This thesis is about citizenship and belonging: how citizenship has
articulated with or against different forms, practices and spaces of belonging.
It examines Jewish East London in the period from 1903 to the end of the
First World War and is based on original archival research. It argues that this
period saw the emergence of a new form of racialized biopolitical citizenship,
which was normalized in the "state of emergency" that was the war. This
citizenship was framed by the imperial context, was based on singular
1e1it her/or" identities and was defined against the figure of alien. The thesis
also argues that, in the same period, an alternative space of political
belonging existed in East London, based on different forms of political
rationality and threaded through with multiple loyalties and identifications,
that challenged the either/or logic of the nation-state. Consequently, Jewish
radicals who operated in this alternative public sphere developed
understandings of political belonging which cut against the grain of the
nation-state, and thus offer resources for thinking about citizenship today.
The thesis seeks to unsettle some of the conventional languages of
citizenship and political belonging by historicizing them: by concentrating on
the specific way in which modern citizenship emerged in imperial Britain, and
on the material processes by which this citizenship was policed and mapped.
The thesis examines a series of different spaces and scales of political
belonging. It attempts to keep in focus regimes of visibility, subjectification
and governmentality that produce these spaces and the practices of
belonging and cultural traditions that wove through them.


A pronounced ENSO cycle occurred from 1986 to 1989, accompanied by distinct dynamical and chemical anomalies in the global troposphere and stratosphere. Reproducing these effects with current climate models not only provides a model test but also contributes to our still limited understanding of ENSO's effect on stratosphere-troposphere coupling. We performed several sets of ensemble simulations with a chemical climate model (SOCOL) forced with global sea surface temperatures. Results were compared with observations and with large-ensemble simulations performed with an atmospheric general circulation model (MRF9). We focus our analysis on the extratropical stratosphere and its coupling with the troposphere. In this context, the circulation over the North Atlantic sector is particularly important. Relative to the La Nina winter 1989, observations for the El Nino winter 1987 show a negative North Atlantic Oscillation index with corresponding changes in temperature and precipitation patterns, a weak polar vortex, a warm Arctic middle stratosphere, negative and positive total ozone anomalies in the tropics and at middle to high latitudes, respectively, as well as anomalous upward and poleward Eliassen-Palm (EP) flux in the midlatitude lower stratosphere. Most of the tropospheric features are well reproduced in the ensemble means in both models, though the amplitudes are underestimated. In the stratosphere, the SOCOL simulations compare well with observations with respect to zonal wind, temperature, EP flux, meridional mass streamfunction, and ozone, but magnitudes are underestimated in the middle stratosphere. With respect to the mechanisms relating ENSO to stratospheric circulation, the results suggest that both, upward and poleward components of anomalous EP flux are important for obtaining the stratospheric signal and that an increase in strength of the Brewer-Dobson circulation is part of that signal.


The aim of this paper was to examine from the perspective of street vendors how they are fighting poverty and the extent of winning this endemic cankerworm. The findings of this paper are informed by a study carried in 2007 on poverty and street vendors in Lesotho. Questionnaires and focus group discussions were used as data collection instruments for the study. The findings show that many street vendors perceived poverty as the satisfaction of basic household needs and some see it as the level of household income. Furthermore, the findings reveal that below half of the respondents prior to joining street vending were meeting their basic needs. After involving in this activity, more than half indicated that they were satisfied with children's educational needs and household food. Similarly, they reported that their life expectations were met and their current life status has improved, notwithstanding the small amount of income they make daily. The paper concludes that street vending is not a panacea for poverty as some vendors indicated signs of dissatisfaction. However, many had improved their lives and households from street vending. Nonetheless, street vending has its own setbacks, resulting from government intervention policy and other circumstances.


Continuous-flow hydrogenation of aromatic nitro compounds was successfully performed by using polysilane-supported palladium catalysts to afford the corresponding amino compounds in high yields. Productivity was high, and a wide variety of nitro compounds were applicable under the continuous-flow conditions. It is noted that no leaching of palladium was observed by inductively coupled plasma analysis.


Morpho-edaphic Index (MEI), and total nutrient input have been applied to the Dawhenya reservoir in Ghana from August 2006 to July 2007 to estimate existing fish yield and future potential productivity. The estimated existing fish yield from the reservoir was about 38.44 kg/ha. In the Dawhenya reservoir, 12 species belonging to 8 genera were encountered out of which 7 genera were fin fishes while the remaining genus was a shell fish. During the dry season, eight fish species were sampled and Barbus macrops contributed the highest (71.6 %) and Oreochromis niloticus the lowest (0.2 %) by weight while in the wet season five fish species were collected and Barbus macrops contributed the highest (85.3 %) and Macrobrachium vollenhovenii the lowest (2.1 %) of total weight of fish in drag net catches. Estimates of b-values ranged from 2.793 in Sarotherodon galilaeus to 3.267 in Macrobrachium vollenhovenii. Only Barbus macrops growth pattern in the reservoir was isometric meaning there was an equal increase in length and weight during growth, while Macrobrachium vollenhovenii, Macrobrachium macrobrachion and Sarotherodon galilaeus growth patterns were allometric, meaning increases in length and weight of the species were not equal during growth. The general physicochemical parameters monitored during the study period fell within the ranges suitable for fisheries and aquatic life in reservoirs, except for phosphates which were outside recommended ranges. Observations of pH showed that the reservoir was slightly alkaline. Agricultural activities within the catchment area of the reservoir should be monitored and controlled to prevent nutrient enrichment since the inhabitants were predominantly peasant farmers.


Teachers of music history often have many pedagogical aims. In addition to covering historical content, they are also responsible for teaching bibliographic skills, the process of scholarly inquiry, and writing. In the course of a single semester, it is nearly impossible to achieve all of these goals. But many teachers of music history instruct the same body of students across multiple semesters. This article argues for a multi-semester approach to the teaching of research and writing.


Inflammatory condition is the consequence of defensive mechanism of immune system against viral and bacterial infection, tissue injury, UV radiation, stress and etc. Persistently acute inflammation leads to chronic phase which is characterized by production of pro-inflammatory mediators from T cells. These molecules (e.g. IL-6, TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-17) are mostly pleiotropic cytokines involved in multiple signaling cascades. NF-κB, STAT3, and HIF-1α are the major engaged pathways directing to several downstream targets associating with tumorigenesis and inflammation. Carcinogenesis processes such as DNA mutation/damage, proliferation, angiogenesis, apoptosis, and invasion are implicated to inflammation. Clearly there is a closely association between cancer and inflammation reported as "Seven Hallmark of Cancer". The elucidation of relationship between inflammation and cancer and their interaction may result in effective therapy and prevention. Gastric cancer is one of the main cancer involved in complex correlation of inflammation and cancer. Inflammation in gastric epithelium could trigger cellular transformation and promote invasion by inducing immune responses and utilizing signaling cascades. Gastric tumor microenvironment has inverse association by providing cytokines and inflammatory mediators. This closely relationship facilitates gastric tumor development and the induction of chronic inflammation in tumor microenvironment. The current review will focus on describing the possible and critical ways in which inflammation and cancer are linked together with specific view to gastric cancer and inflammation. Finally, it introduces some putative treatment generally used in this way in order to direct more attention for further exploration.


Species belonging to the Burkholderia cepacia complex (BCC) are capable of causing chronic respiratory tract infections in patients suffering from cystic fibrosis as well as in immunocompromised individuals. Most of these species are highly resistant to antibiotic therapy, generating the need for their rapid and accurate detection for the proper treatment and clinical management of these patients. In this work, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique based on the amplification of the recA gene (PCR-recA) was applied for an accurate identification of bacteria belonging to the BCC. Sensitivity (S) and specificity (E) of two biochemically-based commercial automated systems, API 20NE and VITEK 2 (bioMérieux®), and of the most representative biochemical manual tests for the identification of the Burkholderia cepacia complex were herein evaluated. The commercial systems VITEK 2 and API 20NE showed the following sensitivity and specificity vaues for identification to the species level, S: 71.1 %, E: 100 %, S: 69.7 %, E: 90.2 %, respectively. More complex results were observed for phenotypic manual tests, since BCC bacteria can undergo selective pressure to survive in chronic patients causing the loss of their typical phenotypic characteristics. The PCR-recA technique was easy to implement even in medium-complexity clinical diagnostic laboratories.


Morocco shares cultural, religious, and linguistic roots with more conservative countries in the region, yet the Moroccan government has interpreted similar traditions to yield the starkly different stance that gender equality is desirable. Morocco's Moudawana, the 2004 legislation on family law with provisions largely derived from Islamic sources, confers unprecedented rights on Moroccan women. Part I of this Note evaluates the Moudawana in light of its break with traditional Shari'a, alongside its fidelity to other Islamic law principles in giving Moroccan women unprecedented rights. While the new Moudawana has provisions addressing inheritance, children's rights, and assets within a marriage, this Note focuses on the provisions on marriage and divorce because they provide the simplest and most accessible illustrations of the law's effects in practice. Part II, with the aid of original, qualitative data gathered in rural Morocco, posits that the Moudawana is not enforced universally, and that under-enforcement likely results from deeply entrenched societal factors, as well as more immediate influences. Part III proposes steps for further reform which would better account for the complex realities of rural life in Morocco, as well as the fact that the Moudawana affronts many local value systems, undermining its efficacy. A basis for the proposed reforms is one human rights NGO's experimental paralegal program in Sierra Leone, which works to reconcile rights-based law with rural cultural norms.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of isometric and isotonic exercise upon the development of strength, endurance, and cross transfer in the elbow flexor muscles. Thirty-nine male college students served as subjects for this study. A cable tensiometer and associated equipment was utilized as the measuring instrument for the strength tests. The subjects were tested for strength one day prior to the initial endurance tests. Each subject was strapped to an apparatus of the investigator's own design and tested individually. Each subject was tested for strength in a position with the elbow flexed to form a ninety degree angle. The subjects were given three trials with each arm the best of which was retained as the measure of muscular strength. The endurance test consisted of performing full curls with a load equal to three-eighths that of the initial strength test score. The curls were performed at a cadence of thirty per minute. Each subject was tested for both right and left elbow flexor endurance. Following the pre-tests the subjects were matched into two groups on the basis of their initial strength test scores. An eight weeks training program followed, during which Group I exercised five days a week by performing a six second maximum isometric contraction of the elbow flexor muscles with the elbow flexed at a ninety degree angle. Group II exercised isotonically by performing a maximum of four half curls a day at eighty percent maximum strength, for five days a week. Following the eight weeks training program post-tests of strength and endurance were given. The post-tests were identical to the pre-tests. The t-test for correlated samples showed significant increases in dominant arm strength scores for both Group I and Group II. A significant increase also occurred in strength of the non-dominant arm of Group I. Significant mean increases occurred in endurance for Group I and Group II for both the exercised and unexercised arms. On the basis of the data and within the limitations of this study the following conclusions were drawn: 1. a daily six second maximal isometric contraction of the elbow flexor muscles performed throughout a period of eight weeks, five days a week is sufficient to cause a significant improvement in exercised muscle strength. 2. The same isometric exercise program is sufficient to significantly improve the strength of the contralateral muscles of the opposite limb. 3. A daily isotonic exercising program consisting of performing half curls with a resistance load equal to eighty percent of the dominant arm strength, performed for eight weeks, is sufficient to produce increase in elbow flexor strength of the dominant exercised arm. 4. The same isotonic exercise program does not produce a significant increase in contralateral strength of the muscles of the opposite limb. 5. The results of the reliability tests were such that definite positive conclusions concerning the development of endurance and its cross transfer cannot be drawn. However, it appears that both isometric and isotonic exercise increased endurance in the dominant arm and cross transfer of endurance to the non-dominant arm. 6. Both a daily isometric and a daily isotonic exercise program are equally effective in providing muscle strength increases in the exercised arm. There appears to be no advantage in using one method over the other.


This paper offers two characterizations of the Kreps-Wilson concept of consistent beliefs. One is primarily of applied interest: beliefs are consistent iff they can be constructed by multiplying together vectors of monomials which induce the strategies. The other is primarily of conceptual interest: beliefs are consistent iff they can be induced by a "product dispersion" whose marginal dispersions induce the strategies (a "dispersion" is defined as a relative probability system, and a "product" dispersion is defined as a joint dispersion whose marginal dispersions are independent). Both these characterizations are derived with linear algebra.


A viewing of the grim but popular BBC police procedural, Wallander (BBC1, 2008–), prompts a reflection on Richard Dyer's original formulation of entertainment as utopia in 1977. It is noted that the concept of entertainment has received relatively little attention within the fields of media and cultural studies since that time and that the history of the television crime drama provides an interesting case study with which to re-examine popular television as a particular form entertainment. The example of the early British police procedural, Fabian of the Yard (BBC 1954–1956) is discussed in order to reveal the complexity of the genre and its various pleasures which have ranged from documenting real crime, the pursuit of knowledge and truth to cultural tourism. Finally it is argued that pleasure in the 'form' of the TV crime drama and a familiarity with its series characters may well be a key factor in its assessing its success as a form of entertainment.


From the Phaidon website:

The Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design features 500 graphic designs including newspapers, magazines, posters, advertisements, typefaces, logos, corporate design, record covers and moving graphics from around the world, which have set a benchmark for excellence and innovation.

The dividers that come with this 'book in a box' allow you to define how you want to organise, whether it is chronologically, alphabetically, by designer or by subject.

Compiled and researched by experts, and illustrated with up to six images per entry, including rarely seen historical and contextual material, The Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design is the ultimate reference guide for the design professional and enthusiast alike. Designed with exceptional production details and rich with information, this book also becomes an object that appeals to the creativity and imagination of the reader.

Born of the traditions of fine art and printing, graphic design is a form of visual communication that seeks to inform, identify or promote through the combination of word and image. But unlike the written word or a work of art, a graphic design operates exclusively in the context in which it will be seen, and mediates between the wishes of the client and the expectations of the public. Moreover, a graphic work is created for mass reproduction.

The field of graphic design, as we know it today, has its roots in two developments: the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century and the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, both of which contributed to the process of graphic reproduction. Today, trade, commerce, communications and culture continue to feed the need for graphic design, and technological developments – most notably the computer – are constantly broadening its possibilities. Of all the arts, graphic design comes closest to our contemporary daily life, as we interact with graphic design on an almost continuous basis.

Five hundred graphic designs created since the advent of mechanical reproduction, are showcased in this archive – from the Gutenberg Bible and Nuremberg Chronicles of the fifteenth century, to the cutting edge magazines, posters and ephemera of today. It is the authoritative selection of newspapers, magazines, advertisements, typefaces, logos, corporate design, record and CD covers and moving graphics from around the world, which have created a benchmark for excellence and innovation.


In recent years, highly ionised pulsed plasma processes have had a great impact on improving the coating performance of various applications, such as for cutting tools and ITO coatings, allowing for a longer service life and improved defect densities. These improvements stem from the higher ionisation degree of the sputtered material in these processes and with this the possibility of controlling the flux of sputtered material, allowing the regulation of the hardness and density of coatings and the ability to sputter onto complex contoured substrates. The development of Inductively Coupled Impulse Sputtering (ICIS) is aimed at the potential of utilising the advantages of highly ionised plasma for the sputtering of ferromagnetic material. In traditional magnetron based sputter processes ferromagnetic materials would shunt the magnetic field of the magnetron, thus reducing the sputter yield and ionisation efficiency. By generating the plasma within a high power pulsed radio frequency (RF) driven coil in front of the cathode, it is possible to remove the need for a magnetron by applying a high voltage pulsed direct current to the cathode attracting argon ions from the plasma to initiate sputtering. This is the first time that ICIS technology has been deployed in a sputter coating system. To study the characteristics of ICIS, current and voltage waveforms have been measured to examine the effect of increasing RF-power. Plasma analysis has been conducted by optical emission spectroscopy to investigate the excitation mechanisms and the emission intensity. These are correlated to the set RF-power by modelling assumptions based on electron collisions. Mass spectroscopy is used to measure the plasma potential and ion energy distribution function. Pure copper, titanium and nickel coatings have been deposited on silicon with high aspect ratio via to measure the deposition rate and characterise the microstructure. For titanium and nickel the emission modelling results are in good agreement with the model expectations showing that electron collisions are the main excitation mechanism. The plasma potential was measured as 20 eV, this is an ideal level for good adatom mobility with reduced lattice defects. All surfaces in the via were coated, perpendicular column growth on the sidewalls indicates a predominantly ionised metal flux to the substrate and the deposition rates agree with the literature value of the sputter yield of the materials. The results of the studies show that ICIS is a viable process for the deposition of magnetic coatings with high ionisation in the plasma.


Abstract. Climate change has increased the temperature and altered the mixing regime of high-value lakes in the sub-alpine region of Northern Italy. Remote sensing of chlorophyll-a can help provide a time-series to allow an assessment of the ecological implications of this. Non-parametric multiplicative regression (NPMR) was used to visualize and understand the changes that have occurred between 2003–2018 in lakes Garda, Como, Iseo and Maggiore. In all four deep sub-alpine lakes there has been a disruption from a traditional pattern of a significant spring chlorophyll-a peak followed by a clear water phase and summer/autumn peaks. This was replaced after 2010–2012, with lower spring peaks and a tendency for annual maxima to occur in summer. There was a tendency for this switch to be interspersed by a two-year period of low chlorophyll-a, which seemed to extend until 2018 for Lake Garda. Variables that were significant in NPMR included time, air temperature, wind speed, cloud cover, winter temperature and winter values for the North Atlantic Oscillation and Eastern Atlantic pattern. The change from spring to summer chlorophyll-a maxima, relatively sudden in an ecological context, could be interpreted as a regime shift. The cause is probably cascading effects from increased winter temperatures, reduced winter mixing and altered nutrient dynamics. Future trends will depend on climate change and inter-decadal climate drivers.


Aftershocks: Remodeling the Past for a Resilient Future aims to provide readers with an accessible look at what would happen today if we were to experience some of the iconic disasters of the past. The report explores how risk modeling can be used to analyze natural events that led to the major disasters of the past, and to understand how these events might impact today's more populous and connected world. The events included in Aftershocks were selected to represent a range of regions and hazards, and to illustrate the evolution of exposure and how vulnerability translates into risk. They were also chosen to illustrate the impacts of disasters on a range of sectors, including agriculture, infrastructure, the supply chain, and—in the case of the Carrington event—the vulnerable "digital cocoon" in which we have encased the world. Finally, the events were chosen to highlight diverse areas of engagement in disaster risk management. Most of the disasters documented here took place in the developing world, where population growth, rapid urbanization, and climate change are heightened, and where the impact of adverse events is exacerbated by the vulnerability of poorer communities, who are disproportionately impacted by disasters. This report makes the case for renewed support to the poorest of the poor.


This article engages Rosi Braidotti's writing on COVID-19 and affirmative ethics to expand understandings of the purpose of leisure and physical activity in women's lives during the pandemic. Utilizing a feminist methodology informed by an ethics of affirmation, care, and creativity, the authors share insights from in-depth interviews with five dedicated Yoga practitioners living in Aotearoa New Zealand. Herein, they reveal how Yoga's physical, mental, and ethical practices supported women as they navigated numerous challenges during the pandemic. The authors discuss the women's complex experiences of affect, including shared exhaustion and compassion. Finally, they illustrate how experiences of discomfort encouraged some women to rethink collective responsibility and experiment with communal solutions to better support others in the face of uncertain futures.


This study examines a strategy, soliciting client questions, that HIV prevention counselors use to obtain a warrant for giving clients information about risk and prevention. If clients ask questions about risk and prevention, counselors can provide advice that is tailored to the client's request rather than speaking in a didactic manner. It has been argued in previous research that this approach of soliciting client questions usually does not actually elicit questions. In this study, I show that rather than being routinely marginalized, clients do hear counselors' solicits as legitimate opportunities to bring up previously unmentioned issues. Moreover, even if clients do not respond to the counselors' solicits with a question, counselors can still use client responses as a means to reopen issues of risk and prevention.


BACKGROUND
Multiple studies have demonstrated an initial high prevalence of spirometric abnormalities following World Trade Center (WTC) disaster exposure. We assessed prevalence of spirometric abnormalities and changes in spirometry between baseline and first follow-up evaluation in participants in the WTC Worker and Volunteer Medical Monitoring Program. We also determined the predictors of spirometric change between the two examinations.

METHODS
Prebronchodilator and postbronchodilator spirometry, demographics, occupational history, smoking status, and respiratory symptoms and exposure onset were obtained at both examinations (about 3 years apart).

RESULTS
At the second examination, 24.1% of individuals had abnormal spirometry findings. The predominant defect was a low FVC without obstruction (16.1%). Between examinations, the majority of individuals did not have a greater-than-expected decline in lung function. The mean declines in prebronchodilator FEV(1) and FVC were 13 mL/yr and 2 mL/yr, respectively (postbronchodilator results were similar and not reported). Significant predictors of greater average decline between examinations were lack of bronchodilator responsiveness at examination 1 and weight gain [corrected].

CONCLUSIONS
Elevated rates of spirometric abnormalities were present at both examinations, with reduced FVC most common. Although the majority had a normal decline in lung function, lack of bronchodilator response at examination 1 and weight gain were significantly associated with greater-than-normal lung function declines [corrected]. Due to the presence of spirometric abnormalities > 5 years after the disaster in many exposed individuals, longer-term monitoring of WTC responders is essential.


The main aim of this work was to assess the possibility of using biomass ashes as substitutes for cement and natural aggregates in concretes without compromising their mechanical and chemical properties. Thirteen concrete formulations were prepared with different percentages of bottom and fly ashes produced at a forest biomass power plant. These formulations were submitted to mechanical compressive strength assays, after 28, 60 and 90 days of maturation. The reference formulation F1 that was produced without biomass ashes and one formulation incorporating fly and bottom ashes, F4, were selected for further characterization. After 90 days of maturation, the selected formulations were submitted to the leaching test described in the European Standard EN12457-2 (L/S ratio of 10 L/kg, in a batch extraction cycle of 24h) by using two different leaching agents: a synthetic marine medium (ASPM medium) and a synthetic freshwater medium (ISO 6341 medium). The eluates produced were submitted to chemical characterization which comprised a set of metals (As, Sb, Se, Cu, Zn, Ba, Hg, Cd, Mo, Pb, Ni, Cr, Cr VI, Al, Fe, Mg, Na, K and Ca), pH, SO42-, F-, dissolved organic carbon, chlorides, phenolic compounds and total dissolved solids. The substitution of 10% cement by fly ashes has not promoted the reduction of the compressive strength of concrete. The new formulation F4 has presented emission levels of chemical species similar or even lower to those observed for the reference formulation F1.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Oxygen-ozone therapy is a minimally invasive treatment for lumbar disk herniation that exploits the biochemical properties of a gas mixture of oxygen and ozone. We assessed the therapeutic outcome of oxygen-ozone therapy and compared the outcome of administering medical ozone alone with the outcome of medical ozone followed by injection of a corticosteroid and an anesthetic at the same session. METHODS: Six hundred patients were treated with a single session of oxygen-ozone therapy. All presented with clinical signs of lumbar disk nerve root compression, with CT and/or MR evidence of contained disk herniation. Three hundred patients (group A) received an intradiscal (4 mL) and periganglionic (8 mL) injection of an oxygen-ozone mixture at an ozone concentration of 27 (cid:1) g/mL. The other 300 patients (group B) received, in addition, a periganglionic injection of corticosteroid and anesthetic. Therapeutic outcome was assessed 6 months after treatment by using a modified MacNab method. Results were evaluated by two observers blinded to patient distribution within the two groups. RESULTS: A satisfactory therapeutic outcome was obtained in both groups. In group A, treatment was a success (excellent or good outcome) in 70.3% and deemed a failure (poor outcome or recourse to surgery) in the remaining 29.7%. In group B, treatment was a success in 78.3% and deemed a failure in the remaining 21.7%. The difference in outcome between the two groups was statistically significant ( P < .05). CONCLUSION: Combined intradiscal and periganglionic injection of medical ozone and periganglionic injection of steroids has a cumulative effect that enhances the overall outcome of treatment for pain caused by disk herniation. Oxygen-ozone therapy is a useful treatment for lumbar disk herniation that has failed to respond to conservative management. Noninvasive procedures, minimally invasive percutaneous injection, and surgery represent the gamut of


Multicast is used to send data to many receivers simultaneously. Multicast protocols developed for wired networks are not suitable for a Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET), mainly because the mobile nodes create a changing topology, and the capacity of the nodes and the links are low compared to a wired network. Hence, it is a challenge to distribute information in an Ad Hoc network. A goal for this Master's thesis work has been to investigate content distribution in mobile ad hoc networks to find possible ways to reduce necessary volume of distribution data. Scaling according to available bandwidth and alternative distribution methods to multicast has been investigated. A test architecture consisting of different components useful for content distribution has been configured and tested. Essential components have been: • Multicast OLSR (MOLSR); a multicast plugin for the MANET protocol Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR), to forward multicast data • File Delivery over Unidirectional Transport (FLUTE); a protocol that supports sending multicast data in several layers • Linux Fedora Core 5 operating system including IEEE 802.11b Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) adapters • A topology emulator to simulate different topologies The first tests were performed using three nodes. Different bit rates and packet sizes were tested to find the best throughput. After adding two more nodes to the network it became clear that the multicast forwarding did not work properly. Many of the first tests have thus given misleading results. After finding an explanation to the multicast forwarding fault, a modification to the test architecture was done; use an older version of Linux Fedora Core. The new test results then showed that it is possible to forward multicast data using FLUTE on a MANET. As expected, the nodes receive a larger amount of the file sent as the number of hops is decreased; up to 100 percent after one hop, whereas up to 80 percent after four hops. Also, test results showed that low data rates give better throughput than high rates. The best throughput was given after resending the FLUTE session several times. The performance of ad hoc networks is less trustworthy than wired / fixed networks. The amount received varies from 0 to 100 percent. The testing of layering using FLUTE did not give any improvements. However, layered content was not available, so all the channels had the same content. Suggestions to possible ways to provide layered content are described. The concept of layering is still interesting for MANETs since it provides the ability for nodes with low capacity to receive less content than nodes with high capacity in a relatively simple way. Further tests are needed to see the results using layered content. When implementations of codec frameworks become more available, these may be great for scaling in ad hoc networks.


This paper provides critical reflections on Manuel Castells' (2012) book Networks of Outrage and Hope. Social Movements in the Internet Age that analyses the "nature and perspectives of networked social movements" (p. 4) and gives special focus to the role of "social media" in movements that emerged in 2011 in Tunisia, Iceland, Egypt, Spain and the United States. I situate Castells' book in an intellectual discourse that focuses on the political implications of social media and that has involved Clay Shirky, Malcolm Gladwell and Evgeny Morozov. The article also discusses the role of social theory and empirical research in Castells' book, presents as an alternative a theoretical model of the relationship between social movements and the media, discusses the implications that some empirical data that focus on social media in the Egyptian revolution and the Occupy Wall Street movement have for Castells' approach, discusses how Castells positions himself towards capitalism and compares his explanation of the crisis and his political views to David Harvey's approach. Section overview: 1. Introduction 2. Social Media and Politics: A Controversy between Clay Shirky, Malcolm Gladwell and Evgeny Morozov 3. Castells on Social Media in the Context of Protests and Revolutions: The Dimension of Social Theory 4. Social Theory Recovered: A Model of the Relationship between Social Movements and the Media 5. Castells on Social Media in the Context of Protests and Revolutions: The Dimension of Empirical Research 6. Manuel Castells and David Harvey: The Question of Political Struggle - For or against Capitalism? 7. Conclusion


Coupling Between Objects and Cyclomatic Complexity have long been used to measure software quality and predict maintainability and reliability of software systems prior to release. In particular, Coupling Between Objects has been shown to correlate with fault-proneness and maintainability of a system at the class level. We propose a new set of metrics based on a fusion of Coupling Between Objects and Cyclomatic Complexity that can be superior to Coupling Between Objects alone at predicting class quality. The new metrics use Cyclomatic Complexity to 1) augment Coupling Between Objects counting to assign a strength of a coupling between two classes and 2) determine the complexity of a method invocation chain through the transitive relation of invocations involved in a coupling. This results in a measure that identifies objects that are coupled to highly complex methods or method invocation chains. The metrics were implemented as an Eclipse Plug in and an analysis of two industry Java projects, ConnectorJ and Hibernate, demonstrates the correlation between the new metrics and post-release defects identified in system change logs.


Image filtering technique plays a very important role in digital image processing. It is one of the major steps in image enhancement and restoration. This filtering technique can remove noise and preserve the details of the image for feature extraction processes. However, filtering process can still be considered as a huge challenge for image filtering technique. Common noises in the image such as Salt & Pepper, Gaussian, Speckle, and Poisson Noise are still posing problems in filtering process where the quality and the originality of the images can be degraded and disturbed. Meanwhile, a single filtering technique is usually fit to deal with only certain specific noise. This paper presents an enhanced Hybrid Median Filter (H6F) technique to improve image filtering process. The technique involves 3x3 sub-mask and determination of new pixel value from the median value of the three steps which are the median calculation of '+'-neighbours, median calculation of all sub-masks and selection of centre pixel value. The H6F technique has been computed on lead frame inspection system. The results have shown that the technique has been able to remove multi-type of noises efficiently and produce exceptionally low Mean-Square Error (MSE) while consuming the acceptable amount of execution time when compared to other filtering techniques.


As biomedical data becomes increasingly easy to generate in large quantities, the methods used to analyze it have proliferated rapidly. However, for the insights gained from these analyses to be meaningful, the analysis methods themselves must be transparent and reproducible. To address this issue, numerous groups have developed workflow standards or specifications that provide a common framework with which to describe a given analysis method. The diversity of methods demands that the specification be robust and flexible to accurately describe a specific biomedical data analysis. However, a powerful specification alone is insufficient to drive reproducible analysis - even the most completely described workflow must also be 9runnable9 on diverse architectures. Thus the complete reproducible workflow ecosystem includes one or more well defined workflow definitions or specifications as well as the software components needed to implement these specifications. Such implementations allow adaptation to diverse environments, provide optimizations to workflow execution, improve computing efficiency, and support reproducibility through task logging and provenance. To meet these requirements, we have developed the Rabix Executor, an open-source workflow engine which utilizes graph theory approaches to enable computational optimization of complex, dynamic workflows, and supports reproducibility in biomedical data analysis.


We describe the derivation and validation of redshift distribution estimates and their uncertainties for the populations of galaxies used as weak-lensing sources in the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year 1 cosmological analyses. The Bayesian Photometric Redshift (BPZ) code is used to assign galaxies to four redshift bins between z ≈ 0.2 and ≈1.3, and to produce initial estimates of the lensing-weighted redshift distributions ni PZ(z) ∝ dni/dz for members of bin i. Accurate determination of cosmological parameters depends critically on knowledge of ni , but is insensitive to bin assignments or redshift errors for individual galaxies. The cosmological analyses allow for shifts ni(z) = niPZ(z − zi) to correct the mean redshift of ni(z) for biases in niPZ. The zi are constrained by comparison of independently estimated 30-band photometric redshifts of galaxies in the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) field to BPZ estimates made from the DES griz fluxes, for a sample matched in fluxes, pre-seeing size, and lensing weight to the DES weak-lensing sources. In companion papers, the zi of the three lowest redshift bins are further constrained by the angular clustering of the source galaxies around red galaxies with secure photometric redshifts at 0.15 < z < 0.9. This paper details the BPZ and COSMOS procedures, and demonstrates that the cosmological inference is insensitive to details of the ni(z) beyond the choice of zi . The clustering and COSMOS validation methods produce consistent estimates of zi in the bins where both can be applied, with combined uncertainties of σzi = 0.015, 0.013, 0.011, and 0.022 in the four bins. Repeating the photo-z procedure instead using the Directional Neighbourhood Fitting algorithm, or using the ni(z) estimated from the matched sample in COSMOS, yields no discernible difference in cosmological inferences.


There is increasing concern regarding current energy feedback approaches as they focus on the individual level, and mostly on household electricity, while the bulk of energy use often lies in heating and cooling. The aim is typically to change user routines, which does not bring a long-lasting impact. In our case study, we address these concerns for apartment buildings by looking at housing cooperatives, the dominant form of apartment ownership in the Nordic countries. These cooperatives manage the heating costs in common and therefore have a large potential for energy saving through long-lasting improvements and investments. We also emphasize the amateur nature of energy work within such cooperatives and consider the implications of our field study findings, interpreted through these amateur and cooperative perspectives, for the design of interactive artifacts.


In this study, we estimate the effects of three targeted labour market programmes (LMPs) on the labour market outcomes of occupationally disabled job seekers. Using propensity score matching, we estimate the average treatment effect on the treated of wage subsi-dies, sheltered public employment, and employment at Samhall, a Swedish state-owned company whose aim is to provide employment for persons with disabilites. The control group consists of individuals who are eligible for the targeted LMPs, but have not (yet) received treatment. Using a rich panel data set, containing demographics as well as health and sickness absence measures, we are able to estimate short- to medium-term effects. Our results show large positive effects of all LMPs on labour income, disposable income and employment, and the effects are relatively persistent. However, consistant with the previous empirical literature, we find considerable locking-in effects, measured by a de-crease in un-subsidized employment. Furthermore, the yearly amounts of disability insur-ance paid decrease as a result of program participation, and the decrease becomes more pronounced with time since treatment start. Finally, the effects on disability insurance prevalence are heterogenous, both with respect to the different LMPs and gender.


Major advances in understanding and treating breast cancer have been made in the last two decades, yet it remains a significant problem with breast cancer being the most commonly identified cancer and the leading cause of cancer death among women worldwide. For many years breast cancer research has mainly focused on genetically changed cancer cells. However, recently the importance of the stromal compartment surrounding cancer cells in facilitating tumor growth, invasion and metastasis has been widely recognized. Cumulating evidence suggests that in particular carcinoma-associated myofibroblasts play a key role within the tumor stroma and influence many aspects of carcinogenesis. Nevertheless, the cell type of origin as well as the precise mechanisms by which these cells develop has not been conclusively established and remains controversial. The role of human adipose tissue derived stem cells (hASCs) in this context has not been studied so far. hASCs are locally adjacent to epithelial breast cancer cells and might represent early response cells within the tumor stroma. Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate whether carcinoma-associated myofibroblasts may originate from hASCs.
The present study revealed that a significant percentage of hASCs differentiate into myofibroblast-like cells expressing alpha smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) and tenascin-C when exposed to conditioned medium from the human epithelial breast cancer cell lines MDMAB231 and MCF7. This process is induced by transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGFβ1) secreted from breast cancer cells. It was shown that conditioned medium from MDMAB231 and MCF7 contains significant amounts of TGFβ1. It could further be demonstrated that the differentiation of hASCs towards myofibroblasts is dependent on TGFβ1 signaling via phosphorylation of Smad2 and Smad3 in hASCs. The induction of myofibroblasts can be abolished using a neutralizing antibody to TGFβ1 as well as by pretreatment of hASCs with SB431542, a selective inhibitor of the TGFβ1 activin receptor-like kinases 4, 5 and 7. Additionally, hASC-derived myofibroblasts exhibit functional properties of carcinoma-associated myofibroblasts such as the increased secretion of the tumor-promoting soluble factors SDF-1α and CCL5. Furthermore hASC-derived myofibroblasts as well as conditioned medium from these cells promote the in vitro invasion of MDAMB231 breast cancer cells. Moreover inhibition of the TGFβ1 signaling pathway in hASCs reduces the potential of these cells to enhance the invasion of breast cancer cells.
Overall, the data of the present study suggest that human adipose tissue derived stem cells can differentiate into carcinoma-associated myofibroblast under the influence of TGFβ1 secreted from breast cancer cells in vitro. The differentiation of hASCs towards these tumor-promoting cells can be abolished by targeting the TGFβ1 signaling pathway. Hence, inhibition of the TGFβ1 signaling pathway may prove to be an interesting target for breast cancer therapies. In vivo studies on the cancer microenvironment under special consideration of the interactions between hASCs and cancer cells should be of interest for breast cancer research in the future.


The Academic and Scientific Cooperation Programme (CORUS 1) is a Priority Solidarity Fund programme (FSP N°2001-22), funded by France's Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (MAEE), which ran from 11 September 2001 to end-November 2008 with a total budget of €4 million. As specified in the TOR, the core task was to evaluate the programme on the basis of commonly recognised criteria for public policy evaluation in addition to criteria of clarity and visibility of the programme. To summarise all these criteria and respond to the question marks about the CORUS 1 programme, the evaluation questions were designed to investigate the programme's strategy, capacity building in the partner countries, the involvement of French researchers and management of the programme.


The present paper analyses the impact of national political leaders on the economic growth of a country, trying to reveal the favourable contexts and the available mechanisms at their hand, allowing them to exert such positive influence, as well as the constrains impeding the same to succeed in their attempt to outperform. Considering the examples of great personalities in the entire world, having imposed themselves as true leaders, who have constructively changed the history of their nations, we undertake to detect how much their decisions and actions were actually supported by the circumstances of the time, therefore identifying the extent of the real merits of the former. Leaders, by their conceptual meaning, represent individuals able to inspire trust to fellows and to move them to action, so that their behaviour is, without any doubt, significantly important in setting the patterns for the well-being of the people coordinated by the same, but without stimulating grounds, the synergic effect of their endeavours may remain ineffective.


The relationship between the performance of individuals and the surrounding environment is fundamental in ecology and evolutionary biology. Assessing how abiotic and biotic environmental factors influence demographic processes is necessary to understand and predict population dynamics, as well as species distributions and abundances. We searched the literature for studies that have linked abiotic and biotic environmental factors to vital rates and, using structured demographic models, population growth rates of plants. We found 136 studies that had examined the environmental drivers of plant demography. The number of studies has been increasing rapidly in recent years. Based on the reviewed studies, we identify and discuss several major gaps in our knowledge of environmentally driven demography of plants. We argue that some drivers may have been underexplored and that the full potential of spatially and temporally replicated studies may not have been realized. We also stress the need to employ relevant statistical methods and experiments to correctly identify drivers. Moreover, assessments of the relationship between drivers and vital rates need to consider interactive, nonlinear and indirect effects, as well as effects of intraspecific density dependence. Synthesis. Much progress has already been made by using structured population models to link the performance of individuals to the surrounding environment. However, by improving the design and analyses of future studies, we can substantially increase our ability to predict changes in plant population dynamics, abundances and distributions in response to changes in specific environmental drivers. Future environmentally explicit demographic models should also address how genetic changes prompted by selection imposed by environmental changes will alter population trajectories in the face of continued environmental change and investigate the reciprocal feedback between plants and their biotic drivers.


The forty-nine papers collected here illuminate the meaning of quantum theory as it is disclosed in the measurement process. Together with an introduction and a supplemental annotated bibliography, they discuss issues that make quantum theory, overarching principle of twentieth-century physics, appear to many to prefigure a new revolution in science.Originally published in 1983.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


Electrocatalysis has the potential to become a more sustainable approach to generate hydrogen as a clean energy source and chemical feedstock. Finding a stable, eco-friendly, low cost and highly efficient catalyst is one of the prerequisites to realize large-scale industrial electrocatalytic hydrogen production. Two-dimensional metal carbide and nitride (MXene) materials have shown characteristics of promising hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalysts, but challenges in terms of both hydrogen adsorption strength and reaction rate still need to be addressed. In addition, previous theoretical studies of MXenes for the HER focus mainly on the thermodynamics (e.g. hydrogen adsorption energy) rather than the kinetics of the reaction (e.g. energy barrier and reaction rate). In this work, we utilize high-throughput computational methods to study both the HER thermodynamics and kinetics of M2XO2 type MXenes and how their HER activity can be enhanced by the modification of different transition metal (TM) adatoms. Compared to the relatively weak HER activity observed for the majority of pristine MXenes, the addition of TM adatoms on the MXene surface is predicted to enhance their HER activity significantly. The presence of TM not only optimizes the Gibbs free energy of hydrogen adsorption (ΔGH) but also reduces the H2 production activation barrier. Intriguingly, we observed a HER mechanism preference switch from Volmer–Heyrovsky observed on pristine MXenes to Volmer–Tafel after modification with TM adatoms. On the basis of in-depth and systematic exploration of the electronic structure and interaction between hydrogen and MXenes, the origin of the mechanism preference switch is linked to the TM-induced electron redistribution on the surface of the MXene.


Communication latency and unpredictable delays in remote response times constitute significant impediments to achieving high performance on massively parallel computers. Message-driven execution is a promising technique to improve the performance of parallel computations by overlapping these delays with useful computation. This thesis explores message-driven execution for improving performance of parallel programs. Programming in message-driven style is difficult due to the split-phase transactions it requires and due to the nondeterministic arrival of messages. We developed language constructs to express dependences between messages and computations in order to simplify expression of message-driven programs. Predicting the performance of message-driven programs via simulations is difficult because the arrival order of messages changes as the machine characteristics change. We developed a trace-driven simulation methodology based on the those language constructs. We also conducted an extensive performance study of message-driven programs.


Tracer experiments are valuable tools for characterizing the fate and transport of solutes carried in stream waters; however, the results can have high uncertainty when the technique is not properly implemented. The goal of this study was to identify the limitations that apply when we couple conservative-tracer injection with reactive solute sampling to identify the transport and reaction processes active in a stream. The conservative-tracer injection is used to characterize the physical transport processes of advection, dispersion, ground-water inflow, and stream-storage exchange (the movement of stream water and solute between the active stream channel and storage zones in the channel margins and in the subsurface). The reactive-solute sampling is used to characterize the removal of reactive solute due to geochemical/biotic processes occurring in the storage zones. We apply the methodology of Wagner and Harvey (1997) to evaluate the tracer approach for the wide range of transport and reaction conditions likely encountered in highgradient streams. The methodology couples solute transport simulation with parameter uncertainty analysis in a Monte Carlo framework to identify those combinations of stream transport and reaction properties that pose limitations to the tracer approach. Our results show that the uncertainty associated with determining the reaction rate constant is strongly related to the reactive loss factor, which is a dimensionless combination of the reaction rate constant, the average solute residence time in the storage zone, the experimental reach length, and the average distance travelled by a stream solute before entering a storage zone. As the reactive loss factor increases, the effect of reactive loss in the storage zones along the study reach increases and the uncertainty in the reaction rate estimate decreases.


lnterleukin-6 (IL-6) is a pro-inflammatory cytokine produced by macrophages, endothelial cells, fibroblasts, vascular smooth muscle cells, T lymphocytes and adipocytes. IL-6 is regulated at the level of transcription. There are multiple regulatory elements in the IL-6 promoter. Three single nucleotide polymorphisms at position -597, -572 and -174 and a variable region of A's and T's at -373 have been identified in the IL-6 proximal promoter. The THP-1 macrophage-like cell line was induced to express IL-6 mRNA in response to IFN-? and LPS. Interferon-gamma induced IL-6 mRNA expression was inhibited by treatment with either atorvastatin or pravastatin. Monocytes extracted from the blood of healthy volunteers of known IL-6 promoter haplotype (+GG9/11G and -GG9/11G) were differentiated to macrophages ex vivo. These cells were cultured in the presence of IL-1beta, LPS or IFN-gamma, to induce IL-6 mRNA. Quantitative PCR was used to quantitate the level of IL-6 mRNA. IL-6 mRNA in macrophages from individuals with the IL-6 promoter haplotype +GG9/11G was significantly induced in response to IL-1beta when compared to -GG9/11G individuals. A similar though non significant effect was detected in response to IFN-gamma. No significant IL-6 promoter haplotype-specific difference was observed in response to LPS. Chromatin remodeling of the IL-6 promoter occurred within 30 minutes of stimulation and was specific to the region of the IL-6 promoter and the stimulus applied to the cells. A DNase I hypersensitive site was identified in the region of the polymorphic AnTn variable tract and a potential DNA cruciform structure in the IL-6 promoter was resolved by T7 Endonuclease I. Atomic force microscopy was used to visualise DNA cruciform structure in IL- 6 promoter haplotype constructs. This work contributes to the understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the normal inter-individual differences in the macrophage IL-6 inflammatory response.


In the present study we analysed the proximate-composition and caloric values of the preferred prey consumed by ribbonfish, Trichiurus lepturus L. 1758 (adult females), that are distributed in the inner continental shelf from northern Rio de Janeiro State, southeastern Brazil (~22oS), assessing the potential of nutritional and energetic approach as a tool to understand the feeding selective pattern of this marine top carnivore. The preferred prey of this predator composed of fish co-specifics, Pellona harroweri, Chirocentrodon bleekerianus, Lycengraulis grossidens, Peprilus paru, squid Doryteuthis plei, and shrimp Xiphopenaeus kroyeri were collected from 2007 to 2010 for proximate-composition (water, protein, lipid, ash, and carbohydrate) and caloric value analyses. The correspondence analysis showed that protein is the main component in the prey species (61.32% of variance explained), standing out from the other nutrients. Lipid has the highest percentage related to L. grossidens, ash to X. kroyeri and carbohydrate to D. plei. The strong correlations between protein and caloric value (positive) and lipid and caloric value (negative) indicated that T. lepturus is attending its energy demand through the prey protein content. This work elucidated the feeding preference of adult females of T. lepturus in relation to nutritional and caloric content of their preferred prey. The species showed food selectivity to prey that provide more energy per ingested biomass, so that the feeding events can maximize the predator's caloric gain, which is obtained by a protein-based diet.


Kernel-level attacks or rootkits can compromise the security of an operating system by executing with the privilege of the kernel. Current approaches use virtualization to gain higher privilege over these attacks, and isolate security tools from the untrusted guest VM by moving them out and placing them in a separate trusted VM. Although out-of-VM isolation can help ensure security, the added overhead of world-switches between the guest VMs for each invocation of the monitor makes this approach unsuitable for many applications, especially fine-grained monitoring. In this paper, we present Secure In-VM Monitoring (SIM), a general-purpose framework that enables security monitoring applications to be placed back in the untrusted guest VM for efficiency without sacrificing the security guarantees provided by running them outside of the VM. We utilize contemporary hardware memory protection and hardware virtualization features available in recent processors to create a hypervisor protected address space where a monitor can execute and access data in native speeds and to which execution is transferred in a controlled manner that does not require hypervisor involvement. We have developed a prototype into KVM utilizing Intel VT hardware virtualization technology. We have also developed two representative applications for the Windows OS that monitor system calls and process creations. Our microbenchmarks show at least 10 times performance improvement in invocation of a monitor inside SIM over a monitor residing in another trusted VM. With a systematic security analysis of SIM against a number of possible threats, we show that SIM provides at least the same security guarantees as what can be achieved by out-of-VM monitors.


A pervasive 20-30 yr periodicity is observed in stable oxygen isotope values over the past 1000 yr from varved lacustrine calcite obtained from Fayetteville Green Lake, New York. Correlation analysis between historical oxygen isotope values and winter vortex latitude shows an inverse relationship wherein an expanded vortex is associated with high d 18 Ocalcite values, and vice versa. An expansion of the vortex favors advection of cyclones from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic regions characterized by high d 18 Oprecipitation values, whereas a contracted vortex favors the development of cross-continental storms originating in the Pacific, which preferentially rain out 18 O as they propagate eastward. We hypothesize that changes in the size of the winter vortex every 20-30 yr over the past 1000 yr modify the primary source regions for meteoric precipitation. We propose two possible climate forcings to explain our hypothesis: an external forcing related to solar variability and an internal forcing related to ocean-atmosphere links.


Aim The aim was to identify how ethical issues have been handled in theses written by undergraduate students in the field of nursing. Background The act of gathering information online to become an 'expert' by locating useful advice for oneself – and others – is a fairly new phenomenon. How virtual caring and nursing can contribute to people's health as a resource is growing as an area of interest within the field of caring sciences. Methods A qualitative content analysis of 21 bachelor theses in nursing science was conducted. The analysis focused on how ethical issues concerning gathering data in cyberspace were handled. Findings The results show that the students chose very complex health issues when gathering data in cyberspace. The results reveal asymmetries between the researcher and subjects behind the data (the bloggers), both in terms of knowledge as well as in relation to the resources available to them. Conclusions There is a need to discuss cyberspace as a source of data, including ethical, ontological, and epistemological issues. Based on the findings, we provide a tentative outline of how data from cyberspace can be used by nursing researchers and instructors at all levels in the field.


Since the emergence of the United States as a major global power, it has claimed to be the "leader of the free world" and the "champion of democracy." During the Cold War, the prodemocracy rhetoric was a major staple on the United States" foreign policy menu. For example, the U.S. claimed that its support for democracy and the former Soviet Union"s endorsement of authoritarianism was the main distinguishing feature between the ideological-political systems of the two superpowers. Thereafter, each succeeding American administration recited the prodemocracy rhetoric, which was elevated to new heights during President George W. Bush"s second term. In his Second Inaugural Address, Bush declared the pursuance of a "freedom agenda" as a major cornerstone of American foreign policy. Using four allied African states of the United States—Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda—and an adversarial state—Zimbabwe— as case studies, this article examines the relationship between the rhetoric of "democracy promotion" through the holding of free and fair elections and praxis. In other words, how did the Bush administration respond to fraudulent elections in its allied and adversarial states, against the backdrop of its policy rhetoric through the promotion of democracy globally?


The snowball Earth hypothesis predicts that low-latitude glaciation lasted millions of years while CO2 built up to critical levels to culminate in catastrophic deglaciation in a supergreenhouse climate. The Gaskiers Formation of eastern Newfoundland (Canada) has been attributed to a snowball glaciation event, but the lack of robust paleomagnetic data and precise geochronological constraints has precluded tests of the hypothesis. Here we present high-precision U-Pb zircon geochronology (chemical abrasion–isotope dilution–thermal ionization mass spectrometry) from eight tuffs from multiple distant stratigraphic sections that bracket glacial diamictites and the first appearance of large Ediacaran fossils. Including internal error, deposition of the Gaskiers diamictite on the Avalon Peninsula is constrained to have been between 580.90 ± 0.40 and 579.88 ± 0.44 Ma, and the Trinity diamictite on Bonavista Peninsula was deposited between 579.63 ± 0.15 and 579.24 ± 0.17 Ma. Assuming approximately synchronous deglaciation, these results imply a maximum duration for deposition of the Trinity diamictite of ≤340 k.y.; this is inconsistent with the multimillion year duration predicted by the snowball Earth hypothesis. Our geochronologic data also constrain the first appearance datum of Ediacaran fossils to <9.5 m.y. after the Gaskiers glaciation. Thus, despite existing paleomagnetic constraints that indicate that marine ice sheets extended to low to middle latitudes, it appears that Earth narrowly escaped a third Neoproterozoic snowball glaciation just prior to the late Ediacaran expansion of metazoan ecosystems.


Esther Pasztory sought refuge in the United States after the 1956 anti-communist revolution in Hungary. Her memoir chronicles the difficulty of straddling two cultures both personally and professionally and Pasztory's escape into a third, ancient culture where she felt her spirit was free to roam. Interweaving her work with the Aztec and Incan history with her past experiences in Hungary and her present life in America. Her story will appeal not only to readers who wrestle with their dual heritage but also to historians who seek an intimate account of post-communist Hungary.


This response to Barton Beebe explores whether contemporary experience in Europe supports the central arguments advanced by Beebe in The Supressed Misappropriation Origins of Trademark Antidilution Law. The development of E.U. law is largely consistent with the idea that dilution law is in part an effort to install a misappropriation regime, at least insofar as the objects of protection are trademarks with a reputation (increasingly, a smaller caveat as the scope of potential trademark subject matter expands and the reputation threshold falls). This has important local consequences: if dilution law is in truth is a law against misappropriation, the Court of Justice of the European Union has greater scope to contribute to the creation of a nascent European law of unfair competition. But examining recent European case law also suggests that understanding misappropriation as part of a broader system of unfair competition may moderate the formalist critique of misappropriation as wholly indeterminate and unlimited. Understood in its unfair competition milieu, a misappropriation-based concept of dilution retains some potential for measured delineation of the edges of protection.


In the UK substantial numbers of new HIV diagnoses are within migrant African
communities. A continuing feature of HIV in this population is the late presentation to HIV
services. This dissertation sets out to explore HIV testing among Africans in the UK, the
factors associated with late presentation to HIV services, and the extent of HIV
acquisition within the UK in African communities. The main focus of the thesis is the
'study of newly diagnosed HIV among Africans in London' (the SONHIA study),
which combined qualitative and quantitative methods in a multi-centre study.
The thesis begins with the work undertaken in preparation for SONHIA. It presents a
literature review to provide epidemiological, cultural and historical background. Next is
an analysis of the 2nd National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles to explore the
factors associated with HIV testing among black Africans in Britain. Finally, the
findings from in-depth interviews with key informants to identify the issues affecting
utilisation of HIV services for Africans in Britain are presented.
The SONHIA study consisted of survey of 269 Africans newly diagnosed with HIV. All
respondents self-completed a questionnaire linked to clinical records, and 26 in-depth
interviews with a purposively selected sub-sample were performed. The findings show
that Africans are accessing services but clinicians are failing to use these opportunities
for preventive and diagnostic purposes with regards to HIV infection. HIV presentation
patterns appear governed by factors linked to the characteristics of, and response to, the
HIV epidemic operating within people's sociocultural networks. UK acquisition of HIV
in this population appears substantially higher than acknowledged by national
surveillance data, with a quarter to a third of HIV possibly acquired in the UK.
The qualitative findings provide contextual understanding of the factors contributing to
late presentation. They highlight the central role of HIV-related stigma and
discrimination in influencing HIV testing behaviours. Failings within the health care
system offer insight as how clinicians can better address HIV in the future.
The key findings are summarized and contextualised with the literature and the current
socio-political climate. The study's limitations are addressed, and the thesis concludes
with the public health and policy implications of the study.


It is now a consolidated fact that our Universe is undergoing an accelerated expansion. According to Einstein's General Relativity, if the main constituents of our Universe were ordinary and cold dark matter, then we would expect it to be contracting and collapsing due to matter's attractive nature. The simplest explanation we have for this acceleration is in the form of a component with a negative ratio of pressure to density equal to −1 known as cosmological constant, Λ, presently dominating over baryonic and cold dark matter. However, the Λ Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) model suffers from a well known finetuning problem. This led to the formulation of dark energy and modified gravity theories as alternatives to the problem of cosmic acceleration. These theories either include additional degrees of freedom, higher-order equations of motion, extra dimensionalities or imply non-locality. In this thesis we focus on single field scalar tensor theories embedded within Horndeski gravity. Even though there is currently doubt on their ability to explain cosmic acceleration without having a bare cosmological constant on their action, the degree of freedom they introduce mediates an additional fifth force. And while this force has to suppressed on Solar system scales, it can have interesting and observable effects on cosmological scales. Over the next decade there is a surge of surveys that will improve the understanding of our Universe on the largest scales. Hence, in this work, we take several different modified gravity theories and study their impact on cosmological observables. We will analyze the dynamics of linear perturbations on these theories and clearly highlight how they deviate from ΛCDM, allowing to break the degeneracy at the background level. We will also study the evolution of the gravitational potentials on sub horizon scales and provide simplified expressions at this regime and, for some models, obtain constraints using the latest data.


Context. The existence of dynamically relaxed stellar density cusps in dense clusters around massive black holes is a long-standing prediction of stellar dynamics, but it has so far escaped unambiguous observational confirmation. Aims. In this paper we aim to revisit the problem of inferring the innermost structure of the Milky Way's nuclear star cluster via star counts, to clarify whether it displays a core or a cusp around the central black hole. Methods. We used judiciously selected adaptive optics assisted high angular resolution images obtained with the NACO instrument at the ESO VLT. Through image stacking and improved point spread function fitting we pushed the completeness limit about one magnitude deeper than in previous, comparable work. Crowding and extinction corrections were derived and applied to the surface density estimates. Known young, and therefore dynamically not relaxed stars, are excluded from the analysis. Contrary to previous work, we analyse the stellar density in well-defined magnitude ranges in order to be able to constrain stellar masses and ages. Results. We focus on giant stars, with observed magnitudes K = 12.5-16, and on stars with observed magnitudes K ≈ 18, which may have similar mean ages and masses than the former. The giants display a core-like surface density profile within a projected radius R ≤ 0.3 pc of the central black hole, in agreement with previous studies, but their 3D density distribution is not inconsistent with a shallow cusp if we take into account the extent of the entire cluster, beyond the radius of influence of the central black hole. The surface density of the fainter stars can be described well by a single power-law at R < 2 pc. The cusp-like profile of the faint stars persists even if we take into account the possible contamination of stars in this brightness range by young pre-main sequence stars. The data are inconsistent with a core-profile for the faint stars. Finally, we show that a 3D Nuker law provides a good description of the cluster structure. Conclusions. We conclude that the observed density of the faintest stars detectable with reasonable completeness at the Galactic centre, is consistent with the existence of a stellar cusp around the Milky Way's central black hole, Sagittarius A∗. This cusp is well developed inside the influence radius of Sagittarius A∗and can be described by a single three-dimensional power-law with an exponent γ = 1.43 ± 0.02 ± 0.1. This corroborates existing conclusions from Nbody simulations performed in a companion paper. An important caveat is that the faint stars analysed here may be contaminated significantly by dynamically unrelaxed stars that formed about 100 Myr ago. The apparent lack of giants at projected distances of R ≲ 0.3 pc (R ≲ 8″) of the massive black hole may indicate that some mechanism may have altered their distribution or intrinsic luminosity. We roughly estimate the number of possibly missing giants to about 100.


The removal of paint from bridges and other structures is a significant issue facing transportation agencies because of the presence and potential for release of lead and other contaminants upon disposal. A large percentage of the bridges are reaching a critical level of deterioration, resulting in management issues for paint waste. The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) applies a conservative approach by assuming all waste generated from bridges previously painted with lead-based paint (LBP) is hazardous. Therefore, an approach that provides accurate in-situ characterization of the waste classification would be beneficial. The goal of this project is to develop a rapid and cost-effective method that can provide an accurate characterization of waste classification. With 11 Regions and 2,385 bridges rehabilitated and subsequently repainted after NYSDOT stopped using LBP on bridges (after 1988), 24 bridges from across the NYS were selected for this study based on Sampling Theory (Deliverable Task 1). The literature review demonstrated that elevated metal concentrations in paint waste have resulted in leaching that exceeds toxicity characteristic (TC) concentrations; however, models to predict leaching behavior have not been developed (Deliverable Task 2). Field portable X-ray fluorescence (FP-XRF) (Deliverable Task 3) was applied to quantify Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) metals (i.e., As, Ba, Cr, Cd, Pb, Hg, Se, and Ag) along with iron and zinc in paint waste samples (Deliverable Task 4), while Hach DR 2800 field portable spectrophotometer (Deliverable Task 3) was employed for measuring dissolved and total lead concentrations in bridge wash water (Deliverable Task 5). Leaching behavior of the paint waste was evaluated with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) toxicity characteristic leaching procedure (TCLP) and multiple extraction procedure (MEP) (Deliverable Task 6). Elevated Pb (5 to 168,090 mg kg-1), Cr (21 to 10,192 mg kg-1), and other metal concentrations were observed in the paint samples. However, 48 out of 51 samples passed the TCLP test, while 19 out of 24 samples revealed concentrations less than the TC level in the MEP study. These results are attributed to the use of iron-based abrasives (steel grit) in the paint removal process. Trace metals are sequestered through interactions with the steel grit surface resulting in reduced leachable concentrations (less than the TC limit). Using the suite of analyses including sequential extraction procedure (SEP), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), iron oxides were observed on the steel grit surface and are important surfaces affecting the degree of metal leaching from the paint waste (Deliverable Task 6). Given an understanding of mechanistic processes along with a demonstrated analysis of variables through principle component analysis (PCA), statistically-based models for leaching from paint waste were developed (Deliverable Task 7). The statistical models demonstrated 96 percent of the data fall within the 95% confidence level for Pb (R2 0.6 – 0.9, p ≤ 0.01), Ba (R2 0.6 – 0.7, p ≤ 0.1), and Zn (R2 0.6 – 0.7, p ≤ 0.01), although the regression model was not significant for Cr leaching (R2 0.5 – 0.7, p ≤ 0.75). The models have applicability over a wide range of total metal concentrations. A practical advantage in applying models developed is the ability to estimate contaminant leaching from paint waste without additional laboratory studies including the U.S. EPA TCLP. Therefore, the statistically-based models developed are a powerful approach for predicting metal leaching and therefore waste classification.


Many new psychoactive substances (NPSs) with different chemical structures have emerged in the illicit drug market in the last decade. The present work was aimed at the development of a simple method in gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (MS) for the determination of NPS of different classes, the use of cannabinoids, and, at the same time, the evaluation of methadone therapy in hair matrix, within our routine analysis control for methadone treatment or from autopsy cases. The determination of synthetic cannabinoids and methadone therapy used an extraction method based on incubation in concentrated sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution, providing a dissolution of the keratin matrix. The described method was applied on 15 authentic specimens from our cases: five showed the presence of methadone and 2-ethylidene-1,5-dimethyl-3,3-diphenylpyrrolidine (EDDP). The described method can be useful not only in the forensic investigation of NPS-related addiction histories but also in epidemiological and retrospective studies on the spread of NPS among specific safety-sensitive social workers. The GC instrument was an Agilent 7820A (Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA, USA), and the detection system was an Agilent 5977B single quadrupole MS operating in selective ion monitoring mode. Validation parameters such as limit of detections (LODs), limit of quantifications (LOQs), repeatability, accuracy, and linearity were satisfactory for its application on real specimens. LODs, LOQs, R%CV, standard deviation, and the mean concentration for the analyzed compounds are reported in Table 1b. Accuracy and repeatability were acceptable for all the analytes at their respective LOQs. Recovery experiments varied from 58.3% to 103.0%, thus allowing the application on authentic specimens. The described method can be useful not only in the forensic investigation of NPS-related addiction histories but also in epidemiological and retrospective studies on the spread of NPS among specific safety-sensitive social workers, such as drivers.


Many states now face serious fiscal problems. The cumulative deficit of the states in 1991 was $31 billion. According to one estimate, over half the states are afflicted with instructurali budget deficits that will persevere long after the economy improves. The fiscal crisis is prompting state policymakers to examine ways to fundamentally reshape and irightsizei state government. Privatization, by injecting competition into service delivery and turning physical assets into financial assets, has emerged as a key component in such programs to rightsize state governments. To obtain the full value from privatization, states should design comprehensive, forward-looking privatization programs rather than adopting piecemeal approaches. A comprehensive program achieves greater benefits in terms of cost savings, efficiency gains, and reining in the growth of government. It also puts the full weight of the governor and/or legislature behind privatization. State policy makers should follow nine basic steps when designing a systematic, comprehensive privatization program. The steps are: Develop the institutional structure for privatization; set up a program of adjustments and incentives for public employees; identify privatization techniques; identify state services and assets that offer opportunities for privatization; determine the legislative and executive barriers to privatization and revise or rescind these; consider introducing mandatory competitive incentives into the delivery of certain state and local services; evaluate the feasibility of privatizing identified privatization opportunities; determine the potential cost savings from privatizing services and assets selected for privatization; prepare a plan for implementing privatization. Comprehensive privatization programs incorporate a variety of privatization techniques and identify numerous privatization opportunities in all aspects of state government. Such programs can save taxpayer dollars and permanently establish competitive incentives to keep the costs of government down in the long term


Much attention has been devoted recently to the generalization puzzle in deep learning: large, deep networks can generalize well, but existing theories bounding generalization error are exceedingly loose, and thus cannot explain this striking performance. Furthermore, a major hope is that knowledge may transfer across tasks, so that multi-task learning can improve generalization on individual tasks. However we lack analytic theories that can quantitatively predict how the degree of knowledge transfer depends on the relationship between the tasks. We develop an analytic theory of the nonlinear dynamics of generalization in deep linear networks, both within and across tasks. In particular, our theory provides analytic solutions to the training and testing error of deep networks as a function of training time, number of examples, network size and initialization, and the task structure and SNR. Our theory reveals that deep networks progressively learn the most important task structure first, so that generalization error at the early stopping time primarily depends on task structure and is independent of network size. This suggests any tight bound on generalization error must take into account task structure, and explains observations about real data being learned faster than random data. Intriguingly our theory also reveals the existence of a learning algorithm that proveably out-performs neural network training through gradient descent. Finally, for transfer learning, our theory reveals that knowledge transfer depends sensitively, but computably, on the SNRs and input feature alignments of pairs of tasks.


The quest for the meaning of various aspects of African music has taken center stage for many Africanists from the humanities and social sciences.(1) To attain this objective in the field of ethnomusicology, new trends of inquiry focus on the impact of the contextual interplay of myriad physical and conceptual cultural elements in the process of musical creativity.(2) Seen from this perspective, one objective of these trends is to reveal the meaning of a musical practice by detecting the extent to which the respective cultural fabric is reflected in the total process of musical creativity pertaining to a given community (wa Mukuna 1993, 154). In his book Musical Practice and Creativity: An African Traditional Perspective (1991), for example, Meki Nzewi provides an excellent case study of reflectivity by casting the creative musical process of the Igbo in Nigeria against the philosophy of Mbari art. He asserts: Its [Mbari art] objective is in its fulfillment not in its utility. Its essence is the celebration of its momentousness: a socio-spiritual regeneration and sustainment. Its philosophy is that death or demise is the essence of growth. The lesson of Mbari is that an achievement is its own end: the thrill and dynamism to achieve burns out with achieving, and, thereby, gives scope for the growth of a fresh incentive for another achievement: a philosophy from which the practice of performance-composition in music also derives. (12) Nzewi implies that the improvisational creative process in instrumental music, like the Mbari art, is an attainment in itself. It exists as a process of fulfillment during the creation and ceases to exist after its completion. This parallelism is corroborated with examples from various music cultures in Africa. Nevertheless, distinctions are to be made between categories of musical compositions to reveal that those performance-compositions belonging to categories of social and religious contexts, for which the efficacy of their ritual requests rigorous fidelity in music and dance reproduction, follow a different set of norms. In this context, a musical composition or dance exists in perpetuity and does not necessarily become "a past referential framework for a new creative experience every subsequent performance occasion," as Nzewi would like us to believe (1991, 12). Despite the enormous literature devoted to the explanation of the nature of African music, its meaning and governing principles continue to challenge casual scholars--who prefer to simplify them by casting or assessing them outside their cultural context--and those who refuse to accept that the creative process of African music is governed by a set of principles different from those of Europe. Whereas Nzewi's argument holds true for instrumental music, it presents difficulties when tested against vocal music. In this essay, I assert that the total concept of the creative process in the vocal music of Africa is contained in the different levels of its languages and that the demise of African languages in the New World rendered musical elements vulnerable to modification or replacement by others with different principles of organization. In other words, the creative process in African music is culturally defined, inspired by a variety of cultural manifestations and practices peculiar to an ethnic group. To comprehend this concept, it is pertinent to delve into a linguistic analysis. The examination of the nature of vocal music in Africa reveals that languages play a paramount role in its organization. Language, a vehicle par excellence for the conveyance of the African philosophy of existence, "I belong, therefore I am," is crucial to the understanding of the creative process of vocal music. Its tonal inflections are not only vital in the process of melodic construction and heterophonic implication; they are also influential in the selection of certain musical instruments used by an ethnic group. …


Near-source observations show that earthquakes initiate with a distinctive seismic nucleation phase that is characterized by a low rate of moment release relative to the rest of the event. This phase was observed for the 30 earthquakes having moment magnitudes 2.6 to 8.1, and the size and duration of this phase scale with the eventual size of the earthquake. During the nucleation phase, moment release was irregular and appears to have been confined to a limited region of the fault. It was characteristically followed by quadratic growth in the moment rate as rupture began to propagate away from the nucleation zone. These observations suggest that the nucleation process exerts a strong influence on the size of the eventual earthquake.


Airborne measurements of pure Saharan dust extinction and backscatter coefficients, the corresponding lidar ratio and the aerosol optical thickness (AOT) have been performed during the Saharan Mineral Dust Experiment 2006, with a high spectral resolution lidar. Dust layers were found to range from ground up to 4–6 km above sea level (asl). Maximum AOT values at 532 nm, encountered within these layers during the DLR Falcon research flights were 0.50–0.55. A significant horizontal variability of the AOT south of the High Atlas mountain range was observed even in cases of a well-mixed dust layer. High vertical variations of the dust lidar ratio of 38–50 sr were observed in cases of stratified dust layers. The variability of the lidar ratio was attributed to dust advection from different source regions. The aerosol depolarization ratio was about 30% at 532 nm during all measurements and showed only marginal vertical variations.


This study addresses Beyehir Lake Basin, which is the largest freshwater lake in Turkey. The aim of the study was to explore the knowledge, perceptions and behaviors of local communities regarding; the critical problems of the basin; technical and political situation of the water management in the basin; possible strategies ensuring positive change towards the sustainability of the basin; and the watershed management strategies which could contribute to success in this case. The participatory level of the local water users of the basin was also examined. The results revealed that local communities were aware of the basin's problems and contribution of the participatory approaches to watershed management. Also, collaboration between the public and public institutions was accepted as key to successful watershed management. The stakeholders, who considered that current water policies to solve the problems of the basin were ineffectual, relied on the local environmental groups more than central government and local authorities regarding their water policies.


Recent evidence from Alsius and Soto-Faraco (2011) suggests that selective attention is required to locate a talking face in a multi-talker array, seemingly in contrast to previous claims that the integration of faces and voices is preattentive (McGurk and MacDonald, 1976). The current study investigated what effect degrading the auditory signal has on the ability to locate a talking face. Twenty participants were presented with between 2 and 4 moving faces, each of which was articulating a different sentence. The task was to decide, as quickly as possible, which of these faces matched the auditory sentence that they heard at the same time. The results showed that in the least demanding auditory condition (clear speech in quiet), increasing the number of faces on screen did not increase visual search times. However, when speech was presented in background noise or was processed to simulate the information provided by a cochlear implant ('sine-wave vocoded speech'), search times increased as the number of faces increased even though intelligibility of the sentences was unchanged. The results suggest that under conditions of low perceptual load it is possible for audiovisual correspondence to 'pop out', but if perceptual load is increased then selective attention is required to bind faces and voices.


Flow induced pulsation in piping are serious concern in refrigeration installations where noise and vibrations are critical factors. This report takes an insight look into the possible ways to minimise the noise and vibration due to pulsations. A modification of the discharge piping was done to reduce the noise produced by pressure pulsation in oil flooded screw compressor. It gets complex while trying to deduce the natural frequency of complicated piping with branches and bends. FEMLAB was used as simulation software. Reflection of waveform in piping masks the real amplitude of the pressure pulsation. A method based on signal processing was employed to decompose the incident and reflected wave.


Given the computational cost and technical expertise required to train machine learning models, users may delegate the task of learning to a service provider. Delegation of learning has clear benefits, and at the same time raises serious concerns of trust. This work studies possible abuses of power by untrusted learners.We show how a malicious learner can plant an undetectable backdoor into a classifier. On the surface, such a backdoored classifier behaves normally, but in reality, the learner maintains a mechanism for changing the classification of any input, with only a slight perturbation. Importantly, without the appropriate "backdoor key," the mechanism is hidden and cannot be detected by any computationally-bounded observer. We demonstrate two frameworks for planting undetectable backdoors, with incomparable guarantees.•First, we show how to plant a backdoor in any model, using digital signature schemes. The construction guarantees that given query access to the original model and the backdoored version, it is computationally infeasible to find even a single input where they differ. This property implies that the backdoored model has generalization error comparable with the original model. Moreover, even if the distinguisher can request backdoored inputs of its choice, they cannot backdoor a new input—a property we call non-replicability.•Second, we demonstrate how to insert undetectable backdoors in models trained using the Random Fourier Features (RFF) learning paradigm (Rahimi, Recht; NeurIPS 2007). In this construction, undetectability holds against powerful white-box distinguishers: given a complete description of the network and the training data, no efficient distinguisher can guess whether the model is "clean" or contains a backdoor. The backdooring algorithm executes the RFF algorithm faithfully on the given training data, tampering only with its random coins. We prove this strong guarantee under the hardness of the Continuous Learning With Errors problem (Bruna, Regev, Song, Tang; STOC 2021). We show a similar white-box undetectable backdoor for random ReLU networks based on the hardness of Sparse PCA (Berthet, Rigollet; COLT 2013).Our construction of undetectable backdoors also sheds light on the related issue of robustness to adversarial examples. In particular, by constructing undetectable backdoor for an "adversarially-robust" learning algorithm, we can produce a classifier that is indistinguishable from a robust classifier, but where every input has an adversarial example! In this way, the existence of undetectable backdoors represent a significant theoretical roadblock to certifying adversarial robustness.


The design of suspension systems for heavy-duty vehicles covers a specific field of automotive industry. The proposed work focuses on the design development of a front controllable suspension for an agricultural tractor capable to satisfy the system requirements under different operating conditions. The design of the control algorithms is based on the developed multibody model of the actual tractor, including the pitch motion of the sprung mass, the anti-dive effects during braking and forward-reverse maneuvers and the non-linear dynamics of the actuation system. For an advanced analysis, a novel thermo-hydraulic model of the hydraulic system has been implemented. Several semi-active damping controls are analyzed for the specific case study. Therefore, the most promising damping strategy is integrated with other control functions, namely a self-leveling control, an original control algorithm for the reduction of the pitch motion, an anti-impact system for the hydraulic actuator and an on-line adaptation scheme, which preserves an optimal damping ratio of the suspension, even against large variations in operating conditions.


One of the Association's few requirements of the president is acceptance of the honor of addressing its members at the annual meeting. Selection of the topic of discussion, which is left to the discretion of the speaker, is difficult because of the varied interests of the group. Moreover, the choice of topics appears to be limited because it is the consensus of most interested persons that infections, for all practical purposes, have been eliminated. It is conceded, perhaps, that a few things of academic interest remain to be done, such as synthesis, by the chemists, of antibodies, and ferreting-out, by combined activities of chemists and mycologists, of Ehrlich's "therapia sterilisans magna." But it is generally assumed that the chief problems have been solved. Those obvious conclusions, however, are orderly deductions by well informed minds. The honor of addressing the Association this year falls to one with a simple mind.