The concepts and methodology needed for designing, developing, and implementing real life applications based on multi-agent systems are today still a challenge for researchers in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science. Industrial-strength multi-agent systems require, among other things, reusability, i.e. the capability of not having to design and implement from scratch a new multi-agent system for every new application domain. In order to improve the reusability of multi-agent systems, we have taken a knowledge modelling stance coming from the research on knowledge engineering, and adapted its insights to deal with multi-agent systems. The resulting contributions are organized in the ORCAS framework, comprising conceptual guidelines to design, methodological commitments for development, and an implemented platform to make concrete these abstract notions and effectively experiment with them. This paper describes the ORCAS e-Institution, and agent platform for developing and deploying open, reusable and configurable cooperative multiagent systems.


The SiC MOSFET has attracted interest due to its superior characteristics compared to its Si counterpart. Several SiC MOSFETs are usually paralleled to increase current capability, considering cost effectiveness and manufacturability. Current unbalance among the MOSFETs is a concern as it affects reliability. The two main causes are asymmetrical layout and parameter mismatch. The variation in parameters, unlike circuit or module layout, is unavoidable during production. Among all the parameters of MOSFET, the spreads in on-state resistance (Rds(on)) and threshold voltage (Vth) are the major concerns during paralleling. The disparity in Rds(on) causes static current unbalance which is self-limited due to the positive temperature coefficient of Rds(on). Its influence is not investigated here. The threshold voltage Vth has a negative temperature coefficient, forcing the MOSFET with lower Vth to carry more current during switching transient. Paralleled MOSFETs are usually de-rated to guarantee safe operation. Balancing of peak currents during switching transient isthe goal of this work. Integration of current/voltage sensors into paralleled structure is difficult in real application. Complicated feedback loop design and separate gate drivers also need to be avoided in perspective of cost and volume. Passive balancing solutions are investigated in this dissertation. The inductors and resistors most effective in improving current sharing are identified by parametric analysis. Their current balancing mechanisms are analyzed in circuit point of view. The design guidelines involving the magnitude of Vth mismatch, current rise time, and unbalance percentage are derived for the selection of passive components. The theory upholds well when substantial parasitics from device package and layout exist. Several passive balancing structures are analyzed and compared in terms of current balancing capability, voltage stress, total switching loss, and switching loss difference. All of them can provide much better current and power balancing without increasing switching loss. Some of the them may increase the stress-inducing inductance, which can be reduced by negative magnetic coupling. Perfect coupling between power-source inductors would enable current matching without penalty on voltage stress. Common-source inductance (Lcm) is effective in dynamic balancing, but at the expense of higher switching loss. It is not considered in power module application because Kelvin connection is normally applied. However, wire bond inside the package of discrete MOSFETs and part of the external leads are inevitable and add to Lcm. Peak-current and switching energy mismatches vary with operating conditions (including input voltage, input current, and switching speed). Design guidelines and procedures that are valid for wide operating range are provided for cases with and without Lcm. This dissertation also models the switching energy and switching energy mismatch of paralleled MOSFETs. The influence of operating conditions, passive balancing components, layout and package parasitic inductances, nonlinear channel performance, and voltage dependent parasitic capacitors are included in the modeling process. The resulting high order system is simplified by reducing the number of passive components and number of devices without losing accuracy. The influence of current balancing components and magnitude of threshold voltage mismatch on sharing are discussed based on modeling results. In conclusion, this dissertation balances the transient currents between paralleled SiC MOSFETs automatically by inductance, resistance and magnetic coupling. This procedure is done utilizing one gate driver without current/voltage sensors and feedback loop. Those solutions work for both polarities of Vth mismatch and force balancing from the first current peak. Design guidelines involving the magnitude of Vth mismatch, current rise time, and maximum peak-current difference are derived to guide the choice of passive components. The detail design procedures are recommended to force currents to share over wide operating range. The aforementioned benefits are demonstrated by two paralleled SiC MOSFETs (C2M0160120D) tested at variant operating conditions. The difference of peak currents can be reduced below 5% of steady-state current in every switching transient. Switching energy mismatch percentage can be reduced by 6 times without increasing total switching energy. Passive Balancing of Switching Transients between Paralleled SiC MOSFETs


This article proposes a shared-control teleoperation architecture for robot manipulators transporting an object on a tray. Differently from many existing studies about remotely operated robots with firm grasping capabilities, we consider the case in which, in principle, the object can break its contact with the robot end-effector. The proposed shared-control approach automatically regulates the remote robot motion commanded by the user and the end-effector orientation to prevent the object from sliding over the tray. Furthermore, the human operator is provided with haptic cues informing about the discrepancy between the commanded and executed robot motion, which assist the operator throughout the task execution. We carried out trajectory tracking experiments employing an autonomous 7-degree-of-freedom (DoF) manipulator and compared the results obtained using the proposed approach with two different control schemes (i.e., constant tray orientation and no motion adjustment). We also carried out a human-subjects study involving 18 participants in which a 3-DoF haptic device was used to teleoperate the robot linear motion and display haptic cues to the operator. In all experiments, the results clearly show that our control approach outperforms the other solutions in terms of sliding prevention, robustness, commands tracking, and user's preference.


This paper aims to determine the behavior of secondary clusters in Swiss French child language and, in doing so, provide a first step towards the identification of the order of acquisition of primary and secondary clusters. The data first of all reveal that the variant with schwa is in a global fashion preferred to the variant without schwa, and this regardless of the child's mastery of primary clusters. The data further reveal that the occasional production of the non-preferred variant without schwa entails modifications of the secondary cluster in conformity with the child's relative mastery of consonant sequencing. While secondary clusters pattern with primary clusters when it comes to repair strategies such as gliding and realization of an interconsonantal reduced vowel, they diverge from the latter when it comes to cluster reduction: there is a general preference for the preservation of C2, irrespective of the sonority profile of the cluster.


A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF FLEXIBILITY IN SELECTED HOUSING SYSTEMS This study is an evaluation of housing construction systems seen in the light of progressive technology and changing human environment. In the past, repetitive use of standardized com¬ ponents and rationalized functions without broad flexibility for variation in plan, for change, or for user participation in the construction process itself, has resulted in a sterile and monotonous physical environment. The dominant construction systems must be derived from practical consideration of user re¬ quirements, modular planning, structural system and subsystems. The objective of this thesis is to contribute a solution to conflicts between technological innovation and human needs through the comparative study of several contemporary construction systems in the United States and Japan. To accomplish this objective, this thesis selects particular housing systems, sets up criteria.for evaluation, and evaluates the housing


Native shortgrass prairie ecosystems have undergone drastic changes since European settlement, resulting in fragmentation of native prairie. With this reduction in available native habitat, it has become increasingly important to conserve the remaining patches of native prairie and the biodiversity within them. In order to apply proper management and conservation strategies to conserve what remains, we must have baseline bio logical information about each of the species present. Few studies exist that focus on the status of amphibians and reptiles in the shortgrass prairie ecosystem. Of particular importance are species whose populations are at risk. The prairie rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis) is a species that is commercially exploited as the focal species of the annual Sharon Springs Rattlesnake Roundup in western Kansas. Unfortunately, information is lacking regarding the potential effects of commercial harvest on rattlesnake populations. The goals of this study were to gain insight into the possible effects of harvest on prairie rattlesnake populations, to develop harvest recommendations, to increase the knowledge of the natural history of this species in the short grass prairie ecosystem, and to conduct a baseline survey of the amphibians and reptiles of the Smoky Valley Ranch, a Nature Conservancy shortgrass prairie preserve in Logan County, Kansas. I collected demographic data from samples of snakes brought to the Sharon Springs Rattlesnake Roundup in 2000 and 2001. These data were compared with similar data collected by Dr. Henry Fitch of the University of Kansas in previous years. The results indicated a shift toward smaller and younger individuals comprising the bulk of the sample, an increased proportion of females, and an apparent increase in the reproduction of younger snakes. These results are expected in a harvest biased toward large individuals. Secondly, in 2000 and 2001, I collected data on the habitat use and movement patterns of prairie rattlesnakes from an unexploited population on the Smoky Valley Ranch. Using traditional capture techniques and radiotelemetry, I collected data associated with 27 individuals at 64 capture sites. Of these sites, 68% were in open grass containing few forbs and 56.3% of all capture sites contained rodent burrows. Sample sizes limited statistical analyses, but radiotelemetry provided useful anecdotal information. Concurrently with the above study, I conducted a baseline survey of the amphibian and reptile species that occur on the Smoky Valley Ranch. Using the traditional visual encounter surveys (VES), aural surveys, road cruising, and drift fence/funnel trap arrays, I documented 24 species of amphibians and reptiles on the ranch. Catch per unit effort (CPUE) values for each sampling method were calculated for each species within each of the 4 major habitat types present on the ranch. An index of relative abundances was created using the CPUE values.


The object of this study is professional cultures among journalists in three countries. The first question in the process is to decide who is a journalist – and the answer is not evident. Deuze (2007:141) describes contemporary journalism as only one kind of work in the broad media sector – an industry with unclear borders between different parts and media workers going in and out of different professional roles. He calls them "portfolio workers" going between assignment and professional roles, which become liquid. Other research describes journalism as a profession passing through on the way to other  better paid jobs (Nygren, 2011:219; Pasti et al., 2012:280).In this study, journalists are defined as people professionally producing content based on facts (not fiction or entertainment) for what  we traditionally label as "mass media", in contemporary debate also called "legacy media": newspapers and magazines, TV and radio channels, online and digital formats connected to the traditional media industry. Also the growing number of "content producers" outside  media companies is included; freelancers  and those employed in production companies. This classic definition of a journalist has problems, for example the borders towards public relations, content marketing and towards entertainment in feature journalism. It also means that independent bloggers and people producing all kind of content produced for  social media platforms are not included in the definition, even if this content has journalistic qualities and sometimes also can generate incomes making it professional in some sense.It is likely that the definition of "journalists" is going to change, professional borders are not fixed forever and media development changes the industry quickly (Anderson et al., 2013). But still this old definition has relevance in relation to the content for daily media consumption. This old definition also makes it possible to connect to earlier research on journalists and their professional cultures in the coming analysis.In this chapter we give the reasons behind the choice of Poland, Russia and Sweden, and some background on professional journalism in these three countries. We also describe the design of the project and the research questions to be answered. The methods in accomplishing the survey and interviews are described in detail.


The opportunity to target weed seeds during grain harvest was established many decades ago following the introduction of mechanical harvesting and the recognition of high weed-seed retention levels at crop maturity; however, this opportunity remained largely neglected until more recently. The introduction and adoption of harvest weed seed control (HWSC) systems in Australia has been in response to widespread occurrence of herbicide-resistant weed populations. With diminishing herbicide resources and the need to maintain highly productive reduced tillage and stubble-retention practices, growers began to develop systems that targeted weed seeds during crop harvest. Research and development efforts over the past two decades have established the efficacy of HWSC systems in Australian cropping systems, where widespread adoption is now occurring. With similarly dramatic herbicide resistance issues now present across many of the world's cropping regions, it is timely for HWSC systems to be considered for inclusion in weed-management programs in these areas. This review describes HWSC systems and establishing the potential for this approach to weed control in several cropping regions. As observed in Australia, the inclusion of HWSC systems can reduce weed populations substantially reducing the potential for weed adaptation and resistance evolution. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.


Introduction: Calcium critical limit in pistachio plants is about 1.3 percent of plant dried material; magnesium critical limit in pistachio leaves is about 0.6 percent of plant dried material. To measure calcium and magnesium there are several methods in which three methods of titration and atomic absorption that are more common and used to libraries more in addition to ICP modern method are used. This research was first performed all through the country and is so important because of using ICP system. Because This system is a modern method, very exact and expensive plus rare. This research uses forty samples of pistachio leaf's extract. After preparing needed calcium and magnesium standards for every system, density of samples' calcium and magnesium were measured. This research aims to obtain the most precious method of measuring plant calcium and magnesium elements after ICP system as possible and by the lowest experimental errors. Materials and methods: Extract of related plant was obtained by dry ash method and assimilation digestion by normal 3 chloride acid. Results and discussion: Regarding that ICP system method is the most precious and modern method, so this is a criterion and results of titration method and plant calcium and magnesium atomic absorption were measured to ICP system and rates of accuracy, deviations and measuring errors were determined.Conclusion: After measuring by ICP method, in this research titration by 97.65 percent accuracy (2.35 percent error) and then atomic absorption system by 93.13 percent accuracy ( 6.87 percent error)  to measure density of plant calcium and magnesium are suggested.


Research in the field of organic photovoltaics has gained considerable momentum in the last two decades owing to the need for developing low-cost and efficient energy harvesting systems. Elegant molecular architectures have been designed, synthesized and employed as active materials for photovoltaic devices thereby leading to a better molecular structure-device property relationship understanding. In this perspective, we outline new macromolecular scaffolds that have been designed within the purview of each of the three fundamental processes involving light harvesting, charge separation and charge transport.


Transient electromagnetic field interactions on inhomogeneous penetrable scatterers can be analyzed by solving time domain volume integral equations (TDVIEs). TDVIEs are constructed by setting the summation of the incident and scattered field intensities to the total field intensity on the volumetric support of the scatterer. The unknown can be the field intensity or flux/current density. Representing the total field intensity in terms of the unknown using the relevant constitutive relation and the scattered field intensity in terms of the spatiotemporal convolution of the unknown with the Green function yield the final form of the TDVIE. The unknown is expanded in terms of local spatial and temporal basis functions. Inserting this expansion into the TDVIE and testing the resulting equation at discrete times yield a system of equations that is solved by the marching on-in-time (MOT) scheme. At each time step, a smaller system of equations, termed MOT system is solved for the coefficients of the expansion. The right-hand side of this system consists of the tested incident field and discretized spatio-temporal convolution of the unknown samples computed at the previous time steps with the Green function.


Using a Bayesian SVAR analysis, we document that an increase in government purchases raises private consumption, the real wage and total factor productivity (TFP) while reducing inflation. Each of these facts is hard to reconcile with both neoclassical and New-Keynesian models. We extend a standard New-Keynesian model to allow for skill accumulation through past work experience, following Chang, Gomes and Schorfheide (2002). An increase in government spending increases hours and induces skill accumulation and higher measured TFP and real wages in subsequent periods. Future marginal costs fall lowering future expected inflation and, through the monetary policy rule, the real interest rate. Consumption increases as a result.


Re-Living the Second Chimurenga: Memories from Zimbabwe's Liberation Struggle. By Fay Chung, Uppsala, Sweden: Nordic Africa Institute, and Harare, Zimbabwe: Weaver Press, 2006. Pp. 349; 9 illustrations. Introduction by Preben Kaarsholm. Pp. 20. SEK 380. Fay Chung is a Chinese-Zimbabwean (her grandfather arrived in the country in 1904), who was educated at the University College of Rhodesia and then in England, was a lecturer at the University of Zambia in the 1970s, and the minister of education in Harare in the 1980s. She was and is such a ZANU-PF stalwart that the lengthy last chapter is devoted to a defense of the third chimurenga and the policies that have rocked Zimbabwe since the late 1990s. She was also, I learned from reading her memoirs, quite the starry-eyed teenager, eager to comment on freedom fighters' looks, clothes, and a range of social interactions worthy of exclamation marks. When it comes to recounting the actual ideas and words that made her such a luminary in ZANU's left wing, she is curiously vague. This is not to say this isn't an important book; it is. Indeed, scholars would probably have a deeper understanding of liberation movements and their divisions in arms and exile if we had more insiders' starry-eyed accounts of them. But since Chung has written the first of this genre, the result is often jarring. Most of the chapter on Josiah Tongogara, for example, gushes. "He was over six feet tall, with the upright and muscular figure of a soldier accustomed to the rigors of war.... With a distinctive, pockmarked, light brown face and greeny-brown eyes.... " (p. 124). If he and his fellow militarists enjoyed "sexual favors" from young women guerrillas this was because of their "traditional feudal values" (p. 82). Besides, for many of these young women such sexual involvements were "a form of social climbing." The rest of the chapter goes to great lengths to explain why he never should have been accused of murdering a man he was known to despise. It is Chung's description of the conduct of liberation from exile that makes for the most interesting and frustrating reading. On the one hand, ZANU in Lusaka and Mozambique and ZANLA in Tanzania are described as such a maze of shifting ideas, opportunities, and loyalties that you can almost feel the fragility of the organization. On the other, Chung is so quick to tie up lose ends and get on with her triumphant narrative that there's no serious discussion of what the critical issues actually were. When Zimbabwean students at the University of Zambia were "tempted" to side with Nhari and Badza in their mutiny of late 1974, she and other Zimbabwean lecturers managed to talk them out of it. …


Having provided in Article XXX for the separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers, the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 adds that the measure was chosen "to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men." In choosing that formulation, the Constitution's authors were announcing that their community's separation of powers was an attempt to effect a relationship between law and state power that would make powerful institutions safer than they would otherwise be. The powers to make, execute, and interpret law were to be separated not merely in order to make of law an efficient instrument of behavior guidance. However, according to the "formal" or "thin" vision, efficient behavior guidance is the basic idea underpinning the Rule of Law. Insofar as the formal vision promises to sharpen the knife of state power, but says nothing about a countervailing shield, it offers no reassurance to citizens who are called upon to give up their own powers to those who would wield the knife. Yet, today, formal accounts of the Rule of Law enjoy widespread support, particularly among legal scholars.
In this article, I take sides in the long-running contest between the formal vision of the Rule of Law and its limited government rival, whose leading exponents include James Harrington, John Locke, Algernon Sidney, and the Founding Fathers. However, although I seek to join the conflict, I have sympathy for the view that it has reached an impasse or at least has begun to offer diminishing returns. I hope to point both sides in the direction of a possible way forward. It seems to me that the most promising route is via a better understanding of the nature of the major Rule of Law visions, as well as of the rivalry between them. My chief aim, then, is to propose a method of inquiry which allows us to gain helpful insights into the historical, moral, and political significance of: (i) the limited government tradition's Rule of Law project; (ii) the formal vision of the Rule of Law; and (iii) the contest between the traditional and formal visions. The method, and the insights it yields, should serve to re-orientate and re-energize our inquiries and debates concerning the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law rivalry is best understood as a clash of visions regarding the proper relationship between law, state power, and interests, expectations, and rights. In order to know where we should stand on the battlefield, we must understand what each side truly represents and what is fundamentally at stake in the conflict.


In a flourishing knowledge society, the communication of information is rapidly changing and, at the level of academic library this is possible through electronic services and digital collection. The informational growth in all the expertise fields, especially in science and culture, its coding in digital form, is a reflection of deep transformations in innovation at national scale and also worldwide. The mix of technology with print culture and science helps the heritage preservation and also provide open access to the scientific community. Digitization of library collections transforms the teaching, learning, researching and moreover the manner in which people interact. The present paper is an insight over the concept of digital library, its evolution and especially its standpoints. Our approach intends to explore and reveal the reasons behind the digitization and also the effects and improvements on the community of library users. We aim to investigate the state of the art of digitization at global scale, the way it is reflected in the official documents, the evolution and barriers of this process in Romania, and the possible measures that must be taken for the future. "CAROL I" Central University Library reshaped its mission and objectives and designed the plan for e-services development in the digital economy age. Considering that Romania still lacks a coherent programme for digitization and the fact that open access is the fundamental right of individuals, we intend to outline the arguments for this process to be included in the public policies, as a measure for sustainable development. Only when knowledge will be provided trough hybrid services we will be able to speak about a modern management based on flexibility, adaptability, creativity in line with the evolution of communication and technological changes.


Immersive Virtual Environments typically rely on a tracking system that captures the position and orientation of the head and hands of the cyber-user. Tracking devices, however, are usually quite expensive and require a lot of free space around the user, preventing them from being used for gaming at home. In contrast with these expensive capture systems, the use of inertial sensors (accelerometers and gyroscopes) to register orientation is spreading everywhere, finding them in different control devices at affordable prices, such as the Nintendo Wiimote. With a control like this, the player can aim at and shoot the enemies like holding a real weapon. However, the player cannot turn the head to observe the world around because the PC monitor or TV remains in its place. Head-mounted displays, such as the Oculus Rift, with a head-tracker integrated in it, allows the player to look around the virtual world. Even if the game does not support the head-tracker, it can still be used if the sensor driver emulates the mouse, so it can control the player's view. However, the point of view is typically coupled with the weapon in first-person shooting (FPS) games, and the user gets rapidly tired of using the neck muscles for aiming. In this paper, these two components -view and weapon- are decoupled to study the feasibility of an immersive FPS experience that avoids position data, relying solely on inertial sensors and the mapping models hereby introduced. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to describe the mapping models proposed and present the results of the experiment carried out that proves that this approach leads to similar or even better targeting accuracy, while delivering an engaging experience to the gamer.


Problem During the first decade of the 21st century, a review of the ministry structure of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in St. Johns, Antigua, was done. It revealed that there was a need for a systematic plan to nurture new members into leaders. Although there were new converts classes held and materials were available for study, there were few organized plans within the church that would assist new members to become spiritually mature and equipped for ministry. This lack of structure has resulted in very few people being prepared to serve in the ministries of the church. Something needed to be done to move new members to spiritual maturity and into ministry. The creation of a discipleship model for new converts at the St. John's SDA church was deemed to be most important to help it fulfill its mission. Method A 12-week discipleship small group structure was developed in 2013 to help the congregation mature its members. It included the learning components of linking theory to practice, fostering personal spiritual development, and utilizing mentoring relationships. Five goals for a spiritually healthy life were the central focus. These included worship, fellowship, nurture, ministry, and evangelism. The success of this process was measured by how each member magnified God, matured, and involved themselves in ministry and mission. Results All six persons completed the 12-week small group discipleship session. The results showed minimal but consistent growth in the five areas of spiritual health that were measured as mentioned above. Only one of the six persons in the group did not show any growth. The short time used was the main weakness of this program. However growth was shown in areas that were not measured by the instrument used in this project. Conclusions This study demonstrates that a well-structured small group model with a clearly defined plan for spiritual growth of each member of the group can assist new believers to achieve spiritual maturity. Spiritually matured members should improve the leadership potential of a congregation. It may also have implications for how we plan, organize, and apply conservation methods in our congregations.


Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas, edited by Judith M. Gerson and Diane L. Wolf. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. 407 pp. $24.95. Holocaust studies is a vibrant area of interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry in the social sciences and humanities. Relative to other disciplines, however, sociology has been underrepresented in this field, leading some observers to speculate that sociology might even have a "Jewish problem." In a recent essay, Burton Halpert laments that when he undertook graduate work in sociology in 1968, he had no idea that the Holocaust might be an appropriate subject of study for someone pursuing a career in sociology. Two decades later, Zygmunt Bauman noted sociologists' continued neglect and failure to appreciate the Holocaust as an area relevant to some of the central concerns of the discipline. Since that time, many (though mostly Jewish) sociologists have heeded Bauman's call for a scholarly engagement with the Holocaust. Judith Gerson and Diane Wolf's anthology, Sociology Confronts the Hohcaust: Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas, is a significant contribution to this effort. Gerson and Wolf's book grew out of an international conference held at Rutgers University in 2001 and includes original contributions by some of the leading scholars in the field. Contained within are interesting empirical studies of neglected topics as well as incisive theoretical analysis of sociological issues. The editors argue that a comparative approach aimed at developing generalizations that apply to other social phenomena should guide sociological research on the Holocaust. As Gerson writes in a chaptet she contributed on Holocaust memoirs, "Continued assumptions of uniqueness only offer to place the Holocaust outside full scholarly study and perpetuate a priori conclusions about distinctiveness" (p. 131). Thus the editors seek to avoid the ghettoization of "Holocaust studies as an area of inquiry onto itself" (p. 6) and instead link Holocaust scholarship to broader disciplinary concerns with ethnicity and immigration, diasporas and transnationalism, and collective memory and identity. Among the noteworthy empirical contributions to the book are studies of Jewish children who were hidden in Belgian convents during the war, the Warsaw ghetto uprising, wartime and postwar experiences of Holocaust survivors, German Jewish cattle dealers who settled in rural New York, dilemmas of Soviet refugees in Israel and the United States, the international Je wish "diaspora business" that utilizes tourism to inculcate Jewish identity and pro-Israel sentiments, and postwar exchanges among German intellectuals over the question of collective guilt. From these and other contributions to the book we gain greater appreciation of the complexity of the Jewish experience - of Jewish identity as not only a social construction but a heterogeneous phenomenon, of Jews who mistreat or hold negative attitudes toward other Jews, of the conflict between Israel and the United States as the center of Jewish culture and identity, and of cultural boundaries that construct varying accounts of victims, petpetrators, and bystanders of the Holocaust. …


The nature of crystallisation processes is of major interest, as they are among the most frequently occurring reactions associated with a variety of relevant processes in chemistry, biochemistry, and geochemistry. In this study, an innovative approach towards fundamentally understanding crystallisation pathways in a seemingly simple system – gypsum – has been developed via infrared spectroscopic techniques. Specifically, infrared attenuated total reflection spectroscopy (IR-ATR) was instrumental in revealing detailed information on inter- and intramolecular interactions during gypsum crystallization via subtle changes in the vibrational spectra of the involved reactants. When applying D2O as an isotope marker, it was shown that isotopically labelled water may serve as a viable spectroscopic probe during mid-infrared (3–15 μm) studies providing unique insight into the crystallization process at molecular-level detail. In addition, it was revealed that H2O and D2O give rise to distinctly different reaction kinetics during the crystallization process.


This thesis investigates the socially imagined representation of two areas of the global South, through the lens of contemporary art. It traces the historicisation of urban Latin America and the Arab world along a timeline of critical lenses, questioning their construction as imagined sites. Re-occurring tropes from exhibition spaces acting as representations of the global South on a macro-level are contrasted with observations from a local level, in an ethnographic study of nineteen artist groups of four capital cities of Latin America and the Arab world. The research draws upon sociological methodologies of research, arts methodologies and historicisation to chart the scope and function of these groups against the backdrop of the global art-institution's so-called geographic turn and it's romanticisation of the precarious state as the new avant-garde. Moving away from the traditional cartography of art and social history, this thesis offers an expanded concept of collectivity and social engagement through art, and the artist group as unit of social analysis in urban space. Putting these ideas into dialogue, artist-led structures are presented as counter-point to collective exhibitions and to the collectivity of national identity and citizenship. An abundance of artist groups in the art scene of each city represents an informal infrastructure in which a mirror image of inner-workings of the city and art world become visible through this zone of discourses in conflict. This unorthodox exploration of art, region, and collective expression launches into the possibility of new constellations of meaning, tools to recapture the particulars of everyday experience in the unfolding of large narratives. Examining the place of collective art practices in the socio-political history of the city, this intervention into current theory around the role of art from the global South traces the currents and counter-currents of the art-institution and its structures of representation re-enacted in places of display and public discourse -- the museum, the news, the gallery, the biennial,the street and the independent art space.


Currently, several states are considering changes to their business organization law to accommodate autonomous businesses—businesses operated entirely through computer code. Several international civil society groups are also actively developing new frameworks and a model law for enabling decentralized, autonomous businesses to achieve a corporate or corporate-like status that bestows legal personhood. Meanwhile, various jurisdictions, including the European Union, have considered whether and to what extent artificial intelligence (AI) more broadly should be endowed with personhood in order to respond to AI's increasing presence in society. Despite the fairly obvious overlap between the two sets of inquiries, the legal and policy discussions between the two only rarely overlap. As a result of this failure to communicate, both areas of personhood theory fail to account for the important role that socio-technical and socio-legal context plays for law and policy development. This Article fills the gap by investigating the limits of artificial rights at the intersection of corporations and artificial intelligence. Specifically, this Article argues that building a comprehensive legal approach to artificial rights—rights enjoyed by artificial people, whether entity, machine, or otherwise—requires approaching the issue through a systems lens to ensure law's consideration of the varied socio-technical contexts in which artificial people exist. To make these claims, this Article first establishes a baseline of terminology, emphasizes the importance of viewing AI as part of a socio-technical system, and reviews the existing market for autonomous corporations. Sections II and III then examine the existing debates around both artificially intelligent persons and corporate personhood, arguing that the socio-legal needs driving artificial personhood debates in both contexts include: protecting the rights of natural people, upholding social values, and creating a fiction for legal convenience. Sections II and III explore the extent to which the theories from either set of literature fits the reality of autonomous businesses, illuminating gaps and using them to demonstrate that the law must consider the socio-technical context of AI systems and the socio-legal complexity of corporations to decide how autonomous businesses will interact with the world. Ultimately, the Article identifies links between both areas of legal personhood, leveraging those links to demonstrate the Article's core claim: developing law for artificial systems in any context should use the systems nature of the artificial artifact to tie its legal treatment directly to the system's socio-technical reality.


The Caribbean's location at the crossroads of global container shipping routes gives the region excellent maritime connectivity that could translate into significant commercial opportunities. Given its heavy dependence on trade, Caribbean authorities are increasingly vested in improving the efficiency of supply chains and addressing issues related to maritime transport and logistics. In the context of the Panama Canal expansion, it is of the utmost important that steps be taken immediately to strengthen the Caribbean's position in global maritime trade routes. The Caribbean Regional Action Plan on Freight Logistics, Maritime Transport and Trade Facilitation reviews the status of trade and transport infrastructure in the Caribbean Basin, with particular emphasis on CARIFORUM countries. The study highlights the main trends in global and regional trade flows in the region, estimates the impact of these trends on the shipping industry and selected Caribbean Basin ports, and proposes a regional Action Plan for taking advantage of new commercial opportunities.


Knock-in mice reveal a critical role for mTORC1 in stimulating autophagy to survive the hypoglycemic period that follows birth. A profound change that occurs with birth is the transition from the maternally supplied nutrients delivered through the placenta to the necessity for feeding and metabolic regulation by the neonate. The mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) is a critical regulator of cellular metabolism, activated by both amino acids [through the guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases) RagA, B, C, and D] and growth factors (through the GTPases TSC1 and TSC2), and requires sufficient glucose or energy stores [through AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK)]. Amino acids stimulate the formation of Rag-GTP, which recruits mTORC1 to the lysosomal surface for activation. Efeyan et al. engineered mice in which RagA was constitutively active (RagAGTP) and found that, although the mice developed normally in utero and were born at Mendelian ratios, the pups failed to survive and died within a day of birth. Tissues from wild-type RagA pups showed inhibition of mTORC1 activity within 1 hour of fasting, whereas tissues from the RagAGTP pups did not. Inhibition of mTOR with rapamycin prolonged the survival of the RagAGTP pups. The hypoglycemia that occurred after birth persisted in the RagAGTP pups and was not due to defective use of glycogen, which was more rapidly depleted in these mice compared with the wild-type mice. Instead, the RagAGTP pups had reduced circulating amino acids, and injection of gluconeogenic amino acids delayed death. Electron microscopic analysis and biochemical experiments indicated that the RagAGTP pups were deficient in autophagy and lysosomal biogenesis. Because activity of mTORC1 is inhibited under conditions of low glucose through the AMPK pathway, it was unexpected that mTORC1 activity would remain high in the RagAGTP pups during extreme hypoglycemia. Studies with cultured mouse embryo fibroblasts or transfected human embryonic kidney–293 cells suggested that mTORC1 was resistant to inhibition by low glucose when the RagAGTP was present. Glucose failed to stimulate the release of mTORC1 from the lysosome in the RagAGTP-expressing cells. Thus, Rag GTPases appear to function in both amino acid– and glucose-mediated regulation of mTORC1 activity. Immediately after birth, inhibition of mTORC1 in response to hypoglycemia is necessary to trigger induction of autophagy to supply the amino acids needed to sustain plasma glucose concentrations. A. Efeyan, R. Zoncu, S. Chang, I. Gumper, H. Snitkin, R. L. Wolfson, O. Kirak, D. D. Sabatini, D. M. Sabatini, Regulation of mTORC1 by the Rag GTPases is necessary for neonatal autophagy and survival. Nature 493, 679–683 (2013). [PubMed]


Lack of information on medication is one of the main reasons why some 30-50% of patients fail to take their medicines as prescribed. To assess patient knowledge about prescribed drugs, outpatients from an internal medicine clinic in a teaching hospital were interviewed after medical consultation. Patients were asked to identify the name, indication, dosage, administration schedule, duration of treatment, side effects, and precautions. Patients' answers were compared to medical prescription or patients' medical records. Two hundred and sixty-four patients were interviewed, of whom 34% displayed satisfactory knowledge. In 31% of cases the drug name stated was incorrect, while in 19% the reported indication differed from that on the medical records. Dosage and administration schedules stated by patients disagreed with physician's instructions in 19% and 31% of cases, respectively. The results suggest that the majority of outpatients have sufficient knowledge for the safe use of prescribed drugs, under an ideal outpatient setting.


Provisioning ubiquitous broadband wireless services necessitates the duplication of the radio equipment or/and the reduction of the size of the radio cells. However, both approaches are not economically viable for the operators. The concept of distributed antennas is proposed as an alternative solution offering low-cost broadband access. In this matter, we propose an innovative Radio Access Network (RAN) architecture called GeRoFAN for Generic Radio-over-Fiber Access Network. The GeRoFAN architecture is based on a transparent optical loop connecting low-cost 4G radio-system antennas using analog Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) technology. However, by transporting Radio Frequencies (RFs) over an Optical Channel (OC), the composite signal suffers from various physical layer impairments that may degrade the system capacity. Supported by a mathematical model reflecting the relevant optical layer limitations, we propose in this paper an innovative control plane that targets to optimize the global radio cellular capacity of GeRoFAN by efficiently mapping RFs onto OCs. This problem is formulated as an Integer Linear Program (ILP) with the objective to minimize the number of OCs subject to 4G cellular planning rules.


Rising inequality's moderating impact on demand can be counterbalanced by heaping on more debt, but only temporarily, as illustrated by America's experience in the late 2000s. Looking beyond the impact on demand, recent literature highlights inequality's unfavourable impact on the accumulation of human capital and thus on supply. This argues in favour of income redistribution, as long as it remains reasonable. In contrast, the top 1%'s share of income distribution does not seem to harm long-term growth prospects as long as it is not linked to "seeking rent" but to the reward of successful innovation.


The 1963 Vajont disaster and the devastating floods that hit the Veneto as well as other areas of Italy in 1966 brought about a significant revision of the policies on soil defense and civic protection. This was the last step in a long process of environmental management intending to build a balanced human-environmental system from the early modern period to the present. This essay explores the changing political ecology of soil and water management in the Veneto region in northern Italy. More specifically, the study traces the evolution of land reclamation works in the longue durée—in particular over the last five centuries—and the economic and social consequences of human actions on the territory. In order to fully outline the policies adopted in different historical periods, it is necessary to understand how the concept of land reclamation changed and gradually came to include drainage, hygienic, agrarian, and environmental factors, with attention paid to the specific ecologies of plains, mountains, and lagoon areas. In this long process, the changing relationships between landowners, farmers, and the state have altered human/natural interactions, with implications for land and water use.


Partially enclosed marine basins often display characteristic pelagic faunal compositions reflecting their distinctive hydrographic conditions. Seasonal upwelling along the northern coast of the Zamboanga Peninsula in East Sulu Sea results to the high fisheries production in the area likely by enhancing local plankton abundance. Zooplankton in this area were investigated during the Joint PhilEx oceanographic cruise on board the R/V Melville in December 2007. Data on the abundance and vertical distribution of major groups of zooplankton were analyzed and compared between two sets of MOCNESS samples collected from a coastal upwelling station and the other from an offshore station. Eighty four (84) zooplankton taxa belonging to 20 major groups were identified in the coastal station, while ninety five (95) taxa under 28 major groups were found in the offshore station. The total zooplankton density was much higher in the coastal station (98.9 ind./m 3 ) than in the offshore station (47.5 ind./m 3 ). Copepods dominated in both stations, comprising up to 70% of the total zooplankton. No distinct variation in the abundance, composition and distribution of zooplankton with depth was observed except in 150 – 200 m depth stratum in the coastal station wherein a dramatic increase in the abundance of copepods, ostracods and chaetognaths was noted. In the offshore station, the crustaceans also showed a drastic increase in abundance in the 50 – 100 m depths. These appear to be related to the thermocline in both stations, where typically higher upper layer primary productivity can support dense communities of zooplankton.


A novel aperture stacked patch (ASP) antenna with circular polarization is proposed. The antenna consists of four parasitic patches, each one being rotated by an angle of 30° relative to its adjacent patches. The proposed antenna has achieved a simultaneous axial ratio <;3 dB and voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) <;2 bandwidth of 33.6% (7.2-10.11 GHz) in the single element and 36.15% (7.1-10.2 GHz) in a 2 × 1-element array configuration. The antenna behavior is explained by a thorough parameter study together with fabrication and measurement.


The operational performance of a submerged hollow fibre Membrane Bio-Reactor (MBR) for treatment of municipal wastewater on pilot scale was investigated. The experimental results indicated that the removal efficiency for SS, COD, NH4-N, turbidity, bacterium, iron (Fe2+) and Manganese (Mn2+) was 100%, 94.5%, 98.3%, 99.7%, lg6, 99%, 92.3%, respectively. The water quality of the effluent was quite good. The reclaimed water could be reused either directly or indirectly for municipal or industrial purposes. The MBR had a strong ability to resist loading shock and DO was a crucial factor to membrane fouling.


This comprehensive and innovative handbook covers aspects of biometrics from the perspective of recognizing individuals at a distance, in motion, and under a surveillance scenario. Features: Starts with a thorough introductory chapter; Provides topics from a range of different perspectives offered by an international collection of leading researchers in the field; Contains selected expanded contributions from the 5th IAPR International Summer School for Advanced Studies on Biometrics for Secure Authentication; Investigates issues of iris recognition, gait recognition, and touchless fingerprint recognition, as well as various aspects of face recognition; Discusses multibiometric systems, and machine learning techniques; Examines biometrics ethics and policy; Presents international standards in biometrics, including those under preparation. This state-of-the-art volume is designed to help form and inform professionals, young researchers, and graduate students in advanced biometric technologies.


Wikipedia is one of the most successful examples of massive collaborative content development. However, many of the mechanisms and procedures that it uses are still unknown in detail. For instance, how equal (or unequal) are the contributions to it has been discussed in the last years, with no conclusive results. In this paper, we study exactly that aspect by using Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients, very well known instruments to economists. We analyze the trends in the inequality of distributions for the ten biggest language editions of Wikipedia, and their evolution over time. As a result, we have found large differences in the number of contributions by different authors (something also observed in free, open source software development), and a trend to stable patterns of inequality in the long run.


ABSTRACT Rapidly growing populations, urbanisation and income are together triggering increased demand for high-value agricultural commodities across Southern Africa with scope for gains from trade and regional integration. The poultry sector in Zambia, in particular, has witnessed a rapid growth triggering increased investments and competition, benefiting the consumers. Despite this growth, the sector still faces huge challenges hindering the development of the animal feed, feed input and poultry production sub-sectors. This has limited the extent of participation of the Zambian poultry industry in the regional market due to uncompetitive prices. This study analyses the animal feed to poultry value chain in Zambia, focusing on the industry capabilities with a view to enhancing its competitiveness and production for the regional market. Enhancing value chain capabilities will require improvements in productivity and production of key poultry inputs, and addressing transportation inefficiencies and coordination among governments.


A series of Reduced Triaxial Extension (RTE) tests were conducted on dummy (brass) and null (water) samples to determine the effects of (corrections required for) piston uplift, piston friction and system compliance associated with RTE tests. During the consolidation stage of RTE tests, the sample may be consolidated in isotropic or anisotropic stress conditions. During the shearing stage of an RTE test, the sample is unloaded in the axial direction by decreasing the deviator stress while the radial stress remains constant. Ten (10) tests were conducted on a brass "dummy" sample. The device was assembled in the same manner as for tests conducted on soil samples. The tests simulated the backpressure saturation and consolidation stages of testing. For various effective stresses (cell pressure and backpressure combinations) the load associated with piston uplift and piston friction was measured. Correlations were developed for piston uplift and piston friction. Eleven (11) tests were on "dummy" ice samples The samples, used as place holders, were set-up in the same manner as for tests conducted on soil samples then allowed to melt before shearing. For various effective stresses the load associated with machine deflection was measured. The contribution of the membrane elongation and filter paper were determined.


Researchers and policy-makers often assume that public preferences for climate change adaptation are positive and stable compared to those of mitigation. However, public judgments about adaptation in natural resource sectors (like forestry) require that people make difficult, value-laden and uncertain trade-offs across complex social-ecological systems. The deliberative methods (e.g. focus groups and in-depth interviews) that are typically used to explore the malleability of these judgments may underestimate the level of preference malleability in broader publics by encouraging participants to rationalize their choices in relation to their own knowledge, values and beliefs, as well as those of others. Here, we use a public survey (N = 1926) from British Columbia, Canada—where forestry is economically, environmentally and culturally vital—to investigate the malleability of public preferences for genomics-based assisted migration (AM) for climate change adaptation in forests. Following an initial judgment, respondents are given new information about AM's potential implementation and impacts—simple messages similar to those that they might encounter through traditional and social media. The results show that respondents' initial judgments are surprisingly malleable, and prone to large bi-directional shifts across all message types. The magnitude of this malleability is related to the degree of the proposed intervention, the type of message, and individuals' demographic and psychographic characteristics. These results suggest that high levels of initial public support may be illusory, and that more attention should be paid to the potential for malleability, controversy and contradiction as adaptation policies are developed and implemented. Process-based arguments related to transparent, evidence-based and adaptive governance may be more influential than risk-based arguments related to climate change and economic impacts.


Object orientation (00) has become a new buzzword for computer applications.
Things are touted as being object oriented, with the implication that this is the "new"
and "better" way to do things. As there are many approaches used to develop systems,
therefore the software industry has to cope with the rapid technological evolution and
the global market competition, in order to satisfy the growing user demands for quality,
services and bandwidth.
This project seeks a review of the status of the object-oriented approach among the
software industry. Based on this, I will analyze the awareness of the object-oriented approach among software developers. In addition to this, the level of usage of the
object-oriented approach in software development activities will also be examined. The
results obtained will be statistically analyzed using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social
Sciences), and discussed later in the light of the literature reviewed


Ringing of birds unveiled many aspects of avian migration and dispersal movements. However, there is even much more to be explored by the use of ringing and other marks. Dispersal is crucial in understanding the initial phase of migration in migrating birds as it is to understand patterns and processes of distribution and gene flow. So far, the analysis of migration was largely based on analysing spatial and temporal patters of recoveries of ringed birds. However, there are considerable biases and pitfalls in using recoveries due to spatial and temporal variation in reporting probabilities.
Novel methods are required for future studies separating the confounding effects of spatial and temporal heterogeneity of recovery data and heterogeneity of the landscape as well. These novel approaches should aim a more intensive and novel use of the existing recovery data by taking advantage of, for instance, dynamic and multistate modeling, should elaborate schemes for future studies, and should also include other marks that allow a more rapid data collection, like telemetry, geolocation and global positioning systems, and chemical and molecular markers. The latter appear to be very useful in the delineating origin of birds and connectivity between breeding and non–breeding grounds.
Many studies of migration are purely descriptive. However, King and Brooks (King & Brooks, 2004)
examine if movement patterns of dolphins change after the introduction of a gillnet ban. Bayesian methods are an interesting approach to this problem as they provide a meaningful measure of the probability that such a change occurred rather than simple yes/no response that is often the result of classical statistical methods. However, the key difficulty of a general implementation of Bayesian methods is the complexity of the modelling —there is no general userfriendly package that is easily accessible to most scientists.
Drake and Alisauskas (Drake & Alisauskas, 2004) examine the philopatric movement of geese using a classic multi–state design. Previous studies of philopaty often rely upon simple return rates —however, good mark–recapture studies do not need to assume equal detection probabilities in space and time. This is likely the most important contribution of multi–state modelling to the study of movement. As with many of these studies, the most pressing problem in the analysis is the explosion in the number of parameters and the need to choose parsimonious modelss to get good precision. Drake and Alisauska demonstrate that model choice still remains an art with a great deal of biological insight being very helpful in the task.
There is still plenty of scope for novel methods to study migration. Traditionally, there has been a clear cut distinction between birds being labelled as "migrant" or "resident" on the basis of field observations and qualitative interpretations of patterns of ring–recoveries. However, there are intermediate species where only part of the population migrates (partial migrants) or where different components of the population migrate to different extents (differential migrants). Siriwardena, Wernham and Baillie (Siriwardena et al., 2004) develop a novel method that produces a quantitative index of migratory tendency. The method uses distributions of ringing–to–recovery distances to classify individual species' patterns of movement relative to those of other species. The areas between species' cumulative distance distributions are used with multi–dimensional scaling to produce a similarity map among species. This map can be used to investigate the factors that affect the migratory strategies that species adopt, such as body size, territoriality and distribution, and in studies of their consequences for demographic parameters such as annual survival and the timing of breeding. The key assumption of the method is the similar recovery effort of species over space and time. It would be interesting to overlay maps of effort to try and remove any induced artefacts in the data.
Differences in timing or the route of migration has often been studies separately. Lokki and Saurola (Lokki & Saurola, 2004) develop an omnibus procedure to test if the migration timing and/or route differ among two populations of birds (e.g. males vs females). It uses a randomization test to calibrate the test statistic. However, it makes the key assumptions about equal recovery effort in time and space so that the method may be most applicable to comparison among species with similar migration timing and movement to keep differential sighting/recovery rates from affecting the result. Of course, it is in these cases where it is most difficulty to separate the groups which will require substantial samples to have good performance.
Thorup and Rahbek (Thorup & Rahbek, 2004) provide a framework for accounting for unequal spatial recovery probability investigating the geometric influence of ocean and sea on observed migratory patterns. Taking the data set of Pied Flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca) ringed as nestlings in Scandinavia and recovered en route on their initial migration and using a model based on the clock–and–compass innate navigation hypothesis they are showing that geometric constraints explain quite a bit of the variation in ring–recoveries. The model also shows that ring recovery patterns do reflect the migratory patterns, and that they are suitable for an analysis of the concentration of the migratory route which is important for the general use of ringing data in studies of migration. This is important for the general use of ringing data in studies of migration and dispersal. The new approach has also implications for understanding the migratory orientation program.
The compiled papers highlight some novel ideas of how to analyse band recoveries to investigate migration routes and migration behaviour as well as dispersal patterns among birds and dolphins. Multistate modeling appears as a valuable tool as it enables to include various covariates and to analyse patterns of movement that change in time, are influenced by weather, or are different between age classes or sex.


As a mother of a young adult child with Aspergers syndrome, as well as being a long-term patient myself (liver transplant in 2005), I have extensive experience in both camps. Recently my 20-year old son was admitted to a children's hospital for a twisted colon that had to be surgically reduced. As the parent of a child with special needs and related physical health-related issues connected to him being on the autism spectrum, I was naturally very concerned about him entering a hospital (perhaps PTSD based on my own experience at moments). Surprising to me, the experience was a very positive one. There were many "practices" I noticed among the nurses and physicians that reduced anxiety, embarrassment and overall stress amongst their young patients and family members who were there for them that ranged from signs on the door, the way they communicated with patient and parent(s), to the manner in which they explained the diagnosis, course of action or treatment and recovery time. All of these concepts or practices could easily be applied to treating adult patients as well. This article will shed light on ways pediatric medicine can positively impact the way we treat all people of all ages who are ill and hospitalized.


Viscosity and thermal conductivity are key transport properties in the design of plate-fin multi-stream heat exchanger in CO2 cryogenic processes. It is necessary to evaluate the reliabilities of viscosity and thermal conductivity models. In addition, the differences in design of multi-stream heat exchanger by using different property models need to be studied as well. In this paper, viscosity models and thermal conductivity models of CO2 mixtures with non-condensable gas impurities were evaluated separately by comparison with existing experimental data. Recommendations were given on model selections and their impact on the design of plate-fin multi-stream heat exchanger were analyzed. The results show that for viscosity, the uncertainty range of Wilke's model is the smallest with a maximum absolute deviation of 6.1%. This model is therefore recommended to be used. For thermal conductivity, GERG model, with a maximum absolute deviation of 8.7% is preferred. The choice of thermal conductivity model has a noticeable impact on the plate-fin multi-stream heat exchanger design, and the maximum deviation by using different thermal conductivity models is 7.5%. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICAE


Drug and vaccination therapies are important tools in the battle against infectious diseases such as HIV and influenza. However, many viruses, including HIV, can rapidly escape the therapeautic effect through a sequence of mutations. We propose to design vaccines, or, equivalently, antibody sequences that make such evasion difficult. We frame this as a bilevel combinatorial optimization problem of maximizing the escape cost, defined as the minimum number of virus mutations to evade binding an antibody. Binding strength can be evaluated by a protein modeling software, Rosetta, that serves as an oracle and computes a binding score for an input virus-antibody pair. However, score calculation for each possible such pair is intractable. %, as the search space is of the order 10^{130}. We propose a three-pronged approach to address this: first, application of local search, using a native antibody sequence as leverage, second, machine learning to predict binding for antibody-virus pairs, and third, a poisson regression to predict escape costs as a function of antibody sequence assignment. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods, and exhibit an antibody with a far higher escape cost (7) than the native (1).


We study user behavior in the courses offered by a major massive online open course (MOOC) provider during the summer of 2013. Since social learning is a key element of scalable education on MOOC and is done via online discussion forums, our main focus is on understanding forum activities. Two salient features of these activities drive our research: (1) high decline rate: for each course studied, the volume of discussion declined continuously throughout the duration of the course; (2) high-volume, noisy discussions: at least 30 percent of the courses produced new threads at rates that are infeasible for students or teaching staff to read through. Further, a substantial portion of these discussions are not directly course-related. In our analysis, we investigate factors that are associated with the decline of activity on MOOC forums, and we find effective strategies to classify threads and rank their relevance. Specifically, we first use linear regression models to analyze the forum activity count data over time, and make a number of observations; for instance, the teaching staff's active participation in the discussions is correlated with an increase in the discussion volume but does not slow down the decline rate. We then propose a unified generative model for the discussion threads, which allows us both to choose efficient thread classifiers and to design an effective algorithm for ranking thread relevance. Further, our algorithm is compared against two baselines using human evaluation from Amazon Mechanical Turk.


Characterized by lightning quick innovation, abrupt shifts in technology, and shorter lifecycles, the marketing of IT products and services presents a unique set of challenges and often requires IT managers and developers to get involved in the marketing process. Marketing IT Products and Services is written to help busy IT managers and marketing managers get up to speed quickly and easily on whats needed to develop effective marketing strategies and campaigns. Focusing on the unique issues involved, this one-stop resource provides everything needed to understand the roles, responsibilities, and management techniques essential for the development of successful strategies. It covers strategic market planning, targeting markets, researching markets, understanding the competition, integrating market and sales strategies, nuances of global markets, developing marketing budgets, pricing, and implementing marketing campaigns. A plethora of appendices included on the books CD allows you to get up and running right away. Aside from a complete marketing glossary, two complete marketing plansone for a hardware product; the other for a software productenable you to bypass the "scut" work of developing a marketing plan so you can focus on the creative aspects of marketing. Because a marketing plan is closely aligned with an organizations business and strategic plans, this book provides you with templates for both of these, as well as a template for that all-important business plan executive summary. The CD also features loads of fill-in templates including customer and competitor analysis surveys, sample press releases, letters of agreement, demographic and target market worksheets, and cost benefit forms. If you have a marketing need, this book has an effective template to meet that need.


This volume is the first book-length study of the extensive career and prolific works of D.A. Pennebaker, one of the pioneers of direct cinema, a documentary form that emphasizes observation and a straightforward portrayal of events. With a career spanning decades, Pennebaker's many projects have included avant-garde experiments (Daybreak Express), ground-breaking television documentaries (Primary), celebrity films (Dont Look Back), concert films (Monterey Pop), and innovative fusions of documentary and fiction (Maidstone). Exploring the concept of "performing the real," Keith Beattie's insightful analysis interprets Pennebaker's films as performances in which the act of filming is in itself a performative transgression of the norms of purely observational documentary. He examines the ways in which Pennebaker's presentation of unscripted everyday performances is informed by connections between documentary filmmaking and other experimental movements such as the New American Cinema. Through his collaborations with such various artists as Richard Leacock, Shirley Clarke, Norman Mailer, and Jean-Luc Godard, Pennebaker has continually reworked and redefined the forms of documentary filmmaking. This book also includes a recent interview with the director and a full filmography. "A welcome addition to the Contemporary Film Directors Series."--Documentary "Filled with useful historical and technical details, this enthusiastic study of one of documentary cinema's most important filmmakers will convert some skeptics and create many new admirers of D.A. Pennebaker's work."--Joe McElhaney, author of Albert Maysles.


Athena Emu has one ambition - to compete at the Athens Olympics. She and her friends have been training hard and their coach, Miss Severity, the Ferret, is optimistic …. But the road to Athens and sporting glory is anything but smooth! There's evil afoot in the Outback as a feral coach, Zorba the Fox, and his wicked side-kick, Aeschylus the Cat, try to sign up Athena and her friends in a sponsorship deal that will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams. Somewhere in all the hype the original intention of the Olympic Games seems to have been lost. Using the notion that "It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game" as a starting point, the play focuses on a group of young Australians (represented by some recognizable Australian animals) whose dreams of success are as yet uncorrupted by the harsh world of sponsorship, financial incentive and economic gain. They become the objects of a wager between the Olympians (represented by Zeus and his wife, Hera). The plot evolves from Zeus's despair at the prospect of anyone in the 21st century recalling the true nature of the games (first played in 776BC) and which were originally conceived as a tribute by humanity to him. Hera, unwilling to believe that the spirit of the earlier games is entirely lost, sends Hermes, their messenger (represented by a galah) to find "someone who remembers what the games are really about" and he becomes the mediator between the mortals and the immortals of the play.


The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot was the country's bloodiest civil disturbance of the century. Leaving perhaps 150 dead, 30 city blocks burned to the ground, and more than a thousand families homeless, the riot represented an unprecedented breakdown of the rule of law. It reduced the prosperous black community of Greenwood, Oklahoma, to rubble. In Reconstructing the Dreamland, Alfred Brophy draws on his own extensive research into contemporary accounts and court documents to chronicle this devastating riot, showing how and why the rule of law quickly eroded. Brophy offers a gut-wrenching portrait of mob violence and racism run amok, both on the night of the riot and the morning after, when a coordinated sunrise attack, accompanied by airplanes, stormed through Greenwood, torching and looting the community. Equally important, he shows how the city government and police not only permitted the looting, shootings, and burning of Greenwood, but actively participated in it. The police department, fearing that Greenwood was erupting into a "negro uprising" (which Brophy shows was not the case), deputized white citizens haphazardly, gave out guns and badges with little background check, or sent men to hardware stores to arm themselves. Likewise, the Tulsa-based units of the National Guard acted unconstitutionally, arresting every black resident they could find, leaving Greenwood property vulnerable to the white mob, special deputies, and police that followed behind and burned it. Brophy's revelations and stark narrative of the events of 1921 bring to life an incidence of racial violence that until recently lay mostly forgotten. Reconstructing the Dreamland concludes with a discussion of reparations for victims of the riot. That case has implications for other reparations movements, including reparations for slavery.


An FDA Warning Letter can be a business disaster. This case study tracks a company from receipt of an FD 483 - that did not find contamination, but only the potential for contamination - to 18 months later when the facility received a clean bill of health. What it did to get there - and what it learned - may keep your site from losing its operating freedom.


Driven by the unprecedented levels of leveraged buyout activity in the years 2004-2007, this paper studies the pricing of LBO risk in the cross-section of corporate credit spreads. Using a dataset of LBOs, CDS and bonds, I first study the reaction of credit spreads of target firms to LBO announcements in the US during the years 2001-2007. I find evidence of credit spread widening by 60-70%, suggesting costs of additional debt significantly outweigh potential increase in expected cash flows. I document a negative reaction in prices of unprotected bonds, suggesting wealth transfer from debt-holders to shareholders. Yet, back-of-the-envelope calculation shows gains to shareholders are due, in large, to alternate sources, implying value creation in LBOs. I then proceed to test whether LBO restructuring risk is priced ex-ante by investors in debt markets. Using exogenous industry-level variables, I find that firms more likely to undergo an LBO have spreads that are higher by 30-50 bps. Incorporation of results into credit pricing models could further our understanding of the cross-sectional variation of credit spreads and alleviate model spread under-prediction in buyout boom years.


Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine, among the most influential artists of the 20th century, together created the music and movement for many ballet masterpieces. This is a study of one of the greatest artistic collaborations in history. Drawing on extensive research, Charles Joseph discusses the Stravinsky-Balanchine ballets against a rich contextual backdrop. He explores the background and psychology of the two men, the dynamics of their interactions, their personal and professional similarities and differences, and the political and historical circumstances that conditioned their work. He describes the dancers, designers and sponsors with whom they worked. He explains the two men's approach to the creative process and the genesis of each of the collaborative ballets, demolishing much received wisdom on the subject. He also analyzes selected sections of music and dance, providing examples of Stravinsky's working sketches and other illustrative materials.


An investigation has been undertaken to determine the major factors influencing the corrosion resistance of duplex-zinc coatings on steel substrates.Premature failure of these systems has been attributed to the presence of defects such as craters and pinholes in the polymer film and debonding of the polymer film from the zinc substrate.Defects found on commercially produced samples have been carefully characterised using metallographic and scanning electron microscopy techniques. The influence of zinc substrate surface roughness, polymer film thickness and degassing of conversion coatings films on the incidence of defects has been determined.Pretreatments of the chromate, chromate-phosphate, non chromate, and alkali-oxide types were applied and the conversion coatings produced characterised with respect to their nature and composition. The effect of degassing on the properties of the films was also investigated. Electrochemical investigations were carried out to determine the effect of the presence of the eta or zeta phase as the outermost layer of the galvanized coating.Flow characteristics of polyester on zinc electroplated hot-dip continuous and batch galvanized and zinc sprayed samples were investigated using hot-stage microscopy. The effects of different pretreatments and degassing after conversion coating formation on flow characteristics were determined.Duplex coatings were subjected to the acetic acid salt spray test. The effect on adhesion was determined using an indentation debonding test and the results compared with those obtained using cross-cut/peel and pull-off tests. The locus of failure was determined using scanning electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy techniques.


The 2018 publication of Julius S. Scott's The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution inspired a renewed focus on the reverberations of the Haitian Revolution. Here, six scholars of the Atlantic World and the Age of Revolutions consider the historiographical implications of The Common Wind and remind us how the Haitian upheaval belongs at the very center of the ripples of modernity that spread across the globe from the revolutionary Atlantic.


'Grey', 'characterless', 'technocratic' are adjectives often associated with Britain's current prime minister, John Major. In A Major Crisis Bonefeld, Brown and Burnham ask what, if anything, was new about Britain's Conservative governments after the fall of Thatcher in 1990. While their answer to this general question is not totally convincing, one phenomenon for which they do supply a very plausible explanation is the greyness of the new prime minister. The authors anchor their analysis within two traditions. One is that of International Political Economy; the other Open Marxism. They argue that virtually all analyses of British politics under Thatcher have been flawed by their undue concentration on Britain. The focus on Thatcherism as a national event has obscured an equally important dimension of analysis: that of Britain as a 'node' within a rapidly changing global capitalist economy—and hence subject to forces within an international political economy that were in many respects common across all advanced industrial economies. The authors propose three periods in the development of the post war global economy: dollar-based Keynesian expansion until the late 1960s; slower growth through the 1970s and 1980s sustained in part by much harsher labour regimes; deflationary stagnation with only patchy growth in the 1990s. This periodisation is not particularly novel, but the authors do have some interesting points to make—particularly about the so-called monetarism of the second period, and on the contradictions which brought it to an end. Governments of the time presented their policies as ones of economic orthodoxy, balancing the books and tight money. The reality, the authors argue, was the opposite. There were certainly deflationary policies. Full employment was abandoned, and anti-trade union laws permitted a general tightening of working class belts. In the UK and the US particularly, the rate of exploitation increased sharply. But governments were far from being fiscally prudent. There was what the authors call an inverse Keynesianism: instead of expanding credit during recessions, governments in the 1980s did so during periods of expansion. And this, say the authors, was a consequence of a critical change in the international economy: financial deregulation and the growth of a market in Werner Bonefeld, Alice Brown and Peter Burnham


In this thesis we investigate the applicability of image processing and pattern recognition techniques to seismic section analysis and interpretation in oil exploration. A seismic section obtained from seismic reflection prospecting is an acoustic image which displays the cross section of the subsurface structure. The data is employed by the seismic interpreters to infer the probable location of underground resources such as hydrocarbon accumulations. However, the task is labour intensive and must be performed by human experts with sound geological and geophysical knowledge and experience. The interpretation procedure is based on visual inspection, data comparison, geologic reasoning and decision making to confirm any subsurface reserves. Hence, automating the task could have a tremendous impact in terms of speeding up the interpretation task and giving more consistent interpretation results by virtue of minimizing the element of human subjective judgement. Much work is still required to develop an automatic analysis/interpretation system. Moreover, even a partial automation of the interpretation process would bring important productivity benefits. In this context, we limit the scope of investigation herein and place the emphasis on extracting geologic events from seismic images/sections based on perceived textural appearance of the data. We adopt the stance that seismic section data can be perceived as a texture image where the character of each distinct geologic event is manifest in its textural appearance. First we quantify such seismic textures using texture representation techniques suggested in the literature. Based on the representation we develop various methods for extracting important geological events from the data automatically. In this thesis, we propose two new approaches regarding the problems of extracting seismic events at the regional and local scales: Regional scale - Seismic Section Segmentation: Image regions of different textural appearance may represent distinct geologic regions. Thus by segmenting a seismic section into regions of homogeneous textural properties it should be possible to identify and delimit regions of different seismic and therefore geological character. A supervised segmentation scheme based on the Bayesian decision rule and using a multiresolution data representation is developed and is demonstrated on seismic images with good results. Local scale - Seismic Horizon Extraction: The perceived seismic texture is constituted by seismic horizons which are caused by a change in the acoustic impedance across the subsurface rock layers and are an indication of rock boundaries in the Earth's subsurface. The seismic horizon extraction procedures result in a line map of the subsurface rock boundary structure. However, the continuity of seismic horizons is invariably corrupted by noise and variation of lithology. Hence, we develop a new robust approach using a probabilistic relaxation labelling technique with a view to automatically locate the seismic horizons and preserve their continuity. The significance of the work is twofold: firstly it provides information to the interpreter which supplements or enhances visual information available in the seismic data which otherwise are less obvious and may be ignored. Secondly, it serves as a building block for more advanced automatic analysis/interpretation system.


An understanding of the habitual physical activity levels of children with chronic disorders is an important consideration relevant to both treatment and clinical monitoring (8). However, a feasible and useful tool for measuring the physical activity levels of children with chronic illness in clinical settings is not readily available. In this article, we review the development and initial psychometric testing (i.e., construct and reliability) of the Habitual Activity Estimation Scale (HAES), a measure developed for use in clinical research. A summary of these investigations suggests that the HAES appears both valid and reliable as a measure of activity in pediatric populations.


Gender differences in finger length ratios are caused by relative differences in sex hormone signaling in developing limb buds. Humans show gender-specific differences in the length ratio between the second finger (2D) and the fourth finger (4D). In women, the second finger tends to be the same length as or longer than the fourth finger, which results in a higher length ratio between 2D and 4D (2D:4D), whereas in men, the fourth finger tends to be longer than the second finger, which results in a lower 2D:4D. The 2D:4D ratio has been correlated to various sexually dimorphic traits (see commentary by Manning). To determine whether alterations in these ratios (2D:4D) reflect in utero exposure to testosterone, as has been presumed, Zheng and Cohn examined hind-leg development in CD-1 mice, a process that showed sexual dimorphism at embryonic day 17 (E17) in the right hind paw and at E21 in the left hind paw. When bound to ligand, the androgen receptor (AR) and estrogen receptor (ER) translocate to the nucleus to transcriptionally activate target genes. In E12.5 male and female mice, the AR showed nuclear localization in the cells of developing digits, and nuclear localization of the AR was higher in 4D than in 2D. By E14.5, the nuclear localization of AR was greater in male mouse 4D than in female mouse 4D. At the same developmental period, the abundance and nuclear localization of ERα was higher in 4D of both male and female mice than in 2D. The difference between AR activity in 4D compared with 2D was greatest in male mice; similarly, female mice showed a more pronounced difference in ERα activity in 4D compared with 2D. In male mice, genetic ablation of AR in the limb resulted in increased or feminized 2D:4D ratios, whereas ERα deficiency resulted in decreased or masculinized 2D:4D ratios. Treating pregnant female mice between E12.5 and E15.5 with the anti-androgen flutamide caused male offspring to have higher 2D:4D ratios, whereas treatment with dihydrotestosterone (DHT) caused female offspring to have lower 2D:4D ratios. Postnatal treatment with flutamide, DHT, or estradiol did not affect digit ratio. The 2D:4D ratio could be feminized in male embryos by antagonizing AR activity and masculinized in female embryos by opposing ER activity with the ER antagonist fulvestrant. The 2D:4D ratio was determined by the length of 4D, and cell proliferation in 4D was increased by pharmacological manipulations that increased AR activity and decreased by those that increased ER activity. Antagonism of AR in male mice and of ER in female mice resulted in differential expression of mRNAs encoding various proteins involved in skeletal development. Thus, the sexual dimorphism in 2D:4D ratios results from the relative difference between androgen and estrogen signaling in the developing limb bud of 4D. Z. Zheng, M. J. Cohn, Developmental basis of sexually dimorphic digit ratios. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108, 16289–16294 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text] J. T. Manning, Resolving the role of prenatal sex steroids in the development of digit ratio. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108, 16143–16144 (2011). [Full Text]


Recently, Managed Alcohol Programs (MAPs have emerged as an alcohol harm reduction model for those living with severe alcohol use disorder (AUD) and experiencing homelessness. There is still a lack of clarity about the role of these programs in relation to Housing First (HF) discourse. The authors examine the role of MAPs within a policy environment that has become dominated by a focus on HF approaches to addressing homelessness. This examination includes a focus on Canadian policy contexts where MAPs originated and are still predominately located. The purpose of this paper is to trace the development of MAPs as a novel response to homelessness among people experiencing severe AUD and to describe the place of MAPs within a HF context.,This conceptual paper outlines the development of discourses related to persons experiencing severe AUD and homelessness, with a focus on HF and MAPs as responses to these challenges. The authors compare the key characteristics of MAPs with "core principles" and values as outlined in various definitions of HF.,MAPs incorporate many of the core values or principles of HF as outlined in some definitions, although not all. MAPs (and other housing/treatment models) provide critical housing and support services for populations who might not fit well with or who might not prefer HF models.,The "silver bullet" discourse surrounding HF (and harm reduction) can obscure the importance of programs (such as MAPs) that do not fully align with all HF principles and program models. This is despite the fact that MAPs (and other models) provide critical housing and support services for populations who might fall between the cracks of HF models. There is the potential for MAPs to help fill a gap in the application of harm reduction in HF programs. The authors also suggest a need to move beyond HF discourse, to embrace complexity and move toward examining what mixture of different housing and harm reduction supports are needed to provide a complete or comprehensive array of services and supports for people who use substances and are experiencing homelessness.


Three sediment cores (PS2613-6, PS2644-5 and PS2646-5), taken by RV "Polarstern" during the expedition "ARKTIS X/2" (1994) in the Denmark Strait and the Greenland sea, were investigated for geophysical and sedimentological properties to get information about climatic changes in the past 380 kyr (marine isotope stages 1-11). The analyses included high resolution magnetic susceptibility measurement, natural gamma ray spectrometry and clay mineral distribution by x-ray diffraction. The comparison of the results with published data, like d18O datings, are used mainly to verify the validity of the natural gamma ray.The magnetic susceptibility is useful in the North Atlantic to produce a stratigraphy.As the delivery region for the ferromagnetie magnetite, the iceland archipelago can be supposed. Differences in the natural gamma ray and the clay composition between the two cores (PS2644-5 and PS2646-5) of the Denmark Strait and the eore (PS2613-6) of the Greenland sea are obviously. Gorrelations between the measured parameters in the eores PS2644 and PS2646 are usefull to characterize the souree of the natural gamma ray. The clay mineral illite is emitting a bigger part of the natural gamma ray. Because of clay minerals as a sign of terrigenous material, the natural gamma ray can be used as a hint for terrigenous delivery region. A negative correlation between the natural gamma ray aetivity and the magnetic susceptibility is useful for stratigrafic significance. The published stratigraphic data could be verified. A correlation between the measured parameters of core PS2613-6 is not possible. The gamma ray emitting material eould not be identified, may be beeause of a superimposition of several emitting eomponents. Since the glacial periods (isotope stages 2 and 4), the clay mineral eomposition is giving hints for a powerfull East Greenland Current in the Denmark Strait, because of a high Illite content. The Irminger Current is only effective in the interglacial isotope stage 3, indieated by a high Smectit eontent.


We sampled 42 permanent vegetation plots in the Adirondack Mountains, NY to characterize the spatial patterns of, and controls on soil C and N contents. Average C (24 kg m ―2 ) and N ( 1.1 kg m ―2 ) contents of the combined organic and mineral horizons were high for northeastern U.S. forests. Contrary to our expectations, whole-profile C and N amounts were not different among northern hardwood (NH), spruce-fir (SF), and pine-dominated (PW) plots. Most of the C and N were stored in organic horizons in the high-elevation SF plots, and in the mineral horizons in NH and PW plots. Regression analyses of the pooled set of sites revealed that the factors that explained the most variability in soil C and N contents were different for organic and mineral horizons and differed between forest types. Overall, growing season degree-days (GSDD) was the variable most closely correlated with C and N contents in both organic and mineral horizons, and varying combinations of N deposition, conifer importance, and soil texture were the principal secondary influences. Spruce-fir plots received the most atmospheric N deposition, and multivariate regression tree (MRT) analysis indicated that N deposition rate was the environmental variable that explained the most variation in organic horizon C (sums of squares [SS] explained = 54%) and N (79% SS explained) amounts in these high-elevation stands. However, even in the unlikely case of 100% retention of the atmospheric inputs of N deposited over the past 50 yr, this source only accounted for a small portion of soil N, and the differences in N among the plots along the deposition gradient. It is likely that differences in GSDD accounted for most of the differences in C and N amounts.


This research examines the spatio-temporal trends in Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) Global Inventory Modelling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series to ascribe land use change and precipitation to observed changes in land cover from 1982 to 2007 in the Mexican Yucatán Peninsula, using seasonal trend analysis (STA). In addition to discrete land cover transitions across the study region, patterns of agricultural intensification, urban expansion and afforestation in protected areas have enacted changes to the seasonal patterns of apparent greenness observed through STA greenness parameters. The results indicate that the seasonal variation in NDVI can be used to distinguish among different land cover transitions, and the primary differences among these transitions were in changes in overall greenness, peak annual greenness and the timing of the growing season. Associations between greenness trends and precipitation were weak, indicating a human-dominated system for the 26 years examined. Changes in the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán appear to be associated with pasture cultivation, urban expansion-extensive cultivation and urban expansion-intensive cultivation, respectively.


Now in full color, the 10th anniversary edition of this classic book takes you deep into the influences that underlie modern video games, and examines the elements they share with traditional games such as checkers. At the heart of his exploration, veteran game designer Raph Koster takes a close look at the concept of fun and why its the most vital element in any game. Why do some games become boring quickly, while others remain fun for years? How do games serve as fundamental and powerful learning tools? Whether youre a game developer, dedicated gamer, or curious observer, this illustrated, fully updated edition helps you understand what drives this major cultural force, and inspires you to take it further. Youll discover that: Games play into our innate ability to seek patterns and solve puzzles Most successful games are built upon the same elements Slightly more females than males now play games Many games still teach primitive survival skills Fictional dressing for modern games is more developed than the conceptual elements Truly creative designers seldom use other games for inspiration Games are beginning to evolve beyond their prehistoric origins