This study examines language style of Arabic newspapers particularly in the world affairs and sport sections, using the word frequency analysis. The study is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter mainly focuses on background and aims of the study, while review of previous studies is presented in the second chapter. Chapter Three discusses Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the selected newspapers and the chosen sections. Chapter Four concerns on the methodology applied in the study. Analysis of the language style is presented in Chapter five and followed by findings which are discussed in Chapter Six. The final chapter provides summary, conclusion and suggestions for further research.

The study employed a self-constructed method in corpus building. A total of 30 articles (world affairs and sports) from seven Arabic newspapers were collected from the official online websites mostly in November 2007. Five of the newspapers are published in Arab countries and one in both the United Kingdom and Australia. The Wordsmith version 5.0 was used in analyzing the corpus data. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyse word frequency list in both categories, while the Likelihood ratio test was applied in the comparison analysis.

Findings revealed that most high frequency words have close relationship to their respective categories especially in the use of nouns. Slight differences were identified in terms of word spelling, loan word, verb transitivity and phrase amongst the newspapers published in different countries s. It is also proven that there is a tendency in MSA to practice new features in news writing which is different from the well known Arabic grammar, i.e, verb and subject agreement in gender. Different newspapers have also demonstrated their own focus in news reporting, and sports section is found to use more specific words than world affairs section.


Actinomycetes from earthworm castings were isolated and screened for their antimicrobial activity and industrial enzymes. A total of 48 isolates were obtained from 12 samples of earthworm castings. Highest numbers of isolates were recovered from forest site (58.33 %) as compared to grassland (25%) and agricultural land (16.66%). The growth patterns, mycelial coloration of abundance actinomycetes were documented. The dominant genera Identified by cultural, morphological and physiological characteristics were Streptomyces (60.41%) followed by Streptosporangium (10.41%),Saccharopolyspora (6.25%) and Nocardia (6.25%). Besides these, other genera like Micromonospora, Actinomadura, Microbispora, Planobispora and Nocardiopsis were also recovered but in low frequency. Among the 48 isolates, 52.08% were found active against one or more test organisms. Out of 25 active isolates 16% showed activity against bacterial, human fungal as well as phytopathogens. Among 48 isolates 38, 32, 21, 20, 16 and 14 produced enzyme amylase, caseinase, cellulase, gelatinase, xylanase and lipase respectively while 10 isolates produced all the enzymes. More interestingly 2, 3, and 1 isolates produced amylase, xylanase and lipase at 45°C respectively. In the view of its antimicrobial activity as well as enzyme production capability the genus Streptomyces was dominant. The isolate EWC 7(2) was most promising on the basis of its interesting antimicrobial activity and was identified as Streptomyces rochei. The results of these findings have increased the scope of finding industrially important actinomycetes from earthworm castings and these organisms could be promising sources for industrially important molecules or enzymes.


The oldest known fossil bird from the Late Triassic (about 225 million years ago) Dockum Formation of Texas, provides insights into the anatomy, evolution and phylogenetic relationships of early birds. In life, this adult bird was about the size of a pheasant ( Phasianus ) counting its long bony tail. Many characters of the skull show that the Texas species is more closely related to other birds than to any known group of archosaurs. The skull is lightly built, pneumatized, with an enormous orbit and expanded temporal region. The teeth are restricted to the tip of the jaws, the posterior teeth having been lost. The temporal region is modified from the diapsid condition, as in modern birds, where the orbit is confluent with the upper and lower temporal openings because of the breakdown of the temporal arcades. The relatively large brain size and the modification of the brain architecture in avian fashion show neurosensory specializations that may be associated with balance, coordination, flight, agility and high metabolic activity. The new species had binocular vision, which suggests that it was a visually oriented predator. Auditory acuity may be associated with vocal behaviour. The quadrate was streptostylic and the whole upper jaw was moved prokinetically as in modern birds. Among current hypotheses for the relationships of birds among archosaurs, both theropod and crocodilian hypotheses have been supported by shared apomorphies. Some of the avian features in the crocodilian skull may have been acquired convergently because of homoplasy. Conversely, the highly akinetic skull and monimostylic quadrate along with primitive brain architecture in early crocodylomorphs negate its close phyletic relationships with birds. Within archosaurs, the theropods are closest to birds, but just what taxon is the sister group among theropods is uncertain at this time. Numerical cladistic analysis of 30 cranial characters generated a hypothesis of the phylogenetic pattern of early avian evolution. By using theropods and sphenosuchids as comparative outgroups and root for the tree, the analysis confirms the monophyly of the class Aves. Archaeopteryx is the most primitive taxon and is sister group to all other birds. Archaeoptryx, Avimimus and the Texas bird are suc cessively closer to the remaining avian taxa or Ornithurae. Hesprom, Ichthyornis and Gobipteryx are the Cretaceous representatives of the Ornithurae. The Triassic bird extends the known avian record back at least 75 million years and documents an early stage in the evolution of modern birds. The avian skull evolved in response to two functional requirem ents: efficient feeding mechanism, leading to the development of cranial kinesis, and neurosensory specializations leading to the enlargement of the braincase and orbit. Cranial kinesis, braincase inflation and otic specialization greatly modified the architecture of early avian skulls from the theropod condition. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that theropods shared a common ancestry with birds, but it is indeterminate from the fossil record whether or not the immediate common ancestor itself was a theropod.


Print workers are exposed to organic solvents, of which the systemic toxicant toluene is a main component. Toluene induces expression of cytochrome P450 2E1 (CYP2E1), an enzyme involved in its own metabolism and that of other protoxicants, including some procarcinogens. Therefore, we investigated the association between toluene exposure and the CYP2E1 response, as assessed by mRNA content in peripheral lymphocytes or the 6-hydroxychlorzoxazone (6OH-CHZ)/chlorzoxazone (CHZ) quotient (known as CHZ metabolic ratio) in plasma, and the role of genotype (5′-flanking region RsaI/PstI polymorphic sites) in 97 male print workers. The geometric mean (GM) of toluene concentration in the air was 52.80 ppm (10–760 ppm); 54% of the study participants were exposed to toluene concentrations that exceeded the maximum permissible exposure level (MPEL). The GM of urinary hippuric acid at the end of a work shift (0.041 g/g creatinine) was elevated relative to that before the shift (0.027 g/g creatinine; p < 0.05). The GM of the CHZ metabolic ratio was 0.33 (0–9.3), with 40% of the subjects having ratios below the GM. However, the average CYP2E1 mRNA level in peripheral lymphocytes was 1.07 (0.30–3.08), and CYP2E1 mRNA levels within subjects correlated with the toluene exposure ratio (environmental toluene concentration:urinary hippuric acid concentration) (p = 0.014). Genotype did not alter the association between the toluene exposure ratio and mRNA content. In summary, with further validation, CYP2E1 mRNA content in peripheral lymphocytes could be a sensitive and noninvasive biomarker for the continuous monitoring of toluene effects in exposed persons.


Geological carbon dioxide storage (CCS) has the potential to make a significant contribution to the decarbonisation of the UK. Amid concerns over maintaining security, and hence diversity, of supply, CCS could allow the continued use of coal, oil and gas whilst avoiding the CO2 emissions currently associated with fossil fuel use. This project has explored some of the geological, environmental, technical, economic and social implications of this technology. The UK is well placed to exploit CCS with a large offshore storage capacity, both in disused oil and gas fields and saline aquifers. This capacity should be sufficient to store CO2 from the power sector (at current levels) for a least one century, using well understood and therefore likely to be lower-risk, depleted hydrocarbon fields and contained parts of aquifers. It is very difficult to produce reliable estimates of the (potentially much larger) storage capacity of the less well understood geological reservoirs such as non-confined parts of aquifers. With the majority of its large coal fired power stations due to be retired during the next 15 to 20 years, the UK is at a natural decision point with respect to the future of power generation from coal; the existence of both national reserves and the infrastructure for receiving imported coal makes clean coal technology a realistic option. The notion of CCS as a 'bridging' or 'stop-gap' technology (i.e. whilst we develop 'genuinely' sustainable renewable energy technologies) needs to be examined somewhat critically, especially given the scale of global coal reserves. If CCS plant is built, then it is likely that technological innovation will bring down the costs of CO2 capture, such that it could become increasingly attractive. As with any capitalintensive option, there is a danger of becoming 'locked-in' to a CCS system. The costs of CCS in
our model for UK power stations in the East Midlands and Yorkshire to reservoirs in the North Sea are between £25 and £60 per tonne of CO2 captured, transported and stored. This is between about 2 and 4 times the current traded price of a tonne of CO2 in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. In addition to the technical and economic requirements of the CCS technology, it should also be socially and environmentally acceptable. Our research has shown that, given an acceptance of the severity and urgency of addressing climate change, CCS is viewed favourably by members of the public, provided it is adopted within a portfolio of other measures. The most commonly voiced concern from the public is that of leakage and this remains perhaps the greatest uncertainty with CCS. It is not possible to make general statements concerning storage security; assessments must be site specific. The impacts of any potential leakage are also somewhat uncertain but should be balanced against the deleterious effects of increased acidification in the oceans due to uptake of elevated atmospheric CO2 that have already been observed. Provided adequate long term monitoring can be ensured, any leakage of CO2 from a storage site is likely to have minimal localised impacts as long as leaks are rapidly repaired. A regulatory framework for CCS will need to include risk assessment of potential environmental and health and safety impacts, accounting and monitoring and liability for the long term. In summary, although there remain uncertainties to be resolved through research and demonstration projects, our assessment demonstrates that CCS holds great potential for significant cuts in CO2 emissions as we develop long term alternatives to fossil fuel use. CCS can contribute to reducing emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere in the near term (i.e. peak-shaving the future atmospheric concentration of CO2), with the potential to continue to deliver significant CO2 reductions over the long term.


Immigrant populations in many developed democracies have grown rapidly, and so too has an extensive literature on natives' attitudes toward immigration. This research has developed from two theoretical foundations, one grounded in political economy, the other in political psychology. These two literatures have developed largely in isolation from one another, yet the conclusions that emerge from each are strikingly similar. Consistently, immigration attitudes show little evidence of being strongly correlated with personal economic circumstances. Instead, research finds that immigration attitudes are shaped by sociotropic concerns about its cultural impacts—and to a lesser extent its economic impacts—on the nation as a whole. This pattern of results has held up as scholars have increasingly turned to experimental tests, and it holds for the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. Still, more work is needed to strengthen the causal identification of sociotropic concerns and to isolate precisely how, when,...


IMPORTANCE
The Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) is one of the most widely used measures to assess pain and related impacts among patients with low back pain (LBP). However, its test-retest reliability and minimal detectable change (MDC) have rarely been examined in patients with LBP, interfering with its utility.

OBJECTIVE
To investigate the test-retest reliability and MDC of the BPI among patients with LBP.

DESIGN
Repeated assessments design with a 1-wk interval.

SETTING
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in a hospital in Taiwan.

PARTICIPANTS
Fifty-four patients with stable LBP conditions.

OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
The BPI has two subscales-Intensity and Interference-that assess pain intensity and pain interference, respectively. Their test-retest reliability was examined using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and MDCs were calculated.

RESULTS
The ICCs of the Intensity and Interference subscales were .62 and .76, respectively. The MDC values for the two subscales were 2.57 and 2.34, respectively. For the four Intensity items, the average-pain score had a higher ICC (.60) than scores on the other items (worst, least, and current pain, which had ICCs of about .40).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
The results suggest that although the BPI is a commonly used measure of pain intensity and pain interference among patients with LBP, caution should be exercised in interpreting the Intensity subscale score and its item scores. What This Article Adds: The BPI is widely used to assess pain and related impacts on daily occupation and functioning among patients with LBP. This study provides information regarding its test-retest reliability. Moreover, the MDC values provide clinicians and researchers with the thresholds for determining real improvement (beyond random measurement error).


Monthly mean aerosol optical depth (AOD) over ocean is compared from a total of 9 aerosol retrievals during a 40 months period. Comparisons of AOD have been made both for the entire period and sub periods. We identify regions where there is large disagreement and good agreement between the aerosol satellite retrievals. Signifi-5 cant differences in AOD have been identified in most of the oceanic regions. Several analyses are performed including spatial correlation between the retrievals as well as comparison with AERONET data. During the 40 months period studied there have been several major aerosol field campaigns as well as events of high aerosol content. It is studied how the aerosol retrievals compare during such circumstances. The dif-10 ferences found in this study are larger than found in a previous study where 5 aerosol retrievals over an 8 months period were compared. However, results in coastal regions are promising especially for aerosol retrievals from satellite instruments dedicated for aerosol research. In depth analyses explaining the differences between AOD obtained in different retrievals are clearly needed. We limit this study to identify differences and 15 similarities and indicate possible sources that affect the quality of the retrievals. This is a necessary first step towards understanding the differences and improving the retrievals .


The criminal law has often been seen as central to the rule of the eighteenth-century landed elite in England. This book presents a detailed analysis of the judicial processs - of victims' reactions, pretrial practices, policing, magistrates hearings, trials, sentencing, pardoning and punishment - using property offenders as its main focus. The period 1740-1820 - the final era before the coming of the new police and the repeal of the capital code - emerges as the great age of discretionary justice, and the book explores the impact of the vast discretionary powers held by many social groups. It reassesses both the relationship between crime rates and the economic deprivation, and the many ways that vulnerability to prosecution varied widely across the lifecycle, in the light of the highly selective nature of pretrial negotiations.

More centrally, by asking at every stage - who used the law, for what purposes, in whose interests and with what social effects - it opens up a number of new perspectives on the role of the law in eighteenth-century social relations. The law emerges as less the instrument of particular elite groups and more as an arena of struggle, of negotiation, and of compromise. Its rituals were less controllable and its merciful moments less manageable and less exclusively available to the gentry elite than has been previously suggested. Justice was vulnerable to power, but was also mobilised to constrain it. Despite the key functions that the propertied fulfilled, courtroom crowds, the counter-theatre of the condemned, and the decisions of the victims from a very wide range of backgrounds had a role to play, and the criteria on which decisions were based were shaped as much by the broad and more humane discourse which Fielding called the 'good mind' as by the instrumental needs of the propertied elites.


The quest for biofuel production and use in Botswana is driven by factors including volatile oil prices, need for fuel security, potential for job creation, potential reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and economic diversification. In line with national efforts to come up with energy sources that are both environmentally friendly and sustainable, this work was carried out to compare performance properties of native crude marula (Sclerocarya birrea) seed oil and petrodiesel fuel on a variable compression engine test rig with automatic data acquisition set up. Parameters such as engine torque, brake power and specific fuel consumption were measured at different loads for the two fuels. The results indicate that engine performance when powered with crude marula oil compares favourable with those for petrodiesel. Optimum numerical values for engine torque, brake power and specific fuel consumption were 28.2 Nm, 6.27 W and 0.34 g/kWh respectively for petrodiesel, and 22.7 Nm, 6.6 W, 0.33 g/kWh respectively for crude marula oil. The engine performance was also analysed for same parameters, namely, engine torque, brake power and specific fuel consumption when powered using the same fuels over a range of compression ratios while the load was fixed at 80%. Optimum numerical values for engine torque, brake power and specific fuel consumption were 27.2 Nm, 3.67 W and 0.59 g/kWh respectively for petrodiesel, and 26.3 Nm, 3.6 W, 0.34 g/kWh respectively for crude marula oil. The results indicate that compression ratio of 16:1 yields optimum engine performance in terms of engine torque and brake power for both fuels under review. However, marula oil fuel recorded smooth steady increase in performance profile across all compression ratios which out-performs petrodiesel on lower compression ratios for engine torque and brake power, and is largely better than petrodiesel on fuel consumption.


Estimating markups has a long tradition in industrial organization and international trade. Economists and policy makers are interested in measuring the effect of various competition and trade policies on market power, typically measured by markups. The empirical methods that were developed in empirical industrial organization often rely on the availability of very detailed market-level data with information on prices, quantities sold, characteristics of products and more recently supplemented with consumer-level attributes. Often, both researchers and government agencies cannot rely on such detailed data, but still need an assessment of whether changes in the operating environment of firms had an impact on markups and therefore on consumer surplus. In this paper, we derive an estimating equation to estimate markups using standard production plant-level data based on the insight of Hall (1986) and the control function approach of Olley and Pakes (1996). Our methodology allows for various underlying price setting models, dynamic inputs, and does not require measuring the user cost of capital or assuming constant returns to scale. We rely on our method to explore the relationship between markups and export behavior using plant-level data. We find that i) markups are estimated significantly higher when controlling for unobserved productivity, ii) exporters charge on average higher markups and iii) firms' markups increase (decrease) upon export entry (exit).We see these findings as a first step in opening up the productivity-export black box, and provide a potential explanation for the big measured productivity premia for firms entering export markets.


Abstract An overview of the diagnostics installed on the Alcator C-Mod tokamak is presented. Approximately 25 diagnostic systems are being operated on C-Mod. The compact design of the machine and the cryostat enclosing the vacuum vessel and magnetic field coils make access challenging. Diagnostics are used to study four focus areas: transport, plasma boundary, waves, and macrostability. There is significant overlap between these topics, and they all contribute toward the burning plasma and advanced tokamak thrusts. Several advanced and novel diagnostics contribute to the investigation of C-Mod plasmas, e.g., electron cyclotron emission, phase-contrast imaging, gas puff imaging, probe measurements, and active magnetohydrodynamic antennas.


Scala relies on libraries as the default mechanism for language extension. While this provides an elegant solution for growing the language, the performance penalty incurred by call-by-name parameters, boxing and anonymous functions is high. We show that inlining alone is not enough to remove this overhead, and present a solution based on decompilation of library code combined with inlining, dead code elimination, and copy propagation. We evaluate our approach on two language extensions, Java-like assert and C-like for-loops and show improvements of up to 45%.


Article history: Received 31 January 2012 Accepted March, 7 2012 Available online 8 March 2012 The aversion dynamics research agenda has incorporated within dispatching heuristics a number of real-world observations involving risk mitigation practices used by real schedulers. One such observation is that schedulers occasionally offload risky jobs from a primary machine to otherwise less desirable machine (older, slower) during periods of peak load to avoid the effects the risky job can have on subsequent jobs. This paper examines this situation within the proportional parallel machine environment. Safety time is used to adjust dispatching priorities of risky jobs to reflect the aversion. The effect of various safety time values on performance is studied. Robust safety time values and/or intervals are identified across a variety of experimental factors related to risk level, percent risky jobs in the job stream, and due date distribution. © 2012 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved


Plasmids are genetic elements that enable rapid adaptation and evolution by transferring genes conferring selective advantages to their hosts. Conjugative plasmids are predominantly responsible for the global dissemination of antimicrobial resistance, representing an important threat to global health. As the number of plasmid sequences grows exponentially, it becomes critical to depict the global diversity and decipher the distribution of circulating plasmids in the bacterial community. To this end, we created COMPASS, a novel and comprehensive database compiling 12,084 complete plasmids with associated metadata from 1571 distinct species isolated worldwide over more than 100 years. The curation of the database allowed us to identify identical plasmids across different bacteria revealing mainly intraspecies dissemination and rare cases of horizontal transmission. We outlined and analyzed all relevant features, plasmid properties, host range and characterized their replication and mobilization systems. After an exhaustive comparison of PlasmidFinder and MOB-typer, the MOB-typer-based analysis revealed that the current knowledge embedded in the current typing schemes fails to classify all the plasmid sequences collected in COMPASS. We were able to categorize 6828 and 5229 plasmids by replicon and MOB typing, respectively, mostly associated with Proteobacteria and Firmicutes. We then searched for the presence of multiple core genes involved in replication and propagation. Our results showed that 2403 plasmids carried multiple replicons that were distributed in 206 bacterial species. The co-integration of replicon types from different incompatibility (Inc) groups is an adaptive mechanism, which plays an important role in plasmid survival and dissemination by extending their host range. Our results highlight the crucial role of IncF alleles (present in 56% of all multireplicons) and revealed that IncH, IncR, and IncU replicons were also frequently carried in multireplicons. Here, we provided a comprehensive picture of the different IncF subtypes by identifying 20 different profiles in 849 IncF multireplicons, which were mostly associated with Enterobacteriaceae. These results could provide the basis for a novel IncF plasmid nomenclature based on different allelic profiles.


The aim of this study was to critically examine the impact of nursing research on the development of health care policy using UK health visiting research as an example. We used established methods to evaluate research impact. This included a documentary review of over 30 policy documents, citation analyses on 19 papers and interviews with health visiting researchers. Although there were examples of policy documents being informed by health visiting research it was not always clear what role research had played in the development of recommendations. Information from researchers provided examples of local, national and international impact, although the extent to which papers may have impacted upon policy was less clear from the citation analyses. Many of the UK studies cited in policy documents were qualitative, observational or reflexive and a lack of evaluative research, in particular randomised controlled trials and other controlled evaluations, may limit the impact of health visiting research on health care policy in the UK. There is evidence that health visiting research has influenced health care policy but this has been limited and there is a need for more research to underpin and inform the role of the health visitor.


Quantum mechanics has irked physicists ever since its conception more than 100 years ago. While some of the misgivings, such as it being unintuitive, are merely aesthetic, quantum mechanics has one serious shortcoming: it lacks a physical description of the measurement process. This "measurement problem" indicates that quantum mechanics is at least an incomplete theory—good as far as it goes, but missing a piece—or, more radically, is in need of complete overhaul. Here we describe an approach which may provide this sought-for completion or replacement: Superdeterminism. A superdeterministic theory is one which violates the assumption of Statistical Independence (that distributions of hidden variables are independent of measurement settings). Intuition suggests that Statistical Independence is an essential ingredient of any theory of science (never mind physics), and for this reason Superdeterminism is typically discarded swiftly in any discussion of quantum foundations. The purpose of this paper is to explain why the existing objections to Superdeterminism are based on experience with classical physics and linear systems, but that this experience misleads us. Superdeterminism is a promising approach not only to solve the measurement problem, but also to understand the apparent non-locality of quantum physics. Most importantly, we will discuss how it may be possible to test this hypothesis in an (almost) model independent way.


Time, cost and quality achievements on large-scale construction projects are uncertain because of technological constraints, involvement of many stakeholders, long durations, large capital requirements and improper scope definitions. Projects that are exposed to such an uncertain environment can effectively be managed with the application of risk management throughout the project life cycle. Risk is by nature subjective. However, managing risk subjectively poses the danger of non-achievement of project goals. Moreover, risk analysis of the overall project also poses the danger of developing inappropriate responses. This article demonstrates a quantitative approach to construction risk management through an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and decision tree analysis. The entire project is classified to form a few work packages. With the involvement of project stakeholders, risky work packages are identified. As all the risk factors are identified, their effects are quantified by determining probability (using AHP) and severity (guess estimate). Various alternative responses are generated, listing the cost implications of mitigating the quantified risks. The expected monetary values are derived for each alternative in a decision tree framework and subsequent probability analysis helps to make the right decision in managing risks. In this article, the entire methodology is explained by using a case application of a cross-country petroleum pipeline project in India. The case study demonstrates the project management effectiveness of using AHP and DTA.


It is impossible to obtain and amplify live neurons from Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. To establish the neurons harboring AD abnormality, we constructed mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells, in which the AD-causative V642I mutation was introduced to the endogenous amyloid precursor protein (APP) gene, in combination with a protocol to efficiently differentiate ES cells into postmitotic neurons without using a cell sorter. By this protocol, ES cells differentiated into >90% of the central type of adult postmitotic neurons. Neurons derived from V642I–APP knock-in ES cells were indistinguishable from wild-type ES-derived neurons, as determined by the expression of various markers for neuronal differentiation. Notably, V642I–APP knock-in ES cell-derived neurons exhibited significantly increased secretion of Aβ42 without AD-related hyperphosphorylation of tau, indicating that the direct output of the AD-causative mutation is increased Aβ42 secretion. In this study, we analyze created neurons with wild-type and AD genotypes and propose a new strategy for generating neurons for any dominantly inherited neurodegenerative diseases. The strategy can be applied to create human neurons with AD or any other neurodegenerative disease by using human ES cells.


Going beyond isolated research ideas and design experiences, Designing Network On-Chip Architectures in the Nanoscale Era covers the foundations and design methods of network on-chip (NoC) technology. The contributors draw on their own lessons learned to provide strong practical guidance on various design issues. Exploring the design process of the network, the first part of the book focuses on basic aspects of switch architecture and design, topology selection, and routing implementation. In the second part, contributors discuss their experiences in the industry, offering a roadmap to recent products. They describe Tileras TILE family of multicore processors, novel Intel products and research prototypes, and the TRIPS operand network (OPN). The last part reveals state-of-the-art solutions to hardware-related issues and explains how to efficiently implement the programming model at the network interface. In the appendix, the microarchitectural details of two switch architectures targeting multiprocessor system-on-chips (MPSoCs) and chip multiprocessors (CMPs) can be used as an experimental platform for running tests. A stepping stone to the evolution of future chip architectures, this volume provides a how-to guide for designers of current NoCs as well as designers involved with 2015 computing platforms. It cohesively brings together fundamental design issues, alternative design paradigms and techniques, and the main design tradeoffsconsistently focusing on topics most pertinent to real-world NoC designers.


Code forges are third party software repositories that also provide various tools and facilities for distributed software development teams to use, including source code control systems, mailing lists and communication forums, bug tracking systems, web hosting space, and so on. The main contributions of this paper are to present some new data sets relating to the technology adoption lifecycles of a group of six free, libre, and open source software (FLOSS) code forges, and to compare the lifecycles of the forges to each other and to the model presented by classical Diffusion of Innovation (DoI) theory. We find that the observed adoption patterns of code forges rarely follow the DoI model, especially as larger code forges are beset by spam and abuse. The only forge exhibiting a DoI-like lifecycle was a smaller, community-managed, special-purpose forge whose demise was planned in advance. The results of this study will be useful in explaining adoption trajectories, both to practitioners building collaborative FLOSS ecosystems and to researchers who study the evolution and adoption of socio-technical systems.


A zooplankton net sampling survey was conducted in the southwest Atlantic between 34* and 55* S during austral spring 1990. The survey grid covered shelf, slope and oceanic regions and contained 44 stations spaced at 100/200 km intervals. Sampling was carried out with an RMT8 net which was deployed obliquely from the surface to either 200 m over shelf regions or 300 m off-shelf. A total of 155 species were identified from 9 taxonomic groups including euphausiids, hyperiid amphipods, chaetognaths, salps, siphonophores and nektonic/planktonic fish. Log-transformed relative numerical abundances for each species were used in hierarchical classification to elucidate macroscale patterns of distribution. Factor analysis was also used on the most abundant and widely distributed species to reveal mesoscale patterns. Classification analysis produced 4 station groups which showed distinct geographic integrity and strong relationships to the positions of water masses. Group 1 was related to the Falkland shelf, Group 2, the Polar Frontal Zone (PFZ), Group 3, the Sub-Antarctic water mass (SAZ) and Group 4, the Sub-Tropical water mass (STZ). The dissimilarity matrix showed that the STZ group was very distant from the other 3 station groups, suggesting that its fauna is distinctly different to that found throughout the rest of the survey grid. By far the highest number of species showed strongest fidelity to the STZ group with 5 out of the 8 species clusters associated to that station group. Factor analysis gave further resolution to the station group patterns. The distribution of Factor 1 suggested that the warm Falkland Current return carried sub-tropical species into the SAZ. Factors 2 and 3 showed that there were at least 2 distinct faunal zones within the PFZ and Factor 4 highlighted the potential influence of the Falkland Current on the distribution of the shelf community. Overall it was evident that there was a strong correspondence between the distribution of faunal groups and water masses. However, the differences between SAZ, PFZ and Falkland shelf groups were mostly characterised by differences in abundance, whereas the STZ/SAZ boundary was marked by distinct differences in species composition.


Abstract A comprehensive taphonomic analysis has yielded a novel interpretation for one of the most famous dinosaur quarries in the world. The Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry (CLDQ) traditionally has been interpreted as an attritional predator trap. This scenario is based largely on a remarkable 3:1 predator:prey ratio, dominated by the remains of the theropod Allosaurus fragilis. This study addresses the taphonomy of CLDQ by combining analyses of fossils and entombing sediments along with putative modern analogues. Thousands of bones have been excavated from CLDQ, representing at least 70 individual dinosaurs from a minimum of nine genera. The fossils occur in a 1-m-thick fine-grained calcareous mudstone interpreted as a floodplain ephemeral-pond deposit. The bones show minimal carnivore modification and surface weathering, whereas approximately 1/3 of the elements studied possess pre-depositional fractures and evidence of abrasion. The vast majority of elements are found horizontal to subhorizontal, without a preferred long-axis orientation. The demographic profile of the CLDQ dinosaur assemblage appears to be highly skewed toward subadult individuals. Numerous lines of evidence question the traditional predator-trap hypothesis. Of the alternatives, catastrophic drought appears to be most consistent with available data. Evidence includes a large assemblage of animals in a low-energy ephemeral-pond depositional setting and geologic and biologic evidence of desiccation. Additional support comes from modern drought analogues that frequently result in mass-death assemblages of large vertebrates. Climatic interpretations during Late Jurassic times are consistent with a semiarid environment characterized by periodic drought conditions.


Various studies have employed quantitative and qualitative methods in order to explore the process of behavioral change emerging during a drug addiction treatment, i.e. the factors both encouraging and discouraging such change. Treatment has been conceived as a process of maturation ("maturing out" theory) or as a sudden behavioral change ("rock bottom experience"). This article focuses on the qualitative approach of the therapeutic procedures of a residential treatment program. The participants of the study were 46 clients undergoing a substances treatment. In order to collect the data, we used the semi-structured interview. All conversation data were taped and later on elaborated with the help of the contextual content analysis. Three main categories derived from these analyses: the supports and the barriers clients face, as well as the way they handle the idea of changing during their addiction treatment. The findings highlight the importance of communality within such a framework, emotional management, practical matters the addicts must face, as well as the contribution of personal characteristics, such as strong will and determination. The implications of the study for clinical practice and future research are still debated.


An understanding of the glacial history of the Amundsen Sea Embayment and Pine Island Bay (PIB) is essential for proposing models on the future development of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). It requires both an understanding of the tectonic history, because basement morphology and inherited erosional features may control the flow direction of ice-sheets and the influx of Circum-Polar Deep Water (CDW) at later times. We, therefore, attempt to reconstruct the tectonic history with the aim to search for basement features and crustal boundaries which may be correlated to the flow and dynamics of ice-sheet advances.The Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica is in a prominent location for a series of tectonic and magmatic events from Paleozoic to Cenozoic times. Seismic, magnetic and gravity data from the embayment and PIB reveal the crustal thickness and significant tectonic features. NE-SW trending magnetic and gravity anomalies and the thin crust indicate a former rift zone which was active during or in the run-up to the breakup process between Chatham Rise and West Antarctica before or at 90 Ma. NW-SE trending gravity and magnetic anomalies, following a prolongation of Peacock Sound, indicate the extensional southern boundary to the Bellingshausen Plate which was active between 79 and 61 Ma. It is likely that the prominent Pine Island Trough follows a structural boundary between the crustal blocks of Ellsworth Land and Marie Byrd Land.We will show newly collected multichannel seismic reflection data from inner PIB which are interpreted in context with published reconstructions for the retreat history in this area. Differences in the behaviour of the ice-sheet are shown to exist for the western and eastern parts of PIB due to basement structures affecting the inflow of CDW which has been made responsible to the recent fast retreat of the Pine Island and Thwaites Glacier systems.


Abstract. Secondary organic material (SOM) produced by the oxidation of anthropogenic volatile organic compounds can be light-absorbing (i.e., brown carbon). Spectral data of the optical properties, however, are scarce. The present study obtained the continuous spectra of the real and imaginary refractive indices (m = n-i k) in the ultraviolet (UV)-to-visible region using spectroscopic ellipsometry for n and UV–visible spectrometry for k. Several different types of SOM were produced in an oxidation flow reactor by photooxidation of toluene and m-xylene for variable concentrations of nitrogen oxides (NOx). The results show that the k values of the anthropogenically derived material were at least 10 times greater than those of the biogenically derived material. The presence of NOx was associated with the production of organonitrogen compounds, such as nitro-aromatics and organonitrates, which enhanced light absorption. Compared with the SOM derived from m-xylene, the toluene-derived SOM had larger k values, as well as a greater NOx-induced enhancement, suggesting different brown-carbon-forming potentials of different aromatic precursor compounds. The results imply that anthropogenic SOM produced around urban environments can have an important influence on ultraviolet irradiance, which might consequently influence photochemical cycles of urban pollution.


In this letter, the problem of blind separation of n independent sources from their m linear instantaneous mixtures is considered. First, a generalized contrast function is defined as a valuable extension of the existing classical and nonsymmetrical contrast functions. It is applicable to the overdetermined blind separation (m > n) with an unknown number of sources, because not only independent components but also redundant ones are allowed in the outputs of a separation system. Second, a natural gradient learning algorithm developed primarily for the complete case (m = n) is shown to work as well with an n m or m m separating matrix, for each optimizes a certain mutual information contrast function. Finally, we present stability analysis for a newly proposed generalized orthogonal natural gradient algorithm (which can perform the overdetermined blind separation when n is unknown), obtaining an expectable result that its local stability conditions are slightly stricter than those of the conventional natural gradient algorithm using an invertible mixing matrix (m = n).


Mexican and red wolves were both faced with extinction in the wild until captive populations were established more than two decades ago. These captive populations have been successfully managed genetically to minimize mean kinship and retain genetic variation. Descendants of these animals were subsequently used to start reintroduced populations, which now number about 40–50 Mexican wolves in Arizona and New Mexico and about 100 red wolves in North Carolina. The original captive Mexican wolf population was descended from three founders. Merging this lineage with two other captive lineages, each with two founders, has been successfully carried out in the captive population and is in progress in the reintroduced population. This effort has resulted in increased fitness of cross‐lineage wolves, or genetic rescue, in both the captive and reintroduced populations. A number of coyote‐red wolf hybrid litters were observed in the late 1990s in the reintroduced red wolf population. Intensive identification and management efforts appear to have resulted in the elimination of this threat. However, population reintroductions of both Mexican and red wolves appear to have reached numbers well below the generally recommended number for recovery and there is no current effort to re‐establish other populations.


JEZIK: A Cognitive Translation System Employing a Single, Visible Spectrum Tracking Detector Davor Bzik Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, BYU Master of Science A link between eye movement mechanics and the mental processing associated with text reading has been established in the past. The pausing of an eye gaze on a specific word within a sentence reflects correctness or fluency of a translated text. A cognitive translation system has been built employing a single, inexpensive web camera without the use of infrared illumination. It was shown that the system translates the text, detects rarely occurring and out-of-context words from eye gaze information, and provides solutions in real time while the user is still reading. The solutions are in form of a translation, definition or synonym for the word in question. The only effort required is that of reading.


Although the relationship between Rom 1.18–2.5 and Wisdom of Solomon 13–15 is variously interpreted, those who detect a level of textual engagement tend to agree that while Rom 2.1–5 critiques Wis 15.1–4, Rom 1.18–32 stands as a compressed yet theologically consistent restatement of Wis 13.1–14.31, 15.7–19. This paper challenges this virtual consensus by rereading Rom 1.18–32 in light of the rhetorical turn at Rom 2.1. The kerygmatic location of Paul's polemic, together with a series of alterations to the Hellenistic Jewish polemical tradition, suggest an interpretation of Rom 1.18–32 that runs directly counter to Wisdom of Solomon's rhetorical and theological purposes in chs. 13–15. Whereas Wisdom of Solomon's polemic functions to reinforce the anthropological distinction between Jew and Gentile on the basis of true and false worship, Paul reworks the aniconic tradition to establish the essential unity of humanity.


This study examines the cultivation of intentionality and integration in a foundation level General Education class: Communities and Societies. Three research tasks were set within the context of a grounded theoretical approach: codification of indicators for both intentionality and integration, and an examination of student learning logs. Intentionality was helpfully scaffolded by targeted questions for reflection while integration appeared more spontaneously, apparently as a result of the course design and delivery but also possibly as a result of the nature of free-styling journaling. Learning logs suggested students found full class discussions, continuous small groups, and journaling itself to be the most consistently useful in terms of their learning. One student described him/herself as a sleeping giant whose excitement for learning was re-awakened in this course. The suggestion is that more explicit cultivation of both intentionality and integration may help other sleeping giants (both students and faculty) to awaken.


Recent breakthroughs in adversarial generative modeling have led to models capable of producing video samples of high quality, even on large and complex datasets of real-world video. In this work, we focus on the task of video prediction, where given a sequence of frames extracted from a video, the goal is to generate a plausible future sequence. We first improve the state of the art by performing a systematic empirical study of discriminator decompositions and proposing an architecture that yields faster convergence and higher performance than previous approaches. We then analyze recurrent units in the generator, and propose a novel recurrent unit which transforms its past hidden state according to predicted motion-like features, and refines it to to handle dis-occlusions, scene changes and other complex behavior. We show that this recurrent unit consistently outperforms previous designs. Our final model leads to a leap in the state-of-the-art performance, obtaining a test set Frechet Video Distance of 25.7, down from 69.2, on the large-scale Kinetics-600 dataset.


CubeSats have revolutionized the way scientists and students perceive space. The majority of CubeSat communication is greatly limited by the AX.25 standards, the small communication window, the available transmission power, and the available bandwidth at VHF/UHF band. As a result, CubeSat radios could only establish low data rate links which restrict the communication capabilities of a CubeSat mission. In this article, a brief review of current software-defined radios (SDRs) used in space missions is given. In addition, two different design methodologies for SDRs for CubeSats are proposed that can be used as a guideline for CubeSat developers. Finally, a high data rate SDR for the UOW CubeSat project is presented that address all the above limitations. The radio operates at S-band, employs quadrature amplitude modulation with a maximum data rate of 60 Mb/s consuming 2.6 Watts in transmit mode and 0.4 Watts in receive mode. The digital signal processing functions and the mode control of the radio are orchestrated by a field programmable gate array system-on-chip. The analog radio frequency domain is accommodated by a 4-layer printed circuit board with dimensions of 92 mm $\times88$ mm. The goal of the UOW CubeSat radio is an adaptive, on-flight reconfigurable communication platform that will revolutionize the current communication capabilities of the CubeSats and expand nanosatellites mission perspectives.


Different cultures and the specific culture manifested within them are intrinsically linked to addiction in a complex fashion which has a long history. For important thinkers, such as Nietzsche, addiction actually embodies human culture, rendering addiction and culture inseparable. This is clearly seen within the Western world's addiction to the consumption of material goods and the damage that results. Utopia has often become dystopia. Not only is an understanding of addiction key to understanding culture but to an understanding of the very act thinking itself and the way of being in the world. Addiction raises key philosophical questions, such as: do people really have a choice in their behavior, and what governs them; is it free will or predetermination? Is it biology or environment is it the external world or the internal that drives addiction, or a complex combination of both? In a contemporary context the media frenzy around celebrity addiction continually fuels public debate in this area, and this book deepens the understanding of addiction within this contentious context. This book addresses a key concern over how addiction became the norm, and it seeks to understand its dominance comprehensively. How did it come to pass that not being an addict was a transgressive act and way of being? While there has been a great deal of debate about addiction utilizing the discourse of individual and often competing disciplines such as biology and psychology, little attention has been paid to the cultural aspects of addiction. The innovative approach taken by this book is to offer insights into this complex area through a contemporary methodology that covers diverse interrelated areas. Drawing on different disciplines, offering deeper insights, from the analysis of music lyrics to empirical social science and anthropological work in AA groups in Mexico and the portrayal of the "addiction' to therapy in film and television, amongst other areas, this book addresses the need for a more comprehensive approach. Academic analysis is also given to the discourse on celebrity culture and addiction. A contemporary fusion of the humanities and the social sciences is the best way forward to tackle this subject and move the debate on. The focus of this study is an innovative interdisciplinary and intercultural approach to addiction, from the social sciences to the humanities, including cultural studies, film and media studies, and literary studies. Areas that have been overlooked, such as lost women's writings, are examined, in addition to comics, popular film and television, and the work of AA groups. This edited collection is the first study to provide such a comprehensive analysis of the cultures of addiction. Traversing cultures across the globe, including Asia, Central America, as well as Europe and America, this book opens up the debate in addiction studies and cultural studies. The important insights the book delivers helps to answer questions such as: In what way can Deleuze further the understanding of addiction through the analysis of rock lyrics? How does anthropology improve the understanding of AA groups? How can cultural studies deepen knowledge on the "addiction" to therapy? These are just some of the vast array of areas this book covers. Other areas include the condemnation of "addiction" to comic reading through an historical examination, violence in popular culture, and lost women's writing on addiction. No other book has such depth and contemporary breadth. Cultures of Addiction is an important book for those taking cultural studies courses across a range of interrelated disciplines, including English and literary studies, history, American studies, and film and media studies. This will be invaluable to library collections in these fields and beyond in the social sciences, and specifically in addiction studies and psychology. (Jason Lee, Editor)


Environmental education is one site of many that reinforces dominant obesity discourses and weight-based oppression through privileging fit, able bodies. Using personal narratives and insights from the nascent field of fat studies, we offer a critical analysis of obesity discourse in environmental writing in general and environmental education in particular. We argue that intersectional analyses of embodiment, abjection, and crisis rhetoric could be generative for both environmental education and fat studies.


Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is the most common type of B-cell lymphoma. It is characterized by a heterogeneous morphology, genetic changes and clinical behavior. A small specific subgroup of DLBCL, harbouring a MYC gene translocation is associated with worse patient prognosis and outcome. Typically, the MYC translocation is assessed with a molecular test (FISH), that is expensive and time-consuming. Our hypothesis is that genetic changes, such as translocations could be visible as changes in the morphology of an HE-stained specimen. However, it has not proven possible to use morphological criteria for the detection of a MYC translocation in the diagnostic setting due to lack of specificity. In this paper, we apply a deep learning model to automate detection of the MYC translocations in DLBCL based on HE-stained specimens. The proposed method works at the whole-slide level and was developed based on a multicenter data cohort of 91 patients. All specimens were stained with HE, and the MYC translocation was confirmed using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). The system was evaluated on an additional 66 patients, and obtained AUROC of 0.83 and accuracy of 0.77. The proposed method presents proof of a concept giving insights in the applicability of deep learning methods for detection of a genetic changes in DLBCL. In future work we will evaluate our algorithm for automatic pre-screen of DLBCL specimens to obviate FISH analysis in a large number of patients.


Despite the importance to identify infants at risk for later language concerns, little research focused on early communicative behaviors in extremely-low-gestational-age infants (ELGA, GA < 28 weeks). In particular, none investigated the multimodal communication in these infants, also considering possible connections to motor skills. Furthermore, rarely the communicative development of these infants has been studied as a result of the interplay among individual and environmental components. Thus, guided by the theoretical framework of the Dynamic Systems Theory, which views development as a result of the interaction between multiple subsystems within the infant and the context, two studies were designed.
In Study 1, spontaneous communicative behaviors (gestures, vocal utterances, and coordinations) were evaluated during mother-infant interactions in 20 ELGA infants and 20 full-term (FT) infants at 12 months. Less advanced communicative and motor abilities emerged in ELGA infants relative to FT infants. Giving and representational gestures were produced at a lower rate by ELGA infants, and pointing gestures and words were produced by a lower percentage of ELGA infants. Positive associations between gestural and fine motor skills were found in the ELGA group.
In Study 2, maternal responses provided to the infants' communicative behaviors were coded with regard to contingency and relevancy at 12 months. The mothers of the ELGA infants did not appear at risk for providing less prompt and meaningful responses relative to the mothers of FT infants, and their relevant responses were strictly related to their infants' communicative abilities at 12 months. Overall, the repeated labeling responses had a predictive effect on the expressive language at 24 months.
We discuss the importance to combine spontaneous communicative behaviors and motor skills in the clinical assessment and early intervention with ELGA infants. We also emphasize the usefulness of the maternal repeated labeling for supporting language development of these infants.


The work of contemporary Italian thinkers, what Roberto Esposito refers to as Italian Theory, is attracting increasing attention around the world. This book explores the reasons for its growing popularity, its distinguishing traits, and why people are turning to these authors for answers to real-world issues and problems. The approach he takes, in line with the keen historical consciousness of Italian thinkers themselves, is a historical one. He offers insights into the great "unphilosophical" philosophers of life-poets, painters, politicians and revolutionaries, film-makers and literary critics-who have made Italian thought, from its beginnings, an "impure" thought. People like Machiavelli, Croce, Gentile, and Gramsci were all compelled to fulfill important political roles in the societies of their times. No wonder they felt that the abstract vocabulary and concepts of pure philosophy were inadequate to express themselves. Similarly, artists such as Dante, Leonardo Da Vinci, Leopardi, or Pasolini all had to turn to other disciplines outside philosophy in order to discuss and grapple with the messy, constantly changing realities of their lives. For this very reason, says Esposito, because Italian thinkers have always been deeply engaged with the concrete reality of life (rather than closed up in the introspective pursuits of traditional continental philosophy) and because they have looked for the answers of today in the origins of their own historical roots, Italian theory is a "living thought." Hence the relevance or actuality that it holds for us today. Continuing in this tradition, the work of Roberto Esposito is distinguished by its interdisciplinary breadth. In this book, he passes effortlessly from literary criticism to art history, through political history and philosophy, in an expository style that welcomes non-philosophers to engage in the most pressing problems of our times. As in all his works, Esposito is inclusive rather than exclusive; in being so, he celebrates the affirmative potency of life.


ABSTRACT Van Loon-Steensma, J.M. and Slim, P.A., 2013. The impact of erosion protection by stone dams on salt-marsh vegetation on two Wadden Sea barrier islands. This paper describes and quantifies the effect of low stone dams on the extent and composition of salt-marsh habitats on two Dutch Wadden islands: Terschelling and Ameland. The stone dams were built to prevent erosion of the salt-marsh edge. Analyses of a series of aerial photographs taken between 1949 and 2010 show a strong reduction in retreat of the marsh edge on the island of Terschelling, from an average rate of 1.3 m per year before construction of the dam to 0.2 m per year after dam construction. Within 20 years of construction of the dam, sedimentation raised the mudflats between the dam and the former cliff, creating a broader foreshore and new marsh area with typical salt-marsh vegetation cover. The dam on the island of Ameland was built on the remnants of a previous low coastal defense. This reinforcement stopped cliff retreat and led to restoration of the eroded salt-marsh strip. Vegetation surveys along transects perpendicular to the coastline revealed that at both sites, typical pioneer salt-marsh vegetation had developed in the raised area between the erosion protection works and the former marsh edge. These habitats were not found in the reference transects without erosion protection. Based on these findings, we conclude that under favorable conditions for sedimentation, erosion protection by low stone dams may bring about a strong reduction in retreat of the salt-marsh edge while helping to restore an ecological attractive foreshore zone.


The purpose of this study therefore is to define the information needs and information-seeking behaviour of family physicians in Nigeria. This will enable an evaluation of whether these information needs are being met or not. A structured, self-administered questionnaire that had been pre-tested and validated was distributed to all the 125 family physicians at the 25th anniversary of the Faculty of Family Medicine in Nigeria.


First there's fellow bounty hunter Ranger, currently on the run from a murder rap and requesting Stephanie's help. Trouble is she can't decide if she should turn him in or keep him for herself. Then there's sexy vice cop Joe Morelli - the man her heart says she's in love with (even though her head says otherwise). He's after Ranger too - but for less romantic reasons...And now there's another male in her life. He's big, he's orange, and he howls when he's left alone. Sexual temptation, homicidal maniacs, car crashes and doughnut addiction are all part of Stephanie Pum's daily routine. But all that pales into insignificance when Grandma Mazur moves in...


In this paper, we explored comprehensive synthetic approaches to axially substituted N-heteroacene based nanoribbon with 11 linearly annulated rings. Although synthetically tedious, we found that a stepwise cyclization between α-diketone and o-aromatic diamine to grow nanoribbon is more efficient than simultaneous dicylization in one step using 3,6-disubstituted-1,2,4,5-tetraaminobenzene. In addition, for the axial modification, pre-modification of a building block was superior to post-modification of preformed nanoribbon. The nanoribbon was characterized with UV-Vis spectroscopy, CV, DSC, and TGA. The nanoribbon showed a relatively stabilized ELUMO of −3.74 eV due to the electron-deficient nature of the core and reduced Egap of 1.55 eV as a result of intramolecular charge transfer between the core and axial thiophene. The electronic properties were also investigated with theoretical calculations at B3LYP/6-31G* level of theory/basis set. Particular attention was paid to the distribution of frontier molecular orbitals as these correlated with the measured electronic properties. The title nanoribbon exhibited remarkable thermal stability with a 424 °C decomposition temperature at 5% weight loss. The axially substituted nanoribbon showed excellent one-dimensional fibrillation properties via organogelation. The nanoribbon gelled hydrocarbon solvents and select halogenated solvents with the lowest critical gelation concentration of 1.2 mM in hexadecane. FE-SEM confirmed the existence of endless flexible one-dimensional fibers with a thickness of ca. 200 nm. Despite the large π-core, the axial functionalization imparted not only processability but also self-assembly ability while maintaining excellent thermal stability. These properties would be useful in future optoelectronic applications.


While contemporary Australia views tertiary education as predominately a private good, it is argued that a university educated population creates substantial public benefit, and is in the public interest. Such a contrast in perceptions is problematic to the creation of policies to meet the social justice rights of students. A representative survey of the financial circumstances of second year accounting students at a regional Australian university is undertaken to create a social report of student circumstances. Both survey data and reflective written comments are recorded to describe a social account of the student experience. This is relevant in two respects, first it reports contemporary Australian tertiary student circumstances, and secondly it contributes to the sparse but emerging accounting literature of social reporting. The study concludes that the exploitation of students in their employment with respect to rates of pay and hours worked challenge current policy and give visibility to the social justice needs of students.


Black-Box Optimization (BBO) methods can find optimal policies for systems that interact with complex environments with no analytical representation. As such, they are of interest in many Artificial Intelligence (AI) domains. Yet classical BBO methods fall short in high-dimensional non-convex problems. They are thus often overlooked in real-world AI tasks. Here we present a BBO method, termed Explicit Gradient Learning (EGL), that is designed to optimize high-dimensional ill-behaved functions. We derive EGL by finding weak-spots in methods that fit the objective function with a parametric Neural Network (NN) model and obtain the gradient signal by calculating the parametric gradient. Instead of fitting the function, EGL trains a NN to estimate the objective gradient directly. We prove the convergence of EGL in convex optimization and its robustness in the optimization of integrable functions. We evaluate EGL and achieve state-of-the-art results in two challenging problems: (1) the COCO test suite against an assortment of standard BBO methods; and (2) in a high-dimensional non-convex image generation task.


Marine species distribution modelling (SDM) studies frequently pair surface environmental variables with deep-water occurrence records de spite the disparity of environmental conditions at the surface and at depth. Straightforward methods, which require only simple modification of existing SDM techniques, have been recently proposed as a means to overcome this problem. Nevertheless, subsequent marine SDM studies have not adopted these modified techniques, continuing to draw conclusions from analyses that associate 2-dimensional (2D; i.e. surface) environmental data with occurrence points distributed in a 3-dimensional (3D) space (i.e. across a range of depths). These include studies involving multi-species macroecological assessments, where SDMs are rarely tailored to suit each species modelled. Here, we use traditional (2D) and modified (2.5D) SDM methods to emphasise the importance of incorporating depth in marine ecological modelling. We demonstrate that ignoring depth may lead to misrepresentative and potentially misleading results, and show that relatively straightforward 2.5D techniques provide an enhanced representation of the environmental niche and, therefore, produce more representative range estimates than their 2D counterparts. Explicit 3D approaches need to be developed to better represent marine diversity and distributions and to test macroecological generalisations.


The focus of this thesis is the design of rate-control (RC) algorithms for constant quality (CQ) video encoding and transcoding, where CQ is measured by the variance of quality in PSNR (peak signal-to-noise ratio). By modeling DCT coefficients as having Laplacian distributions, Laplacian rate/models are developed for MPEG-4 encoding and transcoding. These models accurately estimate the rate and distortion (in PSNR) of MPEG-4 compressed bitstreams. The rate model is applied to a CBR (constant bit rate) encoding algorithm. This algorithm offers a better or similar PSNR as compared to the Q2 [7] algorithm with a lower variation in bitrate. Thus, it outperforms Q2. These models are then applied to CQ video coding and transcoding. Most CBR control algorithms aim to produce a bitstream that meets a certain bitrate with the highest quality. Due to the non-stationary nature of video sequences, the quality of the compressed sequence changes over time, which is not desirable to end-users. To provide a solution to this problem, six CQ encoding algorithms are proposed: the first two are VBR (variable bit rate) algorithms with a fixed target quality (FTQ), the next two are CBR algorithms with FTQ, and the last two are CBR algorithms with a dynamic target quality (DTQ). Within each group of two, the quality is controlled either at the frame level (using the Laplacian rate/distortion model) or at the macroblock level (using the actual distortions). With the success of these algorithms, the CQ DTQ encoding algorithms are extended to MPEG-4 video transcoding (bitrate reduction with requantization). These CQ transcoding algorithms can handle the problems that are uniquely present in transcoders, such as the lack of the original sequence and requantization. Similar to their encoding counterparts, these CQ transcoding algorithms have an extra degree of freedom to balance the quality variation with the accuracy to the target bitrate and the average quality. Simulation results indicate that these algorithms offer lower PSNR variance while having similar/lower average PSNR and bitrate when compared with Q2T and TM5T (transcoding version of Q2 and TM5). Besides proposing MPEG-4 CQ RC algorithms, an MPEG-2 rate-control algorithm is also developed based on TM5. It aims at improving the subjective quality measured by using Watson's DVQ (digital video quality) metric. When compared with TM5, it provides a better DVQ. However, since Watson's DVQ metric is not a standard way to estimate the subjective quality, PSNR is still used in the rest of the research


The interaction between water and cellulose has been studied by deuterium NMR and water sorption isotherm measurements for a bleached kraft pulp and an unbleached linerboard pulp beaten to various degrees. Measurements of 2H quadrupole splittings, spin-lattice relaxation rates and half height line widths have been carried out at different relative humidities. Furthermore, the spin-lattice relaxation rates at 86% relative humidity were measured in the frequency range 2-62 MHz for the bleached kraft pulp, unbleached linerboard pulp and for a microfibrillated cellulose sample. The relaxation rates show a strong dependence on the resonance frequency. The reorientation of the water molecules adsorbed on fibers can be described by two corrletion times of the order of 10 ns and 50 ps respectively. Analysis of the experimental data does not show any effects of beating on the cellulose water interaction strength. All observations made can be explained by morphological changes of the fibers.


Over the last decade the Argentine banking industry has been subject to important regulatory changes, increased internationalization and restructuring. The way in which this process has affected the degree of competition is subject to discussion in Argentina, and it has been argued, along the lines of the structure-conduct-performance paradigm (SCP), that increased concentration could have undermined competition in banking markets. But, while acording to the former approach concentration is necessarily related to poor competition, the new industrial organization (NIO) approach, that relies on firms profit maximization behavior, has emphasized the weaknesses of relying on concentration measures to draw conclusions about market structure.
This paper evaluates the competitiveness of Argentine banking markets by extending the Conjectural Variations (CV) approach to the case of multiproduct firms. We model Argentine banks as multi-output firmes, operating in two markets: retail and corporate, an adequate classification to describe the characteristics of the Argentine banking system, wher some banks are more retail oriented and have a broad network of branches, mainly offering liquidity services while others have very few branches and are more specialized in giving credit to firms. We measure the degree of market power by estimating a CV model for a panel of banks from 1997 to 1999. Rather than evaluating a specific market structure, a strategy that can lead to undetermined results in the case of multi-output firms, we construct a market power index that varies in a continuum interval. This measure permits to determine the extent to which prices deviate from marginal costs, which is the relevant question from the welfare point of view. We find that for both markets, retail and corporate, are very close to the competitive solution. Finally, these results are confronted with the predictions that could be drawn from concentration measures, according to the SCP approach.


We explore the impact of pulsar electromagnetic dipole and fallback accretion emission on the luminosity of a suite of kilonova models. The pulsar models are varied over pulsar magnetic field strength, pulsar lifetime, ejecta mass, and elemental abundances; the fallback models are varied over fallback accretion rate and ejecta mass. For the abundances, we use Fe and Nd as representatives of the wind and dynamical ejecta, respectively. We simulate radiative transfer in the ejecta in either 1D spherical or 2D cylindrical spatial geometry. For the grid of 1D simulations, the mass fraction of Nd is 0, 10−4, or 10−3, and the rest is Fe. Our models that fit the bolometric luminosity of AT 2017gfo (the kilonova associated with the first neutron star merger discovered in gravitational waves, GW170817) do not simultaneously fit the B, V, and I time evolution. However, we find that the trends of the evolution in B and V magnitudes are better matched by the fallback model relative to the pulsar model, implying the time-dependence of the remnant source influences the color evolution. Further exploration of the parameter space and model deficiencies is needed before we can describe AT 2017gfo with a remnant source.


1. The NADP-dependent glutamate dehydrogenase of Neurospora crassa undergoes slow reversible structural transitions, with half-times in the order of a few minutes, between active and inactive states. The inactive state of the enzyme, which predominates at pH values below 7.0, has an intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence 25% lower than that of the active state, which predominates at pH values above 7.6. The inactive state can be activated either by an increase in pH or by addition of activators such as succinate. 2. The kinetics of the slow transitions that follow activating and inactivating rapid changes in conditions have been monitored by measurements of protein fluorescence. The results show that the slow reversible conformational change detected by the change in fluorescence is the rate-limiting process for enzyme activation and inactivation. 3. In both directions this conformational change follows apparent first-order kinetics and the rate constant is independent of protein concentration. These kinetics and published measurements of molecular weight are indicative of an isomerization process. 4. In both directions the changes show a large energy of activation and a large positive entropy of activation, consistent with a considerable disturbance of conformation in the transition state. 5. Comparisons of the fluorescence emission spectra of the active and inactive states indicate that the difference in fluorescence is produced by quenching, possibly intramolecular, in the inactive conformation. Iodide ions cause similar quenching. 6. In some mutationally altered forms of the enzyme comparable but modified conformational changes can be followed by protein fluorescence.


In this work we report the
development of a cheap and scalable flow-based flash nanoprecipitation approach to prepare D-leucine nanoparticles particularly useful as
glidants in dry powder for inhalation. Starting from preliminary batch
screens, the process was successfully optimized and scaled-up
under mesofluidic conditions. The nebulization with both mini and nano spray-dryer,
the SEM analysis of nanoparticles and the aerodynamic evaluation of a formulation
obtained by physical mixing of atomized D-leucine powders with budenoside showed an
excellent decrease in particle size without altering the morphology, and a
marked improvement in the aerodynamic properties of the drug. This simple and
economic method by physical mixing of leucine with micronized active
pharmaceutical ingredients can represent a valid alternative to co-spray-drying.


Centralised approaches often run counter to people-centered management of wastewater. Large areas are not served by
formal facilities and existing systems are often overloaded and poorly maintained, with major effects especially for poor
people. A possibly more people-centered alternative may be to adopt a decentralised approach that locates planning
and aspects implementation at community level and enhances local ownership of wastewater management. (DWWM).
Although DWWM should not be considered to be a panacea, this paper presents a number of decentralised options and
considers their implications. To implement decentralised options requires more than local initiative – a supportive crosscutting
policy environment is crucial to move initiatives beyond a pilot scale. The paper considers the requirements of an
effective enabling policy and what it means in practice It argues for holistic, inclusive and replicable policies that link to
the wider context of poverty reduction within a cross-cutting framework of good governance in decentralised political
administration.


The introduction and diffusion of personal computers are widely viewed as a technological revolution. Using U.S. metropolitan area–level panel data, this paper asks whether links between PC adoption, educational attainment, and the return to skill conform to a model of technological revolutions in which the speed and extent of adoption are endogenous. The model implies that cities will adjust differently to the arrival of a more skill-intensive means of production, with the returns to skill increasing most where skill is abundant and its return is low. We show that the cross-city data fit many of the predictions of the model during the period 1980–2000, the PC diffusion era.


Based on the standard axiom of individual utility maximization, rational choice has postulated that higher income inequality translates into greater redistribution by shaping the median voter's preferences. While numerous papers have tested this proposition, the literature has remained divided over the appropriate measure for redistribution. Revisiting the original contribution by Meltzer and Richard in 1981, the present paper argues that the median voter hypothesis implies that relative redistribution should increase in line with inequality. However, an empirical test based on 110 observations from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) finds no support for the hypothesis. By contrast, voters' actual preferences offer a better guide to understanding redistributive outcomes. The findings challenge the narrow concept of human motivation that underpins rational choice, and point to the importance of fairness orientations that have been emphasized in behavioral economics.


BACKGROUND
Improved tuberculosis (TB) screening is urgently needed for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected patients.

METHODS
An observational, multi-country, cross-sectional study of HIV-infected patients to compare a standardized diagnostic evaluation (SDE) for TB with standard of care (SOC). SOC evaluations included TB symptom review (current cough, fever, night sweats and/or weight loss), sputum Ziehl-Neelsen staining and chest radiography. SDE screening added extended clinical signs and symptoms and fluorescent microscopy (FM). All participants underwent all evaluations. Mycobacterium tuberculosis on sputum culture was the primary outcome.

RESULTS
A total of 801 participants were enrolled from Botswana, Malawi, South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, Peru and Brazil. The median age was 33 years; 37% were male, and median CD4 count was 275 cells/mm(3). Thirty-one participants (4%) had a positive culture on Löwenstein-Jensen media and 54 (8%) on MGIT. All but one positive culture came from sub-Saharan Africa, where the prevalence of TB was 54/445 (12%). SOC screening had 54% sensitivity (95%CI 40-67) and 76% specificity (95%CI 72-80). Positive and negative predictive values were respectively 24% and 92%. No elements of the SDE improved the predictive values of SOC.

CONCLUSIONS
Symptom-based screening with smear microscopy was insufficiently sensitive. More sensitive diagnostic testing is required for HIV-infected patients.


Distributed switch-and-stay combining (DSSC) has been envisioned as an effective transmission technique to achieve spatial diversity in a distributed fashion, with low implementation complexity. In this paper, we take a step further to incorporate DSSC into spectrum-limited environment, where the operating nodes have to share the frequency radio spectrum with licensed users. In particular, by deploying DSSC scheme in cognitive radio networks, we have shown that the low transmit power at unlicensed users, inflicted by the peak interference power constraint at licensed users, can be alleviated. We present closed-form expressions for outage probability and spectral efficiency, enabling us to evaluate and optimize the considered network performance. Numerical and simulation results show that when the switching threshold is below the outage threshold the full diversity order can be guaranteed at the secondary networks.


This paper describes the nature of capital flight, the methodologies used to measure it, and its drivers. The paper presents updated estimates of the magnitude of capital flight from 39 African countries for which adequate data are available for the period 1970-2010. It gives a global context of the problem of capital flight from Africa by providing comparative indicators on capital flight and related flows for other developing regions. The paper undertakes a detailed econometric analysis of the drivers of capital flight from African countries. It explores empirically the role of domestic and external factors in driving capital flight, including structural factors, the macroeconomic environment, governance, risk and returns to investment, capital account openness, and financial development. The first objective of the study is to contribute to the literature by providing the most comprehensive analysis of capital flight from Africa that takes into account economic as well as non-economic dimensions, and recognizes the importance of both the domestic and global contexts. The second objective is to contribute to the policy debate on capital flight both in Africa and globally.


This article reports a survey of first year law students (1Ls) on their first day of class in the United States, England, Scotland, Germany, Australia, and Argentina. The survey asked about the 1L's opinions of the prestige and honor of lawyers and whether lawyers deserve their incomes. It revealed that 1Ls had quite low opinions about whether lawyers were honorable, sometimes lower than the opinions held by the general public. The survey also inquired about the sources of information students found helpful in forming their opinions. The 1Ls reported that the news, discussions with friends, and lawyers in the family were helpful. Surprisingly high numbers reported that popular culture sources had been helpful. Numerous studies have shown that people's opinions are influenced by fictitious pop culture they have consumed (so-called media effects). In some countries (particularly the U. S. Germany, and Argentina), the 1L's opinions of lawyers' prestige, honor, and deserts were positively correlated to the amount of legal film and television shows they had consumed. In Scotland, they were negatively correlated. These relationships could suggest the presence of a media effect (meaning that the 1L's opinions were influenced by pop culture they had consumed). ************* This is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in the International Journal of the Legal Profession(c)(2005) Copyright Taylor & Francis.


Silicified anthoecia (fertile le'mmas and paleas) of grasses (Berriochloa communis, Berriochloa primaeva, and Berriohldoa cf. nova) were found in, the oral cavity and rib cage articulated skeletons of Teleoceras major buried in late Clarendonian volcanic ash in. Nebraska The plant fossils, thought to be food residues, help clarify, the enigmatic paleobiological role, of Teleocears, which had hippotamus-like porportions but very high-crowned teeth. Telecoceras was probably amphbious, but siliceous grasses formed a significant portion of its diet.


Accurate modeling of complex terrain, especially steep terrain, in the simulation of wind fields remains a challenge. It is well known that the terrain-following coordinate transformation method (TFCT) generally used in atmospheric flow simulations is restricted to non-steep terrain with slope angles less than 45 degrees. Due to the advantage of keeping the basic computational grids and numerical schemes unchanged, the immersed boundary method (IBM) has been widely implemented in various numerical codes to handle arbitrary domain geometry including steep terrain. However, IBM could introduce considerable implementation errors in wall modeling through various interpolations because an immersed boundary is generally not co-located with a grid line. In this paper, we perform an intercomparison of TFCT and IBM in large-eddy simulation of a turbulent wind field over a three-dimensional (3D) hill for the purpose of evaluating the implementation errors in IBM. The slopes of the three-dimensional hill are not steep and, therefore, TFCT can be applied. Since TFCT is free from interpolation-induced implementation errors in wall modeling, its results can serve as a reference for the evaluation so that the influence of errors from wall models themselves can be excluded. For TFCT, a new algorithm for solving the pressure Poisson equation in the transformed coordinate system is proposed and first validated for a laminar flow over periodic two-dimensional hills by comparing with a benchmark solution. For the turbulent flow over the 3D hill, the wind-tunnel measurements used for validation contain both vertical and horizontal profiles of mean velocities and variances, thus allowing an in-depth comparison of the numerical models. In this case, TFCT is expected to be preferable to IBM. This is confirmed by the presented results of comparison. It is shown that the implementation errors in IBM lead to large discrepancies between the results obtained by TFCT and IBM near the surface. The effects of different schemes used to implement wall boundary conditions in IBM are studied. The source of errors and possible ways to improve the IBM implementation are discussed.


Metronidazole is recommended as the first-line treatment for Bacterial Vaginosis (BV). With respect to various side effects of metronidazole and increased antibiotic resistance, it seems necessary to find a medication with fewer side effects. The present study aimed to compare the effects of Mycocin vaginal cream (made of garlic and thyme) and metronidazole vaginal gel on treatment of the patients with BV. This clinical trial which was conducted on 120 married women aged 18-44 years whose infection with BV was diagnosed through clinical Amsel criteria. The participants were randomly divided into two groups of 60 receiving Mycocin vaginal cream or metronidazole vaginal gel for seven days. Clinical Amsel criteria and the patients' complaints were assessed again 7 days after completion of the treatment period. The results showed a decrease in the patients' complaints and clinical Amsel criteria after the treatment with Mycocin vaginal cream and metronidazole vaginal gel. However, no significant difference was observed between the two groups regarding clinical improvement in Amsel criteria (P<0.05). Mixed Garlic and Thyme vaginal cream (Mycocin) seems to be an appropriate alternative for metronidazole vaginal gel in treatment of BV.


Oceanic new production is a potential avenue for the removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide to the deep abyss. The ability to estimate new production on large, ocean-basin scales has important implications for studies of the greenhouse effect. This paper describes the development of a method which will allow real-time estimates of new production on ocean-basin scales, given real-time data on ocean colour and sea-surface temperature from satellites. This study has concentrated on the northwest Indian Ocean region but the protocol developed could be geographically transportable. Results from a biogeochemical study carried out in the northwest Indian Ocean during a monsoon and an intermonsoon period in 1994 indicate that this region can be partitioned into 6 distinct provinces based on bathymetry, sea-surface temperature and chlorophyll measurements. Parameters that define the vertical structure in the biomass profile and the photosynthesis-light curve have been established for each province and these, in combination with archived satellite data, are used to compute the primary production for each province using an established light-dependent model. From our empirically derived relationship between the f-ratio and primary production, new production for the northwest Indian Ocean over these 2 different seasons is computed.


The most common and devastating disease affecting the cultured shrimp
especially Penaeus monodon is caused by the white spot syndrome virus (WSSV), which
has spread throughout the world mainly through different species of crustaceans carrying
the virus. Although considerable progress has been made in the molecular
characterisation of WSSV, little information is available on shrimp genes which are
involved in the defence and progression of WSSV within the host. Similarly, knowledge
of the virus-host cell interaction could reveal molecular pathways exploited by the virus,
and targets that could be pursued.
Quantitative real time PCR method was used to estimate the rate of viral
progression in different tissues of P. monodon at 6, 12, 24, 36 and 48 hpi (hours post
infection) following experimental injection with a known copy number of virus in the
abdominal muscle. At 12 hpi the viral load was highest in haemocytes followed by
pleopod, muscle and gills whereas at 48 hpi the gills, the main target of WSSV, showed
the highest viral load followed by pleopod, muscle and haemocytes. Viral copy number in
the haemocytes was the lowest beyond 12 hpi indicating a remarkable decrease in the rate
of viral replication in haemocytes compared to other tissues. The viral load in haemocytes
though, increased again beyond 36 hpi it never surpassed the load in the other tissues.
This might be due to the haemocytes infiltrating back from the infected tissues carrying
the virus back into circulation leading to increase in the viral load in the haemolymph.
To develop a better understanding of shrimp antiviral defences and possibly
develop new control measures for WSSV, differential expression of immune related
genes in haemocytes following WSSV infection were measured. Transcriptomic approach
involving synthesis of cDNA from RNA isolated from both the control and
iv
experimentally infected shrimps were carried out to study the relative expression of
immune gene through semi-quantitative PCR. The specific primers targeted to amplify
the immune genes were designed from the published sequence data using suitable
softwares. Optimised protocol was used for PCR amplification of the cDNAs of the target
genes. The study revealed differential expression of immune related genes encoding Clectin,
lysozyme, prophenoloxidase, penaeidin, crustin and haemocyanin. The
survivability of animals and the elevated level of immune gene expression were found to
be directly linked. Animals surviving beyond 3½ days showed higher expression levels of
the genes encoding lysozyme, C-lectin, penaeidin, prophenoloxidase-1 and
prophenoloxidase-2 than those animals which died before 2½ days. This is indicative of
genetic basis of individual variations in disease resistance. It also suggests that the gene
expression level quantified through semi-quantitative PCR can be used as a biomarker for
selecting broodstocks for better resistance to WSSV infection, thus promising a role in the
fight against WSSV along with other management measures.
To understand the mechanism of viral infection, it is very important to study how
the viral infection affects the host's protein expression. After the experimental infection
with the WSSV, protein profiles of various tissues like gills, hepatopancreas and muscle
tissues were studied by SDS PAGE at different time points and compared with the
controls. In addition, the protein profiles of different subcellular organelles were also
analyzed by SDS PAGE.


The first chapter introduces the area of phenyleneethynylenes. The parent of the novel systems presented here, 1,4-bis(phenylethynyl)benzene (BPEB), is an ex- tended π–conjugated system, known for its interesting structural, optical and elec- tronic properties. Derivatives of this system have demonstrated great potential in the field of organic electronics, particularly as components in OLEDs, PV cells and molecular wires. An introduction to the phenyeneethynylenes and fundamentals of various photophysical properties is presented, along with a brief overview of several synthetic methodologies available for the preparation of arylethynylenes. In Chap- ter 2 the equipment and methods used for the determination of the excited state properties of the compounds are discussed.
The preparations and excited state study of a series of thiophene–based aryle- neethynylene oligomers are reported in Chapter 3. This chapter begins with a short review of thiophene based molecules followed by a discussion of the synthetic pro- cedures available for the preparation of the various dibromoheteroarene cores. The work presented here has allowed comparisons to be drawn with the photophysical and structural properties of the known 2,5-bis(phenylethynyl)thiophene, upon mod- ification of the central thiophene core. Oligomers containing an oxidised thiophene (thiophene-1,1-dioxide) displayed significantly red–shifted absorption and emission bands compared to those of the parent and derivatives, indicating significant ICT in the excited state. Furthermore, the lifetimes of the thiophene-1,1-dioxide sys- tems were significantly longer than those of the non–oxidised derivatives, resulting in much higher rates of fluorescence decay (kf ). Quantum yields for this series of thienyl arylethynylenes varied from 3 % to 43 %. Several systems featuring pe- ripheral substituents (OMe and CN) were prepared to probe the effect of electron donating and withdrawing groups on the photophysical properties of the oligomers. Also, two of the oligomers prepared featured a break in the conjugation across the thiophene derivative and one of these molecules exhibited phosphorescence upon cooling to 77 K, allowing direct measurement of the triplet energy. Chapter 4 begins with a short review of the diazole heterocycles, to illustrate the potential applications of these systems. The novel oxygen-containing diazoles were compared to their sulfur–containing analogues, which have been reported pre- viously in the literature. The benzofurazan and benzothiadiazole–based oligomers have been appended with peripheral substituents in the form of electron–donating and electron–withdrawing groups (R = H, t–Bu, OMe, NH2, CO2Me and CN), in an attempt to monitor the effect of increasing electron donation and electron withdrawing effects on these already electron–deficient oligomeric systems. 2,5- bis(Phenylethynyl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole exhibited high energy absorption and emission maxima, as well as relatively narrow absorption and emission profiles, in contrast to the broad profiles of the other electron–deficient systems. The benzofurazan se- ries exhibited broad, unstructured emission profiles, yet all systems displayed two distinct absorption bands. Fluorescence quantum yields of these compounds were generally very high; for 4,7-bis(4-t-butylphenylethynyl)benzofurazan, φf = 0.96. All benzofurazan and benzothiadiazole arylethynylenes displayed fluorescence lifetimes
of several nanoseconds. Chapter 5 presents a comparison of the photophysical properties of selected
molecules from Chapters 3 & 4 and BPEB, as well as suggestions for future work. All novel systems have been purified and characterised using typical methods (1H and 13C NMR spectroscopy, accurate mass spectrometry, melting point, and elemen- tal analysis and crystallographic structure determination where possible) and their excited state properties have been probed using photophysical methods (including room and low temperature UV–vis absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy and fluoresence quantum yields and lifetime). Ab initio calculations have afforded opti- mised geometries which have been compared to molecular structures determined us- ing X–ray diffraction and vibrational spectroscopy. TD–DFT calculations have been used to rationalise the observed photophysical spectra, helping with assignment of bands in the fluorescence spectra, aiding the determination of states responsible for
absorption and emission.