Three drainage basins belonging to different drainage systems, but in close proximity, were evaluated to compare the seasonal dynamics of macroalgal communities in the northwest region of Sao Paulo State, southeastern Brazil and to evaluate the most influential stream environmental variables. Monthly samplings were carried out from September 1992 through September 1993 in three sampling sites along the main river of each basin. 10 m length cross segments were evaluated for species percent cover and richness, on both the population and community levels. Selected stream variables were measured: specific conductance, temperature, turbidity, mean cross-sectional area of the reach, current velocity, pH, and oxygen saturation (%). Pearson Product-Moment correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis were applied to evaluate interactions and contributions of the variables on seasonal variation of communities and populations. Results suggested that several factors influenced community dynamics. Significant correlations of species percent cover to oxygen saturation, cross-sectional area, pH, current velocity, specific conductance, turbidity, and precipitation were found, whereas richness was correlated to oxygen saturation, temperature, turbidity, pH, and current velocity. Multiple regression analysis revealed that precipitation and turbidity were the most influential parameters accounting for percent cover and richness variations. Seasonal changes of the cyanophyte Phormidium splendidum, the chlorophyte Stigeoclonium helveticum, the rhodophytes Chantransia stage, and Batrachospermum delicatulum were correlated with different variables. The seasonal community patterns were essentially similar in the three drainage basins, with high values of percentage cover and species number occurring typically during the dry season. However, local characteristics can modify the trend of seasonality. Interactions among some parameters (e.g. turbidity, oxygen saturation, temperature, and current velocity) are important, but precipitation seems to be the source of much of the environmental changes and the key factor responsible for seasonality of macroalgal communities in the basins investigated and, presumably, in tropical lotic systems.


Failure of plain concrete in tension is characterized by softening, which is accompanied by the development of regions of highly localized strains. The main objective of this research is to study the fracture energy (the value of tensile strain) in the concrete and its effects on the load for plain concrete beams. Beams were tested by Bosco and analysis by the use of computer program ANSYS. The three dimensional brick element was used to represent the concrete element. The results confirmed that the plain concrete beams do not fail when the first crack is obtain, but depends on the value of the tensile strain (fracture energy), where the increase in the value of the tensile strain due to increases in the load applied on the beam.


This book explores Italy's remaking in light of the loss of a wide range of territorial possessions—colonies, protectorates, and provinces—in Africa and the Balkans, the repatriation of Italian nationals from those territories, and the integration of these "national refugees" into a country devastated by war and overwhelmed by foreign displaced persons from Eastern Europe. Post-World War II Italy served as an important laboratory, in which categories differentiating foreign refugees (who had crossed national boundaries) from national refugees (those who presumably did not) were debated, refined, and consolidated. Such distinctions resonated far beyond that particular historical moment, informing legal frameworks that remain in place today. Offering an alternative genealogy of the postwar international refugee regime, the book focuses on the consequences of one of its key omissions: the ineligibility from international refugee status of those migrants who became classified as national refugees. The presence of displaced persons also posed the complex question of who belonged, culturally and legally, in an Italy that was territorially and politically reconfigured by decolonization. The process of demarcating types of refugees thus represented a critical moment for Italy, one that endorsed an ethnic conception of identity that citizenship laws made explicit. Such an understanding of identity remains salient, as Italians still invoke language and race as bases of belonging in the face of mass immigration and ongoing refugee emergencies. The book's analysis of the postwar international refugee regime and Italian decolonization illuminates the study of human rights history, humanitarianism, postwar reconstruction, fascism and its aftermaths, and modern Italian history.


We estimate auto accident externalities (more specifically insurance externalities) using panel data on state-average insurance premiums and loss costs. Externalities appear to be substantial in traffic dense states: in California, for example, we find that the increase in traffic density from a typical additional driver increases total state-wide insurance costs of other drivers by $1725 to $3239 per year, depending upon the model. High traffic density states have large economically and statistically significant externalities in all specifications we check. In contrast, the accident externality per driver in low traffic states appears quite small. On balance, accident externalities are so large that a correcting Pigouvian tax could raise $66 billion annually in California alone, more than all existing California state taxes during our study period, and over $220 billion/yr. nationally.


This thesis aims to address issues relating to genome architecture and base composition. The first part of this thesis addresses questions relating to codon usage. Initially I will investigate thousands of bacterial species using a detailed analysis of strengths of selection acting upon codons usage while also investigating patterns of optimal codon changes with respect to genomic base composition and tRNA abundance. I report that selection on codon usage increases throughout the length of highly expressed genes, in particular, the first quarter of genes have significantly lower selection. Further, it is clear that factors affecting genomic base composition can eventually lead to changes in optimal codons if the change in base composition is strong enough, however these patterns differ substantially between amino acids. The debate over translational efficiency vs. accuracy was addressed by comparing sites of differing conservation. Differing conservation were defined using a phylogenetic method, allowing sites to change in their extent of conservation throughout the tree. The results show that translational accuracy acts strongly on the top 10% of conserved sites, however is relatively weak when compared to the efficiency for other sites. Also detected is a reduction in apparent selection on codon usage on the bottom 10% of conserved sites which is likely to be caused by conflicting positive selection on amino acids. Finally, although differences in patterns are observed between amino acids, the general relationship to conservation is similar. As much of the variation in codon usage is determined by variation in base composition, this aspect of base composition is investigated in the second part of the thesis. The observed variation in intragenomic base composition in bacteria was found to be far higher than expected for GC-rich bacteria. The non-core part of the genome contributes to this variation to a greater extent than the core part, suggesting that processes such as AT-rich horizontal gene transfer may be involved. Secondly, base v composition is modelled under Brownian motion and as an extension, the OrnsteinUhlenbeck process, which allows for multiple optima throughout the tree. The model including optima fits the data better than standard Brownian motion or Brownian motion with multiple diffusion coefficients. Finally, I investigate a case where a previous codon usage analysis has been seriously confounded by an unusual genome architecture of abnormal regional base composition in two species of eukaryotic parasites in the genus Theileria. In both species, the background G+C content is 37% at most, out of the four syntenic chromosomes. In many orthologous regions however, T.annulata has a decreased G+C content of 28% while T.parva has an increased G+C content of 41%. Various factors coincide with this remarkable divergence: increased divergence at all types of site, recombination hot spots in T.parva, an increased frequency of tandem repeats and DNA sequence motifs in both species. The evolutionary origins of these unusual patterns will be discussed.


Bentonite cake is usually formed on the excavated trench surface that is supported by the bentonite slurry during construction of slurry cutoff walls. The lower hydraulic conductivity of bentonite cakes formed during construction of slurry cutoff walls in comparison to backfill materials provides an additional benefit. In the present study, the hydraulic conductivities of bentonite cakes made using three different bentonites were estimated using the modified fluid-loss test under various pressures. Both the hydraulic conductivities of bentonite cakes and cutoff-wall backfill are important in evaluating the in situ hydraulic performance of slurry cutoff-wall construction. Three bentonite slurry concentrations of 4, 6, and 8% were used to fabricate bentonite cakes that represent common field conditions. X-ray diffraction, cation exchange capacity, and swell-index data were collected to characterize the bentonites. Two modified methods for analyzing fluid-loss test results were used to estimate bentonite cake hydraulic conductivities. In addition, the viscosity as a function of time was measured to explain the sealing capacities of the bentonite slurries. The bentonite-cake hydraulic conductivities ranged from 2.15×10−11 m/s to 2.88×10−10 m/s, which were 10 to 500 times lower than the cutoff wall backfill design. Experimental results for 4 and 6% bentonite slurries were relatively similar, but the 8% slurries were noticeably different. Calculated bentonite-cake thickness and stress distribution indicated that the local void ratio and hydraulic conductivity may vary across the cake thickness. The considerably lower bentonite-cake hydraulic conductivities compared to the cutoff wall backfill design show its significance in slurry cutoff-wall construction practices.


The paper argues that kinship ties and sharing information on violent acts can be interpreted as forms of 'hostage-taking' likely to increase cooperation among co-offenders. The paper tests this hypothesis among members of two criminal groups, a Camorra clan based just outside Naples, and a Russian Mafia group that moved to Rome in the mid-1990s. The data consist of the transcripts of phone intercepts conducted on both groups by the Italian police over several months. After turning the data into a series of network matrices, we use Multivariate Quadratic Assignment Procedure to test the hypothesis. We conclude that the likelihood of cooperation is higher among members who have shared information about violent acts. Violence has a stronger effect than kinship in predicting tie formation and thus cooperation. When non-kinship-based mechanisms fostering cooperation exist, criminal groups are likely to resort to them.


Biometric face recognition is becoming more frequently used in different application scenarios. However, spoofing attacks with facial disguises are still a serious problem for state of the art face recognition algorithms. This work proposes an approach to face verification based on spectral signatures of material surfaces in the short wave infrared (SWIR) range. They allow distinguishing authentic human skin reliably from other materials, independent of the skin type. We present the design of an active SWIR imaging system that acquires four-band multispectral image stacks in real-time. The system uses pulsed small band illumination, which allows for fast image acquisition and high spectral resolution and renders it widely independent of ambient light. After extracting the spectral signatures from the acquired images, detected faces can be verified or rejected by classifying the material as "skin" or "no-skin." The approach is extensively evaluated with respect to both acquisition and classification performance. In addition, we present a database containing RGB and multispectral SWIR face images, as well as spectrometer measurements of a variety of subjects, which is used to evaluate our approach and will be made available to the research community by the time this work is published.


Several goals can be considered when optimizing blends from multiple water resources for urban water supplies. Concentration-response relationships from the literature indicate that a changed water quality can cause impacts on health, lifetime of consumer goods and use of water additives like softeners. This paper describes potential economic consequences of diluting Copenhagen's drinking water with desalinated water. With a mineral content at 50% of current levels, dental caries and cardiovascular diseases are expected to increase by 51 and 23% respectively. Meanwhile, the number of dish and clothes washer replacements is expected to decrease by 14%. In economic terms these changes are equal to 24-85% of water production costs in 2005. Our calculations further indicate that the economic impact from changing the water quality can be at least as significant as the change in operating costs going from fresh water based to desalinated water supply. Large uncertainties prevent the current results from being used for or against desalination as an option for Copenhagen's water supply. In the future, more impacts and an uncertainty analysis will be added to the assessment.


First results from ionospheric topside sounding data received at Taiwan National Central University are reported. The sounding was accomplished from the topside sounder on the Russian MIR. The topside ionograms and calculated vertical profiles of electron concentration were compared with corresponding bottomside ionograms and profiles. The total composed vertical profiles were obtained. A very good correspondence between the topside and bottomside ionospheric data, both for critical frequency and peak height was achieved and a total composite vertical profile was thus obtained. The scaled local plasma (ordinary cutoff) and critical frequencies, as well as topside profiles along the station pass, permit the position and shape of the northern crest of the equatorial anomaly to be determined. The low orbit of MIR space station gives the unique possibility to check the peak height models of the ionosphere due to ability of in-situ and remote sounding measurements simultaneously, especially in periods when the station is inside the peak.


Abstract This study investigates the use of steel fibers and hybrid composite with a total fibers content of 2% on the high strength flowing concrete and determines the density, compressive strength, static modulus of elasticity, flexural strength and toughness indices for the mixes. The results show that the inclusion of more than 0.5% of palm fibers in hybrid fibers mixes reduces the compressive strength. The hybrid fibers can be considered as a promising concept and the replacement of a portion of steel fibers with palm fibers can significantly reduce the density, enhance the flexural strength and toughness. The results also indicates that the use of hybrid fibers (1.5 steel fibers + 0.5% palm fibers) in specimens increases significantly the toughness indices and thus the use of hybrid fibers combinations in reinforced concrete would enhance their flexural toughness & rigidity and enhance their overall performances


This paper is concerned with the allegation that fair value accounting rules have contributed significantly to the recent financial crisis. It focuses on one particular channel for that contribution: the impact of fair value on actual or potential failure of banks. The paper compares four criteria for failure: one economic, two legal and one regulatory. It is clear from this comparison that balance sheet valuations of assets are in two cases crucial in these definitions, and so the choice between "fair value" or other valuations can be decisive in whether a bank fails; but in two cases fair value is irrelevant. Bank failures might arise despite capital adequacy and balance sheet solvency due to sudden shocks to liquidity positions. Two of the most prominent bank failures cannot, at first sight, be attributed to fair value accounting: we show that Northern Rock was balance sheet solvent, even on a fair value basis, as was Lehman Brothers. The anecdotal evidence is augmented by empirical tests that suggest that mark-to-market accounting does not increase the perceived bankruptcy risk of banks.


Food safety regulations designed for industrial-scale food producers can create insurmountable challenges when applied to small-scale food producers. These challenges can make for a frustrating environment for food consumers, producers, and regulators, at times leading to tensions between food producers and people working in food safety. The objective of this study was to identify ways to reduce these tensions and promote intersectoral collaboration. We used concept mapping, a structured, participatory, mixed-method approach, to solicit ideas and synthesize input from those working in food safety and food security. We sent invitations to 96 individuals working in food safety or food security, and 50 completed the online concept mapping. Twenty-three participated in categorizing and ranking all the resulting statements. The findings were 'mapped' into six clusters: (1) communicating, (2) understanding intent, (3) educating, (4) understanding risk and regulation, (5) recognizing scale, and (6) enhancing partnerships. We further reduced these six clusters into three categories: "relationships," "education," and "context." Although there are no quick or easy ways to ease tensions between those working in food safety and food security, we suggest four practical ways to ease tensions to ensure safe and accessible food: (1) a collaborative group at a high regulatory level that shares authority is needed; (2) building relationships across disciplines should be considered as part of public health work; (3) regulatory documents should be written in plain language; and (4) food safety regulations should account for differences in scale of production with supportive resourcing.


As outlined in the previous IAF congress in Vancouver, global warming is a majorand growing concern in Arctic regions. Climatic changes in the polar regions of earth are believed to be at least twice as dramatic as in others. A wide international and interconnected approach to the investigation of its impacts is needed. Remote sensing of Arctic regions is unique as it can be used to provide periodic, reliable and precise datasets of any given region. Field research, on the other hand iscrippled by the remoteness, the cost, and the short time frame generally involved. While a considerable amount of research has been conducted on sea ice, sea surface temperatures, and sea currents, few studies have been focusing on the impacts of climate change on theland, and in particular on the permafrost that underlies the entire Arctic. This critical issue has to be addressed rapidly since it directly affects the Inuit communities, the flora, and the fauna of the Arctic.One singular component of the Arctic regions is the presence of tundra polygons, also termed patterned ground. Tundra polygons are linked to the thermal contraction ofthe ground at very low temperatures. They can be found on Earth and on Mars and are observable over large areas, delineating fractal-like networks on the ground. They are characterized by the presence of large quantities of ice at their edges. The imminenceof considerable warming of air temperatures in the Arctic will undoubtedly lead to the melting of most ice, subsequently inducing a lowering of the ground over thousands ofsquare kilometres. No method presently exists to automatically delineate these networks of polygons, and thereafter to quantify the volumes of ice. In this study we present the first attempt to quantify the volumes associated with the thermal contraction fractures and subsequently the volumes of ice present in the ground using high resolution imagery. We investigated several terrains in the western and high Canadian arctic and validated this method with intensive field campaigns. Geophysical methods including ground penetrating radar and capacitive-coupled resistivity were used to provide and in situ mapping of the subsurface, yielding the necessary calibration datasets.Ikonos 1 m imagery for several locations of the Arctic was used to process the algorithm developed at McGill University (Canada) and at the Alfred Wegener Institute (Germany) by the authors. A set of directional edge-enhancement filter combined with radiometric enhancements was applied to the images and yielded remarkably sharp and clear images of the polygonal networks. In addition, geophysical yield data proved to corroborate the patterns extracted by the algorithm. Further processing allowed us to make a first assessment of the volumes of ice associated with the polygons and subsequently of the potential settlement of the ground.The method could be extended to the study of mars polygons (MOC imagery) andsimilarly produced sharp images with clearly defined delineations of the network. This method emphasizes the crucial role played by satellite imagery in the study of climate change environmental impacts in remote Arctic regions. Current innovations including the launch of new high resolution sensors and constellations of such sensors will allow periodic and intensive studies of remote and inaccessible locations. In addition,this technique, by its universal component, can serve current reassessments of potential permafrost hazards in remote Arctic regions.


"Composed as an extension of the conversations that took place during the 2015 Journee sans culture, To Spoil the Party, to Set Our Joy Ablaze gathers contributions from those who moderated the discussions of the day as well as those who set up its sites of rest, reflection, and play. These authors work to remain true to the spirit of what they lived, led by the desire to find a source of collective energy that exceeds the pervasive effects of tiredness and resignation. Their texts are joined by others, commissioned by the editorial team, which explore matters of concern not sufficiently addressed during the day." -- Publisher's website.


This study examined consumer attitudes towards food attributes and origins, alongside consumer's willingness to pay (WTP) for food certified for these attributes in China, India and the UK. The study used surveys including a choice experiment undertaken in each country. The economic impact of the WTP for food certification in each of these countries on New Zealand was also assessed using a partial equilibrium trade model. Results showed environmental, social and basic attributes in food products were valued positively by consumers in all countries, with WTP up to 77 per cent extra for food products certified for various attributes.


Morphological structures often consist of simpler traits which can be viewed as either integrated (e.g. correlated due to functional interdependency) or non–integrated (e.g. functionally independent) traits. The combination of a long–term stabilizing selection on the entire structure with a short–term directional selection on an adaptively important subset of traits should result in long historical persistence of integrated functional complexes, with environmentally induced variation and macroevolutionary change confined mostly to non–integrated traits. We experimentally subjected populations of three closely related species of Sorex shrews to environmental stress. As predicted, we found that most of the variation in shrew mandibular shape was localized between rather than within the functional complexes; the patterns of integration did not change between the species. The stress–induced variation was confined to non–integrated traits and was highly concordant with the patterns of evolutionary change—species differed in the same set of non–integrated traits which were most sensitive to stress within each species. We suggest that low environmental and genetic canalization of non–integrated traits may have caused these traits to be most sensitive not only to the environmental but also to genetic perturbations associated with stress. The congruence of stress–induced and between–species patterns of variation in non–integrated traits suggests that stress–induced variation in these traits may play an important role in species divergence.


With the ending of the political conflict and the signing of the Belfast Agreement in April 1998, Northern Ireland (NI) has its own Assembly (1999) with its own legislative policy-making powers. Politicians who are elected to the Assembly choose ministerial portfolios in proportion to their party strength based on the principle of power-sharing. Political devolution and power-sharing have created a new set of policy relationships which in many ways have frustrated efforts to achieve consensus on key policy decisons, since all major legislation requires cross-party support. Teacher education has been the subject of a prolonged review which concluded with the publication of a consultation document Teacher education in a climate of change: The way Forward (DE and DEL, 2010). While the purpose of the review was descroibed as being concerned with matters surrounding the closer integration of initial teacher education (ITE) with induction, early professional development (EPD) and continuing professional development (CPD), issues of rationalization, demographic trends and the cost of ITE were never far away.


Purpose: FGFR1 is a promising therapeutic target in multiple types of solid tumors, including head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). FGFR inhibitors have shown great therapeutic value in preclinical models. However, resistance remains a major setback. In this study, we have investigated the prognostic value of FGFR1 expression in HNSCC, the therapeutic relevance of targeting FGFR with AZD4547, and potential resistant mechanisms. Experimental Design: IHC and FISH were applied on tissue microarrays to investigate FGFR1 protein expression and FGFR1 gene copy numbers in 452 HNSCCs. The sensitivity of HNSCC cell lines to AZD4547, either as single or combination treatment with the EGFR inhibitor gefitinib, was assessed using long-term colony formation assays, short-term viability assays, and biochemical analysis. Results: FGFR1 protein overexpression occurred in 82% (36/44) of human papillomavirus (HPV)–positive HNSCC and 75% (294/392) of HPV-negative HNSCC and relates with poor overall survival and disease-free survival in HPV-negative HNSCC [HR, 3.07; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.74–6.90; P = 0.001 and HR, 1.53; 95% CI, 1.04–2.39; P = 0.033]. Moreover, the FGFR1 gene was amplified in 3% (3/110) of HPV-negative HNSCC. Treatment of the high FGFR1-expressing cell line CCL30 with AZD4547 reduced cell proliferation and FGFR signaling. Two FGFR-amplified cell lines, SCC147 and BICR16, were resistant to AZD4547 treatment due to EGFR signaling. Combined AZD4547 and gefitinib treatment synergistically inhibited the proliferation of resistant cell lines. Conclusions: Here, we identify high FGFR1 expression as a candidate prognostic biomarker in HPV-negative HNSCC. Furthermore, we provide a rationale for treating FGFR1-expressing HNSCC with the FGFR inhibitor AZD4547 and for combining AZD4547 and gefitinib in FGFR inhibitor–resistant HNSCC patients. Clin Cancer Res; 22(15); 3884–93. ©2016 AACR.


Abstract. Change detection analysis for monitoring and modeling riverine systems requires detailed spatial and temporal surveying of river morphology dynamics. Accurate digital surface models are an essential part of the studies of morphodynamic modeling of rivers and river channel evolution. An accurate high-resolution surface model of the river channel and floodplain enables a more comprehensive view of the riverbed evolution and allows monitoring of morphological changes of the entire river channel more precisely compared with traditional methods. In current practice, unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are widely used for various applications in photogrammetry, especially for three-dimensional surface modeling and large-scale mapping of riverine environments. UASs offer many advantages in terms of cost and image resolution and approaches for mapping across varying spatial extents when compared with terrestrial photogrammetry and satellite remote sensing systems. UAS-based aerial mapping was implemented in order to produce very high resolution surface models of a flood-sensitive region based on structure from motion technique. Ultimately, multitemporal topographic data were produced, and morphodynamic processes in the lower course of the Büyük Menderes River in Turkey were modeled by digital shoreline analysis system and digital elevation model of difference methods. These methods were employed to examine the changes in the shoreline and to analyze the size of geomorphological changes and spatial patterns. The results showed that the change in the shoreline of the meanders varied from 3 to 27 m, and the water levels varied between ∼0.3 and 3 m. Although there was both sediment erosion and deposition along the shoreline, the predominant process was identified as deposition in the shoreline. A significant correlation was found between the deposited sediments and the sinuosity index values (r  =  0.88) according to the changes in water level over the months. In addition, major changes on the deposition rate were found to occur mostly after the summer season. This research showed that UASs could provide a suitable measurement model for determining areal and volumetric eroded/deposited sediment quantities along the meandering fields.


Il 22mo Congresso europeo di psicologia della salute "Behavior, Health and Healthcare: from physiology to policy" - The aim of this paper is to briefly report the topics discussed during the last European Conference of Health Psychology in Bath, describing the main research areas and reflections on methodological aspects presented. Finally, we also point out some organizational aspects that promote participants interaction and debate. Key words: European Health Psychology Society, European Conference, current issues of research.


The main objective of the education process is that student must learn well rather than the educators to teach well. If radiologists get involved in the process of medical education, it is important for them to do it through sound knowledge of how students learn. Researches have proved that most of the teachers in the field of medical education including diagnostic imaging are actually doctors or technicians, who didn't have an opportunity to study the basics of learning. Mostly they have gained their knowledge through watching other educators, and they mostly rely on their personal skills and experience in doing their job. This will hinder them from conveying knowledge in an effective and scientific way, and they will find themselves lagging away behind the latest advances in the field of medical education and educational research, which will lead to negative cognitive outcomes among learners. This article presents an overview of three of the most influential basic theories of learning, upon which many teachers rely in their practical applications, which must be considered by radiologist who act as medical educators.


In this work we provide results of data mining and machine learning techniques, which form the basis of our prediction model for snail density classification in relation to the Schistosomiasis epidemic disease. All experiments to date are cognitive components in the development of our prediction model for the epidemic disease Schistosomiasis. This disease is detrimental to the health of the communities of affected areas as well as the crop and cattle life. If detected for early warning of the disease, the local communities can be better prepared to deal with any consequences of a breakout. This report gives an insight into the relationship between using a snapshot sample of environment data for epidemic disease vector classification, as opposed to the construction of an increased synthetic dataset.


Invasive species eradication programs can fail by applying management strategies that are not robust to potentially large but non-quantified risks. A more robust strategy can succeed over a larger range of possible values for non-quantified risk. This form of robustness analysis is often not undertaken in eradication program evaluations. The main non-quantified risk initially facing Australia's fire ant eradication program was that the invasion had spread further than expected. Earlier consideration of this risk could have led to a more robust strategy involving a larger area managed in the program's early stages. This strategy could potentially have achieved eradication at relatively low cost without significantly increasing known and quantified risks. Our findings demonstrate that focusing on known and quantifiable risks can increase the vulnerability of eradication programs to known but non-quantified risks. This highlights the importance of including robustness to potentially large but non-quantified risks as a mandatory criterion in evaluations of invasive species eradication programs.


A study of two bridges between science and society: governmental science policy and scientists' voluntary public-interest associations. According to a widespread stereotype, scientists occupy an ivory tower, isolated from other parts of society. To some extent this is true, and the resulting freedom to pursue curiosity-driven research has made possible extraordinary scientific advances. The spinoffs of "pure" science, however, have also had powerful impacts on society, and the potential for future impacts is even greater. The public and many policymakers, as well as many researchers, have paid insufficient attention to the mechanisms for interchange between science and society that have developed since World War II. Ivory Bridges examines two such mechanisms: governmental science policy (often involving the participation of "scientist administrators") and scientists' voluntary public-interest associations. The examination of science policy is guided by the notion of "Jeffersonian science" -- -defined as basic research on topics identified as being in the national interest. The book illustrates the concept with a historical case study of the Press-Carter Initiative of the late 1970s and proposes that a Jeffersonian approach would make a valuable addition to future science policy. The book also looks at the activities of citizen-scientists who have organized themselves to promote the welfare of society. It shows that their numerous and diverse organizations have made major contributions to the commonweal and that they have helped to prevent science from becoming either too subservient to government or too autonomous. An extensive appendix profiles a wide variety of these organizations.


This study attempts to better understand the status of artisanal/small-scale fisheries and fishworkers in Ghana. It aims to establish the pre-eminence of the artisanal sector, with the ultimate objective of exploring the prospects, potentials and problems of sustaining and developing artisanal fisheries. The study aims to promote more equitable and sustainable fisheries. It provides baseline information on the status of artisanal/small- scale fisheries and fishworkers, especially with regard to technical, social and economic aspects. It analyzes the impact of industrial fisheries on the artisanal sector. It also identifies the main threats to artisanal fisheries, has well as the inshore fishers' potential to harvest fisheries resources that are currently harvested by industrial fisheries. The information provided in this study will help fishworkers build and strengthen their organizations. It will also be useful for policymakers, researchers, planners, academics and anyone else interested in fisheries and fishing communities. (104pp.)


The nodulation of roots in legumes is a key factor in nitrogen fixation. Working in the leguminous plant Lotus japonica, Tirichine et al. and Murray et al. have identified how the hormone cytokinin fits into the signaling cascade by which leguminous plants establish nitrogen-fixation nodules filled with symbiotic bacteria. Gain-of-function mutation in a cytokinin receptor results in spontaneous formation of bacteria-free nodules, whereas loss of function results in too few nodules despite aggressive formation of bacterial infection threads. L. Tirichine, N. Sandal, L. H. Madsen, S. Radutoiu, A. S. Albrektsen, S. Sato, E. Asamizu, S. Tabata, J. Stougaard, A gain-of-function mutation in a cytokinin receptor triggers spontaneous root nodule organogenesis. Science 315, 104-107 (2007). [Abstract] [Full Text] J. D. Murray, B. J. Karas, S. Sato, S. Tabata, L. Amyot, K. Szczyglowski, A cytokinin perception mutant colonized by Rhizobium in the absence of nodule organogenesis. Science 315, 101-104 (2007). [Abstract] [Full Text] G. E. D. Oldroyd, Nodules and hormones. Science 315, 52-53 (2007). [Summary] [Full Text]


The behavioral peculiarities of a highly compressed substance in partially open thermodynamic systems is discussed. Unlike for their closed counterparts, for open systems the time factor and effective pressure differences between various parts of the system should be taken into account. This proves to be relevant to many high-pressure experiments and especially so to geophysics, where celestial bodies are not closed systems with respect to their components. To demonstrate the unusual behavior of partially open systems, results on the decomposition of the stoichiometric GeO2 oxide under heating and pressure are presented. It is shown that under a moderate pressure of 100 kbar or less, in most cases the high entropy of the volatile component is the determining factor for the plausible decomposition reaction of compounds involving light elements, whereas at megabar pressures the ratio of specific volumes of the reaction components becomes more important. The results of the work suggest that the decomposition of compounds with volatile components at ultrahigh pressures and high temperatures might be a source of gaseous planetary atmospheres. In particular, the decomposition of Fe, Si, and Mg oxides in the Earth interior can serve as an additional geological source of oxygen beyond the familiar biogenic source. An alternative model for the formation of the Earth metal core is proposed within the framework of this hypothesis.


Managing Capital Flows provides analyses designed to help policymakers develop a framework for managing capital flows that is consistent with prudent macroeconomic and financial sector stability.


Deaths in custody rightly receive significant attention in the media, but the far higher rate of deaths among ex-prisoners during their first year after release from prison is not widely reported. A high risk of death after release from custody seems counterintuitive, but the phenomenon has been reported in overseas literature. In this issue of the Journal (page 64), we present the first Australian evidence. Kinner and colleagues found that, in 2007–08, more than 400 ex-prisoners died in their first year after release — up to 30% of these in the first month. While their analysis had methodological limitations, it is likely that their estimates understate the mortality rate. The Australian prison population is about 30 000, a figure that had increased by 39% over the decade to 2009. Approximately 50 000 prisoners are released each year, and there are about 385 000 ex-prisoners living in the community (http://www.aihw.gov.au/publication-detail/?id=6442468371). This represents 1.8% of the Australian population, so exprisoner health has significant repercussions, and the load on our health services is likely to increase. It is now clear that this population is extremely vulnerable. Almost half of all deaths were drug-related, involving mostly non-Indigenous ex-prisoners. While Indigenous Australians comprise more than a quarter of the total prisoner population, they are less likely to be injecting drug users. As Kinner et al discuss, there are evidence-based programs available that may reduce drug-related deaths, yet they are not being widely implemented. Reducing deaths from non-drug-related causes is more complex. Interventions that target mental illness, chronic disease and injury prevention will be required as part of the solution. Sadly, a United States man with chronic health problems recently resorted to stealing $1 from his bank with the aim of being arrested to gain access to prison health services. If we are to look for answers overseas, there is probably more to be learnt from the German penal system, which aims to resocialise and rehabilitate prisoners. It endeavours to "normalise" living conditions so that they resemble life in the community (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhaff/193/19304.htm). Presumably, this makes the transition to freedom less stressful. The Australian penal system, with a 2-year recidivism rate of about 40%, and about half of prisoners having been previously imprisoned, is failing. Prisoner health must be seen to encompass both inmates and those recently released. It should be seen to include justice issues that influence health: is the quantum of punishment appropriate; are there alternatives to incarceration; are rehabilitation and education programs available? Programs that smooth the reintegration of prisoners into society are urgently required. Better data are needed to understand what is happening to prisoners after release, but the results of the study by Kinner et al leave no doubt that the health care system must flag exprisoners as a high-risk group, and move to meet its needs.


Animals and humans engage in an enormous variety of behaviors which are orchestrated through a complex interaction of physical and informational processes: The physical interaction of the bodies with the environment is intimately coupled with informational processes in the animal's brain. A crucial step toward the mastery of all these behaviors seems to be to understand the flows of information in the sensorimotor networks. In this study, we have performed a quantitative analysis in an artificial agent — a running quadruped robot with multiple sensory modalities — using tools from information theory (transfer entropy). Starting from very little prior knowledge, through systematic variation of control signals and environment, we show how the agent can discover the structure of its sensorimotor space, identify proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensory modalities, and acquire a primitive body schema. In summary, we show how the analysis of directed information flows in an agent's sensorimotor networks can be used to bootstrap its perception and development.


This paper deals with the establishment of the coastal sanatorium at Apelviken that housed and treated children and young adults there in the early 20th century. It is focussed upon the juncture of attitudes and values of society that made possible the creation of the sanatorium through philanthropy and public means, while at the same time dealing with the medical theories and practices that informed the treatment received there. In other words, this deals with the culture of care that evolved at this time. It will be published in the forthcoming book Disabled Children, Contested Caring 1850-1979 (preliminary title)


As many applied theatre practitioners work outside the radar of mainstream critical attention, it is often difficult to share knowledge or hear about new developments in this field; the consequences of this are that many practitioners, particularly those new to the field, are left with the task of 'reinventing the wheel', and well seasoned professionals' work becoming stagnant. Taking as our starting point 'Theatre, Media, and Survival' the creators of this panel began to consider how our own work in applied theatre might benefit from a larger web presence, specifically one which might better connect applied practitioners 'glocally' (ie, both locally and globally), allow for healthier and more frequent dialogue about approaches to work, question the efficacy of applied theatre methods, and subsequently developing a resource that might benefit theatre scholars. The panel specifically aims to question: (1) how technology and new media impacts our work as applied theatre practitioners; (2) the functionality, general purpose and feasibility of a professional/social network and how this might impact our work; and (3) how such a network might be maintained. It is hoped that one of the outcomes of the panel will be the development of a work-group that will be responsible for making the theorised network a reality.


This thesis is an account of research at two levels of inquiry. At the context-level, it is concerned with advancing theoretical understanding of the challenges to progressing Sustainable Development (SD) in NHS organizations. Previously these had been described as comprising i) lack of organizational support afforded to SD, ii) difficulties in prioritising and evaluating the impacts of SD initiatives, and iii) a dominance of working arrangements inappropriate for dealing with the cross-departmental and inter-organizational nature of SD. At the meta-level, it is concerned with advancing theoretical understanding of an Action Research (AR) approach to addressing such challenges in their context. It seeks to contribute to emerging frameworks which define a co-operative relationship between practitioners as active participants in their own solutions to organizational change for SD, and outside academics as facilitators of appropriate learning processes to support this. I engaged in two phases of research to address both these levels of inquiry. In Phase 1, I developed a theoretical understanding of the challenges of NHS SD through fifteen semi-structured interviews with practitioners and policy makers leading initiatives for SD in the NHS. In Phase 2, I used this contextual theory to inform an AR approach to progressing SD in one NHS organization. In this process, I facilitated cycles of action and reflection with a group of five senior managers over a twelve month period, in order to develop their organization's SD strategy. Both Phases revealed the constraints practitioners face in developing SD beyond a narrow resource efficiency agenda. AR holds potential for developing broader interpretations through the integration of SD theory into organizational learning process. However, such an endeavour is beyond the scope of a single AR project and must be viewed as an ongoing relationship between academics and practitioners, as well as other actors of influence from across the health system.


An intrinsic M-channel lifting factorization of perfect reconstruction filter banks (PRFBs) is presented as an extension of Sweldens' conventional two-channel lifting scheme. Given a polyphase matrix E(z) of a finite-impulse response (FIR) M- channel PRFB with det(E(z))=z/sup -K/, K/spl isin//spl Zopf/, a systematic M-channel lifting factorization is derived based on the Monic Euclidean algorithm. The M-channel lifting structure provides an efficient factorization and implementation; examples include optimizing the factorization for the number of lifting steps, delay elements, and dyadic coefficients. Specialization to paraunitary building blocks enables the design of paraunitary filter banks based on lifting. We show how to achieve reversible, possibly multiplierless, implementations under finite precision, through the unit diagonal scaling property of the Monic Euclidean algorithm. Furthermore, filter-bank regularity of a desired order can be imposed on the lifting structure, and PRFBs with a prescribed admissible scaling filter are conveniently parameterized.


The purpose of this research is to see whether the insurance influences the economic development of Western Balkan countries. Currently, insurance comprises an economic sector that includes all activities of conception, production and trading of this type of service that is of public interest but generally carried out by private law entities. For the specification of the econometric model in this research, we are based on the secondary data published in the official reports of the World Bank, the Central Bank, and the statistical agencies of some countries. To measure empirical results, there are used these statistical tests: fixed effects model, Hausman Taylor Regression, generalized method of the moment (GMM), and GLS regression. Based on the empirical results, we can conclude that life insurance and non-life insurance have a significant connection and positively impact the economic growth of these countries. Other variables that have shown a positive result in economic growth are: GDP per capita, Exports, whereas variables that negatively impact on economic growth are inflation and government spending.The empirical results of this document may recommend that relevant institutions implement institutional improvements that contribute to strengthening competition, advancing risk management techniques, and so on. In conclusion, we can say that future researches can be done as events, life insurance or non-life insurance impact on economic growth in Kosovo and in the countries of the region. The study is carried out with secondary data, and all empirical analyses are original. Through the results of this study we intend to offer more empirical evidence for our country and countries in the region recommending that relevant institutions improve the functioning of the financial sector and especially the insurances part because it is the factor that affects the economic growth. Key words: Economic growth, life insurance, non-life insurance, Kosovo.JEL Classification: C23, E31, G22, O11


The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the amount of language models (i.e., dose frequency) that Spanish-English bilingual children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) require in order to consistently produce challenging target grammatical forms for 6 morphemes, 3 in English and 3 in Spanish, via a structural priming task. Participants included two 2 grade children with SLI, five typically developing kindergarten children, and three typically developing 2 grade peers. Participants were administered 10 control and 10 experimental cloze phrase computer tasks for each morpheme. In the control condition participants finished cloze phrase sentences which targeted the target morpheme while in the experimental task participants heard a model of the target morpheme and were subsequently required to finish the cloze phrase. Results replicated results of structural priming for all groups in each language. Results also indicated that Spanish was more robust in producing morphological priming effects in comparison to English morphological forms possibly due to linguistic differences. Clinical and research implications are discussed.


When it comes to post-armed conflict interventions aimed at restructuring a shattered society, policy makers have largely treated countries as an undifferentiated whole, ignoring local dynamics that reinforce or transform the power relations that are often most relevant to peoples' lives. Using the example of Guatemala, the authors argue that locallevel, bottom-up mechanisms can reflect a country's diverse makeup and experience of conflict, and provide crucial precursors or extensions for wider-scale national and international projects. Local-level initiatives also can involve more community members, promote agency and perhaps be less prone to large-scale patronage and corruption. In promoting truth-telling initiatives and confronting the past, memorializing the departed and burying the dead, and resolving ongoing or recent community conflicts, the authors have found that local-level programs have distinct advantages. The article considers local 'houses of memory,' community-sponsored psycho-social interventions and exhumations; and conflict resolution based on Mayan methods. It concludes that such efforts should be more systematically identified and supported in post-armed conflict settings. In transitional justice, as elsewhere, the authors find, all politics is local.


Discrete choice models are the state-of-the-art for the mathematical modelling of demand. Based on the concept of random utility, they are able to predict the choice behavior of individuals. However, these models are highly non linear and non convex in the variables of interest, and therefore difficult to be included in mixed linear optimization models. These models are of great importance in transportation revenue management systems. In this research, we propose a new mathematical modeling framework to include general random utility assumption inside discrete optimization framework. In order to tackle the nonlinearity and non-convexity imposed by choice-models, we rely on simulation to capture the probabilistic nature of demand. Since the formulation has been designed to be linear, the price to pay is the high dimensionality of the problem. We have performed some preliminary experiments for small instances with promising results. Nevertheless, for more general cases, additional techniques as decomposition methods may be required.


The chemistry of enolates can be considered one of the cornerstone areas in organic chemistry. Regioselective generation of an enolate in the presence of several enolisable sites can often prove to be a difficult task. Discoveries in recent years have led to new areas of enolate formation in the presence of other carbonyl groups. These include reductive aldol chemistry where direct reductive aldol coupling of an , unsaturated carbonyl group in presence of a carbonyl electrophile enables often perfectly regioselective reactions to occur. This tandem conjugate reductionelectrophilic trapping process enables the reaction to be performed in a "one-pot" manner. The first examples of asymmetric copper-catalysed reductive aldol reactions have been developed for the formation of a range of -hydroxylactone products. A combination of Cu(OAc)2 H2O with different bisphosphine ligands catalyses these intramolecular reductive aldol reactions. TMDS (1,1,3,3-tetramethylhydrosiloxane) is used as a stoichiometric hydride source. The reaction proceeds with high relative stereocontrol (>19:1 dr), while absolute stereocontrol remains modest (up to 83% ee). The yields range from moderate to good. A continuous search for improved reaction conditions led to the discovery that cobalt-catalysed reductive aldol reactions have an advantage over the coppercatalysed reaction in the cases where 4-hydroxypiperidin-2-one products are formed. When Co(acac)2·H2O is used together with Et2Zn as the stoichiometric reductant, an increased substrate scope is observed while the diastereoselectivity of the reaction remains high. Yields are also remarkably higher compared to the results obtained with the copper catalyst. These reaction conditions are also used to perform intermolecular reductive aldol reactions between a range of , -unsaturated amides and ketones. The reactions proceed readily with high diastereoselectivities (up to >19:1 syn:anti) and good yields. Asymmetric variants have been studied by the use of a chiral oxazolidine auxiliary. Although good selectivities have been obtained, this method currently suffers from the fact that the chiral auxiliary is difficult to cleave. Ni(acac)2 was also found to perform the intramolecular reductive aldol reaction. Et2Zn was again used as the stoichiometric reductant. The nickel-catalysed reaction increased the reaction scope still further. This time both -hydroxylactone and 4-hydroxypiperidin-2-one products were readily formed. The former proceeded with increased yields compared to those obtained with the copper catalyst, and, the latter with comparable results to those obtained with the cobalt catalyst.


We introduce high dynamic range image hallucination for adding high dynamic range details to the overexposed and underexposed regions of a low dynamic range image. Our method is based on a simple assumption: there exist high quality patches in the image with similar textures as the regions that are over or under exposed. Hence, we can add high dynamic range details to a region by simply transferring texture details from another patch that may be under different illumination levels. In our approach, a user only needs to annotate the image with a few strokes to indicate textures that can be applied to the corresponding underexposed or overexposed regions, and these regions are automatically hallucinated by our algorithm. Experiments demonstrate that our simple, yet effective approach is able to significantly increase the amount of texture details in a wide range of common scenarios, with a modest amount of user interaction.


CONTEXT
Arthroscopic surgical repair of the shoulder is recommended when conservative treatment for shoulder instability (SI) fails. However, many patients undergoing this procedure do not return to same level of activity. Psychological factors and muscle strength have been shown to be associated with postoperative outcomes in other musculoskeletal conditions.

OBJECTIVE
To investigate the association between fear avoidance, muscle strength, and short-term function in patients after surgical SI repair.

METHODS
Twenty-five male patients who underwent shoulder surgery following at least one event of SI were included in this study. Evaluations of fear avoidance related to physical activity and disability were performed at baseline (during the first encounter with the physical therapist) and 7 to 8 weeks postsurgery. Fear avoidance beliefs were assessed using the Fear Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire. Disability was assessed using the Disabilities of Arm, Shoulder, and Hand questionnaire and the Western Ontario SI index. The follow-up evaluation (weeks 7-8) included measurement of maximal isometric strength of the internal and external rotators. Nonparametric Kendall tau was used to determine the correlations between baseline fear avoidance, muscle strength, and disability at follow-up.

RESULTS
Disabilities of Arm, Shoulder, and Hand questionnaire at follow-up was significantly correlated with baseline Disabilities of Arm, Shoulder, and Hand questionnaire (τ = .520, P < .001), baseline fear avoidance (τ = .399, P = .008), and both internal rotator (τ = -.400, P = .005) and external rotator strength (τ = -.353, P = .014). Western Ontario SI index at follow-up was moderately correlated with baseline Western Ontario SI index (τ = .387, P = .007), internal rotator (τ = -.427, P = .003), and external rotator (τ = -.307, P = .032), but not with baseline Fear Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire (τ = .22, P = .145).

CONCLUSIONS
The results indicate a possible association between fear avoidance beliefs and short-term disability. Further studies are warranted to better explore and understand these relationships.


Hans Memling was one of the most important, prolific and versatile painters active in 15th-century Bruges, and one of the leading artists of the Early Netherlandish School. Commissioned by Abbot Jan Crabbe, one of Memling's most signifcant and erudite patrons, the triptych of the Crucifi xion - in particular its wings, with their complex and meticulously conceived background landscapes and the convincing realism of the portraits - ostentatiously demonstrate Memling's skills and ambitions. Completed around 1470, the triptych was dismembered in the 18th century. Two panels from the altarpiece are among the finest paintings owned by the Morgan Library& Museum, New York, where they are on permanent view in Pierpont Morgan's Study. The exhibition brings together the scattered elements of the famous triptych, reuniting the Morgan inner wings with the central panel now owned by the Musei Civici in Vicenza, Italy, and the outer wings from the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, Belgium. Hans Memling: Portraiture, Piety, and a Reunited Altarpiece accompanies the first museum exhibition to explore the reconstructed masterpiece in context. It has long been observed that the donor portraits are the most outstanding aspect of the Crabbe Triptych, especially the portrait of Anna Willemzoon in the left wing, an extraordinary image of old age, and representative of the merging of the sacred and secular realms that is often present in the work of Memling and his contemporaries. Memling was notable as a painter of portraits, and his work in this field revolutionized portrait painting across Europe. To present the artist's extraordinary ability to capture a likeness, a number of his independent portraits will be examined, including the Morgan's compelling Man with a Pink. The volume also highlights links between panel painting and manuscript painting in 15th-century Flemish art, drawing connections, for example, between the grisaille Annunciation on the outer wings of the altarpiece and the grisaille figures that decorate so many manuscripts painted in Bruges during Memling's lifetime. Underscoring this great artist's impact, the book also examines Early Netherlandish drawings from the Morgan's collection, works ranging from the early compositional studies and fi gure drawings to a group of portrait drawings made in the generation after Memling and under his influence.


On Halloween night 1938, Orson Welles broadcast a radio adaptation of the H. G. Wells fantasy, The War of the Worlds. What listeners heard sounded so realistic that at least a million were frightened by word that "strange creatures" from Mars had landed in central New Jersey and were "unleashing a deadly assault." Several thousand were so terrified they ran into the streets, drove away in their cars, or called the police for information about how to escape. Why did so many panic when the circumstances reported were so improbable? That is just the question Hadley Cantril, then a young social psychologist, set out to answer. Originally published in 1940, The Invasion from Mars remains a classic. The broadcast provided a unique real-life opportunity to explore why the relatively new medium of radio could have such an effect. Using a mix of research methods, Cantril shows that the impact of the broadcast had less to do with what went out over the air than with the "standards of judgment" people did or did not use in evaluating what they were hearing. This book is of continuing value to those interested in communications and mass behavior.


The field of graphene research has developed rapidly since its first isolation by mechanical exfoliation in 2004. Due to the relativistic Dirac nature of its charge carriers, graphene is both a promising material for next-generation electronic devices and a convenient low-energy testbed for intrinsically high-energy physical phenomena. Both of these research branches require the facile fabrication of clean graphene devices so as not to obscure its intrinsic physical properties. Hexagonal boron nitride has emerged as a promising substrate for graphene devices as it is insulating, atomically flat and provides a clean charge environment for the graphene. Additionally, the interaction between graphene and boron nitride provides a path for the study of new physical phenomena not present in bare graphene devices. This review focuses on recent advancements in the study of graphene on hexagonal boron nitride devices from the perspective of scanning tunneling microscopy with highlights of some important results from electrical transport measurements.


1. Introduction The most dramatic revolution in payment methods in the past few decades has, undoubtedly, been the plastic card. The credit card is a payment vehicle of convenience, which provides its holders with multifarious benefits. A credit card has been defined as a payment card, the holder of which is permitted under his contract with the issuer of the card to discharge less than the whole of any outstanding balance on his payment card account on or before the expiry of a specified period, subject to any contractual requirements with respect to minimum or fixed amount of payments. (1) The card permits the holder to obtain credit up to a stated maximum amount from the issuer upon the card's presentation to a merchant. The card issuer sends the cardholder periodic statements (usually monthly) describing the purchases made. The cardholder may settle the indebtedness without interest by paying the entire amount on receipt of the statement or the cardholder may settle the indebtedness by installments, paying interest on the outstanding amount. Retail and service based businesses that cannot accept credit card payments are at a disadvantage against their competitors. In the United States alone, 350 billion dollars a year are spent with credit cards. It is no wonder that businesses want to accept credit cards, even though it means paying a percentage of each credit card sale to the acquiring bank or processor. In the twenty first century credit card fraud is a major and global problem. By nature of it being global, its adverse effects are being experienced by all jurisdictions, however, it also impacts locally at a national level, for which we require legislation that tailors the remedy to the local needs. The credit card fraud has posed several challenges to jurisdictions across the globe. First, proper laws to prevent the offence must be in place, primarily to punish those who commit this offence and to deter potential offenders. Secondly, to afford remedial assistance to those who have suffered as a result of this offence. An investigation committee of the Russian Interior Affairs Ministry in late 2004 completed an investigation of credit card fraud. Russian police officers and Federal Security Bureau agents detected a syndicate that was stealing client databases from large banks to fabricate plastic credit cards of the world's leading payment systems--Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. The criminal organization was selling counterfeit cards to fraudsters in the United States, in Canada, Israel, Turkey and many other countries. (2) Another country where credit card misuse is rampant is Indonesia. (3) Recently the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee carried out an investigation pertaining to Internet security between January 2005 and June 2005 and found that the number of recorded phishing incidents alone was 312. And further the Committee was informed that the amount of cash stolen in the first half of 2006 was US 45 million based on the findings of APACS. (4) The manager of Master Card Europe, Paul Lucraft, gives a clear picture of recent losses suffered in the country due to fraud. (5) Card-not present fraud, including losses from telephone and Internet sales, rose by 24% in 2004 to 150.8 million [pounds sterling] ($285 million).... smart cards do not prevent this type of fraud, so criminals are focusing more on this type of activity. Fraud due to counterfeit cards was up by 17% to 129. 7 million [pounds sterling] ($246.5 million) in 2004, while fraud due to stolen or lost cards was up 2% to 114.4 million [pounds sterling] ($217.3 million), according to APACS. ID fraud due to fraudulent card applications or account takeover was up by 22% to 36.9 million [pounds sterling] ($70.1 million). In 2004, the New Straits Times, Malaysia, the local newspaper reported that RM100 million was lost due to credit card fraud in the first six months of year. …


Companies in Victorian Britain operated in a laissez-faire legal environment from the perspective of outside investors, implying that such investors were not protected by the legal system. This article seeks to identify the alternative mechanisms that outside shareholders used to protect themselves by examining the dividend policy and governance of over 800 publicly traded companies at the beginning of the 1880s. We assess the importance of these mechanisms by estimating their impact on Tobin's Q. Our evidence suggests that dividends and well-structured and incentivized boards of directors may have played a role in protecting the interests of outside investors.


The rise in US defense spending since 1998 has no precedent in all the years since the Korean war. It most readily compares with two earlier, but lesser spending surges: the 1958-1968 surge of 43% and the 1975-1985 surge of 57%. The post-Cold War retrenchment of the US military reached its limit in 1998 with DoD's budget settling at an ebb point of $361.5 billion (2010 USD). If we treat the 1998 budget level as a "baseline" and project it forward to 2010 (adjusting for inflation), we find that the total amount of funds that have been given to DoD above this level during the years 1999-2010 is $2.15 trillion (in 2010 dollars). This figure constitutes what we call the post-1998 spending surge. (All told, DoD budget authority for the period was $6.5 trillion in 2010 dollars).


A new method has been developed for monitoring and control of automated sample processing and preparation especially focusing on desalting of samples before analytical analysis (described in more detail in Automated Desalting Apparatus, (NPO-45428), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 34, No. 8 (August 2010), page 44). The use of non-contact conductivity probes, one at the inlet and one at the outlet of the solid phase sample preparation media, allows monitoring of the process, and acts as a trigger for the start of the next step in the sequence (see figure). At each step of the muti-step process, the system is flushed with low-conductivity water, which sets the system back to an overall low-conductivity state. This measurement then triggers the next stage of sample processing protocols, and greatly minimizes use of consumables. In the case of amino acid sample preparation for desalting, the conductivity measurement will define three key conditions for the sample preparation process. First, when the system is neutralized (low conductivity, by washing with excess de-ionized water); second, when the system is acidified, by washing with a strong acid (high conductivity); and third, when the system is at a basic condition of high pH (high conductivity). Taken together, this non-contact conductivity measurement for monitoring sample preparation will not only facilitate automation of the sample preparation and processing, but will also act as a way to optimize the operational time and use of consumables


Recent progress in NLP witnessed the development of large-scale pre-trained language models (GPT, BERT, XLNet, etc.) based on Transformer (Vaswani et al. 2017), and in a range of end tasks, such models have achieved state-of-the-art results, approaching human performance. This clearly demonstrates the power of the stacked self-attention architecture when paired with a sufficient number of layers and a large amount of pre-training data. However, on tasks that require complex and long-distance reasoning where surface-level cues are not enough, there is still a large gap between the pre-trained models and human performance. Strubell et al. (2018) recently showed that it is possible to inject knowledge of syntactic structure into a model through supervised self-attention. We conjecture that a similar injection of semantic knowledge, in particular, coreference information, into an existing model would improve performance on such complex problems. On the LAMBADA (Paperno et al. 2016) task, we show that a model trained from scratch with coreference as auxiliary supervision for self-attention outperforms the largest GPT-2 model, setting the new state-of-the-art, while only containing a tiny fraction of parameters compared to GPT-2. We also conduct a thorough analysis of different variants of model architectures and supervision configurations, suggesting future directions on applying similar techniques to other problems.


The effects of the percolation phase transition on equilibration of porous media during drainage are shown to set on at moisture contents, θ, somewhat larger than the critical moisture content for percolation, θt An algorithm is developed, which yields the typical upward curvature of log[h(θ)] curves at low moisture contents, where h is the hydraulic head, as well as a flattening of the curve of log[K(h)] for large h, where K is the hydraulic conductivity. Within certain approximations the procedure can be validated through solution of the associated differential equation. The procedure was tested against seven drainage curves from the USDOE Hanford site and found to be predictive. However, theoretical questions remain regarding, among other things, the implicit assumption that the interfacial tension measured is an equilibrium value, even though the moisture content is not. The motivation of the present research is to reduce ambiguities in the interpretation of dry‐end pressure–saturation curves.


This book includes twenty case studies of World Heritage sites from around the world that explore, from a human rights perspective, indigenous peoples' experiences with World Heritage sites and with the processes of the World Heritage Convention. The book will serve as a resource for indigenous peoples, World Heritage site managers and UNESCO, as well as academics, and will contribute to discussions about what changes or actions are needed to ensure that World Heritage sites can play a consistently positive role for indigenous peoples, in line with the spirit of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.


This volume departs both from approaches to revolution in Latin America that emphasize interests and those that emphasize socioeconomic and political injustice. Rather, it deals with real life, flesh and bone, revolutionary cadres: their thoughts, backgrounds, mentalities, and behavior. Going beyond cliches about Soviet encroachment in Latin America and "injustice breeds revolution," the contributors address the issue of the relationship between leaders and followers in a revolutionary context, seeing revolutionary leaders as the key to articulating and defining the agenda of the "revolution." In contrast to most theorizing, revolutionary leaders almost invariably come from the privileged, even aristocratic classes. The findings raise the issue of how well these leaders actually represent the peoples for which they claim to speak. They also prompt questions about the democratic nature of guerrilla organizations. If the leaders are so far removed, by social background and education, personal experience and ideological articulation, from their followers, how realistic is it to see the Left as a purveyor of progress? Perhaps it is more correct, say the contributors, to see their claims as manipulative tactics directed to resolving a struggle for power among competing elites. The selection of topics ranges from the historical development of revolutionary struggles since Che Guevara (Halperin and Ratliff) to the more specific application and motivation behind them (Ybarra-Rojas and Tismaneanu). Chapters deal with the attempt to define a typology of revolutionary leaders (Radu) and their Western supporters (Hollander). Some authors (Payne, Horowitz) combine .these approaches. Many issues examined in this volume are new, including an analysis of the gap between the internationalist outlook of the leaders and the parochial views of their followers. The violent organizations of the Left in Latin America are shown to be largely the functional result of upper- and middle-class leaders who combine an appeal to the lumpenproletariat at home with support of alienated Westerners to pursue their own elitist agenda.


Probabilistic approaches to computer vision typically assume a centralized setting, with the algorithm granted access to all observed data points. However, many problems in wide-area surveillance can benefit from distributed modeling, either because of physical or computational constraints. Most distributed models to date use algebraic approaches (such as distributed SVD) and as a result cannot explicitly deal with missing data. In this work we present an approach to estimation and learning of generative probabilistic models in a distributed context where certain sensor data can be missing. In particular, we show how traditional centralized models, such as probabilistic PCA and missing-data PPCA, can be learned when the data is distributed across a network of sensors. We demonstrate the utility of this approach on the problem of distributed affine structure from motion. Our experiments suggest that the accuracy of the learned probabilistic structure and motion models rivals that of traditional centralized factorization methods while being able to handle challenging situations such as missing or noisy observations.


This thesis covers aspects of the history of the theorisation of sexuality and kinship in the period between 1860 and 1930. The history presented here' is selective. It is organised around a problem of contemporary relevance. This problem is why it has become difficult to produce a historically specific account of sexual organisation in society without falling into essentialist notions of sexuality.

The thesis argues that there are two dominant explanations for the emergence of this theoretical difficulty. One is that during the period under investigation there was consolidated a division of attention between various theoretical discourses. Aspects traditionally entailed in any consideration of sexuality - kinship, marriage, the family, reproduction, sexual instincts - were raised in different ways by different discourses. The divisions between these discourses was consolidated in part around this division of attention. The other factor influencing our contemporary problem is that in so far as sexuality has been treated within the social sciences, it has come under a theoretical division between the individual and society. Consigned in general to the realm of the individual, sex has fallen prey to a dispute between modes of explanation. The division is between those explanations which insist on the primacy of the individual attributes and those which seek to explain all phenomena by reference to the interaction of elements in a given society. The thesis argues for the need to transcend the limitations imposed by this theoretical division.

The thesis is in two parts. The first traces the treatment of sexuality which came to dominate in the second half of the nineteenth century through a particular study of kinship. It reveals both the dominant modes of explanation and the themes and preoccupations for which these debates were vehicles. These preoccupations reveal how discourses were consolidated with different objectives, modes of attention and modes of explanation. The second part traces the division of attention within those discourses which now have the greatest claim as explanations of sexual relations within society, that is between marxism and psychoanalysis. It shows how, and for what purpose, certain concepts were mobilised; it discusses whether the heritage of concepts drawn from earlier debates limits the advances which can be made while remaining within traditional disciplines.

The purpose of this study is to reveal primarily the limiting effect of the theoretical division between individual and society on studies of sexual division. It aims to show that while this division is operative, accounts of sexuality will be dominated by essentialist explanations. It argues for breaking down the divisions between existing disciplines, and in particular the division between psychoanalysis and some of the social sciences.


In recent years, the development of digital technologies and the diffusion of ICT worldwide alongside with the growth of Web 2.0 have facilitated and enabled the emergence of peer-to-peer (P2P) based online platforms that promote user-generated content, sharing, and collaboration. These platforms and marketplaces are byproducts of a larger economictechnological phenomenon called the sharing economy. P2P marketplaces associated with sharing economy operate particularly within the field of travel and tourism. The most popular P2P rental site is Airbnb, which since its foundation in 2008 has grown extremely rapidly and now surpasses the major hotel chains in accommodation offered and market valuation and is present in more than 34 000 cities in 191 countries. In this study, we seek to understand how the proliferation of Airbnb is shaping the short-term rental markets of major cities, which areas are more affected and whether there is any spatial concentration. The central question of the research is that how the different social and geographical indicators influence the spatiality of Airbnb in major cities. To display the changes we utilized a mapping method that visualize the spatiality of Airbnb using a raster image visualisation taking into consideration different social and geographical indicators. The results may reveal the positive and negative side-effects of Airbnb. Moreover, we can locate those parts of the cities, which have seen the greatest pressure from tourism or "touristification" and its negative impacts on cities and residents. Finally, we conclude with implication for design and future research.


The proportion of patients undergoing liver transplantation (LT) with renal insufficiency has significantly increased in the Model for End‐Stage Liver Disease (MELD) era. This study was designed to determine the incidence and predictors of post‐LT chronic renal failure (CRF) and its effect on patient survival in the MELD era. Outcomes of 221 adult LT recipients who had LT between February 2002 and February 2007 were reviewed retrospectively. Patients who were listed as status 1, were granted a MELD exception, or had living‐donor, multiorgan LT were excluded. Renal insufficiency at LT was defined as none to mild [estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) ≥ 60 mL/minute], moderate (30–59 mL/minute), or severe (<30 mL/minute). Post‐LT CRF was defined as an estimated GFR < 30 mL/minute persisting for 3 months, initiation of renal replacement therapy, or listing for renal transplantation. The median age was 54 years, 66% were male, 89% were Caucasian, and 43% had hepatitis C. At LT, the median MELD score was 20, and 6.3% were on renal replacement therapy. After a median follow‐up of 2.6 years (range, 0.01–5.99), 31 patients developed CRF with a 5‐year cumulative incidence of 22%. GFR at LT was the only independent predictor of post‐LT CRF (hazard ratio = 1.33, P < 0.001). The overall post‐LT patient survival was 74% at 5 years. Patients with MELD ≥ 20 at LT had a higher cumulative incidence of post‐LT CRF in comparison with patients with MELD < 20 (P = 0.03). A decrease in post‐LT GFR over time was the only independent predictor of survival. In conclusion, post‐LT CRF is common in the MELD era with a 5‐year cumulative incidence of 22%. Low GFR at LT was predictive of post‐LT CRF, and a decrease in post‐LT GFR over time was associated with decreased post‐LT survival. Further studies of modifiable preoperative, perioperative, and postoperative factors influencing renal function are needed to improve outcomes following LT. Liver Transpl 15:1142–1148, 2009. © 2009 AASLD.


This paper studies causal relationships and the potential of improving conditional quantile forecasting between Bitcoin and seven altcoin markets as well as between Bitcoin and three mainstream assets, namely gold, oil, and the S&P500, by applying the Granger-causality in distribution and in quantiles tests. We find significant bidirectional causality between Bitcoin and all altcoins and assets considered in the two distribution tails. An enhanced forecast of Bitcoin price returns is thus derived by conditioning on altcoins or assets and vice versa during extreme market conditions. However, under normal market conditions the results for the centre of the distribution of the Bitcoin price returns conditional on altcoins depend on both the altcoin considered and quantile under investigation. We also find evidence that Bitcoin is not isolated from financial markets, while this developing financial asset is a strong safe-haven for oil and a weak safe-haven for S&P500, but it cannot be considered as either a weak or strong safe-haven for gold. Our results reveal a more complete relationship between Bitcoin and altcoins as well as financial assets than was previously considered.


Zircon from two high-pressure, low-temperature orthogneisses (1-1.5 GPa and 550 ° C) from the Sesia Zone, Western Alps were examined by means of scanning electron, back-scattered and cathodoluminescence imaging and isotope dilution thermal ionization mass spectrometry to investigate U-Pb systematics of zircon in high-pressure, low-temperature terranes. The results of the U-Pb geochronology show a simple, two-stage mixing trend between crystallization of the leucogranitic protolith and eo-Alpine high-pressure metamorphism. The upper intercept ages of 435 ± 8 and 396 ± 21 Ma constrain the age of the protoliths and can be correlated to the zircon interiors that display strong cathodoluminescence. The lower intercept age of 68 ± 6.6 Ma dates the eo-Alpine high-pressure metamorphism and can be correlated with weakly luminescent, slightly zoned overgrowth seen in CL- and BSE-images, respectively. Two air-abraded single-grain analyses of apparently inherited zircons give a concordant age of 3.7 Ga and a discordant age of 2.4 Ga. Eo-Alpine zircon dissolution and overgrowth are characterized by internal and external embayed surfaces and multi-faceted crystal forms, respectively. A notable lack of evidence for pervasive fluid-rock interactions supports the view that dissolution of zircon was aided by local pore fluids of low salinity produced during metamorphic dehydration reactions of biotite and zoisite to form garnet. Precipitation of zircon overgrowths may have accompanied the H 2 O-consuming reaction of phengite formation from garnet.


Stereo depth estimation is used for many computer vision applications. Though many popular methods strive solely for depth quality, for real-time mobile applications (e.g. prosthetic glasses or micro-UAVs), speed and power efficiency are equally, if not more, important. Many real-world systems rely on Semi-Global Matching (SGM) to achieve a good accuracy vs. speed balance, but power efficiency is hard to achieve with conventional hardware, making the use of embedded devices such as FPGAs attractive for low-power applications. However, the full SGM algorithm is ill-suited to deployment on FPGAs, and so most FPGA variants of it are partial, at the expense of accuracy. In a non-FPGA context, the accuracy of SGM has been improved by More Global Matching (MGM), which also helps tackle the streaking artifacts that afflict SGM. In this paper, we propose a novel, resource-efficient method that is inspired by MGM's techniques for improving depth quality, but which can be implemented to run in real time on a low-power FPGA. Through evaluation on multiple datasets (KITTI and Middlebury), we show that in comparison to other real-time capable stereo approaches, we can achieve a state-of-the-art balance between accuracy, power efficiency and speed, making our approach highly desirable for use in real-time systems with limited power.


Pupils with specific learning difficulties and behaviour
disorders are a relatively strongly represented group in Czech
schools, which traditionally received special attention. This
group of pupils has more serious problems when making
educational and subsequently professional choices in the labour
market. In the text we present data from a quantitative
investigation focused on identification of specific features in
professional aspirations of pupils with a mild disability,
specific learning difficulties and behaviour disorders.
Attention is paid to selected circumstances and influences
which often play a role in the process of decision making,
particularly the influence of counselling bodies.


Nutrition has been shown to have a significant impact on aging. Caloric Restriction (CR), i.e., undernutrition not malnutrition, significantly increases the survival of laboratory animals by retarding/delaying the aging process. CR has beneficial effects on various physiological systems, including the immune system. Overall, the immunological status of rodents fed a restricted diet is superior to the immunological status of the non-restricted animals. It is believed that CR might retard aging and immunosenescence through a mechanism involving changes in signal transduction and gene expression. Recent studies from our laboratory support the view that the mechanism of CR involves changes in the activation of the upstream signaling molecules and cytokine gene expression that are altered with age.


Abstract Multiple-input single-output (MISO) systems are employed in free space optical (FSO) links to mitigate the degrading effects of atmospheric turbulence. In this paper, we consider a MISO FSO system with practical transmitter and receiver configuration that consists of radial laser array with Gaussian beams and a Gaussian receiver aperture function. We have employed our previously derived formulation of the power scintillation in which Huygens–Fresnel principle was employed. Therefore, we choose system parameters within the range of validity of the wave structure functions. Using the on-off keying modulation and the log-normal probability distribution function, we quantify the average bit error rate (〈BER〉) of laser array beams in weak turbulence. It is observed that the radial array beams at the transmitter are more advantageous than the single Gaussian beam. However, increasing the number of array beamlets to more than three seems to have negligible effects on 〈BER〉 . It is further observed that 〈BER〉 decreases when the source size, the ring radius and the receiver aperture radius increase.


Few studies, to our knowledge, have examined whether early improvements in individual, instead of overall, depressive symptoms predict remission in major depressive disorder (MDD). This post hoc analysis used data from 194 patients with MDD enrolled in a 6‐week double‐blind, placebo‐controlled, randomized trial of mirtazapine, to identify improvements in specific individual depressive symptoms in the early phase that are associated with subsequent remission. Trajectories of individual depressive symptoms over 6 weeks were compared between remitters and nonremitters. Early improvement was defined as a ≥20% decrease in the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression 17 items (HAM‐D17) total score in weeks 1 and 2, and remission was defined as a HAM‐D17 final score of ≤7. Reliability parameters were calculated for early improvements in predicting later remission. Whether improvement in each of the HAM‐D17 symptoms in weeks 1 or 2 predicted remission was examined, using binary logistic regression analyses. As a result, improvements in weeks 1 and 2 were associated with sensitivity of 0.82 and 0.99 and specificity of 0.54 and 0.44, respectively, in predicting remission in week 6. Improvements in insomnia late (P = .04) and insight (P = .007) in week 1 and somatic symptoms general (P = .002) and insight (P = .04) in week 2 were associated with remission in week 6. In conclusion, early improvements in insight, insomnia late, and somatic symptoms general, as well as overall depressive symptoms, may serve as specific clinical indicators of subsequent remission in patients with MDD receiving mirtazapine.


The lack of congruence between the involved articular surfaces causes the inherent instability of the glenohumeral joint. This joint is therefore the most commonly dislocated joint in the human body. Anterior instability accounts for over 90% of the shoulder dislocations. The reason of this almost unidirectional dislocation remains unknown. Few studies have quantitatively discussed the joint stability utilizing musculoskeletal models. Other studies mainly utilized either purely clinical or cadaveric approaches to address the joint stability. The aim of this study is to identify the key factors contributing to anterior instability through a quantitative analysis of the shoulder's dynamic stabilizers.


We present a deviational Monte Carlo method for
solving the Boltzmann equation for phonon transport subject to the
linearized ab initio 3-phonon scattering operator. Phonon
dispersion relations and transition rates are obtained from density
functional theory calculations. The ab initio scattering operator
replaces the commonly used relaxation-time approximation, which is
known to neglect, among other things, coupling between out of
equilibrium states. The latter is particularly important in
two-dimensional materials such as graphene, which is the subject of
this thesis. One important ingredient of the method presented here
is an energy-conserving, stochastic particle algorithm for
simulating the linearized form of the ab initio scattering
operator. This scheme is incorporated within the recently developed
deviational, energy-based formulation of the Boltzmann equation, to
obtain, for the first time, low-variance Monte Carlo solutions of
this model for time- and spatially-dependent problems. The
deviational formulation ensures that simulations are
computationally feasible for arbitrarily small temperature
differences, while the stochastic treatment of the scattering
operator is both efficient-in the limit of large number of states,
it outperforms the more traditional direct evaluation methods used
in solutions of the homogeneous Boltzmann equation-and exhibits no
timestep error. We use the method to study heat transport in
graphene ribbons, a geometry used to experimentally measure the
thermal conductivity of graphene. Our results show that the
effective thermal conductivity of ribbons decreases monotonically
as either the length or the width of the ribbon decreases. We also
show that at room temperature the error introduced by modeling the
effect of transverse diffuse boundaries using a homogeneous
scattering approximation is on the order of 10% and as high as 30%.
A simple parametric model for the effective thermal conductivity
depending only on the Knudsen number is presented that outperforms
the homogenous scattering rate approximation in terms of accuracy.
Spatially resolved temperature and heat flux profiles are also
obtained and analyzed for the first time in graphene ribbons using
the linearized ab initio scattering term.


This paper documents the features of a new database that focuses on changes in the intensity in the usage of several widely used prudential tools, taking into account both macro-prudential and microprudential objectives. The database coverage is broad, spanning 64 countries, and with quarterly data for the period 2000Q1 through 2014Q4. The five types of prudential instruments in the database are: capital buffers, interbank exposure limits, concentration limits, loan to value (LTV) ratio limits, and reserve requirements. A total of nine prudential tools are constructed since some useful further decompositions are presented, with capital buffers divided into four sub-indices: general capital requirements, real state credit specific capital buffers, consumer credit specific capital buffers, and other specific capital buffers; and with reserve requirements divided into two sub-indices: domestic currency capital requirements and foreign currency capital requirements. While general capital requirements have the most changes from the cross-country perspective, LTV ratio limits and reserve requirements have the largest number of tightening and loosening episodes. We also analyze the instruments' usage in relation to the evolution of key variables such as credit, policy rates, and house prices, finding substantial differences in the patterns of loosening or tightening of instruments in relation to business and financial cycles.


Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the major public health problem worldwide, particularly in the Middle East. Diffuse axonal injury (DAI) is commonly found in TBI. Although DAI can lead to physical and psychosocial disabilities, its prognostic value is still a matter of debate. Magnetic Resonance (MR) is more sensitive for detecting DAI lesions. Objective: To identify the radiological and clinical factors associated with the functional capacity one year after the traumatic brain injury. Methods: The study included 251 patients with severe head trauma for whom Brain MRI was done within one month after injury. Demographic, clinical, and radiological data were collected during hospitalization. Neurocognitive and psychiatric evaluation were done one year thereafter. Results: DAI was more frequent in our patients. Psychiatric disorders, cognitive impairment, and poor functional outcome were more common in patients with DAI especially those with cerebral hemisphere and brain stem lesion, and mixed lesions. Duration of post traumatic amnesia (DPTA), lost consciousness and hospital stay (DHS) as well as the volume of diffuse axonal injury (DAI) were associated with poor neurocognitive outcome. DPTA, and DAIV may be considered independent factors that could predict the neurocognitive outcome. Conclusion: MRI following traumatic brain injury yields important prognostic information, with several lesion patterns significantly associated with poor long-term neurocognitive and psychiatric outcomes.