On his tour through modern Georgia in search of memories of the Old South, Tony Horwitz marveled at Japanese tourists' fascination with Gone with the Wind and observed the exchanges between them and a busy Vivien Leigh--Scarlett O'Hara impersonator, Melly Meadows. Meadows had taken her act to Tokyo and boasted that she had once shown her red pantalets to a delighted Japanese Empress. She had learned some Japanese to banter with the tourists who contracted for her appearances in Atlanta, and from these exchanges, she speculated that the Japanese had a "special affinity" for Gone with the Wind (GWTW) because of a kindred attraction to traditional notions of femininity and because they, like southerners, had rebuilt their country after a devastating war. Horwitz mentions other sources of attraction: Scarlett's loyalty to family, her strength, and the "subtle, mannered code" that both Japanese and southern culture seem to share. (1) It is no news to GWTW watchers that Margaret Mitchell's 1936 book and subsequent film have been embraced by fans around the world. By the late 1930s Gone with the Wind was enormously popular in the United States; it had won a Pulitzer and almost a million and a half volumes were published in the first edition. Today, GWTW is a global phenomenon that has sold over thirty million copies and has been issued in nearly two hundred editions in forty countries. The film, released in 1939, became one of the most popular escapist events of the hard 1930s in the United States, winning eight Academy Awards before it was also sold to audiences around the world. Both book and movie--the GWTW phenomenon has usually circulated in a hybrid of both versions--continued to be widely appreciated everywhere in the next half century. The book was enjoyed even surreptitiously in Nazi Germany after 1942 and in the Soviet Union after World War II, where it and other American books were banned. Gone with the Wind was praised as an example of "people's literature" by authorities in China during the trial of the Gang of Four. It was so popular in Russia during perestroika that it went through at least ten editions in the 1980s; two million copies were published of an edition issued by the publishing house Pravda in 1991. One of the Russian fans of the novel, Alexandra Alekseevna Krupoder, was so moved by the plight of the characters that she wrote a thousand-page sequel that brought to a happy conclusion the sentimental yet unhappy dosing of the original. Elsewhere, the story also landed on fertile cultural soil, and foreign-language editions were published in places that had relatively small markets for the book. One collector of "Windiana" that Tony Horwitz encountered in Georgia possessed copies of the book from Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Ethiopia, and even one from Latvia, published in 1938, just before Latvia disappeared as an independent country for a half century. (2) And there was also one from Vietnam. The book was available in the south of Vietnam in the 1960s and widely read there in the 1980s; the film version was available in the 1960S and again in the 1990s. Alexandra Ripley's massive Wind-inspired novel, Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind," arrived in Vietnam at a propitious time in 1991, when it could feed on the rediscovery of GWTW, as well as benefit from the 1986 market reforms of the Sixth Party Congress and a liberalized book publishing industry that began, at least in Hanoi, churning out translations of American bestsellers. Though the Vietnamese version of Scarlett was a bumpy one--a Vietnamese translation of a French translation of the English original--it was an instant hit, along with several other novels new to Vietnam by the likes of Harold Robbins, Danielle Steel, and Stephen King. A new Vietnamese edition of GWTW also appeared in the 1990s and was again widely read. The sequel has since largely disappeared from the shelves of bookstores, while the original experienced renewed interest in the late 1990s among another generation of younger readers. …


Background: Hikikomori, a form of social withdrawal first reported in Japan, may exist globally but cross-national studies of cases of hikikomori are lacking. Aims: To identify individuals with hikikomori in multiple countries and describe features of the condition. Method: Participants were recruited from sites in India, Japan, Korea and the United States. Hikikomori was defined as a 6-month or longer period of spending almost all time at home and avoiding social situations and social relationships, associated with significant distress/impairment. Additional measures included the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale, Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS-6), Sheehan Disability Scale (SDS) and modified Cornell Treatment Preferences Index. Results: A total of 36 participants with hikikomori were identified, with cases detected in all four countries. These individuals had high levels of loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale M = 55.4, SD = 10.5), limited social networks (LSNS-6 M = 9.7, SD = 5.5) and moderate functional impairment (SDS M = 16.5, SD = 7.9). Of them 28 (78%) desired treatment for their social withdrawal, with a significantly higher preference for psychotherapy over pharmacotherapy, in-person over telepsychiatry treatment and mental health specialists over primary care providers. Across countries, participants with hikikomori had similar generally treatment preferences and psychosocial features. Conclusion: Hikikomori exists cross-nationally and can be assessed with a standardized assessment tool. Individuals with hikikomori have substantial psychosocial impairment and disability, and some may desire treatment.


'Product modularity' has recently experienced a significant increase in interest in the academic literature. While the concept of product modularity is used across a wide range of academic research areas, substantial variations exist in the ways in which the concept is described and interpreted. In this paper, I develop a framework to represent the similarities and differences that appear across these variations of the concept of product modularity. Next, through an extensive literature search I construct a set of 85 references representing the use of product modularity in the engineering and management literature over the past 30 years (1975€O²006). With help of the framework I then analyze the use and interpretation of product modularity in every reference in the set. The analysis demonstrates that the product modularity concepts taken together really encompass a bundle of product characteristics rather than a single condition, and individual research areas exhibit certain preferences in which they define and operationalize product modularity. I conclude with some recommendations for future research. Overall, this paper strives to provide a vocabulary to improve cross-disciplinary understanding of product modularity.


In the last decade, Russia and the West have made a number of
mutual accusations of politicization of energy supplies. These
accusations came on the heels of a general deterioration of
mutual relations between these two blocs. The biggest concerns
have been related to the natural gas supplies, especially after
the 2009 supply crisis. The southeastern European states
sustained the hardest blow in this crisis, as all Russian gas
supplies flowing through Ukraine were stopped. On top of that,
the impact on these states was more severe than in other parts
of Europe due to their import dependency and the structure of
their economies. In this book, the author addresses the
question whether Russia really misuses gas supplies for its
policy goals and what the conditions for such use are. Based on
13 case studies, the author examines whether Russia, through
the state-owned company Gazprom and its subsidiaries,
subscribes to a so-called strategic approach to energy policy.
In other words, whether these companies serve as foreign policy
tools for its homeland government.


This study aims at contributing to the vulnerability and adaptation to climate changes (CC) analysis of bordering communities of Togodo Reserve, in order to enhance their resilience. Specifically, the present study attempted to (i)  identify the climatic hazards of the WRT; (ii) determine the impacts of climate variability and change on their livelihoods; (iii) assess the socio-economic vulnerability of these communities to food insecurity in relation to CC; and (iv) identify indigenous adaptation strategies to control the effects of CC. The methodological approach used is based on a factual research and a field investigation. The investigation is conducted in two villages around the reserve, namely Deve and Gbohoule. The results showed that climate variability and change were appreciated in different indicators by the local communities living around the WRT: Droughts, flooding, high winds and temperature increase with severe consequences on the communities (famine, destruction of tangible and intangible properties, loss of human life, populations' migration). The communities are aware that humans are responsible for these events that have become recurrent from 2007 and occur almost every year. According to them, the causes of climate changes are deforestation (due to overexploitation of timber, fuelwood and shifting agriculture), bush fires, rapid increase in population, anger of gods due to irregularities of sacrifices and violations of customs. The communities are vulnerable to main climatic hazards and suffered from food insecurity. The factorial correspondence analysis (FCA)) carried out shows that the perception of the degree of exposure of households to risks depends on their standard of livelihood. Facing these climate events, the populations develop many adaptive strategies of which most are consistent with the national orientations and strategies. These adaptive strategies must be reinforced and supported in order to reduce the vulnerability of these populations to climate changes.

 Key words: Climate variability and change, communities, livelihood, vulnerability and adaptation, Wildlife Reserve of Togodo.


Hybrid terrestrial-satellite Single Frequency Networks (SFN) achieve large spectral efficiencies due to a higher frequency reuse, which is attained by transmitting the same waveform in the same frequency band from satellite and terrestrial transmitters. However, the presence of multiple transmitters propitiates the existence of the so-called SFN echoes, which can degrade the system performance even if they arrive within the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) guard interval. In this paper we characterize this effect by resorting to Packet Error Rate (PER) prediction metrics (or effective Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) metrics), and analyze two simple preprocessing schemes that mitigate this degradation: the use of Alamouti space-time codes, and a convenient pre-filtering at the terrestrial transmitter.


The not-so-wise Solomon In this article it is argued that although the mere existence of Solomon is in contention in contemporary Old Testament scholarship, a historical Solomon can be accepted. However, this Solomon differs widely from the positive image of him that abounds not only in the Bible itself, but also in general Christian thought. In this article the relevant issues concerning the historical Solomon are put on the table and it is argued that a critical stance towards Biblical and other hero figures, which searches for a balance between individual and collective interests, befits more the attitude of a mature and responsible religion (and therefore spells wisdom).


The common use and variety of social software services has rapidly increased over the past years. The big success of established services like Facebook, Twitter or YouTube accelerates the transformation of the whole web. Next generation services are characterized by strong social interaction and collaboration tools. Significantly affected by this movement, conventional commerce platforms and online shops are gradually substituted by social shopping communities. Social commerce allows consumers to collaborate online, to exchange information about products and to get advice from trusted individuals. This paper introduces a scalable social software service model for an online shopping community built under consideration of existing best practice services. The model combines features of social networking, online shopping and social commerce sites. We present comparative analyses of these three service categories, significant showcases as well as the creation process of the model itself. The designed framework serves as basis for both service developers and researchers.


Software tools are a great aid to process engineers, but too much dependence on such tools can often lead to inappropriate and suboptimal designs. Reliance on software is also a hindrance without a firm understanding of the principles underlying its operation, since users are still responsible for devising the design. In Process Engineering and Design Using Visual Basic, Arun K. Datta provides a unique and versatile suite of programs along with simultaneous development of the underlying concepts, principles, and mathematics. Each chapter details the theory and techniques that provide the basis for design and engineering software and then showcases the development and utility of programs developed using the material outlined in the chapter. This all-inclusive guide works systematically from basic mathematics to fluid mechanics, separators, overpressure protection, and glycol dehydration, providing basic design guidelines based on international codes. Worked examples demonstrate the utility of each program, while the author also explains problems and limitations associated with the simulations. After reading this book you will be able to immediately put these programs into action and have total confidence in the result, regardless of your level of experience. All nine programs are available on the companion CD-ROM, including a useful unit conversion tool.


Public lending by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) may have done more harm than good in Brazil, adversely affecting real interest rates and productivity growth. Specifically, BNDES's large amounts of subsidized lending are responsible for substantial credit market segmentation, choking off monetary policy transmission. As a result, to maintain price stability the Central Bank of Brazil is forced to raise interest rates more than it might do otherwise in the absence of BNDES lending. Restoring Brazil's capacity to grow in the medium term requires a thorough rethinking of the role of BNDES. In particular, the bank's lending rates should be aligned with market prices, term and risk premia, while taking into account that, with an adequate transparency framework, public development banks can increase private sector participation instead of crowding it out.


Due to the growing amount of cooperative business scenarios, collaborative Business Process Management (cBPM) has emerged. The increased number of stakeholders with minor expertise in process modeling leads to a high relevance of model understandability in cBPM contexts. Despite extensive works in the research fields of cBPM and model understandability in BPM, there is no analysis and comprehensive overview of methods supporting process model understandability in cBPM scenarios. To address this research gap, this paper presents the results of a literature review. The paper identifies concepts for supporting model understandability in BPM, provides an overview of methods implementing these concepts, and discusses the methods' applicability in cBPM. The four concepts process model transformation, process model visualization, process model description, and modeling support are introduced. Subsequently, 69 methods are classified and discussed in the context of cBPM. Results contribute to revealing existing academic voids and can guide practitioners in cBPM scenarios.


As mobile networks continue to evolve, two major problems have always existed that greatly affect the quality of service that users experience. These problems are (1) efficient resource management for users at the edge of the network and those in a network coverage hole. (2) network coverage such that improves the quality of service for users while keeping the cost of deployment very low. In this study, two novel algorithms (Collaborative Resource Allocation Algorithm and Memetic-Bee-Swarm Site Location-Allocation Algorithm) are proposed to solve these problems. The Collaborative Resource Allocation Algorithm (CRAA) is inspired by lending and welfare system from the field of political economy and developed as a Market Game. The CRAA allows users to collaborate through coalition formation for cell edge users and users with less than the required Signal-to-Noise-plus-Interference-Ratio to transmit at satisfactory Quality of Service, which is a result of the payoff, achieved and distributed using the Shapley value computed using the Owens Multi Linear Extension function. The Memetic-Bee-Swarm Site Location-Allocation Algorithm (MBSSLAA) is inspired by the behaviour of the Memetic algorithm and Bee Swarm Algorithm for site location. Series of System-level simulations and numerical evaluations were run to evaluate the performance of the algorithms. Numerical evaluation and simulations results show that the Collaborative Resource Allocation Algorithm compared with two popular Long Term Evolution-Advanced algorithms performs higher in comparison when assessed using throughput, spectral efficiency and fairness. Also, results from the simulation of MBSSLAA using realistic network design parameter values show significant higher performance for users in the coverage region of interest and signifies the importance of the ultra-dense small cells network in the future of telecommunications' services to support the Internet of Things. The results from the proposed algorithms show that following from the existing solutions in the literature; these algorithms give higher performance than existing works done on these problems. On the performance scale, the CRAA achieved an average of 30% improvement on throughput and spectral efficiency for the users of the network. The results also show that the MBSSLAA is capable of reducing the number of small cells in an ultra-dense small cell network while providing the requisite high data coverage. It also indicates that this can be achieved while maintaining high SINR values and throughput for the users, therefore giving them a satisfactory level of quality of service which is a significant requirement in the Fifth Generation network's specification.


Clinicians often wonder if the single sentence from the Folstein Mini-Mental Status Exam (MMSE) offers meaningful information about the patient. We compared single sentences derived from the MMSE generated by 3 groups of participants — hospitalized medically-ill patients with psychiatric comorbidity, hospitalized medically-ill patients without psychiatric comorbidity, and non-hospitalized non-psychiatric participants. These sentences were analyzed for themes using manual thematic coding and a semi-automatic computerized method, the Meaning Extraction Method (MEM). We found that thematic content obtained from as little as a single sentence could differentiate between participant groups using both methods. Specifically, psychiatric patients used more power themes, focused on states other than the present, and were less interpersonally engaged than the other groups. Thematic content also indicated cognitive status through scores on the Clock Drawing Test (CDT) and MMSE. Our findings suggest that a single sentence can provide meaningful information about patients with medical and psychiatric comorbidity.


Imaging Excitations Complex processes such as chemical reactions and photosynthesis involve the transport of energy. The mechanisms of how the energy migrates, the influence of the surrounding environment, or the extent to which quantum mechanics affects the process remain unclear. Günter et al. (p. 954, published online 7 November; see the Perspective by Donley) found that a cloud of cold atoms suitably prepared and decorated with "impurity" Rydberg atoms could be used to image the transport of excitations between excited Rydberg atoms directly. This ability to tune the influence of the background environment may help in the study of the coherent transport of energy in complex many-body systems. An imaging technique based on a cloud of cold atoms provides a model system to study the coherent transport of energy. [Also see Perspective by Donley] Electronically highly excited (Rydberg) atoms experience quantum state–changing interactions similar to Förster processes found in complex molecules, offering a model system to study the nature of dipole-mediated energy transport under the influence of a controlled environment. We demonstrate a nondestructive imaging method to monitor the migration of electronic excitations with high time and spatial resolution, using electromagnetically induced transparency on a background gas acting as an amplifier. The continuous spatial projection of the electronic quantum state under observation determines the many-body dynamics of the energy transport.


The issue of transmitting optical packets (called slots in this paper) smoothly toward an egress switch appears to be overlooked in bandwidth access schemes proposed for optical packet-switched (OPS) networks. Here, we explain the benefits of providing an even (smooth) slot transmission and propose four basic metrics and three hybrid metrics to achieve an even slot transmission from an ingress switch of a multiwavelength/fiber slotted OPS network. The even slot transmission can help improve network performance parameters required for Internet applications. An index parameter is also introduced for each method, and a formulation is provided to gauge how even a transmission is among different combinations of frame periods, wavelengths, and fibers. These formulations can provide us with a new approach to relatively compare different bandwidth access schemes in order to determine which scheme can provide an even transmission of traffic to an OPS network. An example is provided for the comparison of two existing bandwidth access schemes in terms of even transmission of traffic.


We present a new technique for simulating high resolution surface wrinkling deformations of composite objects consisting of a soft interior and a harder skin. We combine high resolution thin shells with coarse finite element lattices and define frequency based constraints that allow the formation of wrinkles with properties matching those predicted by the physical parameters of the composite object. Our two-way coupled model produces the expected wrinkling behavior without the computational expense of a large number of volumetric elements to model deformations under the surface. We use C1 quadratic shape functions for the interior deformations, allowing very coarse resolutions to model the overall global deformation efficiently, while avoiding visual artifacts of wrinkling at discretization boundaries. We demonstrate that our model produces wrinkle wavelengths that match both theoretical predictions and high resolution volumetric simulations. We also show example applications in simulating wrinkles on passive objects, such as furniture, and for wrinkles on faces in character animation.


Abstract An increased prevalence of various filamentous fungi in sputum samples of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) has been reported. The clinical significance, however, is mostly unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical relevance of Scedosporium spp. and Exophiala dermatitidis from sputum samples of patients with CF in the Netherlands. In this cross-sectional study, all CF patients of the Dutch national CF registry who were treated at five of the seven recognized CF centers during a 3-year period were included. We linked clinical data of the national CF registry with the national Dutch filamentous fungal database. We investigated the association between clinical characteristics and a positive sputum sample for Scedosporium spp. and E. dermatitidis, using logistic regression. Positive cultures for fungi were obtained from 3787 sputum samples from 699 of the 1312 patients with CF. Scedosporium spp. was associated with severe genotype, CF-related diabetes, several microorganisms, and inhaled antibiotics. E. dermatitidis was associated with older age, female sex, and Aspergillus spp. CF patients with and without Scedosporium spp. or E. dermatitidis seemed comparable in body mass index and lung function. This study suggests that Scedosporium spp. and E. dermatitidis are probably no major pathogens in CF patients in the Netherlands. Greater understanding of epidemiologic trends, risk factors, and pathogenicity of filamentous fungi in the respiratory tracts of patients with CF is needed.


There is widespread implicit agreement within the field of psychotherapy about the therapeutic potential of mental imagery. A review of the literature indicates, however, a paucity of general theory. The literature on mental imagery is mainly concerned with its application i.e. procedures and techniques. Theorising, where it occurs, is usually informed by the specific psychological model espoused by the particular psychotherapeutic modality. In order to advance the utilisation of mental imagery as a therapeutic intervention, more attention needs to be paid to developing broader transtheoretical frameworks.
In order to address this theory gap, research is required to identify common factors operating across all therapeutic schools with regard to the application of mental imagery. To this end a study was undertaken to inquire into potential category bases for developing generic typologies in mental imagery. A scoping exercise was undertaken of case studies of mental imagery in clinical practice published in academic journals in order to map out the field. A sample of suitable case vignettes drawn from a wide range of therapeutic approaches was selected. The imagery-related clinical material was abstracted and used as the data for a grounded theory style analysis. This analytic process disclosed one overarching category i.e. the therapeutic function of mental imagery and two core categories: 1. conveying information from the subconscious/wider mind-body system to the conscious mind, and 2. delivering directions from the conscious mind to the subconscious/wider mind-body system. These two categories were further differentiated into the following six specific functions: diagnostic; monitoring; processing; reparative; process management; and framing. It is proposed that this emerging functional typology of mental imagery has the potential to be the base of a coherent unifying transtheoretical model.
These findings are discussed and critiqued in the light of the original unabridged data, and the researcher's own clinical practice with mental imagery. The relevance and implications of these findings are considered with regard to the wider field of psychotherapeutic practice. Recommendations are made regarding the further testing out and refinement of this potential model of the therapeutic functionality of mental imagery.

This study is accompanied (and its subject matter further illuminated) by an account of the researcher's own heuristic inquiry into the subjective and tacit dimensions of her research journey disclosed through symbolising this process as a mental image and monitoring its changes over time.


High-quality, hands-on science education is lacking in many low-resource schools. Seattle Children's Research Institute launched a mobile science lab program in 2009 to support the efforts of schools in Washington state by providing access to engaging hands-on science activities and opportunities to interact with scientists. For this study, we provided intensive science enrichment to students in grade four and their families with the goals of improving knowledge of key topics in the life sciences, increasing engagement in learning science, and encouraging student interest in a career in STEM. Four new activities were created for this project, two of which included family participation. Students at ten Title I-eligible schools completed two new curriculum modules on the mobile lab, and students and family members attended a science night at the school and a field trip to Seattle Children's Research Institute. Students who participated in the project demonstrated statistically significant gains in knowledge of the topics addressed by the activities and in the ability to recognize typical STEM careers and tasks associated with those careers, which persisted into grade five. The family events were well attended with family members reporting increased confidence in talking with their child about STEM.


This study examines three questions about the impact of collaboration during scientific argumentation. First, do groups craft better arguments than individuals? Second, to what degree do individuals adopt and internalize the arguments crafted by their group? Third, do individuals who work in groups learn more from their experiences than individuals who work on their own? To examine these questions, 168 high school chemistry students were randomly assigned, using a matched pair design to collaborative or individual argumentation conditions. Students in both treatment conditions first completed a task that required them to produce an argument articulating and justifying an explanation for a discrepant event. The students then completed mastery and transfer problems on their own. The results of this study indicate that (a) groups of students did not produce better arguments than students who worked alone, (b) a substantial proportion of the students adopted at least some elements of their group's argument, and (c) students from the collaborative condition demonstrated superior performance on the mastery and transfer problems. These observations indicate that collaboration was beneficial for individual learning but not for initial performance on the task. The study concludes with a discussion of these observations and recommendations for future research. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed93: 448–484, 2009


Reduction of phosphorus (P) inputs to surface waters may decrease eutrophication. Some researchers have proposed fi ltering dissolved P in runoff with P-sorptive byproducts in structures placed in hydrologically active areas with high soil P concentrations. Th e objectives of this study were to construct and monitor a P removal structure in a suburban watershed and test the ability of empirically developed fl ow-through equations to predict structure performance. Steel slag was used as the P sorption material in the P removal structure. Water samples were collected before and after the structure using automatic samples and analyzed for total dissolved P. During the fi rst 5 mo of structure operation, 25% of all dissolved P was removed from rainfall and irrigation events. Phosphorus was removed more effi ciently during low fl ow rate irrigation events with a high retention time than during high fl ow rate rainfall events with a low retention time. Th e six largest fl ow events occurred during storm fl ow and accounted for 75% of the P entering the structure and 54% of the P removed by the structure. Flow-through equations developed for predicting structure performance produced reasonable estimates of structure "lifetime" (16.8 mo). However, the equations overpredicted cumulative P removal. Th is was likely due to diff erences in pH, total Ca and Fe, and alkalinity between the slag used in the structure and the slag used for model development. Th is suggests the need for an overall model that can predict structure performance based on individual material properties.


Meet three couples in their three kitchens on the Christmas Eves of three successive years. The "lower class" but very much up and coming Hopcrofts are in their bright new, gadget filled kitchen anxiously giving a little party for their bank manager and his wife and an architect neighbor. Next there are the architect and his wife in their neglected, untidy flat. Then the bank manager and his wife are in their large, slightly modernized, old Victorian style kitchen. Running like a dark thread through the wild comedy of behind the scenes disasters at Christmas parties is the story of the advance of the Hopcrofts to material prosperity and independence and the decline of the others. In the final stages the little man is well and truly on top, with the others, literally and unnervingly, dancing to his tune.


FEW TRENDS HAVE changed the demographics of US elementary and secondary schools as dramatically as the record-high immigration of the past dozen years. Students who are learning English for the first time, better known as English language learners, make up a greater proportion of the K-12 population than ever before. According to the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs, between 1989-1990 and 2004-2005, enrollment of ELL students in US schools increased 150 percent, from roughly 2 million to well over 5 million. Mix 5 million-plus ELL students with the demands of the No Child Left Behind Act, which holds schools accountable for the academic performance of limited-English-speaking students, and you have a sure recipe for a boom in the market for tools and technologies that help teach English as a Second Language. "We are seeing an explosion in this market," says Kristina Potter, senior director of ELL curriculum development at Pearson Digital Learning, a provider of preK-12 digital learning solutions. "But it's not so much that there's a bunch of new technologies out there for ESL. It's that more teachers are using computers and software in their ESL programs, and vendors are exploiting the capabilities of existing technologies in ELL-focused products." Specialized ESL software is designed to help ELL students develop English-language listening, speaking, and reading skills. They range from simple, self-directed pronunciation programs delivered on CD, to complete multimedia software suites, such as Pearson's English Language Learning and Instruction System (ELLIS) product line, which can be deployed on desktop PCs, installed on district servers, or delivered via a web browser. The common thread among these programs is their emphasis on making text-heavy information more accessible through graphics, animation, and video. Virtually all of them offer some level of interactivity, and a growing number are web-based or network-connected. The best of them are providing more than pretty pictures. The buzz phrase here is context-based instruction, which puts students into lifelike situations using digital video. "All of our instruction materials are video-based," says Potter, "so they situate the students in real-world environments and break that video base down into specific skill instructions." The software suites in Pearson's ELLIS line are good examples of ESL programs that exploit the multimedia capabilities of modern computer environments. Users are treated to high-quality graphics, digital sound, voice recording, video, animation, and interactive point-and-click screen controls. The line is billed as "a complete, interactive, multimedia, customizable curriculum." It includes ELLIS Kids, for young learners at three English-proficiency levels (preliterate, beginner, and low intermediate); and ELLIS Academic, for students 12 and older. (ELLIS Business for working adults is also available.) As Pearson puts it, "Learners experience a virtual world, using and speaking English." Depending on the level of play, the programs offer interactive role-playing, context-sensitive translation, grammar, vocabulary, cultural insight, pronunciation and comparison tools, mastery tests, and skills-tracking features. For Rosetta Stone, one of the bigger players in the electronic language-instruction business, context is key. The company's programs serve as a medium for a teaching model known as Dynamic Immersion, in which the learner's native language--whatever it may be--is never used for explanation or translation. "In effect, we create an environment and set of processes that mimic the way you learned your first language," explains Duane Sider, the Harrisonburg, VA-based company's director of learning. "The environment provides native speakers, real texts, and thousands of real-life images. We introduce you to words in the new language, not by defining them with words in another language, but with the objects and events themselves. …


There has been a terrible mistake. Wayside School was supposed to have been built with thirty classrooms all next to each other in a row. Instead it was built with the thirty classrooms all on top of each other - thirty storeys high! That may be why all kinds of strange stuff happens at Wayside School. Especially on the thirtieth floor. It is a school full of unusual characters too. Mrs Gorf, the meanest teacher in the world. Terrible Todd who always gets sent home early. John who can only read upside down. It is a crazy mixed-up school, brilliantly brought to life by the irresistible Louis Sachar.


This dissertation combines psychology with peace and conflict research in a cross-disciplinary approach to reconciliation processes after intrastate armed conflict. Two overarching contributions are made to the field of reconciliation research. The first is conceptual and methodological. The vague concept of reconciliation is defined and operationalized (Paper I), and a method is proposed for how reconciliation may be studied systematically at the national level (Paper II). By discussing what reconciliation is and how we should measure it, comparative research on reconciliation is facilitated which is imperative if we wish to learn of its promises and pitfalls in post-conflict peacebuilding. The second contribution is empirical. There has been an assumption that truth telling is healing and thereby will lead to reconciliation; healing is the assumed link between truth and reconciliation. This assumption was investigated in two studies in Rwanda in 2006. A multistage, stratified cluster random survey of 1,200 adults was conducted to assess whether witnessing in the gacaca, the Rwandan village tribunals for truth and reconciliation, was beneficial for psychological health; thereby investigating the claim that truth telling is healing (Paper III). The results of the survey are disconcerting. Witnesses in the gacaca suffered from significantly higher levels of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder than non-witnesses also when controlling for important predictors for psychological ill-health such as gender or trauma exposure. To acquire a more comprehensive understanding of the experience of witnessing in the gacaca, in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 women genocide survivors who had witnessed in the gacaca (Paper IV). The results of this study challenge the claim that truth telling is healing, suggesting instead that there are risks for the individuals on whom truth-telling processes depend. Traumatization, ill-health, isolation, and insecurity dominate the lives of the testifying women. Insecurity as a result of the truth-telling process emerged as one of the most crucial issues at stake. This dissertation presents a novel understanding of the complexity of reconciliation in post-conflict peacebuilding, demonstrating that truth and reconciliation processes may entail more risks than were previously known. The results of this dissertation can be used to improve the study and the design of truth and reconciliation processes after civil war and genocide.


The standard method of measuring the galaxy pairwise velocity dispersion on small scales via the anisotropy in the two-point correlation function in redshift space suffers from the fact that it is a pair-weighted statistic, and thus is heavily weighted by the densest regions in a way that is difficult to calibrate. We propose a new statistic, the redshift difference of close projected pairs of galaxies as a function of local density, which is designed to measure the small-scale velocity dispersion as an explicit function of density. Computing this statistic for a volume-limited subsample of the Optical Redshift Survey, we find that the small-scale velocity dispersion rises from 220 km s-1 in the lowest density bins to 760 km s-1 at high density. We calculate this statistic for a series of mock catalogs drawn from a hydrodynamic simulation of an Ωh = 0.5 cold dark matter universe (standard CDM) and find that the observed velocity distribution lies ≳1 σ below the simulations in each of eight density bins; this measurement formally rules out this model at the 7.4 σ level and quantifies the well-known problem that this model produces too high a velocity dispersion. This comparison is insensitive to the normalization of the power spectrum, although it is quite sensitive to the density and velocity bias of galaxies relative to dark matter on small scales.


We present deep and wide  V , I CCD photometry of the Ursa Major I (UMa I) dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph) in the Local Group. The images of the galaxy were taken with the Subaru/Suprime-Cam wide field camera, covering a field of 34´ $\times$ 27´ located at the centre of the galaxy. The colour-magnitude diagram (CMD) of the UMa I dSph shows a steep and narrow red giant branch (RGB), blue and red horizontal branch (HB), and main sequence (MS) stars. A well-defined main sequence turn-off (MSTO) is found to be located at $V_{0,\rm MSTO}$ ~ 23.5 mag. The distance modulus is derived as $(m-M)_0$ = 19.93 ± 0.1 (corresponding to a distance D = 96.8 ± 4 kpc) from the V -band magnitude of the horizontal branch ($V_{0,\rm HB}$ = 20.45 ± 0.02). The mean metallicity of the RGB stars is estimated by the $V-I$ colour as [Fe/H] ~ -2.0. The turn-off age estimated by overlaying the theoretical isochrones reveals that most of stars in the UMa I dSph are formed at a very early epoch (~12 Gyr ago). The isopleth map of stellar number density of the UMa I dSph, based upon the resolved star counts of MS, RGB, HB stars as well as blue stragglers (BS), shows that the morphology of the UMa I dSph is quite irregular and distorted, suggesting that the galaxy is in a process of disruption. The very old and metal-poor nature of the stellar population implies that the star formation history of this newly discoverd faint dSph may have been different from other well-known "classical" dSphs, which show significant stellar populations of intermediate age. The stellar population of the UMa I dSph closely resembles that of Galactic old metal-poor globular clusters, but its size is typical of Galactic dSphs ( r e = 188 [pc], $r_{1/2}$ = 300 [pc]), and the shape of its spatial density contours suggests that it is undergoing tidal disruption. These characteristics of stellar population and spatial distribution of the faint galaxies help us to understand how they formed and evolved, and give a hint to the nature of the building blocks of hierarchical galaxy formation.


Excerpt] The purpose of my presentation is to consider whether the use of self-directed teams enhances competitiveness in services. In the context of heightened competition brought about by deregulation and the internationalization of service markets, do "team-based" work systems produce higher quality service and customer satisfaction? Do workers benefit as well? Should unions as well as management support this innovation? If so, under what conditions and why? This presentation complements that of the other panelists in this session in important ways. First, while Verma provides an overview of the array of workplace innovations being introduced in telecommunications firms (from joint labor-management consultation to total quality and self-management), I focus on a more detailed quantitative assessment of use of one of those innovations—self-directed work groups. Second, I consider the ways in which the introduction of self-managed teams differentially affects the job characteristics of two of the groups identified in Herzenbergs typology of work systems in services: the semiautonomous groups (represented by customer service representatives in telecommunications) and the autonomous groups (exemplified by network field technicians).


Background and Objectives: Current approaches in surgical skills assessment employ virtual reality simulators, motion sensors, and task-specific checklists. Although accurate, these methods may be complex in the interpretation of the generated measures of performance. The aim of this study is to propose an alternative methodology for skills assessment and classification, based on video annotation of laparoscopic tasks. Methods: Two groups of 32 trainees (students and residents) performed two laparoscopic tasks: peg transfer (PT) and knot tying (KT). Each task was annotated via a video analysis software based on a vocabulary of eight surgical gestures (surgemes) that denote the elementary gestures required to perform a task. The extracted metrics included duration/counts of each surgeme, penalty events, and counts of sequential surgemes (transitions). Our analysis focused on trainees' skill level comparison and classification using a nearest neighbor approach. The classification was assessed via accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity. Results: For PT, almost all metrics showed significant performance difference between the two groups (p < 0.001). Residents were able to complete the task with fewer, shorter surgemes and fewer penalty events. Moreover, residents performed significantly fewer transitions (p < 0.05). For KT, residents performed two surgemes in significantly shorter time (p < 0.05). The metrics derived from the video annotations were also able to recognize the trainees' skill level with 0.71 – 0.86 accuracy, 0.80 – 1.00 sensitivity, and 0.60 – 0.80 specificity. Conclusion: The proposed technique provides a tool for skills assessment and experience classification of surgical trainees, as well as an intuitive way for describing what and how surgemes are performed.


Participatory development is designed to mitigate problems of political bias in pre-existing local government but also interacts with it in complex ways. Using a five-year randomized controlled study in 97 clusters of villages (194 villages) in Ghana, we analyze the effects of a major participatory development program on participation in, leadership of and investment by preexisting political institutions, and on households' overall socioeconomic well-being. Applying theoretical insights on political participation and redistributive politics, we consider the possibility of both cross-institutional mobilization and displacement, and heterogeneous effects by partisanship. We find the government and its political supporters acted with high expectations for the participatory approach: treatment led to increased participation in local governance and reallocation of resources. But the results did not meet expectations, resulting in a worsening of socioeconomic wellbeing in treatment versus control villages for government supporters. This demonstrates international aid's complex distributional consequences.


Sickness absenteeism figures show a relatively large amount of variation across firms and organizations, indicating substantial within-firm correlations between absenteeism records of individual workers. To study the role of firm-specific circumstances and workforce composition, we specify three-state, multicycle duration models of work, sickness, and job separation, with workplace-specific fixed effects to account for unobserved differences between firms. In the most flexible specification, these fixed effects are separate, nonparametric, baseline hazards for each firm and each type of transition. Alternative estimation methods are discussed and applied to individual absenteeism histories of primary-school teachers.


Over the last decade, organic electrosynthesis has become recognized as one of the methodologies that can fulfill several important criteria that are needed if society is to develop environmentally compatible processes. It can be used to replace toxic or dangerous oxidizing or reducing reagents, reduce energy consumption, and can be used for the in situ production of unstable and hazardous reagents. These are just a few of the most important attributes that render electrochemistry environmentally useful. In this review the main characteristics of electrochemistry as a promising green methodology for organic synthesis are described and exemplified. Herein we provide basic information concerning the nature of electrosynthetic processes, paired electrochemical reactions, electrocatalytic reactions, reactions carried out in ionic liquids, electrogeneration of reactants, electrochemical reactions that use renewable starting materials (biomass), green organic electrosynthesis in micro- and nano-emulsions, the synthesis of complex molecules using an electrosynthetic key step, and conclude with some insights concerning the future. Throughout the review the "green aspects" of these topics are highlighted and their relationship with the twelve green chemistry principles is described.


Important trends in contemporary intellectual life celebrate difference, divisiveness, and distinction. Speculative writing increasingly highlights "hermeneutic gaps" between human beings, their histories, and their hopes. In this book Karl Morrison identifies an alternative to this disruption. He explores for the first time the entire legacy of thought revolving around the challenging claim "I am you"--perhaps the most concise possible statement of bonding through empathy. Professor Morrison shows that the hope for thoroughgoing understanding and inclusion in another's world view is central to the West's moral/intellectual tradition. He maintains that the West may yet escape the fatal flaw of casting that hope in paradigms of sexual and aesthetic dominance--examples of empathetic participation inspired by hunger for power, as well as by love.The author uses diverse sources: in theology ranging from Augustine to Schleiermacher, in art from the religious art of the Christian Empire to post-Abstractionism, and in literature from Donne to Joyce, Pirandello, and Mann. In this work he builds on the thought of two earlier books: Tradition and Authority in the Western Church: 300-1140 (Princeton, 1969) and The Mimetic Tradition of Reform in the West (Princeton, 1982). "I Am You" goes beyond their themes to the inward act that, according to tradition, consummated the change achieved by mimesis: namely, empathetic participation.Originally published in 1988.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


The innate immune system is many organisms first line of defense against pathogenic insult or tissue damage [1]. This defense strategy is intent on restoring homeostasis upon perturbation. Upon activation of the innate immune system in humans, an oligomeric protein complex termed the "Inflammasome" forms in myeloid cells [2]. The canonical output of activation of any subset of inflammasome is Caspase-1-mediated secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines IL1β and IL18 [3, 4]. Chronic or uncontrolled inflammasome activation is at the core of myriad economically burdening diseases [5-8]. In many of these diseases, endogenous factors chronically engage the innate immune system. To study these diseases in in vivo, over time as they progress, in a transgenic organism will segue into the development of next generation therapeutics. In this study we sought to utilize a modified Firefly Luciferase (pGLO) construct to measure Caspase1, and thus, inflammasome activity. pGLO has been engineered to be catalytically activated in response to targeted cleavage by a protease [9]. We report that insertion of a short peptide sequence targeted by Caspase-1 into the linker region of a circularly permuted Firefly Luciferase (pGLO) has allowed us to quantitatively assess the level of inflammasome activation in live cells. A successful in vitro experiment demonstrating sensitive and specific quantification of Caspase-1 activity should lead to an in vivo mouse model for the study of inflammatory disease.


A recent result of Salvetti and Settepanella gives, for a complexified real arrangement, an explicit description of a minimal CW decomposition as well as an explicit algebraic complex which computes local system homology. We apply their techniques to discriminantal arrangements in two dimensional complex space and calculate the boundary maps which will give local system homology groups given any choice of local system. This calculation generalizes several known results; examples are given related to Milnor fibrations, solutions of KZ equations, and the LKB representation of the braid group. Another algebraic object associated to a hyperplane arrangement is the module of derivations. We analyze the behavior of the derivation module for an affine arrangement over an infinite field and relate its derivation module to that of its cone. In the case of an arrangement fibration, we analyze the relationship between the derivation module of the total space arrangement and those of the base and fiber arrangements. In particular, subject to certain restrictions, we establish freeness of the total space arrangement given freeness of the base and fiber arrangements. Abstract Approved: Thesis SupervisorApproved: Thesis Supervisor Title and Department


A Theology for the Social Gospel is undoubtedly Walter Rauschenbusch's most enduring work. It is here that Rauschenbusch, the father of the social gospel in the United States, articulates the theological roots of social activism that surged forth from mainline Protestant churches in the early part of the twentieth century. Skillfully examining the great theological issues of the Christian faith--sin, evil, salvation, and the kingdom of God--Rauschenbauch offers a powerful justification for the church to fully engage society. The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic works in the field.


Smart multiresponsive bionanocomposites with both humidity- and thermally activated shape-memory effects, based on blends of ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) and thermoplastic starch (TPS) are designed. Thermo- and humidity-mechanical cyclic experiments are performed in order to demonstrate the humidity- as well as thermally activated shape memory properties of the starch-based materials. In particular, the induced-crystallization is used in order to thermally activate the EVA shape memory response. The shape memory results of both blends and their nanocomposites reflect the excellent ability to both humidity- and thermally activated recover of the initial shape with values higher than 80 and 90%, respectively.


In this study, a 2D model of an excavation with a tied back sheet pile wall in interaction with perpendicular rows of deep dry mixed overlapping columns was compared to a 3D model. A method to take into consideration the effect of the overlap zones between columns in a 2D model, where the improved soil was modeled as a composite material, was investigated and the results between the 2D and 3D analyses were compared with focus on predicted failure load, failure mechanism and deformations. The results of this numerical study show that both the area improvement ratio of the improved soil and the quality of the overlap zone has a significant influence on how well a 2D model that incorporates the overlap zone between columns, performs compared to the 3D model.


Setting boundaries is a creative act. Harnessing the idea of student involvement and engagement in live projects to their architectural education is difficult. Attempting to define what a live project actually is in this situation has required a lot of self-searching by architectural educators. Whilst it is an accepted condition of mainstream practice that timescale, budget and brief are matched with intention and design before works starts on site, it is not at all clear that such a definitive bounding of the project is in the students' best interest in a learning environment. This paper looks at the work of the Architecture of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources (ARCSR) research cluster, and assesses the relationship between boundary setting and changing intentions; speculating on the effect of changing intentions on the education of the student.

The value of live projects for students involves to a large extent the value of the present moment of active engagement with concrete reality. With the rising cost of university education and a parallel increase in the adoption of live projects at architecture schools, new approaches to learning are required that operate on a different set of principles to those geared towards training architects for large scale, office based practice. Students should be encouraged to experiment and innovate using incremental, iterative and reflective processes embedded in a real setting and tested in the present.


This study has a major motivation to empirically find the fundamentals of budget deficit instability for the period 1984 to 2016 using panel data set of low and high income countries. All the countries included in the study are reported in the international monetary fund (IMF) Government financial statistic (GFS) and World Bank member countries.This study has tried to empirically evaluate the economic and political sources of budget deficit volatility. This study has tried to empirically evaluate the economic and political sources of budget deficit volatility. This study first estimate the regression model by considering the panel characteristics of the data set and estimate the fixed effects and random effects models. Finally Hausman test is used to make a decision for the best fit model. According to present study institutional variables are very important determinants of budget deficit, both in the regions of low and high income countries. The outcome indicates that the budget is more stable with the higher level of political stability. The Budget deficit has more fluctuations if higher level of corruption coexists. This study contributes to the literature for institutional setup and budget deficit and reached to the conclusion that to avoid high and unstable deficit attention should be diverted to improve institutional setup of the economy.


This study investigates the effects of education on the participation of women in the informal sector of 40 developing countries using OLS linear regression. Through some econometric adjustments, the final model suggests that education, represented by years of schooling, is correlated with a 2.74% increase in women's chances of being employed in this sub-sector of the economy. This means that the better educated still end up doing the jobs that do not require such knowledge. An implication of the result is that the current way which schooling is delivered to the poor might not be the most efficient way.


Effective leadership has been widely accepted as being the key constituents in securing school development. The intensity and complexity of the leadership role in today's world of change warrants for effective leadership training to equip principals with the necessary knowledge, skills and expertise. Leadership preparation and development programs have been on the agenda across a number of countries. However, this recognition of the need for specific preparation for aspiring and practicing school leaders around the world has been slower to emerge. This is due to the fact that there is still an unwritten assumption that good teachers can become effective leaders without specific preparation. This is why in many countries including Malaysia, training is not a requirement for appointment as a principal. This review will focus on the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH), the 'sole' training which is conducted by IAB for aspiring principals. A review of the strengths and weaknesses of the NPQH preparation program point towards the need to further evaluate the program. Therefore, the aim of this review is to provide understanding of the importance of further investigation of the NPQH program in Malaysia in a wider perspective to ensure leadership effectiveness in schools.


The conclusion sums up the contributions which this IDS Bulletin makes towards the goals of reducing violence through social action and improving research in violent contexts. These contributions are of three kinds: methodological, ethical and transformational, with respect to the violent realities in which the processes unfolded. Methodologically speaking, the contributions in this issue offer a series of insights that permit better understandings of violence and better contextual awareness of violent settings. They emphasise innovative research methodologies which elicit insights from those who experience violence but are often invisible. Ethically speaking, contributors' concerns with uncovering often-suppressed facets, dynamics and perspectives on violence are part of their normative interest in the emergence of democratic forms of politics and progressive social change. The research intervention can serve as a catalyst for transforming violent realities, dislodging and re-focusing participants' viewpoints on their lifeworlds, allowing changes to happen.


Genetic algorithms are built as abstract populations of a number of candidate solutions, each of it being evaluated for accomplish a desired performance. Populations evolve from one generation to another through mutation, crossover and selection in order to obtain an acceptable solution. Genetic algorithms applications cover the subject of decision, classification, optimization and simulation of hard problems. The quality of a genetic algorithm is evaluated in terms of speed, accuracy and domain of applicability. The use of all genetic operators could assure the convergence towards the optimum solution for a specific hard problem. The approaches used to construct the search space and the objective function (survival of the fittest, natural selection) assure the diversity of genetic algorithms. Studies on the development and use of genetic algorithms in solving hard problems in the field of agricultural systems were identified, analyzed and are presented here.


Aim: Due to the presence of rich blood circulation and non-invasive nature of administration, the nasal route has been established as valuable therapeutic alternatives. This study was designed with the basic objective to formulate mucoadhesive microspheres of anticonvulsant drug, lamotrigine (LT) for intranasal delivery and to carry out its pharmacodynamic investigations to benefit the emergency cases of epileptic seizures. Materials and Methods: The microspheres were prepared by ionotropic gelation method and characterized for morphology scanning electron microscopy, particle size, drug entrapment efficiency, thermal behavior (differential scanning calorimetry), and crystallinity (X-ray diffraction), in vitro swelling studies, in vitro drug diffusion, ex vivo bioadhesion, and ex vivo biocompatibility studies in excised sheep nasal mucosa. The resultant LT loaded chitosan (CH) microspheres were further evaluated for pharmacodynamic efficacy in pentylenetetrazol (PTZ) induced seizures in mice. Result and Discussion: Results demonstrated that the microspheres were discrete, smooth, and spherical in shape with size 24.5 ± 2.62 to 48.52 ± 2.34 μm, appropriate for nasal drug delivery. The CH-based nasal LT microspheres demonstrated high encapsulation efficacy, strong bioadhesion potential, and high permeation without any signs of morphological toxicity in excised sheep nasal mucosa. Importantly the intranasal administration of LT microspheres delayed the onset of clonic convulsion and offered complete protection against the PTZ induced seizures in mice compared to its peripheral administration. Conclusion: Thus, the formulation of LT loaded CH mucoadhesive microspheres offers promising advantages over conventional dosage with its immediate onset of action.


Examinations of the Native American experience in the US criminal justice system are still relatively sparse, despite earlier calls for increased attention to Native American crime and justice issues. This is unfortunate, as Native Americans are unique among all groups in US society and face distinctive criminal justice jurisdictional complexities. We argue that this uniqueness renders extant racial/ethnic theoretical framings incomplete for understanding the Native American experience with criminal justice in the United States. First, we describe the complexities of criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country, discuss how internal colonialism shapes the Native American experience, and outline a set of directions for research to illuminate such jurisdictional complexities. Second, we discuss general theoretical frameworks and their strengths and limitations in explaining the Native American experience. We argue for a focus on the interlocking institutional power that shapes tribal, state, and federal justice coupling. We present an agenda for research on the consequences of contemporary criminal justice arrangements for individual Native Americans and for Native American communities collectively.


In recent years there has been a flurry of works on learning Bayesian networks from data. One of the hard problems in this area is how to effectively learn the structure of a belief network from incomplete data--that is, in the presence of missing values or hidden variables. In a recent paper, I introduced an algorithm called Structural EM that combines the standard Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm, which optimizes parameters, with structure search for model selection. That algorithm learns networks based on penalized likelihood scores, which include the BIC/MDL score and various approximations to the Bayesian score. In this paper, I extend Structural EM to deal directly with Bayesian model selection. I prove the convergence of the resulting algorithm and show how to apply it for learning a large class of probabilistic models, including Bayesian networks and some variants thereof.


Chocolate, in the form of a hot chocolate beverage, was widely available to men and women of all ethnic and social groups in late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth-century Santiago de Guatemala, the capital city of colonial Central America. At the same time, chocolate acted as a central vehicle of women's ritual power, used as the basis for magical potions to cast supernatural illness, in sexual witchcraft practices, and even, at times, as a flash point for women's disorderly behavior in public settings. The gendered associations of chocolate with ritual power and disorder in Guatemala are considered within the broader context of the changing cultural uses and meanings of New World food products during European expansion in the Americas.


Objectives The aim of this study was to investigate whether Australian cat owners are effectively meeting their cats' environmental needs and to identify areas of deficiency that may have an impact on the cats' health and welfare. Methods An online survey investigating lifestyle factors and provision of environmental resources was distributed to Australian cat owners. Results In total, 12,010 respondents, representing cat-owning households, completed the survey. Altogether, 45.5% were single-cat households and 54.5% were multi-cat households, with a mean number of two cats per household. In total, 46.3% of households contained indoor cats, 51.8% contained indoor–outdoor cats and 1.8% had mostly outdoor cats. Dry food was the predominant food type in 59% of households and few respondents fed their cats in a manner that stimulates natural predatory behaviours. Altogether, 17.1% of households reported cats with urinary problems such as haematuria or urethral obstruction, and 19.8% reported inappropriate urination outside of the litter tray. The incidence of urinary problems was found to be significantly increased in multi-cat households, those with a low number of litter trays, less frequent cleaning of the trays of faeces and the use of crystal type litter. The veterinary clinic was the most common place to obtain advice about feeding and toileting management. Conclusions and relevance An increased number of Australian households now contain multiple cats that live restricted or indoor lifestyles. Despite the majority of respondents claiming to have a lot of knowledge about cats and obtaining veterinary advice, deficiencies were identified in toileting facilities and feeding practices, which raises significant welfare concerns. Urinary tract disorders are an important cause of morbidity, mortality and relinquishment and its presence was associated with inadequate toileting facilities. Ongoing education of cat owners and an increased effort by veterinarians to include basic husbandry in preventative care consultations is critical to improving the welfare of pet cats.


Climate change is acknowledged to be the major problem currently facing the human race, and the need to reduce our carbon footprint becomes ever more urgent as the scientific predictions of the effects of climate change become increasingly dire. Whether we are fully aware of the social and political consequences of striving for a significant reduction is more questionable. The Carbon Footprint Wars identifies the many dangers inherent in the projected solutions - such as retreating from the spread of globalization, the current socio-economic paradigm for world trade. The war of words that is being waged over the appropriate way to deal with our collective carbon footprint has critical implications for us all. Stuart Sim examines the issues in detail, raising questions about the assumptions being made on both sides of the climate change divide. He argues that we must urgently address the problem of how to engineer the best possible trade-off between economic survival and ecological disaster - and he puts forward some radical suggestions about how we should set about doing so.


Students in a flipped classroom environment use a variety of technology to access content information outside of the classroom and develop the skills while in the classroom with the teacher. Studies on new teaching methodologies are show that this classroom design promotes the student's ability to monitor their own progress and feel centered with their learning and not detached. My research reiterated common accounts of student classroom learning and unveiled important information about how well students understood how standards are aligned. The first implementation goal was to use a formative assessment to gather pre and posttest information for the teacher and student. The assessment is a professionally designed and aligned product that gives accurate information on where students are in the skills they have been assessed on. My goal was to see how well students would respond to using the assessment to gather information about their own learning, independent of a structured and timed assessment event. Results showed that the participant students (N=35) who took assessments and tutorials gained 1.6 years in science. Student levels averaged a science mastery of third grade and six months and after the treatment the students averaged at fifth grade and two months. Additional information related to student behaviors and attitudes on learning, assessments and curriculum were brought up through the course of working with the students.


Economic conditions and labor force participation vary significantly across the states of the Union. Despite these marked differences, little is known about the reasons for such variations in retirement patterns. Using the Current Population Survey for the period 1977-2007, this paper demonstrates that the differences in the labor force participation of men age 55-64 are related to the labor market conditions, the nature of employment, and the employee characteristics in each state as well as a pseudo replacement rate. These variables explain more than one-third of the total variation. Even moving to a fixed-effects model only cuts the explanatory power by half. The question remains, however, whether these relationships reflect different populations or unique aspects of the state. To answer that question we turn to the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We estimate equations for the probability of working and for the expected retirement for men in their late fifties and early sixties. In each case, the first equation includes just the state-level variables and the second the state-level variables and the HRS demographic and economic information for each individual. The results show that the state-level variables explain almost none of the variation in the probability of working or the expected retirement age, but most of the state-level variables are statistically significant both before and after the inclusion of the HRS information.


Within a colloidal dispersion, the presence of negatively adsorbing material can produce a variety of effects on the dispersion properties and interactions. With increasing concentration, the negatively adsorbing material induces both depletion and structural forces on the dispersion, which can dramatically affect both colloidal stability and near-contact hydrodynamics. This project focused on expanding our understanding of the effects of such negatively adsorbing materials on both equilibrium and dynamic interactions between particles. The effects of charged, hard spheres (silica nanoparticle) on the hydrodynamic drag force a particle experiences as it approaches a flat plate were measured experimentally using colloid probe atomic force microscopy (CP-AFM). Deviation was found between the measured drag force and predictions for the drag force in a simple, Newtonian fluid. The measured drag force was always smaller than the predicted drag force as the particle approached contact with the plate. An effective viscosity, that approached the dispersing fluid viscosity at contact and the bulk viscosity at large separations, was determined for the system. This effective viscosity displayed similar characteristics to those predicted theoretically by Bhattacharya and Blawzdziewicz (J. Chem. Phys. 2008, 128, 214704.). The effects of both anionic and cationic micelles on the depletion and structural forces in a colloidal dispersion were studied both experimentally (with CP-AFM) and theoretically. The depletion and structural forces between a microparticle and a flat plate were measured and compared with the depletion force predicted by the force-balance model of Walz and Sharma (J. Colloid Interface Sci. 1994, 168, 485-496.). Consistent with previous work, the measured depletion force for both micelles was smaller in magnitude than that predicted by the Walz and Sharma model for hard, charged spheres. It is theorized that rearrangement of the micelle surfaces charges or physical deformation of the micelles may be responsible for the observed result. An effective surface potential for the micelles is proposed as a correction to the Walz and Sharma model. Finally, the stability of colloidal dispersions was studied macroscopically in solutions of ionic micelles. The colloidal dispersions displayed clear flocculation behavior in both cationic and anionic micelles. This flocculation behavior was compared with energy profiles determined from CP-AFM experiments between a single particle and a flat plate. A simple phase diagram was proposed for predicting the stability of


Many works have shown that strong connections relate learning from examples to regularization techniques for ill-posed inverse problems. Nevertheless by now there was no formal evidence neither that learning from examples could be seen as an inverse problem nor that theoretical results in learning theory could be independently derived using tools from regularization theory. In this paper we provide a positive answer to both questions. Indeed, considering the square loss, we translate the learning problem in the language of regularization theory and show that consistency results and optimal regularization parameter choice can be derived by the discretization of the corresponding inverse problem.


This study concerns the choice of primary dental service provider by consumers. If the health service delivery system allows individuals to choose between public-care providers or if complementary private services are available, it is typically assumed that utilisation is a three-stage decision process. The patient first makes a decision to seek care, and then chooses the service provider. The final stage, involving decisions over the amount and form of treatment, is not considered here. The paper reports a discrete choice experiment (DCE) designed to evaluate attributes affecting individuals' choice of dental-care provider. The feasibility of the DCE approach in modelling consumers' choice in the context of non-acute need for dental care is assessed. The aim is to test whether a separate two-stage logit, a multinomial logit, or a nested logit best fits the choice process of consumers. A nested logit model of indirect utility functions is estimated and inclusive value (IV) constraints are tested for modelling implications. The results show that non-trading behaviour has an impact on the choice of appropriate modelling technique, but is to some extent dependent on the choice of scenarios offered. It is concluded that for traders multinomial logit is appropriate, whereas for non-traders and on average the nested logit is the method supported by the analyses. The consistent finding in all subgroup analyses is that the traditional two-stage decision process is found to be implausible in the context of consumer's choice of dental-care provider.


Some recent methods for lossy signal and image compression store only a few selected pixels and fill in the missing structures by inpainting with a partial differential equation (PDE). Suitable operators include the Laplacian, the biharmonic operator, and edge-enhancing anisotropic diffusion (EED). The quality of such approaches depends substantially on the selection of the data that is kept. Optimising this data in the domain and codomain gives rise to challenging mathematical problems that shall be addressed in our work.
In the 1D case, we prove results that provide insights into the difficulty of this problem, and we give evidence that a splitting into spatial and tonal (i.e. function value) optimisation does hardly deteriorate the results. In the 2D setting, we present generic algorithms that achieve a high reconstruction quality even if the specified data is very sparse. To optimise the spatial data, we use a probabilistic sparsification, followed by a nonlocal pixel exchange that avoids getting trapped in bad local optima. After this spatial optimisation we perform a tonal optimisation that modifies the function values in order to reduce the global reconstruction error. For homogeneous diffusion inpainting, this comes down to a least squares problem for which we prove that it has a unique solution. We demonstrate that it can be found efficiently with a gradient descent approach that is accelerated with fast explicit diffusion (FED) cycles. Our framework allows to specify the desired density of the inpainting mask a priori. Moreover, is more generic than other data optimisation approaches for the sparse inpainting problem, since it can also be extended to nonlinear inpainting operators such as EED. This is exploited to achieve reconstructions with state-of-the-art quality.
We also give an extensive literature survey on PDE-based image compression methods.


Graph-based models form a fundamental aspect of data representation in Data Sciences and play a key role in modeling complex networked systems. In particular, recently there is an ever-increasing interest in modeling dynamic complex networks, i.e. networks in which the topological structure (nodes and edges) may vary over time. In this context, we propose a novel model for representing finite discrete Time-Varying Graphs (TVGs), which are typically used to model dynamic complex networked systems. We analyze the data structures built from our proposed model and demonstrate that, for most practical cases, the asymptotic memory complexity of our model is in the order of the cardinality of the set of edges. Further, we show that our proposal is an unifying model that can represent several previous (classes of) models for dynamic networks found in the recent literature, which in general are unable to represent each other. In contrast to previous models, our proposal is also able to intrinsically model cyclic (i.e. periodic) behavior in dynamic networks. These representation capabilities attest the expressive power of our proposed unifying model for TVGs. We thus believe our unifying model for TVGs is a step forward in the theoretical foundations for data analysis of complex networked systems.


The paper discusses economic theories of harm for anti-competitive margin squeeze by unregulated and regulated vertically integrated firms. We review both predation and foreclosure theories, as well as the mere exploitation of upstream market power. We show that foreclosure provides an appropriate framework in the case of an unregulated firm, whereas a firm under tight wholesale regulation should be evaluated under the predation paradigm, with an adequate test that we characterize. Finally, although non-exclusionary exploitation of upstream market power may also induce a margin squeeze, banning such a squeeze has ambiguous effects on the competitive outcome; hence, alternative measures, such as a cap on the access price, may provide a better policy.


While many (popular) cultural studies focus on the discursive construction, and dominant meanings created in and through events, shows and individuals, there has been a relative dearth of studies that examine the production practices of those who create these mediated entities. As such, this project seeks to help 'fill' the relative void left in production practice studies, by critically evaluating the 2003 Little League World Series (LLWS). We will argue that the cultivation of this event was part of a wider (un)spoken social and political project to position the United States as a country which was to be exalted as a space of widespread diversity, acceptance of difference, and to be revered for its 'inherent greatness' (Ferguson 2004). Further, through our critique of the veritable 'meaning makers' for the LLWS, this project aims to illuminate the power they have in reifying particular – in this case overwhelmingly positive – understandings of those who hold political sway at particular moments in time. This article concludes by looking back at the 2003 American socio-political moment through a 2007 lens, a time when the republic is unquestionably more wary towards the Bush Presidency, the 'War in Iraq', and the government more generally.


Symbian OS continues to be the top operating system for smartphones across the world, with the number of Symbian OS phones sold now well beyond the 100 million mark. As more and more developers realize the huge opportunities available designing with Symbian OS, one of the first major obstacles they face is the sheer length of time it takes to start producing functional C++ applications for Symbian OS phones. "Quick Recipes on Symbian OS" provides easy-to-use recipes for mastering common development tasks. The book's structured, time-focused approach to becoming familiar with the basics allows readers to get up and running quickly. From the Author This book is meant as an entry point into the Symbian OS C++ development ecosystem. Our goal is to allow you to create a working prototype of your application for Symbian OS withing 2 weeks, using only this book, a computer, an internet connection and a Symbian phone. Inside, you will find reusable modules implementing the most common tasks developers usually have to labour on, along with enough information for you to understand them and integrate them into your own application. This book can be used in several ways: - as a learning exercise. - to complement a university course. - as a reference to keep on your desk.


Recent studies of the magnetic field at the core-mantle boundary have revealed fixed sites of either static magnetic features or persistent secular variation. This suggests that part of the magnetic-field behaviour is controlled by the mantle. The most plausible mechanism for core-mantle interaction is thermal coupling, although topography may also be significant. The magnetic sites coincide with anomalies in lower-mantle seismic velocity, as determined from tomography, and density, as determined by flow models of mantle convection constrained by tomography and the geoid. Some magnetic features coincide with subduction zones, particularly those near Indonesia; they may be caused by bumps on the core-m antle boundary beneath trenches. Palaeomagnetic pole positions suggest the magnetic behaviour has persisted for at least 5 Ma, as would be expected if it were controlled from the mantle. These conclusions could be quantified if the frozen-flux hypothesis allowed determination of fluid flow at the core surface, but unfortunately failure of the hypothesis makes all such determinations suspect. Core motions calculated so far suggest the flow is mainly toroidal. Questions about the dynamics of the flow (whether it is steady, stratified, or geostrophic) remain unresolved.


In previous overexpression studies we revealed a role for the lysosomal membrane protein LIMP-2/LGP85 in lysosomal biogenesis. LIMP-2-deficient mice show an increased postnatal mortality which is associated with a development of a uni- or bilateral hydronephrosis caused by an obstruction of the ureteropelvic junction. An accumulation of lysosomes in epithelial cells of the ureter adjacent to the ureteral lumen and a disturbed apical expression of uroplakin was observed, suggesting an impairment of membrane transport processes. Serious hearing impairment in LIMP-2-deficient animals was indicated by deficits in acoustic startle responses, in brainstem evoked auditory potentials and a reduced endochondral potential. LIMP-2-deficient mice suffer from a massive decline of spiral ganglia in the cochlea concomitant with that of the inner and outer hair cells. These pathological changes begin at the age of 3 months and are probably secondary to a degeneration of the stria vascularis. LIMP-2-deficient mice are also characterized by a peripheral demyelinating neuropathy. Demyelinization was found to be associated with a massive loss of peripheral myelin proteins and an increased activity and expression of lysosomal proteins highlighting a hitherto unknown role of the lysosomal compartment in the development of this myelination disorder. The phenotype of LIMP-2-deficient mice stimulates the search for mutations in human disorders associated with degeneration of the stria vascularis and/or demyelinization of peripheral nerves.


State legislators have often been in the shadow of their national counterparts, but they drive the processes of democracy. Rosenthal brings together a lifetime of research and experience on state legislative politics into one eminently readable volume - a dynamic, inside view of the people involved, the politics that prevail, and the interest groups and lobbyists who advocate their causes. Building on earlier work with new data and recent interviews and observations, Rosenthal looks at the way representation works, Americans' critical view of their legislatures, the role of legislative leaders, the dynamics of executive-legislative relationships, as well as norms and ethics. Both a complement and contrast to the policymaking process on Capitol Hill, "Engines of Democracy" proves that no one gives insight into state legislators and their work the way Alan Rosenthal can.


Exotic beams of short-lived radioisotopes are produced in nuclear reactions such as thermal neutron induced fission, target or projectile fragmentation and fusion reactions. For a given radioactive ion beams (RIB), different production mode are in competition. For each of them the cross section, the intensity of the projectile beam and the target thickness define an upper production rate. The final yield relies on the optimisation of the ion-source, which shall be fast and highly efficient in view of the limited production cross section and on minimum diffusion time out of the target matrix or fragment catcher to reduce decay losses. Eventually, either chemical or isobaric selectivity is needed to confine unwanted elements near to the production site. These constraints are discussed for pulsed or dc driven RIB facilities and the solutions to some of the technical challenges will be illustrated by examples of actually scarcely produced near drip line elements. Presented at the XXth International Linac Conference, 21-25 August 2000, Monterey, California, USA


Letter writing mattered a great deal to Flannery O'Connor, especially in the period from early 1951 until her death in August 1964--when lupus gave her life a decisive sedentary turn. She explained her special circumstances in a letter written to a priest friend: "I never mind writing anybody. In fact it is about my only way of visiting with people as I don't get around much and people seldom come to see us in the country" (p. 139). Sally Fitzgerald has performed a noteworthy service, as well as a loving gesture, in making a generous selection of these letters available. Her own discreet and understated introduction and her occasional intertextual commentary assure that the "last word" will be Flannery's. Sally Fitzgerald has avoided the elaborate paraphernalia of the scholarly edition--just as she and her husband did when they brought out Mystery and Manners in 1969--which, at a certain sacrifice, helps eliminate the eyesore of the footnote-cluttered page and helps rivet one's attention more uncompromisingly on the epistolary text. The letters themselves do not disappoint. Neither do they offer any particular surprises. Readers of the fiction and of Mystery and Manners should be fully prepared for virtually everything in The Habit of Being (a happily chosen title with a nod to Jacques Maritain). Besides, bits and pieces of the correspondence were already in print in The Added Dimension: The Art and Mind of Flannery O'Connor and in the pages of Shenandoah and Saturday Review. Thus one reads along in the letters and can enjoy their rather even narrative flow, spiced by O'Connor's occasionally savage wit and by her engaging word plays. Any large claim for these epistolary gestures strikes me as unjustified, especially something like the following (found in a review in The Chronicle of Higher Education): "The Habit of Being is one of the great collections of letters in American literature, equal in range and quality to those of Hawthorne and Melville and comparable, in what they tell us about the craft of fiction and writing, to the notebooks and prefaces of Henry James and the journals of Henry David Thoreau." O'Connor herself would probably have been amused and slightly embarrassed by this assertion. Certainly the large number of letters she sent to "A." (a woman "who wishes to remain completely anonymous," we are told by Sally Fitzgerald), which cover the period from July 20, 1955, through July 25, 1964, have quite special properties. They are usually more formal and serious, with something more of a "high" style, than the correspondence with other friends. A remark made in one of these letters, dated November 25, 1960, "the human comes before art," sets the tone for this epistolary exchange. O'Connor is concerned with her friend's spiritual dimension, her "habit of being," and worries when "A." seems to be turning away from the Church in favor of the gospel according to Iris Murdoch. She is also upset somewhat at "A." 's inability to get published and encourages her own agent, Elizabeth McKee, to circulate two of her novels. But O'Connor is quick to point out that she, too, benefits from the relationship: "Your writing me forces me to clarify what I think on various subjects or at least to think on various subjects and is all to my good and to my pleasure" (p. 103). As I read through this trove of letters to "A." I was reminded several times of the correspondence between Jacques Riviere and Alain-Fournier. The spiritual and the literary mingle in the same happy way in this other epistolary crise de conscience which, incidentally, also went on for nine years (1905-1914) and also ended abruptly with the early death of one of the letter-writers (Alain-Fournier). The principal difference is that we have both sides of the exchange with Riviere and Alain-Fournier while we have only O'Connor's contributions in The Habit of Being. We can hope someday Farrar, Straus, Giroux will bring out both ends of the correspondence in a single volume, just as Harper and Row recently did with the Nabokov-Wilson letters. …


This thesis explores the relationship between physicians' clinical and educational roles in the context of UK General Practice (GP) education by investigating the experiences of seven GP trainers through an ethnographic approach employing Activity Theory (AT). The Introduction considers the philosophy and structures of GP education and outlines the author's professional biography to provide context. The Literature Review focusses on the development of medical education as a discrete field and identity formation in medical educators, concluding that: specialist medical educators are a relatively new group; and there is a paucity of knowledge regarding the impact on physicians of occupying dual clinical and educational roles. The thesis then focusses on three Research Questions (RQs), namely: 1. What is the impact of GP trainers' clinical practice upon their educational work? 2. How does GP trainers' educational practice influence their clinical work? 3. What are the social contexts for GP trainers' clinical and educational practice? These questions are addressed within a pragmatic theoretical framework to build up an ethnographic description of the participants' experiences. Data collection is through semi-structured interviews and observation of video-recorded teaching. Ethical issues associated with the study are discussed in detail, in particular the challenges of "insider" research. Four approaches are used for data analysis: global impressions; word cloud analysis; thematic analysis; and analysis shaped by AT. In answer to RQs 1 and 2, the study finds that GP trainers experience their dual roles as intimately linked, intuitively transferring their skills between their clinical and educational practice. The study also finds that GP trainers reconstruct their professional identities through teaching. With regard to RQ 3, engaging in teaching can lead to internal conflict for GP trainers and tensions with their colleagues, trainees and regulators. These findings are discussed in relation to medical education research methodology and the impact the study on the researcher is explored. The thesis closes by considering the conflicted position the participants occupy, concluding that teaching offers physicians the opportunity to reconstruct their professional identities so they can approach tensions in their practice with a sense of agency and optimism.


transamination ABSTRACT. We studied the effects of exogenous spermidine (Spd) on plant growth and nitrogen metabolism in two cultivars of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) that have differential sensitivity to mixed salinity-alkalinity stress: 'Jinpeng Chaoguan' (salt-tolerant) and 'Zhongza No. 9' (salt-sensitive). Seedling growth of both tomato cultivars was inhibited by salinity-alkalinity stress, but Spd treatment alleviated the growth reduction to some extent, especially in 'Zhongza No. 9'. Exogenous Spd may help reduce stress-induced increases in free amino acids, ammonium (NH4 + ) contents, and NADH-dependent glutamate dehydrogenase (NADH-GDH) activities; depress stress-induced decreases in soluble protein and nitrate content; and depress nitrate reductase, nitrite reductase, glutamine synthetase (GS), NADH-dependent glutamate synthase (NADH-GOGAT), glutamate oxaloacetate transaminase (GOT), and gluta- mate pyruvate transaminase (GPT) activities, especially for 'Zhongza No. 9'. Based on our results, we suggest that exogenous Spd promotes the assimilation of excess toxic NH4 + by coordinating and strengthening the synergistic action of NADH-GDH, GS/NADH-GOGAT, and transamination pathways, all during saline-alkaline stress. Subsequently, NH4 + and its related enzymes (GDH, GS, GOGAT, GOT, and GPT), in vivo, are maintained in a proper and balanced state to enable mitigation of stress-resulted damages. These results suggest that exogenous Spd treatment can relieve nitrogen metabolic disturbances caused by salinity-alkalinity stress and eventually promote plant growth.