Background and Aims Sympatric plant species that share pollinators potentially compete for pollination and risk interspecific pollen transfer, but this competition can be minimized when plant species place pollen on different areas of the pollinator's body. Multiple studies have demonstrated strong differential pollen placement by sympatric plant species under laboratory conditions; however, field evidence collected in natural settings is less common. Furthermore, it is unknown whether precise pollen placement on the pollinator's body remains constant throughout the foraging period, or if such patterns become diffused over time (e.g. due to grooming). To test the prevalence of differential pollen placement in the wild, we examined a community of five night-blooming plant species in southern Thailand that share common bat pollinators. Methods We mist-netted wild foraging nectar bats and collected pollen samples from four body parts: the crown of the head, face, chest and ventral side of one wing. We also noted the time of pollen collection to assess how pollinator pollen loads change throughout the foraging period. Key Results Our findings revealed that most of our plant study species placed pollen on precise areas of the bat, consistent with experimental work, and that patterns of differential pollen placement remained constant throughout the night. Conclusions This study demonstrates how diverse floral morphologies effectively limit interspecific pollen transfer among Old World bat-pollinated plants under natural conditions. Additionally, interspecific pollen transfer is probably minimal throughout the entire foraging period, since patterns of pollen on the bats' bodies were consistent over time.


Regularization is typically understood as improving generalization by altering the landscape of local extrema to which the model eventually converges. Deep neural networks (DNNs), however, challenge this view: We show that removing regularization after an initial transient period has little effect on generalization, even if the final loss landscape is the same as if there had been no regularization. In some cases, generalization even improves after interrupting regularization. Conversely, if regularization is applied only after the initial transient, it has no effect on the final solution, whose generalization gap is as bad as if regularization never happened. This suggests that what matters for training deep networks is not just whether or how, but when to regularize. The phenomena we observe are manifest in different datasets (CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100), different architectures (ResNet-18, All-CNN), different regularization methods (weight decay, data augmentation), different learning rate schedules (exponential, piece-wise constant). They collectively suggest that there is a ``critical period'' for regularizing deep networks that is decisive of the final performance. More analysis should, therefore, focus on the transient rather than asymptotic behavior of learning.


The Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, has stated that "the Annual National Assessment (ANA) results for 2011 are an indication that the education sector needs to focus even more on its core functions of quality learning and teaching". ANA is the standardized national assessments for Languages and Mathematics in the intermediate phase (Grades 4-6) and in Literacy and Numeracy for the foundation phase (Grades One to Three). The Grade Six national average in Languages was 28%. Of these grade six learners, only 30% achieved above 35%. The Minister attributed these results to "an under-emphasis on the development of the basic skills for reading and writing". In the school studied in this dissertation, the average percentage achievement in the ANA for learners from Grade Three to Grade Six was between 18% and 23% for languages. This data revealed that learners lacked basic writing skills.
This dissertation explores and describes the experiences of three educators when teaching functional and creative writing. Data was collected through in-depth interviews. The three educators teach English at the school. The school is situated in a low socio-economic area of Cato Manor, near Durban.
The findings indicate the need for educators to be specialists in the field of Languages and Mathematics in order to improve experiences of teaching and learning. Secondly, lack of sufficient resources, such as lack of the workbooks introduced by the Department of Education, hinder the teaching and learning process. Sustainability of professional development and teambuilding exercises leads to effective teaching and learning. Dewey (1933) revealed that reflection on experience leads to learning. Whole school reflective practice will improve experiences of the teaching and learning of creative and functional writing.
There is a close link between challenges and experiences. The researcher in this study is working from the perspective that all teachers have positive and negative experiences. On the other hand not all teachers face challenges when teaching functional and creative writing.


Although David Lodge's Nice Work (1988) provides a surprising narrative of reconciliation between the academy and industry, its concluding pages allude to an even more pervasive cultural dilemma that has haunted English life for centuries - the mostly silent war that rages unchecked between the classes. Robyn Penrose, the novel's academic protagonist, recognizes the acuity of class and cultural distance that separates her students from a young black gardener tending the campus lawn. "The gardener is about the same age as the students," Lodge writes, "but no communication takes place between them - no nods, or smiles, or spoken words, not even a glance. . . . Physically contiguous," Lodge continues, "they inhabit separate worlds. It seems a very British way of handling class and race" (277). Lodge's depiction of the tacit acceptance of England's rigid class structure and the interpersonal distance that it produces in Nice Work signal the narrative's place in an historical tradition of British novels that highlight the social and economic discrepancies of life on the sceptered isle and its principalities. From such works as Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders (1722) and Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) to Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1855) and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (1989), British literature echoes with authorial discontent in response to the nation's historical obsessions with rank, social standing, and pedigree. England's dizzying celebration of class and the implicit honor that invariably accompanies it extends to its national folklore as well, from the anti-heroic exploits of Empire and colonialism to disaster at sea. Legend has it, for instance, that as the Titanic sank during the early morning hours of 15 April 1912, Captain Smith implored first-class male passengers to "be British, boys, be British" and surrender the ship's paucity of lifeboats to women and children. Nevertheless, more first- and second-class male passengers, including the White Star Line's derelict chief executive, J. Bruce Ismay, managed to survive the disaster than children from third-class and steerage combined (Wade 58, 67).(1) Concern for such a corrosive lack of value for the lives and experiences of the lower or disenfranchised classes underscores the narrative agenda inherent in many of E. M. Forster's fictions, including Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), which problematizes English perceptions of the lifestyles and mores of Italians, and A Passage to India (1924), a novel in which Forster surveys the social inequities and atrocities inevitably bred by a class- and race-conscious nation that engages in imperialism. In Howards End (1910), Forster assaults the superstructure of the British class system, peels back its many and variegated layers, and argues that only interpersonal connection and compassion will enable England to modify its deafening social distances, the likes of which Lodge depicts in Nice Work. The parlance of family systems psychotherapy offers a particularly useful means for explicating Forster's illustrations of class and culture and the roadblocks that they erect in England's pathways to the kind of national morphogenesis necessary for its society to bond and endure.(2) In Families and Larger Systems: A Family Therapist's Guide through the Labyrinth (1988), Evan Imber-Black astutely observes that "all families engage with larger systems." Healthy, differentiated families, moreover, "are able to function in an interdependent manner with a variety of larger systems, utilizing information from these systems as material for their own growth and development" (14). Reading the layers of England's class structure as the component parts of a larger, albeit dysfunctional, family system illuminates Forster's critique of class and culture in Howards End. By supplying readers with a critical lens that identifies the nature of the feedback loops existing between the novel's characters and the diversity of their class origins, family systems psychotherapy demonstrates the manner in which Forster employs narrative therapy as a means for challenging his nation - with its collection of disparate classes and cultures - to, if nothing else, "only connect. …


Leverage the power of SQL Server 2017 Integration Services to build data integration solutions with ease
Key Features
Work with temporal tables to access information stored in a table at any time

Get familiar with the latest features in SQL Server 2017 Integration Services

Program and extend your packages to enhance their functionality
Book Description
Microsoft SQL Server 2017 uses the power of R and Python for machine learning and containerization-based deployment on Windows and Linux. By learning how to use the features of SQL Server 2017 effectively, you can build scalable apps and easily perform data integration and transformation.

You'll start by brushing up on the features of SQL Server 2017. This Learning Path will then demonstrate how you can use Query Store, columnstore indexes, and In-Memory OLTP in your apps. You'll also learn to integrate Python code in SQL Server and graph database implementations for development and testing. Next, you'll get up to speed with designing and building SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) data warehouse packages using SQL server data tools. Toward the concluding chapters, you'll discover how to develop SSIS packages designed to maintain a data warehouse using the data flow and other control flow tasks.

By the end of this Learning Path, you'll be equipped with the skills you need to design efficient, high-performance database applications with confidence.

This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt books:

SQL Server 2017 Developer's Guide by Milos Radivojevic, Dejan Sarka, et. al

SQL Server 2017 Integration Services Cookbook by Christian Cote, Dejan Sarka, et. al

What you will learn
Use columnstore indexes to make storage and performance improvements

Extend database design solutions using temporal tables

Exchange JSON data between applications and SQL Server

Migrate historical data to Microsoft Azure by using Stretch Database

Design the architecture of a modern Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) solution

Implement ETL solutions using Integration Services for both on-premise and Azure data
Who this book is for
This Learning Path is for database developers and solution architects looking to develop ETL solutions with SSIS, and explore the new features in SSIS 2017. Advanced analysis practitioners, business intelligence developers, and database consultants dealing with performance tuning will also find this book useful. Basic understanding of database concepts and T-SQL is required to get the best out of this Learning Path.


Cybernetics is a broad subject, encompassing many aspects of electrical, electronic, and computer engineering, which suffers from a lack of understanding on the part of potential applicants and teachers when recruiting students. However, once the engineering values, fascinating science, and pathways to rewarding, diverse careers are communicated, appropriate students can be very interested in enrolling. At the University of Reading, Reading, U.K., a key route for outreach to prospective students has been achieved through the use of robots in interactive talks at schools, competitions (often funded by Public Understanding of Science projects), a collectable fortnightly magazine, exhibitions in museums, open days at the University, and appearances in the media. This paper identifies the interactive engagement, anthropomorphic acceptability, and inspirational nature of robots as being key to their successful use in outreach activities. The statistical results presented show that the continued popularity of degrees at Reading in cybernetics, electronic engineering, and robotics over the last 20 years is in part due to the outreach activities to schools and the general public.


OBJECTIVE
To describe the challenges, including sociocultural and socioeconomic barriers, faced by an urban immigrant population in the United States affected by thalassemia major.

DESIGN
Ethnographic, semi-structured, 1-on-1 interviews using an interview guide developed for this study. Digital recordings were transcribed and data analyzed using constant comparative method.

SETTING
University-based, Comprehensive Thalassemia Program at Children's Memorial Hospital, Chicago, IL, USA.

PARTICIPANTS
Fourteen Southeast Asian and Asian Indian parents of children with transfusion dependent thalassemia.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
Qualitative descriptions of parental experiences, frequency of codes applied to interviews and emergent themes.

RESULTS
Thalassemia has its greatest impact on the emotional and social well-being of affected children and their parents. Current and future concerns were related to disease-specific complications and challenges with management such as transfusions and chelation therapy. These perceptions were tied to parental hope for a cure, a frequently coded coping mechanism. Despite their availability, few parents relied on support systems beyond immediate family members due to perceived public knowledge gaps about thalassemia. Culturally based past experiences and barriers did not emerge as dominant themes in our analysis.

CONCLUSION
The impact of thalassemia is tremendous for affected children and their parents and is due more to factors that were either disease-specific or common to other chronic disease models rather than those influenced by culture. The unmet needs of these families require additional investigation to facilitate the development of initiatives aimed at improving quality of life and lessening overall impact of thalassemia


The detection of waterborne pathogens mainly relies on sample processing. This process concentrates large volume of water to very small volume that can be used under microscopes. The current approved concentration techniques are slow, very expensive, time-consuming and often results in low recovery rates of pathogens. This research explores the use of high frequency sonication which is attached to two different types of filters to improve the recovery rate and work towards automated filtration/elution systems. Both systems were designed and tested with latex beads and live Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts.
Previous research has often focussed on chemical approaches to improve recovery levels during filter elution. But novel physical methods, such as the use of megasonic sonication, offer great potential for effective removal of pathogen from filters. Compared with ultrasound-assisted agitation, megasonic sonication, which operates at a higher frequency of energy excitation, offers more gentleness and during the process more detailed elution process with lower risk of pathogen damage. Megasonic exposure of oocysts with Cryptosporidium has been shown to preserve their viability. This elution mode enables pathogen infectivity to be established downstream, because viability and species details can not be extracted from attenuated pathogens.
Here we investigate the use of megasonic elution in two different filtration set-ups to improve Cryptosporidium recovery rates: firstly, dead-end filtration using a Rexeed filter and secondly, tangential flow filtration using a Fresenius filter. The results show that recovery levels for both installations are increased by about 50 per cent, demonstrating the capacity of megasonic elution in this application.
Introduction: Cryptosporidium is a particularly problematic waterborne pathogen due to resistance to chlorination, low infectious dose and impressive longevity in its environment. Additionally, detection is challenging as recovery rates are often low and the protozoan cannot be cultured in the lab making effective sample processing for concentration essential.
Recently, the use of ultrasonic elution has been shown to significantly improve the rate of recovery for Cryptosporidium. Nevertheless, it was also shown that a few minutes of continuous ultrasound destroy Cryptosporidium oocysts with more than 90 percent deactivation of the oocyst. As longer exposures significantly impacted viability, the integrated ultrasound filtration system defined by Al-Sabi was limited to 5 s of ultrasonic operation. Deactivation destroys the capacity of the identified pathogens to assess their viability status. In addition, DNA degradation may be incompatible with species-determining molecular methods.
By comparison, megasonic sonication offers a way to elude undamaged and potentially viable oocysts from filters and membranes, by minimizing the time needed for bubble growth and the resulting low cavitation energy. This work also demonstrated Cryptosporidium 's viability even after 120 min of megasonic exposure, with an excystation assay reporting an excystation rate of 96 percent with a sporoziote / shell ratio of 2.26 (compared to 97 percent and 2.4 for control)
Here, we explore the use of megasonic sonication for pathogen elution in an automated filtration system with different filter types and suggest how the integration of megasonic transducers could boost the set-up efficiency. Typically, protozoan pathogen recovery rates from the detection protocol filtration stages are low; therefore, the key focus of this study was to determine whether megasonic elution would lead to an increase in recovery rates.
Objective: The goal was to investigate whether megasonic elution could increase Cryptosporidium 's recovery levels using filters included in automated filtration systems.
Results & Discussion: Experiments were undertaken to explore the potential of megasonic elution with different filter types using two different systems. The Rexeed 25AX filter used a dead-end filtration system and a tangential flow set-up was introduced with a Fresenius FX1000 filter. These filters have been selected from previous literature because they were used in automated set-ups and based on data, i.e. previous demonstration of good filtration efficiency with Cryptosporidium oocysts. Before the filter is back-flushed to elute pathogens from the filter, the sample is first passed through the filter and pathogens captured in the dead-end operation.
The tangential flow system was part of a fully automated system to replace the previously mentioned Cryptosporidium regulatory control process, developed by Shaw Water Company. No pre-treatments of chemical filters or elution buffers were used for this study focusing solely on the impact of the method of physical elution. Normal operating procedures have been contrasted with the use of the megasonic transducer (for the dead-end filter during the back-flush process and for the tangential flow filter in operation). Importantly, however, both increases were statistically significant for the tangential flow and dead-end flow filters with a student T-value of 4,064 and 3,077 respectively, both larger than the T-test value of 2,776 using a confidence interval of 95 per cent. This suggests waterborne protozoa monitoring systems should consider including megasonic elution. Previous work with the Filta-Max filter did not demonstrate such a large increase in recovery rates, and rather advantages were observed and emphasized in terms of automated and more efficient elution into smaller volumes.
Conclusions: Megasonic elution provides a major increase in Cryptosporidium recovery levels from automated filtration setups.


The effect of formalin on the organoleptic parameters, biochemical composition and storage quality of iced and frozen stored giant freshwater prawns ( Macrobrachium rosenbergii ) was investigated. The organoleptic characters such as appearance, textural condition, colour, odour of both formalin added and non-added prawns were evaluated. The quality of non-added prawns was judged good up to first 3 days of iced storage and remained acceptable in terms of commercial standard for processing in the industry up to 6 days. On the other hand, formalin added samples were organoleptically acceptable up to 8 days. The expressible moisture content of both formalin added and non-added prawns continued to increase gradually during 90 days of frozen storage and it was higher in non-added sample. Study of proximate composition at initial storage showed that there were variations in composition between formalin added and non-added samples. At the end of 10 days of iced storage, there was little change in composition in both the cases. To assess the freshness of the prawn samples, TVB-N value and myofibrillar protein solubility were determined. Under iced storage, there was a clear trend of increasing TVB-N value both in formalin added and nonadded samples with higher value in non-added sample. The initial myofibrillar protein solubility of formalin added prawn was 88% and that of non-added sample was 80%. After 10 days of iced storage, the protein solubility of both the samples decreased to 50% of their initial value. The solubility of myofibrillar protein of formalin added prawn was lower than non-added sample. Overall loss of freshness took place much faster in non-added prawn sample than the formalin added sample both under iced and frozen storage conditions. Keywords: Freshwater prawn; Organoleptic parameter; Myofibrillar protein; TVB-N value DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jbau.v9i1.8758 JBAU 2011; 9(1): 159-168


The purpose of this study is to adapt the Scale for Spiritual Intelligence Scale developed by Kumar and Mehta (2011) into Turkish and to examine its reliability and validity. Data have been collected from four different study groups involving a total of 1,098 high school students (440 females and 658 males). In Turkey, the exploratory factor analysis of the Scale for Spiritual Intelligence's original structure, which consists of six factors, only appears to have occurred in four cases. The goodness-of-fit statistics obtained as a result of the confirmatory factor analysis performed on one sample using this structure are X2 = 335.17, SD = 145 (X2 / SD = 2.33), RMSEA = 0.052, SRMR = 0.049, GFI = 0.93, CFI = 0.90, AGFI = 0.91. Whether or not a statistically significant difference exists in the scores for the lower and upper 27th-percentile groups was examined in order to look at the discriminators of the scale; a statistically significant difference has been detected in favor of the upper segment. As a result of the criterion validity study, a significant positive correlation has been found between the Scale for Spiritual Intelligence and the Meaning in Life Scale (Demirbaş, 2010). According to the obtained linguistic equivalence results, the Turkish form of the scale is seen to be equivalent to the original English form. Cronbach's alphas of internal consistency and reliability were calculated as .86 and .85 for both samples. Research results reveal the Turkish form of Scale for Spiritual Intelligence to be a valid and reliable instrument that can be used in scientific studies to be carried out in Turkey.


Fairy tales and Where the Wild Things Are, The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia books, Little House on the Prairie and The Earthsea Trilogy. What would you find if you went back and re-read your favourite books from childhood? Francis Spufford discovers both delight and sadness, in this widely celebrated memoir of a boy who retreats into books, faced with a tragedy in his family. 'A beautifully composed and wholly original memoir, sounding the classics of children's literature.' David Sexton, Evening Standard 'Exuberant and serious, funny and sophisticated, this memoir of reading and childhood is a delight.' Andrea Ashworth


We investigate the effects of fragmentation in equity markets on the quality of trading outcomes in a panel of FTSE stocks over the period 2008-2011. This period coincided with a great deal of turbulence in the UK equity markets which had multiple causes that need to be controlled for. To achieve this, we use the common correlated effects estimator for large heterogeneous panels. We extend this estimator to quantile regression to analyze the whole conditional distribution of market quality. We find that both fragmentation in visible order books and dark trading that is offered outside the visible order book lower volatility. But dark trading increases the variability of volatility, while visible fragmentation has the opposite effect in particular at the upper quantiles of the conditional distribution. The transition from a monopolistic to a fragmented market is non-monotone.


Theories of embodied cognition hold that the conceptual system uses perceptual simulations for the purposes of representation. A strong prediction is that perceptual phenomena should emerge in conceptual processing, and, in support, previous research has shown that switching modalities from one trial to the next incurs a processing cost during conceptual tasks. However, to date, such research has been limited by its reliance on the retrieval of familiar concepts. We therefore examined concept creation by asking participants to interpret modality-specific compound phrases (i.e., conceptual combinations). Results show that modality switching costs emerge during the creation of new conceptual entities: People are slower to simulate a novel concept (e.g., auditory jingling onion) when their attention has already been engaged by a different modality in simulating a familiar concept (e.g., visual shiny penny). Furthermore, these costs cannot be accounted for by linguistic factors alone. Rather, our findings support the embodied view that concept creation, as well as retrieval, requires situated perceptual simulation.


The effects of the nature of disintegrant (N), its concentration(C) and its type (T) on the disintegrant properties - crushing strength (Cs), friability (Fr) and disintegration time (Dt) - of paracetamol tablets formulated with starch disintegrants from white and yellow trifoliate yam varieties (Dioscorea dumetorum Pax) and rice (Oryza sativa, Linn) were studied comparatively with those containing official corn starch by the application of statistical principles based on a 23 experimental design. Generally, for all the starch disintegrants, the ranking for the individual effects on Cs, Fr and Dt were N>C>T, N>C>T and C>F>T, respectively. The general ranking for the interactions would appear to be N-C > C-T > N-T. From these, it may be inferred that the concentration of disintegrant, C which is apparently involved in the two largest groups of interaction is generally the most important in influencing the effects of the variables on the disintegration properties of the various starches since it would influence the effects of the two other variables considerably. These findings can be useful in manipulating the variables to obtain desired disintegration properties for formulated paracetamol tablets.


The mains current in an ac/dc converter contains periodic current pulses due to the action of rectifier and output filter capacitor. The high current peaks cause harmonic distortion of the supply current and low power factor. This results in a poor power quality, voltage distortion, poor power factor at input ac mains, slowly varying rippled dc output at load end and low efficiency. Many input wave shaping methods have been proposed to solve the problem of poor power factor which can be classified as active and passive methods. The main focus of this study is to review various existing wave shaping methods in terms of their efficiency, total harmonic distortion and power factor. Among the passive wave shaping techniques, the improved passive current wave shaping method and the novel method are analyzed and are simulated in ORCAD software. The active method which uses a MOSFET switch driven by the rectangular pulses of continuously varying duty cycle over a period of supply voltage is analyzed. The relevant theoretical design parameters and the simulated results are presented.


Dicistroviridae is a family of small non-enveloped viruses with monopartite, linear, positive-sense RNA genomes of approximately 8–10 kb. Viruses of all classified species infect arthropod hosts, with some having devastating economic consequences, such as acute bee paralysis virus in domesticated honeybees and taura syndrome virus in shrimp farming. Conversely, the host specificity and other desirable traits exhibited by several members of this group make them potential natural enemies for intentional use against arthropod pests, such as triatoma virus against triatomine bugs that vector Chagas disease. This is a summary of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) Report on the taxonomy of the Dicistroviridae which is available at www.ictv.global/report/dicistroviridae.


The soybean aphid (Aphis glycines Matsumura) is a major soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) insect pest. Soybean plant introduction (PI) 200538 has strong resistance to the aphid. The objectives of our research were to determine the inheritance of resistance and to map gene(s) controlling resis- tance in PI 200538. F 2 populations developed from crosses between PI 200538 and three sus- ceptible genotypes were tested for resistance and with DNA markers. F 2 plants from the cross 'Ina' × PI 200538 segregated 114 resistant to 37 susceptible and F 2 plants from the cross 'Wil- liams 82' × PI 200538 segregated 203 resistant to 65 susceptible when tested for resistance to soybean aphid biotype 1. F 2 plants from the cross LD02-4485 × PI 200538 segregated 167 resistant to 62 susceptible when tested for resistance to biotype 2. These populations fi t a 3:1 genetic ratio (P = 0.89, 0.78, and 0.52, respectively) with resistance dominant over sus- ceptibility. Segregation among F 2:3 families from the crosses supported the dominant resistance gene hypothesis. The gene mapped to soybean linkage group F, fl anked by the simple sequence repeat marker loci Satt510, Soyhsp176, Satt114, and Sct_033, located in the same region as the aphid resistance gene Rag2. Since the resis- tance gene in PI 200538 also gave resistance to soybean aphid biotypes 1 and 2, it is pos- sible that the gene is Rag2 and not a new aphid resistance gene. Therefore, PI 200538 may be an additional source of Rag2.


External cost from meat consumption raises an issue of possible government mechanisms toward mitigation. Economic theory provides a framework for determining the optimal set of mechanisms considering the associated benefits and costs. Such a theoretical development rests on the responsiveness of consumers to alternative mechanisms. Considering two mechanisms, a Pigouvian tax and green-label education, yields tandem theoretical optimal government mechanisms. Populating this theoretical model with empirically derived elasticities and other parameters provides an application. Results indicate education alone will likely not yield a high social-optimal level of mitigation. Instead, a Pigouvian tax will be required to move consumption toward a socially desired state.


The latest National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines on intrapartum care include advice on the appropriate use of cardiotocographs. This technology has become, rightly or wrongly, commonplace as an increasing number of women are receiving CTG monitoring during their labour. The technology is now over 50 years old, however, it has still to be proven effective. The cardiotocograph monitors are not monitors per se—they are used as a recorder and signal display to be then reviewed by an observer. Increasingly computers have been used to improve this technology, both display and interpretation and computers are now to be used to help interpret traces in real time. This article addresses whether the potential in CTG monitoring technology has finally materialized.


Gossip is believed to be an informal device that alleviates the problem of cooperation in humans. Communication about previous acts and passing on reputational information could be valuable for conditional action in cooperation problems and pose a punishment threat to defectors. It is an open question, however, what kind of mechanisms can make gossip honest and credible and reputational information reliable, especially if intense competition for reputations does not exclusively dictate passing on honest information. We propose two mechanisms that could support the honesty and credibility of gossip under such a conflict of interest. One is the possibility of voluntary checks of received evaluative information from different sources and the other is social bonding between the sender and the receiver. We tested the efficiency of cross-checking and social bonding in a laboratory experiment where subjects played the Prisoner's Dilemma with gossip interactions. Although individuals had confidence in gossip in both conditions, we found that, overall, neither the opportunities for cross-checking nor bonding were able to maintain cooperation. Meanwhile, strong competition for reputation increased cooperation when individuals' payoffs depended greatly on their position relative to their rivals. Our results suggest that intense competition for reputation facilitates gossip functioning as an informal device promoting cooperation. This article is part of the theme issue 'The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling'.


In this research, a by-product of paper and timber industries, lignosulphonate (LS), was used to enhance the properties of expansive clay. Laboratory tests included Atterberg limits, Proctor compaction, unconfined compressive strength (UCS), free swell and unconsolidated–undrained (UU) triaxial compression tests, which were conducted on LS-treated and untreated specimens. Moreover, effects of moisture content changes and cyclic wetting and drying on soil properties were assessed. To illustrate strength creation owing to LS-stabilization, scanning electron microscopy was conducted on unstabilized and LS-stabilized clay. The strength properties of the soil improved with LS-stabilization. For both the treated and untreated soils, strength parameters decreased with increase in compaction moisture content. The swell per cent and swell pressure of the expansive clay reduced owing to LS-stabilization. The reduction of plasticity index of the soil because of stabilization changed the category of soil expansivity from high to moderate. These improvements in soil properties are related to the electrostatic reaction that occurs between the LS–water mixture and soil particles, thus leading to soil aggregation.


This article studies the problem of modifying the action ordering of a plan in order to optimise the plan according to various criteria. One of these criteria is to make a plan less constrained and the other is to minimize its parallel execution time. Three candidate definitions are proposed for the first of these criteria, constituting a sequence of increasing optimality guarantees. Two of these are based on deordering plans, which means that ordering relations may only be removed, not added, while the third one uses reordering, where arbitrary modifications to the ordering are allowed. It is shown that only the weakest one of the three criteria is tractable to achieve, the other two being NP-hard and even difficult to approximate. Similarly, optimising the parallel execution time of a plan is studied both for deordering and reordering of plans. In the general case, both of these computations are NP-hard. However, it is shown that optimal deorderings can be computed in polynomial time for a class of planning languages based on the notions of producers, consumers and threats, which includes most of the commonly used planning languages. Computing optimal reorderings can potentially lead to even faster parallel executions, but this problem remains NP-hard and difficult to approximate even under quite severe restrictions.


PURPOSE
This study examined applicant reactions to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Standardized Video Interview (SVI) during its first year of operational use in emergency medicine (EM) residency program selection in order to identify strategies to improve applicants' SVI experience and attitudes.

METHOD
Individuals who self-classified as EM applicants applying in the Electronic Residency Application Service 2018 cycle and completed the SVI in summer 2017 were invited to participate in two surveys. Survey 1, which focused on procedural issues, was administered immediately after SVI completion. Survey 2, which focused on applicants' SVI experience, was administered in fall 2017, after SVI scores were released.

RESULTS
The response rates for surveys 1 and 2 were 82.3% (2,906/3,532) and 58.7% (2,074/3,532), respectively. Applicant reactions varied by aspect of the SVI studied and their SVI total scores. Most applicants were satisfied with most procedural aspects of the SVI, but most applicants were not satisfied with the SVI overall or with their total SVI scores. About 20-30% of applicants had neutral opinions about most aspects of the SVI. Negative reactions to the SVI were stronger for applicants who scored lower on the SVI.

CONCLUSIONS
Applicants had generally negative reactions to the SVI. Most were skeptical of its ability to assess the target competencies and its potential to add value to the selection process. Applicant acceptance and appreciation of the SVI will be critical to the SVI's acceptance by the graduate medical education community.


The three wastewater treatment plants in Gaza Strip, Palestine, rely on old technologies that have proved to be unable to solve the existing problems. Sludge management is not currently considered in detail in Palestine and the area will face challenges of sludge management in the near future after the construction of ongoing and planned projects in the Gaza Strip. The paper focuses on the determination of the quantity and quality of existing and future sludge in the Gaza Strip based on the available literature, current and planned wastewater treatment systems, present population data, and future population forecasts for the Gaza Strip. Sludge currently generated in the Gaza Strip is difficult to quantify. No measurements are taken and there are no previous estimates of sludge quantities. Estimates suggest that around 400 m3 of sludge is produced daily from the secondary treatment facility in the Gaza treatment plant. The analyses show that sludge is almost free of heavy metals and rich in nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. The quantities of sludge estimated by the year 2025 in all Gaza Strip are 55.74 thousand kilograms of dry solids daily. The sludge is expected to consist of 1–2% dry solids which mean that 3,716 m3 of sludge will be generated daily in the Gaza Strip by the year 2025. These quantities will be a real challenge for the local authorities.


The brain's attentional system identifies and selects information that is task-relevant while ignoring information that is task-irrelevant. In two experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined the effects of varying task-relevant information compared to task-irrelevant information. In the first experiment, we compared patterns of activation as attentional demands were increased for two Stroop tasks that differed in the task-relevant information, but not the task-irrelevant information: a color-word task and a spatial-word task. Distinct subdivisions of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the precuneus became activated for each task, indicating differential sensitivity of these regions to task-relevant information (e.g., spatial information vs. color). In the second experiment, we compared patterns of activation with increased attentional demands for two Stroop tasks that differed in task-irrelevant information, but not task-relevant information: a color-word task and color-object task. Little differentiation in activation for dorsolateral prefrontal and precuneus regions was observed, indicating a relative insensitivity of these regions to task-irrelevant information. However, we observed a differentiation in the pattern of activity for posterior regions. There were unique areas of activation in parietal regions for the color-word task and in occipito-temporal regions for the color-object task. No increase in activation was observed in regions responsible for processing the perceptual attribute of color. The results of this second experiment indicate that attentional selection in tasks such as the Stroop task, which contain multiple potential sources of relevant information (e.g., the word vs. its ink color), acts more by modulating the processing of task-irrelevant information than by modulating processing of task-relevant information.


A method for determining adaptive observation locations is demonstrated. This method is based on optimal estimation (Kalman filter) theory; it determines the observation location that will maximize the expected improvement, which can be measured in terms of the expected reduction in analysis or forecast variance. This technique requires an accurate model for background error statistics that vary both in space and in time. Here, these covariances are generated using an ensemble Kalman filter assimilation scheme. A variant is also developed that can estimate the analysis improvement in data assimilation schemes where background error statistics are less accurate. This approach is demonstrated using a quasigeostrophic channel model under perfect-model assumptions. The algorithm is applied here to find the supplemental rawinsonde location to add to a regular network of rawinsondes that will reduce analysis errors the most. The observation network is configured in this experiment so there is a data void in the western third of the domain. One-hundred-member ensembles from three data assimilation schemes are tested as input to the target selection procedure, two variants of the standard ensemble Kalman filter and a third perturbed observation (3DVAR) ensemble. The algorithm is shown to find large differences in the expected variance reduction depending on the observation location, the flow of the day, and the ensemble used in the adaptive observation algorithm. When using the two variants of the ensemble Kalman filter, the algorithm defined consistently similar adaptive locations to each other, and assimilation of the adaptive observation typically reduced analysis errors significantly. When the 3DVAR ensemble was used, the algorithm picked very different observation locations and the analyses were not improved as much. The amount of improvement from assimilating a supplemental adaptive observation instead of a fixed observation in the middle of the void depended on whether the observation was assimilated sporadically or during every analysis cycle. For sporadic assimilation, the adaptive observation provided a dramatic improvement relative to the supplemental fixed observation. When an adaptive observation was regularly assimilated every cycle, the improvement was smaller. For the sporadic assimilation of an adaptive observation, targeting based simply on the maximum spread in background forecasts provided similar target locations and similar analysis improvements to those generated with the full algorithm. The improvement from the regular assimilation of an adaptive observation based on the spread algorithm was no larger than when observations from a fixed target in the middle of the void were regularly assimilated.


Introduction: Sri Lanka has experienced confirmed dengue outbreaks since the 1960s although severe dengue disease (DHF/DSS) didn't appear until 1989. Since then, cyclical outbreaks associated with severe disease have occurred throughout the island. The most recent epidemic began in 2009 with the apparent introduction of a new genotype of DENV-1. To better understand the mechanisms underlying the persistence of this ongoing epidemic, a longitudinal study was conducted in hospitals in the Colombo district from April 2012 to March 2014. In order to glean as much information as possible about the viral genetics from this large cohort, we developed a novel Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) platform that can function without any a priori knowledge of the target dengue genome.Methods: The principle problem encountered when employing NGS directly on patient samples is the high ratio of host to viral RNA. To compensate for this, we developed a hybridization-based enrichment strategy consisting of DENV-specific 120nt, biotinylated oligodeoxynucleotides to capture DENV genomic material from an NGS library prepared directly from patient sera.Results: The strategy developed here allowed us to enrich DENV genomic material over 5000 fold relative to unenriched material. Full genome data and phylogenetic analysis indicate that the DENV-1 are predominantly genotype 1 although a smaller number of genotype 5 isolates was also identified.Conclusion: The platform developed for this study has the inherent ability to capture all four serotypes of DENV and can significantly increase the virus to host RNA ratio. The principle driver of the current dengue epidemic in Sri Lanka is the same DENV-1 genotype that has been in circulation since 2009.This research was funded by the Singapore Infectious Disease Initiative (SIDI/2013/012) and the European Union 7th Framework Programme through 'DengueTools'. (www.dengue-tools.net).Disclosure: Nothing to disclose.


Many hydrologic models and agricultural management applications require evapotranspiration estimates. The intensity of evapotranspiration is mainly determined by mathematical models rather than by direct measurement. In addition to its own estimate of evapotranspiration it is necessary to determine the uncertainty of this estimate. This uncertainty is not usually mentioned. In this paper these formulas are derived for the uncertainty estimate of evapotranspiration under simplifying assumptions. These assumptions enabled one to derive an expression of evapotranspiration estimation uncertainty suitable for practical applications. The paper focuses on both the absolute and the relative uncertainty of evapotranspiration estimation. The derived formulas can be used for determining the uncertainty in evapotranspiration estimation, but as well as for the accuracy estimate which is necessary for the measuring of input variables. The derived relationship shows that the net radiation should be more accurately measured than the other energy fluxes that have an influence on evapotranspiration. It follows that the relative uncertainty of evapotranspiration is primarily influenced by the relative uncertainty of net radiation. The uncertainty in the measurement of net radiation was derived from data obtained by using a radiometer which was equipped with a pair of pyranometers and with a pair of pyrgeometers. Planck's Law was used for spectral analysis. The possible presence of systematic errors in the measuring of net radiation was evaluated for its potential impact on the errors of the evapotranspiration estimate. This paper is accompanied by measurement records and graphs documenting the achieved results.


Background: Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (CMR) has utility in the risk stratification of patients post ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Myocardial strain is theoretically more linked to left ventricular pump function than left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). There are a number of CMR strain techniques including bespoke methods such as displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) and cine derived methods such as feature-tracking. Whilst cine-derived strain is more appealing for imaging in real-world practice, there are concerns on accuracy, especially on a myocardial segmental level. Deformation-tracking is a new technique based on tissue-tracking from cine imaging which has been developed in our group and is theoretically more accurate at identifying myocardial displacement and shortening than other commercial cine-strain techniques.
Hypothesis: Compared with standard methods for imaging heart function, novel strain methods have superior diagnostic and prognostic performance.
Objectives: (1) I aimed to compare circumferential strain derived from DENSE, deformation-tracking and feature-tracking in a group of 81 healthy volunteers, and in a group of STEMI patients. I investigated the relationship between strain age and sex in the healthy volunteers. (2) I also investigated the comparative performance of the three strain techniques and LV surrogate outcomes (LVEF, LV end diastolic volume indexed to body surface area, infarct size) as well as composite health outcomes (major adverse cardiac events) at 4 years in the STEMI patients. (3) I investigated the incremental predictive utility of segmental circumferential strain over infarct size to predict segmental functional improvement by wall-motion scoring at 6 months in patients with STEMI, and the influence of infarct characteristics (microvascular obstruction, intra-myocardial haemorrhage) on segmental circumferential strain at 6 months. (4) I investigated the utility of feature-tracking derived global longitudinal strain in this STEMI group. (5) Finally, I performed a de-novo study implementing a new DENSE technique in a group of STEMI patients and compared deformation-tracking and feature-tracking against this new technique.

Methods:
1. Healthy Volunteers Study: 81 participants underwent multi-parametric CMR at 1.5T.
2. STEMI population 1: 324 patients underwent a similar multi-parametric CMR at 3 days and 295 at 6 months post STEMI. Composite health outcomes that are pathophysiologically linked to STEMI were collected by an independent team.
3. STEMI population 2: 50 patients underwent a multi-parametric CMR at 1 day and 6 months post STEMI. This protocol included the new 2D-Spiral DENSE sequence.
The imaging analyses were performed using standardised methods. Health outcomes were analysed and adjudicated by an independent team blinded to the rest of the study. Statistical analyses were carried out under the supervision of a biostatistician.
Results: The main findings of this thesis are:
1. Deformation-tracking performed well when compared with a reference method (DENSE) in a large group of healthy volunteers. The advantage of utilising a cine-strain derived method is that this would obviate the need for bespoke strain sequences being acquired, limiting the total duration of an CMR scan, and making strain more accessible in the clinical setting.
2. Global circumferential strain with DENSE provides incremental prognostic value over infarct size and pathologies revealed by contrast-enhanced CMR for LV surrogate outcomes. Strain imaging with DENSE has emerging potential as a new reference test for prognostication in patients after an acute STEMI.
3. Global circumferential strain with DENSE provides incremental prognostic value over infarct size and pathologies revealed by contrast-enhanced CMR for MACE.

Conclusions: The data presented in this thesis indicate that CMR strain imaging may be clinically useful in the assessment of patients following an acute STEMI. This indicates that strain should be more widely used in clinical studies as both global and segmental strain provide incremental utility over more commonly used markers of prognosis for global and regional LV function, as well as major adverse cardiac events. 2D-Spiral DENSE is a new technique, which I have demonstrated, to be feasible to acquire in STEMI patients and has the potential to investigate LV pump function in more detail than conventional methods.


Air
flow in an avian lung was studied numerically to determine the effects of air
sac compliance on flow in the parabronchi. In this preliminary study, the geometry
of the avian respiratory system was simplified to capture the characteristics
of respiratory flow. The pressure fluctuation within air sacs caused by inflation
and deflation was expressed by a lumped parameter model. The results
demonstrate that the flow direction in the parabronchi varied, depending upon
the compliance of the air sacs. A unidirectional flow in the parabronchi was achieved for compliances where pressure
fluctuations in all air sacs were in phase. Air sac compliance significantly
affected the pressures in the anterior and posterior air sacs and thus
the pressure difference over the parabronchi that drove the flow in the
parabronchi. These results address the importance of air sac compliance in the
avian respiratory system and suggest that the compliance of air sacs would be
optimized to accomplish unidirectional flow in the parabronchi.


The emerging literature on aging and decision making posits that decision‐making competence changes with age, as a result of age differences in various cognitive and noncognitive individual‐differences characteristics. In a national life‐span sample from the United Kingdom (N = 926), we examined age differences in financial decisions, including performance measures of sunk cost and credit card repayment decisions, and self‐report measures of money management and financial decision outcomes. Participants also completed four individual‐differences characteristics that have been proposed as relevant to financial decision making, including two cognitive ones (numeracy and experience‐based knowledge) and two noncognitive ones (negative emotions about financial decisions). First, we examined how age was related to the four financial decision‐making measures and the four individual‐differences characteristics. Older age was correlated to better scores on each of the four financial decision‐making measures, more experience‐based knowledge, less negative emotions about financial decisions, whereas numeracy and motivation were not significantly correlated with age. Second, we found that considering both the two cognitive and the two noncognitive individual‐differences characteristics increased predictions of financial decision making, as compared with considering either alone. Third, we examined how these four individual‐differences characteristics contributed to age differences in financial decision making. Older adults' higher levels of experience‐based knowledge and lower levels of negative emotions seemed to especially benefit their financial decision making. We discuss implications for theories on aging and decision making, as well as for interventions targeting financial decisions.


Exploring the short and largely forgotten history of adult-oriented 8-bit video games produced for the Atari 2600 home game console, this essay argues that the games represent an important attempt by media producers to bridge the adult film and interactive entertainment industries. Although American Multiple Industries, Playaround, and Universal Gamex failed to establish a market, their titles nevertheless demonstrate how adult games function as desire machines within an erotic economy that sells a host of anticipatory pleasures. Indeed, the resulting public outcry not only led to the game industry's first sex-based controversy, but the antagonism signals the desire to regulate sexual expression on a new media technology as game producers—following the lead of adult video professionals—attempted to transport users' joysticks from living rooms into bedrooms.


Most smokers do not utilize approved interventions for nicotine dependence, reducing the probability of cessation. Smoking cessation programs typically use recruitment messages emphasizing the health threats of smoking. Augmenting this threat message by describing the genetic aspects of nicotine addiction may enhance enrollment into a cessation program. During telephone recruitment, 125 treatment-seeking smokers were randomized to receive by phone either a standard threat message or a threat plus genetic prime message and were offered open-label varenicline and counseling. There was a greater rate of enrollment into the cessation program for the threat plus genetic prime participants (51.7%) versus the threat-only participants (37.7%; p = .03). Smokers who self-identified from racial/ethnic minority groups were less likely to enroll in the cessation program (p = .01) versus smokers who self-identified as Caucasian. These preliminary data suggest that a simple, affordable, and transportable communication approach enhances enrollment of smokers into a smoking cessation program. A larger clinical trial to evaluate a genetic prime message for improving recruitment into smoking cessation programs is warranted.


For blind deconvolution of an unknown sparse sequence convolved with an unknown pulse, a powerful Bayesian method employs the Gibbs sampler in combination with a Bernoulli-Gaussian prior modeling sparsity. In this paper, we extend this method by introducing a minimum distance constraint for the pulses in the sequence. This is physically relevant in applications including layer detection, medical imaging, seismology, and multipath parameter estimation. We propose a Bayesian method for blind deconvolution that is based on a modified Bernoulli-Gaussian prior including a minimum distance constraint factor. The core of our method is a partially collapsed Gibbs sampler (PCGS) that tolerates and even exploits the strong local dependencies introduced by the minimum distance constraint. Simulation results demonstrate significant performance gains compared to a recently proposed PCGS. The main advantages of the minimum distance constraint are a substantial reduction of computational complexity and of the number of spurious components in the deconvolution result.


Onion is one of the important commodity in Indonesia, onion is also a much-needed spice vegetables society. Onion crop growth is affected by the level of fertility of growing media and other environmental factors. Fertilization is vital to the growth and yield of onion for proper fertilization can increase the fertility of growing media. One effort to improve soil fertility mineral that is with organic matter. Organic materials that can be used is corn straw which has been decomposed with the help of the fungus T richoderma sp. This study was conducted over three months from December 2014 to February 2015. The study was conducted experimentally with 5 treatment using a Completely Randomized Design (CRD), each treatment was repeated 4 times so that there are 20 experimental units. , Parameters measured were the number of leaves, number of tubers, tuber dry weight of the shelf, and wrap the tubers. Data were analyzed statistically and followed by Duncan's test at 5% level. The results showed that administration of tricho compost with a dose of 15 tonnes / ha gave the best results on the number of leaves, number of tubers and tuber dry weight of the shelf. Keywords: onion, Trichoderma sp, fertilization


The paper examines how the long-run inflation-unemployment tradeoff depends on the degree to which wage-price decisions are backwardversus forward-looking. When economic agents, facing time-contingent, staggered nominal contracts, have a positive rate of time preference, the current wage and price levels depend more heavily on past variables (e.g. past wages and prices) than on future variables. Consequently, the long-run Phillips curve becomes downward-sloping and, indeed, quite flat for plausible parameter values. This paper provides an intuitive account of how this long-run Phillips curve arises.


The U.S. government interferes with the market for foreign laborers by restricting the number and mix of immigrants and setting tight quantitative limits on foreign-born guest workers. This has created a mismatch between the demand for foreign workers from U.S. businesses and their supply, directly leading to the illegal immigration situation we confront today. The current system inefficiently limits the gains that our economy could achieve from employing larger numbers of foreign workers, and it disproportionately harms small U.S. businesses. The economic fears associated with increased guest workers or immigrants are unfounded. The current Senate immigration reform proposal would be a marginal improvement but does not go far enough. Red Card, an alternative guest worker proposal, would better coordinate labor markets. Ultimately, an immigration market free from government limitations and interference would be the most efficient solution.


The vascular endothelium plays a critical role in cardiovascular homeostasis, and thus identifying the underlying causes of endothelial dysfunction has important clinical implications. In this regard, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) has recently emerged as an important regulator of metabolic processes. Dysfunction within the ER, broadly termed ER stress, evokes the unfolded protein response (UPR), an adaptive pathway that aims to restore ER homeostasis. Although the UPR is the first line of defense against ER stress, chronic activation of the UPR leads to cell dysfunction and death and has recently been implicated in the pathogenesis of endothelial dysfunction. Numerous risk factors for endothelial dysfunction can induce ER stress, which may in turn disrupt endothelial function via direct effects on endothelium-derived vasoactive substances or by activating other pathogenic cellular networks such as inflammation and oxidative stress. This review summarizes the available data linking ER stress to endothelial dysfunction.


In curve of growth, traditionally equivalent width is found for absorption lines of Gaussian, Lorentz and Voigt profile against flat continuum. Here, absorption against non-flat distributions is examined. These non-flat distributions are Gaussian and Lorentz distribution. Analytically equivalent widths for absorption against non-flat continuum are complicated integrals. It is impossible to solve these integrals analytically so I have solved them numerically. At low μ the absorption is independent on profile while the growth of absorption depends on profile at high μ, where μ is width.


Additive manufacturing (AM) processes have the ability to build complex geometries from a wide variety of materials. A popular approach for metal-based AM processes involves the deposition of material particles on a substrate followed by fusion of those particles together using a high intensity heat source, e.g.a laser or an electron beam, in order to fabricate a solid part. These methods are of high priority in engineering research, especially in applications for the energy, health, and defense sectors. The primary reasons behind the rapid growth in interest for AM include: (1) the ability to create complex geometries thatare otherwise cost-prohibitive or difficult to manufacture, (2) increased freedom of material composition design through the adjustment of the elemental ratios of the composing powders, (3) a reduction in wasted materials, and (4) fast, low-volume, production of prototypeand functional parts without the additional tooling and die requirements of conventional manufacturing methods. However, the highly localized and intense nature of these processes elicits many experimental and computational challenges. These challenges motivate a strong need for computational investigation, as does the need to more accurately characterize the response of parts built using AM. The present work will discuss these challenges and methods for creating multiscale material models that account forthe complex phenomena observed in additively manufacturedproducts. The linkage between process, structure, and property of AM components, e.g., anisotropic plastic behavior combined with anisotropic microstructural descriptors afforded through enhanced data compression techniques, will also be discussed.


This survey article describes a method for choosing uniformly at random from any finite set whose objects can be viewed as constituting a distributive lattice. The method is based on ideas of the author and David Wilson for using "coupling from the past" to remove initialization bias from Monte Carlo randomization. The article describes several applications to specific kinds of combinatorial objects such as tilings, constrained lattice paths, an alternating sign matrices.


This paper develops a taxonomy of buyer–supplier relationships (BSRs), based on the supplier's absorptive capacity (AC). AC encompasses three learning processes: exploration, assimilation, and exploitation. The aim is to develop a taxonomy that can predict a firm's performance with regard to innovation and operational efficiency. This research complements the literature, which presently focuses on descriptive rather than predictive taxonomies. Data from 153 firms were collected through survey research. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the quality of data and calculate composite scores to be used in the cluster analysis to develop the BSRs patterns. Analysis of variance was used to explore the relationships between BSR type and firm performance. Finally, semi-structured interviews aided interpretation of the proposed taxonomy. Findings support the identification of groups of dyads through different combinations of the learning processes underlying AC. The different combinations are typified through AC strength and AC reinforcement. The results provide evidence of a significant relationship between AC strength and firm performance. Surprisingly, we did not find empirical support for the relationship between AC reinforcement and performance.


The design of machines that rely on arrays of servomotors such as robotic arms, orbital platforms, and combinations of both, imposes a heavy computational burden to coordinate their actions to perform coherent tasks. For example, the robotic equivalent of a person tracing a straight line in space requires enormously complex kinematics calculations, and complexity increases with the number of servo nodes. The conventional method of executing these calculations is with a PC-style set of electronics including a powerful CPU (central processing unit) microprocessor, operating system, power supply, a number of peripherals, connectors to support each servo node, and a web of star-topology wiring across the machine (including flexing joints), generally exceeding 100 conductors. In industry, the most common implementation is one or more dedicated PC cards mounted on an ISA (Industry Standard Architecture), PCI (Peripheral Com ponent Interc onnect), or VME bus. These cards provide the I/O connectors and supplement the CPU to execute the massive kinematic calculations in real time. A new high-level architecture for coordinated servo-machine control enables a practical, distributed transputer alternative to conventional central processor electronics. The solution is inherently scalable, dramatically reduces bulkiness and number of conductor runs throughout the machine, requires only a fraction of the power, and is designed for cooling in a vacuum. The benefit of this innovation is total elimination of the central controller and reducing the heavy web of star-topology wiring across the machine to four wires along a shared serial bus. This scalable innovation results in decreased power consumption, decreased bulk, and vacuum compatibility. This controller places a digital signal processor (DSP), instead of a microprocessor, at each motor axis, each with its own power supply, conduction cooling, etc. The DSPs communicate via CANbus over RS-485 hardware, forming the heart of the transputer. Features of the device include reduction in flex wear in serial-articulating joints, streamlining of robotic structures (with reduced wire-harness bulk), survivability in the case of a single-processor failure, and uniformity in handling various types of servos (brushless, brushed, etc.) and sizes up to 300 W. Brushless compatibility supports elimination of brush-life limits and particulate generation. Power in the 2-wire bus flows directly between regenerative power nodes and motive power nodes, rather than traversing the round-trip star topology. This work was done by Brian Zenowich, Adam Crowell, and William T. Townsend of Barrett Technology Inc. for Johnson Space Center. Further information is contained in a TSP (see page 1). In accordance with Public Law 96-517, the contractor has elected to retain title to this invention. Inquiries concerning rights for its commercial use should be addressed to Barrett Technology Inc. 625 Mount Auburn Street Cambridge, MA 02138-4555 USA Phone: (617)252-9000 Fax: (617) 252-9021 E-mail: email@example.com Refer to MSC-24295-1, volume and number of this NASA Tech Briefs issue, and the page number. Ultra-Compact Transputer-Based Controller for High-Level, Multi-Axis Coordination Features include reduction in flex wear, streamlining of robotic structures, survivability, and uniformity in handling various types of servos. Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas


ABSTRACT I present here a revision of the late Pleistocene Haplomastodon chimborazi (Proaño, 1922) material from Bolivar, Ecuador and a comparison with other New World trilophodont gomphotheres, and provide new morphological data in order to develop a novel phylogenetic hypothesis of South American (SA) proboscideans. Haplomastodon Hoffstetter, 1950 includes a single SA species whose valid name is H. chimborazi. Haplomastodon waringi (Holland, 1920) is considered to be an invalid taxon as it is based on undiagnosed material. Phylogenetic analysis supports the monophyly of SA gomphotheres (Cuvieroniinae) H. chimborazi, Cuvieronius hyodon (Fischer de Waldheim, 1814), and "Stegomastodon" platensis (Ameghino, 1888), based on five unambiguous characters. Conflicting evidence regarding the interrelationships of SA gomphotheres leads to three possible alternative hypotheses: two paired associations ((H. chimborazi, "S." platensis) C. hyodon) and ((C. hyodon, "S." platensis) H. chimborazi), and a trichotomy. These imply that the ancestral separation of the three SA taxa might be either the result of two successive dichotomous branchings or of a single trichotomous branching event. The latter hypothesis would be consistent with the disjunct fossil distribution of the three SA gomphothere species. "Stegomastodon" platensis is shown to be not closely related to North American (NA) Stegomastodon Pohlig, 1912, supporting its removal from the latter genus. The NA species Rhynchotherium cf. falconeri Osborn, 1923 is placed as the sister taxon of SA gomphotheres, on the basis of four unequivocal characters. NA Stegomastodon and the Asian Sinomastodon Tobien, Chen & Li, 1986 form successive outgroups to the previous clade together with whom they form a monophyletic group which includes all the brevirostrine species considered, along with the "depressed-beaked" gomphothere Rhynchotherium Falconer, 1868. The results of the present phylogenetic analysis indicate a rather high level of homoplasy in the evolution of New World gomphotheres.


The Common Voice corpus is a massively-multilingual collection of transcribed speech intended for speech technology research and development. Common Voice is designed for Automatic Speech Recognition purposes but can be useful in other domains (e.g. language identification). To achieve scale and sustainability, the Common Voice project employs crowdsourcing for both data collection and data validation. The most recent release includes 29 languages, and as of November 2019 there are a total of 38 languages collecting data. Over 50,000 individuals have participated so far, resulting in 2,500 hours of collected audio. To our knowledge this is the largest audio corpus in the public domain for speech recognition, both in terms of number of hours and number of languages. As an example use case for Common Voice, we present speech recognition experiments using Mozilla's DeepSpeech Speech-to-Text toolkit. By applying transfer learning from a source English model, we find an average Character Error Rate improvement of 5.99 ± 5.48 for twelve target languages (German, French, Italian, Turkish, Catalan, Slovenian, Welsh, Irish, Breton, Tatar, Chuvash, and Kabyle). For most of these languages, these are the first ever published results on end-to-end Automatic Speech Recognition.


Historically, U.S. anti-discrimination law has been concerned with the total exclusion of certain groups from the workplace or from particular job categories within the workplace. Laws were directed at this across-the-board intolerance. As scholars (including Devon Carbado, Barbara Flagg, Mitu Gulati, Angela Harris and others) have noted, this is not the sole or arguably the primary way in which discrimination operates today. Homogeneous institutions and job categories are now suspicious (and presumably the market will no longer tolerate such places). Thus, instead of the wholesale exclusion of groups, what we are more likely to see is intra-group "screening" or "preferencing" to determine who will be included; that is, instead of the total exclusion of a group, employers are more likely to identify within groups those individuals they find most palatable (e.g., by selecting a lighter-toned African American over a darker-toned African American, a woman who wears makeup over a woman who does not, or a gay male who downplays his sexuality over a gay male who celebrates it). Although scholars have done an excellent job documenting the ways in which intra-group discrimination happens and have made progress in securing legal recognition of intra-group claims, one question has received scant attention in the literature. It is this: assuming a legal basis for intra-group claims, can plaintiffs actually win these cases? In other words, it is one thing to be able to assert a right to relief; it is another to convince a fact finder to grant that relief. In the attached article, Intra-Group Preferencing: Problems of Proof in Colorism and Identity Performance Cases, I fill a missing void in the literature by exposing the unique challenges that plaintiffs face in proving intra-group claims. I also demonstrate ways in which traditional legal frameworks must be tweaked in order to address more subtle and nuanced contemporary discrimination.


The purpose of this qualitative research analysis is to highlight the key changes over the last decade that influenced the U.S. Military to redirect its efforts of ignoring social media, to make it one of its major contributing asset to effective communication. I will examine my findings by answering the following questions to prove or deny that social media has enhanced the U.S. Military's communication with its target audience. The first question is-Why did the U.S. Military change its strategy on using social media to manage communication? I am aiming to find out who or what events influenced this change and how long it took to make these changes. I hope to outline key lessons learned and the benefit of becoming pro-social media. The second question-What are the current procedures, practices and issues with the U.S. Military's plan for managing social media? I aim to find out if the U.S. Military is effective with its current ability to manage themes and messages by use of social media. Third question is-Learning from a decade of communication through social media, what is the future of the U.S. Military's social media plan? What have public affairs officers learned from past and current operations to help pave a new path for effective communication in an ever changing social media driven society. During the research process for this study, 20 public affairs officers (PAO) randomly selected from the five branches of U.S. Military service were interviewed to gain insight on the effectiveness of its communication. While this is only a small number and not a representation of the whole U.S. Military, it provided sufficient information to prove the desired hypothesis. While interviewed these 20 PAOs all three research questions were answered regarding the U.S. Military's effectiveness while communicating, concerns with the current nature of communication and recommendations for the future to make communication even more effective. SOCIAL MEDIA: ENHANCING THE U.S. MILITARY'S COMMUNICATION WITH ITS TARGET AUDIENCE


In this interview, author and investigative journalist Eric Schlosser talks with the Bulletin about his recently published book Command and Control. He explains why he decided to tell the history of America's nuclear arsenal "from the bottom up," largely through interviews with ordinary people who were tasked with developing and safely deploying nuclear weapons. Schlosser describes some of the safety issues that have plagued the nuclear weapons program, and he expresses frustration that many government documents exposing these very issues—some dating as far back as the Cold War—have not yet been made public. He recommends increased spending on training and maintenance of aging nuclear weapons, but says that the main purpose of his book is not to push a particular policy but rather to encourage public debate about nuclear weapons and to raise questions about their current military purpose.


The MCI is considered as a useful tool for aggregating information related to the combined effect of real interest and exchange rate. The usefulness of the MCI for Jordan can be viewed as a concept that incorporates the effects of the interest and exchange rate channels on aggregate output. Thus, it summarizes the financial conditions in an economy. This paper has constructed an MCI index for Jordan through estimating the effects of real interest and real exchange rates effects on output by using an ARDL model. The results indicate that authorities in Jordan should take the movements of real exchange rate indices into consideration while adjusting monetary and fiscal stances. Also, the results of the model indicated a significant negative impact of real interest rate and real exchange rate on real GDP growth. These results contradict previous studies on transmission mechanism channels in Jordan (Poddar, et al., 2006; Neaime, 2008) and illustrate that the monetary policy in Jordan has some room to maneuver and affect real variables in the long run.


Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is one of the most widely used geophysical survey methods to locate cavities under roads due to its speedy exploration and high-resolution imaging. To locate underground cavities using GPR, we need to distinguish between cavity-induced reflections and other reflections, which can be achieved by examining the polarity change in reflections compared to the polarity of the transmitted signal. The polarity change can be measured from the phase shift between the target and first reflections. To estimate the phase shift in reflections, the method of computing the power spectrum difference between the original trace and background signal was proposed, but the method has a limitation for shallow reflectors. As an alternative method to avoid this limitation, we propose using only one component of the power spectrum difference, the cross-correlation between the target reflection and background signal. The cross-correlation has its maximum peak at a time lag between the target and first reflection (from the air-ground interface). Additionally, the phase at that time lag represents a phase shift between the two reflections. We compare our cross-correlation-based method with the conventional method of computing the whole power spectrum difference and investigate the feasibility of our method for distinguishing cavity-induced reflections using a 2D field data set acquired in a testbed in Sudeoksa, Korea.


There is evidence that overexpression of transgenes codifying antifungal proteins may confer protection to pathogen attack, and that this protection is increased due to the synergic effect of the expression of two or more genes. On the other hand it is well known that sunflower is a recalcitrant specie, highly difficult to be genetically transformed. In this context, the final aim of this project was to obtain sunflower plants expressing at least two antifungal genes, avoiding sequential transformation. The antifungal genes used encode for two enzymes that degrade the fungal wall (glucanase and chitinase), an osmotin and a ribosome inhibitor protein. Two types of transformation vectors were used: a more traditional system with a double cassette and a novel system producing a unique polyprotein with antifungal proteins released in equimolecular quantities. The polyprotein vector system generated hyperhydric shoots with necrotic areas and abnormal growth at the end of the tissue culture procedure, making impossible the use of this interesting vector in sunflower. Transformation assays carried out with the pHGC39 vector (including glucanase and chitinase genes) vector produced 0.83% efficiency, corresponding to 13 rooted shoots in kanamycin (Km) from a total of 1568 agroinfected shoots. T0 rooted shoots resulted positive by PCR analysis and were transferred to greenhouse to obtain their offspring. In addition, we corroborate the transformation protocol using Km as selective marker, previously described (Radonic et al. 2006) with a reporter gene, but in this opportunity with antifungal genes.


Software security has become an increasingly important issue for information and software system. Secure vulnerabilities of software system may cause a company out of business and even destroy the social normal operation. How to improve software security becomes a critical issue in software development process. In this paper, utilizing the static program analyzer and dynamic simulation analyzer to collect metrics, proposes an Analyzer-based Software Security Measurement (ASSM) model. Applying ASSM model, the secure flaws of software system can be identified clearly. And, using a Rule-based Software Security Improvement (RSSI) operation to control and improve security defects and security vulnerability of software system. The security risk of software system can be reduced efficiently.


This Legal Scholarship Symposia Articles is brought to you for free and open access by TU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Tulsa Law Review by an authorized administrator of TU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact firstname.lastname@example.com. Recommended Citation Marla E. Mansfield, A Reexamination of the Temporal Dimension in Property and Takings, 44 Tulsa L. Rev. 765 (2008).


A very important application of time series learning is online diagnosis, ormonitoring, to detect and classify hazardous conditions in a physical system. Examples of crisis monitoring in the industrial, military, agricultural and environmental sciences are numerous. This paper first defines heterogeneoustime series, those containing different types of embedded, statistical patterns. Next, it surveys basic techniques for acquiring several types of temporal models (using artificial neural networks and Bayesian networks). A new, multistrategy system for learning heterogeneous time series is then presented; it uses task decomposition and quantitative metrics to select techniques for each identifiable (and relevant) embedded subproblem. This multistrategy solution is briefly compared to some mixture models for recombining specialized classifiers. The validation experiments use two large-scale applications, shipboard damage control automation and crop monitoring in precision agriculture. This paper concludes with a report on work in progress and some early positive learning results regarding these application domains.


The notion of institutional racism or sexism has been around a long time. Many of the original drafters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 sought to address more than just discrete acts of discrimination. They sought as well to respond to what Senator Humphrey called the many impersonal institutional processes which nonetheless determine the availability of jobs for nonwhite workers, but the statute Congress ultimately enacted fell short of their hopes on that score. Hints of a structural approach to discrimination persist in the doctrine of disparate impact. But that doctrine can no longer be said to have much practical significance. In the past decade, however, a number of academics have sought to revive the structural focus urged by Senator Humphrey and the exponents of institutional racism and sexism theory. Their efforts have been fueled by three significant developments: changes in the workplace that have made traditional tools of antidiscrimination law less effective in attacking problems of job bias; important empirical and experimental findings of social psychologists that demonstrate the persistence of (frequently unconscious or subtle) bias; and developments in regulatory theory that seem to offer a way effectively to address structural discrimination. In this paper, I examine these recent proposals for a structural employment discrimination law. But unlike much of the existing literature, my story is not an optimistic one. To the contrary, I believe that the structural turn in employment discrimination scholarship is best understood as highlighting the limits of antidiscrimination law. Perhaps paradoxically, that is in part because I find the case for a structural approach to employment discrimination law so compelling. Unconscious bias, interacting with a changing workplace, creates equality problems that our current antidiscrimination law is poorly suited to solving. A structural approach seems to be the best hope for addressing these problems. But there are very significant obstacles to the success of a structural approach to employment discrimination law. In the areas of the law that already seem to impose on courts the obligation to police workplace structures that might facilitate discrimination, judges have proven unwilling or unable to discharge that responsibility with rigor. The new proposals seek to sidestep that history, but they do so largely by urging deference to professional communities that are as likely to subvert as to promote norms of workplace equality. And these difficulties are mere symptoms of a deeper problem: To address structural employment discrimination issues effectively will require going beyond the generally accepted normative underpinnings of employment discrimination law. Because courts (and legislatures) are unwilling to take that step, structural discrimination advocates must proceed by indirection and seek to empower workplace constituencies that (those advocates hope) will serve the cause of equality. But unless courts have some normative idea of what workplace equality should mean, they will be unable to assure that those workplace constituencies will serve the purposes of antidiscrimination law. Employment discrimination law thus faces a challenge: The individualistic remedies provided by existing law are no match for the problems that the new structural-discrimination literature identifies. Those problems - unconscious bias interacting with flexible workplace structures - are likely to become more and more significant as time goes on, and other structural equality problems are likely to become more significant as well. But employment discrimination law is an insufficient tool for addressing these problems.


Bipartite-matching markets pair agents on one side of a market with agents, items, or contracts on the opposing side. Prior work addresses online bipartite-matching markets, where agents arrive over time and are dynamically matched to a known set of disposable resources. In this article, we propose a new model, Online Matching with (offline) Reusable Resources under Known Adversarial Distributions (OM-RR-KAD), in which resources on the offline side are reusable instead of disposable; that is, once matched, resources become available again at some point in the future. We show that our model is tractable by presenting an LP-based non-adaptive algorithm that achieves an online competitive ratio of ½-ϵ for any given constant ϵ > 0. We also show that no adaptive algorithm can achieve a ratio of ½ + o(1) based on the same benchmark LP. Through a data-driven analysis on a massive openly available dataset, we show our model is robust enough to capture the application of taxi dispatching services and ride-sharing systems. We also present heuristics that perform well in practice.


Refundable credits, particularly the earned income tax credit (EITC) and the child tax credit, serve an important anti-poverty measure for low-income taxpayers.  Annually, millions of taxpayers who do not owe any federal income tax must file a tax return in order to claim these credits that are in the nature of social benefits.  The eligibility requirements for refundable credits are complex, and these returns are particularly prone to audit: EITC audits comprise one-third of all individual income tax audits.  Because of the large dollar amounts at stake, a taxpayer's mistaken understanding of the eligibility requirements for these refundable credits can often result in a deficiency of several thousand dollars. Though studies indicate that taxpayer error is more commonly inadvertent than intentional, the section 6662 20% accuracy-related penalty applies once the deficiency reaches a statutory "understatement" threshold; it is imposed computationally and without regard to the taxpayer's intent. By statute, taxpayers have the right to contest the accuracy-related penalty by demonstrating that there was reasonable cause for the underlying error and the taxpayer acted in good faith. Treasury regulations provide that such a circumstance might include "an honest misunderstanding of fact or law that is reasonable in light of all the facts and circumstances, including the experience, knowledge, and education of the taxpayer".  Yet for all of these reasons – lack of experience, lack of knowledge, and relative lack of education – the taxpayer is unlikely to have the knowledge or resources to raise the very defense that is meant to protect an unsophisticated taxpayer. Drawing comparisons between refundable tax credits and social programs administered by other agencies, this article calls upon the IRS to better differentiate between inadvertent error ("those who don't know") and intentional or fraudulent error ("those who know better").  The article argues that the current accuracy-related penalty approach is unduly punitive.  It concludes by proposing solutions that the IRS might consider in light of Congress's desire for the Service to administer these social benefits through the Internal Revenue Code.


Abstract The forest of Chettaba is of great ecological importance for the Constantine region. It is characterized by a very heterogeneous forest cover, the dominance of forest species (Pinus halepensis and Quercus ilex) and an advanced stage of degradation. Vegetation in this region reflects the climate. The summer is dry and hot while the winter is rainy and cold. Indeed, the combination of rain and temperature directly influences the physiology of the vegetation in this forest. The main objective of this work is to characterize the different responses of Aleppo pine and holm oak seedlings and to specify the biochemical variations under the seasonal effect. Biochemical assays of proline, soluble sugars, total proteins and chlorophyll were quantified in the different organs of two species for each of the years 2018–2019. The results obtained show very significant accumulation of total soluble sugars and proline in holm oak and Aleppo pine leaves compared to stems and roots during the winter season (520 ± 20 and 370 ± 17.98 µmol/mg DM respectively). Contrary to the previous results, the highest total protein levels were recorded during the summer with levels of 0.666 ± 0.116 and 1,626 ± 0.107 mg/g FM. Parallel to the accumulation of these three solutes, a gradual decrease in the chlorophyll pigment content was recorded in winter and summer.


Abstract The nature and mode of origin of quartz-cored tourmalines (QCT) are studied from hydrothermal quartz veins within massive quartz-tourmaline (MQT) rocks at Roche, SW England. The QCT are annular, have blue maximum absorption colour and occur together with tourmalines with brown cores rimmed by blue tourmaline. Where the quartz core is not continuous throughout the length of the QCT crystals, the tourmaline core has brown maximum absorption colour, similar to tourmalines without quartz cores. Both the blue and brown tourmalines are schorl, but are compositionally distinct showing different Fe/(Mg + Ti) ratios and Ca concentrations. Fluid inclusion data indicate quartz precipitation from a moderate salinity (~20−25 wt.% NaCl eq.) brine which periodically boiled following pressure drops within the vein system. The QCT show rheomorphic and lobate textures on their inner margins indicating selective dissolution of their brown, relative Mg-, Ti- and Ca-rich tourmaline cores and replacement with quartz. This presents a problem in terms of the nature of the fluid responsible for such selective dissolution because tourmaline is generally highly resistant under the normal range of hydrothermal fluid conditions. It is proposed that the relatively high concentrations of Ti, Mg and Ca in the brown tourmaline caused significant lattice strain, which together with an increase in pH, and probably Al, in the boiling hydrothermal fluid caused the brown cores to become unstable compared with the Fe-rich blue tourmaline rims.


The goal of conservation is to preserve cultural heritage for future generations. However, there are a wide variety of perspectives regarding the conservation of material cultural heritage. Differences of opinion stem from the materials and deterioration present, or the function and history of the object. From the degree of interventive
treatment to the choice of materials that will be used during treatment, conservators often differ in opinion regarding the treatment of cultural heritage. But what do these different methods imply for the object? Is there actually a 'right' way? Using religious icons as the lens for this discussion, various conservation approaches will be explored. This paper will allow a glimpse of the variety of issues which must be considered during the conservation process, and will demonstrate that above all, that there are no easy answers and no shortage of conflicting opinions in the field of conservation.


This paper presents the current data from a continuing longitudinal study of Internet connection and use in secondary schools in Great Britain. Using 1997 data as a baseline, changes in Internet connection and use since the announcement of the NGfL and NOF funding are tracked. Data includes:

The types and numbers of computers, networks and computer suites

The types and numbers of Internet connections

Methods of ensuring that pupils do not have access to unsuitable material

The amount and type of use which is being made of Internet connections

The distribution of Internet computers across subjects

The pattern of use of the Internet within subjects

The use of the Internet within D&T teaching

The present position is summarised and some future considerations are discussed.


Competitive analysis is a critical part of any business. Product managers, sellers, and marketers spend time and resources scouring through an immense amount of online and offline content, aiming to discover what their competitors are doing in the marketplace to understand what type of threat they pose to their business' financial well-being. Currently, this process is time and labor-intensive, slow and costly. This paper presents Clarity, a data-driven unsupervised system for assessment of products, which is currently in deployment in the large IT company, IBM. Clarity has been running for more than a year and is used by over 1,500 people to perform over 160 competitive analyses involving over 800 products. The system considers multiple factors from a collection of online content: numeric ratings by online users, sentiments of reviews for key product performance dimensions, content volume, and recency of content. The results and explanations of factors leading to the results are visualized in an interactive dashboard that allows users to track their product's performance as well as understand main contributing factors. Its efficacy has been tested in a series of cases across IBM's portfolio which spans software, hardware, and services.


It is suggested that the concept of "logic grammar" as relation between a string and a parse-tree can be extended by admitting the lexicon as part of the relation. This makes it possible to give a simple and elegant formulation of the process of infering a lexicon from example sentences in conjunction with a grammar. Various problems arising from implementation and complexity factors are considered, and examples are shown to support the claim that the method shows potential as a practical tool for automatic lexicon acquisition.


Many industrial steam turbine applications require the capability for variable speed operation in combination with high mass flow rates and high back pressure levels. Especially the low-pressure blading has to be designed carefully with respect to the mechanical integrity. An effective way to reduce blade vibration is the introduction of a simple lacing wire to couple the moving blades. In this paper, the structural behavior of blades coupled by a wire is verified by means of linear and nonlinear finite element method. Different modeling techniques for the coupling effects are presented and discussed. Special focus is put on the nonlinear effects of the contact between blade and wire to investigate the frictional damping performance of the system. The obtained numerical results are validated by strain gauge measurements on a full-scale test turbine under real steam conditions in an industrial steam turbine test rig. The experimental data show low blade vibration amplitudes in the whole operational range indicating a high damping performance of the investigated wire design. The calculation results from the forced response analysis including the frictional effects are in good agreement with the experimental data.