Modern parallel computing techniques are subject to poor scalability. Their performance tends to suffer diminishing returns and even losses with increasing parallelism. Some methods of intelligent computing, such as neural networks and genetic algorithms, lend themselves well to massively parallel systems but come with other drawbacks that can limit their usefulness such as the requirement of a training phase and/or sensitivity to randomness. This thesis investigates the feasibility of a novel method of intelligent parallel computing by implementing a true multiple instruction stream, single data stream (MISD) computing system that is theoretically nearly perfectly scalable. Computational dreaming (CD) is inspired by the structure and dreaming process of the human brain. It examines previously observed input data during a "dream phase" and is able to develop and select a simplified model to use during the day phase of computation. Using mazes as an example problem space, a CD simulator is developed and successfully used to demonstrate the viability and robustness of CD. Experiments that focused on CD viability resulted in the CD system solving 15% of mazes (ranging from small and simple to large and complex) compared with 2.2% solved by random model selection. Results also showed that approximately 50% of successful solutions generated match up with those that would be generated by algorithms such as depth first search and Dijkstra's algorithm. Experiments focusing on robustness performed repeated trials with identical parameters. Results demonstrated that CD is capable of achieving this result consistently, solving over 32% of mazes across 10 trials compared to only 3.6% solved by random model selection. A significant finding is that CD does not get stuck on local minima, always converging on a solution model. Thus, CD has the potential to enable significant contributions to computing by potentially finding elegant solutions to, for example, NP-hard or previously intractable problems.


This study used narrative inquiry as a methodology to explore the lived experiences of five African American women in science across the academic spectrum, from doctoral candidate to full professor. The research questions guiding the inquiry included one overarching question and three sub-questions: What are the lifestories of successful African American women in science?; a) How do successful African American women in science define themselves?; b) What have been the facilitators and barriers encountered by successful African American women in science?; and c) What have been the systems of support for African American women in science? The study was theoretically positioned within the frameworks of Critical Race Theory and Black Feminist Thought. The two theories were used to guide all aspects of the study including methodology, data collection, and analysis. Data included eleven 40-60 minute semi-structured interview transcripts as well as the participants' Curriculum Vitae. The study design and data analysis were built upon Clandinin and Connelly's (2000) and Clandinin's (2006) model of narrative inquiry which explores narratives as a means to understand experience. Analysis and interpretation created three dominant narratives: Scientific Beginnings, An Unexpected Journey, and Lift as You Climb. Each narrative set explores multiple stories that describe storylines which aligned with the participants' goals of who they were and who they were becoming as scientists; and, storylines of tension which ran counter to the women's goals and aspirations. Barriers and support systems are revealed, as well as the meanings the participants made of their experiences and how it affected their lives.


Many Americans are using herbal supplements without telling their primary care providers. When a person is taking warfarin, a medication that has a narrow therapeutic window and the potential for interaction with many substances, including food, medications, and supplements, providers must inform them of the risks. A literature review was done to find current literature related to warfarin and herbal interactions. Limited quality data is available, with most literature found being case reports, and small population studies. A patient teaching pamphlet was created and tested using a pretest/posttest in a convenience sample of 18 patients that use warfarin at an internal medicine clinic in Northern Wyoming. The results showed improvement in posttest scores in 17 of 18 participants. Mean improvement was 10.9%. Providers should include herbal supplements in routine medication history. Providers should teach all patients using warfarin about potential interactions with herbal supplements and about the need to inform their provider about supplements. Lack of standardization of herbal supplements makes it difficult to research the risks and benefits as well as potential interactions. More research is needed to determine risks.


As Linux clusters have matured as platforms for low-cost, high-performance parallel computing, software packages to provide many key services have emerged, especially in areas such as message passing and networking. One area devoid of support, however, has been parallel file systems, which are critical for high-performance I/O on such clusters. We have developed a parallel file system for Linux clusters, called the Parallel Virtual File System (PVFS). PVFS is intended both as a high-performance parallel file system that anyone can download and use and as a tool for pursuing further research in parallel I/O and parallel file systems for Linux clusters.

In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of PVFS and present performance results on the Chiba City cluster at Argonne. We provide performance results for a workload of concurrent reads and writes for various numbers of compute nodes, I/O nodes, and I/O request sizes. We also present performance results for MPI-IO on PVFS, both for a concurrent read/write workload and for the BTIO benchmark. We compare the I/O performance when using a Myrinet network versus a fast-ethernet network for I/O-related communication in PVFS. We obtained read and write bandwidths as high as 700 Mbytes/sec with Myrinet and 225 Mbytes/sec with fast ethernet.


When cloud layers cover photovoltaic (PV) panels, the amount of power the panels produce fluctuates rapidly. Therefore, to maintain enough energy on a power grid to match demand, utilities companies rely on reserve power sources that typically come from fossil fuels and therefore pollute the environment. Accurate short-term PV power prediction enables operators to maximize the amount of power obtained from PV panels and safely reduce the reserve energy needed from fossil fuel sources. While several studies have developed machine learning models to predict solar irradiance at specific PV generation facilities, little work has been done to model short-term solar irradiance on a global scale. Furthermore, models that have been developed are proprietary and have architectures that are not publicly available or rely on computationally demanding Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models. Here, we propose a Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory Network model that treats solar nowcasting as a next frame prediction problem, is more efficient than NWP models and has a straightforward, reproducible architecture. Our models can predict solar irradiance for entire North America for up to 3 hours in under 60 seconds on a single machine without a GPU and has a RMSE of 120 W/m2 when evaluated on 2 months of data.


Injection drug use (involving the injection of illicit opiates) poses serious public health problems in many countries. Research has indicated that injection drug users are at higher risk for morbidity in the form of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B and C, and drug-related mortality, as well as increased criminal activity. Methadone maintenance treatment is the most prominent form of pharmacotherapy treatment for illicit opiate dependence in several countries, and its application varies internationally with respect to treatment regulations and delivery modes. In order to effectively treat those patients who have previously been resistant to methadone maintenance treatment, several countries have been studying and/or considering heroin-assisted treatment as a complementary form of opiate pharmacotherapy treatment. This paper provides an overview of the prevalence of injection drug use and the opiate dependence problem internationally, the current opiate dependence treatment landscape in several countries, and the status of ongoing or planned heroin-assisted treatment trials in Australia, Canada and certain European countries.


The collection of articles in this Special Feature is part of a larger project on "Forecasting Societies' Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change" (an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council to Wolfgang Lutz). In investigating how global change will affect population vulnerability to climate variability and extremes, the project aims to help develop strategies that enable societies to better cope with the consequences of climate change. In doing so, the basic hypothesis being tested is that societies can develop the most effective long-term defense against the dangers of climate change by strengthening human capacity, primarily through education. Education can directly influence risk perception, skills and knowledge and indirectly reduce poverty, improve health and promote access to information and resources. Hence, when facing natural hazards or climate risks, educated individuals, households and societies are assumed to be more empowered and more adaptive in their response to, preparation for, and recovery from disasters. Indeed the findings from eleven original empirical studies set in diverse geographic, socioeconomic, cultural and hazard contexts provide consistent and robust evidence on the positive impact of formal education on vulnerability reduction. Highly educated individuals and societies are reported to have better preparedness and response to the disasters, suffered lower negative impacts, and are able to recover faster. This suggests that public investment in empowering people and enhancing human capacity through education can have a positive externality in reducing vulnerability and strengthening adaptive capacity amidst the challenges of a changing climate.


It has been shown that the combination of benzylamine or tyramine and low concentrations of vanadate markedly stimulates glucose transport in rat adipocytes by a mechanism that requires semicarbazide-sensitive amine oxidase (SSAO) activity and H(2)O(2) formation. Here we have further analysed the insulin-like effects of the combination of SSAO substrates and vanadate and we have studied the signal-transduction pathway activated in rat adipocytes. We found that several SSAO substrates (benzylamine, tyramine, methylamine, n-decylamine, histamine, tryptamine or beta-phenylethylamine), in combination with low concentrations of vanadate, stimulate glucose transport in isolated rat adipocytes. Furthermore, SSAO substrates together with vanadate stimulated the recruitment of GLUT4 to the cell surface in isolated rat adipocytes. Benzylamine plus vanadate also stimulated glucose transport and GLUT4 translocation in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Benzylamine or tyramine in combination with vanadate potently stimulated the tyrosine phosphorylation of both insulin receptor substrate (IRS)-1 and IRS-3. In contrast, benzylamine and vanadate caused only a weak stimulation of insulin receptor kinase. Benzylamine or tyramine in combination with vanadate also stimulated phosphoinositide 3-kinase activity; wortmannin abolished the stimulatory effect of benzylamine and vanadate on glucose transport in adipose cells. Furthermore, the administration of benzylamine and vanadate in vivo caused a rapid lowering of plasma glucose levels, which took place in the absence of alterations in plasma insulin. On the basis of these results we propose that SSAO activity regulates glucose transport in adipocytes. SSAO oxidative activity stimulates glucose transport via the translocation of GLUT4 carriers to the cell surface, resulting from a potent tyrosine phosphorylation of IRS-1 and IRS-3 and phosphoinositide 3-kinase activation. Our results also indicate that substrates of SSAO might regulate glucose disposal in vivo.


The analysis of animal movement is a large and continuously growing field of research. Detailed knowledge about movement strategies is of crucial importance for understanding eco-evolutionary dynamics at all scales – from individuals to (meta-)populations. This and the availability of detailed movement and dispersal data motivated Nathan and colleagues to published their much appreciated call to base movement ecology on a more thorough mechanistic basis. So far, most movement models are based on random walks. However, even if a random walk might describe real movement patterns acceptably well, there is no reason to assume that animals move randomly. Therefore, mechanistic models of foraging strategies should be based on information use and memory in order to increase our understanding of the processes that lead to animal movement decisions.

We present a mechanistic movement model of an animal with a limited perceptual range and basic information storage capacities. This 'spatially informed forager' constructs an internal map of its environment by using perception, memory and learned or evolutionarily acquired assumptions about landscape attributes. We analyse resulting movement patterns and search efficiencies and compare them to area restricted search strategies (ARS) and biased correlated random walks (BCRW) of omniscient individuals.

We show that, in spite of their limited perceptual range, spatially informed individuals boost their foraging success and may perform much better than the best ARS. The construction of an internal map and the use of spatial information results in the emergence of a highly correlated walk between patches and a rather systematic search within resource clusters. Furthermore, the resulting movement patterns may include foray search behaviour. Our work highlights the strength of mechanistic modelling approaches and sets the stage for the development of more sophisticated models of memory use for movement decisions and dispersal.


A long-term goal of vertebrate biostratigraphers is to construct a microvertebrate biostratigraphy for lower Mesozoic rocks that complements and extends the mammal-based biostratigraphy in place for Upper Cretaceous-Recent deposits. Here we report substantial progress toward achieving this goal based on the distribution of microvertebrate fossils in the Upper Triassic Chinle Group of the western USA. This biostratigraphic hypothesis independently corroborates the existing macrovertebrate biostratigraphy, recognizing four temporally successive assemblages—the Otischalkian, Adamanian, Revueltian, and Apachean, with subdivisions of the Adamanian (St. Johnsian and Lamyan) and Revueltian (Barrancan and Lucianoan). Many microvertebrate taxa, unfortunately, have long stratigraphic ranges and thus, while widespread and easily recognized, are not reliable index fossils. These taxa include the chondrichthyans Lissodus and Reticulodus synergus, most lepidosauromorphs(including sphenodontians), and various microvertebrate archosauromorphs. However, other taxa have relatively short stratigraphic ranges and occur in multiple localities and thus have some utility as index taxa. Adamanian index taxa include the procolophonid(?) Colognathus obscurus and the putative ornithischians Tecovasaurus murryi, Crosbysaurus harrisae and Krzyzanowskisaurus hunti. Revueltian index taxa include the chondrichthyan Reticulodus synergus, the crurotarsan Revueltosaurus callenderi and the cynodont Pseudotriconodon chatterjeei. Sphenodontian taxa appear to have relatively little utility as biostratigraphic markers at this time scale, although similar forms cooccur at the Placerias quarry in Arizona and correlative strata in the Tecovas Formation of West Texas. The best candidates for index taxa are those that, like therian mammals, have complex teeth and thus are identifiable to the genus or species level based on isolated teeth or tooth fragments. Many of these taxa are rare in the macrovertebrate record but common in some microvertebrate assemblages.


Tropical forests are being cleared at an alarming rate although our understanding of their ecology is limited. It is therefore essential to design restoration experiments that both further our basic knowledge of tropical ecology and inform management strategies to facilitate recovery of these ecosystems. Here we synthesize the results of research on tropical montane forest recovery in abandoned pasture in Costa Rica to address the following questions: (1) What factors limit tropical forest recovery in abandoned pasture? and (2) How can we use this information to design strategies to facilitate ecosystem recovery? Our results indicate that a number of factors impede tropical forest recovery in abandoned pasture land. The most important barriers are lack of dispersal of forest seeds and seedling competition with pasture grasses. High seed predation, low seed germination, lack of nutrients, high light intensity, and rabbit herbivory also affect recovery. Successful strategies to facilitate recovery in abandoned pastures must simultaneously overcome numerous obstacles. Our research shows that establishment of woody species, either native tree seedlings or early‐successional shrubs, can be successful in facilitating recovery, by enhancing seed dispersal and shading out pasture grasses. On the contrary, bird perching structures alone are not an effective strategy, because they only serve to enhance seed dispersal but do not reduce grass cover. Remnant pasture trees can serve as foci of natural recovery and may enhance growth of planted seedlings. Our results highlight the importance of: (1) understanding the basic biology of an ecosystem to design effective restoration strategies; (2) comparing results across a range of sites to determine which restoration strategies are most generally useful; and (3) considering where best to allocate efforts in large‐scale restoration projects.


A stratospheric trace species measurement concept is presented which utilizes tunable infrared diode lasers as sources for sensitive in situ absorption spectroscopy in selected wavelength regions. As an embodiment of this concept, the Balloon-Borne Laser In Situ Sensor (BLISS) is a high-resolution absorption spectrometer designed to provide measurements of the concentrations of stratospheric species and their diurnal variations. The instrument uses second-harmonic detection of the absorption of tunable diode laser (TDL) radiation (3–30 μm) in a 1-km path length defined by a retroreflector lowered 0.5 km below the BLISS gondola. A He–Ne laser and co-aligned TV camera with CID imaging are used for retroreflector tracking under microprocessor control. Four TDLs will provide simultaneous measurements of molecular species in the 20–40-km altitude range, the predicted minimum-detectable mixing ratio at 30 km being typically ≤0.1 ppbv.


Essential Pharmacokinetics: A Primer for Pharmaceutical Scientists is an introduction to the concepts of pharmacokinetics intended for graduate students and new researchers working in the pharmaceutical sciences. This book describes the mathematics used in the mammillary model as well as the application of pharmacokinetics to pharmaceutical product development, and is useful as both a self-study and classroom resource. Content coverage includes detailed discussions of common models and important pharmacokinetic concepts such as biological half-life, clearance, excretion, multiple dosage regimens and more. Numerous equations, practical examples and figures are incorporated to clearly illustrate the theoretical background of pharmacokinetic behavior of drugs and excipients. * Shows how to apply basic pharmacokinetic methods to evaluate drugs, excipients and drug products* Uses guided practice questions, mathematical concepts and real-world examples for self-assessment and retention purposes* Illustrates how to write and evaluate drug registration files


TPL-2 (COT, MAP3K8) kinase activates the MEK1/2-ERK1/2 MAPK signaling pathway in innate immune responses following TLR, TNFR1 and IL-1R stimulation. TPL-2 contributes to type-1/Th17-mediated autoimmunity and control of intracellular pathogens. We recently demonstrated TPL-2 reduces severe airway allergy to house dust mite by negatively regulating type-2 responses. In the present study, we found that TPL-2 deficiency resulted in resistance to Heligmosomoides polygyrus infection, with accelerated worm expulsion, reduced fecal egg burden and reduced worm fitness. Using co-housing experiments, we found resistance to infection in TPL-2 deficient mice (Map3k8–/–) was independent of microbiota alterations in H. polygyrus infected WT and Map3k8–/–mice. Additionally, our data demonstrated immunity to H. polygyrus infection in TPL-2 deficient mice was not due to dysregulated type-2 immune responses. Genome-wide analysis of intestinal tissue from infected TPL-2-deficient mice identified elevated expression of genes involved in chemotaxis and homing of leukocytes and cells, including Ccl24 and alternatively activated genes. Indeed, Map3k8–/–mice had a significant influx of eosinophils, neutrophils, monocytes and Il4GFP+ T cells. Conditional knockout experiments demonstrated that specific deletion of TPL-2 in CD11c+ cells, but not Villin+ epithelial cells, LysM+ myeloid cells or CD4+ T cells, led to accelerated resistance to H. polygyrus. In line with a central role of CD11c+ cells, CD11c+ CD11b+ cells isolated from TPL-2-deficient mice had elevated Ccl24. Finally, Ccl24 neutralization in TPL-2 deficient mice significantly decreased the expression of Arg1, Retnla, Chil3 and Ear11 correlating with a loss of resistance to H. polygyrus. These observations suggest that TPL-2-regulated Ccl24 in CD11c+CD11b+ cells prevents accelerated type-2 mediated immunity to H. polygyrus. Collectively, this study identifies a previously unappreciated role for TPL-2 controlling immune responses to H. polygyrus infection by restricting Ccl24 production.


In the eastern Mediterranean, plate motions occur between the Arabia/Anatolia, Africa/Arabia and Anatolia/Africa boundaries along the Amanos Fault, the Dead Sea Fault and the Cyprus Arc, and the extension of the latter on land. Detailed enhancement and classification procedures applied to SPOT XS imagery of the Hatay region, and centred on the Quaternary Amik Basin, have revealed a prominent NE–SW-trending tectonic lineament. Recent seismicity suggests that this NE–SW-trending lineament dies out in the Quaternary Amik Basin in the east and continues to the Cyprus Arc to the south-west. Structural lineament extensions derived from SPOT XS imagery using linear edge enhancement and unsupervised classification methods and the distribution of seismicity in the Hatay region show that this region has been affected by the East Anatolian Fault Zone, the Dead Sea Fault Zone and the Cyprus–Antakya Transform fault. These fault associations accommodate northerly movement of the African and Arabian plates toward the Eurasian plate. The Amik Basin appears to have been formed by interaction among the Amanos Fault interpreted here as a continuation of the East Anatolian Fault the left-lateral Dead Sea Fault, and the left-lateral Cyprus–Antakya transform fault. Active faults belonging to the aforementioned structural zones meet one another to form a triple junction at the Amik Basin near Antakya.


We have characterized a far-red-light response that induces a novel pathway for plastid development in Arabidopsis seedlings. This response results in the inability of cotyledons to green upon subsequent white light illumination, and the response is suppressed by exogenous sucrose. Studies with mutants showed that this far-red block of greening is phytochrome A dependent and requires an intact downstream signaling pathway in which FHY1 and FHY3 may be components but in which HY5 is not. This highlights a previously undefined branchpoint in the phytochrome signaling pathway. Ultrastructural analysis showed that the far-red block correlates with both the failure of plastids to accumulate prolamellar bodies and the formation of vesicles in the stroma. We present evidence that the far-red block of greening is the result of severe repression of protochlorophyllide reductase (POR) genes by far-red light coupled with irreversible plastid damage. This results in the temporal separation of phytochrome-mediated POR; repression from light-dependent protochlorophyllide reduction, two processes that normally occur in coordination in white light.


We study consumer inertia in the mobile subscription market, focusing on the decision of whether to switch to a competing provider. To identify the extent of inertia, we exploit price changes faced by 270,000 consumers of a large telecom provider. We document that the propensity to switch provider after the price change increases among consumers whose costs decrease with the new prices. Furthermore, we find that the increase is largest right after consumers are informed of the upcoming change—during the two months prior to the tariff change—as opposed to when the price change is implemented. From these findings, we infer what we call a poking effect; the information of an upcoming price change causes consumers to engage in searches for alternative offers, leading to increased switching. We supplement the analysis with a survey and find indications that the poking effect is due to consumer inattention. To separate the effect on attention from the reaction to the actual price change, we estimate a model of consumer choice with limited attention. We find that when consumers are poked, it increases the share of consumers becoming attentive to competing offers. This leads many consumers to switch providers earlier than they would otherwise, explaining why they leave even though their terms with their current company improve.


The paper examined the effect of audit fee, client retention, market expansion drives in small and medium-sized audit firms on audit quality, and the long run relationship. The study was conducted against the background of the empirical evidence in the literature that audit firm size and audit fee are key determinants of audit quality. The study obtained data through a structured questionnaire administered to panel of small and medium-sized audit firms in Nigeria. The data so obtained was analyzed using the E. View econometric software. It was observed that audit fee and market expansion drives impact positively on audit quality amongst this category of firms, while client retention strategies impacts negatively on audit quality in the short run. However in the long run, it was observed that all three variables impact positively on standard audit practice, as the need to retain clients becomes dependent upon on a firm's capacity for improved client satisfaction via the quality of audit services rendered. Thus, it is evident that the impact of the variables interrogated in this current study on audit quality is not audit firm size dependent. Therefore the paper recommends the need for small and medium-sized audit firms to strive to offer competitive services that are in tune with global best practices and in conformity with International Auditing Standards (IAS) to enhance their growth. This would enhance their continuous relevance in the emerging and expanding audit market in Nigeria.


Clients with diminished capacity due to disability are entitled to the same competent and diligent representation from their lawyers as are all clients. They have a right to confidentiality in communication and a right to the independent judgment of their lawyers. When a client's decision-making capacity is impaired by a disability, however, it may be more difficult for the lawyer to ensure these rights or to maintain a conventional lawyer-client relationship. A lawyer representing a client with questionable capacity may be faced with ethical questions: When, if at all, should the lawyer substitute his or her judgment for that of an incapacitated or questionably capacitated client? To whom should the lawyer look for decision-making assistance when a client is impaired? May a lawyer seek assistance from the client's family, other third parties or the courts without violating the duty of confidentiality to the client? Finally, is it legally or ethically permissible for a lawyer to refuse to represent a client with a disability or to withdraw from representation if a client becomes disabled? This chapter in the New York State Bar Association forthcoming publication, REPRESENTING PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES, focuses on some of the issues a lawyer may encounter in representing clients with diminished capacity, and examines the ways in which these issues are addressed in New York under the New York Rules of Professional Conduct and other ethical guidance.


Regardless of whether or not the Kyoto Protocol enters into force, the EU may decide to set itself a long-term greenhouse gas emission target and thus to continue its leadership role in international climate policy. As for the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, the EU may decide on a burden-sharing agreement as an integral part of such a long-term climate policy. Against this background I analyse three different options to distribute an overall budget of emission entitlements until 2042 among the member states of an enlarged EU. It is shown who wins and who loses with regard to compliance costs. As the member states' attitudes towards the different approaches are likely to depend on the relative attractiveness of the allocation options, a relevance threshold is introduced which may help to predict and understand the complexity of future climate negotiations in Europe.


Traditionally a great deal of learning from sport development never gets acted upon or passed outside local areas. The North East PEACE III Sports and Leisure for Peace Building Programme set out to address this issue.Many of the participants who delivered sport and good relations activities during this programme reported back to The Sports Academy at the University of Ulster in March 2011. The result is the creation of this workbook which highlights and documents the learning that took place throughout the programme. The workbook can help community organisations in the future plan their actions and achieve similar levels of success as this programme.Why have we created a workbook?It is crucial to create a legacy from the North East PEACE III investment. Sport development is a field of activity that has an experience culture. Many activities are passed down from development officer to junior development officer, physical education teacher to tutor and so on. The knowledge base in this area is substantial but sometimes best practice is localised in one specific area. This workbook will ensure that all participants and tutors in the Sports and Leisure programme and all sports practitioners benefit from the learning that has taken place.What does it aim to do?The workbook documents the learning experience of the North East PEACE III programme. Club, school and Local Authority experiences and learning from the programme is captured and will form a resource for future individuals or organisations wishing to replicate these, or similar activities.Who is this workbook aimed at?The workbook is aimed primarily at those wishing to participate in similar sporting initiatives in the future. Members of sporting organisations from across the community, members of Local Government organisations and educators can learn from a knowledge bank based on what has gone before.How can this workbook be used?This workbook covers eight key topics from the North East PEACE III Sports and Leisure programme that can be used to facilitate future sport and cultural awareness events, programmes and activities. The cases within this workbook provide a summary of the experiences of a number of the initiatives that took place during the programme. The content can be used to support future endeavours in this field. Individuals involved in the design, implementation and review of future programmes can use this as a starting point for new ideas.


Observing activities of working vehicles on a work site, such as a factory, is important in regard to managing the lifetime of vehicles and achieving high operational availability. However, it is a problem that an administrator cannot completely grasp the activities of a working vehicle. Existing systems cannot cover a large area, particularly in an indoor environment. A system is proposed for monitoring operating activities of working vehicles, regardless of whether they are operating indoors or outdoors. The system calculates the activity rate of a vehicle by analyzing the topology of a network configured by the wireless technology ZigBee. In addition, it was experimentally verified that network topology and RSSI can be used to estimate activities of working vehicles.


We present a novel ecosystem‐specific framework for developing nutrient criteria from biological thresholds and predictive modeling (BTPM) and an application of this framework to lakes in Michigan, U.S. The four main components for the BTPM framework are: (1) to predict each ecosystem's 'expected nutrient concentration' in the absence of human effects using a predictive model, (2) to identify important biological thresholds along a nutrient gradient (i.e., biological [BIO] benchmarks), (3) to determine each ecosystem's current nutrient concentration, and (4) to use the above information to derive a nutrient criterion for each ecosystem using the BTPM algorithm. The BTPM framework is extremely flexible in that it can be applied to any aquatic ecosystem type or nutrient and the four components can be implemented in a variety of ways. Our BTPM framework has two additional features: it recognizes that prior to human disturbance, ecosystems varied in their natural nutrient concentrations, and it incorporates risk into the decision‐making process. In the simplest scheme, a nutrient criterion is set at a BIO benchmark greater than the expected nutrient concentration. However, to protect ecosystems more conservatively, a criterion is set at current lake nutrient concentrations if current is less than the BIO benchmark. In our application of the BTPM framework, we developed total phosphorus (TP) criteria for a diverse set of 374 lakes in MI. The expected lake TP concentrations in the absence of human effects ranged from 3 µg L−1 to 24 µg L−1, suggesting that a single criterion approach would not be appropriate.We found two predominant benchmarks in the biological data along the TP gradient, one for zooplankton metrics at 8 µg L−1, and one for phytoplankton metrics at 18 µg L−1. We present the sequence of analyses and decisions that could be used to apply this approach in a management context using Michigan lakes as an example.


This Article considers three fairness issues relating to a cap-and-trade system: fairness to industry, fairness to communities disproportionately impacted by pollution, and fairness to low-income energy consumers. First, assuming any compensation of industry is warranted, free allowances would overcompensate firms for the cost of achieving emission reductions; industry should not receive effective ownership of the atmosphere at the public's expense. Second, environmental justice advocates argue that cap-and-trade systems generate pollution hot spots and encourage dirtier plants to continue operating to the detriment of certain disadvantaged communities. However, cap and trade has no intrinsic tendency to produce increased emissions in disadvantaged communities. Designers of cap-and-trade systems nevertheless should be alert to possible hot spots, particularly in low-income and minority communities. If hot spots are expected or emerge during the operation of the program, responses could include creating geographic grading zones, imposing ceilings on emissions in addition to the cap-and-trade scheme, or prohibiting certain sources from purchasing allowances. Third, any regulation of emissions raises costs, which has a disproportionate impact on low-income consumers. This effect can be greatly ameliorated through adroit use of revenue from emissions allowance auctions to offset the additional burden on low-income consumers from increased energy costs. The bottom line is that fairness issues are not a deal-breaker for cap and trade, but they do deserve thoughtful consideration in designing a system.


Our previous studies demonstrated that some functional polymers could exhibit satisfactorily low mechanical loss in high-amplitude bending vibration in the ultrasonic frequency range. In this study, to explore further applications of these functional polymers in high-power ultrasonic transducers, we focus on Langevin transducers as they are most widely employed in industrial applications. The developed transducer has a sandwich structure: piezoelectric ceramic elements are clamped between two polymer cylindrical bodies with a metal screw. The vibration characteristics of the polymer-based Langevin transducers differ from the metal-based ones owing to the difference in the material constants. When working in the 1st-order longitudinal modes, the polymer-based transducers exhibit dumbbell-shaped deformations because of the higher stiffness of the metal screws. Their mechanical losses reach the maximal values on the vibrating bodies instead of the piezoelectric ceramic elements. Besides, when the strains on polymer vibrating bodies exceed certain values, there exist sharp reductions in mechanical quality factors (Q factors), which restrict the maximal vibration velocities of polymer-based transducers. The poly phenylene sulfide (PPS)-based transducer yields Q factors of 350 and its vibration velocity linearly increases to 1060 mm s−1, comparable to the maximal values achievable on metal-based ones. These properties indicate the potential of PPS-based transducers for ultrasonic applications.


While many studies on typical recommender systems focus on making recommendations to individual users, social activities usually involve groups of users. Issues related to group recommendations are increasingly becoming hot research topics. Among the differences between individual and group recommender systems, the most significant is social factors of group users. Social factors, including personality, expertise factor, interpersonal relationships, and preference similarities, widen the gap between group and individual recommendations. A new approach focuses on the impact of social factors on group recommender systems a computational model integrating the influences of personality, expertise factor, interpersonal relationships, and preference similarities. Comparative experiments are conducted on two datasets. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can provide more accurate and satisfactory group recommendations, especially when social influences are significant.


Preliminary palaeomagnetic data are presented for the AND-1B drill core. A total of 1309 samples were collected from the drill core immediately following recovery and splitting. Natural remanent magnetisation (NRM) and bulk magnetic susceptibility data were determined for all samples using a Molspin spinner magnetometer and Bartington Instruments susceptibility bridge, respectively, immediately after collection. Polarity was determined for the upper 700 m of the drill core from 615 stepwise alternating fi eld (AF) and thermally demagnetized samples with an average sample spacing of ~80 cm between 32 and 240 mbsf and ~2 m between 240 and 700 mbsf. Stepwise demagnetised samples were measured on 2G Enterprises long-core cryogenic magnetometers at the University of Otago and the Istituto di Geofi sica e Vulcanologia. A magnetic polarity zonation was constructed for the interval between 32.33 and 700 mbsf, with roughly equal normal and reversed polarity represented. Above 32.33 mbsf, poorly consolidated diamictite strata prevented sample collection. The remaining record was subdivided into 15 magnetozones (8 normal and 7 reversed). Magnetozone boundaries are defi ned at the midpoint between samples of opposite polarity or by samples with transitional polarity. It was not possible to isolate characteristic remanence (ChRM) directions on orthogonal component plots and hence polarity for several ~10 m intervals in the core. Future work will include determination of a polarity zonation for the lower 585 m of the drill core and halving data spacing between 240 and 700 mbsf.


Consumer acceptance of buying goods and services online via the Internet is growing, although e-ecommerce has been mostly a mirror of traditional methods of pricing transactions – fixed price or auctions. The proliferation of personal mobile devices with pervasive Internet access and localization capability means a richer set of pricing parameters can be used. Allowing buyers and sellers to more explicitly price requests and filter offers, including information about time and place, allows for better transaction results for both parties. This paper examines the impacts of including the time and place of performance of a service as part of the price. A system for implementation is proposed, a simulation of the system is evaluated, and the results presented.


This essay argues that the universality claim is a claim concerning two different domains: first, the domain of the political and, second, the domain of foreign policy. The domain of the political gives us a theory of political rights as we find them in Rawls' Political Liberalism. The domain of foreign policy gives us a theory of human rights as we find them in Rawls' Law of Peoples. Both are distinct from a third domain, that of the moral relations of persons, where rights also are seen to have a bearing. We have therefore political rights, human rights, and moral rights. Only the first two enjoy universality. The distinction between the moral, the political and the international domains is crucial to the success of the claim to universality.


This article, by Alice Paige-Smith and Jonathan Rix, considers the current context of early intervention in England from the perspective and experiences of two families and in particular focuses on two young children identified as having Down syndrome. This case study research has emerged from previous research conducted by the authors, both of whom are Senior Lecturers at the Open University and have a wealth of experience across all phases of education. Their previous research involved interviews with parents of children diagnosed as having Down syndrome, which raised further questions about early intervention and the pedagogical relationship between the parent and the child, and recognised that 'early intervention' can be more than structured activities led by professionals. The research in this article, which has been funded by the British Academy, used ethnographic methodology to understand the process of early intervention with two young children with Down syndrome and their families. The methodology developed to include narrative first-person observation of the child and photography. In addition to this a method of reflecting on the process of early intervention developed that included the researchers, the parent and the child. The development of this research methodology is considered in detail in this article.


Recent work by Bresnan and colleagues (Bresnan 2007, Bresnan et al. 2007, Bresnan and Nikitina 2007) has argued that double object and prepositional dative constructions are essentially identical, the choice between them being conditioned by various factors. I argue against this conclusion, showing that the grammar clearly distinguishes double object from prepositional dative constructions. Under certain circumstances, the first object of a double object construction can shift to the right, with the preposition to appearing, but the grammar still distinguishes this from a prepositional dative construction that looks identical on the surface. The phenomena that I investigate are scope interactions with quantifiers and locative inversion. In addition, the rightward reordering operations investigated here indicate that constraints on variable binding, including weak crossover, must be formulated in terms of linear order rather than hierarchy.


We propose a simple uncertainty modification for the agent model in normal-form games; at any given strategy profile, the agent can access only a set of "possible profiles" that are within a certain distance from the actual action profile. We investigate the various instantiations in which the agent chooses her strategy using well-known rationales e.g., considering the worst case, or trying to minimize the regret, to cope with such uncertainty. Any such modification in the behavioral model naturally induces a corresponding notion of equilibrium; a distance-based equilibrium. We characterize the relationships between the various equilibria, and also their connections to well-known existing solution concepts such as Trembling-hand perfection. Furthermore, we deliver existence results, and show that for some class of games, such solution concepts can actually lead to better outcomes.


This may be our first epistemologically-driven depression. (Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature and limits of knowledge, with how we know what we think we know.) That is, a large role was played by the failure of the private and corporate actors to understand what they were doing. Most heads of ailing or deceased financial institutions did not comprehend the degree of risk and exposure entailed by the dealings of their underlings--and many investors, including municipalities and pension funds, bought financial instruments without understanding the risks involved. (1) ********** There are two major competing narratives for the financial crisis. One narrative focuses on moral failure, in which the compensation structure for executives at financial institutions encouraged them to place their own and other firms at risk to reap short-term gains. (2) The other narrative focuses on cognitive failure, in which executives and regulators overestimated the risk-mitigating effects of quantitative modeling and financial engineering. It is important to sort out which of these narratives deserves more credence. Those who emphasize moral failure have highlighted a number of distortions between private and social benefits, including: that executive pay at financial institutions is not tied to long term viability, (3) the "originate to distribute" model of mortgage financing gives the originator an incentive to make bad loans that are passed down the line in the system of structured financing of mortgage securities, (4) and rating agencies are overly generous in granting AAA and AA ratings because they were paid by the issuers of mortgage-related securities. (5) Under the moral failure theory, the essential problem is the misalignment between the incentives of executives to maximize their own salaries and the long-term best interest of the financial firms they led. (6) In this narrative, regulators were either stifled by ideological faith in markets or hampered by organizational flaws--most notably, the alleged absence of anyone charged with monitoring systemic risk. The other narrative is one of cognitive failure. Under this view, key individuals believed propositions that turned out to be untrue. Propositions that were falsely believed included: that a nationwide decline in housing prices, having not occurred since the Great Depression, was impossible; increased home ownership rates were a sign of economic health; the use of structured finance and credit derivatives had reduced risk to key financial institutions; monetary policy only needed to focus on overall economic performance, not on asset bubbles; banks were well capitalized; and quantitative risk models provided reliable information on the soundness of mortgage-backed securities and of the institutions holding such securities. (7) In hindsight, these propositions were wrong. Policymakers were caught up in the same cognitive environment as financial executives. Market mistakes went unchecked not because regulators lacked the will or the institutional structure with which to regulate, but because they shared with the financial executives the same illusions and false assumptions. Under the narrative of moral failure, the financial crisis was like a fire started by delinquent teenagers, with the adults in charge not sufficiently inclined or positioned to exercise adequate supervision. The solution is thus to reorganize and reenergize the regulatory apparatus. Under the narrative of cognitive failure, it is as if the authorities supplied the lighter fluid, matches, and newspapers used to start the fire. In particular, housing policy encouraged too many households to obtain homes with too little equity. Bank capital regulations steered banks away from traditional lending toward securitization. Moreover, these regulations encouraged the banks' use of ratings agencies and off-balance-sheet entities to minimize the capital held to back risky investments. …


This research studied the Big Brother Africa (BBA) and its role in the emergence of popular culture in Africa. It sought also to find out the influence or role of mediated communication the BBA programmes impact on its consumers and subsequent emergence of popular culture in the continent. The study adopted survey method of data gathering, wherein a sample size of 356 respondents was chosen. Descriptive statistics was used as method of analysis. The survey results showed that most of the respondents are consumers of BBA shows. The study equally observed that the BBA shows are characteristically sensual, promotes nakedness and immorality while trying to promote a western lifestyle in an African context. The study observed that BBA consumers who are mostly youths are influenced by the BBA Reality Television show, and consequently tend to entrench an alien culture as a popular culture among them. Implications of the study were drawn from the findings and amongst other, the study therefore recommended that the African Union and other sub-regional bodies should make bold to sponsor, and moderate BBA through the integration of basic African identities into their show.


There are wide global variations in the prevalence of caesarean section in developed, developing and underdeveloped countries. The objective of this this study was to determine the trends in caesarean section at Calabar General Hospital, Cross River State. This paper used a retrospective review of clinical records at the maternity units of Calabar General Hospital from 2009 to 2013. Findings from this study showed that Cesarean section rate ranged from 3.85% in 2009 to 7.38% in 2013 with an average cesarean section rate of 5.39%. Based on available data, elective cesarean section progressed substantially from 17.2% in 2009 and slightly declined to 15.3% in 2010, then increased again from 22.5% in 2011, 29.6% in 2012 to 31.0% in 2013. Emergency cesarean section on the other hand increased progressively from 82.8% in 2009 to 84.7% in 2010 then declined from 77.5% in 2011, 70.4% in 2012 to 69.0% in 2013. In conclusion improvement of obstetric services should be a priority in all health care settings.


A study was conducted to characterize fungal and oomycete pathogens associated with root diseases of acid lime and sweet lime in Oman. A survey which covered 17 administrative districts and 166 farms showed prevalence of dieback symptoms in 8.8% of acid limes and in 15.9% of sweet limes. Some of the acid limes (3.0%) and sweet limes (3.5%) were also found to suffer from gummosis at the trunk base. Isolations from bark and root samples obtained from diseased acid lime and sweet lime trees showed association of 19 fungal species with these plants, with Lasiodiplodia hormozganensis, L. theobromae and Fusarium solani being the most common. When the most common fungi were inoculated on acid lime and sweet lime seedlings, L. hormozganensis, L. theobromae, Neoscytalidium dimidiatum and F. solani reproduced wilt, decline or gummosis symptoms on the inoculated plants . Isolations from 14 nursery seedlings of acid lime and sweet lime showed association of 12 fungal species, which implies that nurseries act as a main source for some citrus pathogens in Oman. The study reports for the first time sweet lime as a host for L. hormozganensis and N. dimidiatum . It also reports for the first time the presence of six new fungi to Oman. © 2014 Friends Science Publishers


The 2018 ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art is awarded to Monika Fleischmann, a research artist that has contributed to the field of interactive media art since the 1980s to the present day. She has pioneered the field of new media art, helping consolidate the shift that has of late transformed media into a research-led interactive media practice and a creative discipline; one that is able to engage in, analyze, and visualize digital media and their transformations in the context of shifting fields of cultural and educational contexts. These transformations have seen digital media turn into a refl exive and analytical arena for critical social and cultural thinking in her work. Her artistic goal is to shed light on the contradictory characteristics of digital media. Her work - realized since 1987 in partnership with architect and artist Wolfgang Strauss - ranges from fashion to digital architecture, interactive design, poetic and social sculptures that intuitively interact with people and environment to explore intersections between art, science, technology, and society. In 1987 she co-founded Art + Com, an interdisciplinary research institute for the convergence of analogue and digital culture in Berlin and the first research institute for digital media in Germany. This space has been instrumental to carry on collaborative projects at the intersection between art and computer science. In 1992, within the Scientific Visualization research group at the GMD (German National Research Center for Information Technology) in Sankt Augustin near Bonn, Germany, Fleischmann and Strauss (the first media artists in Germany to work in a research context in collaboration with computer scientists) began to develop ground breaking interactive media systems in both pure and applied contexts. Among the projects developed were the "responsive workbench," which today, along with the immersive virtual reality environment CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment), is extensively deployed in visualization environments, as well as the interactive media installation "Liquid Views" which has been exhibited successfully across the world. The VR installation "Home of the Brain" (1989), in collaboration with Strauss, represents one of the pioneering VR interactive artworks and has earned them a Golden Nica of Prix Ars Electronica for interactive art. Their work has been exhibited and awarded internationally and is part of the collection of the ZKM, Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. In 1997, she founded the MARS Exploratory Media Lab, a research laboratory at the forefront of artistic and technical scientific research on digital media and one of the world's leading hubs for trans-disciplinary collaborations between artists, architects, designers, cultural scientists and computer scientists. As a research artist in a computer science environment, Fleischmann has benefited from and extended the research in this field and brought it across global networks by constructing netzspannung.org, one of the first media art archive and eTeaching platforms at Fraunhofer Research Society, Munich, Europe's largest application-oriented research organization. Her multidisciplinary background - fashion design, art and drama, computer graphics - has made her an expert in the world of art, computer science and media technology. Her artistic work deals with the change of identity and perception in a digital media culture. Beside the VR technology used in "Home of the Brain," Fleischmann has contributed to the development of sensitive surfaces for the promotion of joint content exploration. These began with the mixed reality installation about the fall of the Berlin Wall, "Berlin-Cyber City" (1988-1989), and continued with the interactive realtime morphing installation "Liquid Views" (1992-93) which originated in the first mirror touchscreen and further to a contactless interface - the PointScreen technology (patented in 2005) which was motivated by a search for alternatives to touching the screen. PointScreen is based on gesture control and the promotion of electric field sensing - with the energy of the body. Electric field sensing is a method to perceive the body in its essential condition. She uses the design of interfaces as a tool, as space and as a situation in the basis of communicative action and motivation, for her scientific exploration of mixed realities. ACM SIGGRAPH is honored to recognize Monika Fleischmann as an important pioneer for her research projects, based on interface design and new forms of communication.


A new series of N'-((1-(substituted amino)methyl)-2-oxoindolin-3-ylidene)-4-(2-(methyl/phenyl)-4-oxoquinazolin-3(4H)-yl)benzohydrazide derivatives 4a-4l were designed and synthesized from anthranilic acid. All the synthesized compounds were characterized by spectroscopic means and elemental analyses. The tail-flick technique and the carrageenan-induced foot paw edema test were performed for screening analgesic and anti-inflammatory activity, respectively. All of the compounds were also examined for their ulcerogenicity. Some of the compounds showed significant activity. Among the test compounds, 4b exhibited 53% and 69% analgesic activity at a dose of 10 and 20 mg/kg, respectively. It also displayed 47% (10 mg/kg) and 65% (20 mg/kg) anti-inflammatory activity with one-fourth of ulcer index of the reference drugs diclofenac and aspirin.


In the spring of 2010, the Hamline Law Review hosted a symposium to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. This article was written for the symposium and provides an exhaustive and detailed account of the historical context and drafting history of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (the UTSA).Among other stories that it tells, the article explains that the UTSA was prompted by the "Erie/Sears/Compco squeeze." Because of the Supreme Court's famous decision in Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins in 1938, it was understood by business interests and their attorneys that the common law development of unfair competition law would have to occur at the state level. However, when the Supreme Court rendered its decisions in the Sears/Compco cases in 1964, the development of unfair competition law at the state level came to a screeching halt. This led to various efforts to fill-the-gap, including a number of proposals for a federal unfair competition law that, in some iterations, included a prohibition on trade secret misappropriation. As detailed in the article, another impetus behind the development of the UTSA was the business community's dissatisfaction with the pace of development and features of the common law of trade secrecy. Importantly, concern was expressed about the risks that trade secret rights would be over-asserted in ways that would unduly quell competition. Thus, care was taken to define trade secrets and available injunctive relief in ways that limit the scope of trade secret protection. In this regard, the drafters of the UTSA were guided by the Supreme Court's decision in Kewanee Oil Co. v. Bicron Corp. which counsels against broad trade secret protection.


Blade tip design and tip leakage flows are crucial aspects for the development of modern aero-engines. The inevitable clearance between stationary and rotating parts in turbine stages generates high-enthalpy unsteady leakage flows that strongly reduce the engine efficiency and can cause thermally induced blade failures. An improved understanding of the tip flow physics is essential to refine the current design strategies and achieve increased turbine aerothermal performance. However, while past studies have mainly focused on conventional tip shapes (flat tip or squealer geometries), the open literature suffers from a shortage of experimental and numerical data on advanced blade tip configurations of unshrouded rotors. This work presents a complete numerical and experimental investigation on the unsteady flow field of a high-pressure turbine, adopting three different blade tip profiles. The aerothermal characteristics of two novel high-performance tip geometries, one with a fully contoured shape and the other presenting a multicavity squealer-like tip with partially open external rims, are compared against the baseline performance of a regular squealer geometry. The turbine stage is tested at engine-representative conditions in the high-speed turbine facility of the von Karman Institute. A rainbow rotor is mounted for simultaneous aerothermal testing of multiple blade tip geometries. On the rotor disk, the blades are arranged in sectors operating at two different clearance levels. A numerical campaign of full-stage simulations was also conducted on all the investigated tip designs to model the secondary flows development and identify the tip loss and heat transfer mechanisms. In the first part of this work, we describe the experimental setup, instrumentation, and data processing techniques used to measure the unsteady aerothermal field of multiple blade tip geometries using the rainbow rotor approach. We report the time-average and time-resolved static pressure and heat transfer measured on the shroud of the turbine rotor. The experimental data are compared against numerical predictions. These numerical results are then used in the second part of the paper to analyze the tip flow physics, model the tip loss mechanisms, and quantify the aero-thermal performance of each tip geometry.


This paper studies the numerical computation of integrals, representing estimates or predictions, over the output $f(x)$ of a computational model with respect to a distribution $p(\mathrm{d}x)$ over uncertain inputs $x$ to the model. For the functional cardiac models that motivate this work, neither $f$ nor $p$ possess a closed-form expression and evaluation of either requires $\approx$ 100 CPU hours, precluding standard numerical integration methods. Our proposal is to treat integration as an estimation problem, with a joint model for both the a priori unknown function $f$ and the a priori unknown distribution $p$. The result is a posterior distribution over the integral that explicitly accounts for dual sources of numerical approximation error due to a severely limited computational budget. This construction is applied to account, in a statistically principled manner, for the impact of numerical errors that (at present) are confounding factors in functional cardiac model assessment.


A new system for nasal sound analysis via Internet to cellular phone was investigated. Spectral analysis of the nasal sound with frequency domain and dB is an important factor in the investigation of nasal airflow pattern. This study included 10 patients and 10 healthy subjects. Patients underwent nasal septoplasty surgery for treatment of nasal septal deviation. This nasal sound analysis was performed on subjects at 1 month postsurgery. This study was performed using an investigator-developed software that sends real-time frequency and spectral analysis video of a patient's nasal sound to an otolaryngologist's cellular phone. Sound intensity was observed at over 25 dB with high range of frequency (2-4 kHz) and less than 10 dB with low (500-1,000 Hz) and medium (1-2 kHz) frequency from 10 patients with nasal obstruction symptoms (group A). In 10 healthy subjects without nasal obstruction symptoms (group B), sound intensity was observed at high frequencies below 5 dB; however, low and medium frequencies were above 15 dB. A statistically significant difference in sound intensity was observed between group A and group B. It was ascertained that use of the new technique will help patients to avoid an unnecessary return to the hospital and will also save money and time.


Shifting from a focus on transitions between speakers at turn boundaries, this paper investigates the local, embodied, and situated organization of units inside a turn-constructional unit (TCU), and illustrates one way that systematic practices associated with unit construction enable emergent forms of participation. In Japanese TCUs are segmentally produced through sequentially organized sub-unit components. Speakers strategically make some sub-unit components operative creating spaces for recipients' actions within the TCU construction. Findings demonstrate the ways in which a range of resources are mobilized to build action within a TCU and how actions shape the trajectory of the emerging TCU.


In Namibia, though it is still a relatively young country, law reform efforts on juvenile/child justice have a long history. The early beginnings can be traced back to shortly after national Independence in 1990. However, whereas considerable efforts have been made to overhaul the system, the legal situation remained unchanged until today. This has distanced Namibia from the world community, which more and more embraces the principles of restorative justice when dealing with young people in conflict with the law. This paper looks into the history of Namibian law reform efforts on juvenile/child justice since Independence, offers a discourse on some essential philosophical and ideological reasoning which as could be argued has become a stumbling block on the way to Namibia's own juvenile/child justice system, and eventually discusses the merits of the Draft Child Justice Bill (2002), a layman's draft, which almost got as far as the Cabinet Committee on Legislation.


The term 'firearm offence' captures a broad spectrum of offending behaviour, from insecure storage of firearms to use in the commission of a violent crime, and hence a similarly broad spectrum of criminal conduct. The primary legislative framework for sentencing of firearm offences is based on enacted legislation in each jurisdiction that defines specific firearm-related offences, alongside minimum and maximum penalties. While offences largely relate to use, possession, ownership, registration, purchase, sale and storage of firearms, jurisdictional variation occurs in the range and classification of these offences, and the associated statutory penalty. Judicial discretion and the relative restriction of sentencing procedures operating in different jurisdictions can further act to influence a varying regime in the type and severity of sentences handed down. This research was undertaken in response to concerns about how effective firearm penalties are in preventing firearm-related offences. While not an evaluation of the effectiveness of penalties per se, the report examines data from New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and the Australian Customs Service, to provide an overview of the type of firearm offences commonly brought before the courts, the outcomes from these proceedings, and the severity of sentences handed down.


Food-waste is produced throughout all the food supply chain, with a large part already achieved at farm level. In fact, fruits and vegetables, which do not satisfy aesthetic demands, cannot be marketed, but their recovery could favour their valorisation for the obtainment of highly qualified goods. In this context, faulty zucchini fruits (cultivar 'Lungo Fiorentino'), intended for disposal, were rescued as effective, inexpensive and bio-sustainable source for cosmeceutical purposes. Zucchini fruits underwent extraction and fractionation to obtain ZLF-O and ZLF-A extracts, which were chemically characterized by UHPLC-HRMS. ZLF-A extract, rich in flavonols and flavones, scavenged massively DPPH• and ABTS•+, and was not cytotoxic at doses up to 200 μg/mL. Thus, ZLF-A was incorporated into a base cream formula. Zucchini-based emulsion was deeply screened for its antiradical properties and cytotoxicity towards human keratinocytes and fibroblasts. ZLF-A-enriched cream, whose chemical stability was assessed over time and mimicking different storage conditions, was further tested on reconstructed epidermis disks (EpiskinTM). The recovery of valuable chemical substances from zucchini agro-food waste, complying with the principles of valorisation and sustainable development, can represent a new market force for local farmers. Data acquired were eager to convey a suitable reuse of nutraceuticals rich zucchini waste.


Elasticity and cost-effectiveness are two key features for ensuring that cloud-based web services appeal to more businesses. However, true elasticity and cost-effectiveness in the pay-per-use cloud business model has not yet been fully achieved. The explosion of cloud-based web services brings new challenges to enable the automatic scaling up and down of service provision when the workload is time-varying. This research studies the problems associated with these challenges. It proposes a novel scheme to achieve optimised auto-scaling for cloudbased web services from three levels of cloud structure: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). At the various levels, auto-scaling for cloud-based web services has different problems and requires different solutions. At the SaaS level, this study investigates how to design and develop scalable web services, especially for time-consuming applications. To achieve the greatest efficiency, the optimisation of service provision problem is studied by providing the minimum functionality and fastest scalability performance concerning the speed-up curve and QoS (Quality of Service) of the SLA (Service-Level Agreement). At the PaaS level, this work studies how to support dynamic re-configuration when workloads change and the effective deployment of various kinds of web services to the cloud. To achieve optimised auto-scaling of this deployment, a platform is designed to deploy all web services automatically with the minimal number of cloud resources by satisfying the QoS of SLAs. At the IaaS level for two infrastructure resources of virtual machine (VM) and virtual network (VN), this research focuses on studying two types of cloud-based web service: computation-intensive and bandwidth-intensive. To address the optimised auto-scaling problem for computation-intensive cloud-based web service, data-driven VM auto-scaling approaches are proposed to handle the workload in both stable and dynamic environments. To address the optimised autoscaling problem for bandwidth-intensive cloud-based web service, this study proposes a novel approach to predict the volume of requests and dynamically adjust the software defined network (SDN)-based network configuration in the cloud to auto-scale the service with minimal cost. This research proposes comprehensive and profound perspectives to solve the auto-scaling optimisation problems for cloud-based web services. The proposed approaches not only enable cloud-based web services to minimise resource consumption while auto-scaling service provision to achieve satisfying performance, but also save energy consumption for the global realisation of green computing. The performance of the proposed approaches has been evaluated on a public platform (e.g. Amazon EC2) with the real dataset workload of web services. The experiment results demonstrate that the proposed approaches are practicable and achieve superior performance to other benchmark methods.


The intestinal microbiota has been found to play a central role in the colonization of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium in the gastrointestinal tract. In this study, we present a novel process through which Salmonella benefit from inflammatory induced changes in the microbiota in order to facilitate disease. We show that Salmonella infection in mice causes recruitment of neutrophils to the gut lumen, resulting in significant changes in the composition of the intestinal microbiota. This occurs through the production of the enzyme elastase by neutrophils. Administration of recombinant neutrophil elastase to infected animals under conditions that do not elicit neutrophil recruitment caused shifts in microbiota composition that favored Salmonella colonization, while inhibition of neutrophil elastase reduced colonization. This study reveals a new relationship between the microbiota and the host during infection.


The performance in visual verbal and non-verbal attentional tests was studied in 14 male and 18 female control subjects and 33 patients with cryptogenic partial epilepsy. The epileptic group was formed of 17 men and 16 women with no evidence of brain damage in CT scan examinations. Interictal epileptiform activity was observed only unilaterally, either in the right (8 male, 8 female) or left (9 male, 8 female) temporal lobes. The performance of epileptic men in visual tests was similar to that of normal men. On the other hand, the performance of epileptic women was worse than that of normal women. These results seem in accordance with the literature that suggests that visual attention in women depends on the functional integrity of both cerebral hemispheres. In men, verbal visual attention is suggested to occur in the left cerebral hemisphere while non-verbal processes, predominantly in the right cerebral hemisphere. Further studies are necessary for the understanding of these sexual differences in cerebral hemispheric asymmetry.


A key input to the capital budgeting process is the cost of capital. Financial managers most often use the CAPM to estimate the cost of capital for which they need to know the market risk premium. Textbooks advocate using the historical value for the US equity premium as the market risk premium. The CAPM as a model has been seriously challenged in the academic literature. In addition, recent research indicates that the true market risk premium might have been as low as half the historical US equity premium during the last two decades. If business finance courses have been teaching the use of the wrong model along with wrong inputs for 20 years, why has no one complained? We provide an answer to this puzzle.


In 1995, the WHO Regional Office for Europe launched the Health in Prisons Project, supported by the WHO Collaborating Centre for Health and Prisons in the Department of Health, United Kingdom. The Project works within a network of countries committed to protecting and promoting health in prisons in the interests of prisoners, of staff and of public health. The network combines shared experience with expert advice to produce guidance for countries wishing to improve health care and circumstances in their prisons and, in particular, to develop their role in preventing the spread of disease. The network aims to maximize an important opportunity for promoting health in a marginalized group and contributing to general public health in their communities. At the request of the Member States involved, the WHO Health in Prisons Project, together with partner organizations and experts and with the support of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Quaker Council for European Affairs, the Quaker United Nations Office, the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, the AIDS Foundation East-West and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, has reviewed all issues affecting womenâ?Ts health in the criminal justice system and has especially considered the gross inequities in womenâ?Ts health in prisons. The Project has adopted the enclosed declaration and background paper as evidence fully justifying the recommendations and call for action in its conclusion.


The impact of thermal comfort demand on the renovation process was carried out on an optimization basis for the thermo-modernization process of an exemplary single-family home located in Warsaw. The verified TRNSYS simulation program was used to generate a set of variants of building modernization solutions. This variants set was used afterwards as a database for optimization. The analysis performed includes the internal air temperature, indicators of thermal comfort (PPD), and annual energy demand for heating and cooling, and investment costs of modernization building. The results indicated the importance of analyzing various variants of building modernization solutions. Performing modernization without analyzing its effects can have positive as well as negative consequences, e.g., achieving a significant reduction in the primary energy demands at the expense of the deteriorated thermal comfort of users. It was shown that separate analysis of indicators leads to completely different solutions and should not be recommended during modernization of single-family buildings.


The purpose of drive shaft is to transmit static and dynamic torques with vibration
stability. Extensive researches have been carried out on the fiber-reinforced
composite drive shaft for the last two decades. Hybrid shafts made of unidirectional
glass fiber or carbon fiber epoxy and steel or aluminum have high fundamental
bending natural frequency as well as high torque transmission capability. The fiber
increases the fundamental bending natural frequency due to its high specific stiffness
and aluminum or steel transmits the required torque.
In the present work experimental tests were carried out to study the bending fatigue
life, static torsion capacity and power transmission capacity of a hybrid aluminum/
composite drive shaft. The composite used are glass and carbon fiber/epoxy. A
tensile test was carried out to find the mechanical properties of composite materials
used throughout this work.
A hybrid shaft was fabricated using a wet filament winding method by winding glass
and carbon fibers onto aluminum tube with different winding angles, numbers of
iv
layers and stacking sequence. A filament winding machine was developed to
fabricate the hybrid aluminum/ composite drive shaft. A special mechanism was
designed and fabricated for carrying out the static torsion test of the hybrid shaft. In
addition, an apparatus was designed and fabricated to investigate the power
transmission capacity of the hybrid shaft. Minor modifications were made for the
rotating bending fatigue machine to perform the bending fatigue test.
Flexural moment fatigue life relationships were obtained and the failure modes of the
hybrid shaft were studied under fully reversed bending load, R = -1. The results show
that the fatigue life for a winding angle of 45o is larger than that for 90o, for both
glass and carbon fibers. The [±45]3 carbon fiber/epoxy laminates enhanced the
fatigue life of aluminum tube up to 54% and the hybrid specimen did not fail till 107
cycles at 14.7 N.m applied bending moment. In the hybridized specimens two carbon
percentage contained 34% and 51% were examined. The results show that the
percentage contained of carbon and glass fibers were significantly affected the
fatigue life of the hybrid shaft at high and low levels of bending load.
The use of matrix inside the aluminum tube increased the fatigue life by 6.5% and
increases the weight of the hybrid specimen by 16%. The results of fatigue test on a
macroscopic level indicate that the cracks initiated in the fiber free zones or in the
outer skin of resin and increased with increasing number of cycles until failure of
specimen. On other hand the micro damage shows that the delamination completely
took place between the composite layer and surface of aluminum tube before the
catastrophic failure of a hybrid specimen. In addition, the aluminum tube failure was
perpendicular to the applied bending load and this phenomenon is the same as that
for the aluminum shaft under bending fatigue test. There is no fiber breakage being
observed from the rotating bending fatigue test.
v
The torque-angle-of-twist response under static torsion load was obtained and the
failure modes of the hybrid shaft were studied. The results show that the static torque
capacity for a winding angle of 45o is larger than that for 90o, for both glass and
carbon fibers. The maximum static torsion for aluminum tube wound by [+45/-45]3
laminates are 273.2 N.m and 173.5 N.m for carbon and glass fiber respectively. The
percentage difference is approximately 36%.
The aluminum tube yielded first at the central region of the shaft, followed by crack
propagation in the composite part along the fiber direction, which eventually caused
delamination of the composite layers from the aluminum tube. This due to the matrix
crack and finally the fibers broke and the catastrophic failure took place.
For a hybrid shaft wound with fiber configurations of [90/+45/-45/90] and [+45/-
45/90/90], the torque-angle-of-twist response results were similar and this satisfied
the Classical Lamination Theory. In addition, the torque capacity increased by
approximately 12 times for the case of an aluminum tube wound with six layers of
the carbon fiber at winding angle of 45o compared to the aluminum tube alone. From
the power transmission test, it was found out that the difference between the static
torque and dynamic torque is approximately 7%-15%.
The finite element analysis has been used to analyzed the hybrid shaft under static
torsion. ANSYS finite element software was used to perform the numerical analysis
for the hybrid shaft. Full scale hybrid specimen was analyzed. Elasto-plastic
properties were used for aluminum tube and linear elastic for composite materials.
The predicted results gave good agreement with the experimental results, the
percentage differences between the experimental and theoretical results is
approximately 3.5%-25%.


MISSED OPPORTUNITIES IN THE MOUNTAINS: THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY'S ACTION PROGRAM IN EASTERN KENTUCKY IN THE 1960s This dissertation explores the University of Kentucky's efforts to develop and implement an "action program" in eastern Kentucky in the 1960s. By the late 1950s, Kentucky's political, business, and academic leaders had identified eastern Kentucky as the state's problem area, and they sought strategies to bring the region into the economic and cultural mainstream. This generation of post-war leaders had an uncompromising faith in the power of knowledge, technology, and planning, and University leaders saw their action program as a university-wide effort to address what most would argue was Kentucky's ugliest problem. This study begins with an examination of the rushed and disorganized Kellogg Foundation-funded Eastern Kentucky Resource Development Project (EKRDP) in 1960. With the national "rediscovery" of Appalachia in the early 1960s and the passage of the Equal Opportunity Act (EOA) and the Appalachian Regional Development Act (ARDA) in 1964 and 1965, University leaders reframed their thinking about how to engage eastern Kentucky in the midst of a War on Poverty. Institutional support for the EKRDP dwindled, and administrators tried to shift the responsibility of the eastern Kentucky program to the newly developed Center for Developmental Change (CDC). However, the leadership of the CDC lacked stability, the faculty who had been the driving force behind the Center did not want to be tied down to Appalachian projects, and the changing expectations for faculty ushered in by the "Oswald Revolution" did not reward interdisciplinary work.


Information security is a fundamental concern for corporations operating in today's digital economy. The number of firms disclosing items concerning their information security on reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has increased in recent years. A question then arises as to whether or not there is value to the voluntary disclosures concerning information security. Thus, the primary objective of this paper is to assess empirically the market value of voluntary disclosures of items pertaining to information security. Based on a sample of 1,641 disclosing and 19,266 non-disclosing firm-years in a cross-sectional pooled model, our primary findings provide strong evidence that voluntarily disclosing items concerning information security is associated positively with the market value of a firm. These findings are based on the use of a market-value relevance model, as well as a bid-ask spread analysis. The study's findings are robust to alternative statistical analyses. The findings also provide support for the signaling argument, which states that managers disclose information in a manner consistent with increased firm value. Finally, the study findings provide some insight into the strategic choice that firms make regarding voluntary disclosures about information security.


Purpose Heat strain is known to be exacerbated on the second of consecutive work days. We therefore evaluated whether prolonged work in the heat would impair whole-body heat loss capacity on the next day. Methods To evaluate this possibility, we assessed changes in whole-body heat exchange and heat storage in eight young (26 ± 4 yr) men during heat stress tests performed on the same day before (day 1) and on the day after (day 2) a prolonged work simulation. Each heat stress test involved three, 30-min bouts of semirecumbent cycling at fixed rates of metabolic heat production (200 W·m−2 (Ex1), 250 W·m−2 (Ex2), and 300 W·m−2 (Ex3)), each separated by 15-min recovery, under hot, dry conditions (40°C, 20% relative humidity). The work simulation (7.5 h) involved three moderate-intensity intermittent work bouts (2 h), each separated by 30-min rest breaks, under similarly hot, dry conditions (38°C, 34% relative humidity). Total heat loss (evaporative ± dry heat exchange) and metabolic heat production were measured using direct and indirect calorimetry, respectively. Body heat storage was quantified as the temporal summation of heat production and loss. Results Total heat loss did not differ between days 1 and 2 (P = 0.66) and averaged (mean ± 95% confidence interval) 185 ± 7 W (Ex1), 233 ± 7 W (Ex2), and 261 ± 5 W (Ex3) across test days. Consequently, the change in body heat storage was also similar between days 1 and 2 (P = 0.32), averaging 133 ± 15 kJ (Ex1), 99 ± 16 kJ (Ex2), and 184 ± 15 kJ (Ex3) across test days. Conclusions When assessed under controlled laboratory conditions in young men, prolonged work in the heat does not seem to impair whole-body heat loss or exacerbate heat storage on the following day.


Significance Plague is infamous as the cause of the Black Death (1347–1353) and later Second Pandemic (14th to 19th centuries CE), when devastating epidemics occurred throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Despite the historical significance of the disease, the mechanisms underlying the spread of plague in Europe are poorly understood. While it is commonly assumed that rats and their fleas spread plague during the Second Pandemic, there is little historical and archaeological support for such a claim. Here, we show that human ectoparasites, like body lice and human fleas, might be more likely than rats to have caused the rapidly developing epidemics in pre-Industrial Europe. Such an alternative transmission route explains many of the notable epidemiological differences between historical and modern plague epidemics. Plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, can spread through human populations by multiple transmission pathways. Today, most human plague cases are bubonic, caused by spillover of infected fleas from rodent epizootics, or pneumonic, caused by inhalation of infectious droplets. However, little is known about the historical spread of plague in Europe during the Second Pandemic (14–19th centuries), including the Black Death, which led to high mortality and recurrent epidemics for hundreds of years. Several studies have suggested that human ectoparasite vectors, such as human fleas (Pulex irritans) or body lice (Pediculus humanus humanus), caused the rapidly spreading epidemics. Here, we describe a compartmental model for plague transmission by a human ectoparasite vector. Using Bayesian inference, we found that this model fits mortality curves from nine outbreaks in Europe better than models for pneumonic or rodent transmission. Our results support that human ectoparasites were primary vectors for plague during the Second Pandemic, including the Black Death (1346–1353), ultimately challenging the assumption that plague in Europe was predominantly spread by rats.


The redox chemistry of tetrathiafulvalene (TTF) and its cation radical and dication have been studied systematically in acetonitrile (0.1M Bu4NPF6) in the presence of water and light. In acetonitrile (100%) containing supporting electrolyte, neutral TTF undergoes two electrochemically and chemically reversible one-electron oxidation steps. The reversible formal potentials associated with The TTF0/+•/2+ are -74 and 311 mV vs. Fc0/+ (Fc = ferrocene). TTF reacts with water to form HTTF+ and TTF+• reacts with water in the presence of light to give TTF, HTTF+ and O2, implying that TTF+• is photoreduced to TTF and water is oxidized to oxygen and protons. Experiments with a Clark electrode confirm the evolution of oxygen. TTF2+ is not stable under ambient conditions and spontaneously reacts with water to generate TTF+• and HTTF+. Voltammetric measurements reveal the details of the redox chemistry for TTF, TTF+•, TTF2+ and HTTF+ in the presence of water and light.
The acid-base chemistry of TTF, TTF+• and TTF2+ in acetonitrile in the presence of trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) and ethereal HBF4 also have been examined. On addition of acid, TTF reacts to form HTTF+, while TTF+• and TTF2+ do not react with acid. The underlying mechanism for the redox and the acid-base chemistry of TTF and its cations has been proposed and supported using digital simulations. A large body of thermodynamic and kinetic information has been revealed from the comparison of the experimental and simulated data.
Electrochemical synthesis of two new materials based on TTF with MO42- or WO42- in aqueous and mixed acetonitrile/H2O (90:10 v/v) solutions have been undertaken. In aqueous media, (TTF)2MoO4 and (TTF)2WO4 have been electrochemically synthesized via the oxidation of TTF solid modified electrode surface and placed in contact with aqueous solutions of MoO42- or WO42-, respectively. TTF can also be electrochemically oxidized in acetonitrile/H2O (90:10 v/v) in the presence of 1mM Na2MoO4 or Na2WO4 to form (TTF)2MoO4 and (TTF)2WO4., respectively The electrocrystallization of these compounds has been monitored using cyclic voltammetry, surface plasmon resonance and electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance. Furthermore, a wide range of microscopic and spectroscopic techniques have been employed to characterize these newly electro-generated compounds.
Two new dimers, TTF2(NO3) and TTF2(NO3)2 have been electrochemically synthesized in aqueous media via oxidation of TTF-modified electrode surfaces, placed in contact with a aqueous nitrate solution. The solid-solid state transformation to these materials has been explored by cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry. The solid-solid state transformation involves oxidation of TTF to TTF+•accompanied by the ingress of aqueous nitrate anions from the bulk solution to the TTF+•. This reaction is governed by a nucleation and growth mechanism and is independent of the electrode material and the identity of the counter cation. However it is strongly dependent on nitrate concentration and the scan rate of voltammetry. Microscopic (SEM) and spectroscopic techniques, such as, UV-vis, FT-IR and Raman have been used to characterize the electrocrystallized TTF-NO3 based materials.
Large amplitude Fourier transformed ac (FTAC) voltammetry technique was used to study the very fast electron transfer for TTF, its radical cation TTF+• and that of dication TTF2+ using a relatively high frequency (233 Hz). Difficulties associated with the use of higher frequencies at large area electrode surface is also discussed in detail. Comparison of the experimental data with simulations was used to extract the heterogeneous charge transfer rate constant for each redox process (i.e. TTF0/+•, TTF+•/2+) and in both the anodic and cathodic scan directions.
Finally, the synthesis and characterization of a new compound containing TTF with phosphorylated sugar has been undertaken. The electrochemical conversion of solid TTF into (TTF)2G6P using a TTF-modified electrode in contact with aqueous Na2G6P electrolyte is reported. In particular, crystalline TTF was immobilized onto a glassy carbon surface and then electrochemically oxidized to the TTF+• in the presence of aqueous Na2G6P as the electrolyte to form the (TTF)2G6P product. Cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry were used to probe the mechanism of the solid–solid state phase interconversion from TTF into (TTF)2G6P. Microscopic (SEM) and spectroscopic techniques, such as, UV-vis, FT-IR and Raman have been utilized to characterize the electrocrystallized (TTF)2G6P bio-materials.


Participants found a variety of pathways through Dancing with the Mouse, a conference sponsored by The National Dance Association of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and co-directed by Joanne (Jodi) Lunt and Keitha Manning. Dance concerts, technique classes, visits to local schools, as well as numerous sessions on dance and technology comprised the many conference activities. Our conference choices reflected a shared interest in understanding how the dance community currently uses technology, at least as shown at this conference, and in formulating some useful questions about the impact of technology on dance practices. Lisa Naugle (LN) comes to this process as a leading member of the fast-growing dance and technology community and an invited conference presenter. Her research interests include investigation of online methods for choreography, plus the use of motion capture and digital image processing in dance performance. Ann Dils (AD), a dance historian who writes about web-based performance and virtual dance, attended the conference as part of her research.


This article explores the potential that community-led digital engagement with heritage holds for stimulating active citizenship through taking responsibility for shared cultural heritage and for fostering long-lasting relationships between local community heritage groups and national museums. Through the lens of a pilot project titled Science Museum: Community-in-Residence, we discovered that – despite working with community groups that were already loyal to and enjoyed existing working ties with the Science Museum in London, United Kingdom – this undertaking proved challenging owing to a range of structural and logistical issues even before the application of digital devices and tools had been considered. These challenges notwithstanding, the pilot found that the creation of time and space for face-to-face dialogue and interactions between the Science Museum and the participating community heritage groups helped to establish the parameters within which digital co-curation can effectively occur. This, in turn, informed the development of a digital prototype with huge potential to enable remote, virtual connectivity to, and interactivity with, conversations about shared heritage. The ultimate goal was twofold: (a) to help facilitate collaborative sense-making of our shared past and (b) to aid the building of sustainable institutional and community/public working ties around emerging affinities, agendas and research questions in relation to public history and heritage.


Wireless mesh networks are primarily used to provide Internet access by sharing the Internet connections of a limited number of gateways. If traffic is routed in the mesh without considering load distribution, unevenly network congestion may arise and some gateways may rapidly get overloaded, which causes a significant reduction of the network capacity. To address this issue, in this paper we firstly develop a queuing network model that accurately predicts the residual capacity of paths in heterogeneous mesh networks, and precisely identify network bottlenecks. By taking advantage of this model, we design a novel Load-Aware Route Selection algorithm, named LARS, which improves the network capacity. This objective is obtained by allowing each mesh node to distribute the traffic load among multiple gateways in order to ensure evenly utilization of Internet connections. Simulation results show that LARS significantly outperforms shortest path routing using contentionaware link costs, achieving throughput improvements of up to 210% in the considered network scenarios.


News and social media now play a synergistic role and neither domain can be grasped in isolation. On one hand, platforms such as Twitter have taken a central role in the dissemination and consumption of news. On the other hand, news editors rely on social media for following their audience's attention and for crowd-sourcing news stories. Twitter hashtags function as a key connection between Twitter crowds and the news media, by naturally naming and contextualizing stories, grouping the discussion of news and marking topic trends. In this work, we propose Hashtagger+, an efficient learning-to-rank framework for merging news and social streams in real-time, by recommending Twitter hashtags to news articles. We provide an extensive study of different approaches for streaming hashtag recommendation, and show that pointwise learning-to-rank is more effective than multi-class classification as well as more complex learning-to-rank approaches. We improve the efficiency and coverage of a state-of-the-art hashtag recommendation model by proposing new techniques for data collection and feature computation. In our comprehensive evaluation on real-data, we show that we drastically outperform the accuracy and efficiency of prior methods. Our prototype system delivers recommendations in under 1 minute, with a Precision@1 of 94 percent and article coverage of 80 percent. This is an order of magnitude faster than prior approaches, and brings improvements of 5 percent in precision and 20 percent in coverage. By effectively linking the news stream to the social stream via the recommended hashtags, we open the door to solving many challenging problems related to story detection and tracking. To showcase this potential, we present an application of our recommendations to automated news story tracking via social tags. Our recommendation framework is implemented in a real-time Web system available from insight4news.ucd.ie.