This thesis conducts a close reading of Kate Grenville's two recent texts, the historical novel The Secret River and its companion "writing memoir" Searching for the Secret River. The first text rewrites an Australian colonial history while the second inscribes a personal, biographical history. I argue for a paired reading of the texts, which broadens the novel's historical concerns, encompassing Searching for the Secret River's contemporary anxieties about place. This reading constructs a composite narrative which is a representation of postcolonial as well as colonial experience. It also enables a decentring of the persistent controversies regarding Grenville's claims for her novel's historical veracity.
The Secret River has featured notoriously in a contemporary Australian debate about the ethical responsibilities of novelists appropriating historical fact. However, a focus on this public and academic debate over disciplinary boundaries has dominated commercial and critical reception of The Secret River, obscuring other aspects of the novel. In establishing a composite reading, this thesis examines one such aspect: the narrative's preoccupation with the notion of belonging.
Chapter one maps the composite narrative across the two texts, differentiating, as well as emphasising the connections between, the journeys of each text's central character. The chapter dissects the characters' individual and common experiences of belonging, while tracing several recurrent themes – including the contested power of literacy and orality – through the composite narrative. The characters' relationships to land are considered as expressions of postcolonial anxiety, after Alan Lawson's discussions of settler narrative tropes.
In chapter two I explore the composite narrative's representations of belonging with a temporal rather than a geographical approach, identifying a nostalgia which is present both formally and thematically. The notion of a literary postcolonial belatedness underpins this argument, facilitating an examination of Grenville's relentless rehearsal of not only national but personal histories.
The final chapter broadens the scope of the thesis to include Grenville's earlier historical novel, Joan Makes History, as well as two contemporary fictionalisations of Australian history – Lindsay Simpson's The Curer of Souls and Richard Flanagan's Gould's Book of Fish. A discussion of the presence of a historiographic self-consciousness in each of these texts contextualises the composite narrative's approach to harnessing historical fact.
The thesis concludes that the paired reading allows a more complex investigation of The Secret River than a reading of the novel alone.


Abstract : To assess the market for component-based software engineering, the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) studied industry trends in the use of software components. The study, conducted from September 1999 to February 2000, examined software components from both technical and business perspectives. The results of this study are summarized in the following technical notes and reports: Volume I: Market Assessment of Component-Based Software Engineering Volume II: Technical Concepts of Component-Based Software Engineering Volume III: SEI Role in Component-Based Software Engineering This technical note, Volume I, examines software component technology from a business perspective. It synthesizes the views of economists, industry analysts, information technology (IT) managers, and engineers. It presents evidence that software component technology is indeed being adopted by commercial industry. It also explains what lies behind the adoption of software component technology, and what industry expects from software component technology.


Richard is bored with the quiet life of his village. He would like to have a motor-car and drive it ...very fast. But Richard lives in a future world where there are no cars, only bicycles and small villages and green forests. And now he is twelve years old, and like the other children, he must do his Year of Sharing. He must live alone in the forest with the wild animals. He must learn to share his world; he must learn how animals live and eat and fight ...and die.


This paper shows that it is possible to evaluate in adults between seventy-six and eighty years of age the psychic effects of traumatic events experienced over sixty years ago. Here we present the constructive processes of an adolescent Jewish girl in France between 1940 and 1946. In addition to being robbed of her adolescence, the clinical situation shows psychopathological disorders linked to cumulative traumas: a thwarted adulthood, difficulty becoming a mother, troubled marital and maternal relations, and a ponderous silence. Retirement permits the liberation she has been waiting for since 1945, in particular through group acknowledgement and the process of writing.


Purpose: The study aims to analyze the influence of bank service quality, brand image and bank image in relation to its priority customer and the implications of a Sharia bank. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study used a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methodology. Quantitative research is a systematic study of the parts and phenomena and their relationships while qualitative research is known as a research method that aims to develop new ideas and study the phenomenon in detail, like the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Findings: Based on the SEM estimation conducted on banking service quality variables, brand image, bank image, customer relationship and customer loyalty, it is found that not all the exogenous variables affect the endogenous variables. Banking service quality and bank image significantly influence customer relationship, while brand image has no significant effect on customer relationship. Bank image, brand image and customer relationship significantly influence customer loyalty, while banking service quality has no significant effect on customer loyalty. Practical Implication: Future researches in breaking down of this construct, into sub-categories of DSR will be interesting and could provide valuable knowledge to the understanding more in-depth view of DSR. Moreover, future research can aim to investigate the impact of DSR on other customers' perceptions and factors such as corporate image, customer satisfaction, and so on. Lastly, since DSR can affect customer trust and brand equity differently, potential researches could analyze how a firm's DSR initiative can impact on customer trust and brand equity for the different cultural contexts of global markets.


When survey respondents are consciously or unconsciously influenced by the characteristics of the interviewer, bias in the survey estimates may result. The effects of interviewer characteristics such as gender and race on survey estimates have been considered previously, but isolating and experimentally manipulating a single interviewer characteristic has been infeasible. With the advent of online virtual worlds, it is now possible to conduct experiments focusing on individual physical interviewer characteristics. We conducted an exploratory study, surveying 60 individuals in Second Life, an online virtual-world community in which the respondent and interviewer were both represented as avatars—three-dimensional representations of real-life individuals. To explore the effect of interviewer appearance on reported health behaviors and attitudes, we randomly assigned half of the survey respondents to a "thin" interviewer and half to a "heavy" interviewer. The data suggest that those who reported to the heavy interviewer were less likely to say their own avatar was attractive, reported less frequent real-life exercise, and reported a higher real-life body mass index, although because of the small number of participants, we did not detect statistically significant differences. The findings suggest that interviewer appearance may have a biasing effect on reports in virtual-world surveys—and perhaps in real-world surveys. Despite the lack of statistically significant findings, the study illustrates the future potential, benefits, and challenges to surveying and conducting methodological research in a virtual world.


This paper aims to explore the importance of both subjective/civic and objective/ethnocultural variables in definitions of the nation used by members of two Western European civic autonomist parties, the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Scotland and Frisian National Party (FNP) in Friesland, the Netherlands. It will be argued that despite both parties' civic credentials, objective variables (like birth and ancestry), which are associated with an ethnocultural conceptualisation of the nation do play a part in how members of these parties define the nation. Conceptualising civic and ethnocultural nationalism as two related continuums, rather than a dichotomy or a single spectrum, gives us a better understanding of how these party members conceive the nation. The final part of the paper explores how the two parties relate to external forces that infringe on the classic idea of sovereignty associated with nationalism. It attempts to establish whether there are relationships between the different intra party conceptualisations of the nation and members' attitude towards immigration and European integration. The paper concludes by stating that the utilisation of objective variables does not mean that such definitions of the nation are exclusive and lead to an insular type of nationalism.


Due to a shortage of IT professionals, many companies intensify their efforts to be perceived as attractive employers in this field, especially by means of social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook. However, it is unknown whether these presences do really attract IT professionals, and if so, whether this is more due to the utilitarian (job search related) characteristics or to the hedonic (entertaining) characteristics of the SNS. In our study, we compared the usage behavior of IT graduates with that of a different group of graduates (in this case: humanities graduates). Our results reveal that corporate SNS presences are suitable to effectively attract IT professionals. Our study proves that the usage behavior of IT graduates is predominantly driven by utilitarian aspects of the SNS presences, while we could verify that humanities graduates use such SNS presences predominantly for entertainment purposes. Therefore, it seems advisable that companies choose the design for their SNS presence with particular regard to the target group that they want to attract and recruit.


From abstract: The Moose Creek area is in the western part of the Matanuska Valley, in south-central Alaska, about 165 miles by railroad north of the coast at Seward. Coal deposits in the valley have been known since the early 1890's, and
there have been producing mines since 1916, but the annual production is only about 40,000 tons, or less than one-third of the total amount consumed in the Territory. Early in 1931 Congress authorized the investigation of mineral resources in areas tributary to the Alaska Railroad, which is Government owned and operated, for the purpose of stimulating development and hence increasing the traffic and revenue of the railroad. The technical work of carrying on these studies was entrusted by Col. O. F. Ohlson, general manager of the railroad, to the United States Geological Survey. One of the investigations undertaken was that of the Moose Creek area, where small coal mines are in operation. Difficulties have been encountered in these mines, owing to the faulted character of the formation, which causes unproductive work in mining and also produces a large percentage of fine coal, which is unsuitable for sale in distant markets. Field examination indicated that more favorable mining conditions might be found somewhat farther west. Core drilling was therefore done in 1932, in
order to learn if workable beds of coal were present that might he mined at less cost and produce a better product than the present mines for competitive sale in markets of the Pacific coast.


The magnetic properties of oceanic basalt samples from 55 DSDP sites (301 samples) and 112 dredge haul sites (311 samples) show wide variations, indicative of heterogeneity in the basaltic layer. Remanent intensity and Königsberger ratio are log-normally distributed and range over three orders of magnitude for each collection. For DSDP samples between-site variation is greater than within-site variation, suggesting horizontal variation of magnetization within the source layer of magnetic anomalies. Crustal magnetization estimates from inversion of short-wavelength oceanic magnetic anomalies may therefore be in error. By using arithmetic means rather than the geometric means appropriate for log-normal distributions, estimates of the magnetization of Layer 2 of around 4 × 10−3 Gauss are obtained for the Indian, Pacific and north Atlantic oceans and Caribbean Sea, while lower averages are found in the south Atlantic and Antarctic oceans. Using this as a representative value for abyssal areas, the thickness of the magnetic source layer is greater than commonly assumed, and probably more than a kilometre. This interpretation is supported by DSDP data from some individual sites, notably the deep holes of Leg 37. The DSDP median destructive fields average only 123 Oe. Although many sites have much higher stabilities than this, there is evidence for unstable NRM at many sites where samples exhibit a strong tendency to acquire viscous remanence components. The low coercivity secondary magnetizations confuse identification of the stable direction during magnetic cleaning. Acquisition of high coercivity secondary remanence (CRM) as a result of maghemitization, which is extensive in the DSDP collection, may also have altered the original NRM direction. Remanent inclination data from four Tertiary DSDP sites (ages 38–40 Ma) have been combined to give a tentative Eocene VGP for east Antarctica at 68°S 64°E. It has not been possible to compare DSDP data in this way at other sites. Palaeolatitudes deduced from DSDP basalt remanent inclinations show large discrepancies from values expected from plate reconstructions at many sites. Incompletely removed secondary magnetizations, tectonic effects and palaeo-reconstruction errors, alone or in combinations, may be responsible for these discrepancies. A major source of deviation from the expected direction may be the rapid cooling of the basalt which does not allow adequate averaging of secular variation.


In this study, a computer-assisted cell tracking system including an automatic image processing program for rapid and precise analysis of cell migration in various conditions was self-designed and L-929 cell migration on the glass coated with type I collagen was examined using this cell tracking system. Furthermore, computer-based image processing software, with the capture program to choose the capture interval and period, and analysis techniques were developed for quantitative analysis of the cell migration on extracellular matrices. The results showed that the migration speed of L-929 cells on the collagen-coated glass was significantly (p < 0.05) increased compared to the non-coated control. On the morphological observations, it was showed that the cells on the collagen-coated glass looked much healthier than those on the control. These results suggested that this cell tracking system would provide tools for the analysis of cell migration in various in vitro conditions and might be effective enough to evaluate various biological events including embryonic development as well as physiological and pathological tissue reorganization.


This review deals with grapevine responses to water stress by examining perturbations to physiological and molecular processes at the root, shoot, leaf and berry levels. Long-distance signalling among organs is also considered. Isohydric or anisohydric Vitis genotypes are described in relation to their response to drought, which is linked to stomatal behaviour. Stomatal regulation of grapevine under abscisic acid and hydraulic control (the latter being linked to embolism formation and recovery in water pathways upstream the stomata) is reviewed and linked to impairments of photosynthetic assimilation. We define three stages of photosynthesis regulation in grapevines that are subjected to progressive water stress on the basis of the main causes of assimilation decline. Early and late contributions of aquaporins, which play a fundamental role in water stress control, are discussed. Metabolic mechanisms of dehydration tolerance are rewieved, and variation linked to differences in transcript abundance of genes involved in osmoregulation, photosynthesis, photorespiration, detoxification of free radicals and coping with photoinhibition. Results of these defence strategies accumulated in berries are reviewed, together with perturbations of their molecular pathways. Features observed in different organs show that grapevine fits well as a complex model plant for molecular and physiological studies on plant drought avoidance/tolerance.


CORSINI A., MARCHETTI M. & SOLDATI M., Holocene slope dynamics in the area of Corvara in Badia (Dolomites, Italy): chronology and paleoclimatic significance of some landslides. (IT ISSN 0391-9838, 2001). The area of Corvara in Badia, located in the Dolomites (NE Italy), is characterised by mountain groups over 3000 m high (Sella and PuezGardenaccia) which are connected to valleys located at about 1500 m in altitude by means of steep slopes. Besides the lithological, neotectonic and climatic characteristics of the area, the high relief energy has favoured intense gravitational slope modelling throughout the Holocene. The study, which aimed at the reconstruction of the geomorphological evolution of the slopes surrounding the village of Corvara in Badia, has implied the geomorphological, stratigraphic and chronological analysis of landslide processes, in particular of those affecting the Col Alto-Pralongià slope, situated uphill of the village. The research has also investigated lacustrine deposits found in the surroundings of Corvara in Badia and downstream of the village, which are due to events of valley damming linked to a landslide detached form the Puez-Gardenaccia group (Col Maladat landslide). In particular, the analysis has made use of stratigraphic data obtained from boreholes, and of chronological data derived from radiocarbon dating of wood and peat remnants collected from the cores and from excavations carried out close to the surface. The study has pinpointed that the triggering of the large complex landslides affecting the Col Alto-Pralongià slope (Col Alto landslide, Arlara landslide and Corvara landslide) occurred in the early Holocene and that subsequent phases of intense slope movements took place on the same slope during the Subboreal-Subatlantic. The 14C data gathered from landslides affecting the Col Alto-Pralongià slope have also permitted the various areas progressively involved in the movements to be identified and the chronology of deposits making up actual landslide accumulations to be reconstructed. Finally, it was also proved that the plain of Corvara in Badia was affected by lacustrine deposition during the Preboreal-Atlantic and again, but to a lesser extent, during the Subboreal-Subatlantic. The evidence of a significant temporal correlation between the development of mass movements on the Col Alto-Pralongià slope and the evolution of the Col Maladat landslide was therefore proved. Even if the landslides investigated are clearly influenced by geological factors, a cause-effect relationship seems to exist between the phases of slope dynamics outlined by the research and the climatic and environmental changes which have characterised the Holocene. The age of trigger of the landslides investigated corresponds to the early Holocene, a period that many Authors consider to be characterised by a rapid increase of temperature (followed by permafrost melting) and of precipitation. In the study area, this climate change caused in-depth infiltration and percolation of water, also favoured by the geological nature of the bedrock. A subsequent phase of slope instability, witnessed by the dating of several landslide events, corresponds to the climatic deterioration of the Subboreal early Subatlantic periods, which has probably caused a large amount of meteoric water to be available on slopes.


Acoustic and electromagnetic hydrographic surveys produce highly-accurate bathymetric data that can be used to update and improve current nautical charts. For shallow-water surveys (i.e., less than 50m depths), this includes the use of single-beam echo-sounders (SBES), multi-beam echo-sounders (MBES), and airborne lidar bathymetry (ALB). However, these types of hydrographic surveys are time-consuming and require considerable financial and operational resources to conduct. As a result, some maritime regions are seldom surveyed due to their remote location and challenging logistics. Satellite-derived bathymetry (SDB) provides a means to supplement traditional acoustic hydrographic surveys. In particular, Landsat 8 imagery: 1) provides complete coverage of the Earth's surface every 16 days, 2) has an improved dynamic range (12-bits), and 3) is freely-available from the US Geological Survey. While the 30 m spatial resolution does not match MBES, ALB, or SBES coverage, SDB based on Landsat 8 can be regarded as a type of "reconnaissance survey" that can be used to identify potential hazards to navigation in areas that are seldom surveyed. It is also a useful means to monitor change detection in dynamic regions. This study focused on developing improved image-processing techniques and time-series analysis for SDB from Landsat 8 imagery for three different applications: 1. An improved means to estimate total propagated uncertainty (TPU), mainly the vertical component, for single-image SDB; 2. Identifying the location and movement of dynamic shallow areas in river entrances based on multipletemporal Landsat 8 imagery; 3. Using a multiple, nonlinear SDB approach to enhance depth estimations and enable bottom discrimination. An improved TPU estimation was achieved based on the two most common optimization approaches (Dierssen et al., 2003 and Stumpf et al., 2003). Various single-image SDB band-ratio outcomes and associated uncertainties were compared against ground truth (i.e., recent Lidar surveys). Several parameters were tested, including various types of filters, kernel sizes, number of control points and their coverage, and recent vs. outdated control points. Based on the study results for two study sites (Cape Ann, MA and Ft Myers, FL), similar performance was observed for both the Stumpf and the Dierssen models. Validation was performed by comparing estimated depths and uncertainties to observed ALB data. The best performing configuration was achieved using low-pass filter (kernel size 3x3) with ALB control points that were distributed over the entire study site. A change detection process using image processing was developed to identify the location and movement of dynamic shallow areas in riverine environments. Yukon River (Alaska) and Amazon River (Brazil) entrances were evaluated as study sites using multiple satellite imagery. A time-series analysis was used to identify probable shallow areas with no usable control points. By using an SDB ratio model with image processing techniques that includes feature extraction and a well-defined topological feature to describe the shoal feature, This dissertation is available at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/2281 it is possible to create a time-series of the shoal's motion, and predict its future location. A further benefit of this approach is that vertical referencing of the SDB ratio model to chart datum is not required. In order to enhance the capabilities of the SDB approach to estimate depth in non-uniform conditions, Dierssen's band ration SDB algorithm was transformed into a full non-linear SDB model. The model was evaluated in the Simeonof Island, AK, using Lidar control points from a previous NOAA ALB survey. Linear and non-linear SDB models were compared using the ALB survey for performance evaluation. The multinonlinear SDB model provides an enhanced performance compared to the more traditional linear SDB method. This is most noticeable in the very shallow waters (0-2 m), where a linear model does not provide a good correlation to the control points. In deep-waters close to the extinction depth, the multi-nonlinear SDB method is also able to better detect bottom features than the linear SDB method. By recognizing the water column contributions to the SDB solution, it is possible to achieve a more accurate estimate of the bathymetry in remote areas.


ABSTRACT: This paper puts forward a vision that integrates liberal and accounting education to engage students with the idea of vocation and pursuit of the common good through their chosen field of accounting. We adopt a common good definition of the public interest that seeks to advance not only the good of institutions and communities (mutual interests) but also the good of individuals (private interests). This approach engages students to critically reflect on how their life experiences, personal commitments, and future professional work can relate to one another. We first discuss disciplinary fragmentation in higher education and its implications for integrating liberal and accounting education. Next, we describe general learning objectives and concepts that support the integration of liberal learning and accounting education with a public interest orientation. We then apply the approach to critique accounting practices that arguably harm the public interest. The concluding section provides a summary ...


The past one hundred years has seen major advances in medical knowledge, care and technology, but has this been healthy? These advances have been underpinned by over-simplified misconceptions of reality in the form of mechanical and atomistic metaphysics. These views effectively abstract us from nature and each other while obscuring the holistic roots of the word health. They have provided justification for our drive to harness the potential energy of non-renewable fossil fuels which has allowed us to augment the living conditions for some on our planet, but at the expense of the conditions for life itself. We are now seeing the consequences of our profligate use of energy in the emergence of environmental problems such as the melting of our polar ice caps, extremes of weather conditions and life threatening pollution more generally. Climate scientists are speculating that due to irreversible positive feedback loops, the most complex levels of life could be extinguished on our planet in sixty or seventy years. This destruction is happening partly due to growth-obsessed economies generating greater dependence on energy intensive technologies, but healthcare is following this trend towards even greater dependence on technology adding to the growing demand for energy globally. This trend is unhealthy as increasing energy use generates larger, more intractable health problems such as Type Two Diabetes. What is needed are further arguments for holistic approaches to health which create the conditions for self-healing rather than energy intensive, entropy accelerating interventions. Such approaches have long been practiced by the healthiest peoples in the world in what are called the 'Blue Zones.' To cultures fragmented by mechanical metaphysics, however, holism no longer makes sense. In this paper, therefore, I will argue for holistic approaches drawing upon what physics understands to be the nature of the Higgs Field and fields in general to reveal the complex nature of our connectedness with all in the universe. I will show holism's ontological primacy through understandings in process metaphysics and modern physics and biology. I will further argue that to avoid extinction we will need to create an ecological civilization which helps heal our dysfunctional relationships with nature. This will require an education in dialectics in order to understand the relationships between contradictory arguments and the implementation of an ethics and politics of eco-poeisis to generate a feel for the whole that so many today fail to experience. This will create and maintain our connections to our communities. Such deep connections will be necessary for us to take responsibility for continually generating the future potential for diverse, healthy life. A condition for this will be the creation of a holistic health field which, being based in process metaphysics, will act as a higher level constraint to condition more holistic thought and practice.


The cDNA for a 54-kDa nuclear protein (p54) has been cloned from a human hepatoma expression library. Contained within p54 is an arginine/serine-rich region similar to segments of several proteins that participate in pre-mRNA splicing including the 70-kDa component of U1 small nuclear and "suppressor-of-white-apricot" proteins. The arginine/serine-rich region is dominated by a series of 8-amino acid imperfect repetitive motifs (consensus sequence, Arg-Arg-Ser-Arg-Ser-Arg-Ser-Arg). Antibodies raised against synthetic peptides of p54 react with an approximately 70-kDa protein on immunoblots of HeLa cell and rat liver nuclear proteins. This apparent discrepancy in mass is also observed when p54 mRNA is translated in vitro. Indirect immunofluorescence studies in HeLa cells show that p54 is distributed throughout the nucleus in a speckled pattern, with an additional diffuse labeling of the nucleus excluding the nucleoli. Double immunofluorescence experiments indicate that these punctate regions are coincident with the speckles seen in cells stained with antibodies against several constituents of the pre-mRNA splicing machinery. Sedimentation analysis of HeLa cell extracts on sucrose gradients showed that p54 migrates at 4-6 S, indicating that the protein is not a tightly associated component of snRNPs. Although the function of p54 is not yet known, our structure and immunolocalization data suggest that this protein may have a role in pre-mRNA processing.


In the late nineteen-fifties and early nineteen-sixties, France, under the leadership of President Charles de Gaulle, aligned its foreign and domestic policies to allow itself to become an independent world power. Many of these policies, although potentially beneficial to the French objectives had direct, specific effects upon other countries. Although it is most difficult to analyze and dissect each and every decision or the French government, there were some decisions which were particularly relevant in regard to the total international situation. In this category would be the French decision in the mid-sixties to establish a course or military self-determination and to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance. Initial reaction to this decision would affect policy decisions concerning the military capability of the NATO alliance with the geographical, tactical, and personnel void created by such a French decision. Further investigation is necessary; however, to comprehend how such a unilateral decision could affect regional and international politics. Such was the case with the French decision to withdraw from NATO. World events, most specifically the Berlin Crisis and the Cuban missile crisis, had made the world governments acutely aware of the possibilities of nuclear confrontation. With the imminent nuclear capability of France, Communist China, India, and other nations of the world it was becoming apparent to the major nations of the world that some type of agreement was necessary to halt the possible, if not probable, proliferation of nuclear weapons. Speculation and discussion regarding an agreement to ban the spread of nuclear information had been a real possibility from the time of the initial Moscow treaty banning nuclear testing. As world events made such an agreement seem more inevitable, the French took their action regarding military affiliation with the NATO alliance. This action raised several situations which could develop into specific problems. Who would take France's place on the European continent; would nuclear weapons be necessary to fill the void left by France? Would the Soviet Union use this action to test the military and political strength of the NATO alliance? To this point there is no known work which deals with the effects of the French withdrawal from the NATO alliance and any subsequent effect that had upon the successful negotiation of a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. In this regard, we shall see how the French action led to deviations in the normal U.S. NATO policies and subsequently how the French action threatened the Non-proliferation Treaty negotiations.


This study examines willingness to take agricultural insurance by cocoa farmers in Nigeria. A three-stage sampling procedure was used to select 120 cocoa farm households and structured questionnaire was used to elicit data from the respondents. The data were analysed with descriptive statistics and probit regression model. Results showed that 77.5% of the farmers were aware of Agricultural Insurance but only 50% were willing to take it. The average willingness-to-pay (WTP) for Agricultural Insurance by the respondents was N11,087.5/ha ($69.85/ha). The significant variables influencing willingness to take agricultural insurance by the farmers were age of household head, educational level, access to extension service and farm income. The study therefore recommends encouraging young well educated people to engage in cocoa farming, overhauling agricultural extension services as well as provision of insurance services to farmers at affordable rate.


Abstract. Since the turn of the millennium various scientific publications have been discussing a re-greening of the Sahel after the 1980s drought mainly based on coarse-resolution satellite data. However, the author's own field studies suggest that the situation is far more complex and that both paradigms, the encroaching Sahara and the re-greening Sahel , need to be questioned. This paper discusses the concepts of desertification, resilience, and re-greening by addressing four main aspects: (i) the relevance of edaphic factors for a vegetation re-greening, (ii-iii) the importance of the selected observation period in the debate on Sahel greening or browning, and (iv) modifications in the vegetation pattern as possible indicators of ecosystem changes (shift from originally diffuse to contracted vegetation patterns). The data referred to in this paper cover a time period of more than 150 years and include the author's own research results from the early 1980s until today. A special emphasis, apart from fieldwork data and remote sensing data, is laid on the historical documents. The key findings summarised at the end show the following: (i) vegetation recovery predominantly depends on soil types; (ii) when discussing Sahel greening vs. Sahel browning, the majority of research papers only focus on post-drought conditions. Taking pre-drought conditions (before the 1980s) into account, however, is essential to fully understand the situation. Botanical investigations and remote-sensing-based time series clearly show a substantial decline in woody species diversity and cover density compared to pre-drought conditions; (iii) the self-organised patchiness of vegetation is considered to be an important indicator of ecosystem changes.


Within a case-control study of postmenopausal breast cancer patients (n = 99) and matched healthy controls (n = 105), thyroid hormone levels were compared and correlated with toenail selenium concentrations. Plasma triiodothyronine (T3) was significantly lower in cases (1.4 +/- 0.4 nmol/l) than in controls (1.6 +/- 0.4 nmol/l), and a strong inverse relationship with breast cancer was observed with an odds ratio of 0.17 (95% CI = 0.08-0.36) in the highest compared with the lowest tertile of T3. Plasma thyroxine and thyroid-stimulating hormone concentrations were similar between cases and controls. Plasma T3 concentration was positively associated with toenail selenium in cases (age-adjusted regression coefficient = 0.049) and controls (age-adjusted regression coefficient = 0.036). Toenail selenium concentrations tended to be lower in cases than in controls, but the differences did not reach statistical significance. Although the disease process per se may explain the lower plasma T3 concentrations, it is also possible, inasmuch as these patients were in early-stage breast cancer, that selenium status may be influencing T3 levels via changes in the activity of the selenoenzyme type 1 iodothyronine deiodinase.


The tremendous variety of language corpora, tools and ways to access them have opened up entire new spheres of application in language teaching and learning. The book deals with a variety of uses of language corpora in foreign or second language teaching and learning, and is divided into four parts. Sections 1 and 2 look at corpora as input, first exploring general issues of how they can inform language teaching, and second describing how this can be put into practice and evaluating concrete uses of corpora with learners. Sections 3 and 4 look at learner corpora as output: this includes comparison with native-speaker corpora to identify 'errors' or areas of difficulty, but also shows what learners can and do know at different levels of proficiency, and what this tells us about the learning process.


The transient thermal grating (TTG) technique in transmitting geometry has been applied to the characterisation of thin-film thermal diffusivity. The thermal grating is initially formed in a film surrounded by two substrates The theoretical background and experimental data for diffraction active and nonactive substrates are described. A one-dimensional model of heat diffusion in a three-layer structure fits the experimental data of TTG decay well if the film thickness is less than the thermal grating period. In addition, film thickness, light absorption coefficient in a film, and thermal properties of substrates influence the TTG relaxation time. The optimum experimental conditions have been selected, and the method of thermal diffusivity characterisation of thin films has been devised.


Estimating the shear wave velocity and thickness of geologic units in a sedimentary structure is important for quantifying the local site effect caused by an earthquake. Inversion of the Rayleigh wave dispersion alone is sensitive to the absolute average shear wave velocity, while the H/V spectral ratio is sensitive to velocity contrasts. The solution of these models in a joint system using conventional inversion techniques suffers from difficulties while evaluating partial derivatives, dependencies to the initial model that is sometimes difficult to estimate, and trapping at a local minimum. Herein, a joint model using the Pareto optimality technique with multiobjective particle swarm optimization was constructed as an effective global optimization method to decrease weakness and increase performance while estimating the depths and velocities. The presented approach is a multiobjective optimization method that does not require weighting, and allows evaluations of the individual objective function separately in a joint system. This study presents 2 synthetic joint system examples to account for a gradient-type and sharp velocity contrast cases, and an application from field data obtained from the Bursa Basin in Turkey. With these examples, an automated parameter search space was demonstrated to account for the abrupt velocity changes and a number of additional key points that are essential for a reasonable optimal solution.


Marine microalgae have been prominently featured in cancer research. Here, we examined cytotoxic effect and apoptosis mechanism of crude ethanol extracts of an indigenous microalga, Chaetoceros calcitrans (UPMAAHU10) on human breast cell lines. MCF-7 was more sensitive than MCF-10A with IC50 value of 3.00 ± 0.65, whilst the IC50 value of Tamoxifen against MCF-7 was 12.00 ± 0.52 μg/mL after 24 hour incubation. Based on Annexin V/Propidium iodide and cell cycle flow cytometry analysis, it was found that inhibition of cell growth by EEC on MCF-7 cells was through the induction of apoptosis without cell cycle arrest. The apoptotic cells at subG0/G1 phase in treated MCF-7 cells at 48 and 72 hours showed 34 and 16 folds increased compared to extract treated MCF-10A cells which showed only 6 and 7 folds increased at the same time points, respectively. Based on GeXP study, EEC induced apoptosis on MCF-7 cells via modulation of CDK2, MDM2, p21Cip1, Cyclin A2, Bax and Bcl-2. The EEC treated MCF-7 cells also showed an increase in Bax/Bcl-2 ratio that in turn activated the caspase-dependent pathways by activating caspase 7. Thus, marine microalga, Chaetoceros calcitrans may be considered a good candidate to be developed as a new anti-breast cancer drug.


This research is to decide the contrastive and difference aspects of syntax between the Malay language as the first language and the Thai language as the foreign language among the students in higher learning at public institutions in Malaysia. Both of these aspects is one of the factors that influenced the process of learning the Thai language among the students. A student is always making errors in oral and writing activities in the Thai language class. Hence, the objectives of this research are to identify the equation and differences in syntax aspect between the Thai and the Malay language, to identify types and the reasons of errors in learning the Thai language between students at the University Putra Malaysia (UPM) and University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), and to submit the proposal, and the learning approaches to increase the control of the Thai language as the foreign language in Malaysia. To reach the objectives of this research, the researcher uses the theory of contrastive and error analysis. The samples of the research consisted of 100 students who have learned the Thai language from level one until level three from two chosen institutions.


Photorefractive gratings are written, read out, and erased with single 30-psec pulses at fluences of 1–15 mJ/cm2 and a wavelength of 0.532 μm in a BaTiO3 crystal. The gratings consist of one component that is fully formed 50 psec after the peak in the writing beams and a second component that grows for approximately 30 sec until it starts to decay by dark erasure. The photorefractive index change per absorbed photon for picosecond pulses is approximately the same as that obtained when a cw beam at 0.515 μm is used with the same crystal. The index change is approximately a factor of 30 smaller than that observed at the same fluence in GaAs at 1.06 μm when the same picosecond laser system is used.


Sensor networks have been an active research area in the past decade due to the variety of their applications. Many research studies have been conducted to solve the problems underlying the middleware services of sensor networks, such as self-deployment, self-localization, and synchronization. With the provided middleware services, sensor networks have grown into a mature technology to be used as a detection and surveillance paradigm for many real-world applications. The individual sensors are small in size. Thus, they can be deployed in areas with limited space to make unobstructed measurements in locations where the traditional centralized systems would have trouble to reach. However, there are a few physical limitations to sensor networks, which can prevent sensors from performing at their maximum potential. Individual sensors have limited power supply, the wireless band can get very cluttered when multiple sensors try to transmit at the same time. Furthermore,the individual sensors have limited communication range, so the network may not have a 1-hop communication topology and routing can be a problem in many cases. Carefully designed algorithms can alleviate the physical limitations of sensor networks, and allow them to be utilized to their full potential. Graphical models are an intuitive choice for designing sensor network algorithms. This thesis focuses on a classic application in sensor networks, detecting and tracking of targets. It develops feasible inference techniques for sensor networks using statistical graphical model inference, binary sensor detection, events isolation and dynamic clustering. The main straregy is to use only binary data for rough global inferences, and then dynamically form small scale clusters around the target for detailed computations. This framework is then extended to network topology manipulation, so that the framework developed can be applied to tracking in different network topology settings. Finally the system was tested in both simulation and real-world environments. The simulations were performed on various network topologies, from regularly distributed networks to randomly distributed networks. The results show that the algorithm performs well in randomly distributed networks, and hence requires minimum deployment effort. The experiments were carried out in both corridor and open space settings. A in-home falling detection system was simulated with real-world settings, it was setup with 30 bumblebee radars and 30 ultrasonic sensors driven by TI EZ430-RF2500 boards scanning a typical 800 sqft apartment. Bumblebee radars are calibrated to detect the falling of human body, and the two-tier tracking algorithm is used on the ultrasonic sensors to track the location of the elderly people.


ADDITIONAL INDEX WORDS. 5-chloro-3-methyl-4-nitro-1H-pyrazole, Citrus sinensis, coronatine, ethephon, fruit detachment force, methyl jasmonate ABSTRACT. 1-MCP is a gaseous ethylene binding inhibitor that controls or delays ethylene-related postharvest problems in a range of horticultural commodities. Our previous work demonstrated that exposure of calamondin to 1-MCP 16 hours before canopy sprays of ethephon greatly reduced unwanted leaf drop while only partially inhibiting the ability of ethephon to cause fruit loosening. The objective of this work was to determine whether formulated 1-MCP (SmartFresh) could be used in the fi eld to stop defoliation caused by abscission agent applications without signifi cantly altering abscission agent-induced fruit loosening. Spray solutions containing 400 mg·L -1 ethephon with 0, 1, 2.5, and 5 mM 1-MCP were applied to canopies of ʻHamlin' and ʻValencia' (Citrus sinensis). Timing of 1-MCP applications was a) 24 hours before, b) in combination with, or c) 24 hours after ethephon. Ethephon at 400 mg·L -1 signifi cantly reduced fruit detachment force (FDF) but caused >70% leaf drop within 15 days after application in both cultivars. Applications of 1-MCP reduced ethephon-associated leaf abscission but had little effect on the ability of ethephon to reduce FDF. Timing of 1-MCP applications did not affect the ability of ethephon to cause fruit loosening; however, the best consistent treatment for control of leaf drop was achieved with the combined application of 5 mM 1-MCP and 400 mg·L -1 ethephon. 1-MCP was used in combination with the abscission agents coronatine, methyl jasmonate (MeJa) and 5-chloro-3-methyl-4-nitro-1H-pyrazole (CMNP) to determine its effect on leaf drop and fruit loosening. Leaf drop in trees treated with ethephon, coronatine, and MeJa was reduced by addition of 1-MCP. However, fruit loosening was largely prevented when 1-MCP was used in combination with coronatine or MeJa. Like ethephon, CMNP-induced fruit loosening was not affected by 1-MCP. The results demonstrate the ability to control ethephon-induced leaf abscission without affecting mature fruit loosening by targeting ethylene binding in citrus.


Innate fear is critical for the survival of animals and is under tight homeostatic control. Deregulation of innate fear processing is thought to underlie pathological phenotypes including, phobias and panic disorders. Although central processing of conditioned fear has been extensively studied, the circuitry and regulatory mechanisms subserving innate fear remain relatively poorly defined. In this study, we identify cocaine- and amphetamine-regulated transcript (CART) neuropeptide signaling in the central amygdala (CeA) - ventral bed nucleus of stria terminalis (vBNST) axis as a key modulator of innate fear expression. 2,4,5-trimethyl-3-thiazoline (TMT), a component of fox faeces, induces a freezing response whose intensity is regulated by the extent of CART-signaling in the CeA neurons. Abrogation of CART activity in the CeA attenuates the freezing response and reduces activation of vBNST neurons. Conversely, ectopically elevated CART signaling in the CeA potentiates the fear response concomitant with enhanced vBNST activation. We show that local levels of CART signaling modulate the activation of CeA neurons by NMDA receptor-mediated glutamatergic inputs, in turn, regulating activity in the vBNST. This study identifies the extended amygdalar CeA-vBNST circuit as a CART modulated axis encoding innate fear. CART signaling regulates the glutamatergic excitatory drive in the CeA-vBNST circuit, in turn, gating the expression of the freezing response to TMT.


Abstract The taxonomic status of all species of Santinezia Roewer 1923 is defined, and a catalogue is provided. Santinezia lucifer, S. gracilis, S. onorei (all from Ecuador), S. furva (from Colombia and Venezuela) and S. hermosa (from Peru) are newly described. Santinezia biordi González-Sponga 1991 is newly considered as a junior subjective synonym of S. serratotibialis Roewer 1932. Santinezia albilineata Roewer 1932, Goniosoma pavani Muñoz-Cuevas 1972, S. benedictoi Soares & Avram 1981, S. decui Avram 1987, S. orghidani Avram 1987 and S. francourbani Avram 1987 are newly considered as junior subjective synonyms of Inezia curvipes Roewer 1916. Nieblia Roewer 1925, Chondrocranaus Roewer 1932, Macuchicola Mello-Leitão 1943 and Carvalholeptes H. Soares 1970 are newly considered as junior subjective synonyms of Santinezia. Nieblia camposi Mello-Leitão 1942 is transferred to Spinicranaus Roewer 1913. Santinezia albimedialis Goodnight & Goodnight 1943 is transferred to Phareicranaus Roewer 1913. Nieblia magna Roewer 1932 is transferred to Neocranaus Roewer 1913. Santinezia micheneri Goodnight & Goodnight 1947 is newly considered as a junior subjective synonym of Phareicranaus ornatus Roewer 1932. A character survey is done including newly discovered characters of genital morphology, patterns of colored marks of dorsal scutum and armature of male leg IV. A phylogenetic analysis of the species of the genus for which males are known is provided allowing the definition of three new species groups. Comparative descriptions are given of the penial morphology of one species of Ventrivomer, one species of Phareicranaus and eight species of Santinezia. Distribution maps for all species of Santinezia are given. The type locality of S. serratotibialis Roewer 1932 is corrected from Trinidad (Bolivia) to Trinidad (Trinidad & Tobago).


This paper develops a new algorithm for inducing cost-sensitive decision trees that is inspired by the multi-armed bandit problem, in which a player in a casino has to decide which slot machine (bandit) from a selection of slot machines is likely to pay out the most. Game Theory proposes a solution to this multi-armed bandit problem by using a process of exploration and exploitation in which reward is maximized. This paper utilizes these concepts to develop a new algorithm by viewing the rewards as a reduction in costs, and utilizing the exploration and exploitation techniques so that a compromise between decisions based on accuracy and decisions based on costs can be found. The algorithm employs the notion of lever pulls in the multi-armed bandit game to select the attributes during decision tree induction, using a look-ahead methodology to explore potential attributes and exploit the attributes which maximizes the reward. The new algorithm is evaluated on fifteen datasets and compared to six well-known algorithms J48, EG2, MetaCost, AdaCostM1, ICET and ACT. The results obtained show that the new multi-armed based algorithm can produce more cost-effective trees without compromising accuracy. The paper also includes a critical appraisal of the limitations of the new algorithm and proposes avenues for further research.


Bone is a natural cellular composite, with a gradient structure going from a loose interconnected core to an outer dense wall, thus minimising bone weight while maintaining a high mechanical performance. Bone can be repaired using either auto- or allo- grafts, which, however, have a limited availability, or present pathogen transmission risks, respectively. Synthetic tissue grafts are therefore investigated in order to provide porous scaffolds, seeded with the appropriate type of cells, as templates for tissue regeneration. This study focused on composite scaffolds based on polymer matrices. The objectives were to understand how different foaming phenomena are affected by the addition of fillers into the polymer, to investigate their effect on the structural and mechanical properties of foams, and then to propose and optimise a solvent free process in order to prepare bioresorbable composite scaffolds suitable for bone tissue engineering applications. The comparison of several processes resulting in porous matrices led to choose supercritical CO2 foaming as a flexible technique to manufacture cellular structures, with the possibility of adding fibres or fillers. First, the integration of glass fibres into polyurethane (PUR) and polyethylene terephtalate (PET) foams, processed by reactive and gas foaming respectively, was investigated in order to study the potential improvement of mechanical properties of porous polymers. With the PUR system, modulus was shown to increase with fibre content, and an optimum fibre length existed. With PET, dense and heterogeneous structures were obtained. In both cases a homogeneous mixing of the two components was required before foaming. Gas foaming of bioresorbable neat polymers, poly(L-lactic acid) (PLA) and poly(D,L-lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA), was carried out in a high-pressure vessel. A wide variety of PLA cellular structures was obtained, with open and closed pores, of diameters between 0.2 and 1.0 mm, and a range of porosity (70-92 %) and modulus (10-180 MPa). On the contrary, using PLGA led to closed, larger pores, and a low modulus. Only PLA was therefore considered as a matrix for composite foaming. Hydroxyapatite (HA) and β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP), were then added to PLA in order to improve mechanical resistance, to regulate pH during scaffold resorption, and, owing to their intrinsic osteoconductivity, to favour mineralisation. Composite preforms were prepared by three different techniques: mixing powders in the dry state, dispersion in polymer solution, and melt-extrusion. Observation of the ceramic distribution, measurements of glass transition and melting temperatures, and tensile tests led to select and optimise melt-extrusion as a clean technique for preparing homogeneous ceramic-polymer preforms. Structural analysis of composite foams produced in the highpressure chamber enabled us to define processing windows as a function of pressure release and cooling rates. HA or β-TCP filled PLA foams were obtained, with porosity between 74 and 83 %, pore size between 0.1 and 1 mm, and modulus between 30 and 250 MPa. Microcomputed tomography confirmed the anisotropy in cellular morphology. Compression tests were also performed and revealed the anisotropic and viscoelastic behaviour of the porous polymer and composite structures. Finally, in collaboration with the Laboratory of Orthopaedic Research (LRO-EPFL) and the Hopital Orthopedique de Suisse Romande (HO-CHUV), the biocompatibility of the developed structures with human primary foetal bone cells was demonstrated, as they proliferated on the template surfaces and differentiated. Foaming parameters could thus be defined to create composite scaffolds suitable for bone tissue engineering applications. Structural and mechanical properties similar to those of cancellous bone were demonstrated and promising in vitro tests were conducted. Therefore the developed scaffolds can now be evaluated in vivo.


Abstract. Creating three-dimensional as-built models from point clouds is still a challenging task in the Cultural Heritage environment. Nowadays, performing such task typically requires the quite time-consuming manual intervention of an expert operator, in particular to deal with the complexities and peculiarities of heritage buildings. Motivated by these considerations, the development of automatic or semi-automatic tools to ease the completion of such task has recently became a very hot topic in the research community. Among the tools that can be considered to such aim, the use of deep learning methods for the semantic segmentation and classification of 2D and 3D data seems to be one of the most promising approaches. Indeed, these kinds of methods have already been successfully applied in several applications enabling scene understanding and comprehension, and, in particular, to ease the process of geometrical and informative model creation. Nevertheless, their use in the specific case of heritage buildings is still quite limited, and the already published results not completely satisfactory. The quite limited availability of dedicated benchmarks for the considered task in the heritage context can also be one of the factors for the not so satisfying results in the literature.Hence, this paper aims at partially reducing the issues related to the limited availability of benchmarks in the heritage context by presenting a new dataset for semantic segmentation of heritage buildings. The dataset is composed by both images and point clouds of the considered buildings, in order to enable the implementation, validation and comparison of both point-based and multiview-based semantic segmentation approaches. Ground truth segmentation is provided, for both the images and point clouds related to each building, according to the class definition used in the ARCHdataset, hence potentially enabling also the integration and comparison of the results obtained on such dataset.


Abstract The petroleum prospectivity of an exhumed basin is largely dependent on the ability of pre-existing traps to retain oil and gas volumes during and after the exhumation event. Although faults may act as lateral seals in petroleum traps, they may start to become hydraulically conductive again and enable fluid flow and hydrocarbon leakage during fault reactivation. We constrain the present day in situ stresses of the exhumed Illizi Basin in Algeria and demonstrate that the primary north–south and NW–SE (vertical strike-slip) fault systems in the study area are close to critical stress (i.e. an incipient state of shear failure). By contrast, the overpressured and unexhumed Berkine Basin and Hassi Messaoud areas to the north do not appear to be characterized by critical stress conditions. We present conceptual models of stress evolution and demonstrate that a sedimentary basin with benign in situ stresses at maximum burial may change to being characterized by critical stress conditions on existing fault systems during exhumation. These models are supportive of the idea that the breaching of a closed, overpressured system during exhumation of the Illizi Basin may have been a driving mechanism for the regional updip flow of high-salinity formation water within the Ordovician reservoirs during Eocene–Miocene time. This work also has implications for petroleum exploration in exhumed basins. Fault-bounded traps with faults oriented at a high angle to the maximum principal horizontal stress direction in strike-slip or normal faulting stress regimes are more likely to have retained hydrocarbons in exhumed basins than fault-bounded traps with faults that are more optimally oriented for shear failure and therefore have a greater propensity to become critically stressed during exhumation.


We describe a hybrid photocatalytic system for hydrogen production consisting of nanocrystalline CdSe/CdS dot-in-rod (DIR) structures coupled to [NiFe] soluble hydrogenase I (SHI) from Pyrococcus furiosus. Electrons are shuttled to the catalyst by a redox mediator, either methyl viologen (MV2+, E0 = −446 mV vs. NHE) or propyl-bridged 2-2′-bipyridinium (PDQ2+, E0 = −550 mV vs. NHE). We demonstrate nearly equal photoreduction efficiencies for the two mediators, despite extracting ∼100 mV of additional driving force for proton reduction by PDQ2+. Femtosecond to microsecond transient absorption reveals that while electron transfer (ET) from the DIR to PDQ2+ is slower than for MV2+, in both cases the ET process is complete by 1 ns and thus it efficiently outcompetes radiative decay. Long-lived charge separation is observed for both mediators, resulting in similar net efficiencies of photoreduction. Whereas both mediators are readily photoreduced, only PDQ2+ yields measurable H2 production, demonstrating the importance of optimizing the electron shuttling pathway to take advantage of the available reducing power of the DIR excited state. H2 production in the PDQ2+ system is highly efficient, with an internal quantum efficiency (IQE) as high as 77% and a TONSHI of 1.1 × 106 under mild (RT, pH = 7.35) conditions.


Increasing client participation in victim-offender mediation is a/undamental challenge facing practitioners. A large database from an established victim- offender reconciliation program (VORP) was used to examine the predictors of client participation in victim-offender mediation. Hypotheses were tested using logistic regression analysis. Results show that client participation varies with the type of offense and the amount of time elapsed between the offense and the case referral. The results suggest that VORPs can maximize client participation by emphasizing rapid processing of cases involving property offenses and delayed processing of those involving personal offenses. Additional predictors of participation are discussed.


As transistor budgets grow enabling chip multi-core processors, adding hardware support to ensure the correctness and security of programs will be just as important, for the average user, as adding another core. The goal of our research is to develop hardware support for software checks and for multi-threaded synchronization that protects memory from corruption. This is the source of a significant number of bugs and security issues. We want efficient low-overhead run-time performance of these checks and synchronization so that it can be left on all of the time, even in production code releases.
Bounds checking protects pointer and array accesses. It is the process of keeping track of the address boundaries for objects, and checking that the loads and stores do not stray outside bounds. It can serve two purposes: it can assist debugging by precisely capturing invalid memory accesses, and it can guarantee protection against buffer overflow attacks. Unfortunately, the high performance overhead of runtime bounds checking has prevented its inclusion in most released software. In this thesis, we analyze the sources of bounds checking overhead. We then consider hardware/software enhancements: the effect merging the check into a single instruction, software optimizations based on potential for overflow to eliminate checks, and changes to meta-data layout to limit copying overhead.
Transactional Memories enable programmers to greatly simplify multi-threaded code by eliminating lock synchronization and its attending deadlock and livelock problems. Unlike locks they also enable speculative concurrent execution through the critical section. Specialized transactional memory can also aid concurrent programming models by providing determinism only when needed at run-time. A key limitation of past transactional memory proposals are that they have a finite memory capacity. Virtualized transactional memory (unbounded in space and time) are desirable, as they can increase the scope of transactions' use, and thereby further simplify a programmer's job. In this thesis, we introduce Page-based Transactional Memory to support unbounded transactions. We combine transaction bookkeeping with the virtual memory system to support fast transaction conflict detection, commit, abort, and to maintain transactions' speculative data.


KRINSKY, BERYL. The Development of a Lexicon for Frozen Vegetable Soybeans and Effect of Blanching Time on Sensory and Quality Parameters of Vegetable Soybeans during Frozen Storage (Under the direction of Dr. Timothy H. Sanders) American vegetable soybean consumption is limited but potential for increased markets based on increased U.S. production is high. Interest in soy foods has risen, fueled by research proving health benefits correlated with soy consumption. The vegetable soybean (Glycine max. (L.) Merrill) is a specialty soybean harvested when the seeds are immature. Due to the narrow window of time available to harvest this crop, freezing is essential for year-round availability of vegetable soybeans. Investigation into vegetable soybean cultivation and processing in the U.S. is ongoing. A flavor lexicon, a set of terms which identify and define the associated aromatic, tastes and feeling factors of a product, for frozen vegetable soybeans was created. This lexicon will provide a standard flavor language for vegetable soybean producers and researchers. A representative sample of commercial frozen vegetable soybean samples was collected. The frozen vegetable soybean lexicon was developed by a 12 member panel of flavor and soybean specialists. Intensity ratings, based on the Sensory Spectrum® scaling method were given to all lexical terms. Food and chemical references, which exemplified the lexicon descriptors were generated and evaluated by the panel. Frozen vegetable soybean flavor was described by 8 aromatics, 3 feeling factors and the basic tastes. In the subsequent months a highly trained descriptive panel validated the lexical language and intensity scores. Quality concerns related to vegetable soybeans require harvest to be carried out quickly, dictating that the product be frozen for year round availability. Enzyme inactivation by blanching is needed to maintain nutritional and sensory quality of vegetable soybeans during storage. This research objective was to determine the optimal blanching time prior to frozen storage. Vegetable soybeans (Mojo Green var.) were harvested 119 days after planting. Soybean pods were water blanched (100 °C) for 30, 60, 90, 120 and 180 seconds in duplicate and cooled in ice water. One half of each treatment was shelled and the other half remained in-pod. Samples of both types were packed in plastic bags and stored at -24 ° C. Samples were evaluated after 0, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 30, 40 and 52 weeks. Analysis consisted of lipoxygenase activity, descriptive sensory analysis, Hunter L-a-b color, texture, and ascorbic acid. Blanching times of 60 seconds or greater were sufficient to inactivate lipoxygenase. Descriptive sensory analysis showed that off-flavor production was enhanced at blanching times less than 60 seconds and that blanching time was directly related to the development of cooked bean and brothy flavor and umami feeling factor. Texture analysis revealed that blanching time was inversely related to bean firmness. Optimal color retention was achieved in 30 to 90 second blanched shelled soybeans and 30 to 120 second blanched soybeans in-pods. The highest ascorbic acid retention was found in shelled soybeans blanched for 60 to 120 seconds, and in-pod soybeans blanched for 60 to 90 seconds. The results indicated that the shortest acceptable blanching time (60 seconds) with respect to lipoxygenase inactivation also yielded acceptable soybean flavor, crisp texture, green color and highest ascorbic acid retention during frozen storage. The Development of a Lexicon for Frozen Vegetable Soybeans and Effect of Blanching Time on Sensory and Quality Parameters of Vegetable Soybeans during Frozen Storage


Autonomous Dynamical Systems (DS) has emerged as an extremely flexible and powerful method for modeling robotic tasks. Task execution of DS models is typically done in an open-loop manner in combination with standard low level controller, e.g. position controller or impedance controller. Such an arrangement has two important drawbacks 1) it is not passive and 2) the DS model can not respond to physical perturbations on the robot body. These are severe limitations in tasks with uncertain physical contacts, e.g. object handovers. We propose a novel control architecture that closes the loop around the DS, ensures passivity and allows tuning of the impedance. We evaluate our approach in a comparative study in an uncertain manipulation task with unexpected contact.


We develop an incentive scheme for a hub-toshuttle campus transit system, encouraging riders to shift travel times to improve system efficiency. Riders are modeled as agents with loss functions in order to evaluate social welfare in the incentive scheme. Incentives are calculated based on a predictive wait-time model trained via Gaussian process regression. Experiments show that the system's total loss decreases, but the average wait time increases. This leads to the conclusion that there is room for improvement in the predictive wait time model.


Coral reefs are the oceans' most diverse and productive ecosystems. However, reef ecosystems are also one of the most endangered habitats on Earth, due to their fragility and exposure to both abiotic and biotic stressors. Understanding the impacts that environmental stressors have on the coral cellular mechanisms is integral for determining the coral health status. It also has important implications for persistence of coral reefs under rapidly changing climatic conditions. In this PhD study, I implemented a transcriptomic approach to investigate the response of the coral A. millepora to biotic and abiotic challenges in an attempt to better understand the molecular mechanisms underlying specific and general coral stress responses.

In Chapter 2, I focus on the coral response to lipopolysaccharidae (LPS) challenge in order to better understand innate immunity in corals. By using differential gene expression analysis and comparative genomics, I provide evidence that the coral response to LPS challenge resembles that of vertebrates. In addition, the effect of pre-exposure to high pCO2 conditions on the response to LPS challenge was investigated where, as in vertebrates and Drosophila, hypercapnia impaired the innate immune response. The results obtained support the hypothesis that coral immunity is likely to be compromised by near-future ocean acidification conditions and that cumulative stressors may predispose corals to increased disease.

In Chapter 3, I investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the coral response to hypo-osmotic stress, again through application of transcriptomic approaches. Previous studies on corals and other marine invertebrates have enabled identification of a group of genes that respond to a wide range of stressors, whereas distinct sets of genes respond to specific stressors. Results described in this chapter illustrate that common responses to environmental stressors in Acropora sp. include up-regulation of genes involved in macromolecular and oxidative damage, while up-regulation of genes involved in amino acid metabolism and transport represent specific responses to salinity stress. These results provide important insights into how corals respond at the molecular level to low salinity events, which are predicted to increase under future climate scenarios due to increased frequency of intense rainfall events.

In Chapter 4, I examine the production of dimethylsulphoniopropionate (DMSP) by corals under salinity stress, in order to better understand the biosynthetic pathway and the role this compound in the coral. The concentration of DMSP increased in the coral under hypo-saline conditions, contradicting the assumption that DMSP functions as an osmolyte in corals, as is the case in higher plants and algae. Results described in this chapter suggest that DMSP production primarily serves as an overflow mechanism for removal of excess methionine arising from catabolism of betaines, although DMSP may also serve as a scavenger of ROS. The transcriptomic analyses also enabled identification of candidate genes for roles in DMSP biosynthesis. When DMSP was produced in response to hyposaline stress, coral homologues of each of the four enzymes classes implicated in DMSP biosynthesis (aminotransferase, reductase, methyltransferase, and decarboxylase) were up-regulated, linking specific genes to production of this compound from methionine in corals.

In Chapter 5, the published data and that described in all of the previous thesis chapters are used in attempt to establish the general mechanisms used by corals to respond to environmental stress. The transcriptomic data generated here provide novel insights into conserved and specific molecular mechanisms used by corals under stress, and advances our understanding of how corals are likely to respond to the challenges of a changing marine ecosystem.


The educational space of the Architecture faculty is used to cultivate architects. At the same time, it becomes the carrier of architectural ideas and teaching methods. The type of architecture and its spatial organization reflect the architectural education philosophy and attitude. Back in history, as early as the Renaissance, there had study places for architects emerged. After the industrial revolution and the modernist process, the types of architectural education sites are more diverse, and their main features are the spatial form of hybrid and box-in-box. This article preliminarily analyzes the evolution of the outline of architectural education building and interprets the spatial ideas in each period. The study focuses on the famous Dutch architectural school–BKCity of the Delft University of Technology, analyzing the teaching space logic of its distinctive Why Factory and exploring how the related space could stimulate the vitality of architectural education. By the analogy of some architectural schools, it also tries to compare the differences and characteristics of Chinese and Western architectural academies, finding out the spatial significance in architecture discipline, education method as well as sustainable application.


[1] No current tree ring (TR) based reconstruction of extratropical Northern Hemisphere (ENH) temperatures that extends into the 1990s captures the full range of late 20th century warming observed in the instrumental record. Over recent decades, a divergence between cooler reconstructed and warmer instrumental large-scale temperatures is observed. We hypothesize that this problem is partly related to the fact that some of the constituent chronologies used for previous reconstructions show divergence against local temperatures in the recent period. In this study, we compiled TR data and published local/regional reconstructions that show no divergence against local temperatures. These data have not been included in other large-scale temperature reconstructions. Utilizing this data set, we developed a new, completely independent reconstruction of ENH annual temperatures (1750–2000). This record is not meant to replace existing reconstructions but allows some degree of independent validation of these earlier studies as well as demonstrating that TR data can better model recent warming at large scales when careful selection of constituent chronologies is made at the local scale. Although the new series tracks the increase in ENH annual temperatures over the last few decades better than any existing reconstruction, it still slightly under predicts values in the post-1988 period. We finally discuss possible reasons why it is so difficult to model post-mid-1980s warming, provide some possible alternative approaches with regards to the instrumental target and detail several recommendations that should be followed in future large-scale reconstruction attempts that may result in more robust temperature estimates.


Progressive politicians have dominated South Korean politics for the past half decade. This environment has fostered a more participatory democracy, manifested by the strengthened voice of non-governmental organizations. However, the current government's repeated blunders in everyday issues, such as its failure to harness dangerously increasing real estate prices or its inability to take a strong stance against Japan in the conflict over the Dokdo Islands, have spawned discontent among moderates and conservatives alike. Many young conservatives, however, are also dissatisfied with the traditional conservative party, which is still associated with corruption during the authoritarian rule and economic failure in the late 1990s. Against this backdrop, self-proclaimed "rational conservatives" have formed an alternative conservative option. Mostly middle-aged academics, these members of the "New Right" are forming non-governmental organizations in order to increase their voice in society and balance Korea's increasingly left-swinging ideological pendulum. The emergence of the New Right has sparked hope for many who are disillusioned by Korea's ideologically polarized politics. However, the New Right in its current state is in danger of degenerating into a transient fad. In order to secure a permanent place in the political spectrum, the New Right must find a voice independent of both traditional conservatives and governing liberals. The basic ideology of the New Right consists of both traditional opposition to the progressive party and innovative departure from the current conservative party's stance. The most striking differences from the latter are the New Right's emphasis on civil liberties and flexibility concerning humanitarian aid to North Korea. The ideological foundation of the New Right is not democracy but classical liberalism--the promotion of individual freedom in both the civil and economic sectors of society. This ideological premise allows the New Right to oppose the current government's market regulations and to simultaneously embrace an increasingly popular emphasis on civil liberties. Furthermore, these new conservatives' emphasis on human rights has prompted them to stray from the hard-line stance of the traditional conservative party regarding North Korea. While the Grand National Party (GNP), the leading conservative party for decades, still refuses to recognize North Korea, the New Right has agreed to recognize it as a separate country while maintaining a vocal opposition to North Korea's authoritarian regime and gross violations of human rights. They are also more open to the idea of amending the anti-communist National Security Law, as part of their effort to promote civil rights. The New Right's flexibility is an important and positive asset and will be crucial in its struggle to carve out a distinct identity in South Korea's political universe. On economic and foreign policies, the New Right maintains a more traditional stance that is closer to the views of the mainstream conservative party. Rational conservatives share the belief that the current leftist government's anti-US policies are detrimental to national security and prefer to look West rather than East for strong allies. The New Right, however, does draw a fine line between old and new by professing to have a more open and rational approach. In a Joonang Daily poll of 117 university professors, more than half answered that they considered traditional conservatives to be "blindly in love with America" and, in contrast, they wanted to "strategically use" the country for South Korea's national interest. On the economic front, the New Right believes that there is a national consensus on the need of an open, free economy and that Seoul should work toward integrating itself into the world community. Recent progress toward free trade agreements with the United States was met with applause among all ranks of new conservatives. …


In adopting a pedagogy that attempts to simulate a 'real-world' environment, the School of Information Systems at one university is using an integrated case method approach using a single case study as a core component in its delivery of an IT project management (ITPM) unit. Using any single case study in this manner requires that the case itself be rigorous enough to support the desired learning outcomes. An investigation into what qualities are required from such cases is undertaken, and a comparison made with those of the actual case study being used in the unit, with the intention of contributing towards the development of a model for determining the ideal requirements for cases used in this manner, to support the achievement of learning objectives.


Diatoms contribute 40-45% of marine primary production. Understanding the contributions of individual species to diatom communities is important in light of warming ocean waters and changing food webs. Here, the diatom genus Thalassiosira, which exhibits irregular pulses in abundance in Narragansett Bay, is examined using data from the Narragansett Bay Long Term Phytoplankton Time Series. High-throughput sequencing (HTS) at the highly-variable V4 region of the 18S ribosomal gene identified fourteen Thalassiosira taxa in monthly samples over a sixyear time period (December 2008-December 2014), seven of which had not previously been identified in this time series. During the same time period, only four Thalassiosira taxa were identified through light microscopy (LM) counts. Many of the newly identified species for this location are small in diameter and difficult to identify using LM. However, they appear to be very frequent and may have a significant ecological role. 18S gene copy number was shown to greatly effect sequence abundance for this locus and this genus, and therefore only presence data was analyzed. Thalassiosira species grouped into four seasonal assemblages, although only 25% of this pattern was explained by temperature, suggesting that other factors such as competition or prey selection may drive Thalassiosira community structure. Comparisons to historical records show possible shifts in frequency and abundance of Thalassiosira species.


A uniform-droplet generator has been employed to produce individual desolvated KCl particles in a laminar air-acetylene flame. The resulting particles were collected on various surfaces and at different points in their vaporization history. Morphological studies were then conducted on the trapped particles in order to better characterize the structural changes which occur during desolvation and vaporization. Particles collected early in their vaporization exhibited strong crystalline structure characteristic of KCl, whereas particles gathered later in their volatilization history showed evidence of fusion and, in some cases, the formation of hollow spheres. In addition to the morphological studies, the various collection surfaces and the collection technique itself were assessed. Direct collection on scanning-electron microscopy specimen stubs was judged to be best.


The Taiwan coastal areas are facing predicted sea-level rise effects in the global climate change context. Better understanding of the mechanisms and forcing factors driving the geomorphological evolution of Taiwan's coastline is essential. We highlight the potential of small river estuaries as archives of coastal evolution and provide a paleo-environmental reconstruction of the Gangkou River estuary based on results from a combined methodological approach using geomorphological, sedimentological, and geochronological analyses. A consistent chronology was established by combining Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating, as well as radiocarbon dating techniques. A distinct beach-rock layer allowed firm correlation of six investigated coastal profiles. Eustatic sea level change was identified as the primary coastal and estuarine landscape development forcing factor in the study area. Tectonic forcing could also be detected from the investigated sites, but has to be regarded as a subordinate secondary forcing factor. The Gangkou River estuary developed in the early Holocene at about 8 ka and was fully developed by the time the Holocene sea-level maximum was reached. With the sea-level dropping until modern times, estuarine zone relocation and a transition to terrestrial processes was initiated, leading to development of the current coastal dune system since about 2.5 ka. Major dune building phases correlate with the climate change associated with the Little Ice Age (LIA) event and stabilised towards recent times, which is in accordance with regional and over-regional coastal Aeolian records in Taiwan. Article history: Received 29 August 2017


Mobile handheld devices such as PDAs and smartphones are increasingly being used by service providers to deliver application functionality similar to that found in traditional desktop computing environments. However, these handheld applications can be quite slow and often lack important functionality compared to their desktop counterparts. We have developed PASSPORT, (PDA application streaming service portal) a thin-client solution that leverages more powerful servers to run full-function desktop applications and then simply stream screen updates to the PDA for display. PASSPORT uses server-side screen scaling to provide high-fidelity display and seamless mobility across a broad range of different clients and screen sizes, including both portrait and landscape viewing modes. PASSPORT also leverages existing PDA control buttons to improve system usability and maximize available screen resolution for application display. We have implemented PASSPORT on Windows PDAs and demonstrate that it can provide superior application performance and functionality compared to the traditional approach of running applications directly on handheld devices


ABSTRACT The distribution of 130 nominal species of the genus Halecium, based on published records, has been mapped for the first time in a comprehensive set of marine ecoregions, to analyse their distribution. Most Halecium species are found at mid- and high latitudes, with some overlaps in distribution ranges across regions. The species richness of Halecium is strongly related to the latitudinal gradient, with maximal diversity at polar and temperate latitudes. Previous detailed studies in the Mediterranean Sea show that large Halecium species of coldwater affinity have regressed or disappeared in recent years, probably due to global warming. Worldwide, however, the overall species richness of Halecium has not changed along the latitudinal gradient over recent decades, with some changes in species composition at temperate-tropical latitudes in both hemispheres, even though the majority of the species that have not been recorded for more than 50 years are of coldwater affinity. The genus can be considered an indicator for biological responses to climate changes for the Mediterranean Sea, but the available distribution data do not allow extending this possibility to the rest of the world. A focused evaluation on the distribution of Halecium species with the addition of new field data might reinforce the picture stemming from the present analysis.


This review of documentary sources, particularly from Early Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and Europe seeks to show how the range of dairy products varied in different areas and to demonstrate that in many societies, cows and dairying played an important role in early religious practice. The range of dairy products consumed also varied greatly between different societies and the use of milk did not automatically imply that dairying technology was applied to its full potential. Also, in some cultures the consumption of milk was confined to certain sections of society.


In recent years, feminist critics have moved from focusing on the misogynistic aspects of late-Victorian evolutionary science to recognising that many women found liberating possibilities within this science. However, most studies of evolution and gender in New Woman writing have concentrated on serious novels. This thesis is the first full-length study of representations of evolution in women's poetry. Focusing predominantly on the work of Mathilde Blind, Constance Naden and May Kendall, I examine how the depiction of evolution in women's poetry of the 1880s and 1890s, particularly comic poetry, responds to the conclusions of professional scientists about the application of evolutionary theory to human society. By reading the poetry in the context of contemporary scientific works, in books and periodicals, I demonstrate that, unlike many social Darwinists, who used evolutionary theory to reinforce the status quo, these poets found aspects within Darwin's work that could be used to disrupt assumptions about natural femininity and to argue for the necessity of social change. The themes examined in this thesis include change, the blurring of boundaries and undermining of hierarchies, the association of white women with people of other races in scientific discourse, and Darwin's representation of women's sexual and reproductive role.


Contract Theory by Patrick Bolton and Mathias Dewatripont, a comprehensive textbook on contract theory suitable for use at the graduate and advanced undergraduate levels, covers the areas of agency theory, information economics, and organization theory and presents many applications in all areas of economics, especially labor economics, industrial organization, and corporate finance. The exercises at the end of the book not only review, chapter by chapter, the basic concepts introduced in the text but also explore additional ideas and applications based on teaching material accumulated over the years by the authors and other instructors of contract theory. The solutions manual to this essential text gives complete solutions to 27 of the 54 exercises in the text, allowing students to study and compare their answers and take greater advantage of this crucial part of the book. The solutions manual follows the structure of the text, grouping exercises by chapter. Chapters 2-6 cover such static bilateral contracting problems as screening, signaling, and moral hazard; chapters 7 and 8 treat multilateral contracting, including auctions, bilateral trade under private information, and multiagent moral hazard; chapters 9 and 10 explore problems of repeated bilateral contracting; and chapters 11-13 cover incomplete contracts, the theory of ownership and control, contracting with externalities, and common agency.


Teachers and mathematics teacher education scholars have identified field experiences and quality mentoring as influential components of math teacher preparation and development. Yet, quality mentoring is a complex and demanding practice. Providing educative feedback to novices, particularly that which encourages reflection versus evaluation, can be challenging work for mentors. To study the potential of an intervention for providing professional development for mentors, I worked with pairs of mentors and prospective teachers (PSTs) offering Smith's (2009) noticing and wondering language as a way of structuring mentoring conversations that maintain both descriptive and interpretive analytic stances. Analysis of before and after conversations provided evidence of how mentor-PST pairs adopted noticing and wondering language, and in particular illuminated the ways in which the language structure might support interpretive mentoring conversations for studying teaching. The results suggest that mathematics teacher educators may want to consider what makes wondering challenging work and how to best support wondering in educative mentoring conversations.


Condition monitoring of structures by measuring transient response and tracking the derived modal parameters has been applied with success in three laboratory studies. Where modal parameters are a function of cross section properties, as in bending elements, direct relations may be obtained between response changes and deterioration. Where modal parameters are not a function of cross section properties, as in lateral vibration of wire ropes, laboratory studies indicated that modal damping coefficients might support condition monitoring. The use of transient response and the particular focus on natural frequencies and damping coefficients can provide a means of passive condition monitoring of structures.


State monitoring is a fundamental building block for Cloud services. The demand for providing state monitoring as services (MaaS) continues to grow and is evidenced by CloudWatch from Amazon EC2, which allows cloud consumers to pay for monitoring a selection of performance metrics with coarse-grained periodical sampling of runtime states. One of the key challenges for wide deployment of MaaS is to provide better balance among a set of critical quality and performance parameters, such as accuracy, cost, scalability and customizability.
This dissertation research is dedicated to innovative research and development of an elastic framework for providing state monitoring as a service (MaaS). We analyze limitations of existing techniques, systematically identify the need and the challenges at different layers of a Cloud monitoring service platform, and develop a suite of distributed monitoring techniques to support for flexible monitoring infrastructure, cost-effective state monitoring and monitoring-enhanced Cloud management. At the monitoring infrastructure layer, we develop techniques to support multi-tenancy of monitoring services by exploring cost sharing between monitoring tasks and safeguarding monitoring resource usage. To provide elasticity in monitoring, we propose techniques to allow the monitoring infrastructure to self-scale with monitoring demand. At the cost-effective state monitoring layer, we devise several new state monitoring functionalities to meet unique functional requirements in Cloud monitoring. Violation likelihood state monitoring explores the benefits of consolidating monitoring workloads by allowing utility-driven monitoring intensity tuning on individual monitoring tasks and identifying correlations between monitoring tasks. Window based state monitoring leverages distributed windows for the best monitoring accuracy and communication efficiency. Reliable state monitoring is robust to both transient and long-lasting communication issues caused by component failures or cross-VM performance interferences. At the monitoring-enhanced Cloud management layer, we devise a novel technique to learn about the performance characteristics of both Cloud infrastructure and Cloud applications from cumulative performance monitoring data to increase the cloud deployment efficiency.


High-resolution X-ray computed tomography (HRXCT) is a 3 D -imaging and analysis technique frequently used for the investigation of internal structures of a large variety of objects, including building materials. The 3 D information is important for the characterisation of internal dynamic processes ( e.g ., water and salt migration, the influence of temperature and/or relative humidity changes) in natural stone, mortars, bricks and concrete. One of the main advantages of HRXCT is the fact that it is a non-destructive characterization technique, which allows 3 D monitoring of internal structural changes at resolutions in the (sub)micrometre scale. Because of its non-destructive nature, it is possible to measure changes in porosity, evolution of micro-cracks, crystallization of salts and migration paths of liquids in the same rock sample over a specific time period. Driven by the technological and computational progress, the technique is continuously growing as an analysis tool in the Geosciences and is becoming an important method in the field of Cultural Heritage. In this manuscript, a short summary of the principle, the advantages and limitations of X-ray computed tomography are presented. In addition, an overview of some current applications of imaging dynamic processes (such as liquid migration, artificial stone weathering and treatment) is provided by means of HRXCT. This is demonstrated in studies related to conservation of Cultural Heritage.


The objective of this study is to analyse the supply and demand for food and drink packaging products in Uzbekistan, and the role of government in supporting the packaging sector. The report is divided into 8 sections. Following this introduction is a section on problem definition. Analysis is divided into 4 sections: demand for packaging products, supply of packaging products, foreign currency expenditure, and waste management. The report finishes off with conclusions and recommendations regarding the role of government in supporting the packaging sector.


Groundwater arsenic contamination has caused a significant public health burden in lowland regions of Nepal. For arsenic mitigation purposes, the Kanchan Arsenic Filter (KAF) was developed and validated for use in 2003 after pilot studies showed its effectiveness in removing arsenic. However, its efficacy in field conditions operating for a long period has been scarcely observed. In this study, we observe the efficacy of KAFs running over 6 months in highly arsenic-affected households in Nawalparasi district. We assessed pair-wise arsenic concentrations of 62 randomly selected household tubewells before filtration and after filtration via KAFs. Of 62 tubewells, 41 had influent arsenic concentration exceeding the Nepal drinking water quality standard value (50 μg/L). Of the 41 tubewells having unsafe arsenic levels, KAFs reduced arsenic concentration to the safe level for only 22 tubewells, an efficacy of 54%. In conclusion, we did not find significantly high efficacy of KAFs in reducing unsafe influent arsenic level to the safe level under the in situ field conditions.


In this paper we present an approach to the design optimization of fault tolerant embedded systems for safety-critical applications. Processes are statically scheduled and communications are performed using the time-triggered protocol. We use process re-execution and replication for tolerating transient faults. Our design optimization approach decides the mapping of processes to processors and the assignment of fault-tolerant policies to processes such that transient faults are tolerated and the timing constraints of the application are satisfied. We present several heuristics which are able to find fault-tolerant implementations given a limited amount of resources. The developed algorithms are evaluated using extensive experiments, including a real-life example.