We propose a unified data modeling approach that is equally applicable to supervised regression and classification applications, as well as to unsupervised probability density function estimation. A particle swarm optimization (PSO) aided orthogonal forward regression (OFR) algorithm based on leave-one-out (LOO) criteria is developed to construct parsimonious radial basis function (RBF) networks with tunable nodes. Each stage of the construction process determines the center vector and diagonal covariance matrix of one RBF node by minimizing the LOO statistics. For regression applications, the LOO criterion is chosen to be the LOO mean square error, while the LOO misclassification rate is adopted in two-class classification applications. By adopting the Parzen window estimate as the desired response, the unsupervised density estimation problem is transformed into a constrained regression problem. This PSO aided OFR algorithm for tunable-node RBF networks is capable of constructing very parsimonious RBF models that generalize well, and our analysis and experimental results demonstrate that the algorithm is computationally even simpler than the efficient regularization assisted orthogonal least square algorithm based on LOO criteria for selecting fixed-node RBF models. Another significant advantage of the proposed learning procedure is that it does not have learning hyperparameters that have to be tuned using costly cross validation. The effectiveness of the proposed PSO aided OFR construction procedure is illustrated using several examples taken from regression and classification, as well as density estimation applications.


The article explores how David Jay's The SCAR Project might be said to represent a disability aesthetics for breast cancer—one that challenges the aesthetic field related to breast cancer and demands an ethical witnessing to the realities of the disease and its disabling effects (whether that be due to surgery, treatment, or their aftermath). It asks: how do we represent breast cancer in the aesthetic field; under what conditions can alternative images appear; how do we approach the visually signified materiality of the body that forces upon us its loss of key markers of "female flesh"; and what is the productive potential of the fact that an alternative aesthetics of breast cancer jars the viewer and compels a state of dis-ease? Ultimately, the article suggests that Jay's work might engender what Michel Foucault named an "aesthetics of existence" that could attend to corporeal suffering, recognize death, and thus politicize the disease in new ways.


Chemical and microbiological composition of four Argentinean kefir grains from different sources as well as characteristics of the corresponding fermented milk were studied. Kefir grains CIDCA AGK1, AGK2 and AGK4 did not show significant differences in their chemical and microbiological composition. In contrast, protein and yeast content of AGK3 was higher than in the other grains. Although grain microflora comprised lactobacilli, lactococcus, acetic acid bacteria and yeast, we found an important difference regarding species. Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis, Lactobacillus kefir, Lactobacillus plantarum, Acetobacter and Saccharomyces were present in all types of kefir grain. While Leuconostoc mesenteroides was only isolated from grains CIDCA AGK1 and Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis biovar diacetylactis, Lactobacillus parakefir and Kluyveromyces marxianus were only isolated from CIDCA AGK2 grains. All grains produced acid products with pH between 3·5 and 4·0. The apparent viscosity of AGK1 fermented milk was greater than the product obtained with AGK4. All fermented milks had inhibitory power towards Escherichia coli but AGK1 and AGK2 supernatants were able to halt the bacterial growth for at least 25 h. Grain weight increment in AGK1, AGK2 and AGK3 during growth in milk did not show significant differences. Despite their fermenting activity, AGK4 grains did not increase their weight.


Scholarship addressing technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK or TPACK) has examined how to develop, apply, and assess it in diverse educational settings and content areas. During the last 12 years, multiple ways to understand this knowledge and support its development have emerged, generating approximately 1,200 publications that utilise the construct, impacting the practice of postsecondary faculty, administrators, and others invested in meaningful educational uses of technology. Perhaps inevitably, TPACK's enthusiastic reception and rapid dissemination have generated multiple points of divergence, which in turn need further study; especially the construct's accurate measurement and validation; how to assist preservice and in-service teachers' TPACK development; contextual influences upon teachers' TPACK; and the relationship of TPACK-based knowledge to teachers' decision-making and action. Given the widespread diffusion of TPACK, research focusing on these and related issues will help to determine the direction of future post-secondary learning and teaching with technologies. Therefore, this special issue of AJET addresses future directions in TPCK/TPACK research and development.


Transport of heavy metals such as Ag is affected by several rate-limiting processes including adsorption and release reactions in soils. In this study, the objective was to qualify adsorption-desorption behavior and transport of silver in the different soils. This study also investigated the influence of the presence of Zn on Ag retention and transport in soils. Kinetic batch adsorption-desorption and column experiments were carried out to investigate the adsorption-desorption and transport of silver in soils having different properties in the presence of Zn. Transport of Ag was carried out using miscible-displacement experiments in water saturated soil columns. For all soils, results indicated that adsorption isotherms for Ag were highly nonlinear with greater affinity for Webster soil. Moreover, the presence of Zn resulted in reduced Ag sorption indicative of competitive behavior. Measured Ag breakthrough results (BTCs) from the column experiments indicated highest Ag mobility in Olivier soil whereas Webster soil exhibited least mobility. This finding is based on the Ag recovered and the retardation of the arrival of Ag in the effluent solution. Furthermore, the presence of Zn resulted in enhanced mobility of Ag. A multireaction and transport model (MRTM) that accounted for nonlinear reversible kinetics and irreversible reactions was capable of describing both Ag and Zn transport in all soil columns.


Researchers from academic institutions and the corporate sector rely heavily on scholarly digital libraries for accessing journal articles and conference proceedings. Primarily downloaded in the form of PDF files, there is a risk that these documents may be compromised by attackers. PDF files have many capabilities that have been widely used for malicious operations. Attackers increasingly take advantage of innocent users who open PDF files with little or no concern, mistakenly considering these files safe and relatively non-threatening. Researchers also consider scholarly digital libraries reliable and home to a trusted corpus of papers and untainted by malicious files. For these reasons, scholarly digital libraries are an attractive target for cyber-attacks launched via PDF files. In this study, we present several vulnerabilities and practical distribution attack approaches tailored for scholarly digital libraries. To support our claim regarding the attractiveness of scholarly digital libraries as an attack platform, we evaluated more than two million scholarly papers in the CiteSeerX library that were collected over 8 years and found it to be contaminated with a surprisingly large number (0.3%-2%) of malicious scholarly PDF documents, the origin of which is 46 different countries spread worldwide. More than 55% of the malicious papers in CiteSeerX were crawled from IP's belonging to USA universities, followed by those belonging to Europe (33.6%). We show how existing scholarly digital libraries can be easily leveraged as a distribution platform both for a targeted attack and in a worldwide manner. On average, a certain malicious paper caused high impact damage as it was downloaded 167 times in 5 years by researchers from different countries worldwide. In general, the USA and Asia downloaded the most malicious scholarly papers, 40.15% and 27.9%, respectively. The top malicious scholarly document downloaded is a malicious version of a popular paper in the computer forensics domain, with 2213 downloads in a worldwide coverage of 108 different countries. Finally, we suggest several concrete solutions for mitigating such attacks, including simple deterministic solutions and also advanced machine learning-based frameworks.


Griscelli syndrome is a very rare autosomal recessive disorder with only about 60 cases reported in the literature. It is characterized by reduced pigmentation of the skin, silvery discoloration of the hair and immunodeficiency. Patients can have an accelerated hemophagocytic phase. The accelerated phase commonly occurs following an infection and has a high risk of mortality. Griscelli syndrome has to be distinguished from Chediak-Higashi syndrome and Elejalde disease, which can also present with silvery hair. In this case report, we discuss the child with silvery hair who presented with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis following varicella infection and was diagnosed to have Griscelli syndrome.


G. Donald Allen, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX 77845 Ed Barbeau, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G3 Irl Bivens, Davidson College, Davidson, NC 28036 Larry Curnutt, Bellevue Community College, Bellevue, WA 98007 Thomas A. Farmer, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056 Reuben Hersh, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131 Dale Hoffman, Bellevue Community College, Bellevue, WA 98007 Donald E. Hooley, Bluffton College, Bluffton, OH 45817 Benjamin Klein, Davidson College, Davidson, NC 28036 Warren Page, Yeshiva University, New York, NY 10033 Karen Saxe, Macalester College, St. Paul, MN 55105 Annie and John Selden, Tennessee Technological University and MERC, Cookeville, TN 38505 Brigitte Servatius, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609


For loudspeaker horns, the throat acoustic impedance and the far field directional characteristics are important measures of performance. Both quantities depend greatly on the shape of the horn, and the acoustical conditions at the mouth of the horn. The Mode Matching Method (MMM) is a semianalytical method for the simulation of sound propagation in ducts, and is the method used as the fundamental building block in this work. In previous work using this method, the horn has usually been assumed to be mounted in an infinite baffle, a condition that is not realistic for most real-world applications. Most horns are usually mounted in finite baffles or cabinets, or placed close to reflecting surfaces or in rooms. This work has therefore focused on extending the MMM to new cases closer to real-world applications. For horns without baffle, or with finite baffles or flanges, two methods have been explored; one for axisymmetric horns based on the solution for a semi-infinite unflanged duct, and one for general geometries based on edge diffraction. For horns near infinite reflecting surfaces, a method has been derived to compute the modal mutual radiation impedance. For the final radiation condition, a horn mounted in the wall of a room, two methods have been explored, where in both cases analytical expressions for radiation impedance and radiated pressure are found for shoebox shaped rooms. Experimental verification of some of the cases mentioned above is provided. The MMM is restricted to certain cross-sectional geometries; round and rectangular geometries are treated in this work. In many practical cases a rectangular horn is connected to a circular loudspeaker, and in order to simulate this and similar configuration, a method has been developed to interface the MMM with the Boundary Element Method. By modifying the MMM, it has also been possible to simulate radiation from concave structures like loudspeaker diaphragms. Using this approach it is also possible to simulate concave reflectors, as long as the source is not outside of the cavity. A final application of the MMM in this work, is the use of the method to compute the transfer function and resonance frequencies of non-shoebox shaped rooms. While the shape of the room is still somewhat restricted compared to Finite Element Method simulations, a wide range of rooms can be simulated.


Thirty years of celebrating the comic genius of Douglas Adams...There is a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. It's not an easy thing to do and Arthur Dent thinks he's the only human who's been able to master this nifty little trick -- until he meets Fenchurch, the girl of his dreams. Fenchurch knows how the world could be made a good and happy place. Unfortunately she's forgotten. Convinced that the secret lies within God's Final Message to His Creation they go in search of it. And in a dramatic break with tradition -- actually find it...Volume Four in the Trilogy of Five


The Dark is rising in its last and greatest bid to control the world. And Will Stanton -- last-born of the immortal Old Ones, dedicated to keeping the world free -- must join forces with his ageless master Merriman and Bran, the Welsh boy whose destiny ties him to the Light. Drawn in with them are the three Drew children, who are mortal, but have their own vital part in the story. These six fight fear and death in the darkly brooding Welsh hills, in a quest through time and space that touches the most ancient myths of the British Isles, and that brings Susan Cooper's masterful sequence of novels to a satisfying close.


The seemingly inexorable rise in real health care costs (i.e. over and above the rate of inflation) has been a cause of great concern to governments throughout the world. Few economists in the world are better qualified than William Baumol to help us understand what is driving up real cost and how we can design a health care system that enables us to live with these cost increases. His explanation - that the 'handicraft' nature of the technology of providing health care means it will inevitably have lower productivity growth than the economy overall — is more fundamental than the usual explanations offered of an ageing population, demand inducing new technology, and consumer pressure. The argument is given added weight by the fact that it was his seminal research into relative price effects arising from differential productivity growth that first brought him to international attention more than 30 years ago. His view that the provision of health care can be made more competitive, so improving efficiency, will encourage many, as his theory of contestability, which first surfaced in the 1980s, has shaped modern economic thinking about industrial structure and competition. However, his thesis is that competition and greater efficiency will not fundamentally alter the relative productivity, and so cost, of health care. Society has to face up to the rising real costs of health care. Professor Baumol's solution will please many in the UK committed to a strong NHS. It is simply that we accept that spending on health care will rise as a share of national income. We must avoid the fiscal illusion of believing that we cannot afford to put up taxes in order to spend more on the NHS and other public services. Economic growth means that we can afford more of everything — private and public consumption. However, in designing a health care system that will provide good health care for the whole population. Professor Baumol sets out some important attributes that will discomfort many supporters of the NHS. Drawing on his research during the US health care reform debate on the Clinton Plan, in which he participated as a strong supporter of plans to achieve universal coverage, he argues that publicly financed health care inevitably risks arbitrary cost cutting as politicians seek to keep taxes down. Far better to fund health care through a regulated private sector, with government as a residual purchaser for those who might otherwise be uninsured. He also argues that good information can drive consumer choice and so make competition work, improving efficiency. Consumer choice must be constrained by co-payment, i.e. patients must pay something directly when visiting a doctor or obtaining a prescription medicine. Of course this perspective reflects, in part, what is achievable in designing a health care system in the US. His views on the inevitability of rising real costs can be challenged as simplistic, and, of course, health care is not one production process or technology, but a bundle of technologies. Some of these may even be capable of productivity improvements that exceed the average for the economy. The evidence, however, suggests that the 'handicraft' effect has dominated and will continue to do so. Many of his points will give pause for thought to those on both sides of the UK debate about the NHS internal market. He suggests that information, choice and competition can improve efficiency, but there are limits. We should reconcile ourselves to spending more on health care as we become a richer nation and not penny pinch. We can afford it — the rising real cost of health care is a sign of our rising prosperity. In the long term, however, publicly funded health care may be cut. If taxes do not rise the choice is to design a privately financed system that provides high quality universal coverage, or to allow a publicly funded service to be steadily eroded. I hope that readers will find this lecture gives them new insights into the health care financing debate and develops their thinking, whatever their economic and ideological perspective. My final, pleasurable, task is to thank Professor Baumol for delivering his stimulating paper at the 2nd OHE Annual Lecture on 5 April 1995, and to thank Lord Peston who chaired the lecture and subsequent discussion.


This paper presents a provisional method for the linking of national input-output models. The national models of Belgium, France and the Federal Republic of Germany are linked through export equations in which domestic demands of the buying countries are used to derive the export projections by sector of each country.

Two national scenarios are presented for comparison with a "basic case" scenario to illustrate the process. Alternative growth rates of exports by sector for 1980-87 are compared. An iterative method of solutions is used: the models are solved in succession. Convergence was found to take place in two iterations; a third iteration resulted in virtually no change.

The method has the drawback that consistency between imports and exports is not strictly adhered to. It has the virtues that new countries can easily be added to the existing set. An expansion of a set of countries to include the U.S., Canada and the U.K. is now planned.


This is a collection of essays dealing with ESL/EFL/FL teacher education by experienced ESL/EFL/FL teacher educators and student teachers of different cultural backgrounds, and from different countries. The essays cover topics that focus both on the teacher as learner and the learner as teacher. This book recognizes that the language classroom has a particular culture of its own while being part of a broader school culture. As a result, the multi-foci nature of the chapters serve to present the varied and diverse language education needs, programs, and approaches. Contents: The National Foreign Languages: Can we Get from Here to There?, Sophie Jeffries; FLES Teacher Preparation: Competencies, Content and Complexities, Gladys C. Lipton; Journaling: A Path to Reflective Teacher Development, Aleiline J. Moeller; Alternative Assessment in Foreign Second Language: What do we in Foreign Language Know?, Charles R. Hancock; Where are the African American Foreign Language Teachers?, Mark English; Foreign Language Teacher Education in a Professional Development School, Alan Garfinkel and Carol Sosa; Portfolio Design and the Decision Making Process and in Teacher Education, JoAnn Hammadou; Peer Evaluation in In-Service Teacher Education, Jeannette Morris; Professional Development for Japanese Teachers, Yoshiko Saito; Successful Listening Comprehension Strategies: Implications for Foreign Language Teaching and Teacher Training, Rhonda Chipman-Johnson; Emergent L2 Writing in the French Immersion Classroom: Implications for Teacher Education of Where are the Holes in Whole Language?, Stephen Carey and Rishma Dunlop; Multimedia and Foreign Language Teacher: A Humananistic Perspective, Josef Hellebrandt; Culture: How do Teachers Teach it?, Zena Moore.


A novel framework for predicting stock trends and making financial trading, decisions based on a combination of Data
and Text Mining techniques. The prediction models of the proposed system extract data in text content of time-stamped
web documents in addition to traditional numerical time series data, which is also available from the Web. The financial
trading system based on model predictions uses three different trading strategies. In this work, our system is simulated
and evaluated on real-world series of news stories and stocks data using Decision Tree Induction Algorithm.
Performance is the predictive accuracy of the induced models and, more importantly, the profitability of each trading
strategy using these predictions.


This article studies several attributes of a firm's long-run decisions about organizational structure, attributes that affect the firm's short-run innovative activity. We focus on flexibility, which lowers the future costs of implementing innovations, and research capabilities, which improve the future opportunities for innovation. We consider two dimentsions of innovation: demand-enhancing (product) and cost-reducing (process). These two types of innovation are complementary in terms of increasing the firm's net revenue in the short run. The complementarities between the firm's short-run decision variables then lead to complementarities between its long-run decisions about product and process flexibility and research capabilities.


Biogeography has traditionally focused on the spatial distribution and abundance of species. Both are driven by the way species interact with one another, but also by the way these interactions vary across time and space. Here, we call for an integrated approach, adopting the view that community structure is best represented as a network of ecological interactions, and show how it translates to biogeography questions. We propose that the ecological niche should encompass the effect of the environment on species distribution (the Grinnellian dimension of the niche) and on the ecological interactions among them (the Eltonian dimension). Starting from this concept, we develop a quantitative theory to explain turnover of interactions in space and time i.e. a novel approach to interaction distribution modelling. We apply this framework to host parasite interactions across Europe and find that two aspects of the environment (temperature and precipitation) exert a strong imprint on species co-occurrence, but not on species interactions. Even where species co-occur, interaction proves to be stochastic rather than deterministic, adding to variation in realized network structure. We also find that a large majority of host-parasite pairs are never found together, thus precluding any inferences regarding their probability to interact. This first attempt to explain variation of network structure at large spatial scales opens new perspectives at the interface of species distribution modelling and community ecology.


AIMS
Although several surrogate measures of insulin resistance have been proposed, their associations with cardiovascular disease (CVD) have not been evaluated sufficiently.

METHODS
A total of 2,356 community-dwelling Japanese individuals aged 40 to 79 years who underwent a 75 g oral glucose tolerance test were followed up for 14 years. The status of insulin resistance was estimated by using the Matsuda index or homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR).

RESULTS
During follow-up, 260 subjects developed CVD. The age- and sex-adjusted hazard ratios of CVD significantly decreased with an increasing Matsuda index and rose with increasing HOMA-IR levels (both p for trend <0.05). After adjustment for age, sex, serum total cholesterol, electrocardiogram abnormalities, proteinuria, smoking habits, alcohol intake, and regular exercise, the risk of CVD was significantly lower in the third to fifth quintiles of the Matsuda index and higher in the fifth quintile of HOMA-IR values compared with the first quintile of the corresponding index (Matsuda index Q3: hazard ratio (HR)= 0.59 [95% confidence interval 0.40-0.87]; Q4: HR= 0.66 [0.45-0.97]; and Q5: HR= 0.67 [0.47-0.97]; HOMA-IR Q5: HR= 1.55 [1.05-2.29]); however, these associations were attenuated after further adjustment for the metabolic syndrome status. In regard to CVD subtypes, the risks for stroke and coronary heart disease significantly decreased with an increasing Matsuda index, while elevated HOMA-IR levels were a significant risk factor for stroke, but not for coronary heart disease.

CONCLUSION
Our findings suggest that insulin resistance significantly increases the risk of incident CVD through metabolic syndrome in Japanese.


This research project constitutes the first of its kind in-depth baseline assessment of the growth and development of the Afghan media sector post-2001. The assessment utilizes the United Nations Media Development Indicators (MDIs) for this specific purpose.
In doing so, this thesis project tests the assumption that despite pressures from both the government, the Taliban-led insurgency and other non-government actors in Afghanistan, and challenges related to financial sustainability and professionalism, the post-Taliban Afghan independent media sector is sufficiently robust, resilient and diffuse across Afghanistan and enjoys widespread political and public support that it will continue to survive and grow as a strong social and political force in the country, and thus contribute to the further entrenchment of democracy in Afghanistan, unlike all other past short-lived instances of media freedom in Afghanistan's history of struggle for constitutionalism and democracy going back to the 19th century.


This semiannual review finds that most of the major international currencies, including the US dollar, euro, Japanese yen, UK pound sterling, and Chinese renminbi, remain close to their fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEERs). The new estimates find this result despite numerous significant exchange rate movements associated with increased volatility in international financial markets at the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2014, and despite a major reduction in the price of oil. The principal cases of exchange rate misalignment continue to be the undervalued currencies of Singapore, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent Sweden and Switzerland, and the overvalued currencies of Turkey, New Zealand, South Africa, and to a lesser extent Australia and Brazil. Even so, the medium-term current account deficit for the United States is already at the outer limit in the FEERs methodology (3 percent of GDP), and if the combination of intensified quantitative easing in Japan and the euro area with the end to quantitative easing in the United States were to cause sizable further appreciation of the dollar, an excessive US imbalance could begin to emerge.


Knowledge generated through experience and understanding relies on the senses, one of which is listening. This thesis provides an opportunity to hear the diminishing voice of tuna utilizing paleolimnological techniques and our natural senses through traditional Indigenous methodologies in order to track the presence of tuna back in time.
This study provides historical environmental context of Lake Moāwhitu catchment (Rangitoto ki te Tonga) as a once significant mahinga kai site for manawhenua, Ngāti Koata. The strong connection to place is not lost on Ngāti Koata despite for many their geographic detachment to their turangawaewae. They hear the voice of tuna calling them back to sustain them as they have sustained Māori from the beginning of time. Now considered wāhi tapu due to significant degradation, Moāwhitu is currently undergoing remedial intervention by Ngāti Koata, DoC, Lakes380 and stakeholders to restore the mauri (life force) of the Lake and adjacent wetland ecosystem.
Drawing from two distinct knowledge streams of western science and mātauranga Māori, this study draws new (on-site) understandings about the anthropogenic impacts on tuna as well as their status and relationship as tuākana (older sibling) to Māori. Through this journey a 'te ao Māori' (Māori worldview) is explored, revealing a historically healthy and abundant tuna population and thriving tuākana-teina relationship up until recent decades. This information complements the environmental reconstruction derived from western science methods applied to a lake Moawhitu sediment core spanning the last 1000 years or so. Through a combination of palynology, hyperspectral scanning and bacterial environmental DNA metabarcoding, it is clear that lake water quality remained high despite various historical land cover and land use changes, until recent decades when deteriorating quality has accompanied a rise in cyanobacteria and toxic algal blooms. These changes appear to coincide with intensified pastoralism accompanying draining of the lake and fringing wetlands since the mid-twentieth century. How tuna have endured these recent human impacts and why their survival and sustainability is important to Aotearoa today is at the heart of this thesis which seeks to explore how two vastly different knowledge streams converge and navigate unchartered waters. The two knowledge baskets (with their respective world views) are held up for the reader to view and consider what an effective collaborative partnership looks like by recognising basic intrinsic values of respect, reciprocity and kindness. The challenge remains to draw out the very best of people (he tangata) as a way to bring about urgent regenerative solutions for our tuākana, tuna, and in turn humanity itself.


OF DISSERTATION ETHNIC XENOPHOBIA AS SYMBOLIC POLITICS: A CROSS-NATIONAL STUDY OF ANTI-MIGRANT ACTIVISM FROM BRUSSELS TO BEIRUT Xenophobia is examined almost exclusively as a prejudice of advanced western nations. I argue that the field of study of xenophobia must be re-conceptualized in order for comparative, cross-regional inquiry to take place. With a new concept of ethnic xenophobia, this dissertation examines the determinants and causal mechanisms of ethnic xenophobic activity across developed and developing countries. I integrate studies of xenophobia and theories of ethnic threat to explain that political elites rely on structural dimensions of threat to convert native anxieties into ethnic xenophobia through the use of anti-migrant myths and symbols. I extend Stuart Kaufman's theory of symbolic politics to further explain how elites mobilize ethnic xenophobic activity in order to gain or maintain political advantage among the native selectorate in their respective competitions for power. I use a Heckman Selection Model and a Structural Equation Model to test this theory across 14,000 cases of ethnic xenophobic activity targeting refugees for seventy-two developed and developing countries from 1990 to 2014. The results suggest that elitesacross both developed and developing countriesdo indeed exploit native anxieties in the aftermath of structural crises and events to provoke and mobilize hostilities toward migrants. A most-different systems design is also used to illustrate the causal mechanisms of the argument across two pairs of cases, including Kenya and the Netherlands and Lebanon and the United States. These cases provide additional support to the cross-regional explanation of ethnic xenophobic activity. This research opens the door to further exploration of similarities in the patterns and trends of ethnic xenophobia and anti-migrant intolerance across different country contexts. The results suggest that efforts for the protection of migrants against such expressions of prejudice require improvement; and that relationships between native and migrant populations matter a great deal for the exploitation of fears and anxieties by political elites especially in and around elections.


Background— Restenosis after implantation of coronary artery stents remains a significant clinical problem. We undertook a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to determine whether cilostazol, a drug that suppresses intimal proliferation, would reduce renarrowing in patients after stent implantation in native coronary arteries. Methods and Results— We assigned 705 patients who had successful coronary stent implantation to receive, in addition to aspirin, cilostazol 100 mg BID or placebo for 6 months; clopidogrel 75 mg daily was administered to all patients for 30 days. Restenosis was determined by quantitative coronary angiography at 6 months. The minimal luminal diameter at 6 months for cilostazol-treated patients was 1.77 mm for the analysis segment (stent plus 5-mm borders) compared with 1.62 mm in the placebo group (P=0.01). Restenosis, defined as ≥50% narrowing, occurred in 22.0% of patients in the cilostazol group and in 34.5% of the placebo group (P=0.002), a 36% relative risk reduction. Restenosis was significantly lower in cilostazol-treated diabetics (17.7% versus 37.7%, P=0.01) and in those with small vessels (23.6% versus 35.2%, P=0.02), long lesions (29.9% versus 46.6%, P=0.04), and left anterior descending coronary artery site (19.3% versus 39.8%, P=0.001). There was no difference in bleeding, rehospitalization, target-vessel revascularization, myocardial infarction, or death. Conclusions— Treatment with the drug cilostazol resulted in a significantly larger minimal luminal diameter and a significantly lower binary restenosis rate compared with placebo-treated patients. These favorable effects were apparent in patients at high risk for restenosis.


When I think of the black male "subject" in the West, I immediately think of Estevancio, the first African who traveled to the U.S. Southwest with the Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in the 1530s, and of Olaudah Equiano, who traveled throughout the Americas in the 1790s before settling in the United Kingdom in 1792. Finding themselves dislocated, homeless, fragmented, hybridized, and in oppressive situations in the West, both Estevancio— whose life intrigued Major and who went by several names, such as Estaban or Estebanico—and Equiano, to survive and to remain in control of their own representations, developed identities that had many selves. Equiano was a trickster figure who to survive played many roles and took various subject positions. Yet he maintained his African roots. Historically and experientially, most African Americans belong to the tradition of Estevancio and Equiano. But unlike most African-American writers who have been shaped by racial identity politics and enlightenment reason, Clarence Major embraces his hybridity, his plural subjectivity, and his life and art bear this out. With nonfiction works like The Dark and Feeling (1974), Come By Here (2002), Necessary Distance (2000), and "Licking Stamps," along with his poetry, paintings, fiction, the Clarence Major Archive, journals, and personal interviews, Keith E. Byerman in The Art and Life of Clarence Major constructs Clarence Major as a plural subject who violates boundaries, as "a black man who does not take race as his principal identity, an artist who deliberately defies mainstream rules, a social and cultural critic who wants to be admired by the world he attacks, and a creator who refuses to commit to one expressive form." Moving between Major's life and art, Byerman shows how Major's racially transgressive family history corresponds with an "artistic identity that resists racial, ideological, cultural, and aesthetic boundaries." Clarence Major's early family life, which was racially fluid and unstable, is quite telling. In addition to paternal and maternal African ancestors, his maternal great-grandmother was white, his mother Inez's father was white, and Inez's mother, Ada, was a descendent of the Cherokees. He was born in Atlanta to a distant, abusive father and a mother who could pass for white. The family constantly moved as Inez desperately tried to find financial stability. Ultimately, Inez ends up in Chicago with her children. As a result of his family's instability, Clarence Major was not properly socialized into normative categories. Thus, he emerges as a subject whose heterogeneous desires, rather than a unified self, came to dominate his personality and his artistic sensibility. These desires caused him to revolt, to transgress social conventions, to go to and empathize with the Other, and to combat totalizing modes of thoughts and social regulation and normalization. He used his art to imagine and, therefore, live in alternative spaces, which allowed his desires to flow. Seemly, Major took pleasure, or what the French calls jouissance, in being the outsider, in violating boundaries. For Major, then, freedom lies in the in-between, the alternative space, where he is most free and alive. This desiring subjectivity allowed Major to enter and exit three disastrous marriages and to father six children by two different women in a period of eight years, whom he did not live with, because he could not successfully settle into a middle-class life and career.


Changing lanes is a commonly-used technique for drivers to either overtake slow-moving cars or enter/exit highway ramps. Optional lane changes may save drivers travel time but increase the risk of collision with others. Drivers make such decisions based on experience and emotion rather than analysis, and thus may fail to select the best solution while in a dynamic state of flux. Unlike human drivers, autonomous vehicles can systematically analyze their surroundings and make real-time decisions accordingly. This paper develops a game theory-based lane-changing model by comparing two types of optimization methods. To realize our expectations, we need to first investigate the payoff function of drivers in discretionary lane-changing maneuvers and then quantify it in an equation of costs that trades-off safety and time-saving. After the evaluation for each alternative strategy combination, the results show that there exists a social gap in the discretionary lane-changing game. To deal with that problem, we provide some suggestions for future policy as well as autonomous vehicle controller designs, offering solutions to reduce the impact of disturbances and crashes caused by inappropriate lane changes, and also, inspire further research about more complex cases.


In the early stages of the crisis that is currently affecting the Spanish economy, the fiscal policy that excessively resorted to automatic stabilizers helped overwhelm the deficit and public debt. In this context, first, in this paper we analyse the trend and variation rate of government revenue as well as expenditure on final consumption and government investment in the last 15 years in relation to the business cycle. In another vein, we also explore and quantify the impact of the countercyclical policies provided from 2007 to 2010 and their impact on the tax burden, which enables us to evaluate the stabilizing role of fiscal policy and thus highlight its fragility. Second, given the challenges of budgetary stability facing the Spanish economy, and always based on the above analysis in which we display the limited room for fiscal manoeuvre, we present the effects of aggregate public spending in a systematic and quantified way as well as its composition as an instrument of fiscal policy. In this framework, a long term stable equilibrium relationship is studied, based on two bivariate models that cointegrate econometrically, that is to say, to estimate models for error correction for cointegrated nonstationary series (and ultimately able to anticipate the evolution of the Spanish economy), we estimate and assess the contribution of spending on investment and government final consumption on aggregate output as well as its differential effect, to assess the concrete impact of the measures applied and ultimately the role of fiscal policy implemented in the early years of the crisis and those that will be designed in the future. Finally, the main conclusion given by the model of behaviour for the final consumption expenditure of general government and GDP, is the existence of delayed adverse effects on the rate of growth of public spending on growth rate GDP. Taking into account the response function of GDP for a boost in public consumption, we estimate that with a lag of two years, an increase in the growth rate of public consumption is falling in the rates of change of aggregate output. Moreover, we can also deduce that the delayed effects of the rate of decline in public investment have a negative impact on economic growth.


The lack of industrywide data on homeownership education and counseling (HEC) programs has severely limited evaluation. In particular, very little evidence exists on the relationship between HEC completion and loan prepayment, an outcome of interest to both mortgage lenders and consumer advocates. Where mortgage prepayment directly influences the sustainability of affordable mortgage products, it also reflects the ability of underserved borrowers to access lower-cost credit through refinancing. This study uses a uniquely rich data set to examine the impact of HEC completion on prepayment and defaultamongborrowers receivingHECfrom a variety of providers across 42 states. The loans, originated between 1999 and 2003, are observed through the first quarter of 2006, a period in which strong housing appreciation and decreasing interest rates generated substantial refinancing activity. Using a competing risks model of mortgage prepayment and default, we find that HEC programs based on classroom instruction and individual counseling improve a borrower's exercise of the mortgage prepayment option, but that programs based on home study or telephone counseling did not affect borrower behavior. Counseling shows no effect on default propensities. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.


This paper seeks to review the current regulatory regime governing cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin, in United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Singapore, and traces the regulatory trend in those identified countries. These developments are compared to the Australian context. From the comparative analysis conducted be-tween regimes available in other jurisdictions and those in Australia, the authors conclude that the Australian regulatory regime in relation to cryptocurrency, in particular Bitcoin, are comparable in some respects and in others are much progressive. This is specifically in light of the 2017 amendments relating to anti-money laundering legislation which places Australia as a strong forerunner to legislate on Bitcoin and anti-money laundering legislation. However, to successfully achieve this, Australia must address its lag in relation to the classification of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency respectively. As such, it is concluded that the regulatory regime of cryptocurrency both internationally and at the Australian level is far from satisfactory.


Abstract. A regional modeling study on the impact of desert dust on cloud
formation is presented for a major Saharan dust outbreak over Europe from 2 to 5 April 2014. The dust event coincided with an extensive and dense
cirrus cloud layer, suggesting an influence of dust on atmospheric ice
nucleation. Using interactive simulation with the regional dust model
COSMO-MUSCAT, we investigate cloud and precipitation representation in the
model and test the sensitivity of cloud parameters to dust–cloud and
dust–radiation interactions of the simulated dust plume. We evaluate model
results with ground-based and spaceborne remote sensing measurements of aerosol and
cloud properties, as well as the in situ measurements obtained during the
ML-CIRRUS aircraft campaign. A run of the model with single-moment bulk
microphysics without online dust feedback considerably underestimated cirrus
cloud cover over Germany in the comparison with infrared satellite imagery.
This was also reflected in simulated upper-tropospheric ice water content
(IWC), which accounted for only 20 % of the observed values. The
interactive dust simulation with COSMO-MUSCAT, including a two-moment bulk
microphysics scheme and dust–cloud as well as dust–radiation feedback, in
contrast, led to significant improvements. The modeled cirrus cloud cover and
IWC were by at least a factor of 2 higher in the relevant altitudes
compared to the noninteractive model run. We attributed these improvements
mainly to enhanced deposition freezing in response to the high mineral dust
concentrations. This was corroborated further in a significant decrease in
ice particle radii towards more realistic values, compared to in situ
measurements from the ML-CIRRUS aircraft campaign. By testing different
empirical ice nucleation parameterizations, we further demonstrate that
remaining uncertainties in the ice-nucleating properties of mineral dust
affect the model performance at least as significantly as
including the online representation of the mineral dust distribution.
Dust–radiation interactions played a secondary role for cirrus cloud
formation, but contributed to a more realistic representation of
precipitation by suppressing moist convection in southern Germany. In
addition, a too-low specific humidity in the 7 to 10 km altitude range in
the boundary conditions was identified as one of the main reasons for misrepresentation
of cirrus clouds in this model study.


ROS promote blood vessel formation in the placenta, which protects against preeclampsia. ROS against preeclampsia Preeclampsia is the onset of high blood pressure and proteinuria that acutely develops after about 20 weeks of pregnancy, which impairs fetal growth and can result in maternal organ damage. There are few treatment options available. Oxidative stress mediated by reactive oxygen species (ROS) has been proposed to inhibit blood vessel formation (a process called angiogenesis) in the placenta, which would be expected to increase the risk of preeclampsia; however, clinical trials have found antioxidants to be ineffective in preventing preeclampsia. Nezu et al. used a mouse model of preeclampsia in which the antioxidant system Nrf2 had been genetically or pharmacologically manipulated. Unexpectedly, genetic ablation of an inhibitor of Nrf2 or treatment with an activator of Nrf2 decreased placental angiogenesis, suppressed fetal growth, and worsened maternal survival. In contrast, deficiency of Nrf2 increased placental angiogenesis and improved fetal and maternal outcomes. These results indicate that ROS are necessary for the placental angiogenesis that reduces the risk of preeclampsia, and help to explain the negative results of the clinical trials of antioxidants. Placental activation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) plays a key role in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are thought to affect placental angiogenesis, which is critical for preventing preeclampsia pathology. We examined the role of ROS in preeclampsia by genetically modifying the Keap1-Nrf2 pathway, a cellular antioxidant defense system, in a mouse model of RAS-induced preeclampsia. Nrf2 deficiency would be expected to impair cellular antioxidant responses; however, Nrf2 deficiency in preeclamptic mice improved maternal and fetal survival, ameliorated intra-uterine growth retardation, and augmented oxidative DNA damage. Furthermore, the placentas of Nrf2-deficient mice had increased endothelial cell proliferation with dense vascular networks. In contrast, the placentas of preeclamptic mice with overactive Nrf2 showed repressed angiogenesis, which was associated with decreased expression of genes encoding angiogenic chemokines and cytokines. Our findings support the notion that ROS-mediated signaling is essential for maintaining placental angiogenesis in preeclampsia and may provide mechanistic insight into the negative results of clinical trials for antioxidants in preeclampsia.


This volume contains the poetic fragments of the two illustrious singers of early sixth-century Lesbos: Sappho, the most famous woman poet of antiquity, whose main theme was love; and Alcaeus, poet of wine, war, and politics, and composer of short hymns to the gods. Also included are the principal testimonia, the ancients' reports on the lives and work of the two poets. The five volumes in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Greek Lyric contain the surviving fragments of solo and choral song. This poetry was not preserved in medieval manuscripts, and few complete poems remain. Later writers quoted from the poets, but only so much as suited their needs; these quotations are supplemented by papyrus texts found in Egypt, most of them badly damaged. The high quality of what remains makes us realise the enormity of our loss. Volume I presents Sappho and Alcaeus. Volume II contains the work of Anacreon, composer of solo song; the " Anacreontea"; and the earliest writers of choral poetry, notably the seventh-century Spartans Alcman and Terpander. Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and other sixth-century poets are in Volume III. Bacchylides and other fifth-century poets are in Volume IV along with Corinna (although some argue that she belongs to the third century). Volume V contains the new school of poets active from the mid-fifth to the mid-fourth century and also collects folk songs, drinking songs, hymns, and other anonymous pieces.


Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England explores one of society's darkest crimes using archival sources and discussing its representation in the drama, pamphlets and broadside ballads of the early modern period. It takes the reader on a journey through the streets and taverns where street literature was hawked, to the playhouses where the crime was dramatized, and the courts where it was tried and punished. Using a regional microstudy of coroners' inquests and churchwardens' presentments, coupled with theories of liminality, marginality and rites of passage, it reveals complex and contradictory attitudes to infants, women and the crime. As well as considering unwed women, the most common perpetrators of infanticide, the study shows that married women, men and the local community were also culpable, and the many reasons for this. Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England is set in its European and historical contexts, revealing surprising continuities across time.


We study the set of continuous functions that admit no spurious local optima (i.e. local minima that are not global minima) which we term \textit{global functions}. They satisfy various powerful properties for analyzing nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems. For instance, they satisfy a theorem akin to the fundamental uniform limit theorem in the analysis regarding continuous functions. Global functions are also endowed with useful properties regarding the composition of functions and change of variables. Using these new results, we show that a class of nonconvex and nonsmooth optimization problems arising in tensor decomposition applications are global functions. This is the first result concerning nonconvex methods for nonsmooth objective functions. Our result provides a theoretical guarantee for the widely-used $\ell_1$ norm to avoid outliers in nonconvex optimization.


This chapter reports on a research project implemented in the Faculty
 of Education at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) which
investigated the impact of integrating Open Educational Resources (OER)
in the teaching-learning process by secondary level student teachers in
Sri Lanka. The research questions this study seeks to answer are: What
are the impacts of OER integration on the use of instructional materials
 by teachers? What are the impacts of OER integration on teachers'
pedagogical perspectives? What are the impacts of OER integration on
teachers' pedagogical practices?

The study adopted a design-based research approach. An intervention
programme was implemented with 230 participants who were student
teachers registered in the OUSL Postgraduate Diploma in Education
programme in nine OUSL centres across the nine provinces of Sri Lanka.
Data were collected at multiple stages through the following
quantitative and qualitative strategies: survey questionnaires, analysis
 of lesson plans, concept mapping, self-reflection, semi-structured
interviews, focus group discussions, usage data from the learning
management system and narratives in the form of "stories". While
descriptive statistical methods such as percentages were used to analyse
 the quantitative data, the authors employed an Interpretive
Phenomenological Analysis approach to analyse the qualitative data.

Findings showed that the integration of OER had a substantial impact
on changing teachers' instructional resource use, pedagogical
perspectives and pedagogical practices. The careful and systematic
design of activities facilitated a shift from a "low" to a "high" degree
 of innovative use of instructional resources as well as creation of OER
 by teachers, while their pedagogical perspectives and practices shifted
 towards more constructivist, context-centric and collaborative
patterns, as well as to a participatory and sharing culture, in favour
of Open Educational Practices.

This kind of capacity-building of teachers in the adoption of OER has
 the potential to strengthen the school education system in Sri Lanka.
Motivating teachers through provision of further opportunities, and
recognition of their initiatives through incentives and appreciation,
would enhance empowerment of teachers to act as "change agents". It will
 also provide insights to inform recommendations for the formulation of
evidence-based guidelines to support OER adoption.


During recent years new excavations at a number of Neolithic locations in the Central Zagros by German, British and Iranian archaeologists have revealed a series of important results. Notable are the Early Neolithic sites of Choga Golan, Jani, Sheikh-e Abad, and East Chia Sabz, all discovered and excavated within the last ten years. In this volume Hojjat Darabi gives a survey of the discoveries on which our knowledge is based. The book is set in a chronological frame, in an environmental context, and in a regional and theoretical perspective. It is illustrated by a number of useful photos, drawings charts and diagrams. The book is a presentation of our knowledge about Neolithic Revolution as it appears right now; in addition, its provides an outline of further steps for future research.


1. Parasites can have important effects on host populations influencing either fecundity or mortality, but understanding the magnitude of these effects in endemic host-parasite systems is challenging and requires an understanding of ecological processes affecting both host and parasite. 2. Avian blood parasites (Haemoproteus and Plasmodium) have been much studied, but the effects of these parasites on hosts in areas where they are endemic remains poorly known. 3. We used a multistate modelling framework to explore the effects of chronic infection with Plasmodium on survival and recapture probability in a large data set of breeding blue tits, involving 3424 individuals and 3118 infection diagnoses over nine years. 4. We reveal strong associations between chronic malaria infection and both recapture and survival, effects that are dependent on the clade of parasite, on host traits and on the local risk of infection. 5. Infection with Plasmodium relictum was associated with reduced recapture probability and increased survival, compared to P. circumflexum, suggesting that these parasites have differing virulence and cause different types of selection on this host. 6. Our results suggest a large potential survival cost of acute infections revealed by modelling host survival as a function of the local risk of infection. 7. Our analyses suggest not only that endemic avian malaria may have multiple fitness effects on their hosts and that these effects are species dependent, but also that adding ecological structure (in this case parasite species and spatial variation in disease occurrence) to analyses of host-parasite interactions is an important step in understanding the ecology and evolution of these systems.


This paper introduces a new and comprehensive Human Development Index (HDI) trends dataset for 135 countries and 40 years of annual data. We apply this dataset to answer several empirical questions related to the evolution of human development over the last 40 years. The data reveal overall global improvements, yet significant variability across all regions. While we confirm the existence of continued divergence in per capita income, we find the inverse for HDI. We find no statistically significant correlation between growth and non-income HDI improvements over a forty year period. We also examine some basic correlates that are associated with countries performance in HDI.


Aims: Although smoking is considered to be an established risk factor for colorectal cancer, the current evidence on the association between smokeless tobacco and colorectal cancer is scant and inconclusive. We used pooled individual data from the Swedish Collaboration on Health Effects of Snus Use to assess this association. Methods: A total of 417,872 male participants from nine cohort studies across Sweden were followed up for incidence of colorectal cancer and death. Outcomes were ascertained through linkage to health registers. We used shared frailty models with random effects at the study level to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results: During 7,135,504 person-years of observation, 4170 men developed colorectal cancer. There was no clear association between snus use and colorectal cancer overall. Exclusive current snus users, however, had an increased risk of rectal cancer (HR 1.40: 95% CI 1.09, 1.79). There were no statistically significant associations between snus use and either all-cause or colorectal cancer-specific mortality after colorectal cancer diagnosis. Conclusions: Our findings, from a large sample, do not support any strong relationships between snus use and colorectal cancer risk and survival among men. However, the observed increased risk of rectal cancer is noteworthy, and in merit of further attention.


Some see the 1980s as a Golden Age, a "Morning in America" when Ronald Reagan revived America's economy, reoriented American politics, and restored Americans' faith in their country and in themselves. Others see the 1980s as a new "Gilded Age," an era that was selfish, superficial, glitzy, greedy, divisive, and destructive. This multifaceted exploration of the 1980s brings together a variety of voices from different political persuasions, generations, and vantage points. The volume features work by Reagan critics and Reagan fans (including one of President Reagan's closest aides, Ed Meese), by historians who think the 1980s were a disastrous time, those who think it was a glorious time, and those who see both the blessings and the curses of the decade. Their essays examine everything from multiculturalism, Southern conservatism, and Reaganomics, to music culture, religion, crime, AIDS, and the city. A complex, thoughtful account of a watershed in our recent history, this volume will engage anyone interested in this pivotal decade.


Enantiomers of a relatively rigid DNA-binding metallo-helix are shown to have comparable activity to that of cisplatin against the cell lines MCF7 (human breast adenocarcinoma) and A2780 (human ovarian carcinoma) but are ca five times more active against the cisplatin-resistant A2780cis. The cell-line HCT116 p53+/+ (human colon carcinoma) is highly sensitive giving IC50 values in the nM range, far lower than the cisplatin control. The hypothesis that the biological target of such metallohelices is DNA is probed by various techniques. Tertiary structure changes in ct-DNA (formation of loops and intramolecular coiling) on exposure to the compounds are demonstrated by atomic force microscopy and supported by circular/linear dichroism in solution. Selectivity for 5′-CACATA and 5′-CACTAT segments is shown by DNase I footprinting. Various three- and four-way oligonucleotide junctions are stabilised, and remarkably only the Λ metallo-helix enantiomer stabilizes T-shaped 3WJs during gel electrophoresis; this is despite the lack of a known helix binding site. In studies with oligonucleotide duplexes with bulges it is also shown for the first time that the metallo-helix binding strength and the number of binding sites are dependent on the size of the bulge. In contrast to all the above, flexible metallo-helices show little propensity for structured or selective DNA binding, and while for A2780 the cancer cell line cytotoxicity is retained the A2780cis strain shows significant resistance. For all compounds in the study, H2AX FACS assays on HCT116 p53+/+ showed that no significant DNA damage occurs. In contrast, cell cycle analysis shows that the DNA binders arrest cells in the G2/mitosis phase, and while all compounds cause apoptosis, the DNA binders have the greater effect. Taken together these screening and mechanistic results are consistent with the more rigid helices acting via a DNA binding mechanism while the flexible assemblies do not.


Agincourt took place on 25 October 1415 and was a turning-point not only in the Hundred Years War between England and France but also in the history of weaponry. Azincourt (as it is now) is in the Pas-de-Calais, and the French were famously defeated by an army led by Henry V. Henry V's stunning victory revived England's military prestige and greatly strengthened his territorial claims in France. The exhausted English army of about 9,000 men was engaged by 20,000 Frenchmen, but the limited space of battle favoured the more compact English forces. The undisciplined charges of the French combined with the exceptional skill of the English archers contributed to a pivotal moment in European warfare. Not more than 1,600 English soldiers died; the French probably lost more than 6,000 men. Juliet Barker's shimmeringly brilliant narrative commemorates and analyses a canonical battle in British history.


Despite the importance of zooplankton in providing vital information about ocean-climate forcing in marine systems, knowledge of the planktonic zoogeography of the south-east Indian Ocean is limited. The dominant oceanographic feature in this region is the anomalous poleward flowing Leeuwin Current, which transports warm, tropical waters south along the Western Australian coast, and follows a trajectory that crosses thirteen degrees of latitude, from the tropical north to the temperate south. This study examined two years of data collected by Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System at three unique locations in Western Australian coastal ocean waters between 22°S and 34°S. Spatial and temporal patterns in zooplankton abundance, composition and diversity were investigated, with a focus on copepods, and differences in assemblage structure were related to oceanographic conditions. Clear distinctions in copepod assemblages were observed, becoming weaker in winter due to enhanced connectivity driven by alongshore and crossshelf transport of species in the Leeuwin Current. Both physical and biogeochemical factors were revealed to be significant in shaping copepod assemblages, with seawater density, an indication of water mass, exerting the greatest influence. The results suggest that both broad scale latitudinal gradients and mesoscale events contribute to variation in dissimilarities of zooplankton assemblages in these waters. This study provides the first detailed comparison of zooplankton assemblages in the northwest, southwest and southern coastal waters of Western Australia, and enhances understanding of the processes influencing zooplankton distribution and structure.


Cutaneous B‐cell lymphomas (CBCL) are the second most common form of primary cutaneous lymphomas. The cutaneous follicle center lymphoma and the cutaneous marginal zone lymphoma (extranodal MALT type lymphoma) account for the vast majority of CBCL and manifest with nodules. These two lymphoma entities have an indolent, slowly progressive course and an excellent prognosis despite a high rate of recurrences. In contrast, cutaneous diffuse large B‐cell lymphoma, leg type, and other rare forms of CBCL display an impaired prognosis and therefore require to be treated with multiagent chemotherapy and anti‐CD20 monoclonal antibodies in most cases. Clinico‐pathologic correlation, histology with immunohistochemical profile and genotyping as well as staging examinations are crucial diagnostic elements in the work‐up of CBCL.


Protein function prediction is important for understanding life at the molecular level and therefore is highly demanded by biomedical research and pharmaceutical applications. To overcome the problem, in this work I have proposed a novel multi-label protein function prediction based on hierarchical approach. In Hierarchical multi-label classification problems, each instance can be classified into two or more classes simultaneously, differently from conventional classification. Mainly, the proposed methodology is consisting of three phases such as (i) Creating clusters (ii) Generation of class vectors and (iii) classification of instances. At first, we create the clusters based on the hybridization of KNearest Neighbor and Expectation Maximization algorithm (KNN+EM). Based on the clusters we generate the class vectors. Finally, protein function prediction is carried out in the classification stage. The performance of the proposed method is extensively tested upon five types of protein datasets, and it is compared to those of the two methods in terms of accuracy. Experimental results show that our proposed multi-label protein function prediction significantly superior to the existing methods over different datasets.


The present study is concerned with the reflection and transmission of plane waves at an imperfect interface between two different fluid saturated porous half spaces. The expression for the reflection and transmission coefficients which are the ratios of the amplitude of reflected and transmitted waves to the amplitude of incident waves are obtained for an imperfect boundary and deduced for normal stiffness, transverse stiffness. The variations of amplitude ratios with angle of incidence are depicted graphically. A particular case of reflection at the free surface in fluid saturated porous half spaces has been deduced and discussed. A special case of interest has also been deduced from the present investigation. It is found that amplitude ratios of the reflected and transmitted waves are affected by the stiffness of the media.


Building autonomous systems, self-learning while moving in an unknown environment, finds a variety of challenging applications. This paper presents a new approach, called clustering by discovery, for identification of clusters in a map which is being learned by exploration. The concomitance of exploration and clustering, we argue, is a mandatory feature for an autonomous system, hence the clustering technique we propose is an incremental process performed while the system is learning the map. Clusters supply an abstract description of the environment and can be used to decrease the complexity of the navigational tasks. The environment is viewed as a map of distinctive places which we assume to be sensed and recognized by the system. The presence of distinctive places and the environment scale are the only facts which we assume known apriori to the system. Clustering by discovery is based on a heuristic indicator called scattering, whose increment is minimized at each exploration step compatibly with a connectivity constraint imposed on clusters. Scattering is defined according to a number of functional and structural requirements. Two variants are presented, and their performance is discussed on a sample of maps including a real urban map and some randomly generated ones. In particular, one of the variants shows robust behaviour in terms of independence of the exploration strategy adopted. >


Introduction: Exudation from the tumour scar and glaucoma can be major problems after proton beam irradiation of uveal melanoma and can sometimes lead to secondary enucleation. We conducted a randomized study to determine whether systematic transpupillary thermotherapy (TTT) after proton beam radiotherapy could have a beneficial effect. Patients and Method:Between February 1999 and April 2003, all the patients treated by proton beam radiotherapy for uveal melanomas ≧7 mm thick or ≧15 mm in diameter were included in this study after giving their informed consent. One half of the patients received proton beam radiotherapy alone (60 Gy in 4 fractions) and the other half received the same dose of proton beam radiotherapy followed by TTT at 1, 6 and 12 months. All the information concerning the initial tumour parameters, treatments and follow-up was recorded and a statistical analysis was performed. Results: We randomized 151 patients. The median follow-up was 38 months. The 2 groups of patients were similar in terms of age, gender and tumour characteristics. The patients treated with TTT showed a greater reduction of tumour thickness (p = 0.06), less retinal detachment at the latest follow-up (p = 0.14) and a lower secondary enucleation rate (p = 0.02). Discussion: The present study is the first randomized analysis to demonstrate a significant decrease in the secondary enucleation rate in patients treated with TTT after proton beam radiotherapy. Further studies should be performed to determine whether TTT could be beneficial to smaller tumours and to define its optimal dose.


Abstract. Satellite radio signals are affected by the presence of electrons in the earth's upper atmosphere (ionosphere). The more electrons in the path of the satellite radio signals, the more the impact on the accuracy of satellite navigation systems such as the Global Positioning System (GPS)/ Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and GLONASS. These electrons introduce several meters of error in position calculation. Total Electron Content (TEC) is used to monitor possible space weather impacts on satellite to ground communication and satellite navigation. TEC is modified in the ionosphere by changing solar Extreme Ultra-Violet (EUV) radiation, geomagnetic storms, and the atmospheric waves that propagate up from the lower atmosphere. Therefore, TEC depends on local time, latitude, longitude, season, geomagnetic conditions, solar cycle activity, and condition of the troposphere. A dual frequency GPS receiver located at an equatorial station, Birnin-Kebbi in Northern Nigeria (geographic location: 12.64° N; 4.22° E), has been used to investigate variation of TEC during the period of 2011 to 2014. We investigate the diurnal, seasonal and solar cycle dependence of GPS-TEC. The result shows that TEC increases from a minimum at 0400 local time (LT) to maximum daytime peak between 1300–1600 LT and then decreases to a minimum value after sunset for all the years. Slight post-noon peaks in the daytime maximum and post-sunset decrease and enhancement is observed in some months. We observed that TEC were higher in the equinoxes than the solstices only in 2012. Where as in 2011, September equinox and December solstice recorded higher magnitude followed by March equinox and lowest in June solstice. In 2013, December solstice magnitude was highest, followed by the equinoxes and lowest in June solstice. In 2014, March equinox and December solstice magnitude were higher than September equinox and June solstice magnitude. June solstice consistently recorded the lowest values for all the years.


Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) is a group of wireless nodes join together to form a network without a defined architecture. It is formed dynamically as the nodes are mobile in nature. This characteristic of MANET could lead to insecure information exchange. Applications in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET) such as military or public emergency network require secure multicast communication. Multicasting supports group oriented communication. A cluster based system provides easy key management within a cluster or a group. In such an interaction system, a new member can join and a current member can leave at any time. This overcomes the issues of energy consumption, end to end delay, unreliability with high packet drop rate and low key delivery ratio. Also, the communication among the existing members can be made secure by using an efficient key management technique. The proposed method is efficient and more suitable for secure multicast communication dedicated to operate in MANETs. Performance analysis of non-clustered and clustered method of key management in MANET is done.


Estimating mechanical properties of concrete before designing reinforced concrete structures is among the design requirements. Steel fibers have a considerable effect on the mechanical properties of reinforced concrete, particularly its tensile strength. So far, numerous studies have been done to estimate the relationship between tensile strength of steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) and other SFRC characteristics using regression analyses. But, in order to determine appropriate relations according to these methods, we need to estimate the basic structure of relations. Genetic programming (GP) method has solved this problem. In this study, the results of 367 laboratory specimens collected from the literature are used to present some relations to predict the tensile strength of SFRC using GP. The proposed relations are more accurate than the relations which have been presented thus far.


The remarkable political change that Morocco has witnessed since the deathof King Hassan II in 1999 and the succession of his son, Mohammed VI, hascontributed to the development of Moroccan satire, due to the margin offreedom granted by the new regime. As a result of this political opening, satireconsiderably gains visibility as a recent phenomenon in the socio-political sceneof Morocco, moving from the shadow of privacy and the clandestine to thespotlight of quasi-permissiveness where satirists tackle issues that had been,not long ago, censored or strictly prohibited. In this chapter, I will demonstratehow the contemporary Moroccan satirical press contributes to shifting politicalboundaries and initiating debate on highly sensitive political matters, and thusserves to redefine the limits of the permissible in the Moroccan press.


Phytophthora cinnamomi has had a huge impact on natural ecosystems in Western Australia. For 29 years the extent of the disease in native forests has been mapped based on large-scale aerial photography, with validation of observations involving the routine testing of soil and root samples for the presence of the pathogen. In addition to P. cinnamomi, six other morphological species have been reported from native ecosystems in Western Australia: P. citricola, P. megasperma, P. cryptogea, P. drechsleri, P. nicotianae and P. boehmeriae. Within the collection there were many isolates that were difficult to identify based on morphology and as more Phytophthora species have been described with similar morphology it was realised that molecular identification of some of the morphological species was required. Thus, the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the rDNA gene has been amplified and sequence data compared to that of known species. Based on phylogenetic analysis, nine potentially new and undescribed taxa can be distinguished. In addition P. inundata, P. gonapodyides, and P. sp. asparagi and P. sp. niederhauseria were identified based on sequence data. Several of the new species are morphologically indistinguishable from known species (eg P. citricola, P. drechsleri, P. megasperma). In some cases the new taxa are indeed most closely related to the known species (eg P.sp. 4 and P. citricola). However, the DNA sequences of other new taxa show that they are not closely related to the morphologically similar species (eg P.sp. 3 and P. drechsleri, P.sp. 9 and P. megasperma). Most of the new species have been associated with dying Banksia spp. whilst P.sp. 2 and P.sp. 4 have also been isolated from Eucalyptus marginata (jarrah). Some species (eg P.spp. 3, 6 and 7) appear to have limited distribution, whilst others (eg P.sp.4) are more widespread. Further work is planned to describe the new taxa and to test their pathogenicity.


[Extract] The Western Australian government has commenced a program of closing down about half of the state's 274 remote communities. The program will, the Premier acknowledges, 'cause distress' to the more than 12,000 Aboriginal people who live there. Premier Colin Barnett cites the 'existing high rates of suicide, poor health and a lack of jobs' as well as the 'abuse and neglect of young children' as the reason for these measures. He says that the latter is 'a disgrace for the state'.

The Western Australian government is somehow managing to make this disgrace even worse. What is unclear about these extraordinary measures is how replacing one government disgrace with another provides any kind of solution to the endemic social problems of these communities. Sadly this act of institutional racism in pursuit of so-called economic outcomes is unsurprising. The signs are all around us that government, at all levels, has failed society in its metamorphosis from state to business.


The relationship between Communism and Americanism during the Popular Front period is now largely perceived as a positive one. By promoting the idea that Communism was an extension of specifically American political traditions, the argument runs, Communists were able to advance their participation in the unions and in a left-oriented cultural-political alliance with broad popular appeal. Against this perspective, this article highlights the repressive significance of liberal nationalism as a resource for the narrowing of political culture in the New Deal labor movement. In particular, the analysis focuses on the importance of Americanism to attacks by the Reuther caucus on the Communist Party in the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from the end of the 1930s through the war. Such factional politics are significant both as a reflection of more general developments in the Congress of Industrial Organizations and because of the UAW's centrality to the political trajectory of the labor movement. More broadly, this history reveals how a liberal anti-Communism embraced the demonizing politics typically associated with the post-war red scare, linking New Deal political culture to a long tradition of countersubversive discourse in America.


This thesis discusses the operating characteristics and design of fluidised bed cooling towers (FBCT), which may be used to cool hot water for industrial purposes. Limited data exist for such a three-phase fluidised bed acting as a cooling tower. This motivated some early workers to investigate its usefulness in cooling tower applications and they showed that the FBCT produces heat and mass transfer rates much higher than in conventional fixed-bed towers. Despite this advantage, the FBCT has not been commercially exploited to date. An extensive experimental study is presented using up-to-date instrumentation to determine the thermal and hydraulic characteristics with a view to establishing a design criteria for full-scale FBCTs. Experimental tests were performed to account for the effect of the plenum chamber and the spray zone region upon the thermal performance of the FBCT. Data analysis was performed so that the effect of the fluidised bed alone as well as the plenum chamber could be known. A prototype was designed and built incorporating nine calibrated Platinum Resistance Thermometers for fluid temperature measurements with one located just below the fluidized bed itself while another was positioned below the plenum chamber to measure outlet water temperatures. Two differential pressure transducers and an electronic water flowmeter were used to measure air pressures and water flow rates respectively. All instruments were connected to a data-logger linked to a personal computer. Two different software packages were written and installed on the computer, to automatically retrieve experimental data from the rig during test runs and to automatically process the retrieved variables for analysis. Nine independent variables were measured in order to determine the tower thermal-hydraulic performance. Water and air flow rates ranged from 0.5 - 5 and 0.5 - 4 kg/s m2 respectively giving liquid/gas mass flux ratios that ranged from about 0.1 - 6. The inlet hot water temperature ranged from about 25 - 55°C while the inlet air wet-bulb temperature averaged about 18°C. Four different spherical packing arrangements were studied at static bed heights that ranged from about 25 to 400 mm. The spray nozzle height from the distributor grid ranged from 400 - 1500 mm. Data analysis was performed for thermal-hydraulic performance using both dimensional analysis and the Merkel approach. A least-square multiple regression analysis carried out on dimensionless and dimensional groups that resulted from this analysis showed that correlations derived are in good agreement with other experimental data. Correlations were derived for the prediction of the bed air pressure drop and hence the power requirement, the tower thermal performance, the minimum fluidisation velocity, and the expanded bed height. Correlations used to design a full-scale FBCT are presented. Novel work included measurements of local radial and axial temperature variations within the fluidised bed. Thermal performance decreased as the liquid/gas mass flux ratio was increased while it increased as the particle size was decreased. High density particles gave a higher bed air pressure, and hence a higher power requirement than low density ones. Minimum fluidization gas velocity was independent of the static bed height. Expanded bed height increased as the liquid and gas mass fluxes were increased. Thermal performance was found to increase when the effect of the plenum chamber was included in the analysis as compared to the fluidised bed itself. Methodological criteria for the design of a full scale FBCT have been developed. Design analysis suggests that FBCTs can be several times smaller in size than conventional cooling towers, and that they may operate with a similar or lower power requirement than the latter.


New installed annual solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity was equal to 76.1 GW in 2016 (+49%), reaching the total of 305 GW around the world. PV sources are able to achieve a greater energy independence, to tackle the climate change and to promote economic opportunities. This work proposes an economic analysis based on well-known indicators: Net Present Value (NPV), Discounted Payback Time (DPBT) and Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE). Several case studies are evaluated for residential households. They are based on three critical variables: plant size (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 kW), levels of insolation (1350, 1450 and 1550 kWh/(m2×y)) and share of self-consumption (30%, 40% and 50%). The profitability is verified in all case studies examined in this work. The role of self-consumption, that is the harmonization between demanded and produced energy, is strategic in a mature market to improve financial performance. A sensitivity analysis, based on both electricity purchase and sales prices (critical variables), confirms these positive results. The Reduction in the Emissions of Carbon Dioxide (ERcd) signifies an environmental improvement when a PV system is used as an alternative to a mix of fossil fuels. Finally, a policy proposal is examined based on a fiscal deduction of 50% fixing the period of deduction equal to 5 years.


BACKGROUND & AIMS
Deleted in liver cancer 1 (DLC1), which encodes a Rho GTPase activating protein, is a bona fide tumor suppressor in hepatocellular carcinoma. Underexpression of DLC1 in cancer has been attributed to genomic deletion and epigenetic silencing. However, the regulatory mechanism of the tumor suppressive activity of DLC1 remains elusive. In this study, we elucidated a novel post-translational modification by which the activity of DLC1 is functionally regulated.

METHODS
Molecular and biochemical approaches were employed to study Akt phosphorylation of DLC1. In vitro and in vivo functional assays were performed to elucidate the functional significance of Akt phosphorylation of DLC1.

RESULTS
Phosphorylation of ectopically expressed and endogenous DLC1 was enhanced upon insulin induction or with Akt expression in liver cancer cell lines. Conversely, addition of a phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt pathway inhibitor or silencing of Akt attenuated the phosphorylation level of DLC1. Site-directed mutagenesis was employed to replace the serine residue of the consensus Akt substrate motifs of DLC1 with alanine. S567 of DLC1 was identified as the only target of Akt phosphorylation. S567 is well conserved in all DLC family members. DLC2 was phosphorylated by Akt at the corresponding residue. Functional assays demonstrated that the S567D phosphomimetic DLC1 mutant lost its inhibitory activities in tumorigenesis and metastasis of oncogenically transformed hepatoblasts in a mouse model.

CONCLUSIONS
This study has revealed a novel post-translational modification that functionally deregulates the biologic activities of DLC1. Phosphorylation of DLC1 and DLC2 by Akt at the conserved residue points to a common regulatory mechanism of the DLC tumor suppressor family.


This paper presents a domain
engineering approach to build a software product line that supports the change
notification service in a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) according to
the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices. For the
development of this product line, the proposed approach makes use of a construction
of products methodology by analogy: this is a new notation which reports the
variability of the products, obtaining metrics as important as the number of
products and uses a language that enables, by means of the flexibilization of a
product and the
development of some generators, to build the rest of the product line. In
addition the paper offers a standard for the analysis and design of the CMDB as well. Finally, the paper
presents an economic model for the product line, where the profitability and
productivity of the proposed solution are analyzed.


Description This package provides tests of significance for covariates (or groups of covariates) in a fully nonparametric regression model and a variable (or group) selection procedure based on False Discovery Rate. In addition, it provides a function for local polynomial regression for any number of dimensions, using a bandwidth specified by the user or automatically chosen by cross validation or an adaptive procedure.


Small businesses in the Central Business District of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania were surveyed to determine their familiarity with and attitudes towards environmental sustainability, including obstacles and motivators for implementation as well as current business practices. While publications on similar topics existed for small businesses in other countries, there appeared to be little recent published research for small business communities in the United States. The research used a combination of online surveys and interviews with business owners and managers to gather data, as well as an extensive literature review for the basis of the analysis. Research results from the local survey supports the notion that "peer pressure" will be the most immediate motivator for businesses in the Wilkes-Barre Downtown area to implement sustainable practices. The two primary obstacles cited by businesses, cost and the feeling of being too small, could be overcome in several ways. First of all, a grant or other financial incentive for implementation might spur businesses that would otherwise be reluctant to do so. Second, tracking the progress of all businesses as a group towards an environmental goal could demonstrate the impact of the collective business action. Addressing the "peer pressure" factor, one thought would be to highlight some early business champions of sustainability in the downtown and through some sort of public relations campaign create enthusiasm for the concept with other businesses. Environmental Sustainability Journal of


Abstract:The manner in which social categories combine to produce inequality lies at the heart of scholarship on social stratification. To date, scholars have largely pointed to two primary ways that negatively stereotyped categories may aggregate: 1) additive effects, whereby one category has similar consequences across the other category, and 2) amplified congruence, whereby a secondary category exacerbates the negative effects of the first category. This article develops an alternative potential aggregation pattern—muted congruence—which posits that when individuals evaluate others that occupy multiple social positions about which stereotypes are highly congruent, such as being black and being unemployed, the additional category membership will have limited influence over the ultimate evaluation. Using evidence from a field experiment, where fictitious applications were submitted to real job openings, I examine which aggregation pattern most accurately reflects how race and unemployment shape actual hiring decisions. In line with predictions from the "muted congruence" perspective, the findings indicate that racial discrimination is prominent, but that there are limited additional negative effects of unemployment for African American workers. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for understanding the aggregation of social categories in the production of inequality.


Historically, wild dogs were extirpated from Australia's sheep growing regions using the same control techniques that are available today: poison baits, trapping, hooting and fencing. In the last half century wild dog management has focused on laying cost-effective, target-specific and humane poison bait, principally coordinated 1080 baiting programs. Unrepaired netting fences, inadequate participation in, and variable efficacy of, 'coordinated' baiting programs, and the ability of wild dogs to disperse hundreds of kilometres has allowed wild dogs to infiltrate and recolonise sheep production regions. Faced with these and other economic and environmental challenges, sheep production in Queensland has contracted dramatically. Improved fence materials and designs, more favourable economic conditions for sheep production, government incentives and formal agreements designed to ensure the private maintenance of fences in perpetuity have renewed interest in exclusion fencing. Based on a study that commenced in 2013 in southwest and central-west Queensland, this paper reports the progress two cluster fence groups are making towards reducing pests and increasing productivity.


The thesis offers an exposition of the religious epistemology of Ian Ramsey (1915-1972) and its development, together with a critical assessment of Ramsey's work indicating its strengths and weaknesses as a contribution to the contemporary debate concerning the problem of religious knowledge. The first chapter includes a study of unpublished material from Ramsey's early "Cambridge period", which reveals his espousal of a "form of Idealism" and the influence of Bradley, Ward and Whitehead. The second, and longest, chapter of the thesis traces Ramsey's development from this position to a "disclosure-based" epistemology and analyses this later philosophy in detail. It includes some reflections on intuitionism in epistemology in general, and religious epistemology in particular. Ramsey's concepts of the discernment and disclosure are related to these reflections. A classification of disclosures is attempted and some of the problems raised by Ramsey's spectrum of examples of disclosure-situations discussed. The objective and subjective elements of the disclosure are studied in detail. The third chapter considers Ramsey's work on religious language; in particular his views on "models" and "qualifiers" and his discussion of the evocative, representative and formal functions of religious discourse. Some attention is also paid to Ramsey's inconclusive suggestions about the nature of metaphysics. Chapter four takes up the issue of the justification of religious belief, comparing Ramsey's views here to his comments on the nature of justification in scientific, personal and metaphysical language. The formal criteria of justification are surveyed, together with Ramsey's material criterion of "empirical fit". Some final suggestions indicate possible developments of Ramsey's position on justification. Two excursuses relate Ramsey's views to (l) the debate on the role of models in science and religion, and (ll) the Thomistic doctrine of analogical prediction.


The Uummannaq region is a mosaic of glacial landsystems, consistent with hypothesized landscape distribution resulting from variations in subglacial thermal regime. The region is dominated by selective linear erosion that has spatially and altitudinally partitioned the landscape. Low altitude areas are dominated by glacial scour and higher elevations are dominated by plateaux or mountain valley and cirque glaciers. The appearance and nature of each landscape type varies locally with altitude and latitude, as a function of bedrock geology and average glacial conditions. Selective linear erosion has been a primary control on landscape distribution throughout Uummannaq, leading to plateau formation and the growth of a coalescent fjord system in the Uummannaq region. This has allowed the development of the Uummannaq ice stream's (UIS) onset zone during glacial periods. Fjord development has been enhanced by a downstream change in geology to less‐resistant lithologies, increasing erosional efficiency and allowing a single glacial channel to develop, encouraging glacier convergence and the initiation of ice streaming. The landscape has been affected by several periods of regional uplift from 33 Ma to present, and has been subject to subsequent fluvial and glacial erosion. Uplift has removed surfaces from the impact of widespread warm‐based glaciation, leaving them as relict landsurfaces. The result of this is a regional altitude‐dependent continuum of glacial modification, with extreme differences in erosion between high and low elevation surfaces. This study indicates that processes of long‐term uplift, glacial erosion/protection and spatial variability in erosion intensity have produced a highly partitioned landscape.


We study the classical problem of maximizing a monotone submodular function subject to a cardinality constraint k, with two additional twists: (i) elements arrive in a streaming fashion, and (ii) m items from the algorithm's memory are removed after the stream is finished. We develop a robust submodular algorithm STAR-T. It is based on a novel partitioning structure and an exponentially decreasing thresholding rule. STAR-T makes one pass over the data and retains a short but robust summary. We show that after the removal of any m elements from the obtained summary, a simple greedy algorithm STAR-T-GREEDY that runs on the remaining elements achieves a constant-factor approximation guarantee. In two different data summarization tasks, we demonstrate that it matches or outperforms existing greedy and streaming methods, even if they are allowed the benefit of knowing the removed subset in advance.