Every contemporary American lawyer who has engaged in litigation is familiar with the now fifty-four-volume treatise, Federal Practice and Procedure. Both of that treatise's named authors, Charles Alan Wright and Arthur Miller, have mourned the death of a Federal Rules regime that they spent much of their professional lives explaining and often celebrating. Wright shared a sense of gloom about federal procedure that he compared to the setting before World War I. Miller has also published a series of articles that chronicled his grief.We agree that something has fundamentally changed. In fact, we believe that we are in the midst of what should be labeled a new era - the fourth in the history of American civil procedure. The first three eras are rather conventional: the first era began with the country's founding; the second era began in the middle of the nineteenth century with the introduction of code pleading; and the third era commenced in 1938 with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.In Part I of this article, we defend the thesis that we are now in a distinct, fourth era. This era is not defined, for the most part, by the introduction of a new set of formal procedural rules; indeed, the formal procedural rules of the third era are largely intact. But if the core values of those rules have been eviscerated by judicial decisions, interred by antipathy, and eulogized by none other than Wright and Miller, we should acknowledge that the third era has, in fact, yielded to a fourth. In Parts II, III, and IV, respectively, we untangle the many forces that conspired to produce this fourth era, offer an unflattering appraisal of it, and begin to plot a strategy for escaping its clutches.


Analysis of hydrologic, geomorphic, and suburbanization data from a small instrumented drainage basin near Iowa City, Iowa, indicates that channel networks are radically altered when suburban development overtakes a drainage basin. Changes in channel networks are such that the network becomes much more efficient in collecting water quickly, so that lag time and kurtosis of storm hydrographs are altered to produce the familiar flash floods of urban areas. The data show that network changes are closely associated with lag time and kurtosis of storm hydrographs and suggest that corrective measures should be concentrated on the internal links of the network. Changes in characteristics of channel networks should be considered in addition to changes in areas of impervious surfaces when the hydrologic impact of suburbanization is assessed.


The aim of this case report is to describe the impact of an intervention for clinical perfectionism, derived from a new cognitive-behavioural analysis, in a patient with binge-eating disorder. It was hypothesized that clinical perfectionism was contributing to the maintenance of the eating disorder, and on this basis it was predicted that reducing clinical perfectionism would improve her eating disorder psychopathology. Standardized independent assessments were found to be consistent with this hypothesis, in that clinical perfectionism and eating disorder psychopathology improved over an eight-session intervention and improvements were largely maintained at 5-month follow-up.


ohn (J) isotherm model stated as log log P = C + n logV , for solid-gas equilibrium, is a unique contribution from India for the study of porous materials. These isotherms are generally characterised by different phases of adsorption marked by a sudden change in slope and sharp kinks in isotherm plots of loglog P versus log V. John isotherm is otherwise known as the phase change method. The isotherm model envisages the degree of porosity, by which the categorisation of porous materials could be done. The volume adsorbed, V(J) corresponding to saturation pressure P s is  taken as the limiting micropore volume (LMV) or John adsorption capacity. The adsorption behaviour of some known microporous carbons has been analysed using John isotherm.  John isotherm along with five other isotherm models, Freundlich, Langmuir, D-R, BET and I plot methods are studied, constants and parameters are compared. There are three carbons, namely GC, its hydrogen treated form H2TGC and the nitric acid treated prodigy NITGC, whose isotherm data available is used to plot John isotherms to report the merits of the isotherm method. The results reveal that John isotherm model give excellent fit to the reported experimental data and provide precise information about the funcional mechanism of adsorption. The study aims to establish the application of John isotherm as a simple empirical isotherm model for characterising the microporosity of carbon materials over a wide range of concentration and relative pressure. The main purpose of this research paper is to reaffirm the application of John isotherm for its universal acceptance to study materials of microporous nature.


Objectives To investigate the construct validity of Script Concordance Testing (SCT) scores as a measure of the clinical reasoning ability of medical students and practising General Practitioners with different levels of clinical experience. Methods Part I involved a cross-sectional study, where 105 medical students, 19 junior registrars and 13 experienced General Practitioners completed the same set of SCT questions, and their mean scores were compared using one-way ANOVA. In Part II, pooled and matched SCT scores for 5 cohorts of students (2012 to 2017) in Year 3 (N=584) and Year 4 (N=598) were retrospectively analysed for evidence of significant progression. Results A significant main effect of clinical experience was observed [F(2, 136)=6.215, p=0.003]. The mean SCT score for General Practitioners (M=70.39, SD=4.41, N=13) was significantly higher (p=0.011) than that of students (M = 64.90, SD = 6.30, N=105). Year 4 students (M=68.90, SD= 7.79, N=584) scored a significantly higher mean score [t(552)=12.78, p<0.001] than Year 3 students (M = 64.03, SD=7.98, N=598). Conclusions The findings that candidate scores increased with increasing level of clinical experience add to current evidence in the international literature in support of the construct validity of Script Concordance Testing. Prospective longitudinal studies with larger sample sizes are recommended to further test and build confidence in the construct validity of SCT scores.


This article is part of a Wisconsin Law Review symposium in honor of the work of Neil Komesar, and particularly his book "Imperfect Alternatives: Choosing Institutions in Law, Economics, and Public Policy." I used this as the main text in 2003 for one of the first law school courses on "The Law of Cybersecurity," even though the book doesn't even mention cybersecurity. The reason was that it was the best single vehicle I had found to prepare students to think critically about comparative institutional analysis, such as how to create institutions that better foster cybersecurity. Part I praises Komesar for recognizing the importance both of market failures and government failures. President Reagan famously summarized the government failure argument: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" More recently, President Obama pointedly joked about the knee-jerk answers of the anti-regulatory crowd: "Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regs, and call us in the morning." This article argues that Komesar does an admirable job of appreciating the interactions of these two sorts of failures, and provides an intellectual underpinning for the approach to cost/benefit analysis now institutionalized in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Part II assesses the imperfect institutional alternatives that apply for the HIPAA medical privacy rule. Although the rule as drafted certainly had flaws, a regulation of this sort seems to have worked better than market-based or other alternatives for protecting medical privacy. Part III analyzes the institutional reasons that U.S. health providers have been slow to adopt electronic health records for patients' clinical records. The Bush administration tried to spur adoption by emphasizing the role of private-sector standards efforts. Adoption appears to be growing much more quickly, however, due to funding for meaningful use of EHRs in the 2009 stimulus bill. The combination of funding and standards incorporated into regulations appear to be working better than alternatives for overcoming coordination problems for EHRs. Part IV examines the institutional alternatives for U.S. governance of Internet privacy. Self-regulatory efforts have been important in changing industry practices. Legislation, however, may well improve practices in the area compared with sole reliance on such self-regulatory initiatives. Part V examines imperfect alternatives for cybersecurity. As Komesar teaches, the features that make an issue difficult for one institution (such as a market approach to cybersecurity) often make the issue similarly difficult for another institution (such as government rules for cybersecurity). The analysis here suggests caution about proposed cybersecurity legislation, while acknowledging significant and continuing market failures. Part VI examines the relatively limited role for the courts in governing these information policy issues, notably because systemic change of information practices is often a bad fit for the case-by-case approach of adjudication. In conclusion, Komesar's work usefully informs the major information policy issues facing policy makers today.


Cost-based optimization is widely known to suffer from a major weakness: administrators spend a significant amount of time to tune the associated cost models. This problem only gets exacerbated in cross-platform settings as there are many more parameters that need to be tuned. In the era of machine learning (ML), the first step to remedy this problem is to replace the cost model of the optimizer with an ML model. However, such a solution brings in two major challenges. First, the optimizer has to transform a query plan to a vector million times during plan enumeration incurring a very high overhead. Second, a lot of training data is required to effectively train the ML model. We overcome these challenges in Robopt, a novel vector-based optimizer we have built for Rheem, a cross-platform system. Robopt not only uses an ML model to prune the search space but also bases the entire plan enumeration on a set of algebraic operations that operate on vectors, which are a natural fit to the ML model. This leads to both speed-up and scale-up of the enumeration process by exploiting modern CPUs via vectorization. We also accompany Robopt with a scalable training data generator for building its ML model. Our evaluation shows that (i) the vector-based approach is more efficient and scalable than simply using an ML model and (ii) Robopt matches and, in some cases, improves Rheem's cost-based optimizer in choosing good plans without requiring any tuning effort.


A significant contribution to political ecology, Conservation Is Our Government Now is an ethnographic examination of the history and social effects of conservation and development efforts in Papua New Guinea. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted over a period of seven years, Paige West focuses on the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area, the site of a biodiversity conservation project implemented between 1994 and 1999. She describes the interactions between those who ran the program—mostly ngo workers—and the Gimi people who live in the forests surrounding Crater Mountain. West shows that throughout the project there was a profound disconnect between the goals of the two groups. The ngo workers thought that they would encourage conservation and cultivate development by teaching Gimi to value biodiversity as an economic resource. The villagers expected that in exchange for the land, labor, food, and friendship they offered the conservation workers, they would receive benefits, such as medicine and technology. In the end, the divergent nature of each group's expectations led to disappointment for both.

West reveals how every aspect of the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area—including ideas of space, place, environment, and society—was socially produced, created by changing configurations of ideas, actions, and material relations not only in Papua New Guinea but also in other locations around the world. Complicating many of the assumptions about nature, culture, and development underlying contemporary conservation efforts, Conservation Is Our Government Now demonstrates the unique capacity of ethnography to illuminate the relationship between the global and the local, between transnational processes and individual lives.


The pathogenesis of osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) baffled physiologists and physicians for over a century. Most past efforts to explain it depended heavily on cell and molecular biology and on changes in the material properties of affected bones (an old idea that OI patients could not make enough bone erred). To such views the still-evolving Utah paradigm of skeletal physiology can add a model for bone and bones that depends on errors in three genetically-determined features. The errors include, 1,2) elevated "set points" of the strain-dependent thresholds that help to control how lamellar bone modeling and remodeling adapt bone strength, architecture and "mass" to the voluntary loads on load-bearing bones; 3) and a reduced modeling-rate limit for the appositional rate of the lamellar bone formation drifts that can increase bone strength, outside bone diameters, cortical and trabecular thickness, and bone "mass". If only abnormalities #1,#2 occurred, that should limit the eventual strength, architecture and "mass" of load-bearing bones, while if only #3 occurred that should prolong or delay how long it took to achieve the above limits, but without changing them. Equally, in driving from New York to Boston, stopping at New Haven would prevent reaching Boston no matter how rapidly one drove (a limited trip). But by not stopping one could reach Boston by driving very slowly (a prolonged but not a limited trip). This model concerns general features of bone and bones in OI that would need study and explanation at the tissue, cellular and molecular-biologic levels. Other places and people must discuss any devils in the details, as well as collagenous tissue, auditory, dental and other problems in OI, and the effects of treatment on the above features.


Objectives: To predict symptomatology (post-traumatic distress, fatigue, and burnout) due to acute and chronic work related stressors among ambulance personnel. Methods: Data were gathered from 123 ambulance workers in The Netherlands in a longitudinal design. At two measurements they completed standardised questionnaires to assess health symptoms, such as the Impact of Event Scale, the Maslach Burnout Inventory, and the Checklist Individual Strength. Acute stressors were assessed with specific questions, and chronic work related stressors were measured with the Questionnaire on the Experience and Assessment of Work. Results: Most of the ambulance workers had been confronted with acute stressors in their work. They also reported more chronic work related stressors than a reference group. Of the participants, more than a tenth suffered from a clinical level of post-traumatic distress, a tenth reported a fatigue level that put them at high risk for sick leave and work disability and nearly a tenth of the personnel suffered from burnout. Best predictors of symptomatology at time 2 were lack of social support at work and poor communication, such as not being informed about important decisions within the organisation. Conclusions: Ambulance personnel are at risk to develop health symptoms due to work related stressors. Although, acute stressors are related to health symptoms, such as fatigue, burnout, and post-traumatic symptoms, it was not found to predict health symptoms in the long term. Main risk factors have to do with social aspects of the work environment, in particular lack of support from the supervisor as well as colleagues and poor communication. When implementing workplace interventions these social aspects need to be taken into account.


A discipline will usually become the object of study and its relationship to other disciplines a moment of concern when its borders are precarious and its definition in dispute. Law, 'the oldest social science', is arguably both prior to discipline — it emerges initially and most forcefully as a practice — and without discipline, its object being potentially all human behaviour. If law is necessarily between and among disciplines, both prone to moonlighting and everywhere homeless, it will also always be in some mode of scholarly crisis. Certain conclusions follow. Law is paradoxically dependent upon other disciplines for its access to the domains that it regulates. The greater its epistemic dependency, however, the slighter its political acknowledgment of that subordination. Which allows a positive thesis: the epistemic drift of law can carry the discipline to a frank acknowledgment of the value of indiscipline both to novelty and intellection.


Conventional computer testing systems usually offer items (questions) where examinees can only select one or more answers. In these systems, there is a fixed number of items to be administered to students. This implies that all students must answer the same number of questions, independently of their knowledge level. By contrast, adaptive testing systems are able to make more accurate predictions of student knowledge level with shorter tests, by choosing the most adequate item to ask next, depending on the current estimation of student knowledge level. In order to be reliable, adaptive testing requires a well-founded underlying theory. The theory mainly used is the Item Response Theory. On the other hand, items that usually appear in adaptive tests have a simple and maybe boring format: a stem and a set of answers. In this paper, a library of templates for the automatic construction of more sophisticated items is presented. These types of items are used in SIETTE, an adaptive web-based system for knowledge assessment by means of tests. This system also provides the capability of generating isomorphic items. With the same mechanism used in the construction of this library, SIETTE has been provided with the capability of restricting the time consumed by students while taking tests.


It is well known in marketing that colour imposes an important influence on human behaviour. However, only little research has been dedicated to the influence of price colour on price judgement for non-discounted prices. Within the framework of this master thesis, two experiments are conducted and analysed, one with a focus on offline distribution (retail store setting) and one paying special attention to online channels. The influence of red or blue coloured prices is evaluated with regards to perceived price, perceived value, and purchase intention. Price and value are shown to be perceived significantly better if coloured prices are used. This fact holds true for the offline and, frequently, the online setting as well as for red and for blue price colour. The effects are more common for low involvement products compared to high involvement offerings. Furthermore, the results indicate that priming the respective colour enhances the influence of coloured prices. Limitations as well as theoretical and practical implications are discussed and further research directions are suggested.


Bone marrow (BM) derived stem cells contribute to the regeneration of diverse adult tissues including heart, liver and brain following BM transplantation. Trans- differentiation is a mechanism proposed to explain how tissue specific stem cells could generate cells of other organs, thus supporting the emerging concept of enhanced adult stem cell plasticity. New studies have demonstrated that spontaneous cell fusion rather than trans-differentiation is the cause of unexpected cell fate changes in vivo. In contrast, several authors have reported that trans-differentiation can occur in vitro in the absence of cell fusion, including the generation of neural derivatives from non-neural tissues. These findings have profound implications for stem cell biology and cell replacement therapy, and as a result require extensive validation. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) nave been isolated from the postnatal BM and more recently many other sites including adipose tissue, skin and placental cord blood. As such these cells have attracted interest as candidates for cell replacement therapies. This interest follows recent observations both in vitro and in transplant studies that these cells are capable of broader differentiation potential beyond those cell lineages associated with the organ in which they reside. The aim of the present thesis was to examine the developmental plasticity of MSCs in vitro including the capacity of these cells to cross lineage boundaries by differentiating into neuro-ectodermal cell derivatives. There are no universally accepted procedures for the prospective isolation of these cells. In the present thesis, procedures for the isolation of MSCs from rat BM and optimal conditions for the propagation of these cells in culture without loss of multipotent differentiation potential and proliferative capacity are first described. Secondly, the response of cultured MSCs with a consistent immunophenotype to defined culture conditions, previously reported to induce neuronal differentiation of MSCs are evaluated. Thirdly, evidence is presented that suggests that previous claims of trans-differentiation and apparent changes in cell phenotype have been incorrectly interpreted. Evidence is provided that MSCs respond to neural cues in vitro with a stress response, which is characterized by aberrant changes in the expression of constitutive neural proteins, an event previously interpreted as trans-differentiation. MSCs do not have the attributes of early or mature neural derivatives and therefore such changes in protein expression do not equate to true neural differentiation. Finally, evidence is presented that demonstrates that MSCs cultured under defined culture conditions release soluble factors that instruct a neurogenic cell fate decision on neural stem cells (NSCs). In addition, these soluble factors also increase neurite outgrowth of Tuj-1+ differentiating cell progeny. These effects may in part explain the therapeutic benefit of MSG transplantation in animal models of CNS lesions.


This thesis comes under the terms of Clause 3.2 in the booklet Research Degrees, Regulations and Notes for Guidance for the University of North London where it is stated that 'A candidate may undertake a programme of research in which the candidate's own creative work forms, as a point of origin or reference, a significant part of the intellectual enquiry.' This work, 'shall have been undertaken as part of the registered research programme.' Furthermore, it is stated that the 'creative work shall be... set in its relevant theoretical, historical, critical or design context.' (University of North London 1996: 6)

The creative work consists of 65 poems intended for an audience of children and the critical work of the thesis is a process of research into the sources and origins of those poems. It is therefore an enquiry that seeks to uncover how a highly specific mode of literature comes to be written.

It is my contention that descriptions of such a process are unsatisfactory unless they incorporate and combine the following four elements:

i) an examination of how the particular self under consideration (me) was formed in a specific socioeconomic, and cultural moment;
ii) an examination of how, within that moment, that self engaged with the texts made available in the institutions it occupied;
iii) an explanation of how the writing involved a synthesis of experiences - of life, texts and audiences;
iv) an explanation of how a writer reads his or her own writing.

The first two of these elements comprise the 'historical.. .context' noted above and the second two offer aspects of a 'theoretical.. .context'.


The Sacramento Basin is part of the Great Valley, a prolific hydrocarbon province that is the remnant of a late Mesozoic-early Cenozoic forearc basin in California. A series of buried submarine canyons extend seaward from the eastern margin of the forearc. These "gorges" formed during multiple episodes of relative sea-level fall during the Tertiary, truncating Late Cretaceous through Eocene marine and nonmarine sandstones. Mud-stones dominate the canyon fills, creating lateral and top seals for numerous gas reservoirs.


In the period from 1970 to the early 1990s, Republican leaders launched three major reforms of the federal system. Although all three initiatives advanced decentralization as a goal, they were remarkably different in their policy objectives, philosophical assumptions, patterns of politics, and policy outcomes. Expanding and updating his acclaimed book, New Federalism: Intergovernmental Reform from Nixon to Reagan (1988), Timothy Conlan provides a comprehensive look at intergovernmental reform from Nixon to the 104th Congress. The stated objectives of Republican reformers evolved from rationalizing and decentralizing an activist government, to rolling back the welfare state, to replacing it altogether. Conlan first explains why conservatives have placed so much emphasis on federal reform in their domestic agendas. He then examines Nixon's New Federalism, including management reforms and revenue sharing; analyzes the policies and politics of the "Reagan revolution"; and reviews the legislative limitations and achievements of the 104th Congress. Finally, he traces the remarkable evolution of federalism reform politics and ideology during the past 30 years and provides alternative scenarios for the future of American federalism.


This thesis examines responses to displacement and suffering among a small Muslim
population presently resident in post-Soviet Russia. The Meskhetian Turks were
deported from Georgia in 1944, and resettled in Central Asia. In 1989, violent attacks
led to further migration of most Meskhetian Turks in Uzbekistan. Some moved to
Krasnodar in southern Russia, where they continue to suffer discrimination by the
region's authorities. The thesis examines how Meskhetian Turks live in diaspora, and
how their traumatic experiences have been integrated into and mediated through
everyday and life-cycle practices. It critiques the representation of post-Soviet and
post-displacement lives as dominated by crisis, arguing that Meskhetian Turks rather
emphasise continuity and the mundane experience of life in diaspora.
The events of 1989 and 1944 are rarely discussed, are not commemorated and do not
consolidate a political community. I argue that this absence of discussion of suffering in
this context is consistent with wider Meskhetian Turkish practices of restraint in the
verbal expression of personal feelings and desires. While silence must be examined as
a language for expression of pain, absence of commemoration can also be integral to
the continual process of living ordinary lives in diaspora. Such continuity is partly
obtained through stressing the importance of being a related person. The construction
of new kin at marriage occasions the most significant Meskhetian Turkish celebrations,
which themselves highlight the value attached to mundane domestic practices
constitutive of Meskhetian Turkish persons and households.
Rather than being blamed for their suffering, the Soviet Union is celebrated, and its
disappearance provides the basis for acceptable public expression of loss. But neither
the positive affiliation with a state, nor village association as a form of relatedness, rely
on identification with a physical place. The thesis thus questions the assumption of
refugees' and others' territorial identification.


This paper reports research in progress. It presents information in the literature on converting traditional courses into Web-Based format. The paper is divided into four parts. The first part makes an introduction to Distance Education (DE) and Web-Based Instruction (WBI) which combines features from both face-toface classroom instruction and DE. The second part discusses current Instructional Design (ID) models for WBI. In the third part, findings from the literature on converting existing courses into Web-based format are discussed. This part includes information in the following categories: How to start the conversion to the WBI, student and instructor support, design issues, interaction among people, and assessment. In the last part, a model proposing an orderly process for converting courses into Web-Based format will be explained.


In the UK, following the Crime and Disorder Act of 1998, the Youth Justice Board (YJB) funded over 450 separate crime prevention schemes. The YJB in approving these various schemes stressed the importance of monitoring and evaluation. Local evaluators were appointed whose role was to report back to the funding agency and the national evaluators. We were commissioned to undertake the local evaluation of four separate schemes. This article attempts an overview of the evaluation process and identifies five crucial areas that raise questions about whether the Youth Offending Teams are the 'unqualified success' and such a fine example of 'joined-up government' that the Youth Justice Board claims (YJB, 2001). In this article, we examine the setting up process (and offer a case study of one particular scheme), issues of inter-agency work and the links between schemes and local communities; procedures and protocols and on what evidence policy was being based; the relationship between the national and local evaluators (and other stakeholders); and finally, the feasibility of achieving the scheme's ambitions given the duration of the funding and the resources available.


Plant cell wall (CW) synthesizing enzymes can be divided into the glycan (i.e. cellulose and callose) synthases, which are multimembrane spanning proteins located at the plasma membrane, and the glycosyltransferases (GTs), which are Golgi localized single membrane spanning proteins, believed to participate in the synthesis of hemicellulose, pectin, mannans, and various glycoproteins. At the Carbohydrate-Active enZYmes (CAZy) database where e.g. glucoside hydrolases and GTs are classified into gene families primarily based on amino acid sequence similarities, 415 Arabidopsis GTs have been classified. Although much is known with regard to composition and fine structures of the plant CW, only a handful of CW biosynthetic GT genes—all classified in the CAZy system—have been characterized. In an effort to identify CW GTs that have not yet been classified in the CAZy database, a simple bioinformatics approach was adopted. First, the entire Arabidopsis proteome was run through the Transmembrane Hidden Markov Model 2.0 server and proteins containing one or, more rarely, two transmembrane domains within the N-terminal 150 amino acids were collected. Second, these sequences were submitted to the SUPERFAMILY prediction server, and sequences that were predicted to belong to the superfamilies NDP-sugartransferase, UDP-glycosyltransferase/glucogen-phosphorylase, carbohydrate-binding domain, Gal-binding domain, or Rossman fold were collected, yielding a total of 191 sequences. Fifty-two accessions already classified in CAZy were discarded. The resulting 139 sequences were then analyzed using the Three-Dimensional-Position-Specific Scoring Matrix and mGenTHREADER servers, and 27 sequences with similarity to either the GT-A or the GT-B fold were obtained. Proof of concept of the present approach has to some extent been provided by our recent demonstration that two members of this pool of 27 non-CAZy-classified putative GTs are xylosyltransferases involved in synthesis of pectin rhamnogalacturonan II (J. Egelund, B.L. Petersen, A. Faik, M.S. Motawia, C.E. Olsen, T. Ishii, H. Clausen, P. Ulvskov, and N. Geshi, unpublished data).


This study presents the development and application of Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) for blended learning environment (BLE) to a university located in rural area of the Philippines with limited technological resources for online learning. Each element of TPACK model was used as a guide in the development of teaching plan for a blended learning environment. A randomized pretest and posttest quasi-experimental research design was used in this experiment to determine the significant difference on the posttest sores of the experimental and control group regarding their achievement test in Computer Fundamentals. Participants of the study consisted 90 freshmen Bachelor of Science in Information Technology students, 45 students each comprising the experimental and control group. An item-analyzed multiple-choice achievement test floated before and after the experiment. Result revealed that successful integration of technology in a technology-deprived university using TPACK model for BLE was evident. Regarding student learning, results revealed that both the experimental and control group slightly increased their mean score using the blended learning approach and traditional teaching inside the classroom. Hence, it is recommended to continuously focus on PCK to further improve the TPACK model for BLE for school in rural areas.


Oxygen is the most abundant element in the Earth, constituting about 43 percent by weight of the crust and mantle. While most of this mass is incorporated into silicates, the next most abundant mineral group in the planet is the oxides. The oxide minerals are generally considered to be those oxygen-based minerals that do not contain a distinct polyanionic species such as OH−, CO32−, SO42− PO43−, SiO44−, etc. The oxide structures are also of interest in mineral physics, because, at high pressure, many silicates are known to adopt structures similar to the dense oxides (see Hazen and Finger, this volume).

Oxide minerals, because of their compositional diversity and structural simplicity, have played a special role in the development of comparative crystal chemistry. Many of the systematic empirical relationships regarding the behavior of structures with changing temperature and pressure were first defined and illustrated with examples drawn from these phases. Oxides thus provide a standard for describing and interpreting the behavior of more complex compounds. Our principal objectives here are to review the mineral structures that have been studied at elevated temperatures and pressures, to compile thermal expansion and compression data for the various structural elements in a consistent fashion, and to explore systematic aspects of their structural behavior at nonambient conditions. The large and growing number of single-crystal structure investigations of the simpler or more important dense oxides at high pressures and temperatures warrant this comparative synthesis.

Regarding thermal expansion for various structural elements, we have chosen to assume linear expansion coefficients. This approach facilitates comparison across disparate structures and methodologies, and it reflects the reality that data are not sufficiently precise in many cases to permit the meaningful derivation of second-order thermal expansion parameters. For compression …


Abstract. Identification of high potential risk and susceptible zones for natural hazards of geological origin is one of the most important applications of advanced remote sensing technology. Yearly, several landslides occur during heavy monsoon rainfall in Kelantan River basin, Peninsular Malaysia. Flooding and subsequent landslide occurrences generated significant damage to livestock, agricultural produce, homes and businesses in the Kelantan River basin. In this study, remote sensing data from the recently launched Landsat-8 and Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar-2 (PALSAR-2) on board the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2) were used to map geologic structural and topographical features in the Kelantan River basin for identification of high potential risk and susceptible zones for landslides and flooding areas. The data were processed for a comprehensive analysis of major geological structures and detailed characterizations of lineaments, drainage patterns and lithology at both regional and district scales. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach was used for landslide susceptibility mapping. Several factors such as slope, aspect, soil, lithology, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), land cover, distance to drainage, precipitation, distance to fault and distance to the road were extracted from remote sensing satellite data and fieldwork to apply the AHP approach. Directional convolution filters were applied to ALOS-2 data for identifying linear features in particular directions and edge enhancement in the spatial domain. Results indicate that lineament occurrence at regional scale was mainly linked to the N–S trending of the Bentong–Raub Suture Zone (BRSZ) in the west and Lebir Fault Zone in the east of the Kelantan state. The combination of different polarization channels produced image maps that contain important information related to water bodies, wetlands and lithological units. The N–S, NE–SW and NNE–SSW lineament trends and dendritic, sub-dendritic and rectangular drainage patterns were detected in the Kelantan River basin. The analysis of field investigation data indicates that many of flooded areas were associated with high potential risk zones for hydrogeological hazards such as wetlands, urban areas, floodplain scroll, meander bend, dendritic and sub-dendritic drainage patterns, which are located in flat topographic regions. Numerous landslide points were located in a rectangular drainage system that is associated with a topographic slope of metamorphic and quaternary rock units. Consequently, structural and topographical geology maps were produced for Kelantan River basin using PALSAR-2 data, which could be broadly applicable for landslide hazard mapping and identification of high potential risk zone for hydrogeological hazards. Geohazard mitigation programs could be conducted in the landslide recurrence regions and flooded areas to reduce natural catastrophes leading to loss of life and financial investments in the Kelantan River basin. In this investigation, Landsat-8 and ALOS-2 have proven to successfully provide advanced Earth observation satellite data for disaster monitoring in tropical environments.


These Proceedings are composed of a selection of papers of the Workshop on Advances in Methodology and Applications of Decision Support Systems, organized by the System and Decision Sciences (SDS) Program of IIASA and the Japan Institute of Systems Research (JISR). The workshop was held at IIASA on August 20-22, 1990.

The Methodology of Decision Analysis (MDA) Project of the SDS Program focuses on a system-analytical approach to decision support and is devoted to developing methodology, software and applications of decision support systems concentrated primarily around interactive systems for data analysis, interpretation and multiobjective decisionmaking, including uncertainty analysis and group decision making situations in both their cooperative and noncooperative aspects.

The objectives of the research on decision support systems (DSS) performed in cooperation with the MDA Project are to: compare various approaches to decision support systems; advance theory and methodology of decision support; convert existing theories and methodologies into usable (simple to use, user-friendly and robust) tools that could easily be used in solving real-life problems.

A principal characteristic of decision support systems is that they must be tuned to specific decision situations, to complex real-life characteristics of every application. Even if the theory and methodology of decision support is quite advanced, every application might provide impulses for further theoretical and methodological advances. Therefore the principle underlying this project is that theoretical and methodological research should be strongly connected to the implementation and applications of its results to sufficiently complicated, real-life examples. This approach results in obtaining really applicable working tools for decision support.

The papers for this Proceedings have been selected according to the above summarized framework of the research activities. Therefore, the papers deal both with theoretical and methodological problems and with real-life applications.


ABSTRACT Sports concussions are recognized as significant injuries among young athletes. Research demonstrates that return-to-play prior to becoming asymptomatic has significant repercussions including sustained cognitive deficits. Many programs have begun to use computerized testing rather than traditional neuropsychological tests to (a) determine baseline performance, (b) track symptoms, and (c) measure symptoms following concussion. Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT) is one such tool. The current study examined ImPACT's convergent and discriminant validity by comparing scores from sports-related concussion athletes (SRC) to those from nonconcussed controls (CTL). SRC included 29 athletes, ages 12–16, referred for neuropsychological assessment following sports-related concussions. CTL included 25 healthy athletes, ages 12–16, who were concussion-free in the past year. Overall, results showed general support for ImPACT, when used to screen cognition. In fact, all ImPACT domains successfully differentiated between SRC and CTL athletes. Evidence supporting appropriate convergent validity was best for the Visual Memory domain. Further, ImPACT domains demonstrated variable discriminant validity. Overall examination of validity demonstrated that ImPACT has some weaknesses but may have utility in detecting postconcussion cognitive impairment.


The GRACE model is a multi-sector, multi-regional, recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model. It was developed for long-term economic analysis of climate change impacts and greenhouse gas abatement policy. The purpose of this report is to provide a description of the model and make available the model equations and structure. This will help in understanding and critically examining the results obtained using GRACE.


All Phytophthora ramorum EU1 lineage isolates tested are of A1 mating type, except for three rare isolates from 2002 to 2003 from Belgium, which were originally assigned the A2 mating type. In one of these isolates (2338), a switch from A2 to A1 mating type was observed in 2006. This observation initiated a larger study in which all cultures and subcultures of the original three EU1 A2 isolates, maintained in three laboratories under different storage conditions, were checked for mating type change. The A2 to A1 mating type switch was observed in four of seven independently maintained isolates that were derived from isolate 2338 in two laboratories, using different transfer regimes and storage conditions. Following the mating type switch to A1 in these four derived isolates, no reversion back to A2 mating was observed, even after up to 5 years of additional isolate maintenance and several more subculturing events. The three other isolates that were derived from isolate 2338 as well as the other EU1 A2 isolates collected in 2002 and 2003 and stored in the same conditions did not display such mating type change. The potential causes of the mating type conversions as well as their epidemiological implications are discussed.


In 2008, 115 pedal cyclists were killed and 2,450 reported as seriously injured on Britain's roads, accounting for 9% of all killed or seriously injured (KSI) road casualties. The Government is committed to reducing road casualties for all road users, including cyclists, and has a national casualty target of reducing by 40% the number of people KSI in road collisionsby 2010, compared with the baseline average for 1994-98. Whilst there isno specific target relating to cyclists, in 2004 the number of KSI had fallen to 38% below the baseline average. However, the number of KSI has increased steadily since then and in 2007 and 2008 was 31% below the baseline average. The Department for Transport commissioned research to understand the reasons for this increase and to assess the causes of collisions involving cyclists. This report by J Knowles et al investigates the key causal factors relating to collisions involving cyclists. The work involved an international literature review and a detailed analysis of cyclist casualties in Great Britain, drawing on both national and in-depth databases ofroad collisions and cycling. The main source of the casualty data was the national STATS19 injury accident data for 1994-2007. Contributory factor data has been recorded nationally as part of the STATS19 system from 2005 and is also reported. The main source of cycling activity data was the National Travel Survey (NTS). (A)


LIGUORI, G,. G. SORTINO, P. INGLESE and V. FARINA, 2016. Quality changes during postharvest life in white fl eshed peach (Prunus persica L. Batsch) fruits: preliminary observations. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 22: 497–504 Sicilian white fl esh peach fruits ecotypes are characterized by a persistent aroma and excellent fl avor that is highly appreciated by consumers. Nevertheless, they reach only regional markets, because of fruit sensitivity to decay and the poor information about their postharvest physiology and shelf-life. In this trial, we studied quality changes during postharvest life of non-melting white-fl esh peach ecotypes 'Tudia', 'Bella di Bivona' and the cultivar 'Daniela'. Fruits were collected at commercial ripening: a fi rst group was submitted to analytical evaluations and another one was stored (2°C, 90% RH) for 32 days. During this storage period, fruits were submitted to four shelf-life periods at ambient temperature (22°C) for 6 days and analyzed every 3th and 6th day. In the period of shelf-life, during storage of fruit at 2°C, we ascertained that Bella di Bivona and Daniela have a shelf-life of 12–14 days while 'Tudia' could reach up to 25–32 days. Flesh fi rmness and chilling injuries trends, during shelf-life, allowed to discover 'Tudia' as the variety which presents the best performance after storage at low temperatures for long periods.


We examine the transport properties of a particular two-dimensional, inviscid incompressible flow using dynamical systems techniques. The velocity field is time periodic and consists of the field induced by a vortex pair plus an oscillating strainrate field. In the absence of the strain-rate field the vortex pair moves with a constant velocity and carries with it a constant body of fluid. When the strain-rate field is added the picture changes dramatically; fluid is entrained and detrained from the neighbourhood of the vortices and chaotic particle motion occurs. We investigate the mechanism for this phenomenon and study the transport and mixing of fluid in this flow. Our work consists of both numerical and analytical studies. The analytical studies include the interpretation of the invariant manifolds as the underlying structure which govern the transport. For small values of strain-rate amplitude we use Melnikov's technique to investigate the behaviour of the manifolds as the parameters of the problem change and to prove the existence of a horseshoe map and thus the existence of chaotic particle paths in the flow. Using the Melnikov technique once more we develop an analytical estimate of the flux rate into and out of the vortex neighbourhood. We then develop a technique for determining the residence time distribution for fluid particles near the vortices that is valid for arbitrary strainrate amplitudes. The technique involves an understanding of the geometry of the tangling of the stable and unstable manifolds and results in a dramatic reduction in computational effort required for the determination of the residence time distributions. Additionally, we investigate the total stretch of material elements while they are in the vicinity of the vortex pair, using this quantity as a measure of the effect of the horseshoes on trajectories passing through this region. The numerical work verifies the analytical predictions regarding the structure of the invariant manifolds, the mechanism for entrainment and detrainment and the flux rate.


Although we cannot be certain that science fiction directly influenced the course that computing technology has taken over the past 50 years (1950-2000), the genre has, at the very least, anticipated the technologies we are using and developing. Speculation about our future human relationship to computers, and to technology in general, has been the province of science fiction for at least a hundred years. But not all of that speculation has been as optimistic as those in the computing profession might assume. While cautionary tales in science fiction are plentiful and varied, the genre is also filled with more optimistic speculation about computer technology that will help save time, improve health, and generally benefit life as we know it. If we take a look at some of this speculation-both optimistic and pessimistic-as if it were prediction, it turns out that many science fiction authors have envisioned the future as accurately as historians have chronicled the past. Prediction is difficult, goes the joke, especially when it comes to the future. Yet science fiction authors have taken their self-imposed charters seriously; they've tested countless technologies in the virtual environments of their fiction.


The paper provides an insight on student satisfaction in a higher education institution (HEI) within the context of a quasi-government environment. Students' opinions about factors related to academic life are sought in the form of a satisfaction feedback questionnaire. This survey aims to investigate issues viewed as important to students by seeking their opinion on a number of factors related to teaching, assessment and support provided by the HEI and its courses. A new model that is based on SERVQUAL framework is proposed that suited the quasi-government environment. The case study was conducted at a quasi-government HEI located in Pahang on the East Coast of Malaysia. Based on the results of this comprehensive study, it is clear that many of the physical aspects of the HEI services were viewed as important relating to student satisfaction. Student feedback confirms that they do receive high quality teaching from staff with high levels of expertise in their various academic disciplines. The lecture and tutorial are considered as the core service provided by the HEI. Students are prepared to tolerate largely deficiencies in the physical aspects of the facilities as long as the teaching they receive is perceived to be at the acceptable level. The concept of the service-product bundle is a valid and reliable tool for the design of a satisfaction survey and segments a HEI's service offering in such a way as to allow management to target resources at those areas that are perceived to be low satisfaction and high importance. This research model can be utilized in most HEIs establishments.


The emergence of LED luminaires that can be dimmed rapidly and frequently enables radical innovations in street lighting automation. It is possible to save considerable amounts of energy by adjusting street lighting according to the movements of individual road users. Since the same lights are often used for illuminating both vehicle lanes and sidewalks, it is necessary to detect both vehicles and pedestrians. A simulation of vehicle and pedestrian traffic is interfaced to a distributed street lighting system based on the IEC 61499 standard, in order to quantify the energy saving potential of a street lighting automation system that exploits real-time sensing information of individual road users while conforming to traffic safety related requirements for road lighting.


Supply Chain Management for Sustainable Food Networks provides an up-to-date and interdisciplinary framework for designing and operating sustainable supply chains for agri-food products. Focus is given to decision-making procedures and methodologies enabling policy-makers, managers and practitioners to design and manage effectively sustainable agrifood supply chain networks.
Authored by high profile researchers with global expertise in designing and operating sustainable supply chains in the agri-food industry, this book:

Features the entire hierarchical decision-making process for managing sustainable agrifood supply chains.
Covers knowledge-based farming, management of agricultural wastes, sustainability, green supply chain network design, safety, security and traceability, IT in agrifood supply chains, carbon footprint management, quality management, risk management and policy- making.
Explores green supply chain management, sustainable knowledge-based farming, corporate social responsibility, environmental management and emerging trends in agri-food retail supply chain operations.
Examines sustainable practices that are unique for agriculture as well as practices that already have been implemented in other industrial sectors such as green logistics and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
Supply Chain Management for Sustainable Food Networks provides a useful resource for researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, regulators and C-level executives that deal with strategic decision-making. Post-graduate students in the field of agriculture sciences, engineering, operations management, logistics and supply chain management will also benefit from this book.


This study aims to examine the literature related to shariah compliance in the Scopus database. Furthermore, classification and critical commentary were applied to find a new direction for developing studies on shariah compliance in Islamic economics. The bibliometric approach was used to analyse 233 articles, while a systematic literature review was used to classify issues from 82 articles on this paradigm. The results showed that the examined studies grew significantly and were influential in developing the shariah compliance paradigm. This was indicated by the author's highest m-index of 0.666. However, this literature primarily concerns financial institutions and their relationship with the paradigm, followed by related literature in various industries, with extensive discussion on ethics and in the normative context. In this regard, shariah compliance issues can be classified into three topics, namely Islamic banks, non-bank financial institutions, and general firms. Shariah compliance was insufficiently used as an instrument to measure the product restructuring impact of an Islamic bank and a reflection of the compliance from the customer psychology perspective. In this context, it is necessary to transform the paradigm into "preventing exploitation" by introducing the customer exploitation index.


Version 1.0 2015 estimates of numbers of live births per grid square, with national totals adjusted to match UN national estimates on numbers of live births (http://esa.un.org/wpp/).


In many European countries, one or more general population surveys have been carried out to get an impression of the characteristics of illicit drug use at national level. Despite valuable efforts to standardise national drug surveys among the general populations in European Member States and to enhance cross-national comparability, national drug surveys still use different instruments, reporting formats and methodologies. To facilitate the comparison of survey practices in EU countries and to provide a tool for everyone planning, organising or executing a survey about drug use among the general population, a meta-analysis of 25 population surveys on drug use in Europe was carried out, including intrinsic and methodological discussions and a description of financial sources, timetables and accessibility of the fieldwork and data documentation. The analysis presented here is part of a larger feasibility study of a repetitive drug survey among the general population in Belgium.


This paper compares two distinct perspectives on the growth of mass media in India. On the one hand we have the institutional and business perspective commonly employed in the assessment of the growth and diversification of print, electronic, and online media. This perspective asserts itself in the media discourse measuring the growth in revenues of mass media, media diversity, consumption of media products, popularity and penetration of various types of content and the like. On the other hand there is the development communication perspective, which is dominated by the political economic critique questioning the benefits the development and diversification of mass media has delivered to the masses. An ongoing research on 'NGDO perception of their relationship with their stakeholders' conducted by the author of this paper, addresses this aspect. Preliminary findings with respect to NGDO interaction with mass media suggest that the appearance of 'development news' in mainstream media can largely be traced as the history of repeated press releases and other efforts made by the NGDOs. Respondent NGDOs also acknowledge that it is essential for them to get press coverage because it enhances NGO profile which in turn helps securing funding opportunities for their programmes and development interventions in the community. Although, the hard found positioning in the news may be advantageous for NGDOs' institutional development, it does lend itself to criticism whether it actually translates into a tangible and sustainable gain for the beneficiary communities serviced by these NGDOs—for instance, in terms of developing and fostering wider-community networks, addressing of local issues, access to markets for local products etc. In a comprehensive model the authors map the higher levels of media interest at policy levels and corporate PR to its lowest ebb at the grassroots development activity. The drivers of mass media growth are deeply rooted in the modernity paradigm, which is quite paradoxical with the elements of participatory development and communication. Often it is assumed that growth of Internet Technologies and Interactive Online Media demonstrates potential to pull the traditional mass media out of the modernity paradigm by encouraging and accommodating participation of the masses. However, in India, access to these new media is by far limited to urban middle-class, whereas the emergence of a truly deliberative and participatory democracy would solicit an active participation of the vast majority of the rural population, in both consumption and creation of content. Citation: Naqvi, M. (2011), Growth and diversification of mass media in India: Whose interests, whose ideas? Presented to International Conference on 'Diversity and Plurality in Media: Reflections of Society', Dec 27-28, Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism and Communication,


We have a law of civil procedure, criminal procedure, and administrative procedure, but we have no law of legislative procedure. This failure has serious consequences in the field of statutory interpretation. Using simple rules garnered from Congress itself, this Article argues that those rules are capable of transforming the field of statutory interpretation. Addressing canonical cases in the field, from Holy Trinity to Bock Laundry, from Weber to Public Citizen, this article shows how cases studied by vast numbers of law students are made substantially more manageable, and in some cases quite simple, through knowledge of congressional procedure. No longer need legislative history always be a search for one's friends.Call this a decision theory of statutory interpretation. This approach is based on how Congress does in fact make decisions and thus is a positive theory. Normatively, it has the advantage of privileging text without blinding judges either to relevant information or to their duty to implement Congress's decisions, including Congress's own decisionmaking methods. It may also have the side benefit of reducing legislative incentives to manipulate the rules or to engage in strategic behavior to induce particular statutory interpretations.


A research problem that has received increased attention in recent years is extending Bayesian nonparametric methods to include dependence on covariates. Limited attention, however, has been directed to the following two aspects. First, analyzing how the performance of such extensions differs, and second, understanding which features are worthwhile in order to produce better results. This article proposes answers to those questions focusing on predictive inference and continuous covariates. Specifically, we show that 1) nonparametric models using different strategies for modeling continuous covariates can show noteworthy differences when they are being used for prediction, even though they produce otherwise similar posterior inference results, and 2) when the predictive density is a mixture, it is convenient to make the weights depend on the covariates in order to produce sensible estimators. Such claims are supported by comparing the Linear DDP (an extension of the Sethuraman representation) and the Conditional DP (which augments the nonparametric distribution to include the covariates). Unlike the Conditional DP, the weights in the predictive mixture density of the Linear DDP are not covariate-dependent. This results in poor estimators of the predictive density. Specifically, in a simulation example, the Linear DDP wrongly introduces an additional mode into the predictive density, while in an application to a pharmacokinetic study, it produces unrealistic concentration-time curves.


Naming conventions can help the readability and comprehension of code, and thus the onboarding of new developers. Conventions also provide cues that help developers and tools extract information from identifier names to support software maintenance. Tools exist to automatically check naming conventions but they are often limited to simple checks, e.g. regarding typography. The adherence to more elaborate conventions, such as the use of noun and verbal phrases in names, is not checked. We present NOMINAL, a naming convention checking library for Java that allows the declarative specification of conventions regarding typography and the use of abbreviations and phrases. To test NOMINAL, and to investigate the extent to which developers follow conventions, we extract 3.5 million reference — field, formal argument and local variable — name declarations from 60 FLOSS projects and determine their adherence to two wellknown Java naming convention guidelines that give developers scope to choose a variety of forms of name, and sometimes offer conflicting advice. We found developers largely follow naming conventions, but adherence to specific conventions varies widely.


This paper investigates the wh-in-situ in Najdi Arabic. It provides the distribution of the in-situ wh-phrases in Najdi Arabic and compares it to Lebanese Arabic studied by Aoun et al., (2010). It, also, discusses the two major analyses for wh-in-situ languages; LF movement and the unselective binding analysis. Islands insensitivity of the Najdi data supports the unselective binding analysis and rejects, along with data form other in-situ languages, the covert movement. Further, the paper discusses the selectional restriction and how each analysis works to satisfy it. Scope is, also, used to argue that the adopted analysis is compatible with.


Aim: Was to describe the knowledge, attitude, and actual practices of mothers in a rural area in Egypt regarding breastfeeding, complementary feeding and weaning and to explore the effect of educational background and age on these views. Materials and Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted on 307 rural mothers who have a youngest child aged 2 years or less. Mothers were selected using systematic random sampling. Results: All the studied mothers knew that breastfeeding is the best nutritional source for the baby. The majority of the mothers had good knowledge about the advantages of breastfeeding for child. As regards weaning, majority (92.5%) of the mothers defined weaning as breastfeeding cessation. Most of the mothers (94.8%) agreed that breastfeeding protect child from infection, 96.1% agreed that it is the healthiest for infant, 76.5% agreed that breast milk lead to loss of figure, and 83.4% agreed that breastfeeding should be avoided during mother's illness. About 84% initiated breastfeeding immediately after delivery, and 42.7% of the studied mothers offered pre-lacteal feeds to baby before lactation. About thirty quarters (74.2%) of mothers fed colostrum. Exclusive breast-feeding was found to be associated with mother's education (P < 0.0001) but not with mother's age at birth, mother's occupation, or place of birth. Conclusion: There is a need for health care system interventions, family interventions, and public health education campaigns to promote optimal BF practices, especially in less educated women.


The top-secret world that the government created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks has become so enormous, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or exactly how many agencies duplicate work being done elsewhere. The result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe may be putting us in greater danger. In TOP SECRET AMERICA, award-winning reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin uncover the enormous size, shape, mission and consequences of this invisible universe of over 1,300 government facilities in every state in America; nearly 2,000 outside companies used as contractors and more than 850,000 people granted 'Top Secret' security clearance. A landmark expose of a new, secret 'Fourth Branch' of American government, TOP SECRET AMERICA is a tour de force of investigative reporting-and a book sure to spark national and international alarm.


Several dams were built on Tigris, Euphrates, and Tigris tributaries in Iraq. The construction of dams had been done in the second half of 20 century. Of the most critical issues confronting the large storage dams in Iraq are the liquefactions in Mosul Dam foundations, land sliding and earthquake effects in Darbandikhan Dam, and the essential maintenance and rehabilitation requirements almost for all the dams. Absolutely, large storage dams made Iraq surviving from thirst in several occasions. Unfortunately, after 2003, the attention or will are not exist pertaining the building of new or partially built large dams.


The drillhole at CRP-3 was the deepest of the project and offered early hopes of retrieving a long plalaeontological record. However, the reality was that the fossil
content dropped off markedly in the lower half of the hole, leaving some tantalising unknowns and uncertainties concerning palaeoenvironments and biochronology. Thus,
authors agree that the age of the bottom of CRP-2/2A is early Oligocene, as is the top of CRP-3, but the amount of possible overlap is debatable and even slight underlap is
likely. Likewise, despite some palaeontological hints that the lower part of the Cenozoic sequence could be within the topmost Eocene, just how much is uncertain.
Twelve papers address aspects of the fossil remains found within the CRP-3 drillcore
so far.


In November 1986, a federal district court judge declared the scheme of voting on New York City's Board of Estimate to be in violation of the constitutional doctrine of one person, one vote.' Mayor Edward I. Koch immediately appointed a charter revision commission, which defined its task broadly. It decided not only to examine alternative voting plans for the Board of Estimate but also to study whether other institutions could better perform the board's myriad powers, which include all final land-use and franchising decisions, the approval of certain types of contracts, and joint responsibility with the City Council for passing the budget. Richard Ravitch, then chairman of the Bowery Savings Bank and formerly head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and earlier the New York State Urban Development Corporation, was named chair of the commission by the mayor, who then added fourteen members, representing much of the city's geographic, demographic, and political diversity. I was named the commission's executive director and counsel after several meetings with its chair, during which we discussed the extensive powers granted the commission by state law and the special opportunity it was being given to rewrite the city's governing document, or what was regularly referred to by some as the city's "constitution." Indeed, during the early proceedings, many members of the commission and its staff were infected by what one commissioner characterized as the "constitutional spirit" of our undertaking. Now, however, more than two years have passed since the commission postponed its major reform efforts to await a decision of the United States Supreme Court, which took jurisdiction in the initiating case. Time has not dampened my enthusiasm for the task or diminished my sense of its importance (in fact, this sense has been enhanced by what I have learned), and it has forced me to refocus my attention from the hoped-for clean path of constitutional reform to a much


Abstract. Diurnal variations of ClO, HO2, and HOCl were simultaneously observed by the Superconducting Submillimeter-Wave Limb-Emission Sounder (SMILES) between 12 October 2009 and 21 April 2010. These were the first global observations of the diurnal variation of HOCl in the upper atmosphere. A major reaction for the production of HOCl is ClO + HO2 → HOCl + O2 (Reaction (R1)) in extra-polar regions. A model study suggested that in the mesosphere, this is the only reaction influencing the amount of HOCl during the night. The evaluation of the pure reaction period, when only Reaction (R1) occurred in the Cly chemical system, was performed by checking the consistency of the HOCl production rate with the ClO loss rate from SMILES observation data. It turned out that the SMILES data at the pressure level of 0.28 hPa (about 58 km) in the autumn mid-latitude region (20–40°, February–April 2010) during night (between modified local time 18:30 and 04:00) were suitable for the estimation of the rate constant, k1. The rate constant obtained from SMILES observations was k1(245 K) = (7.75 ± 0.25) × 10−12 cm3 molecule−1 s−1. This result is consistent with results from a laboratory experiment and ab initio calculations for similar low-pressure conditions.


Large European river floodplains have been intensively reduced through human activities over several millennia. Ecological assessments of natural large river systems remain rare and potentially flawed since they typically omit either the main channel of the river or, more commonly, aquatic habitats that occur naturally in the floodplain of dynamic systems.
Surveys were conducted over a longitudinal and lateral gradient to assess distribution, richness and production of macrophytes along two little-disturbed large upland rivers in Scotland.
Lateral dynamics, through the creation of backwaters, underpinned the occurrence, abundance and production of macrophytes in these rivers. Indeed, backwaters, despite representing only 5% of the total area of aquatic habitat, supported a significantly higher concentration of species (65% of species recorded at the riverscape scale were unique to backwaters) than the main channel.
The frequency with which backwaters were connected to the main channel during flood flows influenced their species richness. Highest species richness in backwaters was typically found at low connectivity. Standing crop in backwaters was 150 times higher per unit area than in the main channel, while at the riverscape scale backwaters accounted for an average 89% of aquatic plant biomass. The highest plant biomass was found at low and medium connectivity with the main channel.
Backwaters appear to be crucial habitats in maintaining macrophyte diversity and production in large river ecosystems. These results emphasize the importance of river hydrodynamics and lateral connectivity in maintaining macrophyte community diversity along large rivers. The results illustrate also the potentially very significant role of backwaters as source habitats supplying propagules and organic matter to downstream reaches.
It is argued that the entire riverscape (floodplain plus main channel) must be considered in the holistic assessment of such systems, while protection of this resource requires greater recognition of linkages within and across habitats, both aquatic and terrestrial, to be effective.

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This paper develops a framework to analyze the actuarial adjustments faced by American workers who claim Social Security benefits before or after their Full Retirement Age (FRA). We derive the conditions under which these adjustments are "actuarially fair" (or "neutral") and develop measures to characterize the devi- ation from the fair form. Fair adjustment schedules are increasing at an increasing rate in take-up age and become flatter as longevity rises. We document that the actuarial fit has improved across generations. Our baseline 3% discount rate scenario estimates that the current schedule deviates from its fair form by less than 1% for average-mortality beneficiaries, compared to 5.1% and 4.0% for male and female beneficiaries in 1980, respectively. The improvement is largely due to the increases in the Delayed Retirement Credit. For men, gains in life expectancy combined with the increase in the FRA also contributed to the improved fit. We predict that the designated increase in the FRA to age 67 will have little effect on the actuarial fit. We investi- gate schedules reflecting (further) increases in the retirement ages, as recommended by the President's 2010 Fiscal Commission, and propose alternatives. We also discuss results from the analysis of the adjustments to spousal and widow(er) benefits.


When conducting laser based diagnostics in combustion environments it is often desirable to obtain temporally resolved information. This can be due to several factors such as combustion taking place in a turbulent flow field, flame propagation from a spark plug in an initially quiescent combustible mixture, or rapid, multi-point fuel consumption in a homogeneous charge as a result of compression ignition in an engine cycle. A multi-YAG laser cluster and a high-speed framing camera capable of recording sequences of up to eight image frames, and having a framing rate up to the megahertz range were originally set up for these types of studies. Within the framework of this thesis, further developments of this high-speed diagnostic system aiming at extending the wavelength palette and thus the range of detectable species, was carried out. In addition, the system was used for measurements with ultra-high repetition rates for the detection of different flame species in a variety of combustion devices. The high-speed laser system was redesigned for the generation of laser radiation at 355 nm, in addition to the original 532 nm and 266 nm, and a successful feasibility test for high-speed formaldehyde planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) was carried out for the new design. Moreover, a novel multi-dye laser cluster has been set up. By pumping each of the four dye lasers individually using the Nd:YAG lasers in the multi-YAG cluster, tunable laser radiation with an ultra-high repetition rate can be produced, without the drawback of either losses in laser pulse energy or significant deterioration of the beam intensity profile often occurring when a single dye laser is pumped at ultra-high repetition rates. The multi-YAG and multi-dye laser clusters were used for high-speed visualization of the OH radical by means of planar laser-induced fluorescence in a low-swirl methane/air flame for tracking flame front movements over time while simultaneously measuring the flow-velocity field. Simultaneous high-speed OH visualization and imaging of the temperature field was also performed. The work carried out was a first step in the development of a detailed Large Eddy Simulation validation database for turbulent, premixed methane/air flames. High-speed OH PLIF using a single dye laser was employed in several other studies of the reaction zone, including an investigation of the ignition properties of hot jets in explosive environments, a study of combustion processes in a pulse combustor, and an investigation of the governing processes leading to electrical signals in an ion-current sensor. The last of these also included high-speed fuel tracer LIF. An alternative technique for flame studies involving measurement of the chemiluminescence from OH and CH in order to determine the equivalence ratio was investigated in terms of spatial and temporal resolution. The capability of the technique for resolving flame fronts was compared to reference measurements of OH PLIF. The tests showed that the spatial resolution in the depth direction suffered from line-of-sight detection, which significantly reduced the resolution. As the sensor was designed for monitoring spatial and temporal inhomogenities in mixtures within industrial gas turbine combustors, the temporal and spatial scales in such a combustor were evaluated using the high-speed laser diagnostic system for time-resolved visualization of OH. Also, fuel tracer PLIF was performed in order to visualize the fuel distribution in the combustor. The multi-YAG laser cluster was used in several studies of combustion processes in a homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine, involving both high-speed fuel tracer PLIF and formaldehyde PLIF, with the aim of studying different types of ignition control. Acetone was used as a fuel tracer in investigating the effects of combustion chamber geometry on combustion. In studies of spark-assisted HCCI operation, the engine was run on a fuel mixture containing n-heptane, which produces formaldehyde early in the cool-flame region. Formaldehyde can thus be used as a fuel marker, eliminating the need of an added fuel tracer in this situation. Furthermore, three-dimensional imaging of formaldehyde in a laboratory flame as well as of Jet-A vapour in a slow non-reacting flow was demonstrated. This was achieved by rapidly scanning the laser sheet across a measurement volume spatially separating the eight laser pulses. A stack of closely spaced PLIF images was acquired by the framing camera, which could be used to re-create the three-dimensional shape of the investigated species by means of interpolation between the sheets. (Less)


Across Europe, more than three hundred houses and museums commemorate the composers who lived and worked in them. In Calling on the Composer, two distinguished musicologists guide the musically curious traveler or reader to these sites and provide essential information on their content and significance. Whether lakeside hut or moated castle, clock tower or cave, village school or fine town house, the physical context for musical genius and the artefacts of day-to-day existence have a powerful impact on how we perceive the figure behind the music we know and love. Julie and Stanley Sadie have journeyed to thirty-one countries to compile this unique travel companion and reference source. They offer practical information for the visitor, seasoned insights, and lively commentary. Richly illustrated and supported by thorough maps, the entries on individual composers trace their steps through the practicalities of life and reveal to us the context of creativity.


1. Plasma adrenaline and noradrenaline were measured in supine and upright positions in 27 essential hypertensive patients and in 12 age-matched control subjects. 2. Plasma adrenaline was markedly increased in a large proportion of patients, compared with control subjects, either in supine or in upright positions, whereas no significant differences were found in plasma noradrenaline. 3. Six hypertensive patients were chronically treated with beta-adrenoreceptor-blocking agents (five with propranolol and one with pindolol). Plasma noradrenaline was not significantly changed in the supine position but was markedly increased on standing in four out of six patients. Plasma adrenaline was decreased in five out of six patients either in suprine or upright positions. 4. These findings support the view that the adrenergic system participates in the mechanism of essential hypertension.


PERSONA is an acronym for PERsonal and SOcial NAvigation. The name of the project illustrates its two-fold approach; studying the individual cognitive, social and cultural differences in navigational ability and
recognizing that computer users are social beings in interacting with other people as they make their way through information spaces. Based on this understanding we are developing new approaches to interactive system design. One of these is to identify how and where we can adapt to the individual person's needs. At the same time we are developing alternative approaches to system design, breaking away from the lonely 'walker in the woods' picture of the information system user, to a social being able to interact with other users and so get help in achieving their goals. In this first deliverable from the project, we present a comprehensive review of literature which we see as having an impact on navigation in information space. This volume contains a number of individual and co-authored papers covering various aspects of geographic and electronic spaces and on navigation in geographic and electronic spaces; Individual
and cultural differences; Social aspects of navigation; Design based on alternative or complimentary approaches that we believe hold the promise of making interfaces and systems more navigable.


We review the state of knowledge concerning international CO2 emission transfers associated particularly with trade in energy-intensive goods and concerns about carbon leakage arising from climate policies. The historical increase in aggregate emission transfers from developing to developed countries peaked around 2006 and declined since. Studies find no evidence that climate policies lead to carbon leakage, but this is partly due to shielding of key industrial sectors, which is incompatible with deep decarbonization. Alternative or complementary consumption-based approaches are needed. Private sector initiatives to trace and address carbon emissions throughout supply chains have grown substantially but cannot compensate for inadequate policy. Three main price-based approaches to tackling carbon leakage are potentially compatible with international trade rules: border adjustments on imports, carbon consumption charges, and climate excise contributions combined with emissions trading. We also consider standards and public procurement options to tackle embodied emissions. Finally, we discuss proposals for carbon clubs involving cooperation among a limited set of countries. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 47 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.


The connection between personality, emotions, and experience has been of interest to researchers for many years. The present study was designed to assess the specific connection between personality, happiness, and happiness inducing behaviors (HIB) within individuals. This study also extends previous research by assessing whether any or all of these variables were connected to the recommendations an individual would make to improve the mood of a hypothetical other. The data from 424 university students were analyzed to determine the relationship between self-reported extraversion and neuroticism and self-reported affect, engagement in HIB, and the recommendations provided. The results revealed the expected positive correlation between extraversion, happiness, and engagement in HIB along with the expected negative correlation between neuroticism, happiness and engagement in HIB. Contrary to hypothesis, although there were differences in recommendations provided by those high or low in HIB, these differences did not indicate that those high in HIB made the most beneficial recommendations to help improve the mood of another. A discussion of the importance, implications, and limitations of the present study is provided.


A variety of techniques were proposed to model smooth surfaces based on tensor product splines (e.g. subdivision surfaces, free-form splines, T-splines). Conversion of an input surface into such a representation is commonly achieved by constructing a global seamless parametrization, possibly aligned to a guiding cross-field (e.g. of principal curvature directions), and using this parametrization as domain to construct the spline-based surface. One major fundamental difficulty in designing robust algorithms for this task is the fact that for common types, e.g. subdivision surfaces (requiring a conforming domain mesh) or T-spline surfaces (requiring a globally consistent knot interval assignment) reliably obtaining a suitable parametrization that has the same topological structure as the guiding field poses a major challenge. Even worse, not all fields do admit suitable parametrizations, and no concise conditions are known as to which fields do. We present a class of surface constructions (T-splines with halfedge knots) and a class of parametrizations (seamless similarity maps) that are, in a sense, a perfect match for the task: for any given guiding field structure, a compatible parametrization of this kind exists and a smooth piecewise rational surface with exactly the same structure as the input field can be constructed from it. As a byproduct, this enables full control over extraordinary points. The construction is backward compatible with classical NURBS. We present efficient algorithms for building discrete conformal similarity maps and associated T-meshes and T-spline surfaces.


Multilayer dielectric optical films are used to achieve high laser-induced damage threshold coatings for mirrors in high energy lasers. These coatings, usually made without ion-assisted deposition (IAD), can have low stress in a typical laboratory atmosphere on any substrate material. However, some applications, such as the generation of time-compressed pulses require a vacuum environment for propagation of the laser pulse. In these applications, films on low thermal expansion substrates develop excessive tensile stress. Ion-assist using an RF ion source is used to increase the compressive stress in the multilayers to achieve a low stress, high laser damage threshold multilayer coating on a silica substrate in vacuum. These coatings are suitable for use in an alldielectric diffraction grating (MLD).


In this paper we present a vision based hardware-software control
system enabling autonomous landing of a mul-tirotor unmanned aerial
vehicle (UAV). It allows the detection of a marked landing pad in
real-time for a 1280 x 720 @ 60 fps video stream. In addition, a LiDAR
sensor is used to measure the altitude above ground. A heterogeneous
Zynq SoC device is used as the computing platform. The solution was
tested on a number of sequences and the landing pad was detected with
96% accuracy. This research shows that a reprogrammable heterogeneous
computing system is a good solution for UAVs because it enables
real-time data stream processing with relatively low energy consumption.


Physically attractive individuals achieve greater success in terms of earnings and status than those who are less attractive. However, much about the mechanism behind this "beauty premium" remains unknown. We use a rich dataset to shed light on its nature at the college level. We find that students judged to be more attractive perform significantly worse on standardized tests but, conditional on test scores, are not evaluated more favorably at the point of admission. Controlling for test scores, more attractive students receive marginally better grades in some cases. Finally, there is substantial beauty-based sorting into areas of study and occupations.


Wild (Diplotaxis tenuifolia) and cultivated (Eruca vesicaria) rocket, popular crops in Italy as well as in many Mediterranean areas, are grown for fresh consumption as well as for dish decoration. During fall and winter of 2010 to 2011, extensive necroses were observed on leaves of D. tenuifolia and E. vesicaria that were grown in commercial greenhouses in Piedmont and Liguria (northern Italy). The disease affected 30 to 40% of 60-day-old plants. First symptoms were usually black-brown lesions, 1 to 30 mm in diameter, which progressively turned black. Lesions usually started on the upper side of older leaves at the leaf margins and tips and developed a yellow halo. Eventually, lesions also affected leaf veins and stems. A fungus was consistently isolated from infected leaves on potato dextrose agar and was grown on water agar (15 g/liter) amended with autoclaved rocket tissues (100 g/liter). After 12 days of growth at 22°C and 12-h dark/12-h light, conidia that were produced were dark brown, obclavate, obpyriform, ovoid or ellipsoid, with beaks. Round conidia without beaks were also present. Conidia showed two to seven (average three to four) transverse and one to three longitudinal septa, and measured 17.7 to 56.2 (average 30.9) × 6.6 to 17.8 (average 10.8) μm. Conidia were produced singly or in short chains (two to three elements) and mostly presented a conical or cylindrical beak, 1.8 to 7.3 (average 3.6) μm, pale light brown to brown. On the basis of its morphological characteristics, the pathogen was identified as an Alternaria sp. (3). DNA was extracted with Terra PCR Direct Polymerase Mix (Clontech, Mountain View, CA) and PCR was carried out with ITS 1/ ITS 4 primer (4). A 553-bp PCR product was sequenced and a BLASTn search (1) confirmed that the sequence corresponded to Alternaria japonica. The nucleotide sequence has been assigned the GenBank Accession No. JP 742643. Pathogenicity tests were performed by spraying leaves of healthy 30-day-old wild and cultivated rocket plants with an aqueous 1 × 105 spore/ml suspension. The inoculum was obtained from cultures of the fungus grown on sterilized host leaves placed on water agar for 20 days in light/dark at 22 ± 1°C. Plants sprayed only with water served as controls. Three pots (four plants per pot) were used for each treatment. Plants were covered with plastic bags for 4 days after inoculation and maintained in a glasshouse at 22 ± 1°C. Lesions developed on leaves 7 days after inoculation with the spore suspension, whereas control plants remained healthy. A. japonica was consistently reisolated from these lesions. The pathogenicity test was carried out twice. The presence of A. japonica has been reported on several brassica hosts, such as Brassica napus, B. nigra, B. oleracea, and B. rapa (2). This is, to our knowledge, the first report of A. japonica on wild and cultivated rocket in Italy as well as in Europe. Because of the importance of rocket in many countries, the potential impact of this disease is high. References: (1) S. F. Altschul et al. Nucleic Acids Res. 25:3389, 1997 (2) J. C. David, IMI Description of Fungi and Bacteria. 144:1432, 2000. (3) E. G. Simmons. Alternaria. An Identification Manual. CBS Biodiversity Series 6, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2007. (4) T. J. White et al. In: PCR Protocols: A Guide to Methods and Applications. M. A. Innis et al., eds. Academic Press, San Diego, 1990.


This paper presents the performance of a transpired solar collector (TSC) used
as a preheater for an air to air heat pump, installed in a demonstration house
in Wales, UK. The TSC is activated when there is a demand for both heating
and ventilation. The system is designed to be aesthetically pleasing, affordable,
and can be installed on south facades/roofs in new and retrofit buildings. A
TSC has been monitored for one year at a demonstration house and data
normalised using historic weather data. Results show the system contributed
15% of the heating and hot water demand (1360kWh) in one year. In 2017 UK
figures this translates into £100 to £200 savings per year compared to a
conventional heating source. The total cost of the TSC technology for a mature
market is projected to be less than £1600 for the installed area which indicates
that the payback could be less than 8 years.


We have studied the ensemble photoluminescence (PL) of 11 GaSb/GaAs quantum dot/ring (QD/QR) samples over >= 5 orders of magnitude of laser power. All samples exhibit a blueshift of PL energy, Delta E, with increasing excitation power, as expected for type-II structures. It is often assumed that this blueshift is due to band-bending at the type-II interface. However, for a sample where charge-state sub-peaks are observed within the PL emission, it is unequivocally shown that the blueshift due to capacitive charging is an order of magnitude larger than the band bending contribution. Moreover, the size of the blueshift and its linear dependence on occupancy predicted by a simple capacitive model are faithfully replicated in the data. In contrast, when QD/QR emission intensity, I, is used to infer QD/QR occupancy, n, via the bimolecular recombination approximation (I alpha n(2)), exponents, x, in Delta E alpha I-x are consistently lower than expected, and strongly sample dependent. We conclude that the exponent x cannot be used to differentiate between capacitive charging and band bending as the origin of the blueshift in type-II QD/QRs, because the bimolecular recombination is not applicable to type-II QD/QRs. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.


Hong Kong is known for its simple, low-rate tax system. Its current schedular income tax mechanism dates from the 1940s and is based on a much older income tax system developed in the United Kingdom. When capital gains tax (CGT) was introduced in the United Kingdom in 1965, no similar step was taken in Hong Kong. The economic and social conditions underlying the original design of the system have changed dramatically over the years and will continue to change, but the system itself has seen little reform to keep pace with these changes. Furthermore, in recent years, Hong Kong's housing market has become one of the world's least affordable, which exerts a profound influence on the prospects of the city and its people, particularly the younger generation. The tax measures taken by the Hong Kong government to tackle the situation focus solely on levying stamp duty on residential property transactions. This article argues for the need for a CGT in Hong Kong with a view to reduce speculative property investment, stabilise the housing market and alleviate the social division. The stamp duty modifications in recent years show that the tax system in Hong Kong is not immune to change and that Hong Kong people are not necessarily resistant to such change. This article also suggests a design for the proposed CGT, based mainly on its equivalent in the United Kingdom but taking into account the circumstances peculiar to Hong Kong.


In the last ten years, the configuration of cultural journalism, regarding editorial and business models, has undergone profound changes. Nowadays, it cannot be separable from the context of cultural and creative industries, which requires a redefinition and expansion of the field, reinforcing its complexity, broadness and heterogeneity (Rivera, 2003). The emergence of more consumer-driven formats within journalism broadly speaking (Fursich, 2012) is thus transforming cultural journalism into a continuum between culture, lifestyle and consumption (Kristensen, 2010), challenging existing definitions of cultural journalism as a distinct journalistic object (Kristensen & From, 2012). In this article, we intended to verify whether the identified trends are present in the Portuguese press media environment, using a newsmagazine (Visao) and its supplement (Visao Sete) as a case study. Combining quantitative (content analysis) and qualitative methodological approaches (interviews and discourse analysis), we stated that while Visao Sete is the clear example of the contemporary approach to culture as a service and a consumer good related to lifestyle, the culture section of the newsmagazine conveys a classic (and somewhat reductive) approach to culture, primarily related to artistic manifestations – which lead us to infer that nowadays newspapers and magazines are still looking for its position regarding cultural journalism.