Increasingly, faculty members are rewarded financially for prestige-maximizing publications. As a result, the balance between publishing and other activities such as teaching or public service may collapse, as argued by Leisyte, Enders, and de Boer (2009). In our paper, we focus on career-related rewards and study their impact on publication productivity to see whether economic incentives do indeed affect faculty behavior, as measured empirically. We compare economic incentives resulting from two different career systems, namely those within the German and the U.S. university systems. We derive three hypotheses regarding expected publication patterns and test them by comparing the lifetime publication patterns of German and U.S. business and economics faculty members.


Older employees are usually assumed to be especially "loyal" to their employers, but there has been little research to establish whether such attitudes have been changing. This paper first conceptualizes the traditional position of older employees in terms of incentive contracts and employment rents, and then uses knowledge about recent change in the labour market to suggest that this position will have been deteriorating relative to younger employees. This prediction is tested using data from national surveys of employees, with the main comparisons over the period 1992-2000 and supplementary comparisons, to test robustness, for 1998-2004. The results support the prediction that older employees have become relatively disenchanted with their situation, and show that their negative feelings are aimed at their own employers rather than the general employment situation.


In order to quantitatively evaluate the interface strength of low-dimensional nanoscale components, a fracture test has been performed in a TEM (transmission electron microscope) using a special holder equipped with a small loading apparatus. The loading apparatus, which involves a 3D piezoelectric tube and a special load sensor placed behind the loading tip, allows precise control of the loading point and the measurement of infinitesimal fracture load. A low-dimensional nanoscale component with interface edges has been fabricated from a multi-layered material using FIB (focused ion beam). With this testing system, an in situ observation of crack initiation from the interface edge of low-dimensional SiN/Cu lines has been successfully implemented along with a quantitative measurement of the fracture load. Using the information obtained from the fracture test, the stress field around the SiN/Cu interface edge has been analytically evaluated.


This volume offers a critical analysis and illustration of the challenges and promises of 'stateless' law thought, pedagogy and approaches to governance - that is, understanding and conceptualizing law in a post-national condition. From common, civil and international law perspectives, the collection focuses on the definition and role of law as an academic discipline, and hybridity in the practice and production of law. With contributions by a diverse and international group of scholars, the collection includes fourteen chapters written in English and three in French. Confronting the 'transnational challenge' posed to the traditional theoretical and institutional structures that underlie the teaching and study of law in the university, the seventeen authors of Stateless Law: Evolving Boundaries of a Discipline bring new insight to the ongoing and crucial conversation about the future shape of legal scholarship, education and practice that is emblematic of the early twenty-first century. This collection is essential reading for academics, institutions and others involved in determining the future roles, responsibilities and education of jurists, as well as for academics interested in Law, Sociology, Political Science and Education. (resume directeurs d'ouvrage)


Currently, science is developing rapidly and its influence on society is more significant than ever. This is all the more reason for today's scientists to interact with the general public. To design effective science communication activities, we must understand scientists' motivations and barriers to publicly communicating science. In this study, we interviewed 19 early-career scientists who had participated in science cafes in Japan. From these interviews, we identified five factors leading to their reluctance to participate in science cafes: 1) troublesome or time- consuming; 2) pressure to be an appropriate science representative; 3) outside the scope of their work; 4) could not perceive any benefit; and 5) apprehension about dialogue with the public. Among these factors, apprehension about dialogue may be the clearest reflection of the scientists' underlying feelings about this form of communication and an indicator of more intrinsic barriers to engaging in science cafes.


A classic boom-and-bust cycle has been brewing since the U.S. electricity market became deregulated in the early 1990s. This initial market opening led to massive investment in the industry, oversupply, and, eventually, significant power price declines. Fueled by the subsequent equity market boom, power companies overleveraged themselves and overstretched their budgets in a buying and trading frenzy. The post-Enron downturn resulted in significant value destruction and many bankruptcies. As a consequence of the considerable dislocation created by deregulation and the boom-and-bust cycle, a fundamental industry restructuring is likely to take place over the next few years. Players in the U.S. market can learn from their peers in the U.K. power industry, which has undergone a similar cycle but is about one to two years ahead of the U.S. in its restructuring efforts. The authors see three groups of companies that could influence the structure of the U.S. power industry in the coming months: industrial players, commercial banks, and new financial entrants. To be successful, all players will need three important elements: a detailed industry analysis that provides a more informed perspective of the commodity cycle and the corresponding asset cycle; a portfolio-development strategy that encompasses both risk/return profiling and asset cycle perspectives; and an execution strategy founded on solid risk management principles.


Many of the cultural heritages in the world have been totally or partly destroyed by natural events and human activities such as earthquake, flood and fire until the present day. Cultural heritages are legacy for us as well; it is also a fiduciary for next generation. To deliver this fiduciary to the future generations, cultural heritages have to be protected and registered. There are different methods for applying this registry but Photogrammetry is the most accurate and rapid method. Photogrammetry enables us to registry cultural heritages and generating 3D photo-realistic models. Nowadays, 3D models are being used in various fields such as education and tourism. In registration of complex and high construction by Photogrammetry, there are some problems in data acquisition and processing. Especially for high construction's photographs, some additional equipment is required such as balloon and lifter. In recent years The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are commonly started to be used in different fields for different goals. In Photogrammetry, The UAVs are being used for particularly data acquisition. It is not always easy to capture data due to the situation of historical places and their neighbourhood. The use of UAVs for documentation of cultural heritage will make an important contribution. The main goals of this study are to survey cultural heritages by Photogrammetry and to investigate the potential of UAVs in 3D modelling. In this purpose we surveyed Gedik Ahmet Pasha Mosque photogrammetricly by UAV and will produce photorealistic 3D model. Gedik Ahmet Pasha, The Grand Vizier of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, has been in Afyonkarahisar during the campaign to Karaman between the years of 1472–1473. He wanted Architect Ayaz Agha to build a complex of Bathhouse, Mosque and a Madrasah here, Afyon, due to admiration of this city. Gedik Ahmet Pasha Mosque is in the centre of this complex. Gedik Ahmet Pasha Mosque is popularly known as Imaret Mosque among the people of Afyon. Gedik Ahmet Pasha Complex is a foundation. For this reason all its expenses are recorded. Furthermore renovations of all buildings in this complex are placed on them with a inscription. According to records and inscriptions The Imaret Mosque has been restored several times. The two significant of these restorations were made after the earthquakes in 1668 and 1792. Lastly, after the renewing lead plating of domes in 1969, the Mosque has gotten its current final situation. The dimensions of Mosque are 29.20 x 35.40 in meter and it has built by a plan of inverse capital (T). There are two domes covering the main worship and it is one of the most important examples of Ottoman architecture with three of dome both side in direction of east to west. At the north side of the Mosque, there is a place for last congregations with five domes. Minaret is at the north-east side of the mosque. It has got one balcony (surrounding the minaret) and has been structured by cut stone with a shape of fluting. It has been covered by dark blue tile between these flutings. The main gate of mosque is made of pen inlaid marble. It is aimed to survey Gedik Ahmet Pasha Mosque photogrammetricly and to model it in 3D photo-realistic. In this study, South NTS-352 Total Station is used to constitute a closed polygon with 8 point. We used 350 ground control point in the field study. It is made levelling to measure elevation of polygon points. For photographs, we used Canon A 180 camera and UAV. Photomodeler software is used to process both camera's and UAV's photographs independently. The facades of mosque are derived and all 3D models of Mosque were merged. This merged model is covered with high resolution photographs for obtaining 3D photo-realistic models of Gedik Ahmet Pasha Mosque.


In August 2012, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published my article surveying two years of seismicity in the Barnett Shale of Texas. The data showed that virtually all well-located epicenters were situated within 3 km of high-volume injection wells. This article summarizes the results of that publication. Recently there has been concern about earthquakes possibly caused by the disposal of hydrofracture flowback fluids in injection wells. Most investigations of earthquakes caused by human activity take place only after an earthquake occurs that is severe enough to be felt by nearby residents and receive media attention. Such events usually have magnitudes ∼M3 or greater and occur in populated areas. Limiting research only to these events does not help us understand why some injection wells trigger seismic activity and others do not.


We present near- (NIR) and mid-infrared (MIR) photometric data of the Type Ibn supernova (SN) 2006jc obtained with the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT), the Gemini North Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope between days 86 and 493 post-explosion. We find that the IR behaviour of SN 2006jc can be explained as a combination of IR echoes from two manifestations of circumstellar material. The bulk of the NIR emission arises from an IR echo from newly condensed dust in a cool dense shell (CDS) produced by the interaction of the ejecta outward shock with a dense shell of circumstellar material ejected by the progenitor in a luminous blue variable (LBV)-like outburst about two years prior to the SN explosion. The CDS dust mass reaches a modest 3.0 × 10^(−4) M_⊙ by day 230. While dust condensation within a CDS formed behind the ejecta inward shock has been proposed before for one event (SN 1998S), SN 2006jc is the first one showing evidence for dust condensation in a CDS formed behind the ejecta outward shock in the circumstellar material. At later epochs, a substantial and growing contribution to the IR fluxes arises from an IR echo from pre-existing dust in the progenitor wind. The mass of the pre-existing circumstellar medium (CSM) dust is at least ∼8 × 10^(−3) M_⊙. This paper therefore adds to the evidence that mass-loss from the progenitors of core-collapse SNe could be a major source of dust in the Universe. However, yet again, we see no direct evidence that the explosion of an SN produces anything other than a very modest amount of dust.


James's approach to religious experience has a reputation for appealing only to the spiritual elite. After all, he set aside average churchgoers in favor of those with "direct personal communion with the divine"; not many live up to that lofty standard. But his approach to this "personal religion," in The Varieties of Religious Experience and in less direct ways throughout his work, shows another side to his religion. Within church structures and even without institutions, he maintained, there is spiritual potential in all humanity. While traditional Western religion looks for the deepest meaning in realms transcendent, James suggested the significance of depth psychology within each person, a kind of "inscendent" realm, the beyond within—he even subtitled The Varieties itself as "A Study in Human Nature." His insights into religion also leached into his other philosophical ideas as he approached even science with humility. He was eager to engage in the scientific method, and deeply respectful of scientific facts, but unwilling to accept the claims of scientific enthusiasts ready to reduce religion to materialist phenomena; yet he welcomed their focus on naturalistic ways to understand religious experiences, since their physical focus presented a first step toward understanding the life of the spirit. The "mystical germ," so dramatic among religious founders, is widely available, deep within every human consciousness. Just as he wrote his psychology for practical use, and his pragmatism as a philosophy of use, so he maintained that spirituality is ready for use.


In Pregnancy, Poverty, and The State, we argue that the core bundle of rights contained in reproductive privacy have been hollowed out through new legislation and court decisions, affecting the actual practice of reproductive privacy. We show how increasingly, even judicial opinions affirming reproductive rights fail to constrain state governments seeking to eviscerate those rights through new legislation. Though court rulings recognize these rights, they ultimately render them meaningless for poor women, particularly poor women of color. These groups are the first victims since they are largely unseen and unheard by those who make the law and policy. As the policies that substantially burden women's reproductive rights become normalized, these norms will affect broader segments of the population, placing greater numbers of women at risk.
We view these issues as not simply matters of law, but of human rights, morality, and dignity. The moral hypocrisy of the state is clear in the reproductive health context. That is, when the state coerces women and girls into pregnancies they do not want and to bear children they do not desire to have, it not only creates unconstitutional conditions, but it also acts immorally. Even though legal scholars typically refer to lawmaking that unduly burdens the poor as unjust, we suggest that legislative efforts to eviscerate reproductive rights is far worse than that.
This project, launches with a review of Professor Khiara Bridges's daring book, The Poverty of Privacy Rights to problematize the intersections of privacy and morality. We view the state as not only a fallible and problematic arbiter of women's morality, but argue the state acts immorally when it deprives poor women of privacy, bodily autonomy, and threatens to rob them of life itself. As we document in detail, bounded in the state's immoral actions toward poor women of color are its historical struggles and campaigns against their personhood and citizenship as well as conscription of their bodies in service to malevolent state agendas such as eugenics and forced sterilization. As we show, this is more than mere indifference, but an historic pattern. We illustrate how the continued effects of more than a century of negative state interventions in the reproductive lives of poor women of color is actually deadly. Finally, we predict that the continued interference in the reproductive lives of poor women creates cultural norms and precedents in medicine, law, and society that will spill over and constrain the rights of all classes of women, regardless of race. That is, historical disregard for the lives and rights of Black women inscribed by judicial doctrine and court opinions as well as state and federal legislation serve as vehicles for contemporary and future disparagement of all women.


We propose Bloom cookies that encode a user's profile in a compact and privacy-preserving way, without preventing online services from using it for personalization purposes. The Bloom cookies design is inspired by our analysis of a large set of web search logs that shows drawbacks of two profile obfuscation techniques, namely profile generalization and noise injection, today used by many privacy-preserving personalization systems. We find that profile generalization significantly hurts personalization and fails to protect users from a server linking user sessions over time. Noise injection can address these problems, but only at the cost of a high communication overhead and a noise dictionary generated by a trusted third party. In contrast, Bloom cookies leverage Bloom filters as a privacy-preserving data structure to provide a more convenient privacy, personalization, and network efficiency tradeoff: they provide similar (or better) personalization and privacy than noise injection (and profile generalization), but with an order of magnitude lower communication cost and no noise dictionary. We discuss how Bloom cookies can be used for personalized web search, present an algorithm to automatically configure the noise in Bloom cookies given a user's privacy and personalization goals, and evaluate their performance compared to the state-of-the-art.


This paper proposes a new method for empirically validate simulation models that generate artificial time series data comparable with real-world data. The approach is based on comparing structures of vector autoregression models which are estimated from both artificial and real-world data by means of causal search algorithms. This relatively simple procedure is able to tackle both the problem of confronting theoretical simulation models with the data and the problem of comparing different models in terms of their empirical reliability. Moreover the paper provides an application of the validation procedure to the Dosi et al. (2015) macro-model.


We present a novel functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm for second-person neuroscience. The paradigm compares a human social interaction (human–human interaction, HHI) to an interaction with a conversational robot (human–robot interaction, HRI). The social interaction consists of 1 min blocks of live bidirectional discussion between the scanned participant and the human or robot agent. A final sample of 21 participants is included in the corpus comprising physiological (blood oxygen level-dependent, respiration and peripheral blood flow) and behavioural (recorded speech from all interlocutors, eye tracking from the scanned participant, face recording of the human and robot agents) data. Here, we present the first analysis of this corpus, contrasting neural activity between HHI and HRI. We hypothesized that independently of differences in behaviour between interactions with the human and robot agent, neural markers of mentalizing (temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and medial prefrontal cortex) and social motivation (hypothalamus and amygdala) would only be active in HHI. Results confirmed significantly increased response associated with HHI in the TPJ, hypothalamus and amygdala, but not in the medial prefrontal cortex. Future analysis of this corpus will include fine-grained characterization of verbal and non-verbal behaviours recorded during the interaction to investigate their neural correlates. This article is part of the theme issue 'From social brains to social robots: applying neurocognitive insights to human–robot interaction'.


The bitumen found in the oil sands of northern Alberta, Canada, represents a significant oil resource. This bitumen is extracted either from mined ore or by using in situ methods. The water-based extraction of mined ore creates large volumes of mineral suspensions that are stored in tailings ponds. Remediation of fine tailings has presented challenges. Several new treatment technologies promise to accelerate the remediation process and at the same time recover more water for use in the extraction process. As a world-class oil reserve, and the only commercially developed oil sand deposit, the Alberta oil sands represent an important future oil source, the magnitude of which will depend to some extent on our ability to limit environmental impacts.


This paper presents a novel synchronization scheme for relay-assisted cooperative communication systems. According to the proposed scheme, the source node transmits a self-symmetric preamble. Taking advantage of this structure, the relay nodes carry out simple yet robust timing synchronization in the presence of large carrier frequency offset (CFO). Each relay node multiplies the received preamble by different frequency rotation function before retransmission. The destination node carries out the novel synchronization algorithm in both time domain and frequency domain at the same time. When the preamble from a certain relay arrives, a sharp peak will emerge in the spectrum of the matching sequence. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme provides very good timing synchronization performance in the presence of multiple CFOs, and also provides accurate estimation of multiple CFOs.


Is the language of rights enough to foster real social and political change? Nivedita Menon explores the relationship between law and feminist politics by examining the contemporary Indian women's movement with comparisons to France and the United States. She argues that the intersection of feminist politics, law, and the state often paradoxically and severely distorts important ethical and emancipatory impulses of feminism. Menon reviews historical challenges to the liberal notion of rights from Marxist, feminist, postcolonial, and critical legal scholars, and analyzes current Indian debates on topics including abortion, sexual violence, and Parliamentary quotas for women. Far from being a call to withdraw from the arena of law, "Recovering Subversion" instead urges feminists everywhere to recognize the limits of "rights discourse" and pleads for a politics that goes beyond its boundaries.


Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] is a potential crop for the Great Plains, but there are few studies on production practices. The research objective was to determine the optimal planting time for pearl milletin Nebraska relative to sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench]. This would optimize pearl millet yields, thus increasing the prospect for pearl millet as a crop. Studies were conducted on Sharpsburg silty clay loam (fine, smectitic, mesic, Typic Argiudoll) and Ortello sandy loam (coarse-loamy, mixed, mesic, Udic Haplustoll) soils between 1995 and 2001. Optimal planting times were determined by relating yields with calendar date, cumulative air heat units, cumulative soil heat units, and soil temperatures. Relative yields related to air or soil heat units were effective in determining the optimal planting time. Optimum pearl millet planting times were 399 air heat units or 410 soil heat units after 1 April for the Sharpsburg soil and 406 soil heat units for the Ortello soil. The optimal sorghum planting time was 308 air heat units or 307 soil heat units after 1 April for the Sharpsburg soil and 402 air heat units after 1 April for the Ortello soil. Both crops had large planting time windows, allowing flexibility in planting time. Sorghum outyielded pearl millet for May and early- to mid-June planting times by 0.57 to 2.32 Mg ha while pearl millet had higher yields by 0.95 to 1.20 Mg ha - 1 for late June and July planting times. Sorghum produced greater yields than pearl millet for most planting times while pearl millet produced greater yields than sorghum for very late planting times.


Genius. With hints of madness and mystery, moral license and visionary force, the word suggests an almost otherworldly power: the power to create, to divine the secrets of the universe, even to destroy. Yet the notion of genius has been diluted in recent times. Today, rock stars, football coaches, and entrepreneurs are labeled 'geniuses,' and the word is applied so widely that it has obscured the sense of special election and superhuman authority that long accompanied it. As acclaimed historian Darrin M. McMahon explains, the concept of genius has roots in antiquity, when men of prodigious insight were thought to possess--or to be possessed by--demons and gods. Adapted in the centuries that followed and applied to a variety of religious figures, including prophets, apostles, sorcerers, and saints, abiding notions of transcendent human power were invoked at the time of the Renaissance to explain the miraculous creativity of men like Leonardo and Michelangelo. Yet it was only in the eighteenth century that the genius was truly born, idolized as a new model of the highest human type. Assuming prominence in figures as varied as Newton and Napoleon, the modern genius emerged in tension with a growing belief in human equality. Contesting the notion that all are created equal, geniuses served to dramatize the exception of extraordinary individuals not governed by ordinary laws. The phenomenon of genius drew scientific scrutiny and extensive public commentary into the 20th century, but it also drew religious and political longings that could be abused. In the genius cult of the Nazis and the outpouring of reverence for the redemptive figure of Einstein, genius achieved both its apotheosis and its Armageddon. The first comprehensive history of this elusive concept, Divine Fury follows the fortunes of genius and geniuses through the ages down to the present day, showing how--despite its many permutations and recent democratization--genius remains a potent force in our lives, reflecting modern needs, hopes, and fears.


Forecasting electricity consumption is a very important issue for governments and electricity related foundations of public sector. Recently, Grey Modelling (GM (1,1)) has been used to forecast electricity demand successfully. GM (1,1) is useful when the observed data is limited, and it does not require any preliminary information about the data distribution. However, the original form of GM (1,1) needs some improvements in order to use for time series, which exhibit seasonality. In this study, a grey forecasting model which is called SGM (1,1) is proposed to give the forecasting ability to the basic form of GM(1,1) in order to overcome seasonality issues. The proposed model is then used to forecast the monthly electricity demand of Turkey between 2015 and 2020. Obtained forecasting values were used to plan the primary energy sources of electricity production. The findings of the study may guide the planning of future plant investments and maintenance operations in Turkey. Moreover, the method can also be applied to predict seasonal electricity demand of any other country.


We performed a series of experiments on suspensions of carbon particles in liquids (ink) and carbon particles deposited on glass to determine the mechanisms for the observed optical-limiting behavior. Both materials show reduced transmittance for increasing fluence (energy per unit area). We found that nonlinear scattering dominates the transmissive losses and that the limiting is fluence dependent, so that limiters based on black ink are effective for nanosecond pulses but not for picosecond pulses. Additionally, the nonlinear scattering and the limiting behavior cease after repeated irradiation. For the liquid, flowing eliminates this effect. All the data obtained are consistent with a model of direct heating of the microscopic-sized carbon particles by linear absorption with subsequent optical breakdown initiated by thermally ionized carriers. A simple calculation gives temperatures higher than the sublimation temperature at the onset of limiting. Emission spectra measurements show singly ionized carbon emission lines with a hot blackbody background emission consistent with temperatures of ≃4000 K. A rapid expansion of the microscopic plasmas generated by the breakdown will effectively scatter further input light. Indeed, in time-resolved experiments the trailing portion of the pulse is most heavily scattered. The time-resolved transmittance of a weak cw probe beam also follows the temporal dependence of the singly ionized carbon emission (≃102 ns). We directly monitored the expansion of the scattering centers by angularly resolving the scattered light for different input fluences and fitting to Mie scattering theory. Since the carbon is black and the microplasmas are initiated by linear absorption, the limiting is extremely broadband. Within the context of this model we discuss the limitations and optimization of ink-based optical limiters.


Accumulation of plastic products in the Environment that adversely affects wildlife, habitat of humans is a major concern for the government at present. As plastic is non-biodegradable in nature, it remain in environment for several years. As a result it is responsible for causing land, air and water pollution. Plastic pollution has been constantly damaging our sustainable environment. The production of plastic is increasing since 1950, 8.3 billion tons of plastic has been produced, which is likely to be double by 2050. The burning of plastic wastes increase the risk of heart disease, damages the nervous system, respiratory ailments such as asthma and cause nausea or headaches. Hence, a sustainable step towards tomorrow's greener and healthier environment needs immediate attention of the environmental scientists. There is an urgent need of creating awareness among people to protect environment in the current situation and ban the usage of plastic.


Insurance can potentially play an important role in climate change adaptation for rural households in developing countries as part of the overall climate change adaptation strategy. However, agricultural insurance markets have many market failures that inhibit their full development. In Colombia these market failures, namely information asymmetries and high transaction costs, are amplified by the country's difficult topography, poor infrastructure, and history of rural violence. Even though the government provides premium subsidies to increase coverage, it is still very low and important crops and small producers are not covered. This paper analyzes in detail the market constraints on the development of the agricultural insurance market in Colombia and provides recommendations so that it can fulfill its potential as a risk management tool in the country.


Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are widely implemented in companies' operation management and there are already a number of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) ERP products on the market. However, companies often have difficulty in identifying the requirements for selecting an ERP system, and also in specifying their objectives in an ERP implementation project. Despite the available information on ERP implementations, companies need a how-to method to support them in gathering and analyzing their ERP requirements. This qualitative empirical research deals with the development of a Customer-Centered ERP Implementation (C-CEI) method for the analysis of ERP system requirements. The development is conducted using an action research approach. The C-CEI method utilizes the principles and process of User-Centered Design (UCD) that aims at involving end users in the early stages of the product development. The results of this research are divided into four parts: (1) the C-CEI method itself, (2) the lessons learned from four companies that participated in the development of the C-CEI method, (3) content analysis of C-CEI documents produced in the companies, and (4) interviews of the companies' personnel who had participated in the development of the C-CEI method. This research guides practitioners in how the ERP implementation can be approached employing a pre-defined method, and how the shared understanding of the ERP project objectives and activities are achieved within the organization. For academics, this study directs the research interest towards developing scientifically-based ERP implementation methodologies to complement those currently provided by ERP vendors and consultants.


Through a new idea of 'the art of decolonisation', this thesis explores the possibility of socially engaged art in the postcolonial context of East Asia. Japan, throughout its national history as an expanding empire from the late 19th century to the Second World War, has left a large number of unresolved legacies of colonialism in East Asia. These problematic legacies had remained almost intact within the architecture of Cold War, the bipolar confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, formed immediately following WWII. After the collapse of the Cold War structure in the late 1980s, then, the task of 'decolonisation' has become extremely pressing in East Asia. This thesis aims to unearth the potential contribution of art to the incomplete project of decolonisation, with its emphasis on, first, its visual and sensory nature and, second, the significance of 'participation' and 'collaboration' as method.

The first part of this thesis is an art-historical and cultural studies investigation of discursive practices of decolonisation in East Asia and Britain. It accompanies a theoretical reconsideration of the concept of 'decolonisation' and a historical reflection of the postcolonial statuses of these regions. The second part is a practice-based investigation on art's potentiality in tackling postcolonial issues in East Asia. It discusses and analyses my own art projects conducted in Japan and Korea between 2014 and 2016. ii This thesis will help advance decolonisation of knowledge in two directions. The contribution to knowledge of this thesis is twofold. First, it expands the notion of 'socially engaged art' theorised in the West by examining works and projects in East Asia in conjunction with a geo-historical setting of the non-Western world.

This will contribute to the development of the scholarship critical to Euro-American centrism, dominant in Cultural Studies, in understanding non-Western art. Second, it proposes applied methods integrating artistic practice for addressing the contentious agendas that stem from colonial historiography of East Asia. This will lead us to a viable methodology that might open up alternative pathways toward more reconciled postcolonial relations among East Asian countries and regions.


Abstract Roof water harvesting is being widely promoted as a panacea for the growing drinking water crisis in India and many underdeveloped and developing countries. This article analyzes the scope, physical feasibility, and economic viability of roof water harvesting systems across classes and under different physical and socioeconomic situations. This article argues that roof water harvesting systems (RWHS) are not alternative to public systems in urban and rural areas of regions receiving low rainfall. Hydrological opportunities for RWHS are very poor in urban and rural areas. The systems offer very little scope in ensuring domestic water security for urban housing stocks of low- and middle-income groups. At the same time, they offer tremendous potential for independent bungalows having large roof area. However, their physical feasibility is very poor in urban areas. Their economic viability as a supplementary source of domestic water supply seems to be poor in urban areas, when compared to augmenting the supplies from the existing public systems. The incredibly low rates charged for domestic supplies by urban water utilities and government subsidies for RWHS would only lead to the urban elite increasing their access to water supplies, while the burden on water utilities would remain unchanged. This will lead to greater inequities in access to water supplies. At the same time, in rural areas with dispersed populations and hilly areas, RWHS may be economically viable as a supplementary source to already existing public water supply schemes. But as its impacts are not likely to be uniform across classes, government subsidies are not desirable. In hilly regions receiving high rainfalls, government investment for community water supply schemes could be replaced by heavy subsidies for installation of RWHS.


The only military application in which depleted-uranium (DU) alloys out-perform present-day tungsten alloys is long-rod penetration into a main battle-tank's armor. However, this advantage is only on the order of 10%, and it disappears when the comparison is made in terms of actual lethality of complete anti-tank systems instead of laboratory-type steel penetration capability. Therefore, new micro- and nano-engineered tungsten alloys may soon out-perform DU alloys, enabling the production of tungsten munition which will be better than existing uranium munition, and whose overall life-cycle cost will be lower, due to the absence of the problems related to the radioactivity of uranium. The reasons why DU weapons have been introduced and used are analysed from the perspective that their radioactivity must have played an important role in the decision making process. It is found that DU weapons belong to the diffuse category of low-radiological-impact nuclear weapons to which emerging types of low-yield (i.e., fourth generation) nuclear explosives also belong. It is concluded that the battlefield use of DU during the 1991 Gulf War, which broke a 46-year-long taboo against the intentional use or induction of radioactivity in combat, has created a military and legal precedent which has trivialized the combat use of radioactive materials, and therefore made the use of nuclear weapons more probable.


Abstract. Understanding aerosol effects on deep convective clouds and the derived effects on the radiation budget and rain patterns can largely contribute to estimations of climate uncertainties. The challenge is difficult in part because key microphysical processes in the mixed and cold phases are still not well understood. For deep convective clouds with a warm base, understanding aerosol effects on the warm processes is extremely important as they set the initial and boundary conditions for the cold processes. Therefore, the focus of this study is the warm phase, which can be better resolved. The main question is: How do aerosol-derived changes in the warm phase affect the properties of deep convective cloud systems? To explore this question, we used a weather research and forecasting (WRF) model with spectral bin microphysics to simulate a deep convective cloud system over the Marshall Islands during the Kwajalein Experiment (KWAJEX). The model results were validated against observations, showing similarities in the vertical profile of radar reflectivity and the surface rain rate. Simulations with larger aerosol loading resulted in a larger total cloud mass, a larger cloud fraction in the upper levels, and a larger frequency of strong updrafts and rain rates. Enlarged mass both below and above the zero temperature level (ZTL) contributed to the increase in cloud total mass (water and ice) in the polluted runs. Increased condensation efficiency of cloud droplets governed the gain in mass below the ZTL, while both enhanced condensational and depositional growth led to increased mass above it. The enhanced mass loading above the ZTL acted to reduce the cloud buoyancy, while the thermal buoyancy (driven by the enhanced latent heat release) increased in the polluted runs. The overall effect showed an increased upward transport (across the ZTL) of liquid water driven by both larger updrafts and larger droplet mobility. These aerosol effects were reflected in the larger ratio between the masses located above and below the ZTL in the polluted runs. When comparing the net mass flux crossing the ZTL in the clean and polluted runs, the difference was small. However, when comparing the upward and downward fluxes separately, the increase in aerosol concentration was seen to dramatically increase the fluxes in both directions, indicating the aerosol amplification effect of the convection and the affected cloud system properties, such as cloud fraction and rain rate.


Conservation of the environment has become critical to the automotive industry. Recently, requirements for on-board diagnostic and engine control systems have been strictly enforced. In the present paper, in order to meet the requirements for a low-emissions vehicle, a novel construction method of the air-fuel ratio (A/F) control system is proposed. The construction method of the system is divided into two steps. The first step is to design the A/F control system for the engine based on an open loop design. The second step is to design the A/F control system for the catalyst system. The design method is based on the generalized predictive control in order to satisfy the robustness to open loop control as well as model uncertainty. The effectiveness of the proposed A/F control system is verified through experiments using full-scale products.


Since the 2007–08 food crisis, many thoughtful analyses have addressed the causes and impacts of high and volatile international food prices and proposed solutions to the crisis. These studies have covered global as well as local food price dynamics and policy reactions. The food price problem is, however, far-reaching, and its impacts are wide and interrelated. The price formation mechanism has become highly complex and dynamic. Policy actions are politically and economically sensitive. This situation calls for continuous and comprehensive assessments of the problem to provide timely and evidence-based knowledge for policy makers. This paper reviews existing evidence and theories and presents new thoughts and insights from analyses to enlighten the course of actions to be taken. Our review implies that the current body of literature concentrates on high food prices. Commodity price analysis should, however, differentiate between three types of price changes: trends, volatility, and spikes. While price trends are important in the long term, volatility and spikes are more important in the short to medium terms. Descriptive statistics indicate that all three price changes are increasing over time and show strong correlations among themselves. A rising medium-term price trend has triggered extreme short-term price spikes and increased volatility. An assessment of the costs of price volatility has shown that the existing literature follows a conventional marginal-cost approach that considers only few cost components. Direct and immediate components have not been adequately analyzed, and long-term effects have been overlooked. The effect on child nutrition and health is one such long-term effect. Under-nutrition in early childhood has negative consequences for lifetime earnings capacity because of the physical and mental impairment it causes. Economy wide distortions and misallocations also threaten the long-term development of commodity-dependent economies. Measuring and estimating the cost of food price volatility should factor in ongoing processes such as economic growth and technological changes. The supply, demand, and market explanations for high and volatile global prices have been differentiated as exogenous and endogenous factors. To help further identify the drivers of food price changes, they are categorized as root causes, intermediate causes, and immediate causes. Both empirical and theoretical evaluations suggest extreme weather events from the supply side, biofuel production from the demand side, and speculation in commodity futures from the market side are the three most important root causes of observed price volatility. The theoretical and empirical effects of speculation in commodity futures are not yet well understood. However, speculative trading in commodity futures should not be viewed as a random bet that can be smoothed out through the price system. It is important to consider the market and nonmarket contexts that guide the behavioral and strategic choices of speculators. Whereas speculation caused by manipulative, disorderly behaviors and 'financialization' are damaging, speculation caused by demand and supply in physical markets can serve as price discovery, liquidity, and risk-hedging mechanisms. Our empirical analysis to quantify the importance of these factors shows that speculation effect is stronger than demand- and supply-side shocks for short term price spikes. Overall policy interventions at global, regional, and local levels should concentrate on reducing price spikes and protecting poor people from short- and long-term crises. The viii formulation and implementation of such policies must be supported with timely information and research-based evidence. A comprehensive portfolio of policy actions is proposed here, rather than over-extended individual measures to address the root causes or over-regulation of markets to address volatility and spikes. Evaluation of policy instruments should weigh the true costs associated with both, action versus inaction. Research must focus on developing price and food security indicators and models that will guide policy implementation also in the short run. Such models are currently missing.


ABSTRACT A quantile autoregresive model is a useful extension of classical autoregresive models as it can capture the influences of conditioning variables on the location, scale, and shape of the response distribution. However, at the extreme tails, standard quantile autoregression estimator is often unstable due to data sparsity. In this article, assuming quantile autoregresive models, we develop a new estimator for extreme conditional quantiles of time series data based on extreme value theory. We build the connection between the second-order conditions for the autoregression coefficients and for the conditional quantile functions, and establish the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimator. The finite sample performance of the proposed method is illustrated through a simulation study and the analysis of U.S. retail gasoline price.


A fast and accurate classification method for sewage sludge biological activity classification is of great significance for wastewater treatment. However, the data are often imbalanced and the accuracy of traditional classification algorithms applied to imbalanced small classes of data is very low. Such small classes are crucial application data. Therefore, based on the analysis of eight microorganisms, a novel method is proposed in this paper for the classification of activated sludge known as balanced support-vector-based back-propagation (SV-BP) neural network. It first splits the multiclass classification problem into a plurality of pairwise classification problems and uses a support vector machine (SVM) to achieve equalization. Second, the new dataset is produced, following which back-propagation neural network (BPNN) is used for training and classification. To examine the efficiency of the model, 1731 real data points are collected from a wastewater treatment factory and divide the data into four classes with the help of wastewater experts. Based on the new model, data redundancy and noise are greatly reduced. With area under the curve (AUC) measurements, we find that the AUC of SV-BP is 6.9% higher than classical BPNN. In addition, the small-class recognition rate of SV-BP is far better than that by classical BPNN and SVM algorithms.


Objective: Postoperative atrial fibrillation (POAF) is an arrhythmia most commonly seen after cardiac surgery. Its association with increased mortality, cost and adverse events has made it crucial to identify those at risk and to prevent POAF through preoperative therapy. In order to do that, we have studied the utilization and predictive power of the CHA2DS2-VASc score, and the relationship between other factors such as preoperative medications and patient clinical characteristics. Methods: A retrospective observational study was conducted by reviewing medical charts for patients who underwent coronary arteries bypass grafting (CABG) with or without aortic valve replacement or mitral valve/tricuspid valve repair and aged >18 years. Patients with a preoperative history of atrial fibrillation (AF) or flutter, patients with a pacemaker, patients with prior antiarrhythmic drugs use within the last 6 months, patients who underwent MAZE procedures, or patients with mechanical mitral valve were excluded. Results: At a cut-off score of ≥ 2 the CHA2DS2-VASc showed a 96.8% sensitivity and 23.1% specificity for predicting POAF. It also showed an increased risk at higher scores, a score of at least 3 significantly predicted the occurrence of events (p<0.000). Age, male gender, high BMI were significant predictors of POAF (p<0.001, p<0.05, p<0.001). Patients who received statins preoperatively were at significant lower risk (p<0.001). Conclusion: The CHA2DS2-VASc score is a strong predictor of adverse events postoperatively.


Fish regulate egg production by atresia. Sometimes, oocytes are encapsulated in cystic structures that might remain in the ovary for months, altering female reproductive potential in future spawning seasons. Ovaries of Atlantic cod ( Gadus morhua , L.) from the Flemish Cap and European hake ( Merluccius merluccius , L.) from the Galician Shelf (NW Spain) were analysed from 1999 to 2006. The prevalence and abundance of ovarian cysts were estimated. Cyst prevalence increased with female size and/or age for both species, and decreased with high condition factor in hake. Cyst intensity does not correlate with any analysed factor. The size/age structure of spawning stock biomass and female condition could affect the prevalence of cysts in the ovaries, though it does not seem to affect cyst intensity in the ovary. Further research is needed to determine cyst resorption time and the impact that it has on egg production and consequently on stock reproductive potential.


Microneedle transport approach has been used from past few a long time as a method to break the stratum corneum layer of skin and to perform the effective transport of drug across the skin and it is especially used for delivery of peptides, protein, DNA, oligonucleotides, molecular mass medicine and inactivated viruses across the dermal layer of the skin. In this hypothetical paper, we specifically targeted on how we will develop double-layer microneedle which can deliver drug-mixture therapy efficaciously. Because there are many diseases together with cancer, tuberculosis, diabetes, leprosy, HIV, and AIDS, which may be efficiently handled by way of drug-combination therapy however this remedy is particularly confined to the tablet, capsule or another form of dosage. If, we can develop double-layered microneedle that can an opportunity to treat these illnesses with painless delivery. In the paper, we have tried to deal with type-2 diabetes with double-layered microneedle and that is formulated with the aid of hypothetically designed capsule which has the projection in it and which may be connected with projection of primary microneedle and can form cone-like cavities and from these cavities we will deliver our drug and materials for the development of secondary layer on a primary layer of microneedle and this technique can be utilized in different disease remedy and it is going to reduce fee of treatment, increase in patient compliance, site directed drug-delivery, increase in bioavailability of drug in the blood stream and increase in therapeutic index with less side effects.


Morphometric information on the terminal arteriolar networks (n = 10) in cat sartorius muscle [Koller et al., Am. J. Physiol. 253 (Heart Circ. Physiol. 22): H154-H164, 1987] is utilized in the calculations of distribution of vascular hindrance throughout the networks. These networks have tree-type geometry, i.e., they do not contain closed loops. The results are discussed in terms of simulated flow distribution. The flow calculations are based on the exact geometry of the arteriolar networks (the control and dilated diameter and the length of each vascular segment) and on assumed values of postarteriolar resistances. Three cases of postarteriolar resistances are considered: zero, constant, and randomly distributed. With zero postarteriolar resistances, the distribution of flow in the terminal arteriolar segments would be highly heterogenous. The simulated flow in each terminal segment is determined primarily by the number of bifurcations on the pathway leading to the terminal segment, with a slight compensation for the length of the pathways. The coefficient of variation of flow in the control state, CV(Qc), would be close to the value in the dilated state, CV(Qd). When each of the terminal segments is connected to a constant postarteriolar resistance, the CV's in both states decrease. The coefficient of variation in the dilated state becomes significantly smaller than in the control state. When postarteriolar resistances are randomly distributed, both CV's increase, and their values become closer to each other. These results suggest that postarteriolar resistances may play a very important role in distribution of flow in the microvascular network. This study formulates a framework for the quantification of the effect of arteriolar dilation on flow redistribution in the network.


Civil war is fought between two political organizations, the state and a rebel group. Myriad theories of civil war have examined the role of state institutions and state strength, but little attention has been devoted to theorizing about rebel organizations themselves. The organizational structure of rebel groups is examined to understand patterns of recruitment and allegiance. Drawing on principal-agent analysis of participation and incentive compatibility constraints and the analytical tradition of rent-seeking contests, a model is developed to demonstrate that three factors—geography, ethnicity, and ideology—play an important role in determining military success, deterring defection within the rebel group, and shaping recruitment.


This paper proposes an algorithm that turns a regular video capturing urban scenes into a high-quality endless animation, known as a Cinemagraph. The creation of a Cinemagraph usually requires a static camera in a carefully configured scene. The task becomes challenging for a regular video with a moving camera and objects. Our approach first warps an input video into the viewpoint of a reference camera. Based on the warped video, we propose effective temporal analysis algorithms to detect regions with static geometry and dynamic appearance, where geometric modeling is reliable and visually attractive animations can be created. Lastly, the algorithm applies a sequence of video processing techniques to produce a Cinemagraph movie. We have tested the proposed approach on numerous challenging real scenes. To our knowledge, this work is the first to automatically generate Cinemagraph animations from regular movies in the wild.


We provide an atmospheric aerosol characterization for North Africa, Northeastern Atlantic, Mediterranean and Middle East based on the analysis of quality-assured direct-sun observations of 39 stations of the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) which include at least an annual cycle within the 1994–2007 period. We extensively test and apply the recently introduced graphical method of Gobbi and co-authors to track and discriminate different aerosol types and quantify the contribution of mineral dust. The method relies on the combined analysis of theÅngström exponent (α) and its spectral curvature δα. Plotting data in these coordinates allows to infer aerosol fine mode radius (R f) and fractional contribution (η) to total Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) and separate AOD growth due to fine-mode aerosol humidi-fication and/or coagulation from AOD growth due to the increase in coarse particles or cloud contamination. Our results confirm the robustness of this graphical method. Large mineral dust is found to be the most important constituent in Northern Africa and Middle East. Under specific meteorological conditions, its transport to Southern Europe is observed from spring to autumn and decreasing with latitude. We observe " pure Saharan dust " conditions to show AOD>0.7 (ranging up to 5), α<0.3 and δα<0 corresponding to η<40% and R f ∼0.13 µm. Small pollution particles are abundant in sites close to urban and industrial areas of Continental and Eastern Europe and Middle East, as well as, important contributions of biomass burning are observed in the sub-Sahel region in winter. These small aerosols are associated to AOD<1, α>1.5 and δα∼−0.2 corresponding to η>70% and R f ∼0.13 µm. Here, dust mixed with fine pollution aerosols shifts the observations to the region α<0.75, in which the fine mode contribution is less than 40%.


We have investigated the influence of controlled modifications of the surface electronic structure of Cu(001) on the spin polarization of photoelectrons emitted via multi-photon excitation. Using ultrashort, circularly polarized laser pulses with ∼3 eV photon energy, spin-polarized electrons can be selectively excited from the spin–orbit (SO) coupled d-bands of Cu into the unoccupied n=1 image potential (IP) state on the Cu(001) surface. Upon lowering the IP state energy level by submonolayer Cs deposition, we show that the IP energy can be tuned into two-photon resonance with initial state d-bands of different double group symmetry, leading to a sign reversal of the spin polarization that is observed at the IP state level. Similarly, exploiting the parallel-momentum IP state dispersion, the resonant tuning of the IP state energy level to different branches of the SO split d-bands is demonstrated. Our results highlight the role of resonant and off-resonant excitation pathways in determining the spin polarization in the excited states. The additional information contained in spin-resolved multi-photon photoemission experiments can be exploited to obtain insights into the mechanism of population of excited states.


Semiconductor nanoparticles represent a very interesting research topic mainly for the optoelectronics applications. The semiconductor particles exhibit properties dependent on the crystallites size, such as the band gap width and the linear optical characteristics (transmission and fluorescence cut-off) besides the non-linear characteristics (refractive index, second and third harmonic generation, two photons absorption, etc). The paper presents the synthesis of CdS nanocrystals and their integration in polymeric matrix. The effect of some polymers with different electrical charges, like polyvinyl alcohol, polyvinyl pyrrolidone, or copolymers maleic anhidride/styrene, maleic anhidride/vynil acetate upon the physico-chemical properties of nanocrystals generated in the aqueous phase was studied. The synthesized nanocrystals were dispersed in polymeric matrix and then were applied on glass support to form films. The properties of the prepared nanoparticles and also the deposited films were investigated by confocal laser scanning microscopy, UV-VIS and fluorescence spectroscopy. In this work we also deal with obtaining of thin films based on colloidal CdS imbedded in potassium silicate-based inorganic polymer. The starting solution was prepared by mixing CdS 10 -4 M aqueous colloidal solution with SSK (potassium silicate solution) aqueous solution (K 2 O/SiO 2 =1/5). We prepared several precursor solutions with CdS/SSK=1/1; 2/1; 3/1; ½; 1/3 ratios. The films have been obtained by the deposition of the above-mentioned mixture on a silicate glass substrate, by means of a special aluminum device based on "dragging method". After heat treatment, the films have been characterized by fluorescence spectroscopy, which revealed emission peaks at 450 nm, 465 nm, 500 nm, 525 nm and 540 nm, depending on the size of CdS nanocrystals. The microstructure of the films was proved by TEM (transmission electronic microscopy) analysis which presented the relative homogeneous morphology of the films.


The Tete Complex of Mozambique is a composite mafic-ultramafic intrusion that consists largely of pyroxenites and gabbros, with lesser amounts of coarse-grained troctolitic and anorthositic rocks reminiscent of massif-type anorthosites. The Complex thus may have potential to host reef-type PGE ores and/or massive Ni-Cu sulphides analogous to those found in the gabbro-troctolite hosted Voisey's Bay deposits. We analysed 8 isotopically and mineralogically well-characterized samples of anorthosite, leucotroctolite, clinopyroxenite, gabbro, olivine melagabbro, dolerite, and a pegmatitic orthopyroxenite for major and trace elements, including PGE. The samples show little evidence for significant crustal contamination and are mostly undepleted in PGE relative to Cu, and to a lesser degree, Ni. If the samples are representative of the intrusion, this may indicate that the Complex has limited potential to host economic Ni-Cu sulphide ores. The potential for reef-type PGE ores remains less clear, in view of the occurrence of such ores in seemingly uncontaminated intrusions elsewhere (e.g. the Great Dyke).


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the effect of surgery on muscular strength and endurance in patients with primary hyperparathyroidism (HPT).

DESIGN
Prospective open study.

SETTING
University hospital, Sweden.

SUBJECTS
Nine patients undergoing HPT surgery and nine matched patients undergoing thyroid resection who acted as controls.

INTERVENTIONS
Concentric and eccentric endurance was evaluated with a test comprising 100 repeatedly executed muscle action at 90 degrees.s-1. Blood samples obtained before and after operation were analysed for calcium, phosphate, thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), and parathyroid hormone (PTH) concentrations.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Peak torque during maximum voluntary concentric and eccentric muscle actions at 90 degrees.s-1 before, three months and one year after operation.

RESULTS
There were no differences in concentric and eccentric peak torque before and after operation either within or between groups. Concentric and eccentric endurance were similar in the HPT group and controls before as well as after operation. The return of calcium and PTH concentrations to their reference ranges after parathyroidectomy did not correlate with changes in concentric and eccentric peak torque.

CONCLUSIONS
The subjective improvement in muscle endurance which is often encountered in patients with HPT after operation is not associated with an objective increase in muscle strength or endurance as measured by isokinetic muscle performance.


It is well known that the massage therapy is useful for the rehabilitation of various diseases. Althoughvarious apparatus have been developed for the massage of the torso and limbs, a machineto perform precise massage therapy to maxillofacial region is not developed yet.Therefore, we developed a robot system that provides massage therapy to the maxillofacialregion. The name of our newly developed robot was WAO-1. WAO-1 has been designedto perform appropriate massage to the patients with dry mouth. System descriptionThe mechanism of WAO-1 consists of two main parts: robot arms and the plungerdevice. The robot arms consist of two 6-DOF (degrees of freedom) manipulators used tocontrol the movement of the plunger device attached to the end-effector of each manipulator(Figure 1). The plunger device is the only part of the robot having direct contact withthe patient face. In order to control the motion of the plungers attached at each arm ofWAO-1, a position control system is implemented. The control system of WAO-1 is composedby a Massage Pattern Generator and Virtual Compliance Control1. Method Anevaluation experiment of WAO-1 is performed. In this experiment, WAO-1 provides themassage to 6 healthy volunteers (without any maxillofacial disorders). Each subject isprovided the massage to its parotid gland for 2 minutes. In order to confirm the effectivenessof the massage provide by WAO-1, the production of saliva was considered as aperformance index. This index is measured by using the Saxon test2; which is a standardmethod to confirm the effectiveness of the massage therapy. Results and discussionThe average production of saliva was increased by 0.63 g after providing the massage. Byanalyzing the collected data with a t-test, we found a significant difference (p < 0.05). Thusthe effectiveness of the massage to the parotid gland by WAO-1 is confirmed. On theother hand, when the doctor gives the massage to the parotid gland of the people, productionof saliva increases 1.4 g (average of 6 people). Therefore, the effect of WAO-1's massageis less than that of doctor's massage. We developed a robot system (WAO-1) whichcan massage the face. We think clinical trial is necessary to collect the data to certify theeffectiveness of robotic massage. The goal of this study is to establish robot massagetherapy as physiotherapy.


Andrew Feinstein, former member of the African National Congress, investigates the secretive world of the global arms trade in his gripping new book "The Shadow World". Feinstein reveals the corruption and the cover-ups behind BAE's controversial transactions in South Africa, Tanzania and eastern Europe and the revolving-door relationships that characterise the US Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex. "The Shadow World" exposes both the formal government-backed trade in arms as well as the illicit deals and lays bare the shocking links between the two. "Essential reading for anyone who cares about justice, transparency and accountability in both the public and private spheres, and for anyone who believes that it is more important to invest in saving lives than in the machinery of death". (Archbishop Desmond Tutu). "Andrew Feinstein has written an authoritative guide to the business of war. Chilling, heartbreaking and enraging". (Arundhati Roy). "The nobility and justice of Feinstein's sentiments are indisputable. The arms trade is a loathsome commerce conducted by people who wear suits and occupy big boardroom tables, but should have trouble sleeping at night". (Max Hastings, "Sunday Times"). "Remarkable and courageous..."The Shadow World" is a heroic book by an author who, in writing it, has put himself in the firing line". (Iain Macwhirter). "Feinstein's book is a singularly powerful study, and deserves to be read by anyone who wants to see light shining on such a shadowy world". ("Independent"). Andrew Feinstein is the author of "After the Party: A Personal and Political Journey Inside the ANC", a best-selling memoir of his time as an African National Congress MP in South Africa. His journalism has been featured in the "Guardian", "Daily Telegraph", "Prospect", "New York Times", "Spiegel", "New Statesman" and "Africa Report". He appears regularly on the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera. He is the founding co-director of Corruption Watch, an anti-corruption NGO, and chairperson of the Aids charity FoTAC.


Both Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon achieved their
first real poetic successes during the Great War. Linked together
as fellow officers and friends, and flushed with the promise of
greater poetic achievement ahead, both writers perceived the war
initially as a vehicle by which they could rid themselves of
Victorian influences and produce startling results as realists.
But as the war continued and both men began to suffer its
effects, they realized that their verses had failed to alert a
victory-determined British populace to its jingoistic mentality.
By mid 1919, both poets were trying to adjust to civilian
status and to re-organize their lives after the upheaval of the
war: Graves attempted at first to expiate his memories of the
Western Front by moving to the Oxfordshire countryside and by
writing sentimental verse, but dissatisfaction with his marriage
and an inability to exorcise his neurasthenic nightmares led him
to experiment with psychological self-analysis in his poetry.
Sassoon's response to the war, in contrast, motivated largely by
a homo-erotic attachment to the enlisted men under his command
and a conviction of social injustice, turned him briefly to
socialism and social satire for a thematic approach to his poetry
in the early Twenties.
In their joint discontent, Sassoon and Graves searched
throughout the mid-Twenties for personal order and artistic
direction. Graves delved into Eastern philosophy and biblical
exegesis until, with the arrival of Laura Riding, his domestic
and creative life was turned around; from Riding, Graves gained
the strength to reject the values imposed upon him by his
background and his literary peers. Similarly, Sassoon struggled
to find a poetic cause commensurate with his talents, but his
disillusionment with the modern world caused him to turn inward
for inspiration. This introspection led Sassoon to a
contemplation of his past, through which he was eventually to
find the symmetry and positive cultural values that were
lacking in the modern world.
Thus, in their individual searches for creative inspiration,
both Graves and Sassoon severed relations with contemporary
British society and each turned to his own form of self-imposed
exile. Graves chose to escape into the uncharted brave new world
of the then undiscovered Majorca, while Sassoon opted for the
bucolic world of rural England in remembrance of things past.
The roads chosen at this juncture were to determine the direction
and tone of both writers' future works.
The recent publication of two biographies of Graves and of
Sassoon's diaries (1915-1925), together with collections of
their unpublished letters, allow a much clearer understanding of
the two poets' work throughout the war years and the Twenties, and
reflect the inexorable road to self-exile and autobiography that
was eventually to provide the only means of exorcising the war
from their personal lives and artistic endeavours.


Directed graphs have been widely used in Community Question Answering services (CQAs) to model asymmetric relationships among different types of nodes in CQA graphs, e.g., question, answer, user. Asymmetric transitivity is an essential property of directed graphs, since it can play an important role in downstream graph inference and analysis. Question difficulty and user expertise follow the characteristic of asymmetric transitivity. Maintaining such properties, while reducing the graph to a lower dimensional vector embedding space, has been the focus of much recent research. In this paper, we tackle the challenge of directed graph embedding with asymmetric transitivity preservation and then leverage the proposed embedding method to solve a fundamental task in CQAs: how to appropriately route and assign newly posted questions to users with the suitable expertise and interest in CQAs. The technique incorporates graph hierarchy and reachability information naturally by relying on a nonlinear transformation that operates on the core reachability and implicit hierarchy within such graphs. Subsequently, the methodology levers a factorization-based approach to generate two embedding vectors for each node within the graph, to capture the asymmetric transitivity. Extensive experiments show that our framework consistently and significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art baselines on three diverse realworld tasks: link prediction, and question difficulty estimation and expert finding in online forums like Stack Exchange. Particularly, our framework can support inductive embedding learning for newly posted questions (unseen nodes during training), and therefore can properly route and assign these kinds of questions to experts in CQAs.


Youth sport administrators and coaches strive to create a positive atmosphere to help young athletes develop as individuals. Yet, many youth sport organizations are challenged with few resources or expertise in developing training models for coaches. The YMCA of San Luis Obispo is a progressive organization committed to developing an effective training model for coaches. The purpose of this study was to assess the changes in YMCA basketball coaches' behaviors and attitudes towards youth development principles associated with youth sports. This study was conducted through follow-up surveys with YMCA youth basketball coaches. Through the follow-up surveys it was found that coaches were able to develop new styles of coaching and strategies for interacting with their players based on training skits viewed at the pre-season meeting. Two major findings were the changes in the coaches' feelings towards running for punishment and punishing all players for individual's actions. Recommendations include expanding the training skits and developing a more comprehensive training program for coaches so they know what is expected, understand what athletes should be receiving, and have ongoing resources to call upon throughout the season.


The Thatcher and Reagan administrations led a shift towards more market oriented regulation of economies in the Anglo-American countries, including efforts to reduce the power of organized labor. In this paper, we examine the development of employment and labor law in six Anglo-American countries (the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand) from the Thatcher/Reagan era to the present. At the outset of the Thatcher/Reagan era, the employment and labor law systems in these countries could be divided into three pairings: the Wagner Act model based industrial relations systems of the United States and Canada; the voluntarist system of collective bargaining and strong unions in the United Kingdom and Ireland; and the highly centralized, legalistic Award systems of Australia and New Zealand. Indeed, such a historical perspective contradicts the idea that there has been a longstanding Anglo-American model of liberal market economic ordering as has sometimes been suggested, e.g. in the varieties of capitalism literature. However, looking at the current state of the employment relations systems in these six countries, we argue that there has been growing convergence in two major areas. There has been a convergence in the area of labour rights toward private ordering of employment relations and away from the idea of work and employment being a matter subject to public ordering. By private ordering, we mean the idea that work and employment terms and conditions are primarily determined at the level of the individual organization, whether through collective bargaining between unions and employers at the organizational level, through individual negotiations, or through unilateral employer establishment of the terms and conditions of employment. The shift away from public ordering of work and employment is most dramatic in the cases of Australia and New Zealand, where the publicly established system of centralized Awards has given way to organizational level ordering of employment relations through workplace or individual level agreements. In the United Kingdom, the shift to greater private ordering is most evident in the breakdown of multi-employer collective bargaining, the weakening of industry wide standards enforced by strong unions, and the growth of nonunion representation at the enterprise level. By contrast, the much lesser degree of change in the labour rights area in North America reflects the historical situation that the Wagner Act model was from the outset a model built around the idea of private ordering. When we turn to the area of employment rights, we also see a convergence across the six Anglo-American countries toward a model in which the role of employment law is to establish a basket of minimum standards that are built into the employment relationship, which can then be improved upon by the parties. Within these general trends, we do see some variation in the degree of convergence on these models of labour and employment rights regulation across the Anglo-American countries. The strongest degree of similarity in adoption of the private ordering in labour rights and the minimum standards basket in employment rights is found in four of the countries: Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and, with recent legislative changes, Australia. Each of these countries has adopted labour laws that favour organizational level economic ordering, but with reasonably substantial protections of trade union organizing and bargaining rights, and a set of minimum employment standards that includes similar sets of minimum wage, basic leave entitlements and unfair dismissal protections. The first outlier in this study is Ireland. The Irish employment relations system stands out as the only one that has continued to have a significant degree of central coordination and public ordering of employment relations. Although there is substantial coordination at the central level, at the organizational level, the Irish This article is available at DigitalCommons@ILR: http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/conference/32 system resembles the other Anglo-American countries much more closely, suggesting that it has the potential to evolve in a similar direction. The other outlier is the United States. Structurally its system is similar to the other Anglo-American countries in emphasizing private ordering in labour law and the role of employment law as being to establish a minimum basket of basic standards. However, where the United States diverges from the other countries is that its system has involved a general favouring of the interests of employers over those of employees and organized labour in the implementation of the model.


Book synopsis: Psychology has traditionally examined human experience from a realist perspective, focusing on observable 'facts'. This is especially so in areas of psychology which focus on the body, such as sexuality, madness or reproduction. In contrast, many sociologists, anthropologists and feminists have focused exclusively on the cultural and communicative aspects of 'the body' treating it purely as an object constructed within socio-cultural discourse.

This new collection of sophisticated discursive analyses explores this divide from a variety of theoretical standpoints, including psychoanalysis, social representations theory, feminist theory, critical realism, post-structuralism and social constructionism.

Body Talk reconciles the divide by putting forward a new 'materialist-discursive' approach. It also provides an introduction to social constructionist and discursive approaches which is accessible to those with limited previous knowledge of socio-linguistic theory, and showcases the distinctive contribution that psychologists can make to the field.


Human trafficking is a modern version of slavery, representing one of the most worrying problems of our current society.Far from being only a national phenomenon, human trafficking has reached a transnational, international level and, in the context of globalization, it continues to develop new dimensions that transform it in a malfeasant phenomenon, impossible to control, prevent or combat efficiently.Every year, more and more persons become victims of human trafficking, being treated as pieces of merchandise that can be sold and bought. These victims are, usually, forced to work in sex industry, but also in agriculture or enterprises (in harsh working conditions), sometimes on the black market, being paid miserably or not being paid at all.According to the latest Report of United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2012), victims of human trafficking belonging to, at least, 136 different nationalities were detected in 118 countries worldwide between 2007-2010.Women and girls together account for about 75 percent of all trafficking victims detected globally.Trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation accounts for 58 per cent of all trafficking cases detected globally, while trafficking for forced labor accounts for 36 per cent (the share of detected cases of trafficking for forced labor has doubled between 2008-2012). Victims trafficked for begging account for about 1.5 per cent of the victims detected globally and trafficking for the removal of organs has been detected in 16 countries in all regions of the world.


Common lands provide smallholder farmers in Africa with firewood, timber, and feed for livestock, and they are used to complement human diets through the collection of edible nontimber forest products (NTFPs). Farmers have developed coping mechanisms, which they deploy at times of climatic shocks. We aimed to analyze the importance of NTFPs in times of drought and to identify options that could increase the capacity to adapt to climate change. We used participatory techniques, livelihood analysis, observations, and measurements to quantify the use of NTFPs. Communities recognized NTFPs as a mechanism to cope with crop failure. We estimated that indigenous fruits contributed to approximately 20% of the energy intake of wealthier farmers and to approximately 40% of the energy intake of poor farmers in years of inadequate rainfall. Farmers needed to invest a considerable share of their time to collect wild fruits from deforested areas. They recognized that the effectiveness of NTFPs as an adaptation option had become threatened by severe deforestation and by illegal harvesting of fruits by urban traders. Farmers indicated the need to plan future land use to (1) intensify crop production, (2) cultivate trees for firewood, (3) keep orchards of indigenous fruit trees, and (4) improve the quality of grazing lands. Farmers were willing to cultivate trees and to organize communal conservation of indigenous fruits trees. Through participatory exercises, farmers elaborated maps, which were used during land use discussions. The process led to prioritization of pressing land use problems and identification of the support needed: fast-growing trees for firewood, inputs for crop production, knowledge on the cultivation of indigenous fruit trees, and clear regulations and compliance with rules for extraction of NTFPs. Important issues that remain to be addressed are best practices for regeneration and conservation, access rules and implementation, and the understanding and management of competing claims on the common lands. Well-managed communal resources can provide a strong tool to maintain and increase the rural communities' ability to cope with an increasingly variable climate.


Since the mid-1990s, media organizations all over the world have experienced a series of significant changes related to technological developments, from the organizational level down to the single journalist. Ownership in the media sector has developed toward increased concentration, mergers, and cross-media ownership. At the same time, digitization of media production has facilitated changes in both the organization and the everyday practice of journalism. Converged multimedia news organizations have emerged, as companies increasingly implement some form of cross-media cooperation or synergy between previously separate journalists, newsrooms, and departments. These changes have raised a number of questions about the relationship between organizational strategies, new technology, and everyday newsroom practice. In the literature on convergence journalism, these questions have been studied from different perspectives. Adopting a meta-perspective, it is possible to sort the literature into two broad categories. The first group consists of research mainly occupied with convergence in journalism. These are typically studies of organizational changes and changes in professional practice, for example increased cooperation between print and online newsrooms, or the role of online journalism in broadcasting organizations. The second group contains research primarily concerning convergence of journalism. This is mainly studies concerned with changes in journalistic texts. Some examples of this are repurposing television news for online publication, increased use of multimedia, and genre development within online journalism. It has to be noted that the two angles are closely connected and also share an interest in the role of technological development and the relationship between changing technologies, work practices, and journalistic output.


Galileo's trial by the Inquisition is one of the most dramatic incidents in the history of science and religion. Today, we tend to see this event in black and white-Galileo all white, the Church all black. Galileo in Rome presents a much more nuanced account of Galileo's relationship with Rome. The book offers a fascinating account of the six trips Galileo made to Rome, from his first visit at age 23, as an unemployed mathematician, to his final fateful journey to face the Inquisition. The authors reveal why the theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun, set forth in Galileo's Dialogue, stirred a hornet's nest of theological issues, and they argue that, despite these issues, the Church might have accepted Copernicus if there had been solid proof. More interesting, they show how Galileo dug his own grave. To get the imprimatur, he brought political pressure to bear on the Roman Censor. He disobeyed a Church order not to teach the heliocentric theory. And he had a character named Simplicio (which in Italian sounds like simpleton) raise the same objections to heliocentrism that the Pope had raised with Galileo. The authors show that throughout the trial, until the final sentence and abjuration, the Church treated Galileo with great deference, and once he was declared guilty commuted his sentence to house arrest. Here then is a unique look at the life of Galileo as well as a strikingly different view of an event that has come to epitomize the Church's supposed antagonism toward science.


We test the recent Fama-French five-factor model and Hou-Xue-Zhang four-factor model using test assets from Fama-MacBeth regressions, which are pure plays on particular characteristics or covariances. Our tests resolve the errors-in-variable bias in Fama-MacBeth regressions with estimated betas. Monte Carlo evidence shows that the tests are unbiased even with time-varying stock betas and characteristics. For both factor models, characteristic pure plays generally have positive alphas, and covariance pure plays have negative alphas. The models fail especially in explaining returns to investment and when pure plays are momentum-neutral. The rejections are economically significant.


In the present thesis, a study about the particle rebound characteristics is presented. The rebound of a spherical particle was analyzed in details and specifically the coefficient of restitution of a sphere colliding to a planar surface was investigated. This study has been conducted by carrying out a series of finite element simulations using the software package ANSYS Autodyn.
In the first part of the work, a summary about the existing studies and the theoretical models is done. While the theoretical model for the elastic collisions was applied and validated, predicting the coefficient of restitution for collisions where plastic deformation is a more complex task.
In the second part, the experimental results of an aluminum oxide particle colliding to an aluminum alloy target surface are provided. Using a finite element analysis software these results are reproduced. The selection of the equation of state and the strength model for each material has a strong role in the results. For both materials, the Shock equation of state is used. For the strength model, the Johnson-Cook and the Elastic model provided by the software are respectively used.
The coincidence of the results obtained with the experimental values, confirm that the model proposed with ANSYS Autodyn fits the real behavior of the particle and therefore, it is validated to analyze other parameters.
By fixing the velocity to 3.85 m/s and varying the impact angle, the effect of this second variable in the rebound is observed. To check how the impact velocity affects the rebound, the impact angle is set to 30o and 60o and the velocity is changed. After run of these simulations, the influence of the parameters such as the initial velocity, the impact angle or the coefficient of friction was obtained and analyzed.


Child maltreatment in the pediatric population is becoming more prevalent in today's society and is being seen more frequently in the primary care setting. Universal prevention of child maltreatment plays a significant role in nursing practice. The American Academy of Pediatrics set forth guidance for pediatricians to practice when assessing a pediatric patient for maltreatment; however, such guidance is not available for advanced practice nurses and little to no training is provided in the clinical setting. In order to accurately identify the child who is a suspected victim of maltreatment, advanced practice nurses must possess the ability to assess, evaluate, refer, investigate, and provide appropriate outcomes for the child and his/her families. The purpose of this Doctor of Nursing (DNP) project was to create an on-line learning tutorial for advanced practice nurses regarding the prevention of child maltreatment in the clinical setting. The goal of the on-line learning tutorial was to address the crucial role advanced practice nurses have in the prevention of child maltreatment and promote the well-being and safety of children. This project used a quasi-experimental, one-group, pre-test/post-test design to determine the effectiveness of an on-line learning tutorial related to child maltreatment. The pretest and post-test would determine the inferences on the effect of the intervention by examining the differences in the preand post-test results. This study provided significant evidence demonstrating that an on-line learning tutorial on the implementation of child maltreatment prevention in the clinical setting was an effective means for increasing knowledge of nurse practitioner graduate students on child maltreatment. The results demonstrated a significant increase in the test scores of the participants after viewing the on-line learning tutorial, indicating the tutorial was effective.


This paper describes a reactive path planning strategy to avoid obstacles in partially known environments during the approach-to-landing phase of a manned helicopter. As experimental platform, the research rotorcraft Active Control Technology/Flying Helicopter Simulator (ACT/FHS) is used. This highly modified EC135 is equipped with a commercial forward-looking Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensor with a range of 1 km. During an approach to an unmapped landing site, geo-referenced LiDAR samples are acquired and combined with database information. The resulting representation of the environment is used for the generation of flight paths which are collision free, technically feasible and acceptable for pilots. Once new samples are collected by the LiDAR sensor, the environment map is updated in real time and the flight path is changed based on typical approach procedures if necessary. Due to experimental aspects, a manual trajectory following was used by providing the pilot with a "Tunnel-In-The-Sky" head down display including visual cues for spatial and speed guidance during the approach. Results show the applicability of the presented planning strategy based on five approaches made to Braunschweig airport in a flight trail conducted in 2015. Furthermore, the need for proper Human-Machine-Interface design is indicated in order to communicate decisions made by the system to the pilot, which exceeds the scope of this work.


Introduction: Air embolism (AE) is a rare, but serious complication that can occur in the practice of hemodialysis. In contrast to careful techniques and meticulous care during insertions and manipulations of the central catheters, awareness of the risk of AE following catheter removal is less. We aimed to analyze the clinical characteristics of the all case reports with AE after catheter removal and summarize the mechanisms, clinical consequences, treatment and prevention of AE. Methods: In addition to our case, MEDLINE database was searched for all case reports with AE following catheter removal, and the clinical, diagnostic and outcome data were analyzed. Findings: A total of 10 patients (including our case) (M/F 6/4; median age 50.5 years) were found for the analysis. Procedures for prevention of AE were reported in a few patients (Trendelenburg position 2, airtight dressing 1). The time that elapsed between catheter removals and onset of AEs was ranged from seconds to 6 hours. The most common findings were dyspnea (90%), hypoxemia (70%), and cerebral dysfunction (70%). The most common sites where air could be detected were the left ventricle (40%), pulmonary artery (30%) and right ventricle (30%). Mortality was reported in 4 (40%) cases and the remaining 6 patients had complete recovery. Blocking of air portal was not reported in any of the fatal cases. Discussion: AE following catheter removal carries a major risk of mortality. Great awareness and attention to preventive procedures and appropriate care after development of AE seem mandatory.


"Back to the USSR." (1) So ran a typical headline after the overwhelming victory of the Communist Party of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) in the parliamentary elections of February 2001. By winning 50 percent of the vote and seventy-one of the one hundred one parliamentary seats, the PCRM had been able to form the kernel of the government and successfully nominate its first secretary, Vladimir Voronin, for the indirectly elected presidency. But this party was somewhat of an unknown quantity on coming to power, not covered at all by the voluminous literature on former Communist ruling parties in Eastern Europe. (2) All the same, many analysts and Moldovan politicians were quick to identify its political profile: This was a completely undemocratic force, "one of the most backward and certainly most Red group[s] in power anywhere in the post-Soviet world," (3) which aimed to transform Moldova into a pro-Russian "Re-Sovietised" backwater and would involve "redrawing the regional map." (4) Some of the new Communist government's key policies (such as the proposed upgrade of Russian to a second state language and the re-introduction of Sovietera administrative districts) have caused internal tension and international consternation and initially do appear to be an incontrovertible confirmation of incipient authoritarianism. On closer inspection, the party's profile appears far more enigmatic: far from turning East, on several occasions President Voronin has declared European integration the primary aim of Moldova's foreign policy and initiated a federalization project that has had the support of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the U.S. State Department. Domestically, the party has presided over economic growth and sporadic privatization, while its most controversial policy proposals (for example, to join the Russian-Belarus Union) remain unimplemented. Consequently, my aim here is to unravel the enigma of the PCRM by focusing on the party's aims and achievements as it ends its first term in office. To do so, I first analyze what the party, stands for, account for its return to power in 2001, and then assess its policy performance and wider role in democratization and socioeconomic transformation. Seeing the party as "unreconstructed" and unconditionally authoritarian clearly is very simplistic. The party is far more pragmatic than prevailing views contend, yet its transformation into a post-Soviet democratic party remains incomplete, and in government it has provided a stern test of Moldova's fragile post-Soviet pluralism. Policy Profile: Principle, Pragmatism, Eclecticism On its surface, the PCRM certainly looks like the "completely unreconstructed" organization it claims to be. (5) After all, the party flies the red flag, flaunts the Communist name and hammer and sickle symbol, and openly celebrates revolutionary holidays. Its party program, traditionally an "objective" statement of the party's long-term aims, is a clear statement of orthodox Marxism-Leninism, with claims about the ultimate goal of communism, internationalism, the temporary victory of capitalism, and the class basis of the party's support coexisting with commitments to free welfare, state control over banks, at least partial recollectivization, working class participation in public administration, and a "voluntary and renovated" union of republics. The party unapologetically claims that it is the heir to the ideas and traditions of the Soviet-era Communist Party of Moldavia (KPM) and remains a member of the umbrella post-Soviet forum for Communist parties, the Union of Communist Parties-Communist Party of the Soviet Union (SKP-KPSS). (6) However, even in the party program there are signs of a more pragmatic, eclectic, and contradictory policy stance. Although there is no explicit commitment to democracy, there is rejection of dogmatism, totalitarianism, ideological monopoly, and the Stalinist cult of personality, with commitments to reformed socialism, political rights and freedoms, and entrepreneurship, except in the strategic branches of industry. …