: Unraveling Motivation of Diaspora Entrepreneurs Jennifer Brinkerhoff (George Washington University) Part II: Global Search for Local Solutions: Role of Diasporas 3. Diaspora Elites Supporting India's Institutional Development: Responding to Big Challenges in Infrastructure and Public Service Provision Devesh Kapur (University of Pennsylvania) 4. Africa's Talent Abroad Supporting Institutional Development in Africa Tanja Faller (African Development Bank) 5. Tacit Skills Formation and Labor Market Incorporation of Mexican Immigrants in the United States Natasha Iskander (New York University, USA) and Nichola Lowe (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA) 6. Diasporas as Part of the Country: Skills Abroad for Reform Dynamics at Home Yevgeny Kuznetsov Part III: Expatriate Talent and Transformation of Innovation Systems at Home 7. Mexico and Argentina: Diaspora Search Networks Interacting with Home Countries - Contrasts and Similarities Ezequiel Tacsir (Inter-American Development Bank), Adolfo Nemirovsky (World Bank), and Gabriel Yoguel (General Sarmiento National University, Buenos Aires) 8. Russia's Technological Diaspora: How to Make It Count in the Transformation of Innovation Systems Lev Freinkman (World Bank), Ksenia Gonchar (National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia), and Yevgeny Kuznetsov 9. South Korea: Strong State, Large Diaspora, Weak Search Networks Jeong-Hyop Lee (STEPI), AnnaLee Saxenian (University of California-Berkeley, USA) Part IV: Implications for Institutional Development and Design of Diaspora Initiatives 10. Principles and Lessons of Institutional Design of a New Generation of Diaspora Initiatives Yevgeny Kuznetsov 11. Diaspora for Development: In Search of a New Generation of Diaspora Strategies Mark Boyle and Rob Kitchin (National University of Ireland-Maynooth)


Qualitative data from a larger study on the impact of parental imprisonment in four countries found that children of prisoners face fundamentally similar psychological and social challenges. The ways that children cope, however, are influenced by the interpretative frame adopted by the adults around them, and by how issues of parental imprisonment are talked about in their families. This article argues that families have to reappraise their view of the imprisoned parent and then decide on their policy for how to deal with this publicly. Their approach may be based on openness and honesty or may emphasise privacy and secrecy, or a combination of these. Children are likely to be influenced by their parents'/carers' views, although these may cause conflict for them. Where parents/carers retain a positive view of the imprisoned parent, children are likely to benefit; where parents/carers feel issues of shame and stigma acutely, this is likely to be transmitted to their children. This is important for social workers and practitioners involved in supporting prisoners' families and for parenting programmes.


We consider constraint-based methods for causal structure learning, such as the PC-, FCI-, RFCI- and CCD- algorithms (Spirtes et al., 1993, 2000; Richardson, 1996; Colombo et al., 2012; Claassen et al., 2013). The first step of all these algorithms consists of the adjacency search of the PC-algorithm. The PC-algorithm is known to be order-dependent, in the sense that the output can depend on the order in which the variables are given. This order-dependence is a minor issue in low-dimensional settings. We show, however, that it can be very pronounced in high-dimensional settings, where it can lead to highly variable results. We propose several modifications of the PC-algorithm (and hence also of the other algorithms) that remove part or all of this order-dependence. All proposed modifications are consistent in high-dimensional settings under the same conditions as their original counterparts. We compare the PC-, FCI-, and RFCI-algorithms and their modifications in simulation studies and on a yeast gene expression data set. We show that our modifications yield similar performance in low-dimensional settings and improved performance in high-dimensional settings. All software is implemented in the R-package pcalg.


It is now well established that the device scaling predicted by Moore's Law is no longer a viable option for increasing the clock frequency of future uniprocessor systems at the rate that had been sustained during the last two decades. As a result, future systems are rapidly moving from uniprocessor to multiprocessor configurations, so as to use parallelism instead of frequency scaling as the foundation for increased compute capacity. The dominant emerging multiprocessor structure for the future is a Non-Uniform Cluster Computing (NUCC) system with nodes that are built out of multi-core SMP chips with non-uniform memory hierarchies, and interconnected in horizontally scalable cluster configurations such as blade servers. Unlike previous generations of hardware evolution, this shift will have a major impact on existing software. Current OO language facilities for concurrent and distributed programming are inadequate for addressing the needs of NUCC systems because they do not support the notions of non-uniform data access within a node, or of tight coupling of distributed nodes.We have designed a modern object-oriented programming language, X10, for high performance, high productivity programming of NUCC systems. A member of the partitioned global address space family of languages, X10 highlights the explicit reification of locality in the form of places}; lightweight activities embodied in async, future, foreach, and ateach constructs; a construct for termination detection (finish); the use of lock-free synchronization (atomic blocks); and the manipulation of cluster-wide global data structures. We present an overview of the X10 programming model and language, experience with our reference implementation, and results from some initial productivity comparisons between the X10 and Java™ languages.


Most research on adaptive decision-making takes a strategy-first approach, proposing a method of solving a problem and then examining whether it can be implemented in the brain and in what environments it succeeds. We present a method for studying strategy development based on computational evolution that takes the opposite approach, allowing strategies to develop in response to the decision-making environment via Darwinian evolution. We apply this approach to a dynamic decision-making problem where artificial agents make decisions about the source of incoming information. In doing so, we show that the complexity of the brains and strategies of evolved agents are a function of the environment in which they develop. More difficult environments lead to larger brains and more information use, resulting in strategies resembling a sequential sampling approach. Less difficult environments drive evolution toward smaller brains and less information use, resulting in simpler heuristic-like strategies.


"Research indicates that low income, minorities are at increased risk for poor dietary behaviors leading to weight gain and poor overall health status. A secondary data analysis of the 1999-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey was conducted to identify associations between food security status, income level, and ethnicity identification and weight status, dietary quality, and dietary behaviors. The sample included US-born Non-Hispanic White (NHW), Non-Hispanic Black (NHB) and Mexican Americans (MA) aged 20-85 years. Bivariate analyses indicated that while low income individuals and NHB were significantly more likely to be obese than NHW and MA, the overall diet quality among the three groups was not significantly different. However, statistically significant differences for specific dietary behaviors were found. NHW reported higher consumption of milk, NHB reported higher consumption of dark green vegetables, and MA reported higher consumption of dried beans and peas. These results suggest that both income and ethnicity should be considered when addressing nutrition interventions."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.


In light of the increasingly blurred line between mediated and nonmediated contexts for social, professional, and educational purposes, attention to the presence and use of innovative digital media is critical to the consideration of the future of computer-assisted language learning (CALL). This article reviews current trends in the use of mediated communication and offers a vision for near-future second and foreign language (L2) learning that utilizes emerging media as (a) meaningful contexts for L2 language development and (b) a means for adding real world relevance to in-class uses of internet-mediated communication tools. In this article, we first explore a sampling of Web 2.0 technologies (e.g., blogs, wikis, and social bookmarking) related to collaborative content building and dissemination of information. We then consider three types of 3-dimensional virtual environments, including open social virtualities (such as Second Life and There), massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) (e.g., World of Warcraft, Everquest, and Eve Online), and synthetic immersive environments (SIEs, i.e., visually rendered spaces which combine aspects of open social virtualities with goal-directed gaming models to address specific learning objectives). In particular, we report on SIEs as they might be used to foster interlanguage pragmatic development and briefly report on an existing project in this area. The ultimate goal is to spark future research and pedagogical innovation in these areas of emerging digital media in order to arrive at a greater understanding of the complexities involved in their integration with language learning in ways that will be most relevant to the communicative contexts of the 21st century.


Abstract Background Microseminoprotein-beta (MSP), a protein secreted by the prostate epithelium, may have a protective role in the development of prostate cancer. The only previous prospective study found a 2% reduced prostate cancer risk per unit increase in MSP. This work investigates the association of MSP with prostate cancer risk using observational and Mendelian randomization (MR) methods. Patients and methods A nested case–control study was conducted with the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) with 1871 cases and 1871 matched controls. Conditional logistic regression analysis was used to investigate the association of pre-diagnostic circulating MSP with risk of incident prostate cancer overall and by tumour subtype. EPIC-derived estimates were combined with published data to calculate an MR estimate using two-sample inverse-variance method. Results Plasma MSP concentrations were inversely associated with prostate cancer risk after adjusting for total prostate-specific antigen concentration [odds ratio (OR) highest versus lowest fourth of MSP = 0.65, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.51–0.84, Ptrend = 0.001]. No heterogeneity in this association was observed by tumour stage or histological grade. Plasma MSP concentrations were 66% lower in rs10993994 TT compared with CC homozygotes (per allele difference in MSP: 6.09 ng/ml, 95% CI 5.56–6.61, r2=0.42). MR analyses supported a potentially causal protective association of MSP with prostate cancer risk (OR per 1 ng/ml increase in MSP for MR: 0.96, 95% CI 0.95–0.97 versus EPIC observational: 0.98, 95% CI 0.97–0.99). Limitations include lack of complete tumour subtype information and more complete information on the biological function of MSP. Conclusions In this large prospective European study and using MR analyses, men with high circulating MSP concentration have a lower risk of prostate cancer. MSP may play a causally protective role in prostate cancer.


Up to three-fourths of college students can be classified as "nontraditional," yet whether typical policy interventions improve their education and labor market outcomes is understudied. I use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impacts of a state financial aid program aimed towards nontraditional students. Eligibility has no impacts on degree completion for students intending to enroll in community colleges or four-year colleges but increases bachelor's degrees for students interested in large, for-profit colleges by four percentage points. I find no impacts on employment or earnings for all applicants. This research highlights challenges in promoting human capital investment for adults..