Since Labov's early work (e.g., 1963, 1966), sociolinguists have frequently examined change in progress on the segmental level, but much less is known about tone change in progress. The present study finds evidence of a tone split in progress in Lalo, a Tibeto-Burman language of China. While many of the world's tone languages show historical evidence of tone splits, to our knowledge this is the first time that a tone split has been observed while it is occurring, making it possible to closely examine phonological, social, and perceptual factors. In this sociotonetic study of Lalo, 2,938 tone tokens were extracted from recordings of 38 speakers and analyzed in terms of age, sex, and educational level. Multifactorial analyses show that the temporal extent of voiced stops' depression of Tone 1 F0 is increasing in apparent time, especially among women, while VOT of voiced stops is decreasing as educational levels improve, giving speakers more contact with Mandarin Chinese. The same 38 speakers were also given a perceptual identification task in which F0 was systematically adjusted. Mixed-effects modeling showed that listeners used multiple acoustic cues (consonant voicing, F0 onset, and F0 shape) to identify the voiced initial. These findings suggest that Lalo is undergoing a tone split that follows Beddor's (2009) coarticulatory path to sound change.


E:ventGallery is delighted to present Another Album – a one-evening video installation by Johanna Billing, curated by Verina Gfader.

Taking place on a mellow summer evening on a Croatian island, the film Another Album (28 min loop, 2006) shows a group of young people sitting in a backyard, having wine and singing songs from the golden era of Ex-Yugoslavian rock music in the 70s and 80s, before the war would destroy much of pan-Yugoslavian cultural expression. The scenes in Another Album are improvised, and appear to recount a narrative of intimacy, nostalgia and conviviality; yet present is also an apparent commentary on re-enactment as means of cultural resistance. Through their song gatherings, the youths in Another Album revive a lost musical legacy challenging both the past and the present.
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BACKGROUND
The clearance of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) loss, defined as functional cure, is a clinical target in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CH). To understand the immune responses underlying functional cure, we evaluated cytokine and chemokine expression profiles from patients with resolving and nonresolving acute hepatitis B (AH).

METHODS
We cross-sectionally evaluated 41 chemokines and cytokines at the peak of hepatitis in the sera from 41 self-limited AH patients who achieved HBsAg seroconversion, 8 AH patients who failed to clear HBsAg within 1 year after the diagnosis, 8 CH patients with hepatic flare, and 14 healthy volunteers. We longitudinally examined 41 chemokines and cytokines in the sera from 4 self-limited AH patients, 3 chimpanzees inoculated with hepatitis B virus (HBV), and 2 CH patients treated with nucleotide analogs and PEG-IFN-α, one resulting in functional cure.

RESULTS
In AH patients and HBV-inoculated chimpanzees with HBsAg loss, CXCL9, CXCL10, CXCL11, CXCL13, and IL-21 were elevated at hepatitis with subsequent decline of HBsAg. Interestingly, IL-21 elevation was observed only in resolving AH patients but not in nonresolvers. CXCL13 and IL-21 elevation was not observed in CH patients who failed to attain HBsAg loss, even at hepatic flare. A concomitant increase of CXCL13 and IL-21 was significant in CH patients who attained HBsAg seroconversion with a sequential therapy.

CONCLUSION
Elevation of serum CXCL9, CXCL10, CXCL11, CXCL13, and IL-21 might be a hallmark of functional cure of AH or CH patients.


For more than a decade, artificial intelligence techniques have served as critical building blocks for cutting edge business applications. Knowledge based systems (KBS) in particular have helped numerous Fortune 1000 companies solve pressing business problems-everything from scheduling their manufacturing operations to managing their investment portfolios. AI has helped many companies improve productivity and reduce costs to meet the demands of today's competitive global economy. Today, business management itself is undergoing fundamental change. For the past several years, business process reengineering (BPR) has become the watchword. This move to rethink and redesign the way a company works aims at further boosting productivity and cutting costs. No wonder then that business managers worldwide are turning to explicit KBS techniques, long proven to achieve the very goals of BPR, to model change. The first wave of AI based tools and applications for business process modeling (BPM) is just hitting the shore. Organizations such as IBM, EDS, the US Army, and Swiss Bank are among the first to adopt AI for BPM. Some are using traditional KBS tools such as ART*Enterprise and ProKappa, while others are turning to ReThink, the first AI tool designed specifically for BPM.


Background/Context Transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions remains a contentious issue in higher education, with proponents showing that students do indeed transfer to four-year institutions and opponents arguing that starting in community colleges hinders baccalaureate degree attainment. One particularly salient issue in this debate is academic preparation. Although virtually all studies of transfer control for academic preparation, there is a dearth of research focusing on whether and how academically unprepared students can catch up in higher education. Research Questions We address two research questions: To what extent do academically unprepared students transfer to four-year institutions? And, can successful completion of intermediate outcomes, such as passing college-level math and writing courses, meeting specific credit thresholds, and earning an associate's degree, diminish the role of initial preparation and increase the probability of transfer? Research Design Using event history techniques, we estimate the likelihood of transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions. Analyses include 20,900 first-time degree-seeking students who enrolled in Florida community colleges in the fall of 1998. Student enrollment is tracked through the summer of 2003. Results Community colleges can indeed serve as an alternative road of access to four-year institutions, even for academically unprepared students: Almost 20% of students in our sample who entered community colleges unprepared for college-level work made the transition to four-year institutions. Moreover, we found that successful completion of intermediate outcomes, such as passing college-level math and writing courses, meeting specific credit thresholds, and earning an associate's degree, enhances the probability of transfer. However, the ability of community colleges to mitigate the negative effects of inadequate academic preparation on transfer is limited; regardless of the intermediate outcome completed, academically unprepared students continued to lag substantially behind their more prepared counterparts. Conclusion Community colleges can serve as a democratizing force in higher education; however, their ability to overcome inadequate academic preparation with which some students enter higher education is limited. Improving academic preparation in K–12 is thus a crucial component of enhancing transfer.


The SEI has been involved with the development and analysis of software process models for several years. As part of the ongoing process of technology evolution, a study has been undertaken to experimentally implement a set of proposed improvements to the process modeling techniques used by the SEI, and to evaluate the results of that experimentation. As a result of that study, a number of modifications to our techniques have been identified. These modifications enhance the support of software engineering concepts in the development and use of process models. This report describes the study and elaborates upon the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed technique improvements.


Craniosynostosis (synostosis) is a serious disease where the sutures of a newborn's skull fuse prematurely leading to debilitating head shape deformities. Due to the seriousness of this condition many normal infants and those with benign head shape abnormalities are referred to pediatric craniofacial plastic surgeons, leading to a high referral burden and delays in diagnosis for patients. A diagnostic delay beyond 4 months of age excludes patients from being treated with minimally invasive endoscopic procedures, leading to higher risk open surgeries. Machine learning (ML) image classifiers can enhance the triaging process of these referrals through the use of 3D images taken by a multicamera & angle setup during patient visits. In doing so, children with synostosis can be identified earlier, qualifying them for less invasive endoscopic surgical intervention. After training a variety of convolutional neural network (CNN) models on 3D images supplemented with synthetic images using generative adversarial networks (GANs), the best-performing model was found to be a novel approach developed in our study called a multi-view collapsed 3D CNN, which achieved area under the receiver operating curves (AUROC) between 90.00-97.00% for detecting various sub-types of synostosis. These results demonstrate the ability for ML models to potentially streamline the detection of children with synostosis and help overcome challenges associated with high referral burdens for these patients. © 2020 P.M. MSc, M.S. MSc, J.P. MD, D. McAllister, M.R.M. MSc, S. Senkaiahliyan, M.B. PhD & D.S. MD.


The 2018 Global Nutrition Report shares insights into the current state of global nutrition, highlighting the unacceptably high burden of malnutrition in the world. It identifies areas where progress has been made in recent years but argues that it is too slow and too inconsistent. It puts forward five critical steps that are needed to speed up progress to end malnutrition in all its forms and argues that, if we act now, it is not too late to achieve this goal. In fact, we have an unprecedented opportunity to do so.


In this paper we investigate crude oil and products price dynamics. We present a comparison among ten prices series of crude oils and fourteen price series of petroleum products, considering four distinct market areas (Mediterranean, North Western Europe, Latin America and North America) over the period 1994-2002. We provide first a complete analysis of crude oil and product price dynamics using cointegration and error correction models. Subsequently we use the error correction specification to predict crude oil prices over the horizon January 2002-June 2002.The main findings of the paper can be summarized as follows - a) differences in quality are crucial to understand the behaviour of crudes; b) prices of crude oils whose physical characteristics are more similar to the marker show the following regularities - b1) they converge more rapidly to the long-run equilibrium; b2) there is an almost monotonic relation between Mean Absolute Percentage Error values and crude quality, measured by API° gravity and sulphur concentration; c) the price of the marker is the driving variable of the crude price also in the short-run, irrespective of the specific geographical area and the quality of the crude under analysis.


Papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) is extremely rare in children. Herein, we present a case diagnosed with PTC at 15 months of age. We conducted a literature review of the published cases with PTC under five years of age. A 1.25-year-old male patient had initially presented with a complaint of progressively enlarging cervical mass that appeared four months earlier. On physical examination, a mass located in the anterior cervical region with the largest measurements of around 3x3 cm was detected. Cervical and thyroid ultrasonography showed a 50x27 mm solid mass in the right lateral neck. Excisional biopsy revealed a follicular variant of PTC with capsular invasion. Subsequently, he underwent a complementary total thyroidectomy. He was diagnosed with intermediate-risk (T3N0M0) PTC. He developed permanent hypoparathyroidism. In the first year of the operation, he was treated with radioiodine ablation (RAI) since basal and stimulated thyroglobulin (Tg) levels tended to increase. Whole-body scintigraphy was normal in the first year of RAI ablation. On levothyroxine sodium (LT4) treatment, levels of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and Tg were adequately suppressed. He is now 8.5-years-old and disease-free on LT4 replacement therapy for seven years and three months. Pediatric PTC has different biological behavior and an excellent prognosis compared to adults. The optimal treatment strategy for pediatric TC is total thyroidectomy, followed by RAI ablation. Post-operative management should include regular follow-up, TSH suppression by adequate LT4 therapy, serial Tg evaluation, and radioiodine scanning when indicated.


At low Reynolds number (Re < 1), the flow of viscous liquids e.g. water, is laminar. An aqueous solution e.g. water becomes viscoelastic when a small amount of polymer additives (< 1 wt%) is added to it; its flow behavior can become drastically different and turbulent i.e. viscoelastic turbulence. This phenomenon has gained increasing attention because it violates the conventional school of thought i.e. highRe criteria, for creating chaos and disorder in a fluid dynamics system. As the polymer molecules are invisible, the indirect deduction of molecular behavior via motion analyses of tracer additives has been adopted as the main investigative approach in viscoelastic turbulent flows. Based on this approach, reported works attribute viscoelastic turbulence to the release of elastic energy by the polymer molecules, which had been extended due to strong velocity gradients in the flow field. The release of energy occurs over a range of time scales which is dependent on the characteristic time scales of the molecules and bulk viscoelastic liquid. Although the reported characteristic time scales vary significantly, their effects on the structure of the viscoelastic turbulent flow field have not been investigated. Despite the significant number of investigations based on the conventional approach, the underlying mechanisms in viscoelastic turbulence remains elusive; several outstanding questions on viscoelastic flows remain unresolved e.g. the high Weissenberg number problem, and the drag reduction theory debate. "How do the polymer molecules change the flow field so drastically when they are only present in minute amounts?". This fundamental question has yet to be clearly answered. Although fluorescent-tagged DNA molecules are commercially available, because they are costly and impractical for large-scale dynamic flow field investigations, their usage has been mostly limited to tracer additives or stress probes. Here, a viscoelastic turbulent flow field generated by a 3-stream flow through a contraction-expansion micro-channel was investigated. Based on the conventional approach i.e. tracer additives, the results show that the generated turbulence exhibits characteristics of 2-D turbulent flows, from which information on the molecular and bulk properties of the viscoelastic liquid could be extracted. In addition, a highspeed molecular imaging technique was developed to observe the polymer molecular conformation changes (i.e. extension and relaxation) in a turbulent flow. The technique is capable of image grabbing speeds of more than 1000 frames per second. The developed molecular fluorescein tagging technique has a much lower cost as compared to fluorescein-labeling of DNA, hence making it more feasible for large scale investigations. With the developed technique, the dynamic molecular conformation changes could be correlated with the statistical properties of the flow field obtained based on the conventional approach.


From the Publisher:
The next generation of mobile communicators is here, and deliveringcontent to them will mean programming in WML (Wireless Markup Language) and WMLScript, the languages of the Wireless Application Environment (WAE). The WAE allows information in almost all applications to be formatted for display on mobile devices, such as cell phones, and enables the user to interact with the information.
Why learn yet another technology? According to some estimates, 75 percent of web document viewing by the year 2002 will be through non-desktop devices, many using wireless technologies. Clearly, the future is wireless. For web developers who want to get up to speed quickly in these languages, Learning WML & WMLScript maps out in detail the WAE and its two major components, WML and WMLScript.
Fortunately, the WAE provides a World Wide Web-like model for writing applications, incorporating several key features of the Web to ease the transition for developers. Almost all wireless applications can be written with WML, which replaces HTML in the wireless environment, and WMLScript, which replaces JavaScript. With this book, web developers with some knowledge of programming and C, Java, or JavaScript syntax can easily master both languages.
Chapter by chapter, Learning WML & WMLScript takes readers through the following WML topics:
Decks, templates and cards User Interaction Variables and contexts Tasks, events, and timers Text and text formatting Images

WMLScript topics include:
Data types, conversions and variables Operators and expressions Statements Functions Standard libraries

Learning WML & WMLScript is the resource of choice for application developers who want to upgrade their skills and their sites so they won't be left plugged in during the wireless revolution.


Given the increasingly available machine translation (MT) services nowadays, one efficient strategy for cross-lingual spoken language understanding (SLU) is to first translate the input utterance from the second language into the primary language, and then call the primary language SLU system to decode the semantic knowledge. However, errors introduced in the MT process create a condition similar to the "mismatch" condition encountered in robust speech recognition. Such mismatch makes the performance of cross-lingual SLU far from acceptable. Motivated by successful solutions developed in robust speech recognition, we in this paper propose a multi-style adaptive training method to improve the robustness of the SLU system for cross-lingual SLU tasks. For evaluation, we created an English-Chinese bilingual ATIS database, and then carried out a series of experiments on that database to experimentally assess the proposed methods. Experimental results show that, without relying on any data in the second language, the proposed method significantly improves the performance on a cross-lingual SLU task while producing no degradation for input in the primary language. This greatly facilitates porting SLU to as many languages as there are MT systems without any human effort. We further study the robustness of this approach to another type of mismatch condition, caused by speech recognition errors, and demonstrate its success also.


The overall objective of this work was to improve the one-dimensional models used to simulate the transport of single-phase natural gas in Norway's large-diameter export pipelines. There was a particular focus on the simulator used by the state-owned company Gassco named Transient Gas Network (TGNet). This simulator was studied in order to uncover any weaknesses or inaccuracies and to predict the natural gas transport with better accuracy both in the daily operation and when long-term capacity calculations are made. The conclusion was that the simulator in general resolves the physics well, provided that the input correlations such as viscosity correlation and friction factor correlation are accurate. The simulator was therefore found trustworthy to be used in the determination of the friction factor for operational data. No satisfactory correlations exist for the additional pressure loss in smooth curves, and like all other commercial simulators TGNet ends up modeling only a straight pipe. This is a weakness, but the magnitude of the associated error is unknown. The simulator also fails to predict the heat transfer for partly buried pipelines. The sensitivity analysis performed on an artificial pipeline model as well as the uncertainty analysis for the full-scale experiments both indicated which parameters are most important in the simulations: • Gas density calculations • Ambient temperature (affecting the gas temperature) • Flow rate measurements • Inner diameter of pipeline The fricton factor was analyzed both by means of laboratory experiments in the high Reynolds number facility Superpipe at Princeton University in US and by comprehensive analysis of real operational data at the largest Reynolds numbers ever covered. The Superpipe measurements were made on a 5 inch inner diameter natural rough steel pipe, and covered both the smooth, transitionally rough and the fully rough region. Reynolds numbers from 150·103 to 20·106 were covered. Due to lack of studies on naturally rough surfaces in literature, these measurements yielded very interesting results. The transition zone was abrupt, but was neither a point transition nor an inflectional transition. The equivalent sand grain roughness was furthermore found to be 1.6 times the measured root mean square roughness, which is in contrast to the value of 3.0 to 5.0 that is commonly used. Operational data were collected from two full-scale steel pipelines with an inner diameter of 40 and 42 inches respectively, covering Reynolds numbers from 10·106 to 45·106 . The experiments showed friction factors signicantly lower than predicted by the Colebrook-White correlation and based on reported roughness measurements. It was also concluded that the pipelines are in the transition zone which is more abrupt than that of Colebrook-White. Increased knowledge about the frictional pressure drop at large flow rates resulting from analysis of operational data has led to updated and increased capacity calculations in several pipelines. The increase is in the range 0.2-1.0%, and facilitates an improved utilization of the natural gas transport infrastructure on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. This work includes three different papers, one presented at an international conference and two published in peer-reviewed international journals.


The articles of Bernard V. Bothmer are the most comprehensive collection of writings on Egyptian art history. They are introduced by T.D.H. James, former Keeper, Egyptian Collection, The British Museum, and Rita Freed, Curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian and Near Eastern Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and address several themes, such as the reappraisal of old theories to gain new insights, the contextual interpretation of Egyptian art to determine nuance and meaning, and stylistic analysis. Topics covered range in date from the origins of ancient Egypt to its decline in the Roman period. The audience for the work includes professional scholars, students and museum curators, particularly in Europe, where Bothmer has a wide following. Bothmer in his career sought out both scholarly and lay audiences, and his writings have the same dual purpose.


In Lindsley's thermometry, a revised sequence of calculation of components is proposed for clinopyroxene, in which kosmochlor component is added. Temperatures obtained for the components calculated by the revised method are about 50 °C lower than those obtained for the components calculated by the Lindsley's original method and agree well with temperatures obtained from orthopyroxenes. Ca‐partitioning between clino‐ and orthopyroxenes is then thought to be equilibrated in types 5 to 7 ordinary chondrites. The temperatures for Tuxtuac (LL5), Dhurmsala (LL6), NWA 2092 (LL6/7), and Dho 011 (LL7) are 767–793°, 818–835°, 872–892°, and 917–936°C, respectively, suggesting that chondrites of higher petrographic types show higher equilibrium temperatures of pyroxenes. The regression equations which relate temperature and Wo and Fs contents in the temperature‐contoured pyroxene quadrilateral of 1 atm of Lindsley (1983) are also determined by the least squares method. It is possible to reproduce temperatures with an error less than 20 °C (2SE) using the regression equations.


Over the past thirty-five years, federal courts have dramatically retreated from actively promoting school desegregation. In the meantime, state courts have taken up the mantle of promoting the vision of educational equity originally articulated in Brown v. Board of Education. "Courts and Kids" is the first detailed analysis of why the state courts have taken on this active role and how successful their efforts have been. Since 1973, litigants have challenged the constitutionality of education finance systems in forty-five states on the grounds that they deprive many poor and minority students of adequate access to a sound education. While the plaintiffs have won in the majority of these cases, the decisions are often branded "judicial activism" - a stigma that has reduced their impact. To counter the charge, Michael A. Rebell persuasively defends the courts' authority and responsibility to pursue the goal of educational equity. He envisions their ideal role as supervisory, and in "Courts and Kids" he offers innovative recommendations for how the courts can collaborate with the executive and legislative branches to create a truly democratic educational system.


Motion planning for spatially constrained robots is difficult due to additional constraints placed on the robot, such as closure constraints for closed chains or requirements on end-effector placement for articulated linkages. It is usually computationally too expensive to apply sampling-based planners to these problems since it is difficult to generate valid configurations. We overcome this challenge by redefining the robot's degrees of freedom and constraints into a new set of parameters, called reachable distance space (RD-space), in which all configurations lie in the set of constraint-satisfying subspaces. This enables us to directly sample the constrained subspaces with complexity linear in the number of the robot's degrees of freedom. In addition to supporting efficient sampling of configurations, we show that the RD-space formulation naturally supports planning and, in particular, we design a local planner suitable for use by sampling-based planners. We demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach for several systems including closed chain planning with multiple loops, restricted end-effector sampling, and on-line planning for drawing/sculpting. We can sample single-loop closed chain systems with 1,000 links in time comparable to open chain sampling, and we can generate samples for 1,000-link multi-loop systems of varying topologies in less than a second.


Selection procedures for any type of service (government or otherwise) are serious policy matters and have the potential to make or mar the process of nation development. For example, the Ministry of Defence, Govt. of India conducts service selection board (SSB) interviews as part of selection procedure for induction of officers in the uniformed services in India. The events in SSB interview can be broadly categorized into three parts namely; Psychological Testing (PT), Group Testing (GT) and Personal Interview (PI). PT is basically aimed at looking into the psychology, GT at physical fitness and PI at interpersonal skills of the candidate. This procedure is adopted for selections in several military forces in the world. The SSB interviews ensure the induction of right type of candidates which become commissioned officers after training and take leadership roles in respective services of the nation. (I myself faced SSB interview for National Defence Academy, Khadakwasla India way back in Feb, 1995. I entered the pharmacy profession and presently hold a University Lectureship in Pharmacy. Going through the various basic psychology texts which hold my fascination for silent incorporation into teaching practice, I wonder the development of such an elaborate procedure and amazing results). The procedures are effective and have been time-tested for decades. In the light of the above mentioned facts, it is proposed that at least, PT is included in the selection of the healthcare professionals. It will ensure that only the professionals with real aptitude for community service enter into respective jobs in the various types of healthcare settings as not all the academically brilliant students may have the interest in serving the community at grass-root level and thereby, contribute to service of the nation. Adopting such procedures will affect the health care services particularly in the rural and semi-urban areas. This will assume greater importance in the developing countries where certain established biases regarding the practice of healthcare professions in remote or rural areas exist. The detailed modalities of the PT procedure can be deliberated by consulting psychologists, health care professions and the recruitment agencies. To begin with, small scale studies can be conducted for first degree health care professionals at select location/s. Anticipating the success of the study may not be an Utopian dream. The success of study may bring an altogether change in the public health scenario on which the government and nongovernment organizations are spending huge amounts of money. Remember, change is the first law of nature.


The development of techniques for quantitative, model-based evaluation of computer system dependability has a long and rich history. A wide array of model-based evaluation techniques is now available, ranging from combinatorial methods, which are useful for quick, rough-cut analyses, to state-based methods, such as Markov reward models, and detailed, discrete-event simulation. The use of quantitative techniques for security evaluation is much less common, and has typically taken the form of formal analysis of small parts of an overall design, or experimental red team-based approaches. Alone, neither of these approaches is fully satisfactory, and we argue that there is much to be gained through the development of a sound model-based methodology for quantifying the security one can expect from a particular design. In this work, we survey existing model-based techniques for evaluating system dependability, and summarize how they are now being extended to evaluate system security. We find that many techniques from dependability evaluation can be applied in the security domain, but that significant challenges remain, largely due to fundamental differences between the accidental nature of the faults commonly assumed in dependability evaluation, and the intentional, human nature of cyber attacks.


Abstract While "women's leadership" may seem, at first glance, to be incongruous to the subject of disability rights through the lenses of emancipatory spirituality, chaos theory and wisdom traditions, just the opposite is true. Chaos theory, with an emphasis on the interconnectedness of all people and living beings, sheds new light on emancipatory ideologies for all individuals, particularly women who have disabilities. Native sciences and other wisdom traditions also present themes of "interdependence and respect [for all living beings]"... (Cajete 2000, 13). Women with disabilities have long been denied "equality of respect." From segregation in schools to discriminatory policies from employers, the women with disabilities among us have systematically faced exclusion from most of our institutions. Drawing on the works of Nancy Eiesland, Michael Lerner, Nancy Mairs and Greg Cajete, as well as my own experiences raising a daughter with a disability, I explore notions of disability rights and models of leadership that embrace the inclusion of individuals with disabilities into all facets of our society. The Nation's proper goals regarding individuals with disabilities are to assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency. Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 Women with disabilities face double discrimination--discrimination based on gender and discrimination based disability. Women of color who are disabled face yet a third type of discrimination ... The limited available statistics suggest that economically, socially, and psychologically, women with disabilities fare considerably worse than either women who are nondisabled or men who are disabled. (Women and Disability Awareness Project 1989) Introduction I would like to begin with an essay my daughter, Heidi Comfort, wrote. In her own words, this is what Heidi would like people to know about being a woman with a disability. By Heidi Comfort My name is Heidi and I have Williams syndrome. I am eighteen-years-old and I like lots of things. I like jewelry a lot, make-up, clothes, shoes, music a ton and nail polish. I love animals a lot and I like to cook. Williams syndrome is actually a gene that is missing. When you have Williams syndrome you are so nice that people appreciate it. You talk a lot and sometimes say things you don't mean. Having Williams syndrome makes me special but sometimes I wish I didn't have it. I wish I was just a regular person. I can't get a tattoo because I have a heart problem. Everything is hard because I have Williams syndrome. I don't know how to speak to boys sometimes. Sometimes kids tease me. They say bad things. They make fun of how I act. It makes me sad to talk about it. I don't feel normal and I don't like how I act sometimes. I get to do lots of good things where I really have fun. I've met lots of famous people like Jennifer Aniston, Mathew Perry, Melissa Ethridge (she is really tight) and Courtney Cox. I got to be in a documentary with Oliver Sacks. Making the documentary was fun. I want people to know that I can do lots of stuff. Nobody should make fun of me. If they do, I will cry. We should treat people with disabilities with respect. I will have Williams syndrome forever. Nothing can change that. I want a good life doing lots of good things. I want to take care of animals and have a good life and still be happy even with a disability. Themes of Interdependence and Interconnectedness Having a daughter with a disability propelled me into the disability rights movement and into the world of the "other." I have spent much of my time searching for ways to create opportunities for inclusion and leadership for Heidi; unfortunately, this has proved to be a difficult task. While searching for inclusive philosophies, I became intrigued with ideas of emancipatory spirituality and what this ideology has to offer in the way of creating more opportunities for people with disabilities. …


The study of keyword spotting, a subfield within the broader field of speech recognition that centers around identifying individual keywords in speech audio, has gained particular importance in recent years with the rise of personal voice assistants such as Alexa. As voice assistants aim to rapidly expand to support new languages, keywords, and use cases, stakeholders face the issue of limited training data for these unseen scenarios. This paper details some initial exploration into the application of Text-To-Speech (TTS) audio as a "helper" tool for training keyword spotters in these low-resource scenarios. In the experiments studied in this paper, the careful mixing of TTS audio with human speech audio during training led to a reduction of over 11% in the detection-error-tradeoff (DET) area under the curve (AUC) metric.


In order to achieve the high luminosity expected from the Large Hadron Collider, the beta function at the interaction points must be minimised. As the aperture in the surroundings of the interaction points become smaller and smaller with decreasing beta function at the interaction point, the latter is kept higher during injection and energy ramp and reduced before the production of collision, by the means of the betatron squeeze. This operation as shown to be very critical in previous colliders, however, good performances were achieved early during the commissioning of the machine allowing to optimise this operation along the year. Firstly, a systematic fill by fill analysis of the beam parameters is performed in order to point out, understand and solve potential issues, allowing, in particular, to minimise the beam losses during the operation. Secondly, simulations of beam parameters based on the strength of the magnets extracted from the control system are introduced and validated with measurements. The simulations are then used to validate new sets of settings for the magnet that allow to perform an identical operation within a shorter duration. Based on this analysis, an optimised set of settings is proposed for operation in 2011.


Abstract Analysing peace journalism is a difficult task, especially within the context of an ongoing conflict. This study looks at peace journalism as it relates to the Balochistan/Pakistan conflict. Balochistan is a Pakistani province that makes up a large part of the country and is rich in natural resources. The Pakistani government has employed a policy of resource exploitation in the province, withholding any due share of profit from the Baloch. The conflict, which has been ongoing since the partition of India, has increasingly become a subject of debate in both the Pakistani and the international media, especially since the US Congress passed a non-binding resolution in favour of Balochistan's right to self-determination. This research study examines the extent of peace journalism in both the traditional and social media in Pakistan since the congressional resolution. The content analysis uses a sample of 100 articles drawn from four Pakistani newspapers, as well as 1,000 tweets from various relevant Twitter users. Using models derived from Galtung and built upon by Lynch and McGoldrick, this study reflects an apparent display of peace journalism in the working timeframe from various different sources.


This study aims to analyse the elements which contribute most to defining the quality of a food product. Geographical provenance, age, propensity to read the label on products, scientific knowledge and self-assessment of knowledge on food safety-related issues emerged as the main differences between the two groups. The perception of quality appears to affect purchase decisions and dietary patterns. The description of the consumer groups who use the same elements to define quality provided a useful insight into consumer choices and potential risk-exposure behaviours. The study of these aspects is therefore relevant for designing effective and targeted communication actions, not only for companies but also for public institutions in charge of safeguarding public health.


Two parallel outbreaks of Brucella melitensis infection occurred in 2014 in two geographical areas in Israel. In two medical centers in northern Israel and one medical center in Jerusalem, 102 patients (58 children, 47 adults) were diagnosed with brucellosis. Most patients (N = 76, 72%) were Muslim Arabs, 28 (27%) were Druze, and one was Jewish. The source of infection was often traced to cheese from the Palestinian Authority. Biovar-1 was evident in 98% in northern Israel but only in 42% in Jerusalem. Most common manifestations were fever (82%) and osteoarticular symptoms (49%). The major differences between the geographic areas were ethnicity and duration until diagnosis. Compared with adults, children had higher rates of hospitalization (93% versus 64%, P = 0.001), osteoarticular symptoms (60% versus 36%, P = 0.05), elevated alanine aminotransferase (12% versus 0%, P = 0.01), and lower C-reactive protein (2.28 ± 2.08 versus 5.57 ± 6.3l mg/dL, P = 0.001). Two unrelated brucellosis outbreaks occurred in 2014 in two different geographic areas of Israel and were limited to sections of the Arab and Druze populations. Most of the demographic and clinical aspects of patients were not affected by geographic variability. Clinical and laboratory differences were found between children and adults emphasizing the nonuniformity of the disease in different age groups. Effective control of unpasteurized dairy foods, health education programs, and improved regional cooperation are required to control brucellosis in Israel.


We confirm a conjecture of Gartland and Lokshtanov [arXiv:2007.08761]: if for a hereditary graph class $\mathcal{G}$ there exists a constant $k$ such that no member of $\mathcal{G}$ contains a $k$-creature as an induced subgraph or a $k$-skinny-ladder as an induced minor, then there exists a polynomial $p$ such that every $G \in \mathcal{G}$ contains at most $p(|V(G)|)$ minimal separators. By a result of Fomin, Todinca, and Villanger [SIAM J. Comput. 2015] the latter entails the existence of polynomial-time algorithms for Maximum Weight Independent Set, Feedback Vertex Set and many other problems, when restricted to an input graph from $\mathcal{G}$. Furthermore, as shown by Gartland and Lokshtanov, our result implies a full dichotomy of hereditary graph classes defined by a finite set of forbidden induced subgraphs into tame (admitting a polynomial bound of the number of minimal separators) and feral (containing infinitely many graphs with exponential number of minimal separators).


Astragalus membranaceus and Astragalus membranaceus var. mongholicus are cultivated in large parts of Shanxi province in China for their high medicinal value in traditional Chinese medicine, and the quality of the medicinal materials is a problem worthy of attention. Traditional strategies to increase quality include use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides, but these may have negative impact on the quality of soil and medicinal materials. In this study, the potential of promoting the quality of the medicinal materials was investigated after inoculating A. membranaceus and A. membranaceus var. mongholicus with mycorrhizal fungus (Funneliformis mosseae). The photosynthetic parameters (net photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate and intercellular CO2 concentration) and main active principle contents (astragaloside IV, calycosin-7-glucoside, astragalus polysaccharide and trace element Se) were determined in inoculated and non-inoculated plants. Results showed that there was a positive impact on photosynthetic process and the accumulation of secondary metabolites of the plants inoculated with F. mosseae. Compared with control plants, the photosynthetic parameters of Astragalus plants inoculated with F. mosseae were higher, more active substances (astragaloside IV, calycosin-7-glucoside, astragalus polysaccharide and Se) were found in the roots of inoculated plants. F. mosseae had similar promoting effects on both A. membranaceus and A. membranaceus var. mongholicus. The symbiosis of F. mosseae and Astragalus plant would be of benefit to improve the quality of the medicinal


Abstract Most research on the relation between psychopathy and intelligence has been conducted with incarcerated male samples. However, psychopathic traits can be found among non-incarcerated individuals, male or female, possessing high intellectual capacities. The construct of psychopathy has been comparatively understudied in women. We hypothesized a positive correlation between interpersonal psychopathic traits and intelligence among females, whereby those non-criminal females having high scores on these traits would be more intelligent than those having low scores on these traits. We carried out a correlational analysis and group comparisons on a sample of 121 non-criminal females. Variables that were measured include the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) total score and its two subscales; the Levenson Primary and Secondary Psychopathy (LPSP) total score and its two subscales; Psychoticism (P) and intelligence measured by Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM). A significant positive correlation (r = .33, p < .05) was found between LPSP-I (interpersonal affective factor) and SPM. Separate ANOVAs were conducted to compare SPM scores of the participants, when they were allocated to groups based on either the PPI or the LPSP scores. Performance of the interpersonal affective group (M = 53.32, SD = 3.45) was better than that of the two other groups (M = 50.26, SD = 3.25 for "Impulsive Antisocial", and M = 49.37, SD = 4.67 for "non psychopathy").


GaAs nanowires were heated locally under ambient air conditions by a focused laser beam which led to oxidation and formation of crystalline arsenic on the nanowire surface. Atomic force microscopy, photoluminescence and Raman spectroscopy experiments were performed on the same single GaAs nanowires in order to correlate their structural and optical properties. We show that the local changes of the nanowires act as a barrier for thermal transport which is of interest for thermoelectric applications.


Transformational eGovernment is the continuous innovation in the delivery of services, citizen participation and governance through the transformation of external and internal relationships by the use of technology; especially on the Internet. When introduced, it offered the hope and promise to revitalize and modernize public services; reinvigorate and improve services to citizens, business and governments; and, create an exciting environment for employees to work and contribute. Countries, world-wide are inexorably engaged and urged forward by both push and pull motivational pressures to use technology to improve democratic participation, social harmony and economic sustain ability. While eGovernment's first decade has been much more transactional than transformational, radical changes affecting eGovernment are needed in this decade: culture, different services and relationships with all stake holders; organizational arrangements; business processes; and resource management. But progress thus far achieved is not without struggle and transformational eGovernment success is far to the deficit side of the performance measurement scale. The project failure rate is so high that transformational eGovernment progress is stalling. The thesis used the mixed method research approach that included the design and implementation of a piloted and structured survey; data collection and analysis; and examination and testing of potential enhanced project management solutions to focus on international transformational eGovernment activity and problems in: project management; the transformation of public service and its organizational and operational arrangements; and international strategies for transformational eGovernment uptake. The surveys conducted in this research identify a synerqistic compendium of ten key challenges and barriers that prevent progress in the project management of transformational eGovernment projects. As a way forward in addressing these challenges, this thesis recommends that project management methodologies be improved by implementing a project initiation concept document process identifying a series of actions and methods to be incorporated as the initial stage of eGovernment project management methodologies to identify, manage and mitigate the unique challenges and barriers that impede eGovernment success.


Wheat gluten (WG) and potato protein (PP) were modified to a basic pH by NaOH to impact macromolecular and structural properties. Films were processed by compression molding (at 130 and 150 °C) of WG, PP, their chemically modified versions (MWG, MPP) and of their blends in different ratios to study the impact of chemical modification on structure, processing and tensile properties. The modification changed the molecular and secondary structure of both protein powders, through unfolding and re-polymerization, resulting in less cross-linked proteins. The β-sheet formation due to NaOH modification increased for WG and decreased for PP. Processing resulted in cross-linking of the proteins, shown by a decrease in extractability; to a higher degree for WG than for PP, despite higher β-sheet content in PP. Compression molding of MPP resulted in an increase in protein cross-linking and improved maximum stress and extensibility as compared to PP at 130 °C. The highest degree of cross-linking with improved maximum stress and extensibility was found for WG/MPP blends compared to WG/PP and MWG/MPP at 130 °C. To conclude, chemical modification of PP changed the protein structures produced under harsh industrial conditions and made the protein more reactive and attractive for use in bio-based materials processing, no such positive gains were seen for WG.


The utilization of scaffolds for enzyme immobilization involves advanced bionanotechnology applications in biorefinery fields, which can be achieved by optimizing the function of various enzymes. This review presents various current scaffolding techniques based on proteins, microbes and nanomaterials for enzyme immobilization, as well as the impact of these techniques on the biorefinery of lignocellulosic materials. Among them, architectural scaffolds have applied to useful strategies for protein engineering to improve the performance of immobilized enzymes in several industrial and research fields. In complexed enzyme systems that have critical roles in carbon metabolism, scaffolding proteins assemble different proteins in relatively durable configurations and facilitate collaborative protein interactions and functions. Additionally, a microbial strain, combined with designer enzyme complexes, can be applied to the immobilizing scaffold because the in vivo immobilizing technique has several benefits in enzymatic reaction systems related to both synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. Furthermore, with the advent of nanotechnology, nanomaterials possessing ideal physicochemical characteristics, such as mass transfer resistance, specific surface area and efficient enzyme loading, can be applied as novel and interesting scaffolds for enzyme immobilization. Intelligent application of various scaffolds to couple with nanoscale engineering tools and metabolic engineering technology may offer particular benefits in research.


Despite the improving accuracy of agent-based expert systems, human expert users aided by these systems have not improved their accuracy. Self-affirmation theory suggests that human expert users could be experiencing threat, causing them to act defensively and ignore the system's conflicting recommendations. Previous research has demonstrated that affirming an individual in an unrelated area reduces defensiveness and increases objectivity to conflicting information. Using an affirmation manipulation prior to a credibility assessment task, this study investigated if experts are threatened by counterattitudinal expert system recommendations. For our study, 178 credibility assessment experts from the American Polygraph Association (n = 134) and the European Union's border security agency Frontex (n = 44) interacted with a deception detection expert system to make a deception judgment that was immediately contradicted. Reducing the threat prior to making their judgments did not improve accuracy, but did improve objectivity toward the system. This study demonstrates that human experts are threatened by advanced expert systems that contradict their expertise. As more and more systems increase integration of artificial intelligence and inadvertently assail the expertise and abilities of users, threat and self-evaluative concerns will become an impediment to technology acceptance.


What challenges will society and museums face in the next quarter-century? How will the demographic profile of America change between now and 2034? How will energy and infrastructure costs affect the sustainability of museums? What will Web 3.0 -- or 5.0 or 6.0 -- look like? Will the "real" survive the assault of the "virtual"? Will the number of leisure-time alternatives continue to grow? Will the lines between work and leisure, public and private, continue to blur? Most importantly, how will museums face these challenges and shape the future they will have to inhabit? This report, commissioned by the Center for the Future of Museums at the American Association of Museums, projects current social trends to 2034 and suggests how museums can face future challenges while continuing to meet their mission of public service. The report focuses on four major trends: demographic shifts, globalization, the revolution in information and communication technologies, and new cultural assumptions about the primacy of the individual as creator and curator.


The landscape of the Ghanaian Telecommunication industry has seen dramatic changes in the last two decades. During these period new companies both local and foreign emerged some as start-ups others through mergers or acquisitions. The liberalized economic environment lead to the influx of operators hence the need to assess their performance and the effectiveness of competitive strategies adopted.  This paper will evaluate the strategies adopted by mobile telecommunication operators to gain competitive advantage in the industry with particular reference to the Ghanaian market. Our study revealed that to have a competitive advantage and improve on performance a sustain investments in the area of infrastructure, human capital, technology, sales and marketing activities and essential resources were critical. Keywords : Telecommunications industry, Customer targets, Strategic management, competitive advantage


The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques across all disciplines has exploded in the past few years, with the ever-growing size of data and the changing needs of higher education, such as digital education. Similarly, online educational information systems have a huge amount of data related to students in digital education. This educational data can be used with artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to improve digital education. This study makes two main contributions. First, the study follows a repeatable and objective process of exploring the literature. Second, the study outlines and explains the literature's themes related to the use of AI-based algorithms in digital education. The study findings present six themes related to the use of machines in digital education. The synthesized evidence in this study suggests that machine learning and deep learning algorithms are used in several themes of digital learning. These themes include using intelligent tutors, dropout predictions, performance predictions, adaptive and predictive learning and learning styles, analytics and group-based learning, and automation. artificial neural network and support vector machine algorithms appear to be utilized among all the identified themes, followed by random forest, decision tree, naive Bayes, and logistic regression algorithms.


Two different agricultural wastes, sunflower stalk and tobacco stalk, were evaluated for the production of xylose, which can be used as a raw material and converted to xylitol, a highly valued product. The objective of the study was to determine the effects of H2SO4 concentration, temperature, and reaction time on the production of sugars (xylose, glucose, and arabinose), and on the reaction by-products (furfural and acetic acid) from sunflower stalk and tobacco stalk and to compare the hydrolysis conditions of these wastes. Since both agricultural wastes had different structures, they had different responses to experimental conditions. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the hydrolysis process in order to obtain high xylose yield and selectivity. The optimum reaction temperature, reaction time and acid concentration were 120 oC, 30 min and 4% of acid concentration for sunflower stalk and 133 oC, 27 min and 4.9% of acid concentration for tobacco stalk.


BRUNSWICK COUNTY SCHOOLS (NC) IS NO ENCLAVE FOR TECHNOPHOBES. Students in all grades have full freedom to visit instructional websites, construct web pages, experiment with digital media, and participate in online educational activities. School administrators strive to have all students pass the North Carolina Computer Skills Test before entering ninth grade. Brunswick's nearly 12,000-strong student population no doubt has many avid social networkers in its ranks. Yet the district's open spirit toward technology in education pinches up at the sight of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites. "Our county does not use social media," says Julie Sloup, media coordinator at Brunswick's Virginia Williamson Elementary School. "They're pretty much blocked in our school system, pretty heavily filtered." It's not a natural position for Sloup to be in. She is in the technology vanguard, having won a prize for creating an interactive website that includes a "Digital Detectives" section, where students use databases and other online research tools to find answers to questions and then submit those answers through the site. The site also hosts a "Battle of the Books" contest, which invites students to discuss their favorite books on an online discussion board. Other features include fun monthly survey questions, feedback features, and lists of student resources for course assignments. However, that's about as far as Sloup wants to go right now with her students. "The site is a way to introduce kids to the educational uses of online media," she says. "I'm trying to integrate them slowly into purposeful uses of technology. I know some of the kids already have Facebook and Twitter accounts, and for my fifth-graders, before they go to middle schools, we'll have a lesson about using social media safely." Sloup's conservative approach is the norm in K-12. According to a survey by the National School Boards Association (NSBA), 52 percent of schools block access to and prohibit any use of social media on campus. It's a move that, judging from that same research, would seem to be counterproductive. The NSBA study found that 96 percent of 9- to 17-year-old students participate in online social networks; of that group, 59 percent use social media to talk about educational topics, and 50 percent talk specifically about schoolwork. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] But schools fear the predatory behavior that lurks around social networking sites, where the exchange of personal information can make users sitting ducks for hackers, thieves, cyberbullies, and scammers. So they're caught in what appears to be an all-or-nothing choice: take advantage of the academic opportunities that social networking sites can provide, or prohibit their use altogether in order to avert the security breaches that may result. For now, the majority of schools are erring on the side of caution and opting for the latter, relying mostly on traditional filtering software to carry out that effort. New Filters for New Media But does it have to be one or the other? There's an emerging middle ground between a complete blockade and total access--new security technologies that can filter out inappropriate content more effectively than their predecessors can, enabling the legitimate use of social media while warding off attacks. New content filters can reduce the threats brought by social media considerably, according to Nick Teplan, networking and security specialist at CDW-G. "Unlike other kinds of sites on the internet, social media sites have large amounts of user-injected content, making them uniquely vulnerable to malware," Teplan says, adding that, while content filters have traditionally focused on blocking traffic, they are now beginning to "take an active role in classifying the content that comes across. A site like Facebook may not be a bad site in and of itself, but some of the content on the site may be inappropriate. …


A small collector bottle, with a precision-moulded top, allows capillary blood from a finger-prick to be automatically metered into a diluent for subsequent laboratory analysis. This device, which has been successfully used by patients to obtain full blood counts, glycosylated haemoglobin values and blood glucose measurements, may have wide application.


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Background:Many persons with HIV infection do not receive consistent ambulatory medical care and are excluded from studies of patients in medical care. However, these hard-to-reach groups are important to study because they may be in greatest need of services. Objective:This study compared the sociodemographic, clinical, and health care utilization characteristics of a multisite sample of HIV-positive persons who were hard to reach with a nationally representative cohort of persons with HIV infection who were receiving care from known HIV providers in the United States and examined whether the independent correlates of low ambulatory utilization differed between the 2 samples. Methods:We compared sociodemographic, clinical, and health care utilization characteristics in 2 samples of adults with HIV infection: 1286 persons from 16 sites across the United States interviewed in 2001–2002 for the Targeted HIV Outreach and Intervention Initiative (Outreach), a study of underserved persons targeted for supportive outreach services; and 2267 persons from the HIV Costs and Services Utilization Study (HCSUS), a probability sample of persons receiving care who were interviewed in 1998. We conducted logistic regression analyses to identify differences between the 2 samples in sociodemographic and clinical associations with ambulatory medical visits. Results:Compared with the HCSUS sample, the Outreach sample had notably greater proportions of black respondents (59% vs. 32%, P = 0.0001), Hispanics (20% vs. 16%), Spanish-speakers (9% vs. 2%, P = 0.02), those with low socioeconomic status (annual income <$10,000 75% vs. 45%, P = 0.0001), the unemployed, and persons with homelessness, no insurance, and heroin or cocaine use (58% vs. 47%, P = 0.05). They also were more likely to have fewer than 2 ambulatory visits (26% vs. 16%, P = 0.0001), more likely to have emergency room visits or hospitalizations in the prior 6 months, and less likely to be on antiretroviral treatment (82% vs. 58%, P = 0.0001). Nearly all these differences persisted after stratifying for level of ambulatory utilization (fewer than 2 vs. 2 or more in the last 6 months). In multivariate analysis, several variables showed significantly different associations in the 2 samples (interacted) with low ambulatory care utilization. The variables with significant interactions (P values for interaction shown below) had very different adjusted odds ratios (and 95% confidence intervals) for low ambulatory care utilization: age greater than 50 (Outreach 0.55 [0.35–0.88], HCSUS 1.17 [0.65–2.11)], P = 0.05), Hispanic ethnicity (Outreach 0.81 [0.39–1.69], HCSUS 2.34 [1.56–3.52], P = 0.02), low income (Outreach 0.73 [0.56–0.96], HCSUS 1.35 [1.04–1.75], P = 0.002), and heavy alcohol use (Outreach 1.74 [1.23–2.45], HCSUS 1.00 [0.73–1.37], P = 0.02). Having CD4 count less than 50 was associated with elevated odds of low ambulatory medical visits in the Outreach sample (1.53 [1.00–2.36], P = 0.05). Conclusions:Compared with HCSUS, the Outreach sample had far greater proportions of traditionally vulnerable groups, and were less likely to be in care if they had low CD4 counts. Furthermore, heavy alcohol use was only associated with low ambulatory utilization in Outreach. Generalizing from in care populations may not be warranted, while addressing heavy alcohol use may be effective at improving utilization of care for hard-to-reach HIV-positive populations.


Significance The bacterial flagellar motor (BFM) is the rotary motor powering swimming of many motile bacteria. Many of the components of this molecular machine are dynamic, a property which allows the cell to optimize its behavior in accordance with the surrounding environment. A prime example is the stator unit, a membrane-bound ion channel that is responsible for applying torque to the rotor. The stator units are mechanosensitive, with the number of engaged units dependent on the viscous load on the motor. We measure the kinetics of the stators as a function of the viscous load and find that the mechanosensitivity of the BFM is governed by a catch bond: a counterintuitive type of bond that becomes stronger under force. The bacterial flagellar motor (BFM) is the rotary motor that rotates each bacterial flagellum, powering the swimming and swarming of many motile bacteria. The torque is provided by stator units, ion motive force-powered ion channels known to assemble and disassemble dynamically in the BFM. This turnover is mechanosensitive, with the number of engaged units dependent on the viscous load experienced by the motor through the flagellum. However, the molecular mechanism driving BFM mechanosensitivity is unknown. Here, we directly measure the kinetics of arrival and departure of the stator units in individual motors via analysis of high-resolution recordings of motor speed, while dynamically varying the load on the motor via external magnetic torque. The kinetic rates obtained, robust with respect to the details of the applied adsorption model, indicate that the lifetime of an assembled stator unit increases when a higher force is applied to its anchoring point in the cell wall. This provides strong evidence that a catch bond (a bond strengthened instead of weakened by force) drives mechanosensitivity of the flagellar motor complex. These results add the BFM to a short, but growing, list of systems demonstrating catch bonds, suggesting that this "molecular strategy" is a widespread mechanism to sense and respond to mechanical stress. We propose that force-enhanced stator adhesion allows the cell to adapt to a heterogeneous environmental viscosity and may ultimately play a role in surface-sensing during swarming and biofilm formation.


We have used asteroseismology to determine fundamental properties for 66 Kepler planet-candidate host stars, with typical uncertainties of 3% and 7% in radius and mass, respectively. The results include new asteroseismic solutions for four host stars with confirmed planets (Kepler-4, Kepler-14, Kepler-23 and Kepler-25) and increase the total number of Kepler host stars with asteroseismic solutions to 77. A comparison with stellar properties in the planet-candidate catalog by Batalha et al. shows that radii for subgiants and giants obtained from spectroscopic follow-up are systematically too low by up to a factor of 1.5, while the properties for unevolved stars are in good agreement. We furthermore apply asteroseismology to confirm that a large majority of cool main-sequence hosts are indeed dwarfs and not misclassified giants. Using the revised stellar properties, we recalculate the radii for 107 planet candidates in our sample, and comment on candidates for which the radii change from a previously giant-planet/brown-dwarf/stellar regime to a sub-Jupiter size or vice versa. A comparison of stellar densities from asteroseismology with densities derived from transit models in Batalha et al. assuming circular orbits shows significant disagreement for more than half of the sample due to systematics in the modeled impact parameters or due to planet candidates that may be in eccentric orbits. Finally, we investigate tentative correlations between host-star masses and planet-candidate radii, orbital periods, and multiplicity, but caution that these results may be influenced by the small sample size and detection biases.


The House of Gospatric was established in Scotland by Malcolm III after 1072 and endowed with lands surrounding the stronghold of Dunbar, in Lothian. The descendants of Gospatric accumulated vast estates in Lothian and the Merse, assuming the title 'earl of Dunbar' by c. 1200. Their charters, of which the earliest surviving dates to the earldom of Gospatric, brother of Dolfin (died c. 1138), belong to the mainstream of European charter culture and exemplify many of the changes in diplomatic observable elsewhere. They are rich in evidence which can be used with that of the chronicles, and of the English and later Scottish public records, concerning the extent of the Dunbar estate in south-east Scotland. They indicate a variety of forms of lay tenure, with land used flexibly by the earls to endow the family, to install associates as tenants and dependants, and to elicit service and revenue; and they show these patterns of land use to have been replicated by those to whom Dunbar land was granted. Women were part of the process, making and assenting to grants. Links with the religious orders were forged and re-forged through benefaction, but dispute settlement and control mechanisms lay at the heart of much of the charter production of the period. Patterns of witnessing varied, according to the context of the charter. The people who served the earl - his family and his dependants, his employees in his estate and household, his associates in aristocratic society - can be identified, grouped and analysed through studies of the witness lists, and the origins and offshoots of their families explored. These formed a network of both dependency and support which was crucial to the functioning of the Dunbar lordship. Whether the structure can be termed feudal is more problematic.

The comital economy was based on arable and pastoral farming, and in the charters there are land management agreements which suggest a heavy involvement in the wool trade. The importance of the maritime economy is glimpsed in arrangements linking to fishing and shipping, and ancillary industries such as salting. There are references to an infrastructure sophisticated enough to sustain extensive trade and commerce. Moreover the developing sense of the cohesiveness of the earldom to which aspects of the Dunbar charters testify connects well with the impression of an active lordship with a coherent economic strategy at a time of growth and expansion.

In an era of change also in the relationship between the Church and lay society, the charters tell of issues of patronage and the control of teinds, of the foundation and endowment of religious houses with land and churches, the competing jurisdiction of lay and ecclesiastical courts. When its power was challenged, the Dunbar lordship responded flexibly, standing its ground in some areas, yielding or seeming to yield in others.

Similarly on the national stage the earls played a prominent role, but one which had to be adapted to the growth of royal justice and the evolution and systematisation or judicial processes. They intermarried with the royal house and from earliest times were close associates of the Scottish kings whose charters they witnessed. Though cross-border lords with extensive English lands and particular frontier responsibilities, they undoubtedly played primarily on the Scottish stage.


This study explores recent attempts by the hip hop community to be recognized in the mainstream political sphere and to have its concerns acknowledged and addressed. This project examines how the scholarship of hip hop (musicology), rhetoric (counterpublic spheres), politics and social movement theory intertwine, and to demonstrate how hip hops community can emerge as a counterpublic sphere that could become a social movement capable of altering the current cultural and political landscape in the United States. Although hip hop as a culture consists of four major elements: breakdancing, graffiti art, deejaying, and rapping, this study focuses on rappers and the use of rap music in the political sphere. It suggests that hip hop is a counterpublic sphere that has the power to affect culture and politics and examines attempts by both liberal and conservative politicians and organizations to garner the hip hop communitys vote. It then discusses political opportunity theory and suggests that it may help the hip hop community emerge as a social movement capable of seizing its political opportunities. It relies upon the rhetorical work of the counterpublic sphere theory as a result of the hip hop community seeking a voice and recognition in the political public sphere. This serves as one of the basis for creating a counterpublic sphere.


How to best provide incentives for a more gender-equal division of domestic work has entered policy debates in many Western countries. Growing evidence suggests that a gender-traditional division of household labor may result in lower fertility rates and greater risk of relationship breakdown and correlates with gender employment and wage gaps. Partly in response, many European countries have implemented some individual parental leave entitlements for fathers, which are not transferrable to mothers. Such non-transferable entitlements for fathers have been consistently shown to increase take-up of (short) leaves by fathers. Whether leave take-up indeed increases fathers' involvement in child care and housework also in the long-term is a more contested question. This DIW Roundup describes potential mechanisms that may underlie such a change and provides an overview of the existing evidence. Overall, previous studies from different countries point to some longer-term effects of fathers taking more than a couple of weeks of leave on a more equal gender division of domestic work.


Synopsis Calcretes are present at two horizons in the Dinantian Inverclyde and Strathclyde Groups of the Cockburnspath Outlier. The lower calcrete, probably uppermost Courceyan to Chadian in age (at the top of the Hurker Member, Ballagan Formation), was formerly interpreted as a tectonic breccia. Petrology shows that the bed is a calcrete with associated root casts. Pyrite within this calcrete suggests that it underwent marine hydromorphism, probably caused by rising marine groundwater associated with relative sealevel rise. The upper calcrete, probably Asbian in age (in the Cove Harbour Member, Aberlady Formation), is mature (stage 3) and has undergone in situ gratification caused by desiccation and shrinkage The Hurker Member calcrete (and other palaeoclimatic indicators) suggest that semi-arid climatic conditions prevailed in Scotland throughout the Lower Carboniferous until Chadian times. This is consistent with palaeoclimatic indicators elsewhere in Euramerican rocks. The Cove Harbour Member calcrete probably correlates with calcretes in the Sandy Craig Formation in Fife. However, it occurs in a rock sequence dominated by humid climatic indicators (coals, sideritic mudstone palaeosols and oil-shales), implying a regionally significant semi-arid period, during otherwise humid conditions. This finding is consistent with fluctuating humid to semi-arid palaeoclimatic phases proposed for the Dinantian of England and Wales.


The objective of this work has been a proof-of-concept dynamic assessment model for a terrestrial environment based on simple, relatively well known parameters. The model has been developed to reproduce trends of 137Cs in a coastal heath dune ecosystem. This study has provided a useful tool for further research in radioecology as it can be further developed to include more radionuclides and calibrated to different ecosystems. Model output has shown that the approach developed here for simulating radionuclide turnover by biota can reproduce realistic trends of 137Cs in a semi-natural environment. The model includes the capability of calculating the dose to vegetation from externally deposited radionuclides. This is a novel calculation that allows a more complete assessment of the risk to flora from radionuclides in the environment caused by anthropogenic activities. The key aspects of the dynamic modelling approach are the calculation of an uptake rate by biota calculated as a function of relatively well known parameters available in the scientific literature: the Concentration Ratio, biological half-life, and mass values for the organism and soil.


Winner, 2009 The Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Technics, given by the Media Ecology Association (MEA). and Winning entry, Professional Cover/Jacket Category, in the 2008 New England Book Show sponsored by Bookbuilders of Boston. Video is an electronic medium, dependent on the transfer of electronic signals. Video signals are in constant movement, circulating between camera and monitor. This process of simultaneous production and reproduction makes video the most reflexive of media, distinct from both photography and film (in which the image or a sequence of images is central). Because it is processual and not bound to recording and the appearance of a "frame," video shares properties with the computer. In this book, Yvonne Spielmann argues that video is not merely an intermediate stage between analog and digital but a medium in its own right. Video has metamorphosed from technology to medium, with a set of aesthetic languages that are specific to it, and current critical debates on new media still need to recognize this. Spielmann considers video as "transformation imagery," acknowledging the centrality in video of the transitions between imagesand the fact that these transitions are explicitly reflected in new processes. After situating video in a genealogical model that demonstrates both its continuities and discontinuities with other media, Spielmann considers three strands of video praxis: documentary, experimental art, and experimental image-making (which is concerned primarily with signal processing). She then discusses selected works by such artists as Vito Acconci, Ulrike Rosenbach, Joan Jonas, Nam June Paik, Peter Campus, Dara Birnbaum, Nan Hoover, Lynn Hershman, Gary Hill, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Bill Seaman, and others. These works serve to demonstrate the spectrum of possibilities in video as a medium and point to connections with other forms of media. Finally, Spielmann discusses the potential of interactivity, complexity, and hybridization in the future of video as a medium.


Chemistry and kinematic studies can determine the origins of stellar population across the Milky Way. The metallicity distribution function of the bulge indicates that it comprises multiple populations, the more metal-poor end of which is particularly poorly understood. It is currently unknown if metal-poor bulge stars ([Fe/H] <−1 dex) are part of the stellar halo in the inner most region, or a distinct bulge population or a combination of these. Cosmological simulations also indicate that the metal-poor bulge stars may be the oldest stars in the Galaxy. In this study, we successfully target metal-poor bulge stars selected using SkyMapper photometry. We determine the stellar parameters of 26 stars and their elemental abundances for 22 elements using R∼ 47 000 VLT/UVES spectra and contrast their elemental properties with that of other Galactic stellar populations. We find that the elemental abundances we derive for our metal-poor bulge stars have lower overall scatter than typically found in the halo. This indicates that these stars may be a distinct population confined to the bulge. If these stars are, alternatively, part of the innermost distribution of the halo, this indicates that the halo is more chemically homogeneous at small Galactic radii than at large radii. We also find two stars whose chemistry is consistent with second-generation globular cluster stars. This paper is the first part of the Chemical Origins of Metal-poor Bulge Stars (COMBS) survey that will chemodynamically characterize the metal-poor bulge population.


Environmental epidemiology comprises the epidemiologic study of those environmental factors that are outside the immediate control of the individual. Exposures of interest to environmental epidemiologists include air pollution, water pollution, occupational exposure to physical and chemical agents, as well as psychosocial elements of environmental concern. The main methodologic problem in environmental epidemiology is exposure assessment, a problem that extends through all of epidemiologic research but looms as a towering obstacle in environmental epidemiology. One of the most promising developments in improving exposure assessment in environmental epidemiology is to find exposure biomarkers, which could serve as built-in dosimeters that reflect the biologic footprint left behind by environmental exposures. Beyond exposure assessment, epidemiologists studying environmental exposures face the difficulty of studying small effects that may be distorted by confounding that eludes easy control. This challenge may prompt reliance on new study designs, such as two-stage designs in which exposure and disease information are collected in the first stage, and covariate information is collected on a subset of subjects in state two. While the analytic methods already available for environmental epidemiology are powerful, analytic methods for ecologic studies need further development. This workshop outlines the range of methodologic issues that environmental epidemiologists must address so that their work meets the goals set by scientists and society at large.


Mental retardation is a complex neuro-psychological clinical syndrome and the affected individuals display a wide array of associated neurological, psychomotor, behavioural and physical disabilities. The severity of these comorbid symptoms is often directly related to the IQ of the suffering child. A randomly selected population of 185 mentally challenged children from the state of Haryana (India) was studied in relation to epilepsy, hypotonia, microcephaly, strabismus and other physical and behavioural symptoms. Some interesting correlations were observed between epilepsy and strabismus as well as epilepsy and microcephaly. Data generated from such studies can be immensely helpful for the community health workers operating in the rural areas of developing countries like India and also for the poor parents who do not have the access to proper clinical diagnosis and genetic counselling


Late Pleistocene morainic sequences around Dundalk Bay, eastern Ireland, were deposited in a variety of shallow, glaciomarine environments at the margins of a grounded ice lobe. The deposits are essentially ice-proximal delta-fan and -apron sequences and are divided into two lithofacies associations. Lithofacies association 1 occurs as a series of morainal banks formed at the southern margin of the ice lobe in a body of water open to influences from the Irish Sea. The morainal banks consist mainly of diamictic muds deposited from turbid plumes and by ice-rafting with minor occurrences of turbidites, cross-bedded gravels (subaqueous outwash) and massive boulder gravels (high-density debris flows). Lithofacies association 2 was deposited in a narrow arm of the sea at the north-eastern margin of the ice lobe. The deposits consist mainly of a series of coalescing, ice-proximal Gilbert-type fan deltas which are interbedded distally with tabular and lens-shaped subaqueous deposits. The latter are mainly ice-rafted diamictons, debris-flow deposits and subaqueous sands and gravels. Both lithofacies associations are draped by diamictons formed by a combination of rain-out, debris flow and traction-current activity. At a few localities the upper parts of the sequence have been sheared by minor oscillations of the ice sheet margin.

These sequences form part of an extensive belt of glaciomarine deposits which border the drumlin swarms of east-central Ireland. Lithostratigraphic variability is partially related to the arrival of large volumes of debris at the ice lobe margin when the main lowland ice sheet surged during drumlin formation. Complex depositional continua of this type lack any major erosional breaks and should not be used either as climatic proxies or for stratigraphic correlations.


This paper discusses about Android which is software developed for the AndroidTM mobile devices. Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. Android is a software platform and operating system for mobile devices based on the Linux operating system and developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed code in a Java-like language that utilizes Google-developed Java libraries, but does not support programs developed in native code. The unveiling of the Android platform on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 34 hardware, software and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. When released in 2008, most of the Android platform will be made available under the Apache free-software and open-source license.


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the crisis of the business profession and the role that management education can play in renewing business management. It is argued that unless future managers demonstrate that they serve the common good in their daily practice, the legitimacy and moral standing of the business profession remain questionable.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents the Masters in International Management Program of CEMS – Global Alliance in Management Education as a pioneering example of developing reflective and responsible managers.Findings – The future manager is defined as a reflexive practitioner who is committed to environmental sustainability, exercises social responsibility, works with sensitivity toward gender and diversity issues, harmonizes information and communications technologies with processes and organizational culture, applies holistic perspective in problem solving, cooperates with social and political actors, and is engaged in progressive entrep...


Purpose: This study describes the trends and applications of machine learning systems in the management of water supply networks. Machine learning is a field in constant development, and it has a great potential and capability to attain improvements in real industries. The recent tendency of data storage by companies that manage the water supply networks have created a range of possibilities to apply machine learning. One particular case is the prediction of pipe failures based on historical data, which can help to optimally plan the renovation and maintenance tasks. The objective of this work is to define the stages and main characteristics of machine learning systems, focusing on supervised learning methods. Additionally, singularities that are usually found in data from water supply networks are highlighted.Design/methodology/approach: For this purpose, eight studies which contain real cases from around the world are discussed. From the data processing to the model validation, a tour of the methods used in each study is carried out. Moreover, the trendiest models are briefly defined together with the mechanisms that best suit their performance.Findings: As a result of the study, it was found that the imbalanced class problem is typical of data from water supply networks where only a small percentage of pipes fail. Consequently, it is recommended to use sampling methods to train classifiers, however, it is not necessary if we are training a regression system. Additionally, scaling and transformation of variables has generally a positive impact on the model's performance. Currently, cross-validation is almost a requirement to obtain reliable and representative results. This technique is employed in all revised studies to train and validate their models.Originality/value: The use of machine learning systems to predict pipe failures in water supply networks is still a developing field. This study tries to define the advantages and disadvantages of different methods to process data from water supply networks, as well as to train and validate the models.


Principal axes methods (such as correspondence analysis [CA]) provide useful visualizations of high-dimensional data sets. In the context of historical textual data, these techniques produce planar maps highlighting the associations between graphemes and texts (paragraphs, chapters, full texts, authors). First, we recall that a simple technique of seriation (re-ordering the rows and columns of a table) is readily derived from the first CA axis. Second, we stress the important role played by bootstrap techniques to allow for valid statistical inferences in a context in which a classical analytical approach is both unrealistic and analytically complex. A series of medieval French texts (12th–13th centuries), rich in spelling variants, exemplify the proposed approaches. A free software program is available.


In this paper we present a rather personal view of the important developments in double-diffusive convection, a subject whose evolution has been the result of a close interaction between theoreticians, laboratory experimenters and sea-going oceano-graphers. More recently, applications in astrophysics, engineering and geology have become apparent. In the final section we attempt to draw some general conclusions and suggest that further progress will again depend on a close collaboration between fluid dynamicists and other scientists.


Laboratory tensile and unconfined compression test results on lightly cemented sand specimens are reported. Type I portland cement was mixed with sand in proportions of 4, 6, and 8% by weight to prepare the specimens. Tensile strength was determined by indirect tensile strength testing and direct tension testing. The variation of tensile strain with stress in indirect tensile strength tests was measured by a computer-aided image analysis method. Based on the test results, tensile and compressive strengths and strain levels at failure have been determined and compared. Nondimensional tensile stress-strain relationships in the form of a rectangular hyperbola as obtained from the indirect tensile strength tests and direct tension tests have been developed.


In December 2015, Juniper Networks announced multiple security vulnerabilities stemming from unauthorized code in ScreenOS, the operating system for their NetScreen VPN routers. The more sophisticated of these vulnerabilities was a passive VPN decryption capability, enabled by a change to one of the elliptic curve points used by the Dual EC pseudorandom number generator. In this paper, we describe the results of a full independent analysis of the ScreenOS randomness and VPN key establishment protocol subsystems, which we carried out in response to this incident. While Dual EC is known to be insecure against an attacker who can choose the elliptic curve parameters, Juniper had claimed in 2013 that ScreenOS included countermeasures against this type of attack. We find that, contrary to Juniper's public statements, the ScreenOS VPN implementation has been vulnerable since 2008 to passive exploitation by an attacker who selects the Dual EC curve point. This vulnerability arises due to apparent flaws in Juniper's countermeasures as well as a cluster of changes that were all introduced concurrently with the inclusion of Dual EC in a single 2008 release. We demonstrate the vulnerability on a real NetScreen device by modifying the firmware to install our own parameters, and we show that it is possible to passively decrypt an individual VPN session in isolation without observing any other network traffic. We investigate the possibility of passively fingerprinting ScreenOS implementations in the wild. This incident is an important example of how guidelines for random number generation, engineering, and validation can fail in practice.


The responses of 12 soybean cultivars to Sclerotinia sclerotiorum were evaluated under field and controlled environment conditions. The 12 cultivars were planted in fields naturally or artificially infested with S. sclerotiorum and evaluated for disease incidence. In controlled environment studies, the cultivars were compared with respect to lesion size on detached leaves and stems inoculated with mycelial disks, incidence of stem rot following mycelial inoculation of foliage, lesion lengths on stems discolored by oxalic acid, and levels of soluble pigment(s) in stems. Significant differences (P ≤ 0.05) in disease incidence, lesion sizes, and levels of soluble pigment(s) were detected among the 12 cultivars in all evaluations, but ranking of cultivars varied among methods and experiments within methods. Corsoy 79 and S19-90 were consistently most resistant in all methods; whereas Kenwood, A2242, Bell, and Williams 82 were least resistant. Pearson correlation coefficients (R) for disease incidence between location years in field experiments (FE) ranged from 0.86 to 0.95. R values between FE and controlled environment experiments (CEE) ranged from 0.01 to 0.62 for detached leaf assays (DLA), -0.20 to 0.47 for lesion lengths on stems inoculated with mycelial disks (LLM), 0.38 to 0.45 for incidence of stem rot from mycelial inoculation of foliage (MIF), 0.08 to 0.66 for lesion lengths on stems discolored by oxalic acid (LLO), and -0.55 to -0.37 for levels of soluble stem pigment(s) (SSP). Absolute values of R between FE and CEE were 0.40 or greater in 40, 17, 33, 29, and 83% of all correlation analyses for DLA, LLM, MIF, LLO, and SSP, respectively. Spearman's coefficients of rank correlation (r s) between FE and CEE based on average performance were 0.55, -0.20, 0.40, 0.42, and -0.44 for DLA, LLM, MIF, LLO, and SSP, respectively. Disease development was slow when foliage was inoculated with a mycelial suspension. Based on experiment (E) by cultivar (C) interaction and rs values between replicate experiments within each method, determination of soluble stem pigment levels (0.86 ≤ rs ≤ 0.97; P < 0.001 for 100% of six analyses; P = 0.98 for E × C interaction) and measurement of lesion lengths on stems discolored by oxalic acid (0.27 ≤ rs ≤ 0.85; rs ≥ 0.58 and P ≤ 0.05 for 68% of 28 analyses; P = 0.07 for E × C interaction) were the most repeatable methods. The results from this study suggest that determination of levels of soluble pigments in stems, measurement of lesion lengths on stems discolored by oxalic acid, and the detached leaf assay may be better than mycelial inoculation of stems or foliage in evaluating soybean cultivars for field resistance to S. sclerotiorum.


We present a Kalman tracking algorithm that can track a number of very small, low contrast objects through an image sequence taken from a static camera. The issues that we have addressed to achieve this are twofold. Firstly, the detection of small objects comprising a few pixels only, moving slowly in the image, and secondly, tracking of multiple small targets even though they may be lost either through occlusion or in noisy signal. The approach uses a combination of wavelet filtering for detection with an interest operator for testing multiple target hypotheses based within the framework of a Kalman tracker. We demonstrate the robustness of the approach to occlusion and for multiple targets.