The largest part of an ice ridge consists of unconsolidated ice rubble, whose material properties decide the load from ridges on ships and structures. Material resistance is attributed to the initial freeze-bonds and the friction and interlocking between blocks. The objective of the thesis was to investigate rubble behaviour by two tests: shear box test at NTNU and pile test at HSVA. The shear box test was aimed at investigating freeze-bond mechanisms in rubble. The pile test was aimed at suggesting values for rubble properties for a model scale experiment. The shear box had dimensions 600 mm x 400 mm x 40 mm, and was filled with ice blocks of 60 mm x 22 mm x 40 mm simulating rubble. Confinement was added, the box was submerged for 10 minutes, and tested in a rig by forcing the rubble to fail in shear. Force vs. displacement was measured. Different types of saline ice and submerging water temperatures were used. Pile testing consisted of making an elongated pyramid-shaped pile, baseline 600 mm, of rubble collected from the ice tank at HSVA. The pile was tilted and geometry was measured before and after failure happened in the pile. Main results from the shear box tests were the observation of a first phase deformation of rubble, that displayed a near linear force-displacement relation and a first peak shear stress. Magnitude of first peaks was measured in the range 8.9 kPa to 59.7 kPa, and depended on submersion water temperature, salinity of ice, how blocks were cut in respect to crystal structure in the ice sheet and confining pressure. Pile tests had repose angles ranging from 36.0° to 47.3°, and cohesion for an assumed angle of friction of 30° was in the range of 172 Pa to 342 Pa. First phase shear stress was compared to shear strength of single freeze-bond tests of the same ice, and direct relations were found. The magnitude of first peak shear stress in tests varied most with ice salinity and crystal structure. The measured repose angles for pile tests give an upper limit for internal angles of friction, and values seemed reasonable. The ice was warm, and this may the reason for the low cohesions.


We develop and estimate a model of child care markets that endogenizes both demand and supply. On the demand side, families with a child make consumption, labor supply, and child-care decisions within a static, unitary household model. On the supply side, child care providers make entry, price, and quality decisions under monopolistic competition. Child development is a function of the time spent with each parent and at the child care center; these inputs vary in their impact. We estimate the structural parameters of the model using the 2003 Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, which contains information on parental employment and wages, child care choices, child development, and center quality. We use our estimates to evaluate the impact of several policies, including vouchers, cash transfers, quality regulations, and public provision. Among these, a combination of quality regulation and vouchers for working families leads to the greatest gains in average child development and to a large expansion in child care use and female labor supply, all at a relatively low fiscal cost.


In the last ten years, french towns such as Strasbourg, Montpellier, Nantes and Orleans have successively chosen to have contemporary artists working on the public spaces along their new tramways. For these often growing conglomerations (as well as more recently for Paris), the tramway as been the latest expression of a urban project that could be shared between local authorities and the population in an « almost consensus », whereas through out the country the legitimity of the standard urban project is more and more contested and therefore less regarded by local authorities as a political opportunity. It probably has something to do with the fact that the objectives of a tramway are equally refering to urban planning stakes as well as to an every day preoccupation of most of the actual inhabitants of these conglomerations. This is the context in which, the promotion of Public Art (a choice usually known for being controversial), has finally been made by local authorities and was not opposed (at least not yet…) the hostility that could be expected from inhabitants and users, since the « national controversy » about Daniel Buren's work at the Palais Royal took place in 1985/86. From that point it seems interesting to bring about a questioning on the nature of the link between Public Art and urban planning through out recent history and thereby on its evolution consecutive to the coming out of new challenges given to town planning. Indeed, this recent « enthousiasm » of local authorities for Public Art needs to be questioned, and especially on the relation it supposes between Public Art and the notion itself of project, as it can be understood in town planning. In that purpose, the institutionnal foundations of public art in France can be related to the successive meanings of the project in the understanding of the leading actors in the sector of planning. First of all, it has to be pointed out that through out the history of Public art in France governement institutions have held the leading role. Local authorities really appeared in this sector in the middle of the eighties, the initiatives coming from the private sector or associations are still discreet today. In this part, governement institutions and naturally the Minister for Culture had from the very beginning a clear intention of supporting economically artistic creation and artists: in 1951, with the creation of the 1% procedure, and in 1983 with the creation of a specific national fund and of the FRACs (regional funds for contemporary art). This intention remains an important issue : nowadays, the key role of State institutions like the DRACs (regional directions for cultural activity) which intervene in almost every public art commission ing, is to bring artists (and fundings…) to every local authority who initiates a project. The background objective being one of promoting artistic creation in a relevant way refering to the art network values. The second crucial point is that, the frame in which this support has taken place is another sector in which government institutions have had the leading role : town-planning and construction, its successive approaches and methods and therefore through different « projects » .


The measurement of the electric current with an optical fiber sensor can be made insensitive to external vibrations that act on the leading fiber by using a circuit involving a mirrored Faraday rotator and a highly twisted low-birefringence fiber. A description of the optical configuration as well as our first experimental results are presented. The circuit gives a passive compensation of the disturbances with a measured rejection of the order of 30 dB while maintaining the correct sensitivity to the measurement of the Faraday effect.


Originally started as an academic research project at UC Berkeley, Apache Spark is one of the most popular open source projects for big data analytics. Over 1000 volunteers have contributed code to the project; it is supported by virtually every commercial vendor; many universities are now offering courses on Spark. Spark has evolved significantly since the 2010 research paper: its foundational APIs are becoming more relational and structural with the introduction of the Catalyst relational optimizer, and its execution engine is developing quickly to adopt the latest research advances in database systems such as whole-stage code generation. This tutorial is designed for database researchers (graduate students, faculty members, and industrial researchers) interested in a brief hands-on overview of Spark. This tutorial covers the core APIs for using Spark 2.0, including DataFrames, Datasets, SQL, streaming and machine learning pipelines. Each topic includes slide and lecture content along with hands-on use of a Spark cluster through a web-based notebook environment. In addition, we will dive into the engine internals to discuss architectural design choices and their implications in practice. We will guide the audience to "hack" Spark by extending its query optimizer to speed up distributed join execution.


Chin (2004) argues that in order for technology to become embedded into curricula activities, it is important that institutional contexts, as well as pupil needs, are considered in the design process. However, this can be a significant challenge as opportunities for learners to express opinions are bound by institutional and research parameters, such as the curriculum, assessment criteria, organisational logistics, technology, pedagogical method and research agenda.
So, how can learners voice their opinions and contribute to participatory design?
The question is of fundamental concern in the Personal Inquiry project, funded by the EPSRC/ESRC. Its goal is to develop an innovative toolkit, running on an Ultra-Mobile PC, which provides 'scripts' in the form of dynamic lesson plans that guide the learners through the inquiry. Both the scripts and their implementation are designed in participation with pupils and teachers.

In this paper, we present the findings from our research to date. Four participatory design workshops have been carried out with two schools in Nottingham and Milton Keynes. Each had a teacher and 6-8 pupils (in single year grouping from years 8-10). Two workshops were designed to provide pupils' reflective accounts of their inquiry-based experiences with prototypes. Two workshops were more forward thinking as pupils were invited to think of interesting ways to investigate their subject and to help create a framework for the inquiry process.
These workshops have enabled us to explore several ways to facilitate the expression of learner voices in the participatory design of technology to support inquiry learning. The outcomes of the workshops have informed the design of ongoing inquiry-based activities and technologies and are being implemented in future studies.

Chin, G. (2004), A case study in the participatory design of a collaborative science-based learning environment, unpublished PhD thesis, Blacksburg, Virginia.


Continuous exposure to parathyroid hormone (PTH), such as occurs in hyperparathyroidism, causes bone loss, whereas intermittent exposure to PTH, which is a treatment for osteoporosis, increases bone volume. Gao et al. sought to understand the role of T cells in the bone response to PTH. T cells provide survival cues to bone-building osteoblasts, as well as to bone marrow stromal cells, which are the precursors of the osteoblasts. T cells also stimulate stromal cells and osteoblasts to produce cytokines that trigger differentiation of osteoclasts, the bone-resorbing cells. Thus, T cells and bone cells have a complex relationship. Gao et al. found that continuous PTH infusion into mice lacking T cells resulted in less bone loss and less bone resorption. Bone marrow cells cultured from T cell-deficient mice had fewer stromal cells than those from wild-type mice and failed to produce osteoclasts in response to PTH. However, osteoclastogenesis was dose-dependently restored by the addition of T cells, but only if the T cells were added at the time of plating. Stromal cells isolated from wild-type mice that had been exposed to PTH exhibited increased mRNA for RANKL, a cytokine that stimulates osteoclastogenesis, and decreased the mRNA for osteoprotegern (OPG), a decoy ligand of the RANKL receptor. This PTH-stimulated change in cytokine production was absent in cells from the T cell-deficient mice. CD40 is a receptor, which is present on the stromal cells, and responds to CD40L, which is present on the T cells. If the T cells lacked CD40L or the stromal cells lacked CD40, then PTH failed to stimulate osteoclastogenesis of cultured bone marrow cells. Furthermore, continuous PTH exposure in CD40L-deficient mice failed to cause bone loss. Thus, T cells appear to provide signals through CD40L to bone precursors that allow them to survive, alter their cytokine production profile, and increase their responsiveness to the osteoclastogenic activity of PTH. Y. Gao, X. Wu, M. Terauchi, J.-Y. Li, F. Grassi, S. Galley, X. Yang, M. N. Weitzmann, R. Pacifici, T cells potentiate PTH-induced cortical bone loss through CD40L signaling. Cell Metab. 8, 132-145 (2008). [PubMed]


Z-source inverter is a recently proposed single-stage inverter with added voltage-boost capability for complementing the usual voltage-buck operation of a traditional voltage-source inverter. In spite of that added feature, the overall voltage gain might still be relatively low for certain applications like the grid connection of low-voltage renewable sources that might not favor multiple series connection. To enhance its gain, while yet preserving its voltage-buck flexibility, modifications to the traditional Z-source inverter are now proposed to develop a new family of cascaded switched-inductor and tapped-inductor Z-source inverters. Unlike existing techniques, voltage stresses within the proposed inverters are better distributed among the passive components, hence avoiding likely single points of failure. For verifying these performance findings, experimental testing on a number of implemented laboratory prototypes was performed with the results shown near the end of the paper.


These days information technologies improve rapidly in raising information society and opening wide opportunities to provide some services electronically. It became necessary to create an effective and secure system which could ensure efficient provision of electronic services. For this purpose an electronic signatare was created, which is equated to a written signature. This article emphasizes the urgency to use an electronic signature, describing the legislative framework, and analyzes the implementation of the law of electronic signature in Lithuania. Firstly, the meaning of electronic signature based on definitions given in Lithuanian legal acts and international documents is explained. Also, the opportunities of usage of electronic signature are discussed. The practice of using electronic signature in Lithuania has been analyzed, positive and negative aspects have been identified. In this article a lot of attention is paid to differences of legislation of electronic signature and the possibilities of its implementation, which reduce the efficiency of an electronic signature. The object of this article is the law of electronic signature and a problem of its implementation in Lithuania. The article analyzes some legal acts related to electronic signature and its effect in Lithuania, evaluates the implementation process of the law of electronic signature and analyzes its features.


Purpose. Driving is a complex behavior that requires the utilization of a wide range of individual abilities. Identifying assessments that not only capture individual differences, but also are related to older adults' driving performance would be beneficial. This investigation examines the relationship between the Useful Field of View (UFOV) assessment and objective measures of retrospective or concurrent driving performance, including state-recorded accidents, on-road driving, and driving simulator performance. Method. The PubMed and PsycINFO databases were searched to retrieve eight studies that reported bivariate relationships between UFOV and these objective driving measures. Cumulative meta-analysis techniques were used to combine the effect sizes in an attempt to determine whether the strength of the relationship was stable across studies and to assess whether a sufficient number of studies have been conducted to validate the relationship between UFOV and driving performance. Results. A within-group homogeneity of effect sizes test revealed that the samples could be thought of as being drawn from the same population, Q [7] = 11.29, p (one-tailed) = 0.13. Therefore, the effect sizes of eight studies were combined for the present cumulative meta-analysis. The weighted mean effect size across the studies revealed a large effect (Cohen's d = 0.945), with poorer UFOV performance associated with negative driving outcomes. This relationship was robust across multiple indices of driving performance and several research laboratories. Conclusions. This convergence of evidence across numerous studies using different methodologies confirms the importance of the UFOV assessment as a valid and reliable index of driving performance and safety. Recent prospective studies have confirmed a relationship between UFOV performance and future crashes, further supporting the use of this instrument as a potential screening measure for at-risk older drivers.


A lot of different risk factors may increase the susceptibility of patients to
cardiovascular disorders. This study was designed to determine the seroprevalence of Chlamydia
pneumoniae as a risk factor in patients with acute coronary syndrome in Urmia.
Materials & Methods: It was a case-control study and the data were collected by searching in patients'
records and laboratory tests. Serum samples were collected from 40 inpatients with acute coronary
syndrome and 44 inpatients that referred to eye ward, matched for age and sex as case and control
group, respectively. The control group was free of criteria of any heart problems (symptoms or ECG
change). The levels of serum triglycerides, cholesterol, fasting blood sugar, IgG and IgM antibodies
against C. pneumoniae was measured and the results were analyzed with chi-square statistical test.
Results: There were no significant differences between the mean of age, sex, smoking history and the
level of fasting blood sugar, cholesterol, triglycerides and C. pneumoniae IgG and IgM antibodies in
the case and control groups, but there was a significant difference in the mean of the white blood cell
counts that was higher in the case group. Seroprevalence of IgG was 68.5% and 66.5% in case and
control groups respectively and in both groups, it was higher in men than women. Only one patient in
the control group (2.3%) had positive IgM antibody against C. pneumoniae.
Conclusion: Although high prevalence of infection with C. pneumoniae was found in subjects but its
role in increasing the risk of developing acute coronary syndrome was not confirmed


In this paper, we present a novel low-complexity technique, which improves the performance of single-antenna multi-carrier communication systems, suffering from in-phase and quadrature (I/Q)-imbalance (IQI) at the receiver. We refer to the proposed scheme as I/Q-imbalance self-interference coordination (IQSC). This technique not only mitigates the detrimental effects of IQI, but, through appropriate signal processing, also coordinates the self-interference terms produced by IQI in order to achieve second-order frequency diversity. However, these benefits come at the expense of a reduction in transmission rate. More specifically, IQSC is a simple transmit diversity scheme that improves the signal quality at the receiver by elementary signal processing operations across symmetric (mirror) pairs of subcarriers. Thereby, the proposed transmission protocol has a similar complexity as Alamouti's space-time block coding scheme and does not require extra transmit power nor any feedback. To evaluate the performance of IQSC, we derive closed-form expressions for the resulting outage probability and symbol-error rate. Interestingly, IQSC outperforms not only existing IQI compensation schemes but also the ideal system without IQI for the same spectral efficiency and practical target error rates, while it achieves almost the same performance as ideal (i.e., IQI-free) equal-rate repetition coding. Our findings reveal that IQSC is a promising low-complexity technique for significantly increasing the reliability of low-cost devices that suffer from high levels of IQI.


Find your perfect putting style and solve the mystery of golf's most puzzling shot The putt is the shortest swing in all of golf and requires the least amount of strength and coordination. Yet it is the most important, and potentially frustrating, shot in the game. "To master the game of golf," writes author and teaching professional Brian Lake, "you must master putting." In this comprehensive lesson book, Lake teaches you how, taking you from essential basics to advanced mechanics. Like no other book, Putt like a Pro explains in detail how to excel with the most unorthodox and successful putting strokes used by tour professionals today. With the innovative instruction of Brian Lake on your green, you'll learn how to: Develop your personal putting style Find the right equipment to fit your style Read the greens and strategize for any condition Master the mental game and build confidence Practice effectively with targeted skill-building sessions Execute the proper grip, stance, and stroke for the claw, the belly putter, the sidesaddle, and other professional-grade putting strokes


This study obtained empirical evidence on the prevalence and structural features of part-time inclusion programs for secondary-aged students operating from Australian special schools. The study documented the demographic features of the participants as well as the frruneworks and implementation structures of the programs. A national survey of government special schools across Australia was used to collect the primary data, the main aim being to add to the overall picture of how, not why, inclusion operates and to provide an insight into ways current practising teachers and schools have set about improving the practice. The results indicate that, although part-time inclusion is operating in only a relatively small number of special schools nationally, these schools embrace both the concept and practice enthusiastically. From the data, part-time inclusion was found to involve students across a wide range of disabilities (both type and degree), with a trend towards increased participation by students with more severe and multiple disabilities. Students accessed a diverse range of mainstrerun secondary school subjects of both an academic and non-academic nature, with a distinct bias towards non-academic subjects. Participation in programs was mainly for short periods (less than 1 day per week), with students, undertaking modified mainstrerun programs, with external support from non-teaching staff (teacher assistants/ aides). The evidence indicates that part-time inclusion is an effective alternative program for a small group of students currently within special schools.


HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES Music and Nazism; Art under Tyranny, 1933-1945. Edited by Michael H. Kater and Albrecht Ricthmuller. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2003. [328 p. ISBN 3-89007-516-9. DM 49.80.] Music examples, illustrations, index. In 1963 Joseph Wulf published Musik im dritten Reich (Gutersloh: Sigbert Mohn Verlag, 1963), one of a series of documentary studies that examined the mechanisms and effects of twelve years of National Socialism in Germany (other volumes treated art, literature and poetry, theater and film, the press and radio). These books were an irritating thorn in the side of a postwar Germany little interested in revisiting its Nazi past. Too many collaborators were still alive, active, and in positions of authority to encourage a full accounting. BuI with the changing of the generational guard over the last quarter century, the subject of cultural life in Nazi Germany has at last taken its place as an established field of research. This development is part of a general process of revisionism that includes holocaust and exile studies, as well as the effort to broaden our understanding of twentieth-century modernism to include a range of movements and figures relegated to the margins. But whereas these latter areas of research are largely concerned with victims and disruption, exploration of German cultural life under National Socialism must also confront a once self-satisfied record of continuity, an aggressive illusion of normalcy that for twelve years spanned an ever-widening chasm of barbarity. The essays of the present volume, collected from an international conference held at the Canadian Genire for German and European Studies at York University in Toronto in 1999, fall into three distinct, though overlapping categories dealing with ideology, individuals, and institutions. Every totalitarian system, whether political or religious, left leaning or right wing, attempts to use the arts for propagandistic ends, but it did not take the Nazis to seduce or coerce Germans into freighting music with ideological import. The German tradition of thinking about music-and instrumentalizing aesthetics-runs very deeply. After all, in "the land of poets and thinkers" (Das Land der Dichter und Denker) even the composer is called a Tondichter, or tone poet, suggesting to some Germans a degree of reflection that sets them apart from their Latin neighbors. In fact, Germans are no more or less musical than other cultural groups, but cultural practice, from the Protestant chorale to the romantic lied, from the tradition of Hausmusick to the introduction of the darkened theater and invisible orchestra at Bayreuth in 1876, has emphasized a certain subjective interiority. That says no more than that music seizes rather than creates cultural predispositions. It is not so much that German music is inherently more "ideological" than that of other cultures. Indeed, German music has proven quite capable of traveling abroad with very little doctrinal baggage-librettos and texts are another matter. The real issue is what happens to this music once it starts rattling about in the echo chamber of the German soul. One German soul under investigation is that of Adolf Hitler. He is the logical starting point for this volume, both because of his intense passion for music and what he made of that passion. Hitler serves as the quintessential German music lover, the dreamy teenager in the gallery whose puerile fantasies are inflamed by swelling crescendos. His special identification with Richard Wagner has led many to regard Wagner as a central influence in shaping the contours of National Socialism. Hans Rudolf Vaget ("Hitler's Wagner: Musical Discourse as Cultural Space") questions this view and sees Hitler's selective appropriation of Wagnerian symbols and ideas (primarily from his writings) as a manipulation of a commonly held, though hotly contested cultural space (geistiger Raum), a space that included, after all, such staunch antifascists as Thomas Mann (one might add, that Hitler's interest in music was nowhere near as intense-or informed-as his preoccupation with architecture). …


As Earth's climate warms, the massive stores of carbon found in soil are predicted to become depleted, and leave behind a smaller carbon pool that is less accessible to microbes. At a long-term forest soil-warming experiment in central Massachusetts, soil respiration and bacterial diversity have increased, while fungal biomass and microbially-accessible soil carbon have decreased. Here, we evaluate how warming has affected the microbial community's capability to degrade chemically-complex soil carbon using lignin-amended BioSep beads. We profiled the bacterial and fungal communities using PCR-based methods and completed extracellular enzyme assays as a proxy for potential community function. We found that lignin-amended beads selected for a distinct community containing bacterial taxa closely related to known lignin degraders, as well as members of many genera not previously noted as capable of degrading lignin. Warming tended to drive bacterial community structure more strongly in the lignin beads, while the effect on the fungal community was limited to unamended beads. Of those bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) enriched by the warming treatment, many were enriched uniquely on lignin-amended beads. These taxa may be contributing to enhanced soil respiration under warming despite reduced readily available C availability. In aggregate, these results suggest that there is genetic potential for chemically complex soil carbon degradation that may lead to extended elevated soil respiration with long-term warming.


Milton Friedman is best known as the founding father and leading exponent of the monetarist school of macroeconomic thought, and for championing the case for the efficacy of free markets in a wide variety of contexts. Without doubt, Friedman's ideas have influenced the research agenda of a whole generation of economists as well as those who influence public policy throughout the world. Friedman's extraordinary gifts of communicating complicated ideas allowed him to become one of the very few economists who are well known outside the economics profession. As well as his many scientific contributions, Friedman sought to communicate his views on a wide range of issues to non-economists. His gift for writing about topics in applied economics, accessible to a mass audience, established Friedman as one of the world's most famous economists. Throughout his professional academic life, because of his high public profile, the ideas of Milton Friedman certainly aroused strong reactions from both opponents and supporters, and, until very recently, with respect to many of his ideas, he swam against a strong and extremely hostile tide of opinion. However, whatever view is held about Friedman's libertarian political and economic philosophy, most commentators would agree that his recent passing brings to an end the life of the last great economist guru of the twentieth century. In this paper, Brian Snowdon and Howard Vane review his most influential contributions to economic analysis and political economy.


Abstract The Loxahatchee River, a 500 km2 watershed on the southeast Florida coast, is a barrier-impounded drowned river valley experiencing rapid urbanization during the past 50 years. The estuary is currently composed of a sandy central basin with bifurcating forks accumulating organic-rich muddy sands. The Northwest Fork drains natural forest, residential, and agricultural catchments and has a much larger bayhead delta than the channelized Southwest Fork, which is only 50 years old and diverts much of the flow from the Northwest Fork. Sediment accumulation rates within muddy sand deposits are about 2–3 mm a−1, commensurate within error of the current rate of local sea-level rise. Previously established Holocene accumulation rates are close to relative sea-level rise, implying that sediment accumulation is in equilibrium with the creation of accommodation space. The main anthropogenic influences have been changes in surface sediment texture corresponding to dredging-induced modification of tidal currents and a localized >threefold increase in sediment accumulation rate supplied by sources local to the estuary. Late Holocene sedimentation has been episodic, and lithofacies vary from bioturbated transgressive sands at depth to peat and laminated fine-grained sediments then back to mottled muddy sands in the uppermost strata. This facies transition is attributed to a change of water column stratification conditions caused by decreased tidal flushing in the estuary possibly brought about by variation in sea level or episodic inlet closure by littoral sand transport. The magnitude of the anthropogenic changes in sedimentation is roughly equal with natural changes in lithofacies formation.


Study Design: Retrospective study Purpose: The aim of this study was to assess the feasibility and safety of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) followed by surgery for spine metastases. Overview of Literature: SBRT has emerged as an exciting field in the management of patients with spine metastases, including those who first undergo surgery. Similarly, neoadjuvant SBRT, which means planned preoperative SBRT, should also be promising. However, there was no literature supporting this approach. Methods: Ten consecutive patients who received surgical management for spine metastases within 30 days after SBRT were reviewed. For patients with limited spine metastases, SBRT was performed first if there is no severe myelopathy. Surgery for decompression and fixation was then performed. Perioperative events were recorded and analyzed. If available, they were followed up for at least 12 months. Results: The SBRT was delivered in single fraction of 14 to 18 Gy (median: 16 Gy). Surgical decompression with fixation was performed 0 to 24 days (median: 5.5 days) after SBRT. The blood loss ranged from 100 to 1500 mL (median: 775 mL). The patients were discharged or transferred 6 to 36 days (median: 7 days) after surgery. One patient developed transient Brown-Sequard syndrome postoperatively. There was no wound complication. Five patients passed away due to progressive disease 2.3 to 13 months after surgery. There was no local recurrence and no instrument failure. Conclusions: Our experience showed that neoadjuvant SBRT followed by surgery is safe and promising for spinal metastases. The long term benefit over postoperative radiotherapy should be determined by further investigation.


Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are more constrained to participate in export market than their large counterparts despite various export assistance provision by the government. Extant literature on SME internationalization mostly focus more on how non-exporting SMEs can become exporters than on how exporting SMEs can sustain and expand their export. This study aims to investigate the factors affecting SMEs' export intensity with reference to the case of Indonesia. Fractional-logit regressions were used to identify the influence of export-exhibiting factors, export-inhibiting factors, and firm and owner characteristics on SMEs' export intensity. The evidences were collected from 497 SMEs in seven provinces in Jawa, Madura and Bali regions. The findings show that SMEs' export intensity is affected by some firm characteristics including firm age and total employees. Export intensity is also affected by some exhibiting factors including owners' overseas and MNC/exporting firm work experience, central government agencies' assistance, network relationships with non-government actors, location, export market of choices and years of exporting. By contrast, export intensity is adversely affected by perceived difficulties in overcoming informational and human resources barriers, distribution, logistics and promotional barriers, financial barriers, foreign government barriers, procedural barriers and price barriers. The policy and managerial implications of the findings are discussed.


Purpose - Bangladesh is an emerging economy and international audit firms operate there through affiliated local audit firms. The Bangladesh audit market can be characterized as an intensely competitive small audit market with relatively poor demand for high-audit quality. In addition, Bangladesh has a relatively small and under developed but growing capital market that is characterized by poor corporate regulation and weak investor protection. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between Big 4 affiliated auditors and accruals quality in Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach - Following prior literature, this paper uses both absolute discretionary accruals and signed discretionary accruals as proxies of accruals quality. The sample is 382 firm-year observations and covers fiscal years 2000-2003. Findings - It was found that the association between Big 4 affiliates and accruals quality in Bangladesh depends on measures of accruals quality and accruals models used. Overall, Big 4 affiliates do not have a positive impact on accruals quality of their clients in Bangladesh. Originality/value - This paper contributes to the literature on audit quality and accruals quality. The results potentially suggest that Big 4 affiliates do not have any positive impact on accruals quality of clients in an intensely competitive audit market where the demand for quality audit is poor and monitoring is lax and raise potential implications for policy makers and market participants in Bangladesh.


This paper discusses a mixed method that combines unsupervised learning methods and human expert input for analyzing telemetry data from long-duration robotic space missions. Our goal is to develop more automated methods for detecting anomalies in time series data. Once anomalies are identified using unsupervised learning methods we use feature selection methods followed by expert input to derive the knowledge required for building on-line detectors. These detectors can be used in later phases of the current mission and in future missions for improving operations and overall safety of the mission. Whereas the primary focus in this paper is on developing data-driven anomaly detection methods, we also present a computational platform for data mining and analytics that can operate on historical data offline, as well as incoming telemetry data on-line.


Purpose To identify size criteria for complex cystic renal masses that can distinguish renal cell carcinoma from benign cysts supplementing the Bosniak classification. Materials and Methods We reviewed the records of 97 patients who underwent surgery for complex cystic renal masses from January 2001 to April 2010. The pathological results were compared with the lesion sizes measured by preoperative computed tomography and other radiological features (contrast enhancement, irregularities of cyst walls and septa, and calcification) were also obtained for categorization according to the Bosniak renal cyst classification. Results Malignancy was significantly associated with cyst size (>2 cm), male gender, and younger patient age (<50 years). According to the Bosniak classification, there was no category I cyst, and all 8 category II cysts were benign. However, 3 of 18 (17%) category IIF cysts, 21 of 39 (54%) category III cysts, and 29 of 32 (90%) category IV cysts were malignant. All category IIF cysts were benign in patients older than 50 years of age. Conclusion Many complex cystic renal masses smaller than 2 cm were benign. We suggest that lesion size should be taken into account when formulating treatment plans for complex cystic renal masses.


Pulse width modulated converters are becoming increasingly popular as their cost decreases and power rating increases. The new trend of smallscale power producers, often using renewable energy sources, has created new demands for delivery of energy to the grid.A major advantage of the pulse width modulated converter is the ability to control the output voltage at any point in the voltage period. This enables rapid response to load changes and non-linear loads. In addition it can shape the voltage in response to the output current to create an outward appearance of a source impedance. This is called a virtual impedance.This thesis presents a controller for a voltage controlled three phase pulse width modulated converter. This controller enables operation in standalone mode, in parallel with other converters in a microgrid, and in parallel with a strong main grid.A time varying virtual impedance is presented which mainly attenuates reactive currents. A method of investigating the overall impedance including the virtual impedance is presented.New net standards have been introduced, requiring the converter to operate even during severe dips in the grid voltage. Experiments are presented verifying the operation of the controller during voltage dips.


iotechnology is defined by the tools used to practice it. By programming DNA and directing cellular machinery, the products that were unimaginable even 10 years ago could be produced. With biotechnology, the nanoscale machinery of
living cells to produce self-contained factories that perform on a characteristic scale of one micron could be established. For industrialization of biotechnology, however, bioproducts and bioenergy must be produced in immense or large quantities to
meet market demand. Genetic engineering, for example, is carried out at a molecular scale but is amplified through fermentation and bioprocess technology to transfer the process from the test tube to the bottle through a sequence of integrated steps that generate, recover, purify, formulate and package the product. The challenge
facing the fermentation and bioprocess technology discipline is in redirecting the genetic and cellular machinery to make commercially and economically important biomolecules when the cells are placed in controlled environments. Fermentation and bioprocess
technology knowledge and skills are applied to design, build and operate hardware and integrated systems that can be used to culture the cells and produce the required products efficiently, as well as to recover, purify and formulate the products in a cost-effective manner
to enable the products to be commercialized. In addition, the design and operation of the biomanufacturing process must also follow the regulations set by the authorized bodies prior to commercialization. For example, the current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP)
regulation set by the Food Drug Authority (FDA) must be adhered to in the production of biopharmaceuticals, while GMP requirements must be applied in food and food ingredient production. The demand for knowledge and skills in fermentation and bioprocess technology continues to grow.
 This discipline provides a bridge between the research laboratory and the economic, large-scale implementation
of biomanufacturing systems. With the rapid growth of biologically based technologies, fermentation and bioprocess technology is needed to solve the problems of today and tomorrow. This lecture describes the basic concept of biomanufacturing processes for the
production of various biotechnology products and also the roles of fermentation and bioprocess technology to "Bring Technology To Life" through the conversion of biological materials into other forms needed by mankind. Examples of approaches that have been applied by our research group in the development and improvement of various biomanufacturing processes, such as production of kojic acid, solvents, probiotic microorganisms, metabolites and biopharmaceuticals, using microbials, plant cells and microalgae are highlighted.


Cylindrical offshore storage tanks are mainly used to store critical liquids such as petroleum and LNG. Failure of these tanks after an earthquake not only results in high financial losses but can also create an environmental disaster as well. Seismic isolation technique has been utilized in this study to mitigate the damaging effects of lateral earthquake forces. In this study, seismic isolation is used in cylindrical offshore storage tanks. Seismic isolators are protected from the marine environment by a water-proof flexible membrane that allows the horizontal movement of the tank. The mathematical model takes the following into account: mass of the stored liquid, added mass of the water surrounding the tank, horizontal stiffness and damping of the isolation system. Internal forces due to the hydrostatic and hydrodynamic forces acting on the system during an earthquake have been calculated by using the shell-moment theory. The results of the analyses are compared for both the isolated and fixed-base tanks.Copyright © 2005 by ASME


Fiscal federalism in Germany is characterized by lacking sub-national tax autonomy and intensive fiscal equalization. Due to a sunset clause, the current equalization system has to be renegotiated by the year 2019. Against this backdrop, this contribution studies the reform preferences of members of state parliaments. The study makes use of a self-conducted survey among the members of all 16 German state parliaments. It tests to which extent the preferences of these veto players for tax autonomy and fiscal equalization are driven by states' self-interest, party ideology and individual characteristics. The results are helpful to understand the political-economic constraints of federal reforms. They indicate that besides the individual ideological position higher state wealth and lower debt levels are linked to larger reform support. Therefore, a promising new reform would have to address budgetary legacies like high pre-existing debt.


Ever since Shaw and McKinnon published their path-breaking works on financial development in 1973, there has been extensive research on the effects of monetary and financial policies on economic growth of developing countries. This book puts forward a new paradigm of monetary development theory along Keynesian lines. The approach is substantiated by providing a fresh perspective on India's economic development after Independence.


Concern has been expressed about the poor academic performance of African American students, in comparison to their other ethnic counterparts. Many individuals have attempted to explain this anomaly. A large portion of studies show how socioeconomic standing and parental involvement play a role in the academic achievement gap. A more modest amount used psychological factors to explain the deplorable academic achievement in African Americans. One such psychological factor, self-efficacy, was not well represented in the literature; few papers discussed the association of self-efficacy and African American academic success. The purpose of this study was to compare self-efficacy levels of individuals from differing ethnic groups. The study was non-experimental and used a survey methodology as a means to collect data. A 14-question survey was created, with questions that ascertained self-efficacy, ethnicity, gender, age, class standing, academic discipline, and perceived academic success. The sample of convenience consisted of 394 students from Southern Adventist University. Results showed that there were no significant differences in self-efficacy among differing ethnic groups, academic disciplines, or along the spectrum of age. However, the results did find a statistically significance gender difference in self-efficacy, with males toting higher scores, and a positive correlation between GPA and self-efficacy. This research can help explain how different sexes and ethnic groups believe in their capabilities and this can be extrapolated to academia, to answer the question of achievement gaps.


Comparative research regarding the varying capabilities of the advanced countries to pursue strategies consistent with ecological modernisation has typically focused on institutional and economic capacity. Though these features certainly shape preparedness for this policy programme in important ways, they do not provide sufficient insight into the ability of individual nations to meet the rigorous requirements of ecological modernisation. More specifically, this policy programme is dependent upon a firm commitment to science and a preference to address environmental problems in technological terms. However, environmental decision‐making, particularly among members of the lay public, is predicated upon numerous epistemologies and countries exhibit considerable variation in their propensity to align their policies with strict rational reasoning. This study introduces a typology that identifies four archetypal environmental knowledge orientations: rational ecologism, Prometheanism, Arcadianism, and ecocidal mysticism. The concept of national character offers one approach for operationalising this typology for empirical application and a case study of the Netherlands suggests that the Dutch style of interpreting indeterminate environmental data is broadly consistent with the principles of ecological modernisation.


We propose a theory in which geographic attributes explain cross-regional institutional differences in (1) the scale of the state, (2) the distribution of power within state hierarchy, and (3) property rights to land. In this theory, geography and technology affect the transparency of farming, and transparency, in turn, affects the elite's ability to appropriate revenue from the farming sector, thus affecting institutions. We apply the theory to explain differences between the institutions of ancient Egypt, southern Mesopotamia, and northern Mesopotamia, and also discuss its relevance to modern phenomena.


Abstract. The aim of this study is to clarify the role of the Southern Ocean storms on interior mixing and meridional overturning circulation. A periodic and idealized numerical model has been designed to represent the key physical processes of a zonal portion of the Southern Ocean located between 70 and 40° S. It incorporates physical ingredients deemed essential for Southern Ocean functioning: rough topography, seasonally varying air–sea fluxes, and high-latitude storms with analytical form. The forcing strategy ensures that the time mean wind stress is the same between the different simulations, so the effect of the storms on the mean wind stress and resulting impacts on the Southern Ocean dynamics are not considered in this study. Level and distribution of mixing attributable to high-frequency winds are quantified and compared to those generated by eddy–topography interactions and dissipation of the balanced flow. Results suggest that (1) the synoptic atmospheric variability alone can generate the levels of mid-depth dissipation frequently observed in the Southern Ocean (10−10–10−9 W kg−1) and (2) the storms strengthen the overturning, primarily through enhanced mixing in the upper 300 m, whereas deeper mixing has a minor effect. The sensitivity of the results to horizontal resolution (20, 5, 2 and 1 km), vertical resolution and numerical choices is evaluated. Challenging issues concerning how numerical models are able to represent interior mixing forced by high-frequency winds are exposed and discussed, particularly in the context of the overturning circulation. Overall, submesoscale-permitting ocean modeling exhibits important delicacies owing to a lack of convergence of key components of its energetics even when reaching Δx =  1 km.


We investigate a suite of recommendation algorithms for audio news listening applications. This domain presents several challenges that distinguish it from more commonly studied applications such as movie recommendations: (1) we do not receive explicit rating feedback, instead only observing when a user skips a story; (2) new stories arrive continuously, increasing the importance of making recommendations for items with few observations (the cold start problem); (3) story attributes have high dimensionality, making it challenging to identify similar stories. To address the first challenge, we formulate the problem as predicting the percentage of a story a user will listen to; to address the remaining challenges, we propose several matrix factorization algorithms that cluster users, n-grams, and stories simultaneously, while optimizing prediction accuracy. We empirically evaluate our approach on a dataset of 50K users, 26K stories, and 975K interactions collected over a five month period. We find that while simple models work well for stories with many observations, our proposed approach performs best for stories with few ratings, which is critical for the real-world deployment of such an application.


This paper analyzes the role of question reformulations in the 2004 US presidential debates. While formulations used for questioning have received quite some attention in the literature, no studies, to my knowledge, with the exception of Clayman (1993), have been concerned with question reformulations, that is, formulations given in response to questions. In contrast to Clayman (1993) who examined the 'directness/evasiveness' of a reformulation as a collaborative achievement involving a question-answer-pursuit sequence, this paper analyzes it as a collaborative achievement involving a question-answer-answer sequence (like a panel news interview). The analysis shows that the reformulations in the 2004 US presidential debates involve a device for adjusting the question and the subsequent answer to the candidate's (actual and presumed) audience. Thus, the relative 'directness/evasiveness' of a candidate's answer depends on which of the 'three' perspectives (/positions) presented by the question-answer-answer sequence that the overhearing audience is most willing to adopt.


To support complex data-intensive applications such as personalized recommendations, targeted advertising, and intelligent services, the data management community has focused heavily on the design of systems to support training complex models on large datasets. Unfortunately, the design of these systems largely ignores a critical component of the overall analytics process: the deployment and serving of models at scale. In this work, we present Velox, a new component of the Berkeley Data Analytics Stack. Velox is a data management system for facilitating the next steps in real-world, large-scale analytics pipelines: online model management, maintenance, and serving. Velox provides end-user applications and services with a low-latency, intuitive interface to models, transforming the raw statistical models currently trained using existing offline large-scale compute frameworks into full-blown, end-to-end data products capable of recommending products, targeting advertisements, and personalizing web content. To provide up-to-date results for these complex models, Velox also facilitates lightweight online model maintenance and selection (i.e., dynamic weighting). In this paper, we describe the challenges and architectural considerations required to achieve this functionality, including the abilities to span online and offline systems, to adaptively adjust model materialization strategies, and to exploit inherent statistical properties such as model error tolerance, all while operating at "Big Data" scale.


Brain imaging techniques have the potential to characterize neurobiological changes that precede the onset of cognitive impairment in persons at risk for Alzheimer's disease. As previously described, positron emission tomography (PET) was used to compare 11 cognitively normal persons 50 to 62 years of age who were homozygous for the ε4 allele of apolipoprotein E and 22 persons without the ε4 allele with a reported family history of Alzheimer's dementia who were matched for sex, age, and level of education. The ε4 homozygotes had significantly reduced glucose metabolism in the same brain regions as patients with Alzheimer's dementia; the largest reduction was in the posterior cingulate cortex. As described here, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to compare hippocampal volumes in the same subject groups. The ε4 homozygotes showed nonsignificant trends for smaller left and right hippocampal volumes; overall, smaller hippocampal volumes were associated with reduced performance on a long‐term memory test. Whereas PET measurements of cerebral glucose metabolism begin to decrease before the onset of memory decline, MRI measurements of hippocampal volume begin to decrease in conjunction with memory decline in cognitively normal persons at risk for Alzheimer's disease.


The global majority of our crops is dependent on pollination. Hence, pollination contributes to one third of global crop production and is an ecosystem service of high commercial and social importance. Bees are the most important crop pollinators, but they are endangered by several anthropogenic impacts, in particular agricultural intensification. Facing rising global demands for food and energy in the background of a growing world population, the prevention of an impending pollinator crisis attracts increasing interest from the public, policymakers and scientists. However, despite new reports on crop pollination are frequently arising, pollination research seems still at the beginning and our knowledge on crop pollination by bees at various scales is scarce.
This work aims to explore so far unknown benefits of bee pollination to highlight its overall importance. It is also focused on the main drivers of crop pollination by bees at different spatial scales, using strawberries as a study organism.
The first part (chapter 2) explores the benefits of bee pollination on commercial value and post-harvest quality of strawberry fruits from different varieties. Exclusion experiments with bee, wind and self pollination treatments were conducted on nine strawberry varieties at an experimental strawberry field. Bee pollination strongly increased the commercial value of strawberry fruits across all varieties by producing well shaped fruits with higher weight. It further elongated the shelf live of strawberries from most varieties, which was calculated from firmness values. Bee pollinated fruits had a more intense red colour and lower sugar-acid-ratios in most varieties. In general, effects differed between varieties, but with mostly similar directions. These results give a positive reply on the questions wether bee polination benefits commercial value and post-harvest quality of strawberries and the differences between varieties.
The second part of this work (chapter 3) focused on the relationship between bee pollination and shelf life of strawberries in detail. From the first part (chapter 2), the number of fertilized achenes from fruits of the variety Yamaska was related to pollination treatments and commercial grades. In 2012, further fruits were harvested on a commercial strawberry field and divided into commercial grades in relation to malformations from insufficient pollination. The process of firmness, fruit weight and decay during storage was analysed in relation to commercial grades. During storage time, firmness and fruit weight were decreasing while the proportion of decayed fruits was increasing, independent from commercial grades. Commercial grades had a general effect on fruit degradation, with improved values in higher grades. Thus higher commercial grades resulting from improved pollination elongated the shelf life of strawberries.
Differences between varieties in part one (chapter 2) lead to the question wether strawberry varieties differ in their attraction to bees with consequences on their visitation rate (chapter 4). The influence of different volatile emissions between strawberry varieties, the bees' responses on distinct compounds and resulting visitation rates on a commercial strawberry field were analysed. Three strawberry varieties were grown in a greenhouse and the flower volatile emissions from each variety as well as anntenal responses of Osmia bicornis L. females on each compound were tested. Further the bees' visitation rates on two varieties were counted at a commercial strawberry field. All strawberry varieties emitted the same flower volatile compounds, but differed in the quantities of most of them. Anntenal reactions of O. bicornis females differed between most compounds and were higher than responses on controls. Under field conditions, the varietey that produced higher quantities of the most attractive compounds was visited much more frequently. Hence, the question about volatile emissions affecting the responses and visitation of solitary wild bees could be positively answered.
The last part of this work (chapter 5) was focused on the main drivers of various bee diversity parameters that explain the community composition of bees and their influence on strawberry fruit weight. As bee diversity is known to change related to landscape complexity, the study was conducted on commercial strawberry fields located in landscapes ranging in a gradient from homogenous to more heterogenous, to get ranging values of the bee diversity parameters. Bees were collected via sweep netting and strawberries were harvested at four field positions, that were located from field edge to center. In general, strawberry weight was strongly influenced by Evenness and to a lower level by Shannon-diversity of bee pollinators, whereas results from species richness and bee abundance were inconsistent. Higher Evenness and Shannon-diversity of the bee community improved strawberry weight at the field edge, whereas higher proportions of honeybees improved fruit weight at the field center, seemingly due to higher conspecific pollen loads. Evenness was negatively correlated to the proportion of honeybees. The research questions could be answered with Evenness being most influential on strawberry fruit weight, with contrasting effects between field locations, driven by the proportion of honeybees.
In conclusion, the commercial value and post-harvest quality of strawberry fruits was strongly dependent on bee pollination, which was generally conducted by both honeybees and wild bees, but further affected by diverse scale-dependent effects. The strong relationship between fruit quantity and quality emphasizes, that pollination countervails to increasing global demands on high quality food. However, against the background of serious pollinator declines due to increasing anthropogenic impacts on various scales, pollination appears to be an ecosystem service that is strongly endangered, which may have extensive impacts on world food security. Hence, the results of the current work emphasize, that international conservation strategies will become more efficient by focusing on a broad scale of facets affecting crop pollination to maintain this highly important ecosystem service for the future.


Abstract. It is generally known that ash particles from coal combustion can trigger ice nucleation when they interact with water vapor and/or supercooled droplets. However, data on the ice nucleation of ash particles from different sources, including both anthropogenic and natural combustion processes, are still scarce. As fossil energy sources still fuel the largest proportion of electric power production worldwide, and biomass burning contributes significantly to the global aerosol loading, further data are needed to better assess the ice nucleating efficiency of ash particles. In the framework of this study, we found that ash particles from brown coal (i.e., lignite) burning are up to 2 orders of magnitude more ice active in the immersion mode below −32 °C than those from wood burning. Fly ash from a coal-fired power plant was shown to be the most efficient at nucleating ice. Furthermore, the influence of various particle generation methods on the freezing behavior was studied. For instance, particles were generated either by dispersion of dry sample material, or by atomization of ash–water suspensions, and then led into the Leipzig Aerosol Cloud Interaction Simulator (LACIS) where the immersion freezing behavior was examined. Whereas the immersion freezing behavior of ashes from wood burning was not affected by the particle generation method, it depended on the type of particle generation for ash from brown coal. It was also found that the common practice of treating prepared suspensions in an ultrasonic bath to avoid aggregation of particles led to an enhanced ice nucleation activity. The findings of this study suggest (a) that ash from brown coal burning may influence immersion freezing in clouds close to the source and (b) that the freezing behavior of ash particles may be altered by a change in sample preparation and/or particle generation.


Abstract:Although family and friends can drain a household's finances by requesting personal loans, lenders have proven savvy in how they respond to such requests. Beyond identifying the importance of sincerity tests for curtailing the pressure to help others in one's social circle, the studies of negative social capital do not address why the pressure to lend varies according to the dramaturgical performance strategies of the benefactors. In other words, how do potential lenders manage to say no without saying no? Using interview evidence from clients at the Mission Asset Fund in California, we show how individuals engage in obfuscatory relational work, performing a self that evades the taboo of greedy callousness, while sometimes telling half-truths about not being able to help in the way borrowers would like. Unlike the concept of obfuscatory relational work, however, we focus on expected transfers that do not happen and on unreciprocated gifts that are disguised as loans. The lender and recipient are engaged in face-saving obfuscation; but in the first case, the lender presents a generous self that is emotionally close to the borrower; in the second, the lender helps the recipient of the gift maintain face by avoiding an awkward ask, pretending the "loan" is expected to be repaid. This paper outlines different strategies of obfuscation among adults trying to improve their financial lives and the contingencies at play as a ruse is abandoned in favor of a direct refusal to lend.


Abstract The order Poales comprises a substantial portion of plant life (7% of all angiosperms and 33% of monocots) and includes taxa of enormous economic and ecological significance. Molecular and morphological studies over the past two decades, however, leave uncertain many relationships within Poales and among allied commelinid orders. Here we present the results of an initial project by the Monocot AToL (Angiosperm Tree of Life) team on phylogeny and evolution in Poales, using sequence data for 81 plastid genes (exceeding 101 aligned kb) from 83 species of angiosperms. We recovered highly concordant relationships using maximum likelihood (ML) and maximum parsimony (MP), with 98.2% mean ML bootstrap support across monocots. For the first time, ML resolves ties among Poales and other commelinid orders with moderate to strong support. Analyses provide strong support for Bromeliaceae being sister to the rest of Poales; Typhaceae, Rapateaceae, and cyperids (sedges, rushes, and their allies) emerge next along the phylogenetic spine. Graminids (grasses and their allies) and restiids (Restionaceae and its allies) are well supported as sister taxa. MP identifies a xyrid clade (Eriocaulaceae, Mayacaceae, Xyridaceae) sister to cyperids, but ML (with much stronger support) places them as a grade with respect to restiids + graminids. The conflict in resolution between these analyses likely reflects long-branch attraction and highly elevated substitution rates in some Poales. All other familial relationships within the order are strongly supported by both MP and ML analyses. Character-state mapping implies that ancestral Poales lived in sunny, fire-prone, at least seasonally damp/wet, and possibly nutrient-poor sites, and were animal pollinated. Five subsequent shifts to wind pollination—in Typhaceae, cyperids, restiids, Ecdeiocoleaceae, and the vast PACCMAD-BEP clade of grasses—are significantly correlated with shifts to open habitats and small, inconspicuous, unisexual, and nectar-free flowers. Prime ecological movers driving the repeated evolution of wind pollination in Poales appear to include open habitats combined with the high local dominance of conspecific taxa, with the latter resulting from large-scale disturbances, combined with tall plant stature, vigorous vegetative spread, and positive ecological feedback. Reproductive assurance in the absence of reliable animal visitation probably favored wind pollination in annuals and short-statured perennials of Centrolepidaceae in ephemerally wet depressions and windswept alpine sites.


As a social movement continues to grow challenging the justice system that fails to prosecute and convict police officers use of deadly force, it is crucial to note what hegemonic constructs maintain the institutional power structures that continue to harm people of color. When police officers are acquitted when they inflict deadly harm on unarmed citizens the justice system is working to maintain the power structures that devalues Black lives. When hegemonic power structures perpetuate injustice it appears necessary to challenge and deconstruct the system as a whole. Do the protest movements choose to challenge hegemony or rather seek to conform to the ideals of the justice system? I ask this question utilizing a Cultural Studies framework putting Stuart Hall, Antonio Gramsci, and Slavoj Zizek in conversation with each other in order to illuminate how activism must contend with hegemony. Activist movements do not seek to radically dismantle hegemony, but work within it in ways that reform and redefine how the concept of justice can be present in the lived realities of communities of color.


The optimal scope of patent protection is an issue with which patent system observers have struggled for decades. Various patent doctrines have been recognized as tools for creating specific patent scopes and, as a result, implementing specific patent theories. One area of patent law that has not been addressed in the discussion on patent scope and theories is patent claim interpretation. This omission is particularly noteworthy because of the substantive role patent claims and the interpretation thereof play in the patent system, namely the framing of questions of patent infringement and validity. This Article will explore the not-yet-discussed relationship between claim interpretation methodology and patent scope. The discussion will focus on how changes in interpretation methodology affect patent scope, an aspect of methodologies that the Article identifies as their "claim scope paradigm." Introducing the claim scope paradigm concept is mainly beneficial for two reasons. First, identifying the claim scope paradigm allows different interpretation methodologies to be evaluated as to their impact on the substantive function of patent claims. A claim scope paradigm criterion represents a significant and worthwhile departure from the current standard of certainty used by courts and commentators. Second, recognizing claim scope paradigms facilitates the use of claim interpretation methodology as a patent policy lever. Interpretation methodologies can be highly effective levers, having the ability to inject patent policy at the most basic level of the patent process.


Content storage in a distributed collaborative environment uses redundancy for better resilience. This redundancy is either achieved by pure replication or using erasure codes for more efficient utilization of available storage. Increasingly such schemes are employed in peer-to-peer environments, though more realistically in local or wide area network settings, which is still characterized by moderate attrition (churn) of network membership. An mportant aspect of guaranteeing persistence and availability in such a system is to maintain the redundancy. A proactive mechanism of replenishing lost redundancy can however be prohibitive, and hence lazier maintenance schemes are desirable. Such systems' performance has typically been studied based on simulations, and more recently some prototype based experimental results have also been reported. While such a methodology is essential in designing and deploying a reliable system, the missing link in the existing literature is a sufficiently accurate analytical model to capture the dynamics of the system. The existing analytical models essentially capture the static resilience of the system. What's more realistic is to evaluate whether - given a rate of churn, and some chosen maintenance strategy, the system operates at a steady state and if so, what is the operational cost of such a system. Since simulations are restricted to chosen workloads (be it synthetic or trace driven), they are limited to only those chosen workloads, even while providing a good initial (hopefully empirical) insight to systems designers. A precise analytical model capturing the system's dynamicity however is expected to provide a more objective insight, and is the primary contribution of this work.


Eucaryotic expression vectors containing the Escherichia coli pyrB gene (pyrB encodes the catalytic subunit of aspartate transcarbamylase [ATCase]) and the Tn5 phosphotransferase gene (G418 resistance module) were transfected into a mutant Chinese hamster ovary cell line possessing a CAD multifunctional protein lacking ATCase activity. G418-resistant transformants were isolated and analyzed for ATCase activity, the ability to complement the CAD ATCase defect, and the ability to resist high concentrations of the ATCase inhibitor N-(phosphonacetyl)-L-aspartate (PALA) by amplifying the donated pyrB gene sequences. We report that bacterial ATCase is expressed in these lines, that it complements the CAD ATCase defect in trans, and that its amplification engenders PALA resistance. In addition, we derived rapid and sensitive assay conditions which enable the determination of bacterial ATCase enzyme activity in the presence of mammalian ATCase.


Motivated by discrepancies between recent bench-top experiments A. Juel and A. Heap, J. Fluid Mech. 572, 287 2007 and numerical simulations A. L. Hazel and M. Heil, ASME J. Biomech. Eng. 128, 573 2006 we employ computational methods to examine the effects of transverse gravity on the steady propagation of a semi-infinite, inviscid air finger into a two-dimensional elastic channel filled with a Newtonian fluid. The special case of propagation in a rigid channel is also discussed in Appendix B. The coupled free-surface, fluid-structure-interaction problem is solved numerically using the object-oriented multiphysics finite-element library OOMPH-LIB. In the absence of gravity the relationship between the applied pressure and the propagation speed of the finger is nonmonotonic, with a turning point at small values of the propagation speed. We demonstrate that the turning point disappears when a modest gravitational force is applied and conjecture that it is this effect of gravity rather than any instability of the zero-gravity solution, as postulated in previous studies, that explains why the turning point has never been observed in experiments. At large propagation speeds, the presence of transverse gravity is shown to increase the pressure required to drive the air finger at a given speed, which is consistent with the observed discrepancies between previous zero-gravity simulations and the experimental results. Finally, we briefly discuss the possible implications of our results for the physiological problem of pulmonary airway reopening. © 2008 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2982520


Human microbial communities are associated with many human diseases such as obesity, diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease. High-throughput sequencing technology has been widely used to profile the microbial communities in order to understand their impact on human health. In the first part of this dissertation, we analyzed fecal samples using shotgun metagenomic sequencing from a prospective cohort of pediatric Crohn's disease patients, who started therapy with enteral nutrition or anti-TNF-alpha antibodies. The results reveal the full complement and dynamics of bacteria and fungi during treatment. Bacterial community membership was associated independently with dysbiosis, intestinal inflammation, antibiotic use, and therapy. Motivated by the problems in real data analysis, this dissertation also presents two novel statistical models for microbiome data analysis. One important aspect of metagenomic data analysis is to quantify the bacterial abundances based on the sequencing data. In order to account for certain systematic differences in read coverage along the genome, we propose a multi-sample Poisson model to quantify microbial abundances based on read counts that are assigned to species-specific taxonomic markers. Our model takes into account the marker-specific effects when normalizing the sequencing count data in order to obtain more accurate quantification of the species abundances. Another statistical model we proposed is for longitudinal microbiome data analysis. A key question in longitudinal microbiome studies is to identify the microbes that are associated with clinical outcomes or environmental factors. We develop a zero-inflated Beta regression model with random effects for testing the association between microbial abundance and clinical covariates for longitudinal microbiome data. The model includes a logistic regression component to model presence/absence of a microbe in samples and a Beta regression component to model non-zero microbial abundance, where each component includes a random effect to take into account the correlations among repeated measurements on the same subject. The statistical methods were evaluated using simulations as well as the real data from Penn microbiome study of pediatric Crohn's disease. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Genomics & Computational Biology First Advisor Hongzhe Li


In this article the author discusses the political risks of foreign firms in Russia. Risks vary a great deal between the industries. Telecommunications is the most risky industry for a foreign firm at the moment. State consolidation in the oil and gas business has continued. When Russia experiences difficult times, foreign oil companies enjoy good times in Russia, and vice versa, and therefore, the latest crisis gives, at least, a temporary relief for foreign oil firms. I predict that the metal industry will also see its national champion. The production of electrical energy is a strategic sector, though it was not explicitly named in the law of strategic sectors, and foreign electricity firms operating in Russia may face surprises, if the Russian Government turns more nationalistic in the next decade.


Proving that an endpoint (e.g. URL, telephone number, etc.) is controlled by a subject is crucial in many applications. In the web, this is witnessed by the widespread adoption of HTTPS. In centralized architectures, this task is usually carried out by trusted certification authorities (CAs). In decentralized applications, for example based on blockchains, or for self-sovereign identity management (SSI), it would be desirable to perform these checks in a decentralized way, relying on the collective behavior of a society of individuals rather than on a single trusted entity. In any case, the result should be a widely usable certificate, as in the centralized CA case. In this paper, we show two blockchain-based methods to prove the association between a subject and an endpoint in a decentralized manner. Our methods are compatible with a wide variety of endpoints and contribute to fill the gap of the current SSI approaches with respect to decentralization. We analyze the security of our proposal and provide a proof-of-concept implementation. We also evaluate performances, costs, and compatibility with current standardization efforts about SSI.


Career adaptability has found a special place among the predictive variables of job satisfaction in the recent decade. In fact, the effect of adaptability in different situations may be different depending on factors such as leader-member exchange. In this study, the mediating role of leader-member exchange in the effect of career adaptability was studied using Hayes's fourth model (2013) and collecting 167 samples from the employees of public sector in Ardabil. First, confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the dimensions of career adaptability and leader-member exchange and only two questions of career adaptability questions were removed from the questionnaire due to undesired factor loading. According to the results, job satisfaction and leader-member exchange had the highest correlation with control (one of the dimensions of career adaptability). Moreover, career adaptability and leader-member exchange had the predictive role in job satisfaction (B= 0.29 and 0.55, respectively). The analysis of the mediating role of leader-member exchange was significant (0.162), which indicates that managers of public sector must pay considerable attention to leader-member exchange, so that they can moderate the effect of career adaptability on job satisfaction even if career adaptability is not satisfactory.


It is very challenging to schedule cluster tools subject to wafer residency time constraints and activity time variation. This work develops a Petri net model to describe the system and proposes a two-level real-time scheduling architecture. At the lower level, a real-time control policy is used to offset the activity time variation as much as possible. At the upper level, a periodical off-line schedule is derived under the normal condition. This work presents the schedulability conditions and scheduling algorithms for an off-line schedule. The schedulability conditions can be analytically checked. If they are satisfied, an off-line schedule can be analytically found. The off-line schedule together with a real-time control policy forms the real-time schedule for the system. It is optimal in terms of cycle time minimization. Illustrative examples are given to show the application of the proposed approach. Note to Practitioners-This paper discusses the real-time scheduling problem of single-arm cluster tools with wafer residency time constraints and bounded activity time variation. With a Petri net model, schedulability is analyzed and schedulability conditions are presented by using analytical expressions. Then, an efficient algorithm is proposed to find a periodical schedule if it is schedulable. Such a schedule is optimal in terms of cycle time and can adapt to bounded activity time variation. Therefore, it is applicable to the scheduling and real-time control of cluster tools in semiconductor manufacturing plants.


AIM:To explore the inhibitory effect of a sustained cyclosporin A (CsA) delivery microsphere (CsA-MS) on posterior capsular opacification (PCO) in rabbit eyes after cataract extraction. ·METHODS:Twenty New Zealand white rabbits accepted cataract extraction plus intraocular lens implantation and their left eyes were intraoperatively injected CsA-MS prepared using polymer polylactioglycolic acid (PLGA) as a carrier and their right eyes were injected with empty MS. The changes in cornea, anterior chamber reaction, intraocular pressure, PCO and CsA concentration in aqueous humor were examined postoperatively and all the eyes were enucleated 3 months after surgery for histopathological and morphological examination with light microscopy and electron microscopy. · RESULTS:Conjunctival hyperemia, corneal edema, intraocular pressure and anterior chamber response of experimental and control eyes were similar, while PCO in CsA MS injected eyes was greatly improved compared with that in control eyes. Posterior capsules in CsA-MS injected eyes were smooth and lens epithelial cells (LEC) did not proliferate significantly (P >0.05), while LEC in posterior capsule of control eyes had different degrees of proliferation and cortical regeneration. LEC in CsA-MS injected eyes were not functionally active and underwent apoptosis, whereas LEC in control eyes were functionally active (F-test, P =0.025). In addition, the cornealultrastructure showed no differences between CsA-MS and MS injected eyes. CONCLUSION:CsA-MS has high bioavailability in rabbit eyes and could inhibit postoperative PCO occurrence and development during the study period, suggesting that CsA-MS may be a promising, effective and safe administration route to prevent PCO in clinic.


The focus of the research is on the process of implementing curriculum innovation in six English nursing schools in response to the invitation from the statutory body - the English National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health visiting - for collaboration between nursing schools and institutions of higher or advanced further education. The thesis begins with a review of the historical background, and the events leading up to the Board's call for experimentation in September 1984; the first two chapters, which are largely descriptive, recording previous attempts to reform the pattern of initial preparation nursing. Content analysis of the submissions reveals differences and similarities in the proposals from the six schools. One scheme, in a rural area, makes no external educational linkage; one nursing school links with a college of education, one with a tertiary college, two with polytechnics and one with lecturers from the extra-mural department of a university. Five of the schemes propose a change in curriculum context and in the status of the student - with supernumerary status for six months, one year or two years. One does not propose to alter the context of the curriculum, but proposes major changes in curriculum content teaching/learning strategies and assessment. An interpretive approach is then adopted to elicit the view of those planning and preparing to introduce change. Visits between July 1986 and July 1989 were made to each school for discussion with individuals and groups, and open interviews with participants and others. Factors influencing the implementation, modifications, and educational or organisational changes in the collaborating institutions are discussed - revealing differences in each social milieu. Issues raised in the six schemes include; the issue of time - the time-scale for adoption of plans, preparing and introducing change, time for preparing everyone involved for changing roles, and the difficulties of time spent travelling between two sites; developing the infrastructure and communication system; the workload for innovators and implementors; maintaining support networks, and the complexity with large, or frequent annual intakes of students. The evidence points to the need for assessment and evaluation to be an integral part of the planning procedure within parameters agreed by the statutory bodies - the UKCC and ENB. The issues raised in the research are relevant to those planning nursing courses for Project 2000.


The most extensive and famous example of fortification in the world, the Great Wall of China stretches for more than 4,000 miles across inhospitable terrain. Charting its development from construction in the 7th century BC through to the present day, this account reveals the true history of the wall, and explores the myths that surround it. Included are details of what it was like to live within the wall, the ideas behind the defensive systems, how it was garrisoned and patrolled, and a discussion of how effective it was against attack. Through extensive examination of both ancient and modern sources, color maps, artwork and photographs, this book illustrates why the wall is one of the great wonders of the world.


Title of dissertation: Formation of Magnetized Prestellar Cores in Turbulent Giant Molecular Clouds Che-Yu Chen, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Dissertation directed by: Professor Eve C. Ostriker Department of Astronomy The main goal of this thesis research is developing a theory to describe the early stages of star formation within magnetized, turbulent molecular clouds, which is a fundamental problem in astrophysics. In giant molecular clouds, supersonic turbulence creates shocks and compresses material to generate overdense structures that can later collapse gravitationally, while the intrinsic magnetic fields in the clouds limit the compression in turbulent shocks and provide support to prestellar cores against self-gravity. Previous numerical simulations had shown promising results that prestellar cores with realistic physical properties can form in shocked regions with the presence of magnetic fields and ambipolar diffusion, but left a big gap in understanding the fundamental mechanism driving prestellar core formation in turbulent, magnetized environments, especially the longstanding puzzle of how these dense, self-gravitating cores form in the diffuse, thermally-supported, and highly magnetized clouds. In this thesis, we firstly adopted both analytic and numerical methods to investigate a one-dimensional C-type shock created by turbulenceaccelerated ambipolar diffusion, and we discovered a transient stage that can theoretically generate overdense regions with relatively low magnetic pressure. We then turned to fully three-dimensional MHD simulations with supersonic convergent flows, and quantitatively studied the physical properties of cores formed in the shock-compressed regions, together with the detailed flows leading to core formation. These cores have similar masses and sizes as the observed ones, and form within a timescale comparable to the observed core lifetime. However, we found that ambipolar diffusion may not be a crucial mechanism for cores to lose magnetic support, because gas in overdense regions preferably flows along the magnetic field lines. We therefore extended the parameter space of our simulations to further examine the anisotropic core formation model. Our results suggest that while prestellar cores are seeded by perturbations from local turbulence, they are built up by collecting surrounding materials anisotropically along the magnetic field lines. To conclude, though turbulence-enhanced ambipolar diffusion can highly reduce the level of magnetization within shock-compressed dense regions, anisotropic contraction may be the key mechanism driving prestellar core formation within turbulent, magnetized giant molecular clouds. This mechanism leads to cores with masses and sizes that are in good agreement with observed prestellar cores. Formation of Magnetized Prestellar Cores in Turbulent Giant Molecular Clouds


Rapid industrialization usually is the cause of increase in pollutants in the natural river bodies. This pollution is attributed to lack of improper treatment and inadequate disposal mechanisms of the waste generated thereof. The aim of present investigation was to screen actinomycetes for their ability to adsorb heavy metals. Actinomycetes belong to most diverse group of filamentous prokaryotes with ubiquitous presence in different ecological niches. This ubiquity is due to their ability to degrade almost any type of polymer and to use several compounds as carbon sources. Nearly 200 actinomycetes from different niches like fresh water, soda lake, geothermal springs, acid soils, etc from different locations in India were screened for ability to grow in presence of 1 to 5 mM of heavy metals like Cd, Hg, Pb, Ni, Sr, Fe, Mo, Zn and Mn. Most of the strains tolerant to heavy metals belonged to the genus Streptomyces spp. Five strains could grow in presence of 5 mM Cd2+, 4 strains in presence of 0.1 mM Hg2+, 18 strains in presence of 5 mM Pb2+, 21 strains in presence of 5 mM Ni2+, whereas 34 strains grew in presence of 5 mM Fe2+. One of the most promising strain was studied for its ability to absorb cadmium where 2x1011 cells or spores could adsorb 0.32 mM to 0.33 mM of cadmium. Spores and vegetative cells showed nearly similar level of adsorbtion ability. This strain can be very useful in developing a bioreactor for the adsorption of heavy metals from industrial effluents containing cadmium.


This study investigates how introducing translanguaging as a way to affirm language and culture impacted students' understandings of learning and teaching in a TESOL certificate course offered at a university in the northeast of the United States. As researchers, teachers, and students committed to justice, we explored the impact of introducing translanguaging in a course that was originally designed as a Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) course through collaborative, qualitative approaches of thematic analysis and macro- and micro-level analyses of power based on our unique individual experiences in the classroom. We found across our analysis that introducing translanguaging provided opportunities to shift assumptions and that, overall, students demonstrated critical sociocultural understandings of language that are foundational in teaching for justice. Ultimately, while we recognize the need for more explicit discussion about the purpose and pedagogy of translanguaging, the shifts towards teaching and embracing multilingual and multicultural realities through translanguaging which the study identified can contribute to the field of language education by demonstrating how teachers might open up possibilities in teaching for justice.


Plague bacillus (Yersinia pestis) is one of the most frequently documented diseases in modern history and has resulted in many suspected plague burials. However, the current lack of adequate methods in paleopathology prevents the cause of death being ascertained in plague victims, as Y. pestis leaves no visible manifestations on bone. Given the lack of methodology in identifying ancient plague (and ancient diseases as a whole), this thesis aimed to test the feasibility of DNA analysis in detecting plague in archaeological bone samples. The analysis utilised PCR in an attempt to detect Y. pestis (the causative agent of the plague) in six bone samples from a suspected plague burial in London, dating to 1348 during the Black Death epidemic. PCR allowed the identification of Y. pestis bacteria in one of the six bone samples, thus demonstrating this technique's viability in plague detection. Furthermore, this detection method can potentially be applied to virtually all blood-borne disease in archaeological and forensic samples.


This paper explores the tension between the Indonesian legal profession's history of activism for social justice causes and its own incapacity to organize itself in a way that might better regulate and support the ideals underpinning the post-1998 reforms. We begin in Parts I and II with an overview of cause lawyering in Indonesia generally. In Part III we consider developments after 1998, when cause lawyers turned their attention again to the long-standing and elusive objective of a united and disciplined bar. We examine the failure of efforts to unite lawyers and remake them as a single profession. The remainder of the paper emphasizes the fluid and dynamic nature of cause lawyering in Indonesia through a case study of Indonesian Legal Aid's advocacy on religious freedom. We highlight how one prominent cause lawyer, Munarman, rejected the values of the legal aid and human rights organizations he once led in favor of Islamist vigilante groups. The paper concludes that the splintered profession as it now stands reflects broader fractures in the wider reform movement as cause lawyers confront reform fatigue and political disillusion.


The models used to analyse the dinamics of fish populations must be fitted to the real data using biological and demographic parameters. The data, as well as the parameters, have to be estimated from sampling strategies devised according to the specific objective. In this lecture the problems of the various sampling methods related with the particular characteristics of Mediterranean fisheries are analyzed.


Modeling and analysis of the materials universe is an emerging area of research with many important applications in materials science. The main goal is to create a map of materials which allows not only to visualize and navigate the materials space, but also reveal complex relationships and "connections" among materials and potentially find clusters of materials with similar properties. In this paper, we consider the problem of mapping and exploring the materials universe using network science tools and concepts. The networks are based on the open-source materials data repository AFLOW.org where each material is represented as a node, and each pair of nodes is connected by a link if the respective materials exhibit a high level of similarity between their Density of States (DOS) functions. We discuss the importance of similarity measure selection, investigate basic structural properties of the resulting networks, and demonstrate advantages and limitations of the proposed approaches.


Arsenic contamination is a world-wide concern. In the past, soil contaminated with arsenic was removed using heavy equipment resulting in the destruction of the environment. However, in recent years a new method, phytoremediation, removes arsenic and maintains the integrity of the environment. Phytoremediation is the use of plants to sequester and remove contaminants. In 2008, water samples from Poplar Cove Creek and Cloer Branch in Macon County, NC (located in the Nantahala National Forest) had levels of arsenic ranging from 13.8 to 20.6 ppb. These results are unusually high for Western North Carolina and are higher than the EPA's drinking water standard of 10 ppb. This study sought to determine if two native fern species (Polystichum acrostichoides (Christmas Fern) and Thelypteris noveboracensis (New York Fern)) accumulate arsenic and to determine if these ferns might be suitable for phytoremediation of arsenic. In the greenhouse experiment, ferns were planted in soil spiked with arsenic ranging from 0 (control) to 50 ppm. Initial and final samples were taken of fronds, roots/rhizomes, and soil to determine arsenic concentration levels. Results showed no accumulation of arsenic in the fronds of either fern species; however, arsenic accumulated in the roots of both fern species. T. noveboracensis showed a stronger relationship with arsenic in the soil and ability to take up arsenic than did P. acrostichoides. However, despite these positive results, the amount of arsenic taken up by these native ferns was too little to make their use feasible for phytoremediation of arsenic.


Here is a compact and affordable edition of J. M. Robert's acclaimed world history. Vividly written and beautifully illustrated, it brings the outstanding breadth of scholarship and international scope of the larger volume within the grasp of most readers. Completely up-to-date, comprehensive yet succinct, it takes readers on an amazing journey from the first appearance of Homo sapiens to recent chapters in the exploration of space. Informative, beautifully rendered maps, photographs of key archaeological finds, and stunning reproductions of important artwork (some in full color) bring the past to life as Roberts surveys the major events, developments and personalities that have shaped the civilizations of the world.


Nikolov, A. and D. GANchev, 2011. In vitro antifungal examination of potassium sorbate towards some phytopathogens. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 17: 191-194 Potassium sorbate, a common food preservative, was tested under in vitro conditions according to its inhibi tory activity towards economically important for Bulgaria phytopathogens. conidial (germ tube inhibition) and Thornberry (radial growth assays) tests were conducted in order to be determine such activity. The received results showed that potassium sorbate has a potential to be a developed as a protective fungicide against Monilia