Description: As the expansion in world aquaculture continues at a very high rate, so does the need for information on feeding of cultivated fish and shellfish. In the larval and juvenile phases of many species, the use of manufactured feed is not possible. This important book covers in detail the biology and culture of the main live prey and microalgae used as feeds in the aquaculture of major commercial species including shrimps, sea bass, halibut, cod and bivalves. Contents include comprehensive details of the status of marine aquaculture in relation to live prey, and chapters covering the biology, production, harvesting, processing and nutritional value of microalgae and the main prey species: rotifers, Artemia and copepods. The editors have drawn together an impressive international team of contributors, providing a work that is set to become the standard reference and practical guide on the subject for many years to come. Live Feeds in Marine Aquaculture is an essential purchase for anyone involved in marine aquaculture, including fish farmers, researchers, and personnel in feed and equipment companies supplying the aquaculture trade. An extremely valuable tool as a reference and practical manual for students and professionals alike; libraries in all universities and research establishments where biological and aquatic sciences and aquaculture are studied and taught, should have copies available on their shelves. Contents: 1. Status of marine aquaculture in relation to live prey: past, present and future.


The aim of this paper is to move a step in the direction of determining the minimum amount of information needed to control a robot manipulator within the framework of adaptive control. Recent innovations in the state of the art show how global asymptotic trajectory tracking can be achieved despite the presence of uncertainties in the kinematic and dynamic models of the robot. However, a clear distinction between which parameters can be included among the uncertainties, and which parameters can not, has not been drawn yet. Since most of the adaptive control algorithms are built on linearly parameterized models, we propose to reformulate the problem as finding a procedure to determine whether and how a given dynamical system can be linearly parameterized with respect to a specific set of parameters. Within this framework, we show how the trajectory tracking problem of a manipulator can be accomplished with the only knowledge of the number of joints of the manipulator. As an illustrative example, we present the end-effector trajectory tracking control of a robot initialized with the kinematic model of a different robot.


In many developed countries, children now begin their formal schooling at an older age. However, a growing body of empirical studies provides little evidence that such schooling delays improve educational and economic outcomes. This study presents new evidence on whether school starting age influences student outcomes by relying on linked Danish survey and register data that include several distinct, widely used, and validated measures of mental health that are reported out-of-school among similarly aged children. We estimate the causal effects of delayed school enrollment using a "fuzzy" regression-discontinuity design based on exact dates of birth and the fact that, in Denmark, children typically enroll in school during the calendar year in which they turn six. We find that a one-year delay in the start of school dramatically reduces inattention/hyperactivity at age 7 (effect size =-0.7), a measure of self regulation with strong negative links to student achievement. We also find that this large and targeted effect persists at age 11. However, the estimated effects of school starting age on other mental-health constructs, which have weaker links to subsequent student achievement, are smaller and less persistent. ABSTRACT In many developed countries, children now begin their formal schooling at an older age. However, a growing body of empirical studies provides little evidence that such schooling delays improve educational and economic outcomes. This study presents new evidence on whether school starting age influences student outcomes by relying on linked Danish survey and register data that include several distinct, widely used, and validated measures of mental health that are reported out-of-school among similarly aged children. We estimate the causal effects of delayed school enrollment using a "fuzzy" regression-discontinuity design based on exact dates of birth and the fact that, in Denmark, children typically enroll in school during the calendar year in which they turn six. We find that a one-year delay in the start of school dramatically reduces inattention/hyperactivity at age 7 (effect size =-0.7), a measure of self regulation with strong negative links to student achievement. We also find that this large and targeted effect persists at age 11. However, the estimated effects of school starting age on other mental-health constructs, which have weaker links to subsequent student achievement, are smaller and less persistent.


Sicily is characterised by active deformations, as suggested by the presence of very recent faulted deposits and by widespread seismicity. The northern portion of the Sicilian belt has undergone strike-slip tectonics since the Pliocene, as the effect of the south Tyrrhenian border dynamics. Integrated methodologies of analysis have been utilised to evaluate the neotectonic setting of the northern sector of the island. To this aim, we have elaborated mesostructural, morphotectonic and morphometric data obtained from field survey, photogeological analysis and from the elaboration of digital elevation model (DEM) data relative to 31 drainage basins. The data sets have been compared with the uplift rate and seismicity distributions, allowing us to recognise different crustal blocks into which the northern Sicily chain may be divided. Each block of the chain reflects the characteristic morphometric pattern of the drainage basins. The morphostructural setting, the distribution of seismicity and the orientation of the recent faults indicate that the main narrow neotectonic deformation zones bounding the crustal blocks range from NW-SE, NE-SW and W-E.


This report presents summaries for two months of current research of the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory Boron Neutron Capture Therapy Program. Information is presented on development and murine screening experiments of low-density lipoprotein, carboranyl alanine, and liposome boron containing compounds. Pituitary tumor cell culture studies are described. Drug stability, pharmacology and toxicity evaluation of borocaptate sodium and boronophenylalanine are described. Treatment protocol development via the large animal (canine) modal studies and physiological response evaluation in rats are discussed. Supporting technology development and technical support activities for boron drug biochemistry and purity, analytical and measurement dosimetry, and noninvasive boron quantification activities are included for the current time period. Current publications for the two months are listed.


Previous studies on the colonial coccoid green algal genus Dictyosphaerium have shown a polyphyletic origin of this morphotype within the Chlorellaceae. Recent molecular analyses assigned the type species D. ehrenbergianum to the Parachlorella clade of the Chlorellaceae. In the present study we focused on strains of D. tetrachotomum, one of the most frequent morphospecies of the genus in inland waters. Analyses of combined SSU and ITS rRNA gene sequences revealed that strains with D. tetrachotomum morphology do not share a close phylogenetic relationship with the type species D. ehrenbergianum. These strains are part of a subclade of the Chlorella clade of the Chlorellaceae, nested between members of Didymogenes and a second new lineage of different Dictyosphaerium-like strains. Due to the unique position of these strains in the tree, we here establish the new genera Hindakia and Heynigia. Morphological analysis and phylogenetic and secondary structure analyses of the SSU, ITS1 and ITS2 of Hindakia strains have revealed considerable differences within this subclade, leading to the separation of two distinct species: H. tetrachotoma and H. fallax. Closely related to this new genus are two colony-forming strains with spherical cells, constituting a distinct lineage consisting of Heynigia dictyosphaerioides, sp. nov., and Heynigia riparia, sp. nov. Further, our results have confirmed the polyphyletic origin of the Dictyosphaerium morphotype within the Chlorellaceae.


Lawmaking by direct democracy, whereby the public votes directly on initiatives and referenda, is an increasingly popular and frequent feature of American politics. But critics of direct democracy point out that voters do not know basic facts about ballot measures, seem confused about the issues, and appear unduly influenced by superficial advertising. I argue that the source of voter confusion in direct democracy is not political ignorance or heavy campaign spending, as commonly alleged, but the scarcity of "heuristic cues" --- cognitive shortcuts that voters customarily use to make political decisions. In this Article, I draw on political psychology to describe what heuristic cues are and how they help voters make difficult choices in other contexts, most importantly in candidate elections. I argue that strengthening heuristic cues in direct democracy offers the best means of rehabilitating voter competence pragmatically, at low cost, without trying to force voters to adjust the way they think about politics. I advocate an aggressive approach to direct democracy regulation that advances beyond the basic disclosure regimes currently in place. Under the "disclosure plus" framework presented here, the government should attempt not only to produce heuristic cues in direct democracy through increased campaign finance disclosure, but also to increase public awareness of those heuristic cues by broadcasting them to the public in highly visible ways. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has frustrated attempts in the past to advance voter competence, I introduce a new constitutional approach to campaign regulation of direct democracy that comports better with Buckley v. Valeo and accommodates the government's significant interest in voter competence.


The shortage of high-quality systematic reviews in the field of radiology limits evidence-based integration of imaging methods into clinical practice and may perpetuate misconceptions regarding the efficacy and appropriateness of imaging techniques for specific applications. Diffusion tensor imaging for patients with mild traumatic brain injury (DTI-mTBI) and dynamic susceptibility contrast MRI for patients with glioma (DSC-glioma) are applications of quantitative neuroimaging, which similarly detect manifestations of disease where conventional neuroimaging techniques cannot. We performed a critical appraisal of reviews, based on the current evidence-based medicine methodology, addressing the ability of DTI-mTBI and DSC-glioma to (a) detect brain abnormalities and/or (b) predict clinical outcomes. 23 reviews of DTI-mTBI and 26 reviews of DSC-glioma met criteria for inclusion. All reviews addressed detection of brain abnormalities, whereas 12 DTI-mTBI reviews and 22 DSC-glioma reviews addressed prediction of a clinical outcome. All reviews were assessed using a critical appraisal worksheet consisting of 19 yes/no questions. Reviews were graded according to the total number of positive responses and the 2011 Oxford Centre for evidence-based medicine levels of evidence criteria. Reviews addressing DTI-mTBI detection had moderate quality, while those addressing DSC-glioma were of low quality. Reviews addressing prediction of outcomes for both applications were of low quality. Five DTI-mTBI reviews, but only one review of DSC-glioma met criteria for classification as a meta-analysis/systematic/quantitative review.


A 39-year-old woman (Case 1) and a 57-year-old woman (Case 2) underwent allogeneic bone marrow transplantation for acute lymphoblastic leukemia and follicular lymphoma, respectively. Both patients had received tacrolimus orally for treatment of or prophylaxis against graft-versus-host disease. Seventeen months (Case 1) and 2 months (Case 2) post-transplantation, when the trough level of tacrolimus was maintained around 10 ng/ml, the serum sodium levels of Cases 1 and 2 decreased to 123.5 mEq/l and 125.6 mEq/l, respectively. Urinary sodium excretions increased to 186.8 mEq/day and 375.7 mEq/day, respectively. Sodium-losing nephropathy due to tacrolimus was diagnosed, and reducing the dose of tacrolimus with no other intervention resulted in resolution of the hyponatremia. Although sporadic kidney transplantation cases with sodium-losing nephropathy due to tacrolimus have been reported, no prior cases with this complication after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) have been reported. Sodium-losing nephropathy should be recognized as one of the renal toxicities of tacrolimus in HSCT as well as kidney recipients.


Access to patient data gathered in clinical trials is a highly controversial and complex issue that needs to balance three aspects: the public right to transparency regarding data used to approve new medicines, protection of the data privacy rights of patients involved in the studies, and commercial confidentiality concerns of the trial sponsors. In response to an increasing number of formal complaints about restrictive practices in publicising clinical data, the European Medicines Agency has started an initiative to enable access to patient-level study data. In November 2012, they organised a workshop to bring the stakeholders together to discuss and establish the way forward.


Translation as a cultural process can be used in various ways to suppress or promote ideologies. Within the framework of Critical Studies in Translation, this article examines the presence of the phenomenon of manipulation; that is, deliberate alteration of central topics and messages for ideological purposes, in the Spanish translation of the story The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. It proposes that Wilde's specific intent in using the fairy tale genre to battle heterosexism (the belief that heterosexuality is the only norm) is not transmitted in any of the Spanish versions of the story, since its English publication in 1888 to the twenty-first century. The analysis proves that all twelve translations of the story found, included the famous translation by Jorge Luis Borges in 1910, manipulate the sex and sexuality of the characters by taking advantage of the commonly perceived ambiguities between the grammatical and cultural gender in Spanish. This is done in such a way that one of the messages of the story, the redemption of homosexual love and its acceptance by God, is omitted entirely to become, and promote, the standard and conventional view of sexuality that dominates contemporary Western tradition. The article finishes by pointing out the linguistic choices that need to be considered for a new translation of the story and provides the translation of a passage as an example.


The aim of this study is to explore the emotion of disappointment in organisations and to develop a new line of theorising inspired by psychodynamic theory. The current literature casts disappointment as a negative emotion undermining morale, depressing expectations and justifying inaction and inertia. This only captures part of the complexity of disappointment and leaves unexplored both its impact on the organisation and its potential creativity. The study presents a theoretical framework derived from research that depicts disappointment as unfolding in three positions; I am disappointing, I am disappointed and I disappoint. It asserts the importance of disappointment as an integrative emotion. The study identifies a contradiction: that at the same time as being seen as 'of little concern' to individuals, there is fear within organisations that disappointment will undermine stability and destroy positive feelings. The study shows how disappointment is connected to, and may help to transform, the dynamics of blame in organisations. Such transformation can be based on an ability to integrate failure and on a development of the relationship between disappointment and learning. Disappointment represents the loss of the fantasy of stability. When reconceptualised in this way, disappointment results in a reimagining of possibility. Fantasy and reality are brought into conscious awareness and tolerated rather than extruded. The imaginary ideal organisation can be seen for what it is: a fantasy that can never be realised. The imaginary ideal is mourned and replaced by a more realistic entity. Organisation members' previous efforts to organise disappointment through blame, shame and extrusion is now recognised as a disappointing strategy. Understood thus, disappointment is at the very heart of organising as it invites consideration of the relationship between fantasy and reality. This differentiates it from other types of social defences which, by their nature defend against thinking and learning.


The encoding of experiences in the brain and the consolidation of long-term memories depend on gene transcription. Identifying the function of specific genes in encoding experience is one of the main objectives of molecular neuroscience. Furthermore, the functional association of defined genes with specific behaviors has implications for understanding the basis of neuropsychiatric disorders. Induction of robust transcription programs has been observed in the brains of mice following various behavioral manipulations. While some genetic elements are utilized recurrently following different behavioral manipulations and in different brain nuclei, transcriptional programs are overall unique to the inducing stimuli and the structure in which they are studied(1,2). In this publication, a protocol is described for robust and comprehensive transcriptional profiling from brain nuclei of mice in response to behavioral manipulation. The protocol is demonstrated in the context of analysis of gene expression dynamics in the nucleus accumbens following acute cocaine experience. Subsequent to a defined in vivo experience, the target neural tissue is dissected; followed by RNA purification, reverse transcription and utilization of microfluidic arrays for comprehensive qPCR analysis of multiple target genes. This protocol is geared towards comprehensive analysis (addressing 50-500 genes) of limiting quantities of starting material, such as small brain samples or even single cells. The protocol is most advantageous for parallel analysis of multiple samples (e.g. single cells, dynamic analysis following pharmaceutical, viral or behavioral perturbations). However, the protocol could also serve for the characterization and quality assurance of samples prior to whole-genome studies by microarrays or RNAseq, as well as validation of data obtained from whole-genome studies.


This paper analyzes how investments in professional European football clubs affect the market value of Chinese corporations. Twelve acquisition cases with complete stock return data are identified between 2009 and 2017. Applying traditional financial event study methodology, it appears that Chinese corporations, on average, do not earn abnormal returns as a result of their investments in professional European football clubs. However, as exceptions to this finding, a few corporations show significant positive or negative abnormal returns. This study also hints at an association between the change in market value of acquiring corporations, the relative transaction size, and their industry relatedness. These findings have important implications for corporate and football managers, current stock holders, and future investors.


Courts are beginning to confront a problem that has divided the scientific community - whether identifying a defendant by fishing through a database of DNA types to find a match to a crime-scene sample reduces the significance of a match. For years, the problem seemed academic. Now that the U.S. has more than five million DNA profiles from convicted offenders and suspects in a national, computer-searchable database, the question has assumed more urgency. Increasingly, individuals are being charged with crimes as a result of a match between their recorded profile and the DNA from a victim or scene of a crime. Arguing that there is no generally accepted scientific opinion on how the probative value of a match from a database trawl should be quantified, some of these defendants have moved to exclude the DNA evidence. Trial courts have ruled both ways. Appellate courts in California and the District of Columbia have rebuffed these challenges, reasoning that the general-acceptance standard for scientific evidence does not apply in this situation. Furthermore, they have held that even though the defendant was not selected randomly, the jury can be given the usual probability that a randomly selected individual will match a crime-scene sample. This Article criticizes the reasoning (but not the outcome) in these opinions. It argues that the attempts to avoid directly confronting the debate among scientists and statisticians rob the opinions of any persuasive value. Elaborating on earlier statistical analyses of the database-trawl question, it presents a more satisfactory rationale for admitting the unadjusted random-match probability.


In this study, the method for damped co-oscillating tides is used to evaluate damping and energy dissipation characteristics for various estuaries of different geometry and depth. Of special interest are the damping and energy dissipation characteristics of the German tidal rivers such as Elbe, Weser and Ems in comparison with North-American tidal estuaries, since the former are characterized by deep navigation channels and relatively flat wadden areas at their lateral boundaries. Harleman and Ippen have applied a mathematical model for co-oscillating tides to the Bay of Fundy and the Delaware estuary. This model gives information about the damping behaviour and energy distribution in the tidal estuaries. Both of the above mentioned estuaries represent special cases since the geometric form of the Bay of Fundy allows it to be approximately represented as a rectangular canal of constant width and depth, whereas for the Delaware Estuary one can assume a constant depth of water. Partenscky has applied an extended form of this model to the St. Lawrence Estuary. The method of co-oscillating tides has now also been used in a mathematical model for the German tidal rivers such as Elbe, Weser and Ems. This method takes into account the influence of geometry and depth on the tidal motion and also the damping of the tidal wave due to friction and partial reflection. Data from gauges situated along the estuaries are needed as initial input for the calculation of the damping coefficient and the phase change. The wave amplitude and the time of highwater must be known from these stations.


Inhibitors of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase of the family of statins have been suggested as therapeutic options in various tumors. Atorvastatin is a statin with potential to cross the blood-brain-barrier, however, the concentrations necessary for a cytotoxic effect against cancer cells exceeds the concentration achievable via oral administration, which made the development of a novel atorvastatin formulation necessary. We characterized the drug loading and basic physicochemical characteristics of micellar atorvastatin formulations and tested their cytotoxicity against a panel of different glioblastoma cell lines. In addition, activity against tumor spheroids formed from mouse glioma and mouse cancer stem cells, respectively, was evaluated. Our results show good activity of atorvastatin against all tested cell lines. Interestingly, in the 3D models, growth inhibition was more pronounced for the micellar formulation compared to free atorvastatin. Finally, atorvastatin penetration across a blood-brain-barrier model obtained from human induced-pluripotent stem cells was evaluated. Our results suggest that the presented micelles may enable much higher serum concentrations than possible by oral administration, however, if transport across the blood-brain-barrier is sufficient to reach therapeutic atorvastatin concentration for the treatment of glioblastoma via intravenous administration remains unclear.


Advances in Inorganic Chemistry presents timely and informative summaries of the current progress in a variety of subject areas within inorganic chemistry, ranging from bioinorganic to solid state. This acclaimed serial features reviews written by experts in the area and is an indispensable reference to advanced researchers. Each volume of Advances in Inorganic Chemistry contains an index, and each chapter is fully referenced.


This thesis engages in analysis and interpretation of certain ideas within the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969). These analyses are placed into a constellational relationship with some filmic works of Andrei Tarkovsky and Michael Haneke. In doing so, I aim to highlight the ongoing relevance and validity of at least some core elements of Adornian theory in a contemporary context.

The thesis consists of four substantive chapters. The first chapter functions as an extended introduction to and justification for the thesis as a whole, and it provides the theoretical background to the project before explicating the idea of a constellational method. The second chapter explores the notion of mimesis in Adorno's thought and Tarkovsky's films as a crucial rejoinder to the prevailing 'communicative' paradigm instituted in large part by Jurgen Habermas' work. The third chapter considers the importance of marginality to the task of social critique by analyzing Adorno's theoretical reflections on the matter and how these can be related to and supported by Haneke's filmic work. The fourth and final chapter examines the relationship between humanity and nature within two preeminent ecological discourses, in contrast to Adorno's critical theory and some of Tarkovsky's films, with the intention of showing how the latter offer a more nuanced and dialectical understanding of this relation.

Throughout the analyses herein, I defend and demonstrate the fertility and pertinence of Adornian theory, for both the interpretation of film and robust criticism of extant social and political conditions. The thesis shows that by constellating Adorno's critical theory with film one may bring out important insights that enhance and enable people's capacity to critically respond to the woefully inadequate status quo.


The Sanctuary of Demeter at Pergamon, capital of the Attalid kingdom in Asia Minor (283-133 BCE), is among the city's oldest, largest, and best-preserved monuments, and it affords a unique view into its development. The cult-site wasestablished in the fourth century BCE and renovated twice in the Hellenistic period - by Philetairos (283-263 BCE), founder of the Attalid dynasty, and by Queen Apollonis, wife of Attalos I (241-197 BCE) - and again in Roman times. Despite its well-documented history, the sanctuary still awaits analysis as an architectural, ritual, and dynastic space, along with integration into the scholarship on Pergamon.This dissertation reexamines the precincts of Philetairos and Apollonis with the aim of reconstructing a context for the sanctuary in the Attalid capital. The investigation proceeds from a reassessment of the archaeological remains,formal and comparative analysis of the monuments, and consideration of cultic requirements. It offers a revised picture of the precinct's development by proposing new reconstructions for the pre-Attalid temenos and the building phases ofPhiletairos and Apollonis. It presents new evidence for narrowing the time-frame of Apollonis' dedication, making it one of the most precisely dated monuments at Pergamon. Although the lack of precise information on the cult prevents ritual identification of all structures on the site, an attempt is made to explain the precinct's ceremonial use. A focal point of the dissertation is the contextualization of the sanctuary's architectural detail. My analysis shows that the monuments of the Demeter Sanctuary were rooted in an Anatolian building tradition and that the style(s) of Apollonis' buildings elaborated on the architectural language of Philetairos' designs, conveying both unity andcontinuity.My reevaluation of the Demeter Sanctuary as an architectural and ritual space lays the groundwork for my future, broader investigations into the role of this cult-site in the Attalid capital - studies that address the intersectionof gender, cult, dynasty, and building style in this space.


Numerous factors contribute to the medication errors that kill up to 98,000 patients each year. Unnecessarily high dosages can result in increased side effects with only a small therapeutic benefit, especially in elderly patients. Lack of patient information-such as a history of allergies or adverse drug reactions-is another cause of error and injury. Communication failures include the use of ambiguous abbreviations, misinterpretation of verbal orders, and lack of timely response to a patient's medication-related symptoms. Dosing errors are common in children because of variability in dosage expressions in drug references. Remedies for prescribing errors are described in detail here.


NMDA receptor (NMDAR) antagonists are dissociative anesthetics, drugs of abuse, and are of therapeutic interest in neurodegeneration and neuropsychiatric disease. Many well-known NMDAR antagonists are positively charged, voltage-dependent channel blockers. We recently showed that the hydrophobic anion dipicrylamine (DPA) negatively regulates GABAA receptor function by a mechanism indistinguishable from that of sulfated neurosteroids. Because sulfated neurosteroids also modulate NMDARs, here we examined the effects of DPA on NMDAR function. In rat hippocampal neurons DPA inhibited currents gated by 300 µM NMDA with an IC50 of 2.3 µM. Neither onset nor offset of antagonism exhibited dependence on channel activation but exhibited a noncompetitive profile. DPA antagonism was independent of NMDAR subunit composition and was similar at extrasynaptic and total receptor populations. Surprisingly, similar to cationic channel blockers but unlike sulfated neurosteroids, DPA antagonism was voltage dependent. Onset and offset of DPA antagonism were nearly 10-fold faster than DPA-induced increases in membrane capacitance, suggesting that membrane interactions do not directly explain antagonism. Furthermore, voltage dependence did not derive from association of DPA with a site on NMDARs directly accessible to the outer membrane leaflet, assessed by DPA translocation experiments. Consistent with the expected lack of channel block, DPA antagonism did not interact with permeant ions. Therefore, we speculate that voltage dependence may arise from interactions of DPA with the inherent voltage dependence of channel gating. Overall, we conclude that DPA noncompetitively inhibits NMDA-induced current by a novel voltage-dependent mechanism and represents a new class of anionic NMDAR antagonists.


In the early 1980s, the American legal system introduced a novel legislative model for tackling the age-old problem of racist violence. Within less than three decades, this novel legislative model was adopted by 47 states across the US, and was 'imported' by dozens legal systems around the globe. Legislatures and advocacy organizations portray the introduction of hate crime laws as an effective instrument for minimizing the disproportionate vulnerability of racial minorities to criminal victimization Scholars have praised their virtues in symbolizing the commitment of the state to providing racial minorities with equal concern and respect. Yet there is something curious, even paradoxical, about the deployment of criminalization - a coercive form of governance so often associated with the perpetuation of structural disadvantage - with such emancipatory ends. This study considers how the embedding of hate crime policies within institutional and political structures which reflect broader patterns of racial and class inequality affect their suitability to achieve their declared emancipatory aims. In pursuing this goal, I place hate crime policies within broader historical and theoretical perspectives. Historically, I consider the way in which the idea of "pro-black" criminalization has been framed and institutionalized from the slavery era to the present. Theoretically, I explore a range of sociological and socio-legal questions regarding the distinctive institutional and ideological functions played by "pro- minority" criminalization regimes. I define ''pro-black" (or "pro-minority") criminalization as comprising of legislative and enforcement arrangements that are specifically aimed at protecting African-Americans (or other minority groups). My analysis shows that, throughout most of American history, "pro-black" criminalization regimes (including hate crime policies) were embedded within broader policy structures which worked to stabilize fundamental aspects of the prevailing system of racial stratification. This pattern was rooted in institutional and ideological features that are likely to characterize "pro-minority" criminalization reforms in various other contexts of social inequality. Overall, I argue, while "pro- minority" criminalization reforms serve to alleviate particular forms of violence and degradation which minorities are disproportionately subjected to, they also work to stabilize the broader systems of social inequality within which these symptoms are embedded.


Abstract: Mass-transport complexes (MTCs) form a significant component of many deep marine clastic successions. Here, studies of outcrop examples of MTCs from the Italian Apennines indicate that material can be entrained across both the upper and lower boundaries of a mass flow. The studied MTCs all incorporate debrite–turbidite couplets. Growth stratal geometries in the overlying turbidite sandstones indicate that turbidite deposition occurred synchronously with internal deformation within substrate debris flows. The turbidite stratal patterns and the internal structure of the debrites jointly indicate that at least the later stages of MTC emplacement were ordered, involving coherent creep. This process can generate unexpected sand-on-sand juxtapositions across otherwise low-permeability debritic horizons. Entrainment of substrate material across the lower debris-flow boundary occurred by thrusting, although this deformation can have initiated before the arrival of the further-travelled debris flow itself. The outcrop examples are thus characterized by composite deformation and depositional histories, such that different parts of composite MTCs can have experienced radically different amounts of displacement. The ordered creeping deformation recognized at outcrop may, however, be under-recognized in seismic examples, where internal deformation and associated growth stratal geometries are less easy to study.


Digital transformation is not a buzzword. IT has moved from the back office to the front office in nearly every aspect of business operations, driven by what IDC calls the 3rd Platform of compute with mobile, social business, cloud, and big data analytics as the pillars. In this new environment, business leaders are facing the challenge of lifting their organization to new levels of competitive capability, that of digital transformation — leveraging digital technologies together with organizational, operational, and business model innovation to develop new growth strategies. One such challenge is helping the business efficiently reap value from big data and avoid being taken out by a competitor or disruptor that figures out new opportunities from big data analytics before the business does.


Maternal obesity prior to and during pregnancy has been associated with an increased incidence of childhood asthma. As diets rich in saturated fat are linked to obesity and inflammation, we created a murine model to investigate the effect of maternal high‐fat diet (HFD) on adult offspring airway hyperreactivity (AHR), a cardinal feature of asthma. Balb/cByJ dams were fed a HFD (60% fat Calories) or normal‐fat diet (NFD) (10% fat Calories) from 8 weeks prior to first breeding through their pregnancies. Pups were weaned to either a HFD or NFD (at 4 weeks of age). AHR was measured in the 10‐week‐old offspring following inhaled methacholine challenge by end‐inflation technique. Bronchial alveolar lavage fluid (BALF) was analyzed for cell count, total protein, and IL‐6. Offspring of HFD dams weaned to NFD had increased AHR compared to offspring of NFD dams weaned to NFD. Offspring of HFD dams that remained on HFDs had increased AHR compared to offspring of NFD dams weaned to HFDs. Offspring of HFD dams had higher BALF cell counts, higher neutrophil percentage, greater total protein, and IL‐6 in the BALF. These results demonstrate that a maternal diet high in saturated fat through pregnancy and lactation plays a key role in programming adult offspring AHR.


Background Peripheral blood vessels, due to availability are used for many years in cancer patients, however in patients with potentially harmful drugs to skin (vesicant drugs) or difficult accessibility to vessels, the use of implantable port (totally implantable venous access port-TIVAP) devices with central vascular access are important. Materials and Methods In this retrospective study, 85 pediatric cancer patients younger than 16 years, with TIVAP implantation, were followed for their complications and outcome. In addition to demographic data, patients' port complications were assessed and compared with published articles. Results Mean days of implanted port usage were 531 ± 358 days in all patients. This period was 287 ±194 days in complicated patients. Complications included as infection (tunnel infection and catheter related blood-stream infection), malfunction and thrombosis, skin erosion, tube avulsion, and tube adhesion to the adjacent vessels were seen in 30.6% of patients. Conclusion According to the published data and this experience, the most common complications in TIVAP are infection and catheter malfunction. It is important to notice that in order to prolong its efficacious life, effective sterilization methods, prevention of clot formation and trauma, are the most useful measures.


: The detailed analysis of quantum chemical study that was performed using several computational methods, including B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) theoretical level, for series of explosive compounds designed based on the Keto-RDX (A) structure is discussed. The heat of formation (HOFs) of the keto RDX compounds were calculated via isodesmic reaction. The detonation properties were evaluated by using the Kamlet-Jacobs equations. The bond dissociation energies (BDEs) for the thermolysis initiation bond were also analyzed to investigate the thermal stability. The results show that the keto RDX derivatives have high positive HOF values, high detonation properties and meet the basic stability requirement. Additionally, a feasible synthetic route of the high energy density compound (HEDC) is also proposed via retrosynthetic analysis.


Efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas build-up through quantifying and controlling the world's forests highlight new directions in international transnational conservation contracts. The emerging regime of Measuring, Monitoring, Reporting, and Verifying (MMRV) in global climate change cooperation, with a particular focus on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+), shows how transnational conservation contracts are helping to reconstruct "sovereignty"--a cornerstone of international law--to adapt to 21st-century perils that demand unprecedented cooperation between nations. While negotiating a Kyoto Protocol successor, Northern nations have pledged US$30 billion in "fast track" mitigation aid to Southern nations between 2010-2012, and pledged US$100 billion yearly by 2020 to support mitigation and adaptation activities in Southern nations. This is to be managed in a global "Green Fund" under the auspices of the World Bank. (1) Despite opposition, (2) REDD+ will attract a large proportion of these funds, as diverse stakeholders prize the South's dwindling forests. Tropical deforestation accounts for about 15-20% of GHG emissions--a greater contribution than all forms of transport combined, and equal to the annual emissions of China or the United States. (3) Extant forests, now viewed as a repository of greenhouse gases fungible with industrialized emissions, have been brought under an international cross-boundary trading regime. (4) Northern governments, businesses, and citizens are investing billions of dollars in the vast, imperiled forests of the South. (5) Funds come not just from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) architecture, but also from parallel, legally mandated offsetting programs in Norway (spending US$3 billion on REDD+), California, and elsewhere, as well as a voluntary market where concerned citizens and businesses offset their GHG consumption through investing in REDD+ in developing nations. (6) In a REDD+ project, an entity--a government, community, private developer, or individual landowner--commits to reforest land or to preserve a forest that would otherwise be cut down or degraded. The entity may then sell the carbon, now sequestered in the trees, for a contracted period of time. (7) REDD+ may happen on a project-by-project basis--one developer, one landowner. Or REDD+ may happen on a broader scale, i.e., a nation or state/province pledges to use REDD+ funding to reduce deforestation or foment reforestation resulting in sequestered GHGs above a "business as usual" baseline. (8) If REDD+ lived up to its synergistic potential, it would mitigate greenhouse gas buildup, alleviate rural poverty, and preserve biodiversity. (9) To make this transfer of funds possible--and thus sustain tropical forests and the human and nonhuman communities that depend upon them--the acronym "MMRV" has become key to mutually beneficial transnational contracts. The acronym MRV first arose in the 2007 UNFCCC Conference of Parties: The Bali Action Plan called for MRV as a crucial element of any new international agreement. (10) "MMRV" stands for "Measuring, Monitoring, Reporting, and Verifying." (11) Without a comprehensive, rigorous, reciprocal--and in many cases, intrusive--system of MMRV, it is unlikely that global leaders will invest in the Green Fund or find common will for a multilateral environmental agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. (12) Outside the formal UNFCCC process, investors in REDD+ are developing MMRV protocols to ensure multiple, synergistic returns on their investments. (13) MMRV OVERVIEW MMRV is key to forging transnational conservation contracts that use REDD+ to battle climate change, and simultaneously to staunch deforestation and reduce poverty. (14) The precise parameters--who must meet which MMRV obligations, on what subjects, with what intrusive oversight--have been pivotal in negotiations to forge multilateral climate change cooperation. …


This paper considers the pros and cons of outsourcing responsibility for security from the African Union to various sub-regional organisations, usually referred to as the regional economic communities (RECs) The author concludes that although there are some advantages in such decentralisation, it is far from clear that all RECs are up to the task they have been given, identifying problems such as the lack of a regional hegemon and the absence of shared values and norms. The paper delivers an analysis of the main RECs covering Africa's five sub-regions: the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) and the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU). The author concludes that the African Union will still be forced to take action in many situations due to organisational weaknesses in several of the sub-regional structures.


Visuospatial working memory (vsWM) is the ability to temporarily retain goal-relevant visuospatial information in memory. It is a key cognitive function related to general intelligence, and it improves throughout childhood and through WM training. Information is maintained in vsWM through persistent neuronal activity in a fronto-parietal network that consists of the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the frontal eye field (FEF). This network is regulated by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). The features of brain structure and activity that regulate the access to and storage capacity of visuospatial WM (vsWM) are still unknown. The aim of my doctoral work has been to find such features by combining a biophysically based model of vsWM activity with functional MRI (fMRI) and EEG experiments. In study I, we combined modeling and fMRI and showed that stronger fronto-parietal synaptic connections result in developmental increases in brain activity and in improved vsWM during development. This causal relationship was established by ruling out other previously suggested mechanisms, such as myelination or synaptic pruning, In study II, we combined modeling and EEG to further explore the connectivity of the network. We showed that FEF→IPS connections are stronger than IPS→FEF connections, and that stimuli enter IPS. This arrangement of connections prevents distracting stimuli from being stored. Study III was a theoretical study showing that errors in measurements of the amplitude of brain activity affect the estimation of effective connection strength. In study IV, we analyzed EEG data from WM training in children with epilepsy. Improvements on the trained task were accompanied by increased frontal and parietal signal power, but not fronto-parietal coherence. This indicates that local changes in FEF and IPS could underlie improvements on the trained task. dlPFC is important for the performance on a large variety of cognitive tasks. In study V, we combined modeling with fMRI to test the hypothesis that dlPFC improves vsWM capacity by providing stabilizing excitatory inputs to IPS, and that dlPFC filters distracters by specifically lowering the capacity of neurons storing distracters. fMRI data confirmed the model hypothesis. We further showed that a dysfunctional dlPFC could explain the link between vsWM capacity and distractibility, as is found in ADHD. The model suggests that dlPFC carries out its multifaceted behavior not by performing advanced calculations itself, but by providing bias signals that control operations performed in the regions it connects to. A specific aim of this thesis has been to describe the mechanistic model in a way that is accessible to people without a modeling background.


In recent years the widespread availability of wireless communications, mobile computing and handheld devices has led to the growth and significance of wireless mobile ad hoc networks. Security issues are paramount in such networks even more so than in wired networks. Though there have been many works in the recent years on secure routing protocols, the "Packet Drop Attack" amongst the nodes is not adequately addressed. In this paper, we analyze a class of secure routing protocols such as SAODV, ARAN and Security Aware Ad Hoc Routing to show how they are vulnerable to packet drop attacks. We also investigate another class of secure routing protocols such as CONFIDANT that cater to defend packet drop attacks but fail due to not having well-defined trust model. The detail study of packet drop events in these protocols leads us to propose a defense-in-depth strategy to secure mobile ad hoc networks through the integration of three layers -prevention layer (based on cryptographic techniques), detection-reaction layer (based on monitoring technique) and enforcement layer (based on obligations).


In Digital Era learning/training can be done any-where, any-time, and by any-one; training does not need classroom and teacher, it is mean more efficient. Many companies consideredto organize training, sothe purpose of this research is to determine the influence of training interventions toward the improvement of the work performance in the era of digitalization.Research methods The survey method used was correlation between the independent variable (X) training intervention and dependent variable (Y)employees' performance. Regression analysis is used to determine the model of the relationship between the variable Y (employee performance) and X (intervention training), While the correlation analysis to determine whether the relations between the variable Y (employee performance) and X (training intervention). The target of population in this studyis 357 employees inMinistry of Finance Tax Court Secretariat Indonesia and three levels of employees in this research are assistant manager, supervisor, and clerks. The total number of researchsamplesis 100 employees. Data are retrieved by using of non-instrument test (questionnaire) using the Likert scale. The results of the research are : (a) in era digitalization progress of training intervention still give positive influence and strong as an instrument toenhance employee performance, the correlation between training intervention and employee performance is 0,67; (b)training intervention 'cannot be ignored' or 'unneglectable' as an instrument to increase employees working performance (c)increased employee performance can be predicted by intervention training by using simple regression model of Y= 1.5 + 0.6 X; (d) training contribute to the achievement of employee performance as much as 45 %, while the remaining 55 % of other factor.


Background: Current clinical balance assessment tools do not aim to help therapists identify the underlying postural control systems responsible for poor functional balance. By identifying the disordered systems underlying balance control, therapists can direct specific types of intervention for different types of balance problems. Objective: The goal of this study was to develop a clinical balance assessment tool that aims to target 6 different balance control systems so that specific rehabilitation approaches can be designed for different balance deficits. This article presents the theoretical framework, interrater reliability, and preliminary concurrent validity for this new instrument, the Balance Evaluation Systems Test (BESTest). Design: The BESTest consists of 36 items, grouped into 6 systems: "Biomechanical Constraints," "Stability Limits/Verticality," "Anticipatory Postural Adjustments," "Postural Responses," "Sensory Orientation," and "Stability in Gait." Methods: In 2 interrater trials, 22 subjects with and without balance disorders, ranging in age from 50 to 88 years, were rated concurrently on the BESTest by 19 therapists, students, and balance researchers. Concurrent validity was measured by correlation between the BESTest and balance confidence, as assessed with the Activities-specific Balance Confidence (ABC) Scale. Results: Consistent with our theoretical framework, subjects with different diagnoses scored poorly on different sections of the BESTest. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for interrater reliability for the test as a whole was .91, with the 6 section ICCs ranging from .79 to .96. The Kendall coefficient of concordance among raters ranged from .46 to 1.00 for the 36 individual items. Concurrent validity of the correlation between the BESTest and the ABC Scale was r=.636, P<.01. Limitations: Further testing is needed to determine whether: (1) the sections of the BESTest actually detect independent balance deficits, (2) other systems important for balance control should be added, and (3) a shorter version of the test is possible by eliminating redundant or insensitive items. Conclusions: The BESTest is easy to learn to administer, with excellent reliability and very good validity. It is unique in allowing clinicians to determine the type of balance problems to direct specific treatments for their patients. By organizing clinical balance test items already in use, combined with new items not currently available, the BESTest is the most comprehensive clinical balance tool available and warrants further development.


Background Infants born prematurely or with complex medical problems are surviving to discharge in growing numbers and often require significant monitoring and coordination of care in the ambulatory setting. Using Healthcare Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (HFMEA), we identified a large number of potentially serious error points in this transition of care. Purpose To test whether a multifaceted intervention that included a health coach to assist families and an enhanced personal health record to improve the quality of information available to parents and community professionals would decrease adverse events and improve family assessment of the transition. Methods Using a concurrent cohort design, infants in one geographic area (pod) of the intensive care nursery received the intervention; infants in two other pods received routine discharge care. Primary outcomes included deaths, sick visits, unplanned readmissions and missed appointments within 1 month of discharge. The family assessed the transition using a modified version of the Care Transitions Measure. Results 125 intervention infants (54% boys) and 104 control infants (48% boys) were enrolled over 18 months. The groups were similar in maternal education, insurance status, language spoken and number of adults in the home, birth weight and length of stay. At least one adverse outcome occurred in 63 (50.4%) intervention infants and 56 (53.8%) control infants (p=0.55). At 24–48 h post discharge, caregivers in the intervention group had significantly higher scores on the adapted care transitions measure (3.51 vs 3.27, p<0.0001); however, at 30 days, the difference was no longer significant (3.45 vs 3.40, p=0.27). Conclusions A multicomponent discharge intervention designed to address specific problems identified using HFMEA did not reduce certain adverse outcomes in the post-discharge period. Trial Registration NCT01088945.


Single-particle tracking (SPT) experiments measure 2-dimensional particle position with a high-resolution digital camera, capturing microsecond motion. SPT has allowed novel investigation of membrane dynamics, enzymology, subdiffusion processes in proteins, and serves as a burgeoning application of statistical modelling. While particle tracking statistical methodology has shown great promise, the literature is comparatively scarce for methods that determine the necessary number of particles to track to assess a relevant scientific hypothesis. This work addresses this gap by providing a Bayesian sample size determination (SSD) algorithm. Namely, this work proceeds in two-stages, (1) model training and (2) the SSD algorithm. A single-trajectory locationscale model incorporating fractional Brownian motion is fit using maximum likelihood estimation for each 2-dimensional SPT trajectory. Subsequently, a multiple-trajectory hierarchical model is fit to capture different particle dynamics caused by fluid heterogeneity. A Bayesian SSD algorithm follows to evaluate scientific relevance based on population-level mean-squared displacement. The performance of the SSD algorithm is first studied under a simulation environment. Three simplified SSD algorithms are presented to accelerate computation. Following this, experimental data of 3,707 fluorescently labelled herpes-simplex virus trajectories are studied across five separate antibody concentrations ranging 0-1000 mg/L. A detailed analysis on the practical use of the SSD algorithm provides insight into virus dynamics as a function of antibody concentration.


The purpose of this study was to determine Zulu women ' s perceptions of their body image relative to weight status attending a noncommunicable disease (NCD) clinic in South Africa. A cross-sectional exploratory study design was used and included 328 (91%) Zulu women who were sampled systematically. The women were subjected to anthropometric measurements and engaged the Stunkard ' s body image figures to determine perception. The study showed that 61% of the sample was in the 40 – 59 age strata. The mean body mass index (BMI) was 37kg/m 2 ( (cid:1) 9.41 kg/m 2 ), with over 90% being overweight or obese. A discrepancy between Zulu women ' s perceived body image and actual BMI existed in all weight status categories with overweight and obesity demonstrating the widest variations (p < 0.000). Women perceived themselves to be thinner than their actual BMI. More than 99% associated an underweight body image to one with disease. Diabetes mellitus (72%) was the most frequent NCD encountered. Only 23% with this condition correctly perceived their body image. It was shown that the negative impact of preferring a larger body image in Zulu women with preexisting NCDs could be refueling their existing comorbidities.


This title deals with the civil rights movement in an earlier generation. Through a reexamination of the earliest struggles against Jim Crow, Blair Kelley exposes the fullness of African American efforts to resist the passage of segregation laws dividing trains and streetcars by race in the early Jim Crow era. "Right to Ride" chronicles the litigation and local organizing against segregated rails that led to the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 and the streetcar boycott movement waged in twenty-five southern cities from 1900 to 1907. Kelley tells the stories of the brave but little-known men and women who faced down the violence of lynching and urban race riots to contest segregation. Focusing on three key cities - New Orleans, Richmond, and Savannah - Kelley explores the community organizations that bound protestors together and the divisions of class, gender, and ambition that sometimes drove them apart. Kelley's findings force a reassessment of the timelines of the black freedom struggle, revealing that a period once dismissed as the age of accommodation should in fact be characterized as part of a history of protest and resistance.


The Generalized Assignment Problem consists of assigning a set of tasks to a set of agents at minimum cost. Each agent has a limited amount of a single resource and each task must be assigned to one and only one agent, requiring a certain amount of the agent's resource. We present the application of a MAX-MIN Ant System (MMAS) and a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP) to the generalized assignment problem based on hybrid approaches. The MMAS heuristic can be seen as an adaptive sampling algorithm that takes into consideration the experience gathered in earlier iterations of the algorithm. Moreover, the latter heuristic is combined with local search and tabu search heuristics to improve the search. Several neighborhoods are studied, including one based on ejection chains that produces good moves without increasing the computational effort. We present computational results of a comparative analysis of the two adaptive heuristics, followed by concluding remarks and ideas on future research in generalized assignment related problems.


Abstract The first step in solving the problem of corruption lies in diagnosing its root causes and determining the underlying factors. One of the most important facilitators of corrupt transactions is intermediaries who make corrupt dealings less risky, thereby increasing corruption. Even worse, there are spurious intermediaries who obtain bribes in connection with public services by pretending to have power over the issue. This deception may be carried out even if the officer providing the public service in question is honest. The simple game theoretical model formulated in this article tries to capture the mechanisms behind such deception. From the solutions of the model, certain policy recommendations to prevent such a process from occurring shall be provided.


In 1990s, several pension reforms had been adopted to insure financial sustainability of Italian Social Security system. This paper studies two main features of Amato and Dini reforms: (i) adoption of notional defined contributions formula; (ii) price indexation of benefits as compared to wage indexation prior to 1992. As the reforms envision a long phase-in period, I consider the effect of the reforms on different generations. This paper studies household decisions and welfare consequences of the reforms using general equilibrium overlapping generations framework. The major focus is on time allocation and human capital accumulation decisions of transition generations. The economic and demographic structure of the economy is calibrated to (i) Italian macroeconomic variables in 1992, (ii) observed earnings profiles in Survey of Household Income and Wealth by Banca d'Italia (SHIW). The reforms decrease financial obligations of the pension system. The paper quantifies the effect of the reforms on transition generations.


OBJECTIVES
To evaluate the current seroprevalence of antibodies against hepatitis A virus (HAV) in a sample of schoolchildren above 10 years of age and to determine the prevalence of HAV-induced hepatitis in adults at a tertiary care hospital in northern India between January 1992 and December 2000.

METHODS
Sera from 276 male and 224 female schoolchildren aged 10-17 years were tested for anti-HAV antibodies by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Consecutive patients with a diagnosis of acute viral hepatitis who attended a liver clinic were tested for the serological markers of HAV, hepatitis B Virus, hepatitis C virus, hepatitis D virus, and hepatitis E virus.

FINDINGS
Of the male and female children, 96.3% and 98.2%, respectively had anti-HAV antibodies in their sera. The prevalence of these antibodies in the age groups 10-12, 13- 14, and 15-17 years were 98.6%, 94.8%, and 98.3% respectively. The frequency of HAV- induced acute viral hepatitis (69/870, 8%) in adults did not show an increasing trend.

CONCLUSION
Mass HAV vaccination may be unnecessary in northern India because the seroprevalence of protective antibodies against HAV in schoolchildren aged over 10 years remains above 95% and there has been no apparent increase in HAV-induced acute viral hepatitis in adults.


We investigated the effects of perinatal hypoxia-ischemia (HI) on brain injury and neurological functional outcome at postnatal day (P)30 through P90. HI was induced by exposing P9 mice to 8% O2 for 55 min using the Vannucci HI model. Following HI, mice were treated with either vehicle control or Na+/H+ exchanger isoform 1 (NHE1) inhibitor HOE 642. The animals were examined by the accelerating rotarod test at P30 and the Morris water maze (MWM) test at P60. T2-weighted MRI was conducted at P90. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) was subsequently performed in ex vivo brains, followed by immunohistochemical staining for changes in myelin basic protein (MBP) and neurofilament protein expression in the corpus callosum (CC). Animals at P30 after HI showed deficits in motor and spatial learning. T2 MRI detected a wide spectrum of brain injury in these animals. A positive linear correlation was observed between learning deficits and the degree of tissue loss in the ipsilateral hemisphere and hippocampus. Additionally, CC DTI fractional anisotropy (FA) values correlated with MBP expression. Both FA and MBP values correlated with performance on the MWM test. HOE 642-treated mice exhibited improved spatial learning and memory, and less white matter injury in the CC. These findings suggest that HI-induced cerebral atrophy and CC injury contribute to the development of deficits in learning and memory, and that inhibition of NHE1 is neuroprotective in part by reducing white matter injury. T2-weighted MRI and DTI are useful indicators of functional outcome after perinatal HI.


Food systems in developing countries are currently undergoing a rapid transformation, with important implications for local farmers, wholesalers, and retailers. While supply side aspects of this transformation have been analyzed previously, issues of consumer demand have received much less attention. This paper analyzes changing consumption habits for fresh fruits and vegetables in Vietnam, using household survey data and a demand systems approach. Demand for products from modern supply chains - particularly modern retailers and non-traditional imports - is highly income elastic. Also, supermarket expansion impacts on consumer demand. This implies a continued restructuring of the food sector in the further process of economic development.


Flint x dent is a common heterotic pattern exploited in maize (Zea mays L.) breeding programs across Europe. Two maize synthetics, EZS1, a mixture of Spanish open-pollinated flint varieties, and EZS2, crosses among North American dent-improved populations, were produced in Zaragoza, Spain. The synthetics showed heterotic behavior and were subjected to two cycles of S 1 -progeny intrapopulation selection for grain yield and lodging resistance before starting reciprocal recurrent selection. Our objectives were to partition the response to selection into additive and dominance effects after two cycles of intrapopulation selection, with generation mean analysis and diversity analysis. The entries resulting from a diallel mating design, without reciprocals, among the original and first two cycles for each population, were tested in five environments. The results showed that both populations were responsive to selection for improved grain yield, but only EZS2 was improved by selection against lodging. Diversity analysis was less conservative than the generation means model in detecting significant genetic effects. Genetic effects associated with selection for grain yield and lodging were mostly additive, but a significant dominance effect was detected in EZS2 for lodging. The improvement of the population cross did not match that of the populations per se, especially for EZS2. A loss of heterosis for the cross was detected, which might become unrecoverable if S 1 selection is continued. It was concluded that S 1 selection should be discontinued and that reciprocal recurrent selection should be initiated.


The polymorphic, seaweed-dwelling intertidal prosobranch gastropo
Littorina obtusata was studied at a sheltered shore in North Wales from
March 1975 to October 1977. Shell shape changes with size, assists
camouflage, and resists crab predation; there is no sexual dimorphism.
Sex ratio rises with increasing size to a 20-30'/ excess of males in small
adults, then declines below unity in the largest adults. Juvenile and
adult shell colour morph ratios fluctuate with time and over short distance
Morph proportions change substantially with age. There is no vertical
migration.
Population size frequency structure is usually trimodal. Adults
constitute a stable peak at c. 114 mm and account for 50-60'/ of the populatii
The rest consists of two actively-growin juvenile modes representing two
year classes; recruitment is broadly continuous, with a winter peak. Pro.
bability-paper analysis suggests that juveniles grow steadily through winte:
then accelerate in spring to reach adult size in late summer or autui
approximately 18-2L1. months from hatching. Growth rate is approximately
0.12 mm/week.
Fifteen mark-and-recapture batch-tagging programmes using two or
more 1-mm shell size cohorts provide size-specific and seasonal mean growth
rates. Growth is fastest in early spring and slowest in late summer and
autumn. Mean growth rate varies threefold with size, increasing from 6 mm
to approximately 0.03 mm/day at 8.5 mm, then declining steadily through
14.5 mm. Differences between adult sexes are slight. Mean growth patter.
approximates to the von Bertalanffy equations. Survivorship is independen
of size (and, in adults, sex) and unlike growth does not vary predictably
with season.
Two individual-numbering capture-recapture programmes reveal
no differences between male and female growth patterns, growth rates, or
survivorship. Individual growth is not always asymptotic, and may proceed
in widely-separated steps. Size does not necessarily indicate age.
Similar-sized snails growing concurrently and together may differ sevenfold
in von Bertalanffy growth parameter k (c. 1x 10-3 to 7x 10-3 days-1) and
by more than an order of magnitude in growth rate (c. 2x 10-3 to 3x 10-2 1
day). Lifespan is three years or more.


RDF is increasingly being used to represent metadata. RDF Site Summary (RSS) is an application of RDF on the Web that has considerably grown in popularity. However, the way RSS systems operate today does not scale well. In this paper we introduce G-ToPSS, a scalable publish/subscribe system for selective information dissemination. G-ToPSS is particularly well suited for applications that deal with large-volume content distribution from diverse sources. RSS is an instance of the content distribution problem. G-ToPSS allows use of ontology as a way to provide additional information about the data. Furthermore, in this paper we show how G-ToPSS can support RDFS class taxonomies. We have implemented and experimentally evaluated G-ToPSS and we provide results in the paper demonstrating its scalability compared to alternatives.


Lavandula angustifolia is used in traditional and folk medicines of Ankober District, North Central Ethiopia, for the treatment of several livestock and human disorders. This toxicity study aimed to investigate L. angustifolia essential oil oral toxicity in mice and skin irritation in rabbit. L. angustifolia essential oil was analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry methods and showed predominance of Eucalyptol (52.36%), Camphor (11.91%), gamma-terpinene (8.775%) and endoborneol (7.585%). Limit test at 2000 mg/kg dose was used for L. angustifolia essential oil acute toxicity test and revealed LD50 value was higher than 2000 mg/kg. For subacute toxicity study 2000mg/kg was given orally to each mouse for 21 days. The result demonstrated no significant changes (p > 0.05) in the body weights, and biochemical parameters, gross abnormalities, water, and food intake were observed. No macroscopic changes were seen in the histopathology analysis of kidneys and livers. For skin irritation test shaved rabbit skin was treated with 10% ointment formulation. Ointment of L. angustifolia oil did not affect mice skin. Generally, this toxicity study demonstrated that L. angustifolia essential oil is nontoxic.


This volume collects the eleven original papers that were written for the NBER Project on G7 Current Account Imbalances. Four major themes emerged from the papers written for the project. First, there was broad agreement that the current account imbalances that prevailed among the G7 countries as of June 2005 would ultimately decline, although there was no consensus on when or how this would occur . Second, there was agreement that adjustments in global currency markets would likely be associated with the shifts in global saving and investment patterns that would be required to bring about the ultimate decline in G7 current account imbalances. Third, while the focus of the conference was on current account imbalances in the G7 countries, it was recognized that the aggregate excess of saving over investment that existed among the emerging market economies at the time of the conference, as well as the currency intervention policies of some of these countries, were contributing to the current imbalances in the G7 that prevailed as of June 2005. Fourth, there was a consensus that re-valuation of the evolving foreign asset and liability positions of the G7 countries would play a role during process by which current account imbalances narrowed, although there was range of opinion concerning how large a role such revaluation effects would play.


Examining residuals, such as Pearson and deviance residuals, is a primary method to identify the discrepancies between models and data and to assess the overall goodness-of-fit of a model. In normal linear regression, both of these residuals coincide and are normally distributed; however, in non-normal regression models, the residuals are far from normality, with residuals aligning nearly parallel curves according to distinct response values, which imposes great challenges for visual inspection. Randomized quantile residual was proposed in the literature to circumvent the above- mentioned problems in traditional residuals. However, this approach has not gained deserved awareness and attention, partly due to the lack of extensive empirical studies to investigate its performance. Therefore, we demonstrate the normality of the randomized quantile residual when the fitted model is true and compare its performance with the traditional residuals through a series of simulation studies. Our simulation studies show that randomized quantile residual has a unified normal distribution under the true model, and has great statistical power in detecting many forms of model inadequacies. We illustrate the use of randomized quantile residual in assessing goodness- of-fit of non-normal regression models in a health care utilization study.


Gesture-based interaction has long been seen as a natural means of input for electronic presentation systems; however, gesture-based presentation systems have not been evaluated in real-world contexts, and the implications of this interaction modality are not known. This thesis describes the design and evaluation of Maestro, a gesture-based presentation system which was developed to explore these issues. This work is presented in two parts. The first part describes Maestro's design, which was informed by a small observational study of people giving talks; and Maestro's evaluation, which involved a two week field study where Maestro was used for lecturing to a class of approximately 100 students. The observational study revealed that presenters regularly gesture towards the content of their slides. As such, Maestro supports several gestures which operate directly on slide content (e.g., pointing to a bullet causes it to be highlighted). The field study confirmed that audience members value these content-centric gestures. Conversely, the use of gestures for navigating slides is perceived to be less efficient than the use of a remote. Additionally, gestural input was found to result in a number of unexpected side effects which may hamper the presenter's ability to fully engage the audience. The second part of the thesis presents a gesture recognizer based on discrete hidden Markov models (DHMMs). Here, the contributions lie in presenting a feature set and a factorization of the standard DHMM observation distribution, which allows modeling of a wide range of gestures (e.g., both one-handed and bimanual gestures), but which uses few modeling parameters. To establish the overall robustness and accuracy of the recognition system, five new users and one expert were asked to perform ten instances of each gesture. The system accurately recognized 85% of gestures for new users, increasing to 96% for the expert user. In both cases, false positives accounted for fewer than 4% of all detections. These error rates compare favourably to those of similar systems.


In a cultural milieu dominated by long-form television dramas such as Breaking Bad and Madmen, how has the apparently simple activity of audio storytelling gained such clout? In the US, documentary radio programs such as RadioLab, This American Life and Radio Diaries enjoy sold-out stage shows telling real-life stories that combine serious journalism with compelling personal narratives, philosophical discourse and an irreverent but always engaging tone.


The objective of the study was to provide a comprehensive review of the literature describing research done on the stability, adaptation and growth of craniofacial structures following distraction osteogenesis (DO). The design of the study was a literature review of clinical and experimental studies using electronic search with several keywords. Despite immediate normalization of craniofacial relationships after DO, post-distraction mandibular and midface stability and growth is variable in the long-term based on the initial condition. Unpredictable and/or unstable outcomes after DO can arise mainly from three main sources: 1) true relapse, 2) return to original morphology and 3) defective growth. Despite the biologic and clinical feasibility of DO in the craniofacial region, relapse, compromised adaptation, and defective post-distraction growth can lead to variable clinical outcomes. When important structures for the mandibular forward and downward displacement are rudimentary or missing in syndromic patients, DO can not 'correct' the condition and post-distraction growth will be defective. Non-syndromic patients have a better potential to respond favourably to DO.


In this work we investigate the limitations and describe the operation of passive fully integrated rectifiers in standard CMOS technology for low-voltage piezoelectric harvesters. These harvesters are typical for low-frequency and low-acceleration applications, such as body-motion scenarios, i.e., wearables. We motivate the choice of active rectifiers for low-voltage energy harvesters and techniques to boost the available input voltage to the rectifier. A test circuit recently taped-out in 0.35-μm CMOS is described to illustrate some of the challenges associated with rectifier design for low-voltage energy harvesters. The circuit occupies an area of 210 × 155 μm2 and operates at input voltages between 0.6 and 3.3 V. Post-layout simulations shows an efficiency of 79 % at a 0.7-V input.


This dissertation intends by contextual analysis to examine a Southern textile community and through its literature--formal and informal, and written before, during, and after the 1929 Lora Mill strike--to show how the stories of this community construct a "figured world" in which identities were formed and lives were made possible through the genres and language practices of different social groups in Gaston County. It argues that each discourse--that of the mill barons, the mill workers, and the communist labor organizers--developed primarily along lines of money and social class, and shows how each discourse defines itself and is subsequently defined, silenced, and/or given voice by the others. It studies the genres of each written discourse (histories, newspapers, dramatic presentations, songs, and other studies) from a power standpoint that each genre maintains this particular social context.


The WeeFestival, English Canada's first performance festival dedicated to children from ages 0 to 5, acts as an advocate for the early years demographic and for the artists who create for them through three key elements of festival structure: programming, space, and creative/artistic exchange. Engaging with research by Ben Fletcher-Watson, Lise Hovik, Matthew Reason, and Adele Senior, this article uses company archives, artist interviews, and the writer's personal experiences to analyze how the WeeFestival temporarily establishes an alternative public sphere that challenges policy-makers, funders, and artists to rethink relationships between arts, very young citizens, and urban life. Even though very young citizens may not initially know that they want to experience art, the festival attends to the interests and responses of young people, demonstrates respect for their capacity to be emotionally and intellectually engaged by artful and thoughtful productions, and establishes festivalized spaces that put an alternative public sphere into action, gesturing to the possibility of real social change. Taking into account the significance of programming for artists, educators, and policy-makers alongside the significance of meaningful audience-artist exchange, the analysis suggests that events like the WeeFestival have the capacity to gently shift how urban dwellers perceive very young children and the way they interact with the arts in daily life.


This paper explores the use of quantile regression for estimation of empirical confidence limits for WASDE forecasts of corn, soybean, and wheat prices. Quantile regressions for corn, soybean, and wheat forecast errors over 1980/81 through 2006/07 were specified as a function of forecast lead time. Estimated coefficients were used to calculate forecast intervals for 2007/08. The quantile regression approach to calculating forecast intervals was evaluated based on out-of-sample performance. The accuracy of the empirical confidence intervals was not statistically different from the target level about 87% of the time prior to harvest and 91% of the time after harvest.


The globalisation of business is a must for many multinational
companies, including Taiwanese enterprises, to stay and prosper on the
competitive edge of international business. Taiwanese Foreign Direct
Investment (FDI) which began in 1986 has had special interest in the region
of South East Asia, especially in Malaysia. Today, there is a need to take a
closer look at the managerial leadership practices in Taiwanese enterprises
within the Malaysian context so as to evaluate the current status and to
provide a basis for future development and improvement.
A survey Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) was randomly
distributed to qualified respondents in a Taiwanese Electronics company.
And 203 valid respondents provided relevant data for comparisons between
Taiwanese and local superiors, which included leadership styles, leadership performance and the associated personal attributes. Confirmative factor
analysis was used in accordance with the two-factor model and five-factor
model of leadership style introduced by Bass (1985). Reliability tests
showed that the constructs were valid and existed in this study. Leadership
styles were compared between Taiwanese and local superiors by using
paired T-test. Stepwise multiple-regression was applied to find out the
leadership styles most associated with leadership performance. One way
ANOVA and independent T-test were used to distinguish the personal
attributes, which had perceived effect on the leadership styles.
The results of this study showed that there were significantly different
and yet similar leadership styles used by Taiwanese and local superiors. No
extra-ordinary leadership styles were perceived among Charisma, Individual
Consideration, Intellectual Stimulation, Contingent Reward and
Management-by-Exception. Charisma was found to be most associated with
leadership performance, which was the leadership effectiveness of
superiors and the satisfaction of subordinates towards leadership. Previous
working exposure to foreign leadership was a crucial factor in affecting
subordinates' perception of leadership.


Mastery of foreign languages, especially English is very important for students, but a monotonous learning model making English communication competence of students cannot develop properly. Therefore, researchers are interested in using learning model Problem Based Learning (PBL) for the improvement of communication skills in English. The purpose of this study is to know how big is the influence of the PBL learning model or Problem Based Learning on improving communication competence (Communicative Competence) English students. The method of this study is descriptive qualitative with 32 samples of AKPARTA Mandala Bakti Surakarta students of 2013/2014 academic year. Based on t-test, the result of the research showed that p = 0.00 and r = 0.939 for p <0.05 then Ho is rejected, that means there is a difference between students" English competence before applying PBL model on teaching learning process and after applying PBL model for teaching learning process. Key Words: English, Problem Based Learning, Communicative Competence


"Toyin Falola has given us what is truly rare in modern African writing: a seriously funny, racy, irreverent package of memories, and full of the most wonderful pieces of poetry and ordinary information. It is a matter of some interest, that the only other volume "A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt" reminds one of is "Ake," by Wole Soyinka. What is it about these Yorubas?"-Ama Ata Aidoo "A splendid coming-of-age story so full of vivid color and emotion, the words seem to dance off the page. But this is not only Falola's memoir; it is an account of a new nation coming into being and the tensions and negotiations that invariably occur between city and country, tradition and modernity, men and women, rich and poor. A truly beautiful book."-Robin D. G. Kelley "More than a personal memoir, this book is a rich minihistory of contemporary Nigeria recorded in delicious detail by a perceptive eyewitness who grew up at the crossroads of many cultures."-Bernth Lindfors "The reader is irresistibly drawn into Falola's world. The prose is lucid. There is humor. This work is sweet. Period."-Ngugi wa Thiongo'o "A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt" gathers the stories and reflections of the early years of Toyin Falola, the grand historian of Africa and one of the greatest sons of Ibadan, the notable Yoruba city-state in Nigeria. Redefining the autobiographical genre altogether, Falola miraculously weaves together personal, historical, and communal stories, along with political and cultural developments in the period immediately preceding and following Nigeria's independence, to give us a unique and enduring picture of the Yoruba in the mid-twentieth century. This is truly a literary memoir, told in language rich with proverbs, poetry, song, and humor. Falola's memoir is far more than the story of one man's childhood experiences; rather, he presents us with the riches of an entire culture and community-its history, traditions, pleasures, mysteries, household arrangements, forms of power, struggles, and transformations.


Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common primary malignant brain tumor in adults, with a median duration of survival of approximately 14 months after diagnosis. High resistance to chemotherapy remains a major problem. Previously, BTK has been shown to be involved in the intracellular signal transduction including Akt/mTOR signaling and be critical for tumorigenesis. Thus, we aim to evaluate the effect of BTK and mTOR inhibition in GBM. We evaluated the viability of GBM cell lines after treatment with acalabrutinib and/or rapamycin through a SRB staining assay. We then evaluated the effect of both drugs on GBM stem cell-like phenotypes through various in vitro assay. Furthermore, we incubated HUVEC cells with tumorsphere conditioned media and observed their angiogenesis potential, with or without treatment. Finally, we conducted an in vivo study to confirm our in vitro findings and analyzed the effect of this combination on xenograft mice models. Drug combination assay demonstrated a synergistic relationship between acalabrutinib and rapamycin. CSCs phenotypes, including tumorsphere and colony formation with the associated expression of markers of pluripotency are inhibited by either acalabrutinib or rapamycin singly and these effects are enhanced upon combining acalabrutinib and rapamycin. We showed that the angiogenesis capabilities of HUVEC cells are significantly reduced after treatment with acalabrutinib and/or rapamycin. Xenograft tumors treated with both drugs showed significant volume reduction with minimal toxicity. Samples taken from the combined treatment group demonstrated an increased Desmin/CD31 and col IV/vessel ratio, suggesting an increased rate of vascular normalization. Our results demonstrate that BTK-mTOR inhibition disrupts the population of GBM-CSCs and contributes to normalizing GBM vascularization and thus, may serve as a basis for developing therapeutic strategies for chemoresistant/radioresistant GBM.


This paper provides and evaluates a new paradigm for collaborative human-robot operation in search and rescue-like settings with information asymmetry. In particular, we focus on settings where the human, a crowdworker in our case, is used as a sensor, providing the route-planning module with essential environmental information. In such settings, the ability to predict the expected performance of the collaborating crowdworker in real-time is instrumental for maintaining a continuously high level of performance. Through an extensive set of experiments with crowdworkers recruited and interacted through Amazon Mechanical Turk, we show that effective online prediction is indeed possible, however only if distinguishing between two subpopulations of crowdworkers, termed "operators" and "sensors", applying a different prediction model to each. Furthermore, we show that even the classification of crowdworkers to the two types can be carried out successfully in real-time, based merely on the first two minutes of collaboration. Finally, we demonstrate how the above abilities can be used for a more effective workers' recruiting process, resulting in a substantially improved overall performance.


The Act establishes that the surety limit on criminal bonds can be no higher than twelve percent on bonds in the amount of $ 10,000 or less and no higher than fifteen percent on bonds in amounts greater than $ 10,000. Additionally, the Act defines bail recovery agent, establishes prerequisites for those people serving as bail recovery agents, and provides that sheriffs require bondsmen to list all of the bail recovery agents who serve them. Furthermore, the Act establishes minimum notification requirements to sheriffs for bond recovery agents who seek to apprehend or conduct surveillance within the sheriff's jurisdiction and sets forth particular notification and qualification requirements for out-of-state bond recovery agents who enter a Georgia jurisdiction for purposes of apprehension or surveillance. Further, the Act requires that bondsmen issue uniform identification cards to all of their bond recovery agents and that bond recovery agents have in their possession the uniform identification card at all times when acting in the capacity of a bond recovery agent. Finally, the Act establishes criminal penalties for bail recovery agents and bondsmen for violations of the Act and authorizes private rights of action against bond recovery agents who enter the wrong property, damage the property, or injure any person therein.


In this paper, we characterize the joint network capacity region (JNCR) for a licensed broadcast (primary) and ad hoc cognitive (secondary) network in a heterogeneous environment, including indoor and outdoor transmissions, under various spectrum (white space) detection techniques. Each technique delivers a different degree of RF-environment awareness - the more a device knows about its environment the larger the network capacity region. To quantify the gains, we develop a simple stochastic model capturing the interdependency amongst primary and secondary nodes and compare their joint capacity. Cognitive devices using the classical signal energy detection method are shown to perform poorly due to limitations on detecting primary transmitters in environments with indoor shadowing. This can be circumvented through direct use (e.g., database access) of location information on primary transmitters, or better yet, on that of primary receivers. The specific capacity trade-off between primary and secondary networks depends on white space detection techniques, resulting in JNCRs which range from complement convex to linear to (almost) convex. Our results show that, for example, the gain of positioning-assisted method over signal energy detection is 76% and the gain of receiver location-aware approach is 177% when the density of primary transmitters is 2 × 10-10 m-2, the indoor shadowing level is -10dB, and the fraction of indoor nodes is 0.5. Furthermore we show that if cognitive devices have positioning information then the secondary network's capacity increases monotonically with increased indoor shadowing in the environment. These are the first analytical results quantifying, albeit for simple heterogeneous environmental model, the capacity gains one can expect when cognitive devices leverage additional information.


Modelling, parameter identification, and simulation play an important role in Systems Biology. In recent years, various software packages have been established for scientific use in both licencing types, open source as well as commercial. Many of these codes are based on inefficient and mathematically outdated algorithms. By introducing the package BioPARKIN recently developed at ZIB, we want to improve this situation significantly. The development of the software BioPARKIN involves long standing mathematical ideas that, however, have not yet entered the field of Systems Biology, as well as new ideas and tools that are particularly important for the analysis of the dynamics of biological networks. BioPARKIN originates from the package PARKIN, written by P.Deuflhard and U.Nowak, that has been applied successfully for parameter identification in physical chemistry for many years.


In today's collaborative business environment there is a need to share information across organizational boundaries. Publish/Subscribe systems are ideal for such scenarios as they allow real-time information to be shared in an asynchronous fashion. In this work, we focus on the access control aspect. While access control in general for publish/subscribe systems has been studied before, their usage in a multi-organizational scenario leads to some novel challenges. Here a publisher might wish to enforce restrictions w.r.t. not only subscribers, but also other publishers publishing certain event types due to competitive or regulatory reasons. With different publishers and subscribers having their own preferences and restrictions, conflicts are evident w.r.t. both publishing and subscribing to specific event types. Given this, the first contribution of this work is to provide efficient conflict detection and resolution algorithms The other important (and often ignored) aspect of large scale and evolving systems is that of efficiently handling modifications to existing policies, e.g. a rule may become invalid after a certain period of time. Our approach in handling such modifications is two-fold: (i) to maintain consistency and (ii) to automatically detect and enforce rules which could not have been enforced earlier due to conflicts. The second contribution of our work is thus to provide lifecycle management for access control rules, which is tightly coupled with the conflict detection and resolution algorithms.


Singapore's pension system is based on two major premises. First, it is possible to finance retirement expenditure almost entirely by mandatory savings of households which are micro-managed and intermediated by the state. Second, the pension system should focus on mitigating absolute rather than relative poverty. The analysis in this paper suggests that fundamental rethinking of these premises is needed to enhance sustainability and fairness of Singapore's pension system. This will require use of social risk pooling methods such as social insurance and budget-financed non-contributory social pensions linked to per capita income, whose value does not decrease over time in real terms; and a shift in policy focus from addressing absolute poverty to relative poverty. The paper also suggests improvements in the design and governance of the Central Provident Fund (CPF) system such as a shift away from administered interest rate to crediting members with full-returns earned on ultimate deployment of CPF balances; and reforming age-based premiums for health insurance and CPF Life. The main constraints in reforming Singapore's pension system towards fairness and sustainability are not fiscal, economic, institutional or capacity related, but arise from unwillingness of policymakers to reconsider pension system objectives, governance and design. More open and informed debate involving all stakeholders could facilitate public policy choices designed to enhance fairness and sustainability of Singapore's pension system.


With rapid adoption of deep learning in critical applications, the question of when and how much to trust these models often arises, which drives the need to quantify the inherent uncertainties. While identifying all sources that account for the stochasticity of models is challenging, it is common to augment predictions with confidence intervals to convey the expected variations in a model's behavior. We require prediction intervals to be well-calibrated, reflect the true uncertainties, and to be sharp. However, existing techniques for obtaining prediction intervals are known to produce unsatisfactory results in at least one of these criteria. To address this challenge, we develop a novel approach for building calibrated estimators. More specifically, we use separate models for prediction and interval estimation, and pose a bi-level optimization problem that allows the former to leverage estimates from the latter through an uncertainty matching strategy. Using experiments in regression, time-series forecasting, and object localization, we show that our approach achieves significant improvements over existing uncertainty quantification methods, both in terms of model fidelity and calibration error.


The Abor volcanic rocks. exposed in the Siang window, NE Himalaya. occur as dismembered thrust-hound packages interbanded with fossiliferous shelf sediments of Upper Palaeocenc to Middle Eocene age. Their age is broadly contemporaneous with the age of collision between the Indian and Tibetan continents. They were. therefore, erupted in a convergent setting through channel ways in the leading edge of the Indian continent. The volcanic rocks occur beneath the Lesser Himalayan thrust sheets and were transported with them during their southward propagation. The Abor volcanic rocks were erupted in an early Palaeogene shallow basin located within marginal parts of the Himalayan fold-thrust belt south of the collision zone. They may thus represent foreland basin magmatism. The abundances of some major and large-ion-lithophile elements have been affected by alteration of the samples. Ti and some other trace elements remain unaffected however, and their abundances indicate that the volcanic rocks form a chemically coherent group of tholciites and alkalinc basalts. The tholeiitic and alkaline basalts reflect different degrees of melting, and low-pressure fractional crystallization involving olivine and plagioclase has played a significant role in the evolution of the basalts. On the basis of ratios of strongly incompatible elements, the two basalt types appear to have been generated from sources having similar character. This source is inferred to he enriched sub-continental mantle.