Impinging jets have been widely used for increasing heat transfer in engineering applications such as cooling of hot steel plates and turbine blades, tempering of glass, drying of papers and films and cooling of electronic components. In the last decades, the semiconductor industry developed so rapidly that the size of electronic component has become less and less. This trend results in the increase of power density, and the simultaneous increase of heat flux on the apparatus. As most of the electronic chips operate only in some range of temperature, it is very important to accelerate the heat dissipation of electronic components. It is obviously that the traditional natural and forced convection methods can't satisfy the cooling of such high heat flux density. In this situation, the swirling jet impingement gets more and more attention as a very potential alternative because of its much better heat transfer effect than the other methods. The objective of the study is to investigate the characteristics of the heat transfer for swirling jet impingement on a surface which aims to enhance the heat transfer rate and also to compare heat transfer characteristics of straight impinging jet and swirl flow impinging jet. The present study focuses on the verification of the swirling jet effect on the distribution of the local heat transfer coefficient on the impinged target surface. Studies would be conducted for a wide range of parameters including velocity, swirl Pitch and nozzle to target plane spacing. The motivation of this paper is to explore the efficiency of swirling jet impingement cooling and understand the mechanisms by which heat is removed from a constant heat flux surface. The heat transfer characteristics and flow structures are explored computationally to gain an understanding of the underlying physics of flow and heat transfer interactions in surface cooling with impinging jets.


Background and purpose: Gold is one of the biochemical compounds in the human body, the effects of which on the activities of some organs has been studied by some researchers. Islam prohibits the use of gold for men, so, this review study investigated the effect of gold on male reproductive system. Materials and methods: Valid electronic databases were searched using the keywords associated with fertility and gold in Englishand Persian and the search was limited to articles published during 2001-2015. The relevant retrieved articles were included in the study. In addition, reference textbooks were hand-searched and some reliable scientific databases were used. Results: Out of the 77 retrieved articles, 14 studies that examined the effect of gold on the male reproductive system were included. Most of the findings suggested that the amount of gold in the seminal fluid and sperm might affect the male reproductive system. Conclusion: This study showed that the amount of gold in male genitals affects fertility. Considering the paucity of scientific studies on this issue, positive or negative effects of gold on male fertility cannot be concluded, hence further studies are required to derive an accurate conclusion.


We introduce FDA5 for efficient parameterization, optimization, and implementation of feature decay algorithms (FDA), a class of instance selection algorithms that use feature decay. FDA increase the diversity of the selected training set by devaluing features (i.e., n-grams) that have already been included. FDA5 decides which instances to select based on three functions used for initializing and decaying feature values and scaling sentence scores controlled with five parameters. We present optimization techniques that allow FDA5 to adapt these functions to in-domain and out-of-domain translation tasks for different language pairs. In a transductive learning setting, selection of training instances relevant to the test set can improve the final translation quality. In machine translation experiments performed on the 2 million sentence English-German section of the Europarl corpus, we show that a subset of the training set selected by FDA5 can gain up to 3.22 BLEU points compared to a randomly selected subset of the same size, can gain up to 0.41 BLEU points compared to using all of the available training data using only 15% of it, and can reach within 0.5 BLEU points to the full training set result by using only 2.7% of the full training data. FDA5 peaks at around 8M words or 15% of the full training set. In an active learning setting, FDA5 minimizes the human effort by identifying the most informative sentences for translation and FDA gains up to 0.45 BLEU points using 3/5 of the available training data compared to using all of it and 1.12 BLEU points compared to random training set. In translation tasks involving English and Turkish, a morphologically rich language, FDA5 can gain up to 11.52 BLEU points compared to a randomly selected subset of the same size, can achieve the same BLEU score using as little as 4% of the data compared to random instance selection, and can exceed the full dataset result by 0.78 BLEU points. FDA5 is able to reduce the time to build a statistical machine translation system to about half with 1M words using only 3% of the space for the phrase table and 8% of the overall space when compared with a baseline system using all of the training data available yet still obtain only 0.58 BLEU points difference with the baseline system in out-of-domain translation.


This paper compares the laser performance of linear and parabolic tapered waveguides in ion-exchanged Nd:Glass, finding significant advantage for the linear guides, with demonstrated adiabatic expansion to widths of 250 /spl mu/m. The characterization of these waveguide lasers by Ti:sapphire pumping is followed by a demonstration of high-power diode-pumped laser operation and a discussion of the optimization of such a scheme for producing high-power integrated-optics laser sources.


Art in the Lives of Immigrant Communities in the United States is the first book to provide a comprehensive and lively analysis of the contributions of artists from America's newest immigrant communities--Africa, the Middle East, China, India, Southeast Asia, Central America, and Mexico. Adding significantly to our understanding of both the arts and immigration, multidisciplinary scholars explore tensions that artists face in forging careers in a new world and navigating between their home communities and the larger society. They address the art forms that these modern settlers bring with them; show how poets, musicians, playwrights, and visual artists adapt traditional forms to new environments; and consider the ways in which the communities' young people integrate their own traditions and concerns into contemporary expression.


Abstract This paper analyzes measures that limit firms' profit shifting activities in a model that incorporates heterogeneous firm productivity and monopolistic competition. Such measures, e.g. thin capitalization rules, have become increasingly widespread as governments have reacted to growing profit shifting activities of multinational companies. However, besides limiting profit shifting, such rules entail costs. As the regulations can only focus on the means to shift profits, not on profit shifting itself, they impose costs on all firms, no matter whether these firms shift profits abroad or not. In the model, these costs force some firms to exit the market. Thus, as the resulting lower competition makes the remaining firms more profitable, regulations to limit profit shifting may even increase the aggregate amount of profits shifted abroad. From a welfare point of view, it can be optimal not to limit profit shifting by such rules.


In unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO), both oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction are related to cell death. The aim of this study has been to characterize profiles of enzyme antioxidant activities and mitochondrial functioning of the contralateral (CL) compared to UUO and Sham (false-operated) kidneys of Balb/c mice. Kidneys were resected 14 days after obstruction for immunohistochemical and cortical mitochondrial functioning assays. Antioxidant enzymes activities were investigated in mitochondria and cytosol. Oxygen consumption (QO2) and formation of O2 reactive species (ROS) were assessed with pyruvate plus malate or succinate as the respiratory substrates. QO2 decreased in CL and UUO in all states using substrates for complex II, whereas it was affected only in UUO when substrates for complex I were used. Progressive decrease in mitochondrial ROS formation–in the forward and reverse pathway at complex I–correlates well with the inhibition of QO2 and, therefore, with decreased electron transfer at the level of complexes upstream of cytochrome c oxidase. CL and UUO transmembrane potential responses to ADP were impaired with succinate. Intense Ca2+-induced swelling was elicited in CL and UUO mitochondria. Important and selective differences exist in CL antioxidant enzymes with respect to either Sham or UUO kidneys: CL kidneys had increased mitochondrial glutathione peroxidase and cytosolic catalase activities, indicative of compensatory responses in the face of an early altered ROS homeostasis (as detected by 4-hydroxynonenal), and of a significant tendency to apoptosis. In CL and UUO, upregulation of nuclear (erythroid-derived 2)-like 2 transcription factor (Nrf2), as well as of cytoplasmic and nuclear Kelch-like ECH-associated protein 1 (Keap1) in opposition to decreased heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), suggest impairment of the Nrf2/Keap1/HO-1 system. It is concluded that chronic obstruction impairs mitochondrial function in CL and UUO, preferentially affecting complex II.


Over the past years, there has been an increase in the use of qualitative methods in health services research, including pharmacy research. Pharmacy practice researchers can use these methods to understand, explain, discover, and explore both patients' and health care practitioners' thoughts, perceptions, and feelings. Qualitative research can also be used for the "democratisation" of research methods through research that is inclusive, collaborative, and involves partnerships and co-production. There is a wide spectrum of qualitative research methods that might be used in pharmacy research. This Special Issue showcases five articles in different settings and countries with diverse participants that seek to develop, explore, describe, and identify. These articles provide further insights into important pharmacy questions with the ultimate goal of helping improve health and well-being.


When biomass is exposed to high temperatures in torrefaction, pyrolysis or gasification treatments, the enrichment of carbon in the remaining 'green coal' is correlated with the temperature. Various other properties, currently measured using wet chemical methods, which affect the materials' quality as a fuel, also change. The presented study investigated the possibility of using NIR spectrometry to estimate diverse variables of biomass originating from two sources (above-ground parts of reed canary grass and Norway spruce wood) carbonised at temperatures ranging from 240 to 850 °C. The results show that the spectra can provide excellent predictions of its energy, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, ash, volatile matter and fixed carbon contents. Hence NIR spectrometry combined with multivariate calibration modeling has potential utility as a standardized method for rapidly characterising thermo-treated biomass, thus reducing requirements for more costly, laborious wet chemical analyses and consumables.


Distributed algorithms offer challenges in checking that they meet their specifications. Verification techniques can be extended to deal with the verification of safety properties of distributed algorithms. In this paper, we present an approach for combining correct-by-construction approaches and transformations of formal models (Event-B) into programs (DistAlgo) to address the design of verified distributed programs. We define a subset LB (Local Event-B) of the Event-B modelling language restricted to events modelling the classical actions of distributed programs as internal or local computations, sending messages and receiving messages. We define then transformations of the various elements of the LB language into DistAlgo programs. The general methodology consists in starting from a statement of the problem to program and then progressively producing an LB model obtained after several refinement steps of the initial LB model. The derivation of the LB model is not described in the current paper and has already been addressed in other works. The transformation of LB models into DistAlgo programs is illustrated through a simple example. The refinement process and the soundness of the transformation allow one to produce correct-by-construction distributed programs.


Infectious mononucleosis syndrome, characterized in typical cases by fever, sore throat, tonsillar exudates, cervical adenopathies and atypical lymphocytosis is associated in most cases to Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection. Other potential causes for this syndrome are acute cytomegalovirus (CMV), Human Immunodeficiency Virus, Toxoplasma gondii or Human Herpes virus 6 infection. These alternative etiologies evolve with a modified clinical picture that includes sometimes leukopenia or rash. Diagnosis of EBV is easily accomplished by atypical lymphocytosis (> 10%), positive heterophil antibodies and IgM antibodies directed against the EB viral capsid antigen (VCA). The latter is needed for cases without positive heterophil antibodies. Acute CMV infection is the second most important cause and can be diagnosed by CMV antigen detection, PCR or shell vial culture of blood samples, although experience with these tests among immunocompetent patients in primary care settings is sparse. Acute primary HIV infection is an important cause for this syndrome and should not be neglected when other causes are discarded. Third or fourth generation HIV ELISA tests, p24 antigen or HIV-PCR detection in blood samples allow recognition of this agent from the second or third week of inoculation. T. gondii and human herpes virus 6 infection can be diagnosed by serological methods. Evolution of EBV or CMV infection is favorable with infrequent complications


The global agriculture of today is to a high degree dependent on mineral fertilisers that through a constant accumulation of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in the biosphere contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and eutrophication of water bodies. At the same time, agricultural productivity around the world is largely constrained by low inputs of plant nutrients. Increased nutrient recovery from organic wastes and livestock and human excreta is needed to sustain soil fertility and ensure food security within the planetary boundaries. In this study, the resource management in Ethiopian farm households (hhs) has been studied to assess to what extent N, P and organic carbon (OC) could be recirculated to farmland from local farm household resources and wastes. The study included 15 farm hhs divided into three different socio-economic groups in the village of Bolo Silasie in central Ethiopia. The data collection was done through interviews, collection and weighing of waste fractions and lab analyses of total N, total P and OC for the most important farm resources and wastes. To understand the dynamics of nutrient accumulation and losses in the farm system, the data was analysed using material flow analysis (MFA). Additionally, 24 fields belonging to the study hhs were sampled and analysed to assess their current soil status in the village. It was found that although livestock are crucial components in the local farming system, only 19% of the manure is returned to the fields through compost application. Finding an alternative to the current use of manure as stove fuel was identified as the intervention with the highest poten-tial for increased nutrient and organic matter recovery. Utilization of livestock urine and hu-man excreta as well as improved management of compost could also make significant con-tributions to improved nutrient recovery. Depending on resource recovery ambition, local resources could supply up to 50 kg N and 12 kg P ha-1 y-1. This should be compared to the current use of mineral fertilizers of 51 kg N and 26 kg P ha-1 y-1. Today, however, many hh resources and wastes have an alternative use, and any intervention in the management system must be considered together with its social, practical and ecological implications. The three socio-economic groups were found to face different challenges and opportunities in nutrient recycling, mainly related to differences in access to livestock. This study hence suggests that research and advisory around local plant nutrient management should pay greater to socio-economic factors influencing hh resource and waste management.


Most current commercial Virtual Reality (VR) drawing applications for creativity rely on freehand 3D drawing as their main interaction paradigm. However, the presence of the additional third dimension makes accurate freehand drawing challenging. Some systems address this problem by constraining or beautifying user strokes, which can be intrusive and can limit the expressivity of freehand drawing. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of relying solely on visual guidance to increase overall drawing shape-likeness. We identified a set of common mistakes that users make while creating freehand strokes in VR and then designed a set of visual guides, the Smart3DGuides, which help users avoid these mistakes. We evaluated Smart3DGuides in two user studies, and our results show that non-constraining visual guides help users draw more accurately.


This paper sets out to evaluate the effect on learners' knowledge and use of language of
one prominent technique in corpus pedagogy, the data-driven use of corpus concordances
with learners as researchers, or Data-Driven Learning (DDL) (Johns 1988, 1991). More
specifically, the paper attempts measurement of the effect of DDL on the achievement of
the goal of appropriate production by learners of logical connectors, an important subskill
in the context of the wider objective of the acquisition of basic academic writing skills
in English. The evaluation uses learner corpora from experimental and control groups,
supported by other methods. The conclusion is that DDL, applied in the context of the
communicative teaching of writing skills, is moderately effective, and that there is
potential both for the further development of learner corpora in an evaluative role, and for
use of a wider range of instrumentation.


Fuzzy measure and Choquet integral are effective tools for handling complex multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problems in which criteria are inter-dependent. The identification of a fuzzy measure requires the determination of 2(superscript n)-2 values when the number of criteria is n. The complexity of this problem increases exponentially, which makes it practically very difficult to solve. Many methods have been proposed to reduce the number of values to be determined including the introduction of new special fuzzy measures like the λ-fuzzy measures. However, manipulations of the proposed methods are difficult from the aspects of high data complexity as well as low computation efficiency. Thus, this paper proposed a novel fuzzy measure identification method by reducing the data complexity to n(n−1)/2 and enhancing the computation efficiency by leveraging a relatively small number of variables and constraints for linear programming. The proposed method was developed based on the evaluation of pair-wise additivity degrees or interdependence coefficients between the criteria. Depending on the information being provided by decision-makers on the individual density of each criterion, the fuzzy measure can be constructed by solving a simple system of linear inequalities or a linear programming problem. This novel method is validated through a supplier selection problem which occurs frequently in real-world decision-making problems. Validation results demonstrate that the newly-proposed method can model real-world MCDM problems successfully.


The minimal stream flow is the most sensitive characteristic of stream flow. The aim of the paper is the assessment of the duration and the frequency of low flow through threshold method on daily discharges. The daily data of the two Danube tributaries (the Topolovets and Voinishka) have been used. The results present the following: low flow typically appears in the summer and episodically in the spring and winter; the duration varies between some days to month; the spatial distribution of extreme minimum flow is discrete and depends on climatic and anthropogenic activities. The method of quantiles gives good threshold level for defining extremely low stream flow, but have to apply in keeping with concrete conditions and purposes.


Ordering and ranking items of different types are important tasks in various applications, such as query processing and scientific data mining. A total order for the items can be misleading, since there are groups of items that have practically equal ranks.We consider bucket orders, i.e., total orders with ties. They can be used to capture the essential order information without overfitting the data: they form a useful concept class between total orders and arbitrary partial orders. We address the question of finding a bucket order for a set of items, given pairwise precedence information between the items. We also discuss methods for computing the pairwise precedence data.We describe simple and efficient algorithms for finding good bucket orders. Several of the algorithms have a provable approximation guarantee, and they scale well to large datasets. We provide experimental results on artificial and a real data that show the usefulness of bucket orders and demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the algorithms.


Contemporary education initiatives require English language arts educators spend half their time on non-fiction and history and social studies teachers to include diverse sources. Beginning in the early grades within the aforementioned curricula, students are to scrutinize multiple texts of the same historical event, era, or figure. Whereas trade books are a logical curricular resource for English language arts and history and social studies curricula, the education mandates do not provide suggestions. Research indicates trade books are rife with historical misrepresentations, yet few empirical studies have been completed so more research is needed. Our research examined the historical representation of Eleanor Roosevelt within trade books for early and middle-grades students. Identified historical misrepresentations included minimized or omitted accounts of the societal contexts and social relationships that shaped Mrs. Roosevelt's social conscience and civic involvement. Effective content spiraling, in which complexity and nuance increase with grade level, between early and middle-grades trade books did not appear. Pedagogical suggestions included ways to position students to identify the varying degrees of historical representation within different trade books and integrate supplementary primary sources to balance the historical gaps.


We describe a quantitative literacy (QL) program at Colby-Sawyer College, a small, residential, liberal arts college in New Hampshire. This program has grown rapidly from a traditional math curriculum to a collegewide understanding of quantitative literacy and voluntary participation by many faculty members in all departments. More than 80% of the faculty agreed that it would be useful for students to be able to use quantitative skills in their courses, but only 24 % thought students were capable of doing very well in mathematics. Twenty-three faculty members attended a summer workshop, funded by NSF, DUE # 0633133, in which they created QL modules for their courses. These participants represented five departments and 13 different disciplines. Modules were created in Biology, Business, Chemistry, Education, English, Environmental Studies, History, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, and Writing. In addition to assessment of individual modules, a college-wide assessment tool will be administered to first-year students and seniors by participating faculty members. We believe that the rapid growth and success of our program is perhaps due to a combination of characteristics of our institution and our approach. These characteristics include: Involving as many people as possible from many different disciplines from the beginning; a culture of collaboration and innovation at Colby-Sawyer; a supportive administration; the support of NSF that allows concentrated and focused time for faculty with heavy teaching loads; and a faculty focus on the scholarship of teaching.


Understanding CO2 efflux from soil at different scales is important when up-scaling CO2 measurements from plot to larger scales, but there have been few studies investigating spatial CO2 efflux in temperate environments.
We conducted a nested analysis of variation to explore how the CO2 efflux variation occurs between different spatial scales. Ninety-six manual dynamic chamber flux measurements of CO2 were undertaken during three, four hour surveys within seven grouped sites, each containing an optimised nested design with lag distances of 0.3m, 1m, 3m and 9m across six hectares of grazed hillslope grassland. This design also included continuous logging soil moisture sensors (plus conductivity and temperature) at 10cm soil depth.
A previous study showed at this site that the variation of soil moisture is divided relatively equally between the four spatial scales 9m. The proportion of large-scale (>9m) variation increased after rainfall. In contrast in the three surveys analysed to date, the vast majority of the variation in CO2 flux occurred over the two smallest scales. No significant correlation between CO2 and soil moisture was observed over any of the spatial scales. All of these three surveys were conducted on relatively dry soils.
We also investigated whether there were significant temporal variations in CO2 efflux over a period of three weeks using an automated soil flux system. These data showed there was no significant temporal variability between 10:00 to 16:00 hrs during late summer.
There has recently been substantial rainfall at the field site and we are now conducting additional surveys to examine how the total CO2 fluxes and their spatial variation is effected by these wetter conditions.


This essay analyses Jacques Stephen Alexis' masterpiece Romancero aux étoiles (1960), which can be considered as a practical application of his sociopoetic theories for a Panamerican humanism. Indeed, in this collection of folktales, Alexis revolutionises the popular imaginary and the genres of orature, but he also reintroduces the Taino/Native contribution to the Haitian identity and culture, devoting two tales to two mythical Taino figures: the queen Anacaona and the viens-viens. The analysis of these two tales, "Dit de la Fleur d'Or" and "Le sous-lieutenant enchanté", allows to understand the new conception developed by Alexis, that of the influence of orature in literature and also his openness to a pluriethnic and pluricultural Americanism.


Among the oldest debates in American jurisprudence concerns the concept of "proximate cause." According to so-called formalists, the legal concept of "proximate cause" is the same as the ordinary concept of "cause." The legal question of whether a cause is proximate for the purposes of establishing tort liability, therefore, is an objective matter about the external world determinable by familiar descriptive inquiry. By contrast, legal realists think that issues of proximate causation are disguised normative questions about responsibility. As the realists William Prosser and Robert Keeton put it, "Proximate cause is better called 'responsible cause'."

Recent work in cognitive science has afforded us new insights into the way people make causal judgments that were unavailable at the time of the original debate between formalists and realists. We now have access to the results of systematic experimental studies that examine the way people ordinarily think about causation and morality. This work opens up the possibility of a very different approach to understanding the role of causation in the law — one which combines the attractive features of both formalism and realism without accepting their implausible consequences.

In addition to providing a model for interpreting the case law of proximate cause, this paper also exemplifies a new way of doing legal theory — a method we call "experimental jurisprudence." Experimental jurisprudence is the study of jurisprudential questions using empirical methods. Jurisprudential disputes about proximate cause are especially ripe for empirical analysis because the debate revolves around whether the legal concept of proximate cause is the same as the ordinary concept of causation. Interrogating the ordinary concept of causation, therefore, should shed light on this question.


We study the effect of transfer of phase noise in different four wave mixing schemes using a coherent phase noise measurement technique. The nature of phase noise transfer from the pump to the generated wavelengths is shown to be independent of the type of phase noise (1 / f or white noise frequency components). We then propose a novel scheme using dual correlated pumps to prevent the increase in phase noise in the conjugate wavelengths. The proposed scheme is experimentally verified by the all-optical wavelength conversion of a DQPSK signal at 10.7 GBaud.


Seven grass species--desert wheatgrass (Agropyron desertorum),
streambank wheatgrass (Agropyron riparium), cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum),
basin wildrye (Elymus cirtereus), Sandberg's bluegrass (Poa sandbergii),
bottlebrush squirreltail (Sitanion hystrix), and needle-and-thread grass
(Stipa comata)--were harvested to a 1/2-inch (1.2-cm) stubble height
periodically between mid-March and December in most years from 1962
through 1968 at the Saylor Creek Experimental Range in southern Idaho.
These samples were analyzed for N, P, S, Ca, Mg, K, Na, Zn, Mn, Cu,
and Fe. Certain digestibility fractions (NDF, NDF-ash, DCW, DCW-ash
free, and TDDM) were also determined on these samples. In addition,
estimates of the soil chemical status, soil moisture contents over depth
and time, forage yields, and moisture contents over time, effects of
ammonium nitrate fertilization on forage yields and mineral composition,
and animal grazing responses to cheatgrass range are included.


Singapore has developed a unique housing system, with three-quarters of its housing stock built by the Housing & Development Board (HDB) and homeownership financed through Central Provident Fund (CPF) savings. As a result, the country's homeownership rate of 90% is one of the highest among market economies. At different stages of its economic development, the Government of Singapore was faced with a different set of housing problems. An integrated land–housing supply and financing framework was established in the 1960s to solve the severe housing shortage. By the 1990s, the challenge was that of renewing aging estates and creating a market for HDB transactions. Housing subsidies in the form of housing grants were also introduced. Recent challenges include curbing speculative and investment demand, as well as coping with increasing income inequalities and an aging population. These have brought about carefully crafted macroprudential policies, targeted housing grants, and schemes to help elderly households monetize their housing equity. This paper analyzes key pillars of the housing policy, specifically land acquisition, the HDB–CPF system, the role of markets, housing market interventions, the Ethnic Integration Policy, and the Lease Buyback Scheme. It concludes with lessons learned for other countries.


Punishing a person based on low unconditional credence in their deservingness to be punished is consistent with retributivist deontological principles. Negative retributivism absolutely prohibits the intentional or knowing infliction of undeserved harm on individuals identified as undeserving, not the intentional or knowing infliction of risks of undeserved harm on individuals. Meanwhile, the knowing infliction of undeserved harm on some unidentified individuals generates not overriding reasons against punishment, but pro tanto reasons against punishment that are to be weighed against other non-overriding reasons for punishment like crime prevention. The upshot is that uncertainty regarding any identified person's deservingness to be punished does not entail that punishment is generally impermissible if negative retributivism is true. One might be misled into thinking that impossibly high levels of unconditional credence in individual desert claims is morally required by failing to distinguish our actual criminal law practices, which are extremely harsh and unjustifiable, from criminal law as it ought to be.


We introduce recurrent neural network grammars, probabilistic models of sentences with explicit phrase structure. We explain efficient inference procedures that allow application to both parsing and language modeling. Experiments show that they provide better parsing in English than any single previously published supervised generative model and better language modeling than state-of-the-art sequential RNNs in English and Chinese.


Community participation in construction during rural infrastructure projects in developing countries is encouraged by many non-governmental organizations. The health and safety aspects of this type of development model have not previously been adequately researched, however. The aim is to identify the socio-cultural factors that motivate community members to participate in construction activities which they perceive as hazardous during a case study of a water and sanitation project in rural Ghana. This is a step towards understanding how health and safety can be more effectively managed during community development projects. A qualitative approach has been taken, using interview, observation and reflection. It was found that the communal culture of the local context resulted in community members feeling pressurized to participate in hazardous construction activities. Local customary laws further compelled individuals as they were concerned they could be fined or arrested should they not fulfil their communal obligations. Further work is required to determine the boundaries within which findings apply but it is likely that there are implications for others managing community construction projects both in Ghana and further afield.


In this article, we propose a thought experiment: what if copyright law could better incorporate social and cultural norms around content engagement and re-use? We draw on empirical research that explores the norms of different creative communities when they reuse the work of others, and the norms of consumers around sharing. We outline how both creators and copyright users engage almost daily in small-scale infringement that does not substitute or disrupt copyright owners' established markets, either because the uses are highly transformative, or personal and unremarkable. We suggest that copyright could better reflect these norms if both norms and moral rights were considered as part of a remedies assessment. We propose that in cases where work has been attributed and treated with integrity, and where the use does not directly cause economic harm to the copyright owner, courts should award only nominal damages and decline to order injunctive relief.


The ability of the API Coryne system, version 2.0, to identify 178 strains of gram-positive rods was evaluated. Seventy eight isolates belonged to genus Corynebacterium and one hundred to related genera, all strains were isolated from clinical samples at the Laboratory of Bacteriology, Hospital de Clínicas José de San Martin (UBA) between 1995 and 2004. The isolates were identified according to von Graevenitz and Funke's scheme. One hundred and sixty two out of 178 strains (91%) were correctly identified at genus and species level (IC95 = 85.6-94.6), in 44 of them (24.7%) additional tests were needed to final identification. Sixteen strains (9%) were not correctly identified (IC95 = 5.4-14.4); none of the 178 strains remained unidentified. The API Coryne system, version 2.0, is useful to identify the majority of Cory-nebacterium species with clinical relevance: Corynebacterium jeikeium, Corynebacterium urealyticum, Corynebacterium striatum, Corynebacterium pseudodiphtheriticum, Corynebacterium amycolatum and related species such as Arcanobacterium haemolyticum, Dermabacter hominis, Listeria monocytogenes, among others. Nevertheless for yellow-pigmented diphteroid gram-positive rods (Aureobacterium spp., Leifsonia aquatica, Microbacterium spp. and Cellulomonas spp.) and for acid fast gram-positive rods (Rhodococcus, Gordonia, Tsukamurella and Nocardia) the identification usefulness the system is limited.


The possibilities of sub-micron patterning by means of microstencils using pulsed laser deposition were investigated. Stencils with circular and elliptical patterns were used, with pore sizes ranging from 1 μm down to 500 nm. Strontium titanate (SrTiO3), silicon (Si) and self-assembled monolayers on gold were used as substrate materials, whereas nickel (Ni), nickel oxide (NiO) and gold (Au) have been deposited. The results show that the chosen deposition setup makes an easy and fast way for high-quality pattern creation. PACS 81.15.Fg; 81.16.Rf; 68.37.Ps


In the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, dilute glacial meltwater flows down well‐established streambeds to closed basin lakes during the austral summer. During the 6–12 week flow season, a hyporheic zone develops in the saturated sediment adjacent to the streams. Longer Dry Valley streams have higher concentrations of major ions than shorter streams. The longitudinal increases in Si and K suggest that primary weathering contributes to the downstream solute increase. The hypothesis that weathering reactions in the hyporheic zone control stream chemistry was tested by modeling the downstream increase in solute concentration in von Guerard Stream in Taylor Valley. The average rates of solute supplied from these sources over the 5.2 km length of the stream were 6.1 × 10−9 mol Si L−1 m−1 and 3.7 × 10−9 mol K L−1 m−1, yielding annual dissolved Si loads of 0.02–1.30 mol Si m−2 of watershed land surface. Silicate minerals in streambed sediment were analyzed to determine the representative surface area of minerals in the hyporheic zone subject to primary weathering. Two strategies were evaluated to compute sediment surface area normalized weathering rates. The first applies a best linear fit to synoptic data in order to calculate a constant downstream solute concentration gradient, dC/dx (constant weathering rate contribution, CRC method); the second uses a transient storage model to simulate dC/dx, representing both hyporheic exchange and chemical weathering (hydrologic exchange, HE method). Geometric surface area normalized dissolution rates of the silicate minerals in the stream ranged from 0.6 × 10−12 mol Si m−2 s−1 to 4.5 × 10−12 mol Si m−2 s−1 and 0.4 × 10−12 mol K m−2 s−1 to 1.9 × 10−12 mol K m−2 s−1. These values are an order of magnitude lower than geometric surface area normalized weathering rates determined in laboratory studies and are an order of magnitude greater than geometric surface area normalized weathering rates determined in a warmer, wetter setting in temperate basins, despite the cold temperatures, lack of precipitation and lack of organic material. These results suggest that the continuous saturation and rapid flushing of the sediment due to hyporheic exchange facilitates weathering in Dry Valley streams.


Objective Statins have been commonly used to treat patients with hypercholesterolaemia and to prevent cardiovascular disease (CVD) worldwide. This study examined trends in use of statins in Taiwan from 2002 to 2011. Design This is a retrospective observational study focusing on the utilisation of statins. Setting The monthly claims data for statins between 2002 and 2011 were retrieved from Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database. Main outcome measures We calculated the yearly prescription rate per new user for each statin. Products were classified as high-intensity/moderate-intensity/low-intensity statins by type of statin and dosage. Users were also classified based on disease histories. Results The number of statin users increased from 10 299 (~1.4% of adults) in 2002 to 50 687 (~6.3% of adults) in 2011. Atorvastatin was the most commonly used agent (28.4%–36.7%) during the study period. After 2007, simvastatin ranked second with 21.7% market share, followed by rosuvastatin, a newer agent that exhibited a substantial growth in prescription rates (3.4% in 2005 and 19.5% in 2011). In 2011, 94.0% of new statin users used statin monotherapies, and 6.0% used combination therapies. Use of moderate-intensity statins increased from 49.0% in 2002 to 71.0% in 2011, while high-intensity statins remained low. Patients with history of coronary events or cerebrovascular events were more likely to be prescribed higher intensity statins compared with those without. Prescribing of higher intensity statins was not greater among people with diabetes compared with those without during 2007–2011. Selection of statins did not differ between people with versus without history of myopathy or liver injury. Conclusion Atorvastatin was the most commonly used statin in Taiwan during 2002–2011. While patients with history of CVD were more likely to be prescribed higher intensity statins compared with those without, this difference was not found comparing those with and without diabetes.


Photosynthetic efficiency of higher plants dynamically adapts to changing light intensity and is greatly influenced by stress, such as water stress. We tested a new portable hyperspectral imaging system, the SOC-700, manufactured by Surface Optics, which produces 12-bit reflectance images between 440 nm and 880 nm with a 4 nm spectral resolution. We quantified the reflectance properties and photochemical reflectance index (PRI) during light adaptation of genetically modified Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. plants lacking or over-expressing the PsbS protein, an essential component of the mechanism of non-photochemical dissipation. In a second experiment, PRI images of gradually water stressed leaves were compared to leaf-level measurements of reflectance using a second commercially available spectrometer, and chlorophyll fluorescence to detect dynamic, photosynthesis correlated changes in reflectance and PRI. In both experiments PRI measured with the SOC-700 changed, reflecting the biochemical adaptation of the photosynthetic apparatus to high light intensity (dynamic changes within minutes) and the gradual deactivation of photosynthesis during drying (changes within hours). The quantum efficiency of photosystem II (� F/Fm� ) and non-photochemical energy dissipation (NPQ) measured from chlorophyll fluorescence, were strongly correlated with PRI. Leaf area PRI values estimated from individual pixel spectra of the SOC-700 quantified photosynthetic efficiency more thoroughly than PRI values calculated from point measurements using the hand-held GER-1500. The applications, limitations, and potential of the SOC-700 for plant eco-physiology and remote sensing are also discussed.


The past few years have seen a rapid growth of interest regarding how information from the different senses is combined. Historically, the majority of the research on this topic has focused on interactions in the perception of stationary stimuli, but given that the majority of stimuli in the world move, an important question concerns the extent to which principles derived from stationary stimuli also apply to moving stimuli. A key finding emerging from recent work with moving stimuli is that our perception of stimulus movement in one modality is frequently, and unavoidably, modulated by the concurrent movement of stimuli in other sensory modalities. Visual motion has a particularly strong influence on the perception of auditory and tactile motion. These behavioral results are now being complemented by the results of neuroimaging studies that have pointed out the existence of both modality-specific motion-processing areas and areas involved in processing motion in more than one sense. The challenge for the future will be to develop novel experimental paradigms that can integrate behavioral and neuroscientific approaches in order to refine our understanding of multisensory contributions to the perception of movement.


Graphene is a monolayer of carbon atoms structured in the form of a honeycomb lattice. Recent experimental studies have revealed that it can support surface plasmons at Terahertz frequencies thanks to its dispersive conductivity. Additionally, characteristics of these plasmons can be dynamically adjusted via electrostatic gating of the graphene sheet (K. S. Novoselov, et al., Science, 306, 666–669, 2004). These properties suggest that graphene can be a building block for novel electromagnetic and photonic devices for applications in the fields of photovoltaics, bio-chemical sensing, all-optical computing, and flexible electronics. Simulation of electromagnetic interactions on graphene-based devices is not an easy task. The thickness of the graphene sheet is orders of magnitude smaller than any other geometrical dimension of the device. Consequently, discretization of such a device leads to significantly large number of unknowns and/or ill-conditioned matrix systems.


Accurate motor control is required when walking around obstacles in order to avoid collisions. When vision is unavailable, sensory substitution can be used to improve locomotion through the environment. Tactile sensory substitution devices (SSDs) are electronic travel aids, some of which indicate the distance of an obstacle using the rate of vibration of a transducer on the skin. We investigated how accurately such an SSD guided navigation in an obstacle circumvention task. Using an SSD, 12 blindfolded participants navigated around a single flat 0.6 x 2 m obstacle. A 3-dimensional Vicon motion capture system was used to quantify various kinematic indices of human movement. Navigation performance under full vision was used as a baseline for comparison. The obstacle position was varied from trial to trial relative to the participant, being placed at two distances 25 cm to the left, right or directly ahead. Under SSD guidance, participants navigated without collision in 93% of trials. No collisions occurred under visual guidance. Buffer space (clearance between the obstacle and shoulder) was larger by a factor of 2.1 with SSD guidance than with visual guidance, movement times were longer by a factor of 9.4, and numbers of velocity corrections were larger by a factor of 5 (all p<0.05). Participants passed the obstacle on the side affording the most space in the majority of trials for both SSD and visual guidance conditions. The results are consistent with the idea that SSD information can be used to generate a protective envelope during locomotion in order to avoid collisions when navigating around obstacles, and to pass on the side of the obstacle affording the most space in the majority of trials.


Corresponding author: Jae Hyeon Kim Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Internal Medicine, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, 50 Irwon-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 135-710, Korea E-mail: email@example.com We appreciate the comments on our study "The Relationship between Lung Function and Metabolic Syndrome in Obese and Non-Obese Korean Adult Males," which was published in Korean Diabetes J 2010;34:253-260. We reported that insulin resistance, and other metabolic risk factors appear to be related to forced vital capacity (FVC), irrespective of obesity in Korean males. The age, height, and disease were the major determinants of ventilatory function [1]. In our study, there was a significant difference of age between metabolic syndrome (MetS) and non-MetS. So, we studied the relationship between MetS and FVC after adjusting for age. After adjusting age, there was still a significant difference in FVC between MetS and non-MetS groups (93.1 ± 12.1 vs. 97.0 ± 11.5, P < 0.05). Furthermore, insulin resistance and other metabolic components such as waist circumference were independently associated with FVC in a multi-linear regression analysis after adjusting for age and height, the major determinants of ventilatory function, and this was consistent with previous studies [2–5]. It has been reported that lung function is affected by several factors such as body composition and fat distribution, physical activity level, handgrip strength and respiratory muscle power [6–9]. Our study was performed on a limited cross-section of the population, so we could not control the potential biases due to differences in physical activity or respiratory muscle power. However, several studies have reported that insulin resistance is independently associated with lung function [3,10]. These studies reported that the lung function is still inversely associated with insulin resistance after adjusting for compounding factors such as age, height, smoking, and physical activity. Furthermore, Lazarus et al. [11,12] reported that skeletal muscle weakness served as a marker for future risk of insulin resistance, and that impaired lung function can aid in the prediction of development of insulin resistance. They suggested that some metabolic change that eventually leads to insulin resistance may initially induce diminished muscle strength and diminished ventilatory function [12]. So diminished muscle strength may be not confounding factor, but an early marker of insulin resistance. Several reports have suggested that impaired lung function is associated with glucose intolerance, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease, and that lung function is a reliable longterm predictor of mortality in the general population . We suggested that decreased FVC is associated with increased metabolic risk and insulin resistance in Korean males. Further prospective study to elucidate the relationship between lung function and metabolic risk is needed.


Eighteen healthy obese subjects participated in a single blind, randomized, crossover study of three test breakfasts, containing 0 g (control), 4 g or 8 g of isolated fenugreek fiber. Subjects recorded ratings of hunger, satiety, fullness and prospective food consumption using visual analog scales (VAS) every 30 min for 3.5 h. Postprandial blood glucose and insulin responses were measured. Energy intake from an ad libitum lunch buffet and for the remainder of the day was assessed. The 8 g dose of fenugreek fiber significantly increased mean ratings of satiety and fullness, and reduced ratings of hunger and prospective food consumption (P < 0.05). Palatability was significantly reduced with increasing doses of fenugreek fiber (P < 0.05). No differences were observed for area under the curve (AUC) for blood glucose among treatments. An increase in insulin AUC was found with 8 g fenugreek fiber. Energy intake at an ad libitum lunch buffet was significantly lower for 8 g than 4 g fenugreek fiber, but not significantly different from control, although there was a trend towards a lower intake (p = 0.11). No differences were observed for energy intake for the remainder of the day. Fenugreek fiber (8 g) significantly increased satiety and reduced energy intake at lunch, suggesting it may have short‐term beneficial effects in obese subjects. Satiety results were not related to postprandial blood glucose. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Distributed sensors could be used in a temperature monitoring system to track the change in temperature in a laboratory or any other room. The temperature monitoring
system can be made intelligent by integrating it with a dialing system that warns against the unwanted temperatures that exceed some predefined limits. Such a system could be utilized in places where the temperature plays an important role. Tissue Culture laboratory is one of the laboratories that could get advantage of this system. Tissue culture laboratory has a large number of tissue samples of various plants. Those tissue samples have to be kept in a specific range of temperature. Researchers need to maintain the temperature within the limits by adjusting the air conditioner to the required temperature. However, there might be a failure in the air conditioner due to lack of gas or thermostat malfunctioning. Temperature in that case will rise or drop and goes beyond the wanted limits. This problem might happen in the working time hours or off time when nobody is around to notice the change in temperature.
Accordingly, a need of a remote alarm system is of great importance to warn the related person for the situation.
This thesis deals with this problem and provides a system that monitor the temperature of the rooms and make emergency call to a pre-programmed number in case of temperature rise or drop out of a predefined range. Development of this system is divided into two main tasks. The first task is to develop a system that reads the temperature of the rooms and passes it to the microcontroller's analog to digital inputs. Then, it displays the temperatures on a computer's monitor. The second task is to develop a dialing system that dials a specified number in case the temperature exceeds limits of 29°C to 31 0c. Motorola MC68HCl1 is programmed to monitor the temperature and automatically dial the pre-programmed telephone number. A complete system was developed in this work to measure the temperature and make emergency calls. It was tested and found to work properly. This work is of a major benefit because of the technique of using a dialing system as an alarm of temperature. It is a remote monitoring and alarming system. It can be concluded that this system could be used in many applications where the
need of remote sensors and alarming system is needed. Some changes and improvements can be added as required by each application.


Despite the scientific consensus on the extinction crisis and its anthropogenic origin, the quantification of historical trends and of future scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services has been limited, due to the lack of inter-model comparisons and harmonized scenarios. Here, we present a multi-model analysis to assess the impacts of land-use and climate change from 1900 to 2050. During the 20th century provisioning services increased, but biodiversity and regulating services decreased. Similar trade-offs are projected for the coming decades, but they may be attenuated in a sustainability scenario. Future biodiversity loss from land-use change is projected to keep up with historical rates or reduce slightly, whereas losses due to climate change are projected to increase greatly. Renewed efforts are needed by governments to meet the 2050 vision of the Convention on Biological Diversity. One Sentence Summary Development pathways exist that allow for a reduction of the rates of biodiversity loss from land-use change and improvement in regulating services but climate change poses an increasing challenge.


This scoping review investigates the potential of bite-sized learning approach in music education. The review identified articles from Scopus and ERIC databases, revealing that bite-sized learning is widely discussed in the field of ICT, mathematics, and medicine. Bite-sized learning is pedagogical and pragmatic, providing easy access, convenience, and reducing cognitive load. The study suggests that music educators can incorporate bite-sized learning by refining music content into manageable small units, utilizing flexible platforms such as TikTok, and tailoring the approach according to learner interests. Bite-sized learning can improve the quality of learning by creating an enjoyable, useful, and understandable learning session, reducing time to mastery, and improving mental health. Moreover, bite-sized learning can align with the 21st century learning traits such as personalization. This review highlights the potential of bite-sized learning in music education and recommends further research to examine its effectiveness in various instruments and related subjects. The study concludes that bite-sized learning can be recognized as a pragmatic, flexible, brevity and personalized learning approach that aligns with the needs of modern learners for the 21st century.


Background and purpose: Amoxicillin is one of the antibiotics that has received especial attention as it causes resistance in bacteria. This compound enters the aquatic environment through different routes including human and animal waste, sewage, and waste disposal of medical health centers, veterinary and pharmaceutical industries. The aim of this study was to remove amoxicillin from aqueous environments by advanced oxidation method using synthesized bimetallic CuFe2O4 nanoparticles. Materials and methods: For the purpose of this study, CuFe2O4 was synthesized through the sol-gel method. The physical and structural characteristics of this catalyst were analyzed using SEM, TEM, XRD, EDX, and VSM techniques. Additionally, this study investigated the effects of pH, initial concentrations of amoxicillin and hydrogen peroxide, and catalyst dosage on the reduction of amoxicillin and Total Organic Carbon (TOC). The concentrations of amoxicillin and TOC were determined by HPLC and TOC analyzers, respectively. Results: The highest efficiency in removal of amoxicillin was 99.27% obtained in optimum conditions with CuFe2O4 at 50 ppm, pH= 4, amoxicillin concentration of 90 ppm, hydrogen peroxide concentration of 30 mmol, 30 min contact time, and 20°C temperature. In this condition the removal of TOC was found to be 36.42%. Conclusion: The process studied here has a proper efficiency in removal of amoxicillin; but higher contact time is needed for adequate removal of TOC.


How can a robot learn to conceptualize its environment in terms of objects and actions, starting from its intrinsic "pixel-level" sensorimotor interface? Several domains in artificial intelligence (including language, planning, and logic) rely on the existence of a symbolic representation that provides objects, relations, and actions. With real robots it is difficult to ground these high-level symbolic representations, because hand-written object models and control routines are often brittle and fail to account for the complexities of the real world. In contrast, developmental psychologists describe how an infant's naive understanding of objects transforms with experience into an adult's more sophisticated understanding. Can a robot's understanding of objects develop similarly?
This thesis describes a learning process that leads to a simple and useful theory of objects, their properties, and the actions that apply to them. The robot's initial "pixel-level" experience consists of a range-sensor image stream and a background model of its immediate surroundings. The background model is an occupancy grid that explains away most of the range-sensor data using a static world assumption. To this developing robot, an "object" is a theoretical construct abduced to explain a subset of the robot's sensorimotor experience that is not explained by the background model.
This approach leads to the Object Perception and Action Learner (OPAL). OPAL starts with a simple theory of objects that is used to bootstrap more sophisticated capabilities. In the initial theory, the sensor returns explained by an object have spatial and temporal proximity. This allows the robot to individuate, track, describe, and classify objects (such as a chair or wastebasket) in a simple scene without complex prior knowledge. The initial theory is used to learn a more sophisticated theory. First, the robot uses the perceptual representations described above to create structurally consistent object models that support object localization and recognition. Second, the robot learns actions that support planning to achieve object-based goals.
The combined system extends the robot's representational capabilities to include objects and both constant and time-varying properties of objects. The robot can use constant properties such as shape to recognize objects it has previously observed. It can also use time-varying properties such as location or orientation to track objects that move. These properties can be used to represent the learned preconditions and post-conditions of actions. Thus, the robot can make and execute plans to achieve object-based goals, using the pre- and post-conditions to infer the ordering constraints among actions in the plan.
The learning process and the learned representations were evaluated with metrics that support verification by both the robot and the experimenter. The robot learned object shape models that are structurally consistent to within the robot's sensor precision. The learned shape models also support accurate object classification with externally provided labels. The robot achieved goals specified in terms of object properties by planning with the learned actions, solving tasks such as facing an object, approaching an object, and moving an object to a target location. The robot completed these tasks both reliably and accurately.


This thesis investigates an ultra-precision multi-axis CNC machining problem encountered in machining sculptured surfaces. Conventional multi-axis CNC machining uses straight line segments to connect consecutive data points, and uses linear interpolation technique to generate the command signals for positions between machining data points. However, due to the multi-axis simultaneous and coupled translational and rotational movements, the actual machining motion trajectory is a non-linear curve. The non-linear curve segments deviate from the linearly interpolated straight line segments, resulting in non-linearity errors, which in turn cause obstacles to ensuring high precision machining. The problem in multi-axis CNC machining is that non-linearity errors result in total machining error which is beyond the range of the machining tolerance. The problem arises from the fact that the linear interpolation technique generates commands for positions along a straight line segment, while rotational movements superimposed onto translational movements cause the cutting point moving along a curved machining motion trajectory. The machining motion trajectory depends on both multi-axis CNC machine tool configuration and the machining rotational movements. The machining rotational movements are kinematically related to cutter orientation variations. Thus, The factors causing the multi-axis CNC machining error problem are the spatially varying cutter orientations and the utilization of linear interpolation method. A novel off-line tool path generation methodology for is developed and reported in this thesis in order to solve the non-linearity error problem in ultra-precision multi-axis CNC machining. The new off-line tool path generation method reduces non-linearity errors by modifying cutter orientation changes based on machine kinematics and machining motion trajectory. A software routine for implementing the new tool path generation methodology is developed. A simulation of the process for machining a sculptured surface by applying the novel methodology illustrates that it increases machining precision considerably. A novel interpolator design technique for solving the non-linearity error problem in ultra-precision multi-axis CNC machining is also presented. A 3D circular interpolation principle is developed which is capable of tracking spherical curves with low position errors and uniform feedrates. On the basis of this (3D circular) interpolator, a combined 3D linear and circular (L&C) interpolator is proposed for five-axis CNC machining. The proposed 3D L&C interpolator is able to drive the pivot of rotational movements along a predesigned 3D curve and conduct the cutting point along a linear spatial path, so that the elimination of non-linearity errors in five-axis CNC machining is achieved. A software interpolation routine of the 3D L&C interpolator is developed, and a computer simulation illustrating the machining of a sculptured surface validates the novel technique


Why do people vote for "strong" leaders who condone violence, debase women, and stoke fear and scapegoating? If free elections alone are not the answer, what will it take to build a caring democracy that promotes the wellbeing and full development of all people? This paper examines these questions from a perspective that takes into account the connection between politics and economics, on one hand, and what children first experience and observe in their family and other intimate relations, on the other. It describes the study of relational dynamics, a multidisciplinary method of analysis that reveals social categories that transcend conventional ones: the partnership system and the domination system. It looks at modern history through the lens of the partnership-domination social scale, focusing on the struggle between the movement toward partnership and regressions to domination. It compares the integrated regressive worldview and political agenda with the fragmented progressive one. It identifies four cornerstones for partnership or domination systems: family/childhood, gender, economics, narratives/language. It then details how to build these cornerstones so they support a more humane, caring, and sustainable future, and provides practical resources for this urgent task.


From 1851 to 1855, the Baltic-German geologist Carl von Ditmar explored and made scientific observations of Kamchatka. This area had first been scientifically investigated by Georg Wilhelm Steller and Stepan Petrovich Krasheninnikov in the 1730s and 1740s. However, until the last decade of the nineteenth century, little was added to the studies by Steller and Krasheninnikov, despite almost all of the Russian circumnavigations having gone through Kamchatka. It was only in 1890 that Ditmar's detailed investigation of the natural history and peoples of the Kamchatka peninsula was published. Although Ditmar remains little known to the broader public, his investigations are still used by those investigating Kamchatka.


Recent minimalist approaches have reduced case to independent primitives (agreement, Tense) – but without any connection to its morphological expression. To solve this dichotomy, we consider the Latin -s case ending. Rejecting default treatments, we conclude that -s is associated with denotational, operator properties. These can be read as the set forming operator i.e. plural; as the inclusion operator, i.e. partitive, possessor, etc. (in a word 'oblique'); or as the quantificational closure of EPP contexts ('nominative'). These properties are preserved in the two-case declension of medieval Gallo-Romance, and in its residues in Romansh varieties. Thus so-called case is a denotational, 'determiner-like' element, with consequences for the classical historical correlation between loss of Latin case and development of the Romance determiner system.


While insect cold tolerance has been well studied, the vast majority of work has focused on the effects of a single cold exposure. However, many abiotic environmental stresses, including temperature, fluctuate within an organism's lifespan. In this thesis I address two major questions. First, does frequency of cold exposure impose additional stress on insects? Second, how does this stress translate to performance and fitness? I first summarize the literature on the effects of repeated cold exposure in insects, critically examining experimental designs. I then address my questions experimentally using four insect species with contrasting life histories and responses to cold exposure. I examine the fitness costs of repeated cold exposure in the chill-susceptible fly Drosophila melanogaster by recording survival, generation time, and number of offspring in flies that had received five 2 h, one 2 h, or one 10 h exposure to -0.5 oC. I found that D. melanogaster trades off immediate survival and reproductive output in response to repeated cold exposure. In the freeze-tolerant caterpillar Pyrrharctia isabella, repeated freezing did not deplete energy reserves, but did damage hemocytes and Malpighian tubules, and led to decreased survival in repeatedlyfrozen caterpillars. Similarly, I found in the freeze-avoiding caterpillar Choristoneura fumiferana that frequency of exposure, independent of period, intensity, or duration of cold exposures significantly increased mortality, likely due to increased investment in cryoprotection at the expense of glycogen reserves. Finally, in the freeze-tolerant fly Eurosta solidaginis, the frequency of exposure, again independent of period, intensity, or duration of cold exposures led to a significant decline in egg production. Repeated cold exposure therefore imposes additional costs to insects, even when intensity and duration of cold are controlled for. This cost may either be a result of accrued damage, or may be energetic as individuals trade off investment in survival mechanisms for reproductive output. Given that many environments are not static, these effects indicate that investigating the effects of repeated stress exposure is important for understanding and predicting physiological responses in the wild.


We studied the phase behavior of a model binary mixture of eye lens crystallin proteins using first‐order thermodynamic perturbation theory. The instability boundary, or spinodal surface, was found to be very sensitive to the strength of the attraction between the two proteins, and also to respond to this interprotein attraction strength in a non‐monotonic fashion. In particular, in the case of either weak or strong attractions, these eye lens solutions become thermodynamicaily unstable. Interestingly, attraction strengths that correspond closely to those of proteins isolated from the living lens fall right within the stable region of the phase diagram. This non‐monotonic stability suggests new molecular mechanisms for eye lens opacification in cataract.


Heterogeneous nucleation phenomena, in particular the condensation of vapors in presence of a substrate, are studied by molecular dynamics simulations. The simulations reported to this date have paid little attention to the description on the substrate. Here the dynamics of the vapor phase and the surface are simultaneously treated. Two cases are studied: the condensation of argon and the condensation of platinum on polyethylene films. The fundamental difference between both systems is the relative strength of the adsorbate-substrate interactions. The United Atom Method is used to represent the interactions of methyl groups within the polymer. The properties of polyethylene in the bulk phase such as the glass transition temperature, the density and the formation of gauche defects in the crystalline phase can be well described with this model. The interactions between argon atoms can be well represented by the Lennard Jones potential. The Embedded Atom Method is used to describe interactions between platinum atoms since many body effects, important in metals, can be incorporated with a computation requirement similar to pair potentials. Cross interactions between different types of atoms and groups are here approximated by the Lennard Jones potential with Lorentz-Berthelot combining parameters. The aim of this investigation is to describe the dynamics of heterogeneous nucleation and to establish the variables which control the growth and structure formation of clusters on the surface, the nucleation rates, and possible modifications of the substrate during condensation. For this purpose, different conditions of the saturation of the vapor phase and temperature of the substrate were simulated in each of the systems studied. Stationary nucleation rates in vapor phase and on the surface are obtained from cluster size statistics using the method of Yasuoka and Matsumoto. Different growth mechanisms were observed in for the simulated systems. Argon tends to condense on the surface as two-dimensional islands which finally coalesce as layers on the polymer surface. Consistent with this type of growth the condensation in the regime of low saturated and undersaturated vapors can be explained by a two- dimensional model within the frame of the classical nucleation theory. Platinum clusters condense as three-dimensional islands and partially wet the polymer surface. For the first time the embedding of metal atoms and metal clusters growth into a polymer substrate, as observed in experiments, is attained by large-scale molecular simulations. Depending on their sizes, the platinum clusters can diffuse into the polymer matrix even at temperatures lower than the glass transition of the polymer. The routines used for the simulation and analysis have been specially developed for the systems studied. Among them are NpT and NVT ensemble molecular dynamics simulations for the preparation and equilibration of thin polymer films, simulations of condensation of argon and platinum on polyethylene films. Furthermore routines developed for the analysis of simulation results include the calculation of a) radial distribution functions, torsion angle distributions and density profiles for the characterization of polymers, b) algorithms for the recognition of clusters in bulk and on a surface and c) routines for the visualization of the performed simulations.


PixelCNN achieves state-of-the-art results in density estimation for natural images. Although training is fast, inference is costly, requiring one network evaluation per pixel; O(N) for N pixels. This can be sped up by caching activations, but still involves generating each pixel sequentially. In this work, we propose a parallelized PixelCNN that allows more efficient inference by modeling certain pixel groups as conditionally independent. Our new PixelCNN model achieves competitive density estimation and orders of magnitude speedup - O(log N) sampling instead of O(N) - enabling the practical generation of 512x512 images. We evaluate the model on class-conditional image generation, text-to-image synthesis, and action-conditional video generation, showing that our model achieves the best results among non-pixel-autoregressive density models that allow efficient sampling.


Introduction: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is an endocrine disorder characterized by high blood glucose levels. One of the approaches for treating DM is by regulating the postprandial blood glucose via inhibition of α-glucosidase enzymes. Seagrass is known as a plant containing bioactive compounds, especially for therapy antidiabetic.This research aims to evaluate the α-glucosidase inhibition activity of three species seagrasses (Enhalus acoroides, Thalassia hemprichii and Cymodocea rotundata) from the Banten Bay, Indonesia. Methods: The extracts of all parts (root, leaf, and stem) from three seagrasses were prepared with maceration method using 80% ethanol solvents. The α-glucosidase inhibitory activity was conducted by microplate reader at 400 nm using acarbose as a positive control. Furthermore, the kinetics of α-glucosidase inhibition, phytochemical screening, and total phenolics content were evaluated against extract which has the most potential α-glucosidase inhibition. Results: The result showed that the 80% ethanol extracts of Enhalus acoroides (IC50 values 168.15 ± 2.71 μg/mL) had the most potential α-glucosidase inhibitors activity compared with the positive control acarbose, Thalassia hemprichii and Cymodocea rotundata (IC50 values 197.27 ± 3.07 μg/mL, 425.86 ± 5.15 μg/mL and 429.28 ± 8.89 μg/mL). The kinetic type of inhibition against α-glucosidase was noncompetitive inhibition. The phytochemical compounds were phenols, flavonoid, terpenes, and tannin with the total phenolic content was 28.76 ± 2.46 mgGAE/g. Conclusion: Enhalus acoroides has the strongest inhibitor of α-glucosidase and can be further developed for DM therapy agents.


This article makes several important contributions to the burgeoning literature on sex work in a digital era. The scholarly literature that has documented the use of the Internet by sex workers has focused almost entirely on prostitution and has yet to make adult webcam modeling a focal point of analysis. This article critically examines the ways in which entry into adult webcam modeling is facilitated by an expectation that sex work in cyberspace maximizes pleasure, primarily because it minimizes the risk of dangers associated with street-based sex work. I conduct content analyses of discussions on a popular online forum for webcam models to explore the themes of pleasure (erotic and affectual) and danger (capping, doxxing, and harassment) in adult webcam modeling. I argue that adult webcam models experience sexual and affectual pleasures in the course of their work and that they are able to experience these pleasures because the computer-mediated sexual exchange acts as a psychological barrier, and that the computer in turn becomes the primary tool that performers use for emotional management. My analysis focuses on how sex workers reconcile the pleasure in their work with the exploitation that is also found there. Here, these camgirls use neoliberal ideas to minimize the perception of danger of their work so that they can experience high levels of pleasure. I further open up a new dialogue about neoliberalism and sex workers by focusing on the neoliberal subject in this new form of sex work.


TO THE EDITOR: Silva and colleagues examined the effects of swimming pools on antibiotic use and clinic attendance for infections in two Aboriginal communities in Western Australia from 1998 to 2005. They concluded that swimming pools led to large decreases in clinic attendances for skin infections, respiratory tract infections, and antibiotic use. The huge health and social disadvantage suffered by Indigenous children is well documented, and any interventions that demonstrate health gains should be recognised. This study highlighted important issues and the results suggested some positive outcomes. However, two weaknesses of the study deserve comment — the lack of a control community without a pool, and the selective use of baseline years. In the absence of a control community (without a pool), these results could reflect documented secular trends in Aboriginal child health overall. For example, there was a 48% overall decline in hospitalisations for childhood pneumonia in four jurisdictions, including WA, between 1998 and 2005. This is not significantly different from the 52% reduction reported by Silva and colleagues. Second, the selective use of baseline years potentially obscures more modest results. The authors use 1998–1999 data for the figure (Box 3) and 1999–2000 as the baseline in the main results table (Box 4). The use of the second time period (1999–2000) gives more favourable results than if the previous year had been used. By interpolation, using the first period as baseline would reduce the effect size from 68% to 35% reduction for skin infections in one community (Jigalong). In the second community, rates of skin infections were actually increasing after 2002. Swimming pools in remote Aboriginal communities appear to have many benefits, including increased showering, school attendance and enjoyment among children. We believe that this study has not demonstrated a health impact of swimming pools in these communities that is different from trends elsewhere. That said, swimming pools are a "public good" that should be available to all Australian children, especially those living in very hot places where there are few alternative recreational opportunities. Arguments about direct health benefits should not be a requirement for one group of disadvantaged Australians when we do not feel we need to make the same arguments for other Australian children.


Turmoil in the business environment is driving manufacturing compa nies to become agile. Agility means the capability of operating profita bly in a competitive environment of continuous and unpredictable changes with information sys tems regarded as one of its main enablers. The research presented in this work f cuses on the assessment of information systems to support agile manufacturing. The a ssessment framework is constructed upon a series of competitive bases (six) and agil ity attributes (32) identified in the literature. Other issues included cover the char acte istics of the business environment and the evolution/development and infrastructure of inf rmation systems. The framework is validated through a survey research instrument and the responses analysed with statistical tests (descriptive statistic s, factor analysis, linear regression and reliability). The results of the statistical analysi s enabled us to determine the attributes identified as predictors for the set of questions linking formation systems and agile manufacturing. Due to the fuzzy nature of assessment of in f rmation systems, the complete framework can be presented as a hierarchy whe re techniques like AHP and fuzzy language sets are applicable. The findings will enable the researchers to clearly ident fy the trends adopted by manufacturing companies in the utilisation of information sys tem to gain competitive edge in support of the concept of agile manufacturing.


The Otolith Group's first exhibition in Norway, In the Year of the Quiet Sun configures moments from the grand project of mid-20th Century Pan-Africanism, envisaged as the total liberation of the African continent from Europe's Empires, through the media of animation, video, interior decor, display-system, reading room and publication.

The works created for In the Year of the Quiet Sun operate as peculiar anomalies that seek to summon forces of indexicality and iconicity from the aspirations, alibis and abuses of sovereignty that emerge in the fields of postal politics, imperial infrastructure and magazine diplomacy.

In the installation Statecraft (2014), the short century of decolonization is envisioned as a political calendar assembled from the medium of the postage stamp. These masscult artifacts, issued to commemorate the independence of African nation-states, from Liberia in 1847 to South Sudan in 2011, are integrated into an elaborate display system that reveals the convergence of Pan-Africanist Pop with Social Realist portraiture. Statecraft approaches the postage stamp less as a witness to history in the making than as a form of evil media that elevates the sovereignty of dictators and revolutionaries alike.

The essay film In the Year of the Quiet Sun (2013) takes its name from the decrease in solar surface temperature that occurs every eleven years. From November 1964 to November 1965, the nation states of the world issued postage stamps to commemorate the first scientific expedition to study the sun. As the stamps turned their face towards the sky, they overlooked the unstable land of Africa's newly independent states.

If the founding of the Universal Postal Union in Bern in 1874 can be understood as the instituting of imperial infrastructure then Rene de Saint-Marceaux's 1907 monument to the UPU stands as the first attempt to visualise global communication. Conceived by The Otolith Group and animated by ScanLab, Sovereign Sisters (2014) mobilises Saint Marceaux's monument into a digital hymn to the automatism of planetary infrastructure.

The installation One Out of Many Afrophilias (2014) summons the energies of the controversial Transition magazine, founded in 1961 in Kampala, Uganda, by poet and editor Rajat Neogy. One Out of Many Afrophilias conjures Transition's influential Afropolitanism into a fictional skyline that combines interior decor with display system and reading room.

In its distanced forms of abstracted decor and allusive display, its essayistic engagement with video and its eldritch deployment of animation, the works assembled In the Year of the Quiet Sun reveal the designs that Pan Africanism exerted and continues to exert upon its subjects; in doing so, it hints at the magic wielded by newly born states upon citizens, exiles, refugees and diaspora.


The names of Holmes clerks such as Tommy Corcoran and Francis Biddle, of Brandeis clerks such as Dean Acheson and Henry Friendly, and of Stone clerks such as Harold Leventhal and Herbert Wechsler ring down the pages of history. But how much do we really know about Carlyle Baer, Tench Marye, or Milton Musser? This article follows the interesting and often surprising lives and careers of the men who clerked for the Four Horsemen - Justices Van Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland, and Butler. These biographical sketches confound easy stereotypes, and prove the adage that law, like politics, can make for strange bedfellows. This Part I of a two-part article covers the clerks to Justices Van Devanter and McReynolds.


A Review of:
Hanneke, R., & O'Brien, K. K. (2016). Comparison of three web-scale discovery services for health sciences research. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 104(2), 109-117. http://dx.doi.org/10.3163/1536-5050.104.2.004

Abstract

Objective – To compare the results of health sciences search queries in three web-scale discovery (WSD) services for relevance, duplicate detection, and retrieval of MEDLINE content.

Design – Comparative evaluation and bibliometric study.

Setting – Six university libraries in the United States of America.

Subjects – Three commercial WSD services: Primo, Summon, and EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS).

Methods – The authors collected data at six universities, including their own. They tested each of the three WSDs at two data collection sites. However, since one of the sites was using a legacy version of Summon that was due to be upgraded, data collected for Summon at this site were considered obsolete and excluded from the analysis.

The authors generated three questions for each of six major health disciplines, then designed simple keyword searches to mimic typical student search behaviours. They captured the first 20 results from each query run at each test site, to represent the first "page" of results, giving a total of 2,086 total search results. These were independently assessed for relevance to the topic. Authors resolved disagreements by discussion, and calculated a kappa inter-observer score. They retained duplicate records within the results so that the duplicate detection by the WSDs could be compared.

They assessed MEDLINE coverage by the WSDs in several ways. Using precise strategies to generate a relevant set of articles, they conducted one search from each of the six disciplines in PubMed so that they could compare retrieval of MEDLINE content. These results were cross-checked against the first 20 results from the corresponding query in the WSDs. To aid investigation of overall coverage of MEDLINE, they recorded the first 50 results from each of the 6 PubMed searches in a spreadsheet. During data collection at the WSD sites, they searched for these references to discover if the WSD tool at each site indexed these known items.

Authors adopted measures to control for any customisation of the product setup at each data collection site. In particular, they excluded local holdings from the results by limiting the searches to scholarly, peer-reviewed articles.

Main results – Authors reported results for 5 of the 6 sites. All of the WSD tools retrieved between 50-60% relevant results. EDS retrieved the highest number of relevant records (195/360 and 216/360), while Primo retrieved the lowest (167/328 and 169/325). There was good observer agreement (k=0.725) for the relevance assessment. The duplicate detection rate was similar in EDS and Summon (between 96-97% unique articles), while the Primo searches returned 82.9-84.9% unique articles.

All three tools retrieved relevant results that were not indexed in MEDLINE, and retrieved relevant material indexed in MEDLINE that was not retrieved in the PubMed searches. EDS and Summon retrieved more non-MEDLINE material than Primo. EDS performed best in the known-item searches, with 300/300 and 299/300 items retrieved, while Primo performed worst with 230/300 and 267/300 items retrieved.

The Summon platform features an "automated query expansion" search function, where user-entered keywords are matched to related search terms and these are automatically searched along with the original keyword. The authors observed that this function resulted in a wholly relevant first page of results for one of the search questions tested in Summon.

Conclusion – While EDS performed slightly better overall, the difference was not great enough in this small sample of test sites to recommend EDS over the other tools being tested. The automated query expansion found in Summon is a useful function that is worthy of further investigation by the WSD vendors. The ability of the WSDs to retrieve MEDLINE content through simple keyword searches demonstrates the potential value of using a WSD tool in health sciences research, particularly for inexpert searchers.


INTRODUCTION This study was undertaken to prepare keys to the European species of the genus Trychosis Foerster. The older keys by Schmiedeknecht (1890 and 1904-1906), mostly based on Tschek's keys in his study of the genus Cryptus (1870b), do not lead to satisfactory results. This is due to the fact that several characters used by Tschek are not critical, while several of the species described by him have turned out to be identical with others. Nevertheless Tschek's pioneer work in this group deserves our admiration. When I had advanced somewhat with the interpretation of Tschek's type material, I became curious about the species described by some other authors, viz. Thunberg, Gravenhorst and Thomson. I had the opportunity to study some of their type specimens. It should be said here that probably the Gravenhorst collection at Wroclaw (Poland) still has some surprises in store, but I had no opportunity to study the collection in situ. There still remain some species inquirendae, these are listed on page 39. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is a pleasure to thank the following persons : Dr. Max Fischer, Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna, for loan of the Tschek Trychosis collection; Mr. Sten Jonsson, Uppsala Universitet, for loan of a Thunberg type specimen; Mr. W. J. Pulawski, Zoological Institute, Wroclaw, for loan of several Gravenhorst type specimens; Fil. lic. Hugo Andersson, Dept. of Entomology, Lund University, for loan of C. G. Thomson's Goniocryptus type material; Dr. Borge Petersen, Universitetets Zoologiske Museum, Copenhagen, for loan of C. G. Thomson's type material; Dr. Henry Townes,


Abstract The USA is the largest consumer of legally, internationally-traded wildlife. A proportion of this trade consists of species listed in the Appendices of CITES, and recorded in the CITES Trade Database. Using this resource, we quantified wildlife entering the USA for 82 of the most frequently recorded wildlife products and a range of taxonomic groups during 1979–2014. We examined trends in legal trade and seizures of illegally traded items over time, and relationships between trade and four national measures of biodiversity. We found that: (1) there is an overall positive relationship between legal imports and seizures; (2) Asia was the main region exporting CITES-listed wildlife products to the USA; (3) bears, crocodilians and other mammals (i.e. other than Ursidae, Felidae, Cetacea, Proboscidea, Primates or Rhinocerotidae) increased in both reported legal trade and seizures over time; (4) legal trade in live specimens was reported to be primarily from captive-produced, artificially-propagated or ranched sources, whereas traded meat was primarily wild sourced; (5) both seizures and legally traded items of felids and elephants decreased over time; and (6) volumes of both legally traded and seized species were correlated with four attributes of exporting countries: species endemism, species richness, number of IUCN threatened species, and country size. The goal of our analysis was to inform CITES decision-making and species conservation efforts.


Discussing results of our joint project that examines the complex interactions among intergovernmental organizations and other transnational institutions and nonstate actors in the global Internet governance ecosystem, this study highlights themes related to the changing roles of international organizations from WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) until NetMundial. Attention is paid to old and new categories of organizations that emerged in this context; and how they have been recognized as stakeholders in the process. These organizations form a network, set in an environmental context, thus constituting the organizational infrastructure for internet governance today. Additionally, tracing knowledge flows and power differentials over time among the different stakeholder organizations helps to illustrate a major finding, the pro-active role of the international organizations studied here in the messy, complex, and cross-national internet governance ecosystem, shaped by and, at the same time, shaping the technical infrastructure.


The processing of airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data requires a precise compensation of the deviations of the platform movement from a straight line. This is usually carried out by recording the trajectory with a high-precision navigation system and correcting them during SAR focusing. However, due to the lack of accuracy in current navigation systems, residual motion er- rors persist in the images. Such residual motion errors are mainly noticeable in repeat-pass systems, where they are causing time- varying baseline errors, visible as artefacts in the derived phase maps. In this letter, a refined method for the estimation of time- varying baseline errors is presented. An improved multisquint pro- cessing approach is used for obtaining robust estimates of higher order baseline errors over the entire scene, even if parts of the scene are heavily decorrelated. In a subsequent step, the proposed method incorporates an external digital elevation model for detec- tion of linear and constant components of the baseline error along azimuth. Calibration targets in the scene are not necessary.


Thomas Bley studied mathematics at the Dresden University of Technology (Germany). From 1975 until 1990 he worked as a scientist at the Institute of Biotechnology (IBT) at the Academy of Science of the GDR in Leipzig. He received his doctorate in 1981 and his habilitation in 1990 with theses in the field of modeling microbial population dynamics. In the following years, he was the head of the Division of Biotechnology at the University of Leipzig. Since 1996, he has held the chair of bioprocess engineering and is head of this study course at the Dresden University of Technology. Prof. Bley is a full member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) and of the Saxon Academy of Sciences. He is an active member of numerous organisations and technical committees in the field of Bioprocess Engineering. Prof. Bley's main fields of research are white biotechnology, biomonitoring and biosignals, dynamics of microbial populations, modeling and control of bioprocesses, flow cytometry, and plant cell cultivation. Thomas Bley


In lifelong reinforcement learning, agents must effectively transfer knowledge across tasks while simultaneously addressing exploration, credit assignment, and generalization. State abstraction can help overcome these hurdles by compressing the representation used by an agent, thereby reducing the computational and statistical burdens of learning. To this end, we here develop theory to compute and use state abstractions in lifelong reinforcement learning. We introduce two new classes of abstractions: (1) transitive state abstractions, whose optimal form can be computed efficiently, and (2) PAC state abstractions, which are guaranteed to hold with respect to a distribution of tasks. We show that the joint family of transitive PAC abstractions can be acquired efficiently, preserve near optimal-behavior, and experimentally reduce sample complexity in simple domains, thereby yielding a family of desirable abstractions for use in lifelong reinforcement learning. Along with these positive results, we show that there are pathological cases where state abstractions can negatively impact performance.


Cross regulation is the main technical drawback of a Single-Inductor Multiple-Output (SIMO) dc-dc converter. This paper proposes a multivariable digital controller to suppress the cross regulation of a SingleInductor Dual-Output (SIDO) buck converter in Continuous Conduction Mode (CCM) operation. The controller design methodology originates from the open-loop shaping of the Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) systems. The control design procedure includes: (i) determination of the non-parametric model of a SIDO buck converter at its rated operating point, (ii) determination of the class of the controller, and (iii) converter open-loop shaping by convex minimization of the square second norm of the error between the converter open-loop transfer function and a desired open-loop transfer function. The proposed controller minimizes the coupling between the outputs of the SIDO buck converter and provides satisfactory dynamic performance in CCM operation. This paper describes the theoretical aspects involved in the design procedure of the controller and evaluates the performance of the controller based on simulation studies and experiments.