The realization of a network of quantum registers is an outstanding challenge in quantum science and technology. We experimentally investigate a network node that consists of a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center electronic spin hyperfine-coupled to nearby nuclear spins. We demonstrate individual control and readout of five nuclear spin qubits within one node. We then characterize the storage of quantum superpositions in individual nuclear spins under repeated application of a probabilistic optical inter-node entangling protocol. We find that the storage fidelity is limited by dephasing during the electronic spin reset after failed attempts. By encoding quantum states into a decoherence-protected subspace of two nuclear spins we show that quantum coherence can be maintained for over 1000 repetitions of the remote entangling protocol. These results and insights pave the way towards remote entanglement purification and the realisation of a quantum repeater using NV center quantum network nodes.


Spherical Fibonacci point sets yield nearly uniform point distributions on the unit sphere S2 ⊂ R3. The forward generation of these point sets has been widely researched and is easy to implement, such that they have been used in various applications. Unfortunately, the lack of an efficient mapping from points on the unit sphere to their closest spherical Fibonacci point set neighbors rendered them impractical for a wide range of applications, especially in computer graphics. Therefore, we introduce an inverse mapping from points on the unit sphere which yields the nearest neighbor in an arbitrarily sized spherical Fibonacci point set in constant time, without requiring any precomputations or table lookups. We show how to implement this inverse mapping on GPUs while addressing arising floating point precision problems. Further, we demonstrate the use of this mapping and its variants, and show how to apply it to fast unit vector quantization. Finally, we illustrate the means by which to modify this inverse mapping for texture mapping with smooth filter kernels and showcase its use in the field of procedural modeling.


Wild-type transthyretin-associated (ATTRwt) amyloidosis is an age-related disease that causes heart failure in older adults. This disease frequently features cardiac amyloid fibril deposits that originate from dissociation of the tetrameric protein, transthyretin (TTR). Unlike hereditary TTR (ATTRm) amyloidosis, where amino acid replacements destabilize the native protein, in ATTRwt amyloidosis, amyloid-forming TTR lacks protein sequence alterations. The initiating cause of fibril formation in ATTRwt amyloidosis is unclear, and thus, it seems plausible that other factors are involved in TTR misfolding and unregulated accumulation of wild-type TTR fibrils. We believe that clusterin (CLU, UniProtKB P10909), a plasma circulating glycoprotein, plays a role in the pathobiology of ATTRwt amyloidosis. Previously, we have suggested a role for CLU in ATTRwt amyloidosis based on our studies showing that (1) CLU codeposits with non-native TTR in amyloid fibrils from ATTRwt cardiac tissue, (2) CLU interacts only with non-native (monomeric and aggregated) forms of TTR, and (3) CLU serum levels in patients with ATTRwt are significantly lower compared to healthy controls. In the present study, we provide comprehensive detail of compositional findings from mass spectrometry analyses of amino acid and glycan content of CLU purified from ATTRwt and control sera. The characterization of oligosaccharide content in serum CLU derived from patients with ATTRwt amyloidosis is novel data. Moreover, results comparing CLU oligosaccharide variations between patient and healthy controls are original and provide further evidence for the role of CLU in ATTRwt pathobiology, possibly linked to disease-specific structural features that limit the chaperoning capacity of CLU.


Fiber tapers provide a way to rapidly measure the spectra of many types of optical microcavities. Proper fabrication of the taper ensures that its width varies sufficiently slowly (adiabatically) along the length of the taper so as to maintain single spatial mode propagation. This is usually accomplished by monitoring the spectral transmission through the taper. In addition to this characterization method it is also helpful to know the taper width versus length. By developing a model of optical backscattering within the fiber taper, it is possible to use backscatter measurements to characterize the taper width versus length. The model uses the concept of a local taper numerical aperture to accurately account for varying backscatter collection along the length of the taper. In addition to taper profile information, the backscatter reflectometry method delineates locations along the taper where fluctuations in fiber core refractive index, cladding refractive index, and taper surface roughness each provide the dominant source of backscattering. Rayleigh backscattering coefficients are also extracted by fitting the data with the model and are consistent with the fiber manufacturer's datasheet. The optical backscattering reflectometer is also used to observe defects resulting from microcracks and surface contamination. All of this information can be obtained before the taper is removed from its fabrication apparatus. The backscattering method should also be prove useful for characterization of nanofibers.


Accurate prepayment models are critical to the valuation of MBS (mortgage backed securities). They also play an important role in the efficient hedging of interest rate risk associated with mortgage funding. We have developed prepayment models using logistic regression for Dutch mortgage loans. We distinguish two types of prepayment: economical prepayment (prepayment without selling the house) and social prepayment (prepayment with selling the house). Prepayment caused by default is included into social prepayment. Using more than 100,000 loan parts and more than 3 million data observations between March 1999 and December 2005, the prepayment probabilities are estimated on an individual loan part level. In the chosen data period, the interest rate dropped to a historical low level not seen since 1960. The models have been validated by backtesting them against historical CPR (constant prepayment rate). The prepayment behaviour in the Netherlands shows unique characteristics comparing to other countries due to the existence of prepayment penalty and tax deduction on penalty interest in the Netherlands. In addition to refinancing incentive, market interest rate, LTV (loan to value), age of borrower, seasoning, seasonality and property type, we found that months-in-arrear and time-on-job are important predictors for prepayment. Furthermore, variables influence the two types of prepayment in distinctive ways and have different relative importance for the two types of prepayments. A previous reported December effect is found to be only relevant to economical prepayment while the time-on-job variable is found to be only relevant to social prepayment.


Gameleira lamprophyres are dykes and mafic microgranular enclaves associated with the shoshonitic Gameleira monzonite. This association belongs to the Paleoproterozoic alkaline magmatism from Serrinha nucleus, northeast Brazil. The liquidus paragenesis is diopside, pargasite, apatite and mica. Reverse zoning was identified in the groundmass alkali feldspar and was related to the undercooling of lamprophyric magma during the emplacement, with high growth rate of pargasite/edenite inducing disequilibrium between feldspars and liquid. Chemical data indicate that the lamprophyres are basic rocks (SiO2 3 wt%) and potassic signature (K2O/Na2O ≈ 2). High contents of MgO and Cr are consistent with a signature of a primary liquid, and such concentrations, as well as Al, K, P, Ba, Ni- and light rare earth elements, are consistent with an olivine-free metasomatic mantle source enriched in amphibole, clinopyroxene and apatite. By contrast, the ultrapotassic lamprophyres from Morro do Afonso, contemporaneous alkaline ultrapotassic magmatism in Serrinha nucleus, were probably produced by melting of a clinopyroxene-phlogopite-apatite enriched-source. The identification of different mineral paragenesis in the source of potassic and ultrapotassic lamprophyres from Serrinha nucleus can contribute to the understanding of the mantle heterogeneities and tectonic evolution of this region.


We consider a multiagent framework for distributed optimization where each agent has access to a local smooth strongly convex function, and the collective goal is to achieve consensus on the parameters that minimize the sum of the agents' local functions. We propose an algorithm wherein each agent operates asynchronously and independently of the other agents. When the local functions are strongly convex with Lipschitz-continuous gradients, we show that the iterates at each agent converge to a neighborhood of the global minimum, where the neighborhood size depends on the degree of asynchrony in the multiagent network. When the agents work at the same rate, convergence to the global minimizer is achieved. Numerical experiments demonstrate that asynchronous gradient push can minimize the global objective faster than the state-of-the-art synchronous first-order methods, is more robust to failing or stalling agents, and scales better with the network size.


We study the role of tax incentives in promoting a fast-growing and novel type of conservation: voluntary, permanent restrictions on private land use through conservation easements. In the United States, easements represent the largest charitable gift on a per-donation basis, but skeptics wonder if their tax preference merely subsidizes wealthy landowners rather than inducing conservation. We incorporate federal and state income tax codes into a calculator to quantify the after-tax donation price and demonstrate its sensitivity to landowner income and state and federal policies. Using a 1987–2012 panel, we measure the response of state-level easements to the price. Our large elasticity estimates, spanning −2.4 to −6.1, indicate that tax incentives induce conservation and do not merely subsidize it. We find no evidence that generous tax benefits have caused less strategic patterns of land conservation.


When Trump says that he wants
NATO to take more responsibility in
the Middle East, what he means is that
he wants the European allies to do
more. He is campaigning for reelection
and has promised to bring the
boys (and girls) home for Christmas.
And of course, in Iraq American
troops are less than welcome these
days, after the targeted assassination
of Iranian General Soleimani near
Baghdad airport (3 January 2020). In
late 2019, Trump had already
withdrawn most troops from Syria,
and now the peace agreement with the
Taliban (29 February 2020) will allow
him to draw down the US military
presence in Afghanistan too. And the
US is considering pulling its troops
out of the Sahel as well. What does this
mean for Europe?


South Asian god-images challenge scriptural understandings of religion. Scripturalism is a pattern of mediation that reifies texts as ahistorical and uses them to legitimise specific regimes of practices and beliefs. In scripturalism, the divine is viewed as super-sensible, non-material, dichotomous and self-creating. While scripturalism may at one time have been solely a 'Western' concern, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries it also has come to be used by Hindu fundamentalist groups. Scripturalism mediates god-images through two interpretive strategies: symbolism and idolatry. Seemingly opposed, both erase the materiality of the god-images by supplementing them to scripture. Drawing on ethnographic accounts of everyday religious practice in Bhaktapur, Nepal, I argue that South Asian god-images should be understood as 'mūrtis', humanly constructed deities dominated by their material element. God-images, furthermore, are brought to life by being enmeshed in a net of social practices.


Abstract Objectives: The objective of the study was to describe wasting and stunting in children aged 12–60 months, admitted to targeted supplementary feeding programmes for the treatment of moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) in South Africa. Design: A cross-sectional, descriptive study was performed. Subjects and setting: Children with MAM, managed as outpatients at primary healthcare facilities in three provinces, were included in the study conducted between September 2012 and August 2013. Outcome measures: Weight, height and mid-upper-arm circumference (MUAC) measurements were collected to classify the children as moderately or severely stunted or wasted. Results: Of the total sample (n = 225), 13% (n = 30) were diagnosed as wasted, 58% (n = 131) as stunted, and 21% (n = 47) as both wasted and stunted. MUAC was significantly associated with wasting. However, an association was not found between MUAC and stunting. Of the sample, 32% (n = 72) presented with severe stunting, and 29% (n = 65) with moderate wasting. Food insecurity was associated with wasting, but not with stunting. Conclusion: A low weight-for-age z-score resulted more from stunting than from wasting in this study. Severe stunting presented as a greater health concern than moderate wasting. Without scrutinising wasting and stunting, healthcare professionals may remain unaware of the drivers of underweight for age in children treated at South African primary healthcare facilities. Following this study's outcomes, the sensitivity of MUAC in screening for moderate malnutrition in South African settings with a high prevalence of stunting is questionable. It is recommended that current nutritional interventions are revisited to explore the efficacy of treating children with wasting, stunting or both.


Significance Alternative models of evolutionary processes suggest different associations between species diversification and trait evolution, but limited empirical evidence is available to test these models across large clades at global extents. Here we investigate the relative timing of species diversification and niche and phenotypic evolution across a global plant radiation (Saxifragales) with enormous phenotypic and habitat variation. We demonstrate strong temporal lags among rates, with increased diversification occurring first, followed by niche and phenotype. Accelerated diversification rates are coincident with mid-Miocene expansion of temperate biomes. Later increases in niche and phenotypic evolutionary rates argue against density-dependent diversification alone, indicating a major role for ecological opportunity. These results have broad implications for understanding diversification processes and the origin of present-day temperate biotas. Environmental change can create opportunities for increased rates of lineage diversification, but continued species accumulation has been hypothesized to lead to slowdowns via competitive exclusion and niche partitioning. Such density-dependent models imply tight linkages between diversification and trait evolution, but there are plausible alternative models. Little is known about the association between diversification and key ecological and phenotypic traits at broad phylogenetic and spatial scales. Do trait evolutionary rates coincide with rates of diversification, are there lags among these rates, or is diversification niche-neutral? To address these questions, we combine a deeply sampled phylogeny for a major flowering plant clade—Saxifragales—with phenotype and niche data to examine temporal patterns of evolutionary rates. The considerable phenotypic and habitat diversity of Saxifragales is greatest in temperate biomes. Global expansion of these habitats since the mid-Miocene provided ecological opportunities that, with density-dependent adaptive radiation, should result in simultaneous rate increases for diversification, niche, and phenotype, followed by decreases with habitat saturation. Instead, we find that these rates have significantly different timings, with increases in diversification occurring at the mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum (∼15 Mya), followed by increases in niche and phenotypic evolutionary rates by ∼5 Mya; all rates increase exponentially to the present. We attribute this surprising lack of temporal coincidence to initial niche-neutral diversification followed by ecological and phenotypic divergence coincident with more extreme cold and dry habitats that proliferated into the Pleistocene. A lack of density-dependence contrasts with investigations of other cosmopolitan lineages, suggesting alternative patterns may be common in the diversification of temperate lineages.


A superbly preserved discrete element conodont fauna has been recovered from carbonate concretions from the upper Desmoinesian (Pennsylvanian) Excello Shale at two localities in south-central Iowa. The multielement apparatuses for Gondolella wardlawi (new species), Idiognathodus acutus, Idioprioniodus conjunctus, and Neognathodus roundyi are reconstructed. Rare specimens of Idiognathodus tuberis (new species) also occur in the fauna.


While nature journaling with elementary age children has recently increased in popularity, journaling with children of ages 2-6 is often overlooked. This article focuses specifically on why journaling is a valid practice in early childhood and the practitioner application of journaling techniques modified for the young child. Young children have an inherent sense of wonder and connection to their natural world which can be preserved and enhanced through the cultivation of observation and documentation. The young child, working either one-on-one or in small groups with the adult, can begin to consciously explore the nearby nature of their world. The addition of a journal practice to regular outdoor environment exploration allows the child to assimilate their observations and experiences while laying a foundation for literacy education. The young child's nature journal is a place for the recording of the natural insights and wonder as developmentally appropriate, rather than the more scientific data collection purposes of an older child's field journal. It is a place for color exploration and recording of the special relationship between the young child and their world through abstract drawings and adult documentation of verbal observations. Prompts may be used with young children, as well as scenarios that enhance seasonal observations, but the journal is foremost a place for spontaneous observation development and "nearby nature" connection facilitation. Drawing on the research of Eyunsook Hyun and Maria Montessori, and the work of Rachel Carson, Clare Walker Leslie, Bill Plotkin, and David Sobel, this article will provide early childhood educators with the resources and motivation to incorporate a sensorial-based journaling practice into their environments.


This paper traces the historical developments using selected literature related to 'library anxiety', 'information seeking anxiety' and 'information anxiety'. These concepts existed independently and parallelly and attracted much attention from the researchers of their respective fields. The existing literature lacked a study establishing a relationship among these three concepts which led to the idea of a general model of information anxiety to inform researchers as well as professionals dealing with policy and practice. This model represents information anxiety as the general and broader concept nesting information seeking anxiety as its sub-set and library anxiety as a further sub-set. It highlights the development of library anxiety, information seeking anxiety, and information anxiety over time. It also outlines the theoretical and practical implications of information anxiety for information services, especially information literacy (IL) instruction, as previous research reported it as a potential determinant of lower levels of information anxiety. The researchers emphasize the necessity for a need-based IL curriculum for the alleviation of users' anxiety related to information related tasks. The future directions for research on the proposed area considering the contemporary information environment have been discussed towards the end.


This paper studies the delegation of activities that pose serious risks to health and the environment in an economy regulated by strict liability schemes. Strict liability induces judgment-proof possibilities. Two civil liability regimes are then compared: a strict liability scheme and a capped strict liability one. The argument is led under a twofold asymmetric information assumption between the principal and the agent: the efficiency level in effort for safety and the agent's level of wealth. The paper shows that standard strict liability under information asymmetries deters the efficient agent to compete and favors adverse selection. Then, under conditions, a capped strict liability regime is a better regime than a standard strict liability one because it induces the efficient agent to supply the level of safety effort equivalent to the first best solution. The counterpart is the perception of an informational rent by the efficient agent. At the optimum, this rent is minimized by the efficient contract supplied by the principal.


Conundrums, puzzles, and perversities: these are Leo Katz's stock-in-trade, and in "Why the Law Is So Perverse", he focuses on four fundamental features of our legal system, all of which seem to not make sense on some level and to demand explanation. First, legal decisions are essentially made in an either/or fashion - guilty or not guilty, liable or not liable, either it's a contract or it's not - but reality is rarely that clear-cut. Why aren't there any in-between verdicts? Second, the law is full of loopholes. No one seems to like them, but somehow they cannot be made to disappear. Why? Third, legal systems are loath to punish certain kinds of highly immoral conduct while prosecuting other far less pernicious behaviors. What makes a villainy a felony? Finally, why does the law often prohibit what are sometimes called win-win transactions, such as organ sales or surrogacy contracts? Katz asserts that these perversions arise out of a cluster of logical difficulties related to multicriterial decision making. The discovery of these difficulties dates back to Condorcet's eighteenth-century exploration of voting rules, which marked the beginning of what we know today as social choice theory. Condorcet's voting cycles, Arrow's Theorem, Sen's Libertarian Paradox - every seeming perversity of the law turns out to be the counterpart of one of the many voting paradoxes that lie at the heart of social choice. Katz's lucid explanations and apt examples show why they resist any easy resolutions. "The New York Times Book Review" called Katz's first book "a fascinating romp through the philosophical side of the law". "Why the Law Is So Perverse" is sure to provide its readers a similar experience.


Abstract Background. Recent interest has focused on reorganizing emergency medical services (EMS) for traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients, with bypass of nonspecialist hospitals and direct transportation to distant neuroscience centers. Although this could expedite neurosurgery and neurocritical care, deteriorating physiology could be deleterious. Methods. We performed a multicenter cohort study examining adult patients with significant TBI enrolled in the English National Trauma Registry. The distributions and correlation of first recorded prehospital and emergency department (ED) vital signs were compared, and the effect of time on changes in vital signs was examined in bivariate and multivariate analyses. Results. A total of 7149 eligible patients were studied. No clinically significant differences were apparent between distributions of prehospital and ED vital signs. Moderate linear correlation was observed for field and ED pulse rate (r2 = 0.34) and GCS values (Spearman's rho = 0.76), with weak correlation apparent for systolic blood pressure (r2 = 0.28) and respiratory rate (r2 = 0.28). Eight percent of cases' vital signs deteriorated in the prehospital interval; however, odds of deterioration in vital sign status did not vary significantly with duration of EMS interval. Conclusion. The similarity between prehospital and ED vital signs, and lack of association between EMS interval and physiological deterioration, may support a strategy of direct transportation of TBI cases to specialist centers. Further research is necessary to identify patients at risk from deterioration during bypass and to investigate effects on mortality.


Background: Recent research and guidelines recommend the routine use of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring for the diagnosis of hypertension, so accuracy of such monitors is more important than ever. Aim: To systematically review the literature regarding the accuracy of ambulatory monitors currently in use. Methods: Medline, Embase, Cinahl, the Cochrane database, Medion and the dabl Educational Trust website were searched until February 2011. No language or publication date limits were applied. Data were extracted separately by two independent reviewers. Methodological quality was assessed by whether a validation protocol had been used and followed correctly. Results: From 5420 journal articles identified, 108 met the inclusion criteria. Excluding studies assessing monitors no longer in use, 40 relevant studies were found using 21 different monitors. Thirty-eight (95%) studies used a validation protocol of which 28 studies assessed a monitor in the general population. Of these, protocols were passed in 24 of 28 studies, but 12 of 24 (50%) found a difference of at least 5 mmHg systolic between the test device and the reference standard for 30% or more of the readings. Of the 10 studies conducted in special population groups (e.g. pregnancy, elderly people), only four devices passed the protocols. Only six (16%) studies correctly adhered to the protocols. Conclusion: Published validation studies assessed most ambulatory monitors as accurate, but many failed to adhere to the underlying protocols, undermining this conclusion and peer review standards. Furthermore, most monitors which 'passed' validation showed significant variation in blood pressure from the reference standard, highlighting inadequacies in older validation protocols. Future validation studies should use protocols with simpler methodologies but more rigorous accuracy criteria.


This work is the analyse of the results of several test campaigns using the composite fatigue
know-how to understand, the composite fatigue of bonded joints. The static stress distribution of bonded
joints is also considered in order to understand the behaviour choosing the best descriptive variables.
As soon as fatigue of composites is a complex phenomenon, no crack initiation is allowed . The
approaches employed to provide fatigue insensitive thresholds are empirical taking a global approach to
analyze the results in a first step. Modified Wohler curves have been adjusted following these directives.
As first approach, they have been demonstrated to give good approaches of the phenomenon.
Nevertheless it is difficult to establish accurate fatigue thresholds due to the lack of accuracy of the
approach since it is based on global loads applied on the coupon and not on the detailed bonded joints
stresses.
The environmental conditions during the test, the type of adhesive, the specimen geometry and
the type of load applied have been statistically demonstrated to be parameters modifying the mean-life
of the bond layer. The remaining scatter could be attributed to the manufacturing process of the joints as
well as the intrinsic test dispersion and the configuration discrepancy.
After the analyses with a global approach, the following work has been focused on the
establishment of a fatigue law based on local bonded joints stress. That is, a local law capable to
approach the mean-life of an arbitrary bond layer.
The proposed local criterion is based on static bonded joints analyses associated to the
classical SN curves approaches.
Until now, this criterion has been approached, with an acceptable precision, the fatigue meanlife
of T-stringers in tension-compression and has validated the non-fatigue of omega-stringers of the
test campaign.


Unsupervised learning algorithms aim to discover the structure hidden in the data, and to learn representations that are more suitable as input to a supervised machine than the raw input. Many unsupervised methods are based on reconstructing the input from the representation, while constraining the representation to have certain desirable properties (e.g. low dimension, sparsity, etc). Others are based on approximating density by stochastically reconstructing the input from the representation. We describe a novel and efficient algorithm to learn sparse representations, and compare it theoretically and experimentally with a similar machine trained probabilistically, namely a Restricted Boltzmann Machine. We propose a simple criterion to compare and select different unsupervised machines based on the trade-off between the reconstruction error and the information content of the representation. We demonstrate this method by extracting features from a dataset of handwritten numerals, and from a dataset of natural image patches. We show that by stacking multiple levels of such machines and by training sequentially, high-order dependencies between the input observed variables can be captured.


A new study of modern Chinese poetry has been published that deserves the attention of linguists working in both the applied and theoretical fields. The focus of the book is experimental and avant-garde literature, and as such it raises questions that are different than the ones we are accustomed to considering in the field of poetics. This review essay considers proposals for understanding poetic ability and sensibility from the point of view of applications of cognitive science.


Phase-change memory (PCM) is an emerging nonvolatile memory technology that promises very high performance. It currently uses discrete cell levels to represent data, controlled by a single amorphous/crystalline domain in a cell. To improve data density, more levels per cell are needed. There exist a number of challenges, including cell programming noise, drifting of cell levels, and the high power requirement for cell programming. In this paper, we present a new cell structure called patterned cell, and explore its data representation schemes. Multiple domains per cell are used, and their connectivity is used to store data. We analyze its storage capacity, and study its error-correction capability and the construction of error-control codes.


One of the key factors guiding the act of communication between individuals in a social network is the desire to persuade or influence one another. In this paper, we study the interplay between a person writing (selecting) a message to send to another and the effect that the message has on its recipient. Using large-scale online user studies, we focus on a single effect (persuading or changing a recipient's opinion about a topic) and its relationship to various measurable properties of the written message often associated with persuasive techniques, namely the degree of emotional and logical content. We find that the persuasive efficacy of these properties varies by domain of discussion and by individual susceptibility, and that senders appear to strategically select their persuasion techniques. Based on these results, we develop a structural model of information diffusion and show through simulations that the emergent larger-scale behaviors are consistent with current models of information cascades and, moreover, are able to model as yet unexplained empirically observed variance in the structural virality of cascades.


The atmospheric flux (wet and dry) of trace metals (Ni, Co. Cu, Pb, Cd, Al and Na) to the Irish Sea and the North-West of England is presented. The fluxes were calculated from determined trace metal concentrations of aerosols (Al, Fe, Mn, Cd,
Co, Cr, Cu, Na, Ni, Pb, V and Zn) and rainwaters (Ni, Co, Cu, Pb, Cd, Al and Na), which were collected using specially designed sampling equipment. The particulate material was analysed using inductively coupled plasma - mass spectroscopy (ICPMS) and also atomic absorption spectroscopy techniques after a complete aciddigestion (HFIHNO3). The dissolved rainwater metal concentrations were determined using the electroanalytical technique adsorptive cathodic stripping
voltammetry (ACSV). This technique also enabled dissolved metal Organic complexation to be determined in the rainwater.
The results indicated that the trace metal aerosol and rainwater concentrations detected for the Irish Sea and urban areas vary considerably during an annual period. This can be attributed to (i) air mass source and (ii) rainwater washout. Geometric mean aerosol concentrations (ng m 3) were calculated for the Irish Sea aerosol (Al, 210; Fe, 159; Mn, 6.2; Cd, 0.26; Co, 0.17; Cr, 2.0; Cu, 5.3; Na 1140; Ni, 4.2; Pb, 19; V, 4.1; Zn, 32) and North-West England aerosol (Al, 365;
Fe, 589; Mn, 21; Cd, 0.80; Co, 0.68; Cr, 13; Cu, 17; Na 2208; Ni, 16; Pb, 45; V, 7.7; Zn, 153) along with total (dissolved + particulate) volume weighted mean concentrations (j.ig l') for the Irish Sea rainwater (Al, 32; Cd, 0.05; Co, 0.05; Cu,
1.8; Na 1998; Ni, 1.1; Pb, 0.73) and North-West England rainwater (Al, 72; Cd, 0.14; Co, 0.15; Cu, 2.9; Na 1274; Ni, 1.7; Pb, 1.82). Air mass analysis studies illustrated the affect on the aerosol trace metal concentrations. For Fe, Mn, Cd, Cu. Pb, V and Zn the Irish Sea aerosol concentrations decreased in the order E> S > N > W. Calculated total inputs to the Irish Sea for Cu (131 t yr:'), Pb (82 t yr') and Cd (3.2 t yr.') were of similar magnitude to total riverine inputs and considerably greater than those of direct discharges (sewage and drainage) for Cu and Pb.
The fate of aerosol associated trace metals in the Irish Sea was investigated by laboratory simulation aerosol seawater/rainwater solubility studies. These studies indicated fast dissolution kinetics for crust-rich and urban-rich aerosol trace metals, with equilibrium times of - 5 minutes for Ni, Co, Cu, Pb and Cd. Similar solubility studies performed on collected Irish Sea aerosols in seawater and artificial rainwater indicated solubilities increased in the order Co (32 %) c Pb (37 %) < Ni (38 %) < Cd (46 %) < Cu (58 %) for seawater. These were correspondingly higher in artificial rainwater, Co (37 %) <Ni (41 %) <Pb (44 %) <Cd (52 %) <Cu (63 %). These solubilities were found to be both lower than field determined rainwater
solubilities, Pb (63 %) <Ni (69 %) c Co (70 %) <Cd (79 %) <Cu (82 %). This difference being attributed to condensation and evaporation cloud cycles which can reduce the pH of cloudwater to - 2.
Within the dissolved fraction, organic complexation was detected for Cu (32 %), Cd (32 %), Pb (34 %), Ni (35 %) and Co (38 %) indicating that the atmosphere is a source of potential metal complexing material. Calculation of net inputs to the Irish Sea highlights the importance of wet deposition. The wet to dry ratio for the selected metals in the Irish Sea increased in
the order Co (1.7) !~ Ni (1.7) <Cu (2) !~ Cd (2) <Pb (2.1). Net atmospheric inputs to the North - East Irish Sea are of the same magnitude for Ni (7 t yr.'), Cu (17 yr.j, Pb (10 t yr.') and Cd (0.36 t yr:') when compared to riverine inputs.


For biohybrid systems involving robot interactions with a large and varied population of animals, it could be beneficial to deploy a morphologically and behaviorally varied population of robots into the environment, for successful interactions across the full diversity of the relevant biological population. In this paper, we briefly summarize our work in two areas integral to this effort: (1) computational investigations of bioinspired methods for retaining population-level variance under evolution; and (2) quantitative evolutionary analysis of genetics and morphology. We also consider ideas for Cognitive Science-inspired work in designing goal-directed behaviors for the robots in biohybrid systems. Based on the underlying idea that robot designs with deeper roots in biology can result in more effective biohybrid systems, our perspectives and approaches could illuminate new commonalities between evolved robot populations and evolved biological populations, which would ideally improve the robots as tools for scientific insight into animals, their behaviors, and their environments.


Abstract. To better understand the spatio-temporal variability of the glaciological environment in Dronning Maud Land (DML), East Antarctica, a 2800-km-long Japanese-Swedish traverse was carried out. The route includes ice divides between two ice-coring sites at Dome Fuji and EPICA DML. We determined the surface mass balance (SMB) averaged over various time scales in the late Holocene based on studies of snow pits and firn cores, in addition to radar data. We find that the large-scale distribution of the SMB depends on the surface elevation and continentality, and that the SMB differs between the windward and leeward sides of ice divides for strong-wind events. We suggest that the SMB is highly influenced by interactions between the large-scale surface topography of ice divides and the wind field of strong-wind events that are often associated with high-precipitation events. Local variations in the SMB are governed by the local surface topography, which is influenced by the bedrock topography. In the eastern part of DML, the accumulation rate in the second half of the 20th century is found to be higher by ~15 % than averages over longer periods of 722 a or 7.9 ka before AD 2008. A similar increasing trend has been reported for many inland plateau sites in Antarctica with the exception of several sites on the leeward side of the ice divides.


Competition for space affects patterns of habitat use and individual performance of coral-dwelling fishes; however, the physical attributes of corals that influence habitat preferences are uncertain. In this study, we investigated the influence of coral colony size and branching structure of 2 coral species, Acropora nasuta and Acropora spathulata, on habitat use and growth rate of 2 coral gobies, Gobiodon histrio and G. erythrospilus. First, we examined 2 key aspects of coral colony structure (interbranch depth and interbranch width) that may influence habitat preferences. We then used laboratory and field-based experiments to test the effects of coral species, coral colony size and branching structure on habitat preference and growth rates of G. histrio and G. erythrospilus. The preferred coral species, A. nasuta, had smaller interbranch width than A. spathulata. A binary-choice laboratory experiment demonstrated that both goby species preferred coral colonies with smaller interbranch width, except when they had the opportunity to occupy A. nasuta over A. spathulata. A field transplant experiment showed that both goby species grew faster on larger coral colonies and in colonies with smaller interbranch width. G. erythrospilus grew faster than G. histrio on A. spathulata, indicating that it suffers less fitness loss when occupying this alternative habitat. Our results show that coral physical attributes are important factors driving habitat preference of coral-dwelling gobies; however, there must also be additional factors that influence their habitat use. Declining average coral size and reduced habitat complexity on coral reefs could have significant impacts on the performance of fishes, affecting ecological processes such as competition.


As the incidence of obesity continues to increase, identifying novel nutritional therapies to enhance weight loss are needed. Raspberry ketone (RK; 4-(4-hydroxyphenyl) butan-2-one) is a bioactive phytochemical that is marketed as a weight loss supplement in the United States, yet there is scant scientific evidence demonstrating that RK promotes weight loss. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effect of RK on accumulation of adipose mass, hepatic lipid storage, and levels of plasma adiponectin in mice fed a high-fat (HF) diet. Mice were individually housed and fed a HF control diet (45% kcal from fat) for two weeks to induce weight gain, then assigned to HF control, high-dose (1.74% wt/wt) raspberry ketone (HRK), low-dose (0.25% wt/wt) raspberry ketone (LRK), or a pair-fed group (PF) fed similar food intake to LRK mice. Following five weeks of feeding, mice fed LRK and HRK diets showed reduced food intake and body weight compared to mice maintained on control diet. When normalized to body weight, mice fed HRK diet exhibited decreased inguinal fat mass and increased liver mass compared to the control group. Hepatic steatosis was lowest in mice fed HRK diet, whereas LRK diet did not have an effect when compared to the PF group. Plasma adiponectin concentration was unaffected by RK and pair-feeding. Our findings demonstrate that RK supplementation has limited benefit to adipose loss beyond reducing energy intake in mice fed a high-fat diet. The present study supports the need for appropriate study design when validating weight-loss supplements.


Ascertaining whether local election results are driven by incumbents�
performance while in office or mechanically reflect constituencies� ideological affiliation and
macroeconomic conditions is crucial for evaluating the alleged accountability-enhancing
property of decentralization. Based on a unique score of urban environmental performance
and the results of all elections held in the major Italian cities over a decade, we investigate
the role of local (fiscal and environmental) versus national issues in municipal elections.
While the empirical evidence points to a strong ideological attachment and a somewhat
weaker fiscal conservatism, it reveals that media reported environmental ranking has a
considerable impact on the popularity of city governments


The low accuracy of wind power scheduling influences the grid dispatch adversely, increasing the demand for spinning to reserve capacity and obstructing the grid frequency regulation. Considering the throughput characteristics of energy storage system, which can be used to compensate for wind farm power scheduling deviations, and smooth the grid power fluctuations, the hybrid energy storage (HES) is employed to enhance the dispatch ability of wind power generation. As one of the key techniques, desirable energy storage capacity configuration (ESCC) and control methods would accelerate the application of energy storage in the field of new resource. Combined with statistics and frequency decomposition of scheduling power deviation, HES capacity configuration and online dynamic power allocation method are proposed. First, by analysis of grid assessment indexes of wind power, scheduled wind power data are produced by improved adaptive error factor correction particle swarm optimization back-propagation neural network (AEFC-PSO-BPNN) prediction followed by wavelet packet smooth (WPS). After comparing with actual power, scheduling deviation statistics and frequency decomposition are applied in capacity and power configuration of energy storage, as well as dynamic power distribution control. With wind/storage simulation platform, then, feasibility of energy storage embedded in grid wind power scheduling deviation, regulation is verified under several combined methods, and the proposed ESCC methods are tested in application case by grid wind power indexes of root-mean-square error rate (RMSE), average volatility (AV), maximum throughout power and current (MTP, MTC), actual supercapacitor (SC), battery consumption capacity, and the number of crossings of state of charge (SOC) of HES. Finally, analyses and comparison of energy storage capacity requirements are carried out on different scheduling deviation control methods so as to explore the significant factors influencing capacity allocation. Applying these methods can improve the scheduling accuracy of grid wind power, reduce power fluctuations at the power common connected (PCC) point, and minimize the impact of accessed wind power to the grid as much as possible.


We analyze the topical question of how the compensation of elected politicians affects the set of citizens choosing to run. To this end, we develop a sparse and tractable citizen-candidate model of representative democracy with ability differences, informative campaigning and political parties. Our results suggest that primaries, campaign costs and rewards have previously overlooked interactions that should be studied in a unified framework. Surprisingly, increasing the reward may lower the average candidate quality when the campaigning costs are sufficiently high.


This review focuses on the role of cyclophilin D (CypD) as a prominent mediator of the mitochondrial permeability transition pore (MPTP) and subsequent effects on cardiovascular physiology and pathology. Although a great number of reviews have been written on the MPTP and its effects on cell death, we focus on the biology surrounding CypD itself and the non-cell death physiologic functions of the MPTP. A greater understanding of the physiologic functions of the MPTP and its regulation by CypD will likely suggest novel therapeutic approaches for cardiovascular disease, both dependent and independent of programmed necrotic cell death mechanisms.


Researchers have written hundreds of papers on the causes and consequences of official foreign aid, while paying almost no attention to private overseas giving, by individuals, universities, foundations, and corporations. Yet private giving is significant—some $15.5 billion/year, compared to more than $60 billion/year in public giving—and is in no small part an outcome of public policy. In most rich countries, tax deductions and credits lower the "price" of charity to donors. And governments with low tax revenue/GDP ratios leave more money in private pockets for private charity. To correct the near-complete lack of information on this de facto aid policy, we survey officials of 21 donor nations on the use of tax incentives to promote private charity. From the results, we develop an index of the overall incentive for private charity, expressed as a percentage increase over the hypothetical giving level absent incentives. France's tax code creates the largest price incentive while those of Austria, Finland, and Sweden offer none. Factoring in the income effect of the tax ratio, Australia, Ireland, Germany, and the United States move to the top, with combined price and income effects sufficient to double private giving. As a result, tax policy appears to have nearly doubled private overseas giving from donor countries in 2003, from a counterfactual $8.0 billion. Two-thirds of the $7.5 billion increase occurred in the United States. Of that, nearly 40% appears to be U.S. charity to Israel. According to 21-country scatter plots, countries with lower church attendance and more faith in the national legislature have lower taxes (stronger income effect), but average levels of targeted tax incentives. Income (GDP/capita) does correlate with private overseas aid/capita, but also with public aid/capita, so that the two aid flows are complementary in magnitude.


This book examines the global governance of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, interrogating the role of this international system and global discourse on HIV/AIDS interventions. The geographical focus is Sub-Saharan Africa since the region has been at the forefront of these interventions. There is a need to understand the relationship between the international political environment and the impact of resulting policies on HIV/AIDS in the context of people's lives. Hakan Seckinelgin points out a certain disjuncture between this governance structures and the way people experience the disease in their everyday lives. Although the structure allows people to emerge as policy relevant target groups and beneficiaries, the articulation of needs and design of policy interventions tends to reflect international priorities rather than people's thinking on the problem. In other words, he argues that while the international interventions highlight the importance attributed to the HIV/AIDS problem, the nature of the system does not allow interventions to be far reaching and sustainable. Offering a critical contribution to the understanding of the problems in HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, International Politics of HIV/AIDS will be invaluable to students and researchers of health, international politics and development.


Transformer based models, like BERT and RoBERTa, have achieved state-of-the-art results in many Natural Language Processing tasks. However, their memory footprint, inference latency, and power consumption are prohibitive efficient inference at the edge, and even at the data center. While quantization can be a viable solution for this, previous work on quantizing Transformer based models use floating-point arithmetic during inference, which cannot efficiently utilize integer-only logical units such as the recent Turing Tensor Cores, or traditional integer-only ARM processors. In this work, we propose I-BERT, a novel quantization scheme for Transformer based models that quantizes the entire inference with integer-only arithmetic. Based on lightweight integer-only approximation methods for nonlinear operations, e.g., GELU, Softmax, and Layer Normalization, I-BERT performs an end-to-end integer-only BERT inference without any floating point calculation. We evaluate our approach on GLUE downstream tasks using RoBERTa-Base/Large. We show that for both cases, I-BERT achieves similar (and slightly higher) accuracy as compared to the full-precision baseline. Furthermore, our preliminary implementation of I-BERT shows a speedup of 2.4-4.0x for INT8 inference on a T4 GPU system as compared to FP32 inference. The framework has been developed in PyTorch and has been open-sourced.


The death of a spouse is one of the most profound and life-altering events adults will ever experience. While the experience of spousal bereavement is traumatic at any time, there is evidence to support the fact that young women who are widowed experience unique challenges. The purpose of studying young widows was to understand the meaning of spousal bereavement for individual participants. The research tradition of phenomenology was chosen to inform the study, and the guiding question became "what is the lived experience of spousal bereavement for young women?" The study participants were five women who were under the age of 45 at the time of their husband's death. The experiences of these young widows were illuminated through stories and reflections on the journey of a young widow. Five themes emerged from their experiences. Young widows grieve both the loss of a companion and the death of their dreams. Accompanying these losses can be the challenges of single parenthood, the need for career, financial and lifestyle changes, and the readjustment to life as a single adult. Increased understanding from the perspective of the bereaved widow, along with strategies and interventions for nurses working with this group of women, will provide nurses and health care professionals with skills to better assist this client population.


Early life stress (ELS) may induce long-lasting psychological complications in adulthood. The protective role of resilience against the development of psychopathology is also important. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among ELS, resilience, depression, anxiety, and aggression in young adults. Four hundred sixty-one army inductees gave written informed consent and participated in this study. We assessed psychopathology using the Korea Military Personality Test, ELS using the Childhood Abuse Experience Scale, and resilience with the resilience scale. Analyses of variance, correlation analyses, and hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses were conducted for statistical analyses. The regression model explained 35.8%, 41.0%, and 23.3% of the total variance in the depression, anxiety, and aggression indices, respectively. We can find that even though ELS experience is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and aggression, resilience may have significant attenuating effect against the ELS effect on severity of these psychopathologies. Emotion regulation showed the most beneficial effect among resilience factors on reducing severity of psychopathologies. To improve mental health for young adults, ELS assessment and resilience enhancement program should be considered.


This paper uses the historical record to isolate episodes in which there were large monetary disturbances not caused by output fluctuations. It then tests whether these monetary changes have important real effects. The central part of the paper is a study of postwar U.S. monetary history. We identify six episodes in which the Federal Reserve in effect decided to attempt to create a recession to reduce inflation. We find that a shift to anti-inflationary policy led, on average, to a rise in the unemployment rate of two percentage points, and that this effect is highly statistically significant and robust to a variety of changes in specification. We reach three other major conclusions. First, the real effects of these monetary disturbances are highly persistent. Second, the six shocks that we identify account for a considerable fraction of postwar economic fluctuations. And third, evidence from the interwar era also suggests that monetary disturbances have large real effects.


By sponsoring, promoting or simply monitoring virtual communities related to their products, work processes, and other topics of interest, organizations leverage the efforts, insights, and abilities of individuals inside and outside their organization. Lurkers are participants who persistently demure from engaging in the core activities that sustain a virtual community. Because virtual communities are perpetuated through voluntary contributions, the persistent peripheral participation of lurkers is sometimes viewed negatively as social loafing or free-riding. Alternatively, an individual may engage in legitimate peripheral participation when their passive monitoring of group activities educates, socializes, and otherwise prepares them for more effective contribution. We reconcile these conflicting views of lurking with individual- and community-level models of peripheral participation that include a parsimonious typology of virtual communities. Through empirical tests based on over 395,000 observations gathered over five months from 548 online discussion forums, we demonstrate how lurking effects growth in site membership and participation. We conclude that lurking as legitimate or illegitimate peripheral participation is context-dependent and a more complex, nuanced activity than previously theorized and measured.


Lifeguard training texts suggest that a lifeguard should continually scan their zone of coverage, carefully examining patrons whose behavior is consistent with drowning or distress. The current study examined whether lifeguard performance is consistent with these specifications and whether these behaviors have enough visual interest to attract the gaze of non-lifeguards looking for drowning behaviors ("trained") or those who were given no specified target ("naive"). Participants viewed video clips of natural swimming taken from three aquatic locations while an eye-tracker recorded their eye position. Lifeguard performance was to some extent consistent with the specifications above, although on many measures it was not statistically better than briefly-trained participants. Implications for future research and training are considered.


We propose a privacy-preserving routing and incentive protocol, called PRIPO, for hybrid ad hoc wireless network. PRIPO uses micropayment to stimulate node cooperation without submitting payment receipts. The lightweight hashing and symmetric-key-cryptography operations are implemented to preserve the users' privacy. The nodes' pseudonyms are efficiently computed using hashing operations. Only a trusted party can link these pseudonyms to the real identities for charging and rewarding operations. Moreover, PRIPO protects the location privacy of the anonymous source and destination nodes. Extensive analysis and simulations demonstrate that PRIPO can secure the payment and preserve the users' privacy with acceptable overhead.


This article reviews national security decision-making in the Iranian context by focusing on institutions, formal process and individuals. It specifically examines the Supreme National Security Council, which formalizes and embodies the decision-making process, as well as the Revolutionary Guards, which epitomize both the influence of institutions as well as the centrality of the agent-individual. Despite the plurality of formal institutions and the existence of process, decision-making remains heavily centered on a small group of largely unelected individuals driven as much by 'regime expediency' as by mutual give-and-take along informal, microfactional lines. While he may have the last word, even Iran's current Supreme Leader is constrained by these ideological, negotiational and structural factors. These key figures are closely affiliated either with the politico-clerical founding kernel of the 1979 Revolution, or the powerful Revolutionary Guards—mainly the hardliners in any case—and are instrumental in determining the discursive boundaries of national security, the scope of which this article confines to defense and foreign policy. Finally, how all this coheres in the realm of strategy has as much to do with regime survival as with the art of reconciling ends and means.


Type IIP supernovae (SNe IIP) have recently been proposed as metallicity (Z) probes. The spectral models of Dessart et al. (2014, MNRAS, 440, 1856) showed that the pseudo-equivalent width of Fe II λ5018 (pEW_(5018)) during the plateau phase depends on the primordial Z, but there was a paucity of SNe IIP exhibiting pEW_(5018) that were compatible with Z < 0.4 Z⊙. This lack might be due to some physical property of the SN II population or to the fact that those SNe have been discovered in luminous, metal-rich targeted galaxies. Here we use SN II observations from the untargeted (intermediate) Palomar Transient Factory [(i)PTF] survey, aiming to investigate the pEW_(5018) distribution of this SN population and, in particular, to look for the presence of SNe II at lower Z. We perform pEW_(5018) measurements on the spectra of a sample of 39 (i)PTF SNe II, selected to have well-constrained explosion epochs and light-curve properties. Based on the comparison with the pEW_(5018) spectral models, we subgrouped our SNe into four Z bins from Z ≈ 0.1 Z⊙ up to Z ≈ 2 Z⊙. We also independently investigated the Z of the hosts by using their absolute magnitudes and colors and, in a few cases, using strong-line diagnostics from spectra. We searched for possible correlations between SN observables, such as their peak magnitudes and the Z inferred from pEW_(5018). We found 11 events with pEW_(5018) that were small enough to indicate Z ≈ 0.1 Z⊙. The trend of pEW_(5018) with Z matches the Z estimates obtained from the host-galaxy photometry, although the significance of the correlation is weak. We also found that SNe with brighter peak magnitudes have smaller pEW_(5018) and occur at lower Z.


The photoluminescence in a lead halide perovskite is measured for different temperatures (5–300 K) and excitation fluences (21–1615 μJ cm−2). It is found that amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) is observed for an excitation density larger than about 1 × 1018 cm−3 for both the tetragonal phase above 163 K and the orthorhombic phase below about 163 K. The fluence that is required to obtain this excitation density depends on temperature and phase since the nonradiative decay of excitations is temperature activated with different activation energies of 85±20 and 24±5 meV for the tetragonal and orthorhombic phase, respectively. The ASE from the tetragonal phase—usually prevailing at temperatures above about 163 K—can also be observed at 5 K, in addition to the ASE from the orthorhombic phase, when the sample is previously exposed to a fluence exceeding 630 μJ cm−2 at a photon energy of 3.68 eV. This additional ASE can be removed by mild heating to 35 K or optically, by exposing the sample by typically a few seconds with a fluence around 630 μJ cm−2. The physical mechanism underlying this optically induced phase transition process is discussed. It is demonstrated that this phase change can, in principle, be used for an all‐optical "write–read–erase" memory device.


Oxidoreductases play pivotal roles in energy capturing and converting processes of life. During these processes, quinones shuttle protons and reducing equivalents between membrane-bound oxidoreductases that generate the proton motive force during oxidative phosphorylation and photophosphorylation. A key mechanistic feature of these oxidoreductases is their ability to tune the reduction potentials of the hydroquinone, semiquinone and oxidized states of their substrate quinones. This level of control allows for maximization of conversion efficiency between the energy of the quinone reducing equivalents and the proton motive force, and prevents side reactions that may be fatal to cells. A half-century of experimental study and computational modeling of the respiratory and photosynthetic complexes has revealed little information on how this mechanistic control is accomplished. To obtain mechanistic insights into the control process, it is necessary to eliminate the biological complexity intrinsic to natural quinone oxidoreductases and create experimental systems that are simplified maquettes of quinone active sites. In this work, development of a naphthoquinone amino acid (Naq), modeled after vitamin K, allowed the creation of a range of quinone peptide maquettes designed to address uncertain mechanistic details of biological quinone control. In a simple heptamer, Naq acquires properties of quinone cofactors found in the three distinct classes of active sites of membrane oxidoreductases under different experimental conditions. Study of Naq in a lanthanide ion binding EF hand peptide allowed observation of the effect of a structural transition from coil to alpha-helix on the aqueous midpoint potential of Naq and measurement of the rate of electron transfer between reduced and oxidized Naq. Naq was also incorporated into a structured miniprotein based upon the TrpCage using a combination of the SCADS computational approach and iterative redesign by hand, creating a simple scaffold for evaluating effects of changing the local environment on Naq. Finally, using expressed protein ligation, Naq was incorporated into a single chain heme-binding maquette. Studies using this multi-cofactor protein to explore electron transfer reactions to and from Naq like those critical to respiration and photosynthesis are underway. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics First Advisor P. Leslie Dutton


We introduce Codex, a GPT language model fine-tuned on publicly available code from GitHub, and study its Python code-writing capabilities. A distinct production version of Codex powers GitHub Copilot. On HumanEval, a new evaluation set we release to measure functional correctness for synthesizing programs from docstrings, our model solves 28.8% of the problems, while GPT-3 solves 0% and GPT-J solves 11.4%. Furthermore, we find that repeated sampling from the model is a surprisingly effective strategy for producing working solutions to difficult prompts. Using this method, we solve 70.2% of our problems with 100 samples per problem. Careful investigation of our model reveals its limitations, including difficulty with docstrings describing long chains of operations and with binding operations to variables. Finally, we discuss the potential broader impacts of deploying powerful code generation technologies, covering safety, security, and economics.


The problem of designing bit-to-pattern mappings and power allocation schemes for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems that employ subcarrier index modulation (IM) is considered. We assume that the binary source conveys a stream of independent, uniformly distributed bits to the pattern mapper, which introduces a constraint on the pattern transmission probability distribution that can be quantified using a binary tree formalism. Under this constraint, we undertake the task of maximizing the achievable rate subject to the availability of channel knowledge at the transmitter. The optimization variables are the pattern probability distribution (i.e., the bit-to-pattern mapping) and the transmit powers allocated to active subcarriers. To solve the problem, we first consider the relaxed problem where pattern probabilities are allowed to take any values in the interval [0, 1] subject to a sum probability constraint. We develop (approximately) optimal solutions to the relaxed problem by using new bounds and asymptotic results, and then use a novel heuristic algorithm to project the relaxed solution onto a point in the feasible set of the constrained problem. Numerical analysis shows that this approach is capable of achieving the maximum mutual information for the relaxed problem in low- and high-SNR regimes and offers noticeable benefits in terms of achievable rate relative to a conventional OFDM-IM benchmark.


Flexible piezoelectric generators (PEGs) present a unique opportunity for renewable and sustainable energy harvesting. Here, we present a low-temperature and low-energy deposition method using solvent evaporation-assisted three-dimensional printing to deposit electroactive poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF)-trifluoroethylene (TrFE) up to 19 structured layers. Visible-wavelength transmittance was above 92%, while ATR-FTIR spectroscopy showed little change in the electroactive phase fraction between layer depositions. Electroactivity from the fabricated PVDF-TrFE PEGs showed that a single structured layer gave the greatest output at 289.3 mV peak-to-peak voltage. This was proposed to be due to shear-induced polarization affording the alignment of the fluoropolymer dipoles without an electric field or high temperature.


Macro-level changes can have substantial effects on the distribution of resources at the household level. While it is possible to speculate about which groups are likely to be hardesthit, detailed distributional studies are still largely backward-looking. This paper suggests a straightforward approach to gauge the distributional and fiscal implications of large output changes at an early stage. We illustrate the method with an evaluation of the impact of the 20082009 crisis in Germany. We take as a starting point a very detailed administrative matched employer-employee dataset to estimate labor demand and predict the effects of output shocks at a disaggregated level. The predicted employment effects are then transposed to household-level microdata, in order to analyze the incidence of rising unemployment and reduced working hours on poverty and inequality. We focus on two alternative scenarios of the labor demand adjustment process, one based on reductions in hours (intensive margin) and close to the German experience, and the other assuming extensive margin adjustments that take place through layoffs (close to the US situation). Our results suggest that the distributional and fiscal consequences are less severe when labor demand reacts along the intensive margin. JEL Classification: D58, J23, H24, H60


Serotonin controls various behavioral states across several species including the nematode C. elegans, where it inhibits locomotion. Just how serotonin regulates movement has not been clear. Nurrish et al. now report that serotonin inhibits synaptic transmission at neuromuscular junctions of C. elegans by inhibiting the release of acetylcholine. In a genetic screen, the authors identified a required role for diacylglycerol kinase (DAGK) in the serotonin-mediated inhibition of acetylcholine release. The presence of DAG in the presynaptic nerve terminal was regulated by both DAGK and a Gαo subunit that was already implicated in serotonin signaling. A decrease in DAG in nerve terminals correlated with a decrease INC-13, a DAG-binding protein that stimulates synaptic vesicle release. The authors propose that a signaling cascade involving Gαo, DAGK, DAG, and UNC-13 can modulate synaptic transmission by controlling neurotransmitter release. Nurrish, S., Segalat, L., and Kaplan, J.M. (1999) Serotonin inhibition of synaptic transmission: Gαo decreases the abundance of UNC-13 at release sites. Neuron 24: 231-242. Online Journal


Beef producers must decide what to do with a cow that fails to conceive during the breeding season. Keeping the open cow results in a years expenses without any revenue. Replacing the open cow with a bred heifer provides immediate revenue although it will take a few years before the heifer reaches peak productivity. A net present value framework is employed to examine this decision. The problem is unique because the open cow and the replacement heifer have different life spans. Finding a common timeframe is impossible since both alternatives will eventually employ replacement heifers if a long enough time frame is considered.


The fundamental objective of this work has been to reveal the necessity of establishing a quality framework for social services by using the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) method. BSC is a modern instrument of strategic management that facilitates the improvement of quality services in general by increasing their efficiency, a goal that is both timely and topical for the European social services sector. The access to affordable, sustainable and high quality services are priorities for all EU states thus making it imperative to develop and implement innovative processes and models based on modern instruments and methods which facilitate the way for a higher quality of life especially in the existing turbulent and restrictive conditions, mankind is facing. The research performed is founded on documents and reform strategies and based on an analysis of numerous studies realised by European institutions in the field of social services. By means of a case study presented, which highlights scientific investigations in the field of quality management and strategic management, we present a model for Balance Scorecard application in organizations that provide social services. We also introduce a strategic map for the development of social services, based on a model of quality and performance applications within the organizations that provide social services, striving to also address issues of sustainability within the social services sector.


This essay explores the metaphorics of copyright, and the conceptual and practical consequences of these metaphorics, during the era between the passage of the Act of Anne in 1710 and the 1774 judgment in Donaldson v. Beckett, which held that the statute limited the term of copyright to a term of no more than 28 years. Commentators on the nature and meaning of literary property included Joseph Addison, who spoke of the author's estate in terms of its agricultural produce; William Blackstone, who described a published work as a key to the author's private grounds; the anonymous pamphleteers in the debate over copyright reform in the mid-1730s, who compared the literary marketplace alternatively to an ever-expanding Field of Knowledge and to a privately owned manor where newcomers could only hope to obtain a Right of Common in [its] Waste; and the counsel in Millar v. Kincaid, who likened literary property to Wild-fowl that might fly the coop at any moment. These metaphors ultimately bespeak two contrasting views about the world in which literature is produced and circulates. On one view, the materials available to writers, and their potential buyers, are thought to be limited in number, so that all forms of copying, from piracy to imitation, are seen as means of depletion. This view accords with the metaphors of literary theft and borrowing, which imagine a taking that depletes the source (and with the metaphor of plagiarism, literally slave-stealing). On the other view, writers and readers are thought to be so various that no real risk of depletion ever arises, because even ostensibly similar books will turn out to involve different modes of expression and will please different readers. This view accords with Renaissance theories of authorship as amplification and with the etymology of the word author itself, from augere, augment, increase. The two alternative perspectives on the literary economy represent extremes, with many commentators and writers falling somewhere in between. The essay focuses on Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749), written while Fielding's publisher, Andrew Millar, was involved in the Kincaid litigation, which involved three allegedly pirated works including Fielding's earlier novel, Joseph Andrews. Seen through the lens of the copyright debate, many of Fielding's pronouncements on authorship in Tom Jones become legible as ironic comments about authors' foolhardy beliefs in their originality and their ability to dictate how readers use and revise their writings. Similarly, the plot of Tom Jones, and particularly its handling of the birth-secret, may be seen to challenge the restrictive model of authorship that treats imitation as theft.


Fisheries practice using trawl and seine nets in Indonesia are still numerous since fishermen round that it will yield much more. However, the practice also threatens the life of small and young fishes as well as destroys the coral reef. The government then issued the regulation namely the Regulation of Minister on Marine Affairs and Fishery Number 2/Permen-KP/2015 about the Prohibition of Trawl and Seine Nets Usage which apply to the whole area of fisheries in Indonesia. It was one of the efforts by the Government of the Republic of Indonesia in conserving its marine ecosystem. The aim of this study was to evaluate the application of regulation to prohibit the trawl and seine nets usage based on sustainable marine preservation principle. This study was a doctrinal research applying case approach and statute approach. The study was held on several regions in Indonesia where the regulation has been enforced. The findings then elaborated with legal sources, such as Act number 32 year 2009 about Environment Conservation and Management, Act number 31 year 2004 about Fisheries, and Regulation of Minister of Marine and Fishery Number 2/Permen-KP/2015 as primary legal sources. The secondary legal sources used were journals, articles, and other relevant sources. The result showed that there is a need to establish a model for ideal implementation of the regulation based on sustainable marine preservation principle in order to conserve the marine environment as well as to increase the welfare of traditional fishermen.


I have always been interested in sports, so when it was time to write the paper I chose to write about sports and economic.It has led to this problem: How is the function of management control and planning problems in sports? Sports clubs are non-profit association and non-profit organizations aim to support members' moral and economic interests. A financial manager will lead the accounting department and have the final responsibility. The finance manager has to work to produce financial results, reports and custom operations (Hogfeldt, 2011). A sports club use economic tools, usually budget. Penner (2001) argues that because the budget is about the future must be based on forecasts. These budget estimates are often inaccurate and different from what reality is. To get a better understanding of the subject I have chosen a qualitative approach to the study. Jacobsen (2002) argues that a qualitative fit when interviews are personal. I have made personal interviews. The interviewees and sport clubs have experiences from the highest league in Sweden. They are Halmstad Bollklubb (HBK, soccer), HK Drott (handball) and Rogle BK (ice hockey). Interviews with sports club have been on tow different occasion, the first time was in spring of 2013 and was then interviews. Interview two was conducted by e-mail in spring 2014. Only a few sports clubs have interviewed and in different sports, the result can't generalize. When it comes to the reliability of the result is reliable. The conclusion is that the financial work is important and should be maintained properly, with help of budget and follow-up with forecasts. The economy is affected by what happens during the season. Handball is after soccer and ice hockey, both audiences and financially. Sports clubs planning problem is because they don't know in advance how the season will be. There has been a suggestion that all premier league clubs in Sweden should pay half of the costs, for the policing at matches. How will it effect a non-profit association? Can budget management, may be an option for sports clubs? That can be subject for a further study.Keywords: Economy, finance officer, sports club, organization, non-profit association, financial control and planning problem.


Managing the Impact of HIV/AIDS in Botswana's Education System: Redefining Effective Teaching and Learning in the Context of AIDS This study has as its starting point the central contention that the implications of the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa affect a wide range of societal structures including all levels of the education system. This multilevel qualitative case study of Botswana's education system sets out to complement national quantitative HIV/AIDS impact studies. Using the draw-and-write technique and unstructured and semi-structured interviews, the study examines the impact of HIV/AIDS on the pupil, classroom, school and contextual levels, as experienced by primary age pupils, teachers, head teachers, regional educational officers and officers at the ministerial level, in high HIV/AIDS prevalence areas. The analysis of data reveals that HIV/AIDS does not only have an impact on orphans and vulnerable children, but affects the majority of children's psychosocial well-being, perception of self, hopes, beliefs and aspirations for the future, as well as, teaching, learning and the management of learning. Moreover, the impact of the pandemic influenced many of the factors that have been shown to correlate positively with pupils' achievements in School Effectiveness (SER) research. The findings of the study thus challenge SER's goal of universality and its narrow focus on academic outcomes. Consequently, the researcher argues that HIV/AIDS needs to be regarded as a contextual variable that not only influences processes and pupils' outcomes at all levels in the education system, but also as variable that must necessitate a shift in the goals, content and role of education, in order for schools to be regarded as 'effective' within the context of AIDS. The study identifies a number of academic and affective educational outputs, outcomes and processes that should be integrated into the primary school phase in order for pupils and schools to not only mitigate the impact of the pandemic but in order that they can become active change agents in reversing the current AIDS trend. The researcher proposes that through a synthesis of the School Effectiveness and the Educational Indicator Research Paradigms, effective process variables can be identified, measured and monitored against relevant outputs and outcomes to support the process of turning the HIV/AIDS trend around.


When a court forces an unwilling person into psychiatric treatment, the law deprives that person of two very important rights – the right to refuse medical treatment and (in the case of involuntary hospitalization) the right to liberty itself. In cases where a psychologically disturbed respondent is believed to pose a serious danger to others, the state clearly has a legitimate interest in confining the respondent, and most discussion concerns the issue of dangerousness – how it is defined; how accurately it can be determined; how vulnerable it may be to bias or mistake. In cases involving danger only to the respondent himself, the law more openly wrestles with the values of autonomy and respect for the individual. Should we allow courts to commit a person involuntarily on the ground that he poses a serious risk of harm, not to others but to himself? If so, under what conditions is this permissible against the conceptual backdrop of the person's presumptive rights to refuse treatment and to retain personal liberty? Psychiatry and Law have different perspectives, and inherently different roles, on this issue. The contemporary standard for involuntary commitment – requiring both a "mental illness" and "danger to self" – attempts to marry those roles and has succeeded only in confusing the courts, too often causing them to convert what should fundamentally be a legal question about legitimate grounds for overruling individual rights into a psychiatric question about the need for treatment. Reform efforts over the last three decades have not changed this reality. Indeed, today the loudest voices on the issue hail from the mental health profession, arguing that existing legal constraints on involuntary commitment are too stringent and that "legal barriers" should be dismantled so that more patients deemed mentally ill to be forcibly treated. This Article opposes that stance. The standard for involuntary commitment on grounds of danger to self should be completely expressed in non-medical terms and should be adjudicated as a purely legal matter. In making the case for that position, I hope to illuminate a core tension between law and psychiatry.


Nanoparticles possess unique physical, chemical, optical and electronic properties stemming from their nanoscale dimensions and are currently used in catalysis, microelectronics, drug delivery, as well as other applications. However, due to their large surface area-to-volume ratio, nanoparticles have a strong tendency to coalesce and sinter during processing or usage over short time scales and at low temperatures, which lead to significant changes in behavior and performance. In this work, in-situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) heating has been used to investigate the effects of particle size, temperature and carbon capping layers on sintering in face-centered cubic (FCC) metallic nanoparticles. For the first time, we make direct and real-time measurements of nanoparticle size, neck growth, dihedral angle and grain boundary motion during sintering, which are then used to calculate fundamental material transport parameters such as surface diffusivity and grain boundary mobility. We observe that carbon surface coatings typically present on most commercial nanoparticles can significantly inhibit sintering in nanoparticles. Also, a new mechanism for coalescence in nanoparticles is shown where small clusters on the support can initiate neck growth by forming a bridge between the nanoparticles consisting of individual atoms or small clusters of atoms. In-situ TEM experiments provide critical and valuable real-time dynamic information for direct investigation of the link between the evolution of sintering and controlling mechanisms, which conventional experiments such as post-mortem TEM observations are not capable of conveying.


This paper demonstrates the potential of near-infrared (NIR) electronic spectroscopy in nondestructive monitoring of a chemical reaction of inorganic functional material. For this purpose NIR spectra in the 12 000–4000 cm−1 region were measured for high reflective green-black (HRGB) pigments (Co0.5Mg0.5Fe0.5Al1.5O4) calcined at 1000, 1100, and 1200°C and pigments with the same components as HRGB but calcined at different temperatures (500–900 °C) (hereafter, called "Pigments A"). NIR spectra of their components such as Co3O4, MgO, Fe2O3, and Al2O3 were also measured. The NIR spectra of Pigments A show two major broad bands. One arises from a 4A2→ 4 T1 (Th) d-d transition of Co(II) in the 9000–6000 cm−1 region. The other band in the 12 000–9000 cm−1 region is assigned to a foot of the charge-transfer (CT) band of Fe2O3. The Co(II) band contains three component bands that are characteristic of a spinel structure. A shoulder arising from (A1-xB x )Th(A x B2-x)OhO4 (A≡Co, Mg, B≡Fe, Al; inverse spinel structure) emerges near 5900 cm−1 in the spectra of Pigments A calcined in the temperature range of 700–900 °C, indicating that the Pigments A calcined in this temperature range assume an inverse spinel structure. When the calcination temperature is above 1000 °C, the final product, HRGB, is produced. This is confirmed from the fact that HRGB shows peaks characteristic of a spinel structure that have different wavenumbers from those of the corresponding peaks of Pigments A. Wide-angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD) patterns were also measured for HRGB, Pigments A, and their components. Based on the NIR and WAXD data we investigated calcination-temperature–dependent crystal structural changes of the components. We also developed partial least squares (PLS) calibration models for the 9000–6000 cm−1 region of the NIR spectra of HRGB and Pigments A. The score plot of latent variable (LV) 2 of the calibration model for calcination temperature demonstrates clearly the existence of an intermediate of the calcination reaction, which may be (A1-xB x )Th(A x B2-x)OhO4 (A≡Co, Mg, B≡Fe, Al).


This work proposes a hybrid algorithm called Probabilistic Incremental Cartesian Genetic Pro- gramming (PI-CGP), which integrates an Estimation of Distribution Algorithm (EDA) with Carte- sian Genetic Programming (CGP). PI-CGP uses a fixed-length problem representation and the algorithm constructs a probabilistic model of promising solutions. PI-CGP was evaluated on sym- bolic regression problems and next trading day stock price forecasting. On the symbolic regression problems PI-CGP did not outperform other approaches. The reason could be premature convergence and being trapped at a local minimum. However, PI-CGP was competitive at stock market forecasting. It was comparable to a fusion model employing a Hidden Markov Model (HMM). HMMs are extensively used for time-series forecasting. This result is promising considering the volatile nature of the stock market and that PI-CGP was not customized toward forecasting.


In a democracy, decisions may be taken in a number of non-violent ways. Some are taken by everybody in referendums or, after an election, by the members of parliament; almost all of these ballots and elections of the general population, as well as decisions by elected representatives, are binding. Other, usually non-binding decisions, may be made by independent commissions or public enquiries, albeit sometimes subject to a government veto; while yet further decisions of government may be influenced by consultations, public opinion surveys, deliberative polls and focus groups. Given the ever-increasing sophistication with which some forms of deliberative democracy operate, it is time to ask whether they too should be legally binding if, that is, (a) the representative sample meets certain minimum criteria, and (b) the outcome, the social choice or ranking, has passed a pre-determined threshold of support. Accordingly, this article first examines the way a social choice or ranking can be identified; next, with frequent reference to instances from across the globe, it takes an overview of the more common means of public participation; and then, in regard to item (b) above, it advocates criteria by which the outcomes of some of these democratic instruments may be deemed to be binding.


Thermal stresses in piping produce through-wall stress gradients that may influence crack growth in the pipe wall. In heavy water reactors (HWRs), the pressure-induced stress in piping is small due to the low pressure values. For major HWR plant transients, the thermal susses (both wall profile and bending due to axial thermal growth) provide approximately 80% of the nominal pipe stress. Cases of local thermal stratification can provide a significant increase in the pipe stresses and the number of stress cycles applied to the piping. One focus in this paper will be to assess the impact of thermal stresses, in general, and thermal stratification, in particular, on the growth of flaws in a pipe due to fatigue loadings. The study will evaluate both the primary loop piping and the pressurizer surgeline piping. Evaluations of fatigue crack growth will be developed for both base material and weldments. The crack growth analysis for 60-year operation of a HWR plant will be reviewed. This analysis will be provided for the primary loop piping and the pressurizer surgeline piping and will establish the worst-case flaw size predicted from fatigue analysis.by end of life. Full-scale flawed pipe fracture testing has been completed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in an approach to show the improbability of an instantaneous double-ended-guillotine break (DEGB) for HWR primary piping. This testing required a major facility (Pipe Impact Test Facility, PITF) to apply all possible design loads, including an equivalent major earthquake (called the SSE earthquake). The facility was designed and built at ORNL in six months. The test article, a 6.1-m (20-ft) long, 406-mm (16-in.) diameter, Schedule 40, 316 L Type stainless steel pipe was fabricated to exacting standards and inspections following the nuclear industry standard practices. A flaw was machined and fatigued into the pipe at a butt weld as an initial condition. The flaw/crack was sized to be beyond the worst-case flaw that HWR piping could see in 60 years of service-if all leak detection systems and if all crack inspection systems failed to notice the flaw's existence. Since October 1991, the test article was subjected to considerable overloadings. The pipe was impacted 104 times at levels equal to and well beyond the safe-shutdown earthquake (SSE) loadings. In addition, 569 751 fatigue cycles and 20 purposeful static overloads have been applied in order to extend the flaw to establish the data necessary to confirm fracture mechanics theories, and, more importantly, to simply demonstrate that an instantaneous DEGB is highly improbable for a HWR primary system at an operating pressure of 1.72 MPa and temperature of 110°C.


BACKGROUND
Treating patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains a challenge, especially when the disease presents at an advanced stage. The aim of this retrospective study was to determine the efficacy of liver resection in patients who fulfil or exceed University of California San Francisco (UCSF) criteria by assessing longterm outcome.

METHODS
Between 2002 and 2008, 59 patients with large HCC (>5 cm) underwent hepatectomy. Thirty-two of these patients fulfilled UCSF criteria for transplantation (group A) and 27 did not (group B). Disease-free survival and overall survival rates were compared between the two groups after resection and were critically evaluated with regard to patient eligibility for transplant.

RESULTS
In all patients major or extended hepatectomies were performed. There was no perioperative mortality. Morbidity consisted of biliary fistula, abscess, pleural effusion and pneumonia and was significantly higher in patient group B. Disease-free survival rates at 1, 3 and 5 years were 66%, 37% and 34% in group A and 56%, 29% and 26% in group B, respectively (P < 0.01). Survival rates at 1, 3 and 5 years were 73%, 39% and 35% in group A and 64%, 35% and 29% in group B, respectively (P= 0.04). The recurrence rate was higher in group B (P= 0.002).

CONCLUSIONS
Surgical resection, if feasible, is suggested in patients with large HCC and can be performed with acceptable overall and disease-free survival and morbidity rates. In patients eligible for transplantation, resection may also have a place in the management strategy when waiting list time is prolonged for reasons of organ shortage or when the candidate has low priority as a result of a low MELD (model for end-stage liver disease) score.


Deep generative models provide a systematic way to learn nonlinear data distributions, through a set of latent variables and a nonlinear "generator" function that maps latent points into the input space. The nonlinearity of the generator imply that the latent space gives a distorted view of the input space. Under mild conditions, we show that this distortion can be characterized by a stochastic Riemannian metric, and demonstrate that distances and interpolants are significantly improved under this metric. This in turn improves probability distributions, sampling algorithms and clustering in the latent space. Our geometric analysis further reveals that current generators provide poor variance estimates and we propose a new generator architecture with vastly improved variance estimates. Results are demonstrated on convolutional and fully connected variational autoencoders, but the formalism easily generalize to other deep generative models.


Alternative-states theory commonly applied, for aquatic systems, to shallow lakes that may be dominated alternately by macrophytes and phytoplankton, under clear-water and enriched conditions, respectively, has been used in this study as a basis to define different states that may occur with changes in wetland salinity. Many wetlands of the south-west of Western Australia are threatened by rapidly increasing levels of salinity as well as greater water depths and permanency of water regime. We identified contrasting aquatic vegetation states that were closely associated with different salinities. Salinisation results in the loss of freshwater species of submerged macrophytes and the dominance of a small number of more salt-tolerant species. With increasing salinity, these systems may undergo further change to microbial mat-dominated systems composed mostly of cyanobacteria and halophilic bacteria. The effect of other environmental influences in mediating switches of vegetation was also examined. Colour and turbidity may play important roles at low to intermediate salinities [concentration of total dissolved solids (TDS) 10 000 mg L–1 TDS). The role of nutrients remains largely unquantified in saline systems. We propose that alternative-states theory provides the basis of a conceptual framework for predicting impacts on wetlands affected by secondary salinisation. The ability to recognise and predict a change in state with changes in salinity adds a further tool to decision-making processes. A change in state represents a fundamental change in ecosystem function and may be difficult to reverse. This information is also important for the development of restoration strategies. Further work is required to better understand the influence of temporal variation in salinity on vegetation states and probable hysteresis effects.


Conservation management practices such as reduced tillage, fertilizer management, and buffer strips are well-established means by which to control erosion and nutrient losses from fields planted in annual row crops. However, agricultural systems which include perennial plant cover, such as the perennial forages found in grazing systems, may represent an alternative way to reduce these losses. In this study, management intensive rotational grazing (MIRG) was tested as a means by which to improve water quality on highly vulnerable row crop land, compared to more traditional conservation management schemes in the south branch of the Root River Watershed (a karst-influenced watershed in Southeastern Minnesota). The effects of both sets of alternative scenarios were evaluated with a watershed-based modeling approach using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool. Alternative conservation management practices included conservation tillage, cover crops, and filter strips. Conversion of row crop production to management-intensive rotational grazing of beef cattle was selected to occur on 2.6% of the total watershed area. Both the conservation management practices and land use changes were targeted to reduce contributions of sediment and phosphorus (P) loads from cropped upland areas. Watershed-wide implementation of all conservation management practices resulted in the greatest reductions in sediment (52%) and total P (28%) loads from upland crop areas, but had the largest land area requirements to achieve these results. Cover crops or filter strips on areas of high slope also showed large cumulative reductions across the watershed and also had the greatest reductions per-unit treated area of all conservation management practices. However, changing land use from row crop production to pasture for grazing was most effective at reducing total sediment and P loads on those acres changed, reducing sediment and P by greater than 85% on targeted areas. Simulation results indicate that utilizing alternative conservation management practices or MIRG, when targeted to areas of steeper slope (greater than 4%), could appreciably reduce sediment and P loads in this watershed, with limited reductions in row crop agriculture acreage.


The anatomy of a coniferous wood, originating from a small trunk or a branch, from the Zechstein (Upper Permian) of NW-Hesse (Germany) is described. Though permineralized wood has been known from this locality at least since the end of the 18th century, this is the first specimen of trunk or branch wood described in anatomical detail from this locality. The wood has no visible growth-rings, rays are rare. Tracheids show uniseriate bordered pits of the mixed type, which are often contiguous and sometimes spaced more than one pit diameter apart. Cross-field pitting is probably araucarioid. It shows great similarities to the protopinacean form-genus Brachyoxylon Hollick & Jeffrey. However, due to the poor preservation of the cross-field pitting, a definite determination of this wood is not possible. Because of the lack of sterile foliage in organic connection, this specimen could not be assigned to any conifer taxon known from the Zechstein. The poor preservation of this specimen is probably due to desiccation, followed by mechanical stress during transport and microbiological decay. The latter process may have also played an important role for the permineralization of parts of this specimen with pyrite/chalcopyrite. Similar microbiological processes may have been involved during the permineralization of other plant material known from this locality (the so-called Frankenberger-Kornahren).