After the economy crisis, there were 42.4 million unit of UKM os SMEs (Small and Medium Scale Enterprises) in 2003 or increase of 9.5%, compared to 2000 with a labor of 79 million. At the same time, (1) Syariah banking found its momentum again to grow, known as the negative spread, and (2) The Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI) prohibits bank interest. The market share of Syariah banking is 1.20% and the financial distribution per November 2003 is Rp5,466.04 billion, dominated by Murabahah financing as much as Rp3,893.1 billion (71,2%). In general, the syariah financing is based on profit sharing and margin. The most common profit sharing in Syariah banking are musyarakah and mudharabah . The method of margin is done in the form of sales contract. The most developed in Syariah banking are murabahah , salam and istishna . This objectives of this research are to study the characteristics and behavior of SMEs that influence the method of financing, to study the constraints in applying the profit sharing method, to determine the most suitable financing method most suitable to the characteristics of SMEs, and to determine the strategy of BNI Syariah to increase market share, and to compete in the Syariah banking industries. The analysis was done by using the qualitative descriptive, crossed tabulation, chi squared (χ²), and Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT). Based on the analysis of χ² , and the result frequency, it shows that the characteristic and behavior of UKM that agree with the murabahah financing system is highly significant , while those that agree with the Syariah banking system is significant , and that agree there are constrains in applying profit sharing method is significant . Based on the SWOT analysis, the strategies are (1) SO, by opening new branches to increase market share, changing perception towards bank interest, cooperating with Islamic Development Bank (IDB); (2) WO, by improving quality of services, Automated Teller Machine (ATM) and technology, recruiting experts in Syariah banking and developing products, (3) ST, by using corporate image as institutional positioning, improving skills, simplifying procedures and processes, (4) WT, by cooperating with competitors, increasing product promotion and authority in financial decision. Opening new BNI Syariah branches in potential areas and improving products according to the consumers need, such as foreign currency, is the most possible thing to do. Key words:Islamic banking, profit sharing, SMEs, strategic


When I received the kind invitation to address this group on the cultural aspects of tropical medicine, I looked in my dictionary to see whether my own not too well defined ideas about culture were in accordance with the official views on the subject. I found that culture meant civilization. Hoping for further enlightenment, I looked up the word civilization, which proved to mean culture. Since the dictionary was no help, I decided to formulate my own ideas about the meaning of these words, and found that if my definition of culture is accepted, the task of discussing with you the cultural aspects of tropical medicine becomes much less formidable than it appeared at first. It is my found hope that you will share my views on this subject after this discussion is over.
Culture, to my mind, is the sum total of the traits and techniques that man acquires and develops in the process of adapting to the environment, and which reflects the degree of this adaptation.


Recent writings by Dan Farber and J.B. Ruhl have put forward a strong case for "eco-pragmatic" and "radical middle" approaches to environmental policymaking. Rather than debate the merits of such an approach, in this Article we examine whether eco-pragmatic policy development is likely in practice and where it might occur, given the tribal nature of public environmental advocacy. We use the remarkably polarized reaction to Bjorn Lomborg's book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," as a vehicle to explore the seemingly fundamental divide that exists between warring parties within the environmental law and policy communities. By offering a more complete understanding of why parties involved in environmental policymaking exhibit such stark bipolarism, we seek to help proponents of pragmatic, inclusive approaches to environmental law and policy overcome the field's tribal dynamics. While many commentators point to the apparently incompatible worldviews of "bean counters" and "tree huggers" as the primary explanation for the lack of a strong middle ground in environmental advocacy, the differences may prove less profound than commonly assumed. After all, like the public at large, bean counters and tree huggers seem to recognize the legitimacy of competing economic and environmental considerations. Thus, rather than simply speaking past one another, disagreement for many advocates seems to be more practical. This usually plays out in contrasting beliefs over the proper manner in which to weigh and compare economic and environmental values, not a dispute concerning the values' existence or their political validity. If this account is accurate, and the divide is less theological than commonly assumed, then space may well exist for some common, pragmatic agreement. In practice, though, these divisions are widened by a number of social dynamics that frustrate effective public deliberation in the environmental policymaking arena. In particular, we examine the influences of (1) group polarization within environmental policymaking communities, (2) entrepreneurial efforts by interest groups to exploit cognitive heuristics and biases among the public, (3) disputes over proper sources of authority for scientific information, and, finally, (4) the possibility of empirical debates subsuming, and consequently obscuring, more fundamental disputes over cultural or social values. These four barriers act together as an effective "policy cutting gate," shunting advocates into one pen or the other and leaving little space in between for effective advocacy of pragmatic, middle approaches to policy problems. As a result, we conclude that eco-pragmatists should concentrate their efforts not at the high-profile level of policy formation but, rather, at the level of policy implementation, where relevant actors are less severely influenced by the social dynamics of the cutting gate. Put differently, the target audience for appeals to eco-pragmatic decisionmaking may well be neither Earth First!, nor the Competitive Enterprise Institute, nor even the general public. Rather, the most fertile terrain for balanced, pragmatic governance likely lies below the advocacy radar screen at the level of administrative implementation of environmental policy.


This study focuses the division of housework among various couple earner types in ten European countries, using data from the European Social Survey, and examines if relative resources, time availability and gender ideology moderate this association. The study combines the conventional economic and gender based approaches with an institutional framework on work-family reconciliation policies and gender norms to examine if the division of housework is institutionally embedded. The result shows that dual-career couples, female-career couples and female single-earner couples divide the housework more equal than dual-earner couples. This relates to the fact that women do less housework. The cross-national analysis show apparent differences between dual-earner and dual-career couples, yet the result reveals smaller gender difference in the division of housework in countries with more institutional support for work-family reconciliation and less traditional gender norms, suggesting that couples decisions on how to divide the housework are institutionally embedded.


knowledge management, data mining, and text mining techniques have been adopted in various successful biomedical applications in recent years. Data Mining (DM) is the most important subfields in knowledge management (KM). It has been proven that data mining can enhance the KM process with better knowledge. In this paper, we investigate the application of DM techniques for mining knowledge of the patient record. The patient record represents documents of the patient's examinations and treatments. Data Mining is the process of "mining" or extracting information from a data set and transform it into an understandable structure for further use. We propose a methodology for mining medical knowledge based on the Bayesian Classification to predict and detect anomalies in breast cancer. We use the Naïve Bayes Algorithm to develop this methodology. We illustrate the knowledge mining process by real examples of medical field. We investigate through these illustrations how knowledge is better mined and thus, reused when applying concepts and techniques of Data Mining. On the other hand, we investigate the potential contribution of the Naive Bayesian Classification methodology as a reliable support in computer-aided diagnosis of such events, using the well-known Wisconsin Prognostic Breast Cancer dataset. Finally, we will demonstrate the suitability and ability of the Naive Bayes methodology in Classification/Prediction problems in breast cancer.


Considered the new silver bullet in guiding corporate strategy, Translating Corporate Strategy into Project Strategy, examines how project management tools and principles can be used to effectively advance business strategy. Through case studies from a variety of industries, the authors demonstrate how successful organizations move beyond mission statements and five-year plans to create the processes that are necessary to carry out time-oriented goals and projects. In addition to examining these successes, the authors also identify effective strategy implementation processes, define the relevant terms using the standards of PMIs PMBOK® Guide, outline staff roles and responsibilities, and offer several different models of personnel structure and capabilities that reflect project management principles and methods. Offering a compelling look into yet another way the project management profession is impacting business results, this book is an indispensable tool for business leaders at all levels.


Abstract Preliminary geological work on samples from Davdar in China indicate that emerald occurs in quartz veins hosted within upper greenschist grade Permian metasedimentary rocks including quartzite, marble, phyllite and schist. Fluid inclusion studies indicate highly saline fluids ranging from approximately 34 to 41 wt.% NaCl equivalent, with minimal amounts of CO2 estimated at a mole fraction of 0.003. Fluid inclusion, stable isotope and petrographic studies indicate the Davdar emeralds crystallized from highly saline brines in greenschist facies conditions at a temperature of ~350°C and a pressure of up to 160 MPa. The highly saline fluid inclusions in the emeralds, the trace-element chemistry and stable isotope signatures indicate that the Davdar emeralds have some similarities to the Khaltaro and Swat Valley emerald deposits in Pakistan, but they show the greatest similarity to neighbouring deposits at Panjshir in Afghanistan.


A simplified conceptual model based on timescales of gravitational circulation, vertical exchange, and total oxygen consumption rate of the biochemical processes is presented to provide insight into the relationships between estuarine dynamics and bottom water dissolved oxygen (DO). Two dimensionless parameters are introduced to diagnose the relationship between the vertical exchange process and the biochemical DO consumption and the influence of gravitational circulation on replenishment of bottom DO. The relative magnitudes of these timescales provide a linkage between the physical and biochemical processes. The hypoxic and anoxic conditions in deep waters of Chesapeake Bay are successfully interpreted with these three proposed timescales. Because the Bay is a long estuary, the replenishment of the bottom DO due to gravitational circulation diminishes as the bottom water travels farther upstream. The bottom DO is mainly modulated by the vertical exchange process in the middle and upper portions of the Bay. In addition to other physical processes that affect vertical exchange, wind and freshwater are the major predictors of the vertical exchange time. The model is applicable to Chesapeake Bay and other estuaries with persistent gravitational circulation if the dimensionless parameters can be appropriately estimated.


Interactive learning deals with the problem of learning and solving tasks using human instructions. It is common in human-robot interaction, tutoring systems, and in human-computer interfaces such as brain-computer ones. In most cases, learning these tasks is possible because the signals are predefined or an ad-hoc calibration procedure allows to map signals to specific meanings. In this paper, we address the problem of simultaneously solving a task under human feedback and learning the associated meanings of the feedback signals. This has important practical application since the user can start controlling a device from scratch, without the need of an expert to define the meaning of signals or carrying out a calibration phase. The paper proposes an algorithm that simultaneously assign meanings to signals while solving a sequential task under the assumption that both, human and machine, share the same a priori on the possible instruction meanings and the possible tasks. Furthermore, we show using synthetic and real EEG data from a brain-computer interface that taking into account the uncertainty of the task and the signal is necessary for the machine to actively plan how to solve the task efficiently.


There is an increasing amount of structure on the Web as a result of modern Web languages, user tagging and annotation, and emerg- ing robust NLP tools. These meaningful, semantic, annotations hold the promise to significantly enhance information access, by enhancing the depth of analysis of today's systems. Currently, we have only started exploring the possibilities and only begin to un- derstand how these valuable semantic cues can be put to fruitful use. Unleashing the potential of semantic annotations requires us to think outside the box, by combining the insights of natural lan- guage processing (NLP) to go beyond bags of words, the insights of databases (DB) to use structure efficiently even when aggregating over millions of records, the insights of information retrieval (IR) in effective goal-directed search and evaluation, and the insights of knowledge management (KM) to get grips on the greater whole. This workshop aims to bring together researchers from these dif- ferent disciplines and work together on one of the greatest chal- lenges in the years to come. The desired result of the workshop will be to gain concrete insight into the potential of semantic an- notations, and in concrete steps to take this research forward; to synchronize related research happening in NLP, DB, IR, and KM, in ways that combine the strengths of each discipline; and to have a lively, interactive workshop where every participant contributes actively and which inspires attendees to think freely and creatively, working towards a common goal.


The Photovoltaic Array Troubleshooting and Educational Facility is a specialised experimentation platform for researchers and students to develop a greater practical understanding of photovoltaic modules, arrays, shading effects and fault scenarios. The Facility was designed, constructed, tested, and delivered to Murdoch University in order to complete the requirements of an undergraduate engineering honours thesis.

Proposed learning experiments involved the investigation of series, parallel, and bypass diode connections of or within photovoltaic modules, partial shading and mismatch effects, as well as the effectiveness of over-current protection under different fault conditions in an extra low voltage array. The Facility provides for the safe measurement of voltages and currents of individual module or array sections of the interconnected array using handheld multimeters and portable IV curve tracers.

Research was conducted on background photovoltaic system theory, module construction and array design, followed by an in-depth examination of the relevant legal regulations applicable to this project. This research was followed by a basic feasibility analysis, used to determine the practicability of this project as a means to satisfy the client requirements, given the technical, operational, economic and scheduling opportunities available for application. Once feasibility was demonstrated the Facility could be designed in detail using software tools, with components specified, sourced, financed and ordered. Upon arrival of the build components the Facility was constructed using industry-standard tools and methods, and tested for module performance and student-level experiment suitability.

The Photovoltaic Array Troubleshooting and Educational Facility project was a complete success. Many new experiments are now available to students, particularly dealing with photovoltaic fault scenarios. Almost all existing d.c. photovoltaic experiments from the Murdoch University Renewable Energy Engineering major can now be conducted in greater detail, on a full array of modules, while exposing students to industry standard components and techniques. The Facility is also available for open days and promotions, and shall be used to attract new students to the industry, the school, and generate a greater enthusiasm for solar power generation.


Business intelligence (BI) is a critical software system employed by the higher management of organizations for presenting business performance reports through Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) functionalities. BI faces sophisticated security issues given its strategic importance for higher management of business entities. Scholars have emphasized on enhanced session, presentation and application layer security in BI, in addition to the usual network and transport layer security controls. This is because an unauthorized user can gain access to highly sensitive consolidated business information in a BI system. To protect a BI environment, a number of controls are needed at the level of database objects, application files, and the underlying servers. In a cloud environment, the controls will be needed at all the components employed in the service-oriented architecture for hosting BI on the cloud. Hence, a BI environment (whether self-hosted or cloud-hosted) is expected to face significant security overheads. In this context, two models for securing BI on a cloud have been simulated in this paper. The first model is based on securing BI using a Unified Threat Management (UTM) cloud and the second model is based on distributed security controls embedded within the BI server arrays deployed throughout the Cloud. The simulation results revealed that the UTM model is expected to cause more overheads and bottlenecks per OLAP user than the distributed security model. However, the distributed security model is expected to pose administrative control effectiveness challenges than the UTM model. Based on the simulation results, it is recommended that BI security model on a Cloud should comprise of network, transport, session and presentation layers of security controls through UTM, and application layer security through the distributed security components. A mixed environment of both the models will ensure technical soundness of security controls, better security processes, clearly defined roles and accountabilities, and effectiveness of controls.


As a radiologist (or, indeed, any kind of physician), you are a professional. You have completed at least two decades of education, including an advanced degree. You have not just passed but scored very competitively on numerous exams, held up under scrutiny from dozens of educators and interviewers, and committed yourself to maintaining your clinical edge by keeping current with academic literature and educational conferences.


Andre Brink's writing since the publication in 1974 in English of his first politically committed novel, Looking on Darkness, is usually read as an indictment of apartheid. Allan Findlay, writing in 1984, notes that "Brink has directed his writing firmly at the entrenched indifference of the white community to the difficulties and humiliations of the non-white, and against the brutality of those white instruments, the totalitarian police and judicial powers, given support despite their connivance in the unilateral furtherance of the interests of one ethnic group" (582). A. J. Hassall concurs: "Brink, like Alan Paton, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee and Athol Fugard, has been preoccupied with the political and racial turmoil that followed the assumption of power by the Afrikaners in 1948 and the consequent implementation of the political philosophy of apartheid" ("Andre Brink" 182). In reviews of specific novels, the pattern of interpretation has been basically the same. Jane Larkins Crain read Looking on Darkness as an "anatomy of racist South African Society" (45). Nick Totten reviewed An Instant in the Wind as a novel on "the immediate political mythos" of Brink's South Africa (29). In a particularly uncomplimentary review of the same novel, Raymond A. Sokolov argued that, while it was important for political reasons for Brink to be published, it was doubtful based on the evidence of An Instant in the Wind if Brink would be read for his art as a novelist (31). On the strength of Rumours ofRain, Lewis Nkosi included Brink in the coterie of distinguished English-speaking writers chronicling South Africa's national sins of commission and omission (1196). In their separate reviews of A Dry White Season, neither Blake Morrison nor Eric Redman concedes any artistic skills to Brink. Where Morrison finds Brink's redemption in the "urgency of what Brink has to report" (516), Redman pays him a similar back-handed compliment: "Although Brink has been touted in America as the obvious inheritor of Alan Paton's mantle, Paton speaks to the heart, evoking sorrows while Brink shouts to the conscience invoking anger" (50). At any rate, Brink's significance is usually sought in the urgency and political relevance of his work to his South African society. Andre Brink's works are not allegories with only a tangential relevance to apartheid South Africa. He, instead, builds his revealing interrogation of being on the authority and urgency of specific historical moments and situations or their imaginative transformations. Brink's perception and documentation of the humiliations of blacks and colored people in apartheid South Africa are, indeed, truly insightful, passionate and varied. Although his basic propositions were almost always derived from the realities of life in South Africa, his grand equation and enveloping vision always transcended the overtly political. The artist in Brink was achingly aware that the writer who seeks relevance beyond his immediate society and beyond his generation must dig beyond the shallow surface of politics. Brink affirms that the role of revealing the truth to people in a country dominated by official lies is of fundamental importance. Even then, he considers this merely journalistic. He contends that the uses of literature, deep and vital as they are, do not lie in the immediate resolutions of problems and anxieties of the experiential world: "it offers no protection against the rigours of the world: the heat or rain, wild animals, rivers in flood, an unremitting sun. If it is essential for survival, it is essential on another level of existence altogether" (Mapmakers 169). The measure of the writer's achievement, therefore, cannot be on any practical scale: his essential realm is that of the human spirit, and his aims are to change insights and sensibilities, to effect his subtler revolution within the hearts and minds of individuals. …


This work examines various methods for creating empirical equations on the basis of data while taking advantage of knowledge about the problem domain. It is demonstrated that the use of high level concepts aid in evolving equations that are easier to interpret by domain specialists. The application of the approach to real-world problems reveals that the utilization of such concepts results in equations with performance equal or superior to that of human experts. Finally, it is argued that the algorithm is best used as a hypothesis generator assisting scientists in the discovery process.


Although the development of e-maintenance operations is understood to offer promising opportunities, it seems to be mainly driven by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) applications development. This is unfortunate, as ICT has no value in itself; rather its benefit comes from the way in which it is utilized within its particular context. Thus, a conceptual framework is proposed to guide both the practice and the research of e-maintenance operations. The framework combines an Industrial Value Chain with a Buyer- Consumer Value Chain, where their intersections articulated in terms of categories derived from Information Logistics. This provides a structure for the conception of e-maintenance that needs to be populated with published research and current e-maintenance practice. This may uncover white spaces where research efforts deserve particular attention and are driven by value generation – for instance, economic. A brief case study, from a leading European truck- manufacturer, illustrates the proposed conceptual framework in application.


The most common energy application for biogas is on-site power generation using gas engine units. The introduction of a bottoming cycle based on Scroll expander Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) technology within a biogas plant is of high interest since the excess heat produced by biogas engines can be used to produce additional power. This paper describes the retrofit of a plant consisting of a digester fed with green municipal wastes and two biogas engine units (200kWe each). The waste heat from the cooling jacket of the first biogas unit is used in cogeneration for the fermentation process and also for heating the buildings of the facility. The objective of the retrofit project is, in a first step, to convert the excess heat from the cooling jacket of the second biogas unit by means of Organic Rankine cycles. Onsite preliminary tests from the operation of the 7 kWe unit have been done, allowing performances to be measured over a broad range of conditions. Those tests confirmed a reasonable behavior of the ORC scroll expander and the interest of the concept. The measured efficiency of the ORC is about 7% with a heat source at around 90°C (i.e. 40% exergy efficiency).


During seismic events, inefficient steel moment frame building systems may exhibit soft-story failures. This thesis focuses on development and validation of a seismic retrofit strategy for avoiding soft-story failures in low-rise and mid-rise steel moment frame buildings. The considered retrofit strategy consists of a sufficiently stiff Rocking Core (RC) pinned to the foundation and pin connected to the existing frame. For demonstration purposes, two representative benchmark steel moment frames, which are modified from the three-and nine-story pre-Northridge steel moment frames designed for Los Angeles in the SAC Steel Project, are considered. Finite Element (FE) models of the benchmark buildings are developed with consideration of member yielding, connection rupture, and P-Delta effect, and validated using published results. Eigenvalue analyses are conducted to investigate the effect of the RC on system modal properties. It is found that in general the added RC with practical stiffness value does not significantly change the fundamental period and therefore does not attract excessive earthquake force to the system. In addition, nonlinear static pushover analyses are performed to address the beneficial contribution of the RC to the system under the performance objectives including immediate occupancy, life safety, and collapse prevention. The Monte-Carlo simulation technique is used to generate the random lateral force distribution required in the nonlinear static pushover analysis. It is found that RC works as expected in all considered scenarios and creates more uniform inter-story distribution along the vertical direction v when it is sufficiently stiff. Furthermore, nonlinear dynamic analyses are conducted using three different ground motion suites (including two suites with ground motions having probabilities of exceedance of 2% and 10% in 50 years, and one suite with near-fault ground motions). It is shown that the systems with properly selected RC can achieve the Best Safety Objective defined in FEMA 356 and exhibit collapse prevention performance under near-fault earthquakes. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


The increasing number and size of wind farms call for more data on human response to wind turbine noise, so that a generalized dose-response relationship can be modeled and possible adverse health effects avoided. This paper reports the results of a 2007 field study in The Netherlands with 725 respondents. A dose-response relationship between calculated A-weighted sound pressure levels and reported perception and annoyance was found. Wind turbine noise was more annoying than transportation noise or industrial noise at comparable levels, possibly due to specific sound properties such as a "swishing" quality, temporal variability, and lack of nighttime abatement. High turbine visibility enhances negative response, and having wind turbines visible from the dwelling significantly increased the risk of annoyance. Annoyance was strongly correlated with a negative attitude toward the visual impact of wind turbines on the landscape. The study further demonstrates that people who benefit economically from wind turbines have a significantly decreased risk of annoyance, despite exposure to similar sound levels. Response to wind turbine noise was similar to that found in Sweden so the dose-response relationship should be generalizable.


In this paper, an inverse problem for galvanic corrosion in two-dimensional Laplace's equation was studied. The considered problem deals with experimental measurements on electric potential, where due to lack of data, numerical integration is impossible. The problem is reduced to the determination of unknown complex coefficients of approximating functions, which are related to the known potential and unknown current density. By employing continuity of those functions along subdomain interfaces and using condition equations for known data leads to over-determined system of linear algebraic equations which are subjected to experimental errors. Reconstruction of current density is unique. The reconstruction contains one free additive parameter which does not affect current density. The method is useful in situations where limited data on electric potential are provided.


Screen technology enables people to read, write, obtain information and communicate through text manipulation in a wider open space. The role of screen in replacing paper handouts has an impact on human literacy (Kress, 2003) especially for education and communication purposes. In the context of online teaching and learning like e-learning, teachers are no longer viewed as the main source of knowledge. Likewise, students are no longer seen as individuals who only absorb what is taught. Through
discussion, students mutually learn from each other (peer-learning). This study investigates 'teaching' behaviour evidenced in activities involving a group of university students using the Learning Management System (LMS) as a tool for discussion. From a socio-cultural perspective, this study will scrutinize the online teaching and learning processes and highlight the significance of the 'mediation' element in life, particularly in the field of lifelong learning. Socio-cultural ideas, particularly by Tharp and Gallimore's (1988)suggest four-stage model of progression through the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)to frame our understanding of the nature of assisted performance provided by the participants in their interaction. This model provides the framework for understanding the
online learning styles of university students.


Ramzan, M. 2013. Structural, Electronic and Mechanical Properties of Advanced Functional Materials. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 1062. 98 pp. Uppsala. ISBN 978-91-554-8723-2. The search for alternate and renewable energy resources as well as the efficient use of energy and development of such systems that can help to save the energy consumption is needed because of exponential growth in world population, limited conventional fossil fuel resources, and to meet the increasing demand of clean and environment friendly substitutes. Hydrogen being the simplest, most abundant and clean energy carrier has the potential to fulfill some of these requirements provided the development of efficient, safe and durable systems for its production, storage and usage. Chemical hydrides, complex hydrides and nanomaterials, where the hydrogen is either chemically bonded to the metal ions or physiosorbed, are the possible means to overcome the difficulties associated with the storage and usage of hydrogen at favorable conditions. We have studied the structural and electronic properties of some of the chemical hydrides, complex hydrides and functionalized nanostructures to understand the kinetics and thermodynamics of these materials. Another active field relating to energy storage is rechargeable batteries. We have studied the detailed crystal and electronic structures of Li and Mg based cathode materials and calculated the average intercalation voltage of the corresponding batteries. We found that transition metal doped MgH2 nanocluster is a material to use efficiently not only in batteries but also in fuelcell technologies. MAX phases can be used to develop the systems to save the energy consumption. We have chosen one compound from each of all known types of MAX phases and analyzed the structural, electronic, and mechanical properties using the hybrid functional. We suggest that the proper treatment of correlation effects is important for the correct description of Cr2AlC and Cr2GeC by the good choice of Hubbard 'U' in DFT+U method. Hydrogen is fascinating to physicists due to predicted possibility of metallization and high temperature superconductivity. On the basis of our ab initio molecular dynamics studies, we propose that the recent claim of conductive hydrogen by experiments might be explained by the diffusion of hydrogen at relevant pressure and temperature. In this thesis we also present the studies of phase change memory materials, oxides and amorphization of oxide materials, spintronics and sulfide materials.


Abstract. Distance clothing technology is an actively developing area. For its implementation in the highly specialized area of manufacturing technical means of rehabilitation, and, in particular, in the manufacture of special functional and aesthetic clothing for disabled people, it is necessary to solve organizational and technical issues. An example of a technical issue is remote acquisition of dimensional features. The dimensional characteristics of the human body are an integral part of the technological process of manufacturing individual clothing. The use of 3D scanning makes it possible to implement remote technology for individual design and manufacture of clothing. The production of clothing for wheelchair users involves the adaptation of standard clothing design techniques to the specific properties of the posture. A case of a patient with a C5-C6 cervical vertebra fracture who has been using a wheelchair for more than 25 years is considered. The study used 3D human models obtained with a 3D scanner. The technique of scanning and an example of processing the obtained data are presented. The main features of dimensional features have been determined and an algorithm for their determination by anatomical landmarks has been developed. Recommendations are given for processing 3D scans and combining them into one 3D model. It is shown that the use of 3D scanning for the remote production of a set of functional and aesthetic clothing for a wheelchair user is a way to produce comfortable individual clothing.


TOI-216 hosts a pair of warm, large exoplanets discovered by the TESS mission. These planets were found to be in or near the 2:1 resonance, and both of them exhibit transit timing variations (TTVs). Precise characterization of the planets' masses and radii, orbital properties, and resonant behavior can test theories for the origins of planets orbiting close to their stars. Previous characterization of the system using the first six sectors of TESS data suffered from a degeneracy between planet mass and orbital eccentricity. Radial-velocity measurements using HARPS, FEROS, and the Planet Finder Spectrograph break that degeneracy, and an expanded TTV baseline from TESS and an ongoing ground-based transit observing campaign increase the precision of the mass and eccentricity measurements. We determine that TOI-216c is a warm Jupiter, TOI-216b is an eccentric warm Neptune, and that they librate in 2:1 resonance with a moderate libration amplitude of deg, a small but significant free eccentricity of for TOI-216b, and a small but significant mutual inclination of 1.°2–3.°9 (95% confidence interval). The libration amplitude, free eccentricity, and mutual inclination imply a disturbance of TOI-216b before or after resonance capture, perhaps by an undetected third planet.


The aim of this paper is to raise some key unaddressed research questions about sustainability. It is my contention that the research necessary to solve the sustainability problem is just not being done. This is because most of the research and policy effort is couched in the context that the sustainability problem can be solved within the current economic context. It does that by asserting that the sustainability problem is essentially an externality problem that can be corrected through getting the prices right and/or regulation/management. My research and analysis suggests that sustainability may not be achievable within the current economic context. Unfortunately, very little of the sustainability research effort is directed outside of the box of the economic orthodoxy.


The pressure of recent legislative, judicial and administrative developments and increasing awareness of the possibilities of other alternatives is encouraging unprecedented experimentation in the consensual arena. As courts and agencies have experimented with a range of solutions to more effectively address the many and varied controversies presented to them, litigators have been exposed to the possibilities of purposive third party intervention prior to adjudication. At the same time, nonlawyers have recoiled from the perceived high costs of 'Total Process' in the litigation mode and have become more proactive in their approaches to conflict. Gradually, both these trends are feeding, together and separately, into the process of contract planning with results which may ultimately far transcend the capabilities of court settings. The time is ripe to take stock of current developments in the arena of private contract and assess the possibilities of movement beyond the stock and static approaches of the past. Our model is the 'relational' world of construction contracting in which multiple parties are wedded for an extended time to produce a one-of-a-kind product under a potentially wide range of economic and climatic conditions. In this world, conflict is not only likely, but well-nigh inevitable. These realities, which have long conditioned parties to the use of out-of-court approaches to conflict, have now stimulated a veritable reformation in contract planning and conflict resolution. The active players are not only attorneys, but nonlawyers who see themselves as rivals of the legal community and remediators of its impact.


This article focuses on growth-promoting aspects in the environment, and the authors propose a strength-based, dynamic model of person-environment interaction. The authors begin by briefly discussing the typical recognition of contextual variables in models that rely on the concept of person-environment fit. This is followed by a review of recent approaches to incorporating positive environmental factors in conceptualizations of human functioning. These approaches lead to an alternative model of personenvironment interaction in which the engagement construct (i.e., the quality of a personenvironment relationship determined by the extent to which negotiation, participation, and evaluation processes occur during the interaction) replaces the static notion of fit. Finally, the authors outline recommendations for overcoming environmental neglect in research, practice, and training.


Injunctions have often been viewed as mere "off switches" that prevent future violations of rights protected by so-called property rules. But injunctions in fact come in a variety of forms having different objects, scopes, and degrees of effectiveness. In practical situations, an injunction might amount to little more than a threat of higher-than-normal monetary sanctions delivered at substantially higher-than-normal speed. This article builds on these insights by investigating the potential and actual scopes of injunctions against patent infringement. An economic model for infringer incentives shows how concerns of injunction scope are substantially analogous to widely examined concerns of patent scope. A new taxonomy provides named classifications for different forms of injunctions. A systematic study of patent-infringement injunctions issued by U.S. district courts in 2010 indicates how often these different forms appear in practice. Startlingly, this study suggests that the majority of such patent-infringement injunctions take an "obey the law" form that violates the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, at least as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has traditionally understood those rules. In another indication of patent law's technology specificity, only 12% of the injunctions directed to biomedical-substance technology feature such apparent error. Meanwhile, courts frequently issue specially tailored injunctions that protect patent rights more or less than a conventional "do-not-infringe" order would. Prophylactic injunctions and other specially tailored injunctions should be recognized as legitimate forms of relief that can enable better balancing of concerns of notice, rights protection, rights limitation, and administrability.


ABSTRACT Objectives The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical, radiographic and histologic results when a highly purified xenogenic bone (Laddec®) was used as grafting material in maxillary sinuses. Material and Methods In fifteen patients requiring unilateral maxillary sinus augmentation, the grafting procedure was performed with Laddec®. Forty-two implants were installed after a 6 month healing period. The height of the augmented sinus was measured radiographically immediately after augmentation and postoperatively up to 36 months. At the time of implant placement, a bone core was harvested in each patient for histological examination. Results The cumulative implant survival rate was 97.6%. The original height was 3.65 (SD 0.7) mm and the augmented sinus height was 13.8 (SD 1.4) mm after the surgery. The reduced height of grafted xenogenic material (RDL) at the implant insertion was 0.83 (SD 0.38) mm, and at the final postoperative visit was 0.91 (SD 0.25) mm, showing no significant correlation with the follow-up periods by Spearman's test (P = 0.118). In addition, no significant difference in the RDL was observed according to the site of implantation (P = 0.682). The mean implant marginal bone loss was 0.38 (SD 0.24) mm. Histological analysis showed the bone cores were composed of 64.72 (SD 3.44)% newly formed bone, 17.41 (SD 2.02)% connective tissue, 16.93 (SD 2.83)% residual graft particles, and 0.94 (SD 0.11)% inflammatory cells. Conclusions According to our data, the highly purified xenogenic bone (Laddec®), used as graft material in the sinus lift procedure, may create adequate bone volume, and appropriate osseointegration of dental implants.


: Simulating flow dynamics in large-scale lakes is often time-consuming. For river flood simulation, the automatic domain updating (ADU), which can effectively control the simulation domain only in and around the flooded areas, has recently been developed. It is easily implementable without any computational errors for river flood simulation; however, its applicability to lake flow simulation with pre‐ cipitation/evapotranspiration has not been investigated. This study examines the applicability of the ADU to large-scale lake flow simulation with the 2-dimensional local inertial equations (2D-LIE) taking the Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia, as a study site. The 2D-LIE with the ADU demonstrated 2.1 times faster simulation with errors less than 5.5%. This efficiency was achieved owing to the wet/dry seasonal nature of the tropical lake and backflow from the mainstream of the Mekong River in the rainy sea‐ son, suggesting that the ADU is applicable to large-scale lake flow simulation.


This study examined the stress coping strategies of athletes with high psychological vulnerability. The participants were 487 university athletes (mean age = 19.8 years, SD = 0.88, 153 women). Data were collected using the Vulnerability Scale for University Athletes and General Coping Questionnaire and analyzed by conducting a multivariate analysis of variance. The results showed significant relationships between vulnerability and coping strategies (r = .11−.39). Vulnerability was most strongly related to the emotional support seeking aspect of emotion-oriented coping (r = .39). There was no significant difference in cognitive reinterpretation (r = .07). Vulnerability had a stronger relationship with emotion-oriented than problem-oriented coping, and high (vs. low) vulnerability athletes had significantly higher emotion-oriented-coping scores. These results suggest that vulnerable athletes need to be provided with appropriate emotional support to cope with stressful situations, as they rely heavily on a stress management strategy focusing on emotion regulation.


This paper proposes a block logit (BL) model, which is an alternative approach to incorporating covariance between the random utilities of alternatives into a GEV random utility maximization model. The BL is similar to the nested logit (NL), in that it is a restricted form of a network GEV (NGEV) model. The NL is a NGEV model where all of the allocation parameters have been fixed with a value equal to zero or one. The BL model proposed in this paper imposes the other possible constraint on the parameters of a NGEV model, so that the restrictions are placed not on the allocation parameters, but on the logsum parameters. The BL model can be used in much the same way as the NL model, to generate choice models that exhibit inter-alternative correlations in random utilities. It can reproduce similar covariance structures to those generated by NL models, but can also create a wider variety of possible covariance matrices than the NL, because it allows overlapping blocks. The estimation of parameters for the BL model is difficult, as the likelihood function for BL models is non-continuous. This paper examines the shape of the BL log likelihood function in some detail, and compares the relative performance of estimation procedures for NL and BL models using mode choice data.


Ashraf 'Ali Thanawi (1863-1943) was one of the most prominent religious scholars in Islamic history. Author of over a thousand books on different aspects of Islam, his work sought to defend the Islamic scholarly tradition and to articulate its authority in an age of momentous religious and political change. In this authoritative biography, Muhammad Qasim Zaman offers a comprehensive and highly accessible account of Thanawi's multifaceted career and thought, whilst also providing a valuable introduction to Islam in modern South Asia.


A new two-parameter descriptive model for the size distribution of
incomes is presented. The Beaman distribution, originally found to describe
the relationship between prices and sales volumes of textiles and
related products, is shown to fit closely US Census data on individual
incomes over the past twenty years. The two parameters of the model
represent the minimum and median levels of income. An important advantage
of the Beaman distribution over other two-parameter models
is that negative incomes can be accounted for.


This paper addresses the problem of feature selection for the classification of ground penetrating radar signals. We propose a new classification approach based on time-frequency analysis and sparse kernel feature selection. In the proposed approach, a time-frequency or a time-scale transform is first applied to the one-dimensional radar trace. Sparse kernel feature selection is then employed to extract an optimum set of features for classification. The sparse kernel method is formulated as an underdetermined linear system in a high-dimensional space, and the category labels of the training samples are used as measurements to select the most informative features. The proposed approach is evaluated through an industrial application of assessing railway ballast fouling conditions. Experimental results show that the proposed combination of sparse kernel feature selection and support vector machine classification yields very high classification rates using only a small number of features.


Univariate methods have frequently been used to discover Quantitative Trait Loci for gene expression measurements, often with much success. However, correlations caused by Linkage Disequilibrium as well as chance correlations, which are functions of the large number of markers typically used in such studies, mean that causative regions can often cause multiple signals. Traditional investigations into the number of QTL for a given phenotype, such as visual inspection of likelihood plots, are not feasible when considering thousands of phenotypes. Stepwise methods have been suggested to counter this, but these are known to produce unstable models and there are difficulties in deriving significance estimates. The Lasso is a shrinkage method which has often been employed to discover true signals when the number of variables exceeds the number of observations. We propose a test statistic based on the threshold at which variables enter the Lasso model, prove analytic properties of this statistic which demonstrate parallels with univariate methods and demonstrate its utility in proposing candidate QTL. We show that this method controls for LD structure, and the estimates of statistical significance produced have superior properties when compared to those derived by stepwise methods. We study the performance of our method using simulation studies. These simulations find that the ratio of true discoveries to false positives is often superior for our method compared to univariate and stepwise approaches. Finally, we apply the derived method to data from a previous eQTL mapping experiment to investigate the nature of genetic regulation in this population.


Background: Aerva lanata is an interesting plant used in traditional medicine for many years and used for the treatment of bladder and kidney stones. Objective: The aim was to study detailed pharmacognostic profi le of an important medicinal plant in the Indian system of medicine, A. lanata (amaranthaceae). Materials and Methods: Flower samples of A. lanata were studied by macroscopical, microscopical characters. Physicochemical, phytochemical, and fl uorescence analysis of powder of the plant was performed according to the methods of standardization recommended by World Health Organization. Results: Macroscopically fl owers are small, actinomorphic, and solitary or aggregated in cymes. Microscopically ovary was found to be bicarpellary, syncarpous, unilocular, superior; ovules one to many and campylotropous type. Powder microscopy of fl ower revealed the presence of epidermis with stomata and covering trichomes, calcium oxalate crystals, starch grains, and oil globules. The investigations also included fl uorescence analysis. Physiochemical parameters such as total ash, acid insoluble ash sulfated ash and water soluble ash; moisture content values were found to be 12.66%, 1.64%, 9.12%, 4.52%, 12%, respectively. Preliminary phytochemical screening showed the presence of carbohydrates, triterpenoids, fl avonoids, glycosides, and phenolic compounds. Conclusion: The results of the present study can serve as a valuable source of information and provide suitable standards for identifi cation of this plant material in future investigations and applications.


The dynamical behavior of the PBL (Planetary Boundary Layer) has a direct effect on the air quality and on the boundary layer parameterization schemes used in local, regional and global models. Active remote sensing systems such as LIDARs (Light Detection and Ranging) use aerosols of the atmosphere as tracers for identification of atmospheric state determined by convective activity, turbulence or dust intrusions. In this paper we have used multiwavelength lidar measurements from a scientific research center in Magurele, Bucharest area (44.35 N latitude, 26.03 E longitude) to provide information about the PBL height evolution, correlated to Saharan dust intrusions over Romania and to meteorological conditions. The Richardson number method is used to estimate the boundary layer height from the radio-soundings. We have used pressure, temperature and dew point profiles as well as the wind direction profiles from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) data base. The height of layers in the lower troposphere from lidar signal was calculated using the gradient method- minima of the first derivative. The results were consistent with the ones obtained from radio soundings.


The EU and the US, mainly through NATO, have been successful in securing peace and prosperity in Europe during the Cold War and in promoting peace beyond Europe after 1990. With the emergence of new powers and the rise of multipolarity, however, it is no longer apparent that transatlantic relations are indispensable and ways must be found to make sure that the relationship remains relevant. The EU and the US currently relate poorly to each other and as a result do not obtain the best possible outcome from their combined resources. Two elements are key to improving transatlantic relations: an inclusive policy towards Turkey (in the strategic interests of both the EU and the US); and more permanent and workable structures suited to the realities of the 21st century.


Extracurricular is basic in the minds and interests of the students because this program is not only enjoyable, but important. It is fuller of meaning than the regular curriculum to many high school students, and it offers opportunity for direct participation (Hansen, 1957:326). The students who participate in English language extracurricular program class has motivation to increase their skill in speaking English. Therefore, the teacher must suit and develop techniques in order to meet the educational needs for the students. Therefore, the writer is interested in investigating this phenomenon as reflected in the title of this study "the technique of teaching speaking in English language extracurricular program at SMU-N II Batu".
The purposes of this study are to know the technique and its implementation used by the teacher in teaching speaking in English language extracurricular program at SMU- N II Batu.
In this study, the subject was the English teacher who taught in English language extracurricular. Meanwhile, the instruments used to get the data of this study were observation and interview.
The result of this study showed that the teacher used several techniques in teaching speaking, they were; focus group discussion, dialogue, role plays, games, simulation, watching movies, debate, quizzes, sort story telling and singing a song.
The implementation of teaching speaking techniques at English language extracurricular program showed that the teacher used more than one technique in each meeting, such as sort story telling technique combined by discussion, and ended up the session with singing a song together. To avoid the students' boredom in the class. The teacher asked the students to sing an English song together or by giving some quizzes to the students, the teacher also applied watching action movie technique in multimedia laboratory. Besides, a technique such as grammarian monopoly game was used in two or more meetings because it was considered that the technique was still interesting for students in the class. The other techniques such as focus group discussion, role play, simulation were also applied in the class, because those techniques were considered easy to be conducted in extracurricular class.


During asymmetric cell division, dynein generates forces, which position the spindle to reflect polarity and ensure correct daughter cell fates. The transient cortical localization of dynein raises the question of its targeting. We found that it accumulates at the microtubule plus-ends like in budding yeast, indirectly hitch-hiking on $\text{EBP-2}^{\text{EB1}}$ likely via dynactin. Importantly, this mechanism, which modestly accounts for cortical forces, does not transport dynein, which displays the same binding/unbinding dynamics as $\text{EBP-2}^{\text{EB1}}$. At the cortex, dynein tracks can be classified as having either directed or diffusive-like motion. Diffusive-like tracks reveal force-generating dyneins. Their densities are higher on the posterior tip of the embryos, where $\text{GPR-1/2}^{\text{LGN}}$ concentrate, but their durations are symmetric. Since dynein flows to the cortex are non-polarized, we suggest that this posterior enrichment increases dynein binding, thus accounts for the force imbalance reflecting polarity, and supplements the regulation of mitotic progression via the non-polarized detachment rate.


Occupant behavior is one of the major factors influencing building energy consumption and contributing to uncertainty in building energy use prediction and simulation. Currently the understanding of occupant behavior is insufficient both in building design, operation and retrofit, leading to incorrect simplifications eywords: ccupant behavior ehavior modeling uilding performance simulation nergy use uilding design and operation in modeling and analysis. This paper introduced the most recent advances and current obstacles in modeling occupant behavior and quantifying its impact on building energy use. The major themes include advancements in data collection techniques, analytical and modeling methods, and simulation applications which provide insights into behavior energy savings potential and impact. There has been growing research and applications in this field, but significant challenges and opportunities still lie ahead. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).


Once in a long while, a person comes along who knows the inside scoop or holds a penetrating insight about a particular issue or situation that others simply overlook, ignore or take for granted. Lawrence Kogan is one such person who, in my opinion, correctly sees a major paradigm shift slowly taking shape in the international law of intellectual property rights. As Mr. Kogan explains, in painstaking detail, this shift is occurring notwithstanding the fact that successful private property rights regimes have resulted in remarkable scientific and technological advances and generated exceptional economic wealth throughout the world. This very comprehensive article represents a clear understanding of why we should all take pause and reevaluate the bases underlying the unprecedented rate and degree of human progress that has taken place during the past century. In doing so, we will likely come to realize that we must prevent the new political alliance and experimental economic system now being formulated by Brazil and other misinformed governments and civil society activists from ever emerging. Without the incentive of private property ownership, individual-based invention and creation, not to mention commercial innovation, would have been largely non-existent. As a result, we human beings would have likely remained a subsistence-based feudal society beholden to the political elite. If we erroneously decide, for reasons of political expediency, to severely restrict or eliminate private intellectual property rights in the life sciences and information technology fields, we once again run the very real risk of technological and economic stagnation, and perhaps, regression. Private property rights are integral to and an indispensable part of human destiny, and thus, the human condition. They also represent basic human values by rewarding those of us capable and willing to assume the economic risk of invention, creation and innovation. Indeed, investors are unlikely to finance new discoveries and inventions that can advance our societies and improve the quality of our lives unless they are entitled to receive exclusive rewards/returns for the risks they have assumed. Real world history supports such logic. Soviet-style communism largely collapsed in Eastern Europe because of the absence of individual incentive-based private property rights regimes. Furthermore, the nations of the African continent have suffered repeatedly as the result of misconceived World Bank structural adjustment and participatory development programs. These programs were unsuccessful in promoting African economic development, in part, because they did not emphasize the importance of private property rights. More importantly, however, they failed also because they did not recognize how the African culture itself epitomized the largely unproductive 'open sharing' ethic that it had inherited from its former European colonizers. Africa needs to move away from this paradigm to one where women actually have the right of property ownership. Therefore, the worst thing that could happen now is for African countries to experience, yet again, a new economic experiment. In light of all this, it is very surprising and quite disturbing that Brazil would take the lead in advocating a new global anti-intellectual property right paradigm favoring open source and universal access to knowledge. …


We report on silent brain infarction (SBI) and leuko- araiosis (LA) of 23 patients with clinically diagnosed "first-ever" acute ischemic lacunar stroke. The lacunar syndromes were pure motor hemiparesis (10), pure sensory syndrome (2), ataxic hemiparesis (3), dysarthria clumsy hand syndrome (3), and sensory- motor deficit (5). Nineteen out of the 23 patients presented with completed strokes on arrival to the hospital, and 4 (17%) developed evolving-stroke within 24 hours of stroke onset. A lacune corresponded to the acute stroke could be found in all patients on brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and in 18 (78%) on brain computed tomography (CT). MRI showed additional subclinical or asymptomatic "silent brain infarctions or lacunes" (SBI) in 19 (83%) of 23 patients, and leuko-araiosis (LA) of moderate to severe degree (> grade 2) was present in 61% of patients although dementia was absent. Hypertension is the risk factor in 78% of cases followed by diabetes mellitus, smoking, and elevated plasma cholesterol level. Independence of the types of lacunar syndromes, patients with hypertension and diabetes mellitus are associated with high grade LA. None with normal blood pressure and plasma glucose had grade 3 or grade 4 LA (p < 0.05). In conclusion, evolving-stroke occurs in one- fifth of patients with "first-ever" lacunar infarct within the first 24 hours of stroke onset. SBI was found in 83% of cases. Hypertension and diabetes mellitus are associated with additional SBI and high grade LA. The severity of leuko-araiosis per se dictates the cerebrovascular risks.


Tiphallus torreon n. sp., the first rhachodesmid milliped from Coahuila, Mexico, displays an iridescent turquoise pigmentation with patterned white paranotal markings and a truncated, subapical projection from the broad, non-descript gonopodal acropodite. Four genera – Strongylodesmus Saussure, Mexidesmus Loomis, and Ceuthauxus and Tiphallus, both by Chamberlin – contain forms exhibiting this general condition, but the last is the only one whose type species does. Synthetic treatments are essential to advance familial knowledge beyond the descriptive stage, and revising these four taxa would constitute a meaningful initial study. Rhachodesmidae extend from northern Nuevo Leon, Mexico, ca. 77 km (48 mi) from the Rio Grande, to central Costa Rica; Glomeridae (Glomerida), Platydesmidae (Platydesmida), and Stemmiulidae (Stemmiulida) show similar distributions whereas Allopocockiidae (Spirobolida) and Rhysodesmus Cook (Polydesmida: Xystodesmidae) traverse the river and occupy southernmost Texas. Tridontomidae, the other component of Rhachodesmoidea, occupies a small enclave in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. Rhachodesmidae/oidea do not occur in Panama and are initially recorded from Belize; localities are needed from Honduras.


Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of applications involving data with structural dependency and graph representations. For these applications, it is very common that their class distribution is imbalanced with minority samples being only a small portion of the population. Such imbalanced class distributions impose significant challenges to the learning algorithms. This problem is further complicated with the presence of noise or outliers in the graph data. In this paper, we propose an imbalanced graph boosting algorithm, igBoost, that progressively selects informative subgraph patterns from imbalanced graph data for learning. To handle class imbalance, we take class distributions into consideration to assign different weight values to graphs. The distance of each graph to its class center is also considered to adjust the weight to reduce the impact of noisy graph data. The weight values are integrated into the iterative subgraph feature selection and margin learning process to achieve maximum benefits. Experiments on real-world graph data with different degrees of class imbalance and noise demonstrate the algorithm performance.


During longer physical strains, our body loses water and salts through sweating. This deprivation leads to states of exhaustion and convulsions. A fitness drink should replenish both, water and mineral nutrients (mainly sodium). Different beers, alcoholic, alcohol-free and yeast-clouded, alcohol-free beer were analyzed by HPLC and Ion chromatography to determine the content of mineral salts and carbohydrates. Osmolality as a degree of tonicity was calculated based on the dissolved components. Data was compared to fitness drinks declared as mineral nutrient containing and isotonic. Subsequently, different sodium salts were added to alcohol-free, yeast-clouded beer to reach the EU recommended sodium concentrations of 500 mg L-1. These spiked beers were blind tested for flavor impairments. This study shows that the fitness drinks came close to fulfill the EU direction. Generally, almost all beers are mineral nutrient containing, as defined by Austrian law. Due to the alcohol concentration, none of alcoholic beers are isotonic, as they are hypertonic. Most of the alcohol free beers are within the isotonic range, especially considering dissolved carbon dioxide. After ingestion, it is degassed by the acidic conditions in the stomach, changing many beers to hypotonic in the end. Each beer fulfills the EU recommended carbohydrate content but none comes even close to reaching the required sodium content. The blind tasting of the spiked beers showed minor flavor impairment with sodium carbonate causing the least negative effects on taste and odor. In conclusion, yeast clouded, alcohol-free beer might be labeled as mineral nutrient containing and isotonic, implying to be an ideal sport drink. Due to the lack of sodium, the real benefit of such a beverage could diminish unless mixed with beverages containing high levels of sodium or sodium carbonate.


Species abundance and distribution metrics are cornerstones of conservation
planning, for example, in establishing extinction risk and selecting priority areas,
but abundance data are scarce and costly to obtain in comparison to those on
species occurrence. Occurrence records, often from citizen science or nonsystematic
surveys, are increasingly used to model species' distributions using
environmental predictors. Methods to relate occurrence models to abundance, and
therefore, provide greater understanding of patterns of abundance across species'
ranges and population size estimates could bring important benefits for
conservation decisions.
This thesis aims to develop tools, combining different analytical techniques,
field data and GIS, to provide improved estimates of species distribution and
abundance in support of extinction risk assessments in threatened Neotropical
bird species. To achieve this aim, a case study was implemented over the ranges of
14 dry forest birds from the Tumbesian region of Peru –an area of critical
conservation importance due to high endemism and severe anthropogenic
threats– with the following objectives: to model the distribution of study species
(Chapter 2); to estimate local abundance of species across their ranges using
covariate Distance sampling (Chapter 3); to explore range-wide variation in
abundance (Chapter 4); to explore the relationship between relative probability of
occurrence, derived from modelling, and bird abundance, derived from field
studies (Chapter 5).
First, ensemble species distribution models, using four modelling methods,
were built with a median of 150 occurrence records per species, bioclimatic
variables and vegetation indices. Modelled Extent of Occurrence, using a 5%
omission error threshold to define presence and absence, was compared to
existing range estimates used in extinction risk assessment. Additionally, field data
were obtained on the local abundance of the study species and habitat
characteristics along four 2.5 km transects at 26 sites over the study area.
Covariate Distance sampling was used to estimate bird abundances at each site.
Where sites represented discrete or delimited units (e.g. protected areas), specific population sizes were estimated. Local abundance was compared across sites and
by range core versus edge; spatial autocorrelation was examined with multivariate
Mantel tests; and, relationships with environmental variables were examined
using Generalised Additive Models. Finally, relationships between abundance
estimates, obtained from the field study, and relative probability of occurrence,
obtained from distribution models, were tested using correlations, and where
significant relationships were found, these were modelled using hierarchical
logistic regression.
Individual species distribution modelling methods performed adequately and
coincided highly in terms of ranked correlation but differed in the distribution of
their predicted values. Range size estimates, from thresholded models, were
generally smaller than, but coincided spatially with, published ranges, with the
exception of three species of conservation interest. Local abundance varied by one
or two orders of magnitude across sites for almost all species, with abundance not
necessarily highest at the centre of species' ranges. Sites of maximum abundance
for individual species did not coincide – nine different sites held the highest
densities of at least one species. Eleven of 14 species showed significant positive
correlations between their abundance and modelled occurrence for at least one
modelling technique.
Modelling techniques are discussed in light of complementing existing
techniques to estimate Extent of Occurrence for extinction risk assessments.
Abundance estimates, using methods that incorporate detectability, can be
obtained for rare species over very patchy habitats with relatively low survey
effort, using a suitably designed sampling protocol. The extreme variation in
species' abundances and the complexity in relationships with environmental
variables has conservation implications, for example, in the design of conservationmotivated
surveys and regarding the need for multiple reserves to capture high
local abundances of key species. The relationship between modelled species'
occurrence and local abundance is a promising area of research with a view to
obtaining better abundance information with less survey effort. In terms of
biodiversity conservation in north Peru, critical sites are recommended for urgent
protection, and updated extinction risk categories are given for threatened species.


The current state of the art in air quality assessment, monitoring and management comprises analytical measurements and atmospheric transport modeling. Earth observation from satellites provides an additional information layer through the calculation of synoptic air pollution indicators, such as atmospheric turbidity. Fusion of these data sources with ancillary data, including classification of population vulnerability to the adverse health effects of particulate pollution in the ambient air integrates them into an optimally managed environmental information processing tool. The computational assessment method described in this work permits a detailed spatial characterization of the domain of interest with a view to optimizing air quality management in order to reduce the corresponding adverse health impact. Results from the pilot application of this technique for integrated environmental and health assessment in the urban environment are given.


BACKGROUND
Intermittent androgen deprivation for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) elevation after radiotherapy may improve quality of life and delay hormone resistance. We assessed overall survival with intermittent versus continuous androgen deprivation in a noninferiority randomized trial.

METHODS
We enrolled patients with a PSA level greater than 3 ng per milliliter more than 1 year after primary or salvage radiotherapy for localized prostate cancer. Intermittent treatment was provided in 8-month cycles, with nontreatment periods determined according to the PSA level. The primary end point was overall survival. Secondary end points included quality of life, time to castration-resistant disease, and duration of nontreatment intervals.

RESULTS
Of 1386 enrolled patients, 690 were randomly assigned to intermittent therapy and 696 to continuous therapy. Median follow-up was 6.9 years. There were no significant between-group differences in adverse events. In the intermittent-therapy group, full testosterone recovery occurred in 35% of patients, and testosterone recovery to the trial-entry threshold occurred in 79%. Intermittent therapy provided potential benefits with respect to physical function, fatigue, urinary problems, hot flashes, libido, and erectile function. There were 268 deaths in the intermittent-therapy group and 256 in the continuous-therapy group. Median overall survival was 8.8 years in the intermittent-therapy group versus 9.1 years in the continuous-therapy group (hazard ratio for death, 1.02; 95% confidence interval, 0.86 to 1.21). The estimated 7-year cumulative rates of disease-related death were 18% and 15% in the two groups, respectively (P=0.24).

CONCLUSIONS
Intermittent androgen deprivation was noninferior to continuous therapy with respect to overall survival. Some quality-of-life factors improved with intermittent therapy. (Funded by the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute and others; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00003653.).


Under favorable soil conditions such as existence of easily destructible organic compounds, balanced heat and moisture, adequate ventilation and abundant nutrients, organic materials are mineralized. Once mineralizing occurs, mineral elements like P, S, Ca, Mg, K and other cations are released. A related study was conducted to determine the effect of seven organic fertilizers (Leaf Mold (LM), Rice Husk (RH), manure, Spent Mushroom Compost (SMC), mixture of LM, RH and SMC (M1), mixture of LM, RH and manure (M2) with the ratio of 1: 1: 1 and control) at three levels of soil compactness (roller weight of 36, 56 and 76 kg) on N, P, K content of soil and aril parts of sport lawn. Treatments were applied as strip plot design in three replications, in research farm of Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources during 2008-2009. According to the results of this study, in all three compactness levels, treatments containing manure and SMC showed more N and K in contrast to control treatment. The most content of soil P in each compactness level was observed in plots fertilized with manure. The manure and control treatments showed the most and the least amount of plant nitrogen in all compactness treatments respectively. The manure and SMC treatments and also treatments containing these organic matters increased plant phosphorus content in compare with RH, LM and control treatments. Also in three compactness, manure and SMC treatments showed more plant potassium in contrast to control.


Forest ecosystems are facing many challenges in the wake of recent pest and disease outbreaks, coupled with uncertain future climate conditions. A particular challenge emerges from the recent outbreak of Phytophthora ramorum identified in Japanese larch (Larix kaempferi) in 2010. Its subsequent spread has caused widespread damage to Japanese larch stands and has resulted in the Japanese, European (Larix decidua) and hybrid (Larix × eurolepis) larches are no longer grant-aided in the Irish afforestation programme in Ireland. Over 20% of forest stands contain some quantity of larch; with a total area of 32,057 ha. Japanese larch is the predominant species with 27,859 ha, 86% occurring as mixed stands and 79% in mixture with Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis). The objective of the study was to examine the range of alternative conifer species that may be suitable to replace larch which potentially have similar or increased levels of productivity, acceptable timber properties, while affording reduced levels of from pest/disease outbreak. To assess productivity, yield class of a range of species in mixture with larch across a gradient of soil types was assessed. Analysis of this data indicated that Sitka spruce, western red cedar (Thuja plicata), grand fir (Abies grandis), western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), Norway spruce (Picea abies), European silver fir (Abies alba), noble fir (Abies procera) and Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) provide suitable alternatives, showing higher levels of productivity across a range of soil types. A strong positive correlation was found between the yield classes of (a) Japanese larch and western hemlock (r = 0.70), (b) hybrid larch and Douglas fir (r = 0.73) and (c) European larch and Sitka spruce (r = 0.61) growing on the same sites. Regression equations were developed between the site yields of Japanese, European and hybrid larches and those of alternative species, as a useful tool to predict growth performance of potential alternative species across a range of soil types where larch is currently growing. The predictive power varied for different species pairings (r2 of 0.24 to 0.87) with the strongest relationships between the yields of Japanese larch and Norway spruce on basin peat (r2 = 0.71) and Japanese larch and Douglas fir on podzol soils (r2 = 0.76; y = 1.2632x + 2.6316). Given the significance of Sitka spruce/Japanese larch mixtures in Irish forestry, future research should focus on the potential for mixtures combining Sitka spruce and alternative Pacific conifers (e.g. Douglas fir, grand fir, western hemlock and western red cedar) that may enhance the resilience of and maintain productivity.


To provide an efficient link maintenance approach, we propose a cross layer medium access control (LM-MAC) protocol for multichannel cognitive radio ad hoc networks. Link establishment and reliable transmission are two key problems for a perfect link maintenance mechanism. Since the cognitive user (CU) pairs have to reestablish their links each frame, in the proposed MAC protocol, three different access modes are designed to guarantee transmission efficiency in continuous frames. To enhance the transmission reliability, each CU will create a father spectrum list (FSL) after joining in the network. FSL is divided into three groups of sub-channels with different functions to compensate the packet loss caused by the primary users' appearance and the deep fading. Meanwhile, since the transmitter and the receiver will share the same FSL, periodical cooperative sensing is adopted to further optimize the former problem. Finally, compared with the existing opportunistic multichannel (OMC)-MAC protocol, the proposed LM-MAC protocol achieves better system performance in terms of saturation throughput, continuity and access delay.


Abstract Much attention is given to the consequences of airborne particles on human health and well-being. Wear is one source of airborne particles and contributions in the urban environments from wheel-to-rail contacts and disc brakes cannot be neglected. Traditionally, mechanical wear has been associated with the generation of particles of diameters of some microns. However, the research described has found ultrafine particle generation from wear processes. Particle generation from wear was measured under controlled laboratory conditions. The wear was created through sliding contact in a tribometer (type "pin-on-disc") with different materials and with different sliding velocities and pressures, to represent rail traffic and automobile disc braking. Particle concentrations and size distributions in the air were determined for particle diameters from 10 nm up to more than 10 μm. For most materials and conditions three particle size modes were found: one at 50–100 nm, one at a few hundred nm and one at a few μm particle diameter.


The government's plans to reorganise public health services in England have been extensively criticised by the influential House of Commons health select committee.

The all party committee of MPs published its 100 page report on the proposed changes on 2 November, raising many concerns and urging key amendments. The proposals are included in the Health and Social Care Bill, which is currently at committee stage in the House of Lords.

The report says that "policy confusion" over levels of funding is making service planning "impossible" and that uncertainty around staffing is causing public health specialists to leave the profession. It also warns that the proposed new commissioning structures lack coordination and cohesion, while the new "health premium" payments could widen rather than reduce health inequalities.

The MPs say that they are "unconvinced" by the government's "responsibility deal" with the food and drinks industry to tackle problems such as obesity and alcohol. The committee's chairman, Stephen Dorrell, a former Conservative health secretary, said, "The government must set out …


We present the Latent Sequence Decompositions (LSD) framework. LSD decomposes sequences with variable lengthed output units as a function of both the input sequence and the output sequence. We present a training algorithm which samples valid extensions and an approximate decoding algorithm. We experiment with the Wall Street Journal speech recognition task. Our LSD model achieves 12.9% WER compared to a character baseline of 14.8% WER. When combined with a convolutional network on the encoder, we achieve 9.6% WER.


Gene therapy has the potential to treat devastating inherited diseases for which there is little hope of finding a conventional cure. These include lethal diseases, like immunodeficiencies or several metabolic disorders, or conditions associated with a relatively long life expectancy but poor quality of life and expensive and life‐long symptomatic treatments, such as muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis and thalassaemia. Skin adhesion defects belong to both groups. For the nonlethal forms, gene therapy, or transplantation of cultured skin derived from genetically corrected epidermal stem cells, represents a very attractive therapeutic option, and potentially a definitive treatment. Recent advances in gene transfer and stem cell culture technology are making this option closer than ever. This paper critically reviews the progress and prospects of gene therapy for epidermolysis bullosa, and the technical and nontechnical factors currently limiting its development.


The unknown fate of Amelia Earhart continues to fascinate. One of the most tantalizing clues involves skeletal remains found on Nikumaroro Island in 1940. Some have summarily dismissed these bones as the remains of Amelia Earhart because they were assessed as male by Dr. D. W. Hoodless, principal of the Central Medical School, Fiji, in 1940. The most recent such dismissal is that of Cross and Wright (2015), who argue that Hoodless's methods were sound and therefore his sex estimate was likely correct. This paper addresses two issues: (1) it evaluates Hoodless's methods and Cross and Wright's support of them, and (2) it compares the Nikumaroro bones with what we can learn about Amelia Earhart's bone lengths. When Hoodless conducted his analysis, forensic osteology was not yet a well-developed discipline. Evaluating his methods with reference to modern data and methods suggests that they were inadequate to his task; this is particularly the case with his sexing method. Therefore his sex assessment of the Nikumaroro bones cannot be assumed to be correct. To address the question of whether the Nikumaroro bones match estimates of Amelia Earhart's bone lengths, I compare Earhart's bone lengths with the Nikumaroro bones using Mahalanobis distance. This analysis reveals that Earhart is more similar to the Nikumaroro bones than 99% of individuals in a large reference sample. This strongly supports the conclusion that the Nikumaroro bones belonged to Amelia Earhart. KEYWORDS: forensic anthropology, Amelia Earhart, human identification, multivariate


John Jerrim and Robert de Vries argue a radical overhaul is needed of how social science is published and produced for it to provide a helpful basis for public policy. More progress is needed in particular over the lack of transparency of the research process, publication bias for positive findings and improved quality assurance mechanisms for peer review. Governments have started to wake up to the fact that public policy should be informed by scientific evidence. Here in the UK, our government says it is committed to the idea that policy should be based on evidence of 'what works'. But what if that evidence is not as reliable as it should be? What if the rock on which we want to build policy is actually made of sand? In our new paper, we describe the major problems with social science research, which severely limit its use in developing public policy. Governments have started to wake up to the fact that public policy should be informed by scientific evidence. Here in the UK, our government says it is committed to the idea that policy should be based on evidence of 'what works'. But what if that evidence is not as reliable as it should be? What if the rock on which we want to build policy is actually made of sand? In our new paper, we describe the major problems with social science research, which severely limit its use in developing public policy. The first problem is transparency. Just as schoolchildren are told they must show their workings in their maths homework, one might presume that academics are required to show how they arrive at the figures they report in their studies. But this is typically not the case. The precise analytic steps taken are rarely seen by others – even by peer reviewers. This makes it very difficult to check the quality of academic work. This is a problem because academic social scientists are just people – they don't always get things right. A host of studies now illustrate how, when attempts are made to reproduce academic evidence, it is not uncommon to find very different results. Consequently, there are likely to be hundreds of studies out there, quietly influencing policy, that could turn out to be incorrect. The next problem is that of perverse incentives. The idealized view of science is that papers are published based solely on scientific merit. You formulate your hypothesis, you test it, then, regardless of the outcome, you publish the results in an academic journal. The problem is that the journals are less keen to publish boring negative results than eye-catching positive ones. And it's not just the journals – scientists themselves are more likely to submit their exciting positive findings for publication in the first place. This is called 'publication bias', and it's fundamentally bad science. If 'boring' negative findings are less likely to be published, the evidence base becomes dominated by positive results. This creates a serious problem for a policymaker trying to assess the scientific evidence on any given topic. They will end up getting a highly distorted picture of the real world; one in which the extent and severity of social problems is probably exaggerated, as is the extent to which policy interventions can change things. This might leave policymakers too active in public policy investing in potentially ineffective solutions to social problems that might not even exist. The final problem is the lack of a thorough quality assurance process. Currently, 'peer-review' is meant to be science's stamp of quality. When a politician invokes 'peer-reviewed research', they mean 'this is proper, solid science'. But in reality, this process is less thorough than one might think. It simply means two or three other researchers think the work is worthy of being in the public domain. One would hope that, as experts in the relevant field, reviewers would tend to agree on what should be published. In fact, levels of agreement are scarily low. Reviewers are human beings with their own biases and prejudices, and they often have no set guidelines or standards upon which to review a study. In the words of the former editor of the British Medical Journal, this can make peer review 'little better than tossing a coin'. Together, these issues are devastating for the integrity of social science as a foundation for public policy. A lot of published studies are probably unreliable, but a lack of transparency leaves us no easy way to check. Problems with the peer-review system mean that the 'peer-reviewed' label is of little use as an indicator of whether a study is any good. And publication bias means that even an unprejudiced review of the evidence on a topic will give an answer that is unlikely to reflect reality. This definitely does not mean we should abandon evidence-based policy altogether. A distorted view of reality is better than proceeding with our eyes closed. Nevertheless, a radical overhaul is needed of how social science is published and produced: Organisations which fund social science should, where possible, require researchers to share the computer code which generated their results Open publishing models should be extended across the social sciences. These models (as exemplified by the journal PLoS One) emphasise publication of all research that is technically sound, regardless of the results. As is (or should be) the case in medicine, social science research projects should be pre-registered before any analysis takes place to prevent them going 'missing in action' if they find negative results. We are optimistic that progress is being made in some areas. But while we wait, policy will continue to be based on unreliable science. The longer we drag our feet, the more damage will be done. About the Authors Dr John Jerrim is a Lecturer in Economics and Social Statistics at the UCL Institute of Education and is a leading thinker in the evidence and methodology underpinning social policy research. He was the first recipient of the ESRC 'Early career impact award' for his research on the attainment of UK pupils compared to their peers in other countries. His research on education, and particularly East Asian teaching methods, has featured extensively in the mainstream international media since 2013. Robert de Vries is a lecturer in quantitative sociology at the University of Kent. His research is primarily in the area of inequality and social hierarchies. He is a research fellow in sociology at the University of Oxford and co-editor of the collaborative social science and policy blog Inequalities.


One of the big business stories in early 2002 was Amazon.com's profitability for the first time in four years. The company reported a $5 million net profit in the fourth quarter of 2001. (1) Although many dot.com entrepreneurs filed for bankruptcy in the past two years, many business forecasters continue to be optimistic about the future of e-commerce, in terms of both consumer online buying and business-to-business Internet transactions. E-commerce has caught the attention of the general public as well as the business and academic communities. Colleges and universities have aggressively integrated e-commerce into existing curricula, often as a result of pressure from recruiters and industry. In some cases, schools have created new degrees or concentrations in e-commerce. A recent survey conducted by the international accrediting body for business schools found that almost half of business schools around the world have formally integrated electronic commerce into their curriculums. (2) This direction is likely to continue. One of the business education trends projected for 2002 is increased integration of e-commerce into the undergraduate and graduate business curricula in the United States. (3) In fact, one business educator predicted that "there will definitely be more courses with e-marketing and e-commerce in their titles" and that "these topics will pervade the overall business curriculum more as well." (4) It is apparent that it will be critical for librarians in various library settings to monitor e-commerce developments and build corresponding collections tailored to the needs of their users. The guest columnist for this article is well informed on the topic of electronic commerce. She currently serves as a full-time staff member in the Schreyer Business Library, located at the University Park campus of The Pennsylvania State University. Stephanie Jakle Movahedi-Lankarani has almost two decades of experience as a reference assistant in subject-based research libraries. She has developed an expertise in e-commerce research and has created a pathfinder on e-commerce that is posted on the Schreyer Library's home page (www.libraries.psu.edu/ crsweb/business/ECommerce). She has also delivered instructional sessions on e-commerce resources to MBA students. In addition, she has authored a comparative review of e-commerce Web sites for an upcoming issue of the Journal of Business and Finance Librarianship, and she has written an article on best e-commerce Web sites for a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Business and Finance Librarianship.--Editor E-commerce rocketed, seemingly out of nowhere, into the collective public conscience during the holiday buying season of 1998. For the first time, the selling and buying of goods on the Internet reached a level of consumer spending that made the average retail consumer sit up and take notice. Amazon.com made more than $1 billion that year, and America Online rang up more than $1.2 billion in sales in just the last ten weeks of the year. (5) Then, almost as quickly as e-commerce had arrived, it seemingly imploded upon itself and sank below the economic horizon. As Internet company after Internet company closed their doors, and the value of technology stocks dropped to the basement, many pundits wrote off e-commerce as a loudly touted, heavily advertised, but largely empty phenomenon. Others added that regardless of what it had been--advertising hype or commercial reality--e-commerce was now quite dead. Like Humpty-Dumpty, they maintained, the dot.com bubble could not be put back together again. Here To Stay Despite the great slowing of its growth in recent years, e-commerce does remain a strong and steadily expanding sector of the United States economy. Statistics from the U. S. Department of Commerce show that total e-commerce retail sales for 2001 were $32.6 billion and accounted for one percent of all 2001 retail sales (up from . …


For decades now, scholars and politicians alike have argued that the concentration of poverty in city housing projects would produce distrust, alienation, apathy, and social isolation - the disappearance of what sociologists call social capital. But relatively few have examined precisely how such poverty affects social capital or have considered for what reasons living in a poor neighborhood results in such undesirable effects. This book examines a neglected Puerto Rican enclave in Boston to consider the pros and cons of social scientific thinking about the true nature of ghettos in America. Mario Luis Small dismantles the theory that poor urban neighborhoods are inevitably deprived of social capital. He shows that the conditions specified in this theory are vaguely defined and variable among poor communities. According to Small, structural conditions such as unemployment or a failed system of familial relations must be acknowledged as affecting the urban poor, but individual motivations and the importance of timing must be considered as well. Brimming with fresh theoretical insights, Villa Victoria is an elegant work of sociology that will be essential to students of urban poverty.