The man behind last year's U.S. Bank case promises more state-level court action Around this time last year the long-simmering stew about financial privacy finally seemed to boil over. But little did anyone know that the hot times were just beginning. As the law that eventually became the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act lumbered toward passage, the nation's attorneys general began tackling financial services privacy in earnest. One of the most zealous, then and since, has been Mike Hatch, attorney general of Minnesota. Hatch and his department filed last year's much-publicized suit against U.S. Bank for allegedly releasing private customer data to a telemarketer in exchange for fees plus commissions on resulting sales. While settled without the bank conceding anything, the resulting headlines were a black eye for the company and for the industry. Further Hatch and other attorneys general vowed to pursue further cases. Since then, Congress not only produced the Gramm-Leach-Bliley privacy provisions, but continues, along with the White House, to propose and debate further privacy legislation. In a recent interview, Hatch, who pressed unsuccessfully for a package of financial, medical, and telemarketing privacy measures in the Minnesota legislature this year. Says his agency has been conducting half a dozen investigations of larger banks on privacy-related grounds. Hatch expect to announce a new case at around the time of this issue would be published. "Some people worry about the government having our data," says Hatch. "The one good thing about the government is that it's not competent enough to deal with it." Industry, he believes, is what should be worrying consumers. Roots of a cause In Washington, consumerist-banking legislation often arises because a member of Congress--or a staff member--gets personally burned by some practices. No such anecdote lies behind Hatch's privacy campaign, however. He has no story to tell about some relative getting burned. As for personal privacy for himself, he laughs. "I'm a politician," Hatch explains, "so I gave up my right to privacy." Carrying on a crusade about privacy--much of his agency' website (www.ag.state.mn.us) is devoted to privacy issues and legislation, plus tips on how to get off mailing lists and such--made Hatch a target for various sleuths, he says. "They keep telling me it's pretty plain stuff" that they find, he chuckles. Hatch says the source of his initial interest in financial privacy was fairly workday--a raft of consumer complaints heard about MemberWorks Inc., a Stamford, Conn.-based marketing firm. The company specialized in selling various "club plans" over the phone--dental discount clubs, merchandise discount clubs, travel clubs, and more. Hatch's suit against that firm (settled in April 2000) charged that the company, among other things, was billing consumers' financial accounts for services that the consumers had not consented to take. Hatch says his staff investigators frequently found that consumer complainants had financial accounts with U.S. Bank that had been charged for the MemberWorks services. This led to the suit, and later settlement, with U.S Bank. Hatch is no stranger to banking, nor the state's institutions. Attorney general since his election to the post in 1996, Hatch spent an earlier political incarnation as Minnesota's commerce commissioner (1983-1989), which included supervision of the state's banks. In Private law practice between that job and his present position, his clients included bankers. "Most bankers I knew believed, as I did, as a bank lawyer, that there is a right to privacy as it relates to bank data," says Hatch. "And there is a good argument that certain data is private. For example, loan files. And, independent of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, there is a fiduciary duty, at least in my state, that a bank shall keep business plans private. …


AbstractMany of the refugees around the world today are children. Some of these children are travelling alone without anyone looking after them. These children flee from their countries to save their lives and as they are children they need special care and protection. This thesis has investigated the protection given to unaccompanied children during the asylum process in the two key instruments in the area: the Convention of the Rights of the Child and the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The Refugee Convention does not contain any procedural rights and does not specifically acknowledge children, even though they are included in the scope of the Convention. On the other hand, the Convention of the Rights of the Child includes some procedural rights, mainly the right of the child to be heard (article 12). But the convention provides no guidance when it comes to determining the refugee status for children.The purpose of this thesis is to look into the relationship between these two conventions and present current rights that occur when an unaccompanied child seeks asylum. The rights that are stated were thereafter derived from the different conventions so that the protection in them could be analyzed.In this thesis, it has been shown that the Convention of the Rights of the child contains important rights and protection for unaccompanied children during the asylum proceedings. The problem seems to be that the state parties do not comply with the rights in the convention. The conclusion of the thesis is that it is better to use the rights and protection that are already in place, meaning the Convention of the Rights of the Child, than creating an entirely new instrument. A lot of the problems that we have today may be solved with the third optional protocol of the Convention of the Rights of the child, since its purpose is to realize the rights that are stated in the convention.


Title of dissertation: ARCHITECTURAL-PHYSICAL CO-DESIGN OF 3D CPUS WITH MICRO-FLUIDIC COOLING Caleb Serafy, Doctor of Philosophy, 2016 Dissertation directed by: Professor Ankur Srivastava Department of Electrical Engineering The performance, energy efficiency and cost improvements due to traditional technology scaling have begun to slow down and present diminishing returns. Underlying reasons for this trend include fundamental physical limits of transistor scaling, the growing significance of quantum effects as transistors shrink, and a growing mismatch between transistors and interconnects regarding size, speed and power. Continued Moore's Law scaling will not come from technology scaling alone, and must involve improvements to design tools and development of new disruptive technologies such as 3D integration. 3D integration presents potential improvements to interconnect power and delay by translating the routing problem into a third dimension, and facilitates transistor density scaling independent of technology node. Furthermore, 3D IC technology opens up a new architectural design space of heterogeneously-integrated high-bandwidth CPUs. Vertical integration promises to provide the CPU architectures of the future by integrating high performance processors with on-chip high-bandwidth memory systems and highly connected networkon-chip structures. Such techniques can overcome the well-known CPU performance bottlenecks referred to as memory and communication wall. However the promising improvements to performance and energy efficiency offered by 3D CPUs does not come without cost, both in the financial investments to develop the technology, and the increased complexity of design. Two main limitations to 3D IC technology have been heat removal and TSV reliability. Transistor stacking creates increases in power density, current density and thermal resistance in air cooled packages. Furthermore the technology introduces vertical through silicon vias (TSVs) that create new points of failure in the chip and require development of new BEOL technologies. Although these issues can be controlled to some extent using thermal-reliability aware physical and architectural 3D design techniques, high performance embedded cooling schemes, such as micro-fluidic (MF) cooling, are fundamentally necessary to unlock the true potential of 3D ICs. A new paradigm is being put forth which integrates the computational, electrical, physical, thermal and reliability views of a system. The unification of these diverse aspects of integrated circuits is called Co-Design. Independent design and optimization of each aspect leads to sub-optimal designs due to a lack of understanding of cross-domain interactions and their impacts on the feasibility region of the architectural design space. Co-Design enables optimization across layers with a multi-domain view and thus unlocks new high-performance and energy efficient configurations. Although the co-design paradigm is becoming increasingly necessary in all fields of IC design, it is even more critical in 3D ICs where, as we show, the interlayer coupling and higher degree of connectivity between components exacerbates the interdependence between architectural parameters, physical design parameters and the multitude of metrics of interest to the designer (i.e. power, performance, temperature and reliability). In this dissertation we present a framework for multidomain co-simulation and co-optimization of 3D CPU architectures with both air and MF cooling solutions. Finally we propose an approach for design space exploration and modeling within the new Co-Design paradigm, and discuss the possible avenues for improvement of this work in the future. ARCHITECTURAL-PHYSICAL CO-DESIGN OF 3D CPUs WITH MICRO-FLUIDIC COOLING


The objective of this paper is to study the electrical resistivity complexity between field and laboratory measurement, in order to improve the effectiveness of data interpretation for geophysical ground resistivity survey. The geological outcrop in Penang, Malaysia with an obvious layering contact was chosen as the study site. Two dimensional geoelectrical resistivity imaging were used in this study to maps the resistivity distribution of subsurface, whereas few subsurface sample were obtained for laboratory advance. In this study, resistivity of samples in original conditions is measured in laboratory by using time domain low-voltage technique, particularly for granite core sample and soil resistivity measuring set for soil sample. The experimentation results from both schemes are studied, analyzed, calibrated and verified, including basis and correlation, degree of tolerance and characteristics of substance. Consequently, the significant different between both schemes is explained comprehensively within this paper. Keywords—Electrical Resistivity, Granite, Soil.


Barley (Hordeum vulgare), cheat (Bromus secalinus), corn (Zea mays), oat (Avena sativa), rye (Secale cereale), and wheat (Triticum aestivum) were infected by a Kansas isolate of the High Plains virus (HPV) in greenhouse experiments, but several other grass species were not. Infection of a host was dependent upon wheat curl mite numbers. Although both green foxtail (Setaria viridis) and yellow foxtail (S. glauca) are found naturally infected by HPV, only yellow foxtail could be infected in greenhouse experiments. Field sampling (1994 to 1996) of symptomatic yellow foxtail showed that it is a good indicator of the presence of HPV, with 252 of 278 symptomatic plants testing positive in enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for HPV, 2 of 278 for American wheat striate mosaic virus, and 1 of 278 for johnson grass mosaic virus, whereas 23 of 278 symptomatic plants were negative for all viruses tested by ELISA and were not infectious in back-assays.


We use InSAR and body wave modelling to determine the faulting parameters for a series of five Mw 5.9–7.1 normal faulting earthquakes that occurred during 2008, including the March 20 Yutian earthquake (Mw 7.1), one of the largest normal faulting events to have occurred recently on the continents. We also study three earlier normal faulting earthquakes that occurred in southern Tibet between 1992 and 2005. Coseismic deformation for each of these eight events is measured with ascending and descending interferograms from ENVISAT, ERS and ALOS SAR data. Elastic dislocation modelling of the line-of-sight InSAR displacements and body wave seismological modelling of P and SH waves are used to estimate fault parameters and are found to be in good agreement for all the events studied. The use of InSAR to measure deformation allows a relatively precise determination of the fault location in addition to resolving the focal plane ambiguity. Only five of the eight events are associated with a clear surface topographic feature, suggesting that an underestimation of the amount of extension would result from using the surface expressions of normal faulting alone. The observations, in all cases, are consistent with slip on planar surfaces, with dips in the range 40–50°, that penetrates the uppermost crust to a depth of 10–15 km. We find no evidence for active low-angle (dip less than 30°) normal faulting. The contribution of the normal faulting to overall extension estimated by summing seismic moments over earthquakes for the past 43 yr is 3–4 mm yr−1, or 15–20 per cent of the rates of extension measured across the plateau using GPS. 85 per cent of the moment release in normal faulting over the past 43 yr has occurred in regions whose surface height exceeds 5 km. This observation adds weight to the suggestions that the widespread normal faulting on the plateau is the result of variations in the gravitational potential energy of the lithosphere.


Numerous scholars have highlighted the extraordinary book-scanning project created by Google in 2004. The project aims to create a digital full text search index which would provide people with online access to books and assist research. A few months after the original idea started being implemented, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers-AAP filed a class-action lawsuit, claiming that Google Book's Project violated copyright law in the United States. The main contention was that the books which were not under public domain could not have been scanned without permission and compensation for authors and publishers.Google's Book Project radically changed its character from the time of its birth until the negotiation of an Amended Settlement Agreement - ASA with the plaintiffs. It has raised serious controversies not only regarding different aspects of the future of the Internet but also over the issue of privatization of knowledge. Those in favour of the initiative highlight the astonishing accomplishment of Google, allowing us to access books more easily than ever before in human history. However, their claim is as dangerous as the song of the sirens. While at first sight Google tells a tale of extraordinary inclusion, it excludes those who cannot pay to access snippets or limited view of around 80% of the books available.We will also discuss the Amended Settlement Agreement of Google with the Author's Guild and its failure on March, 2011. Finally, we will explore the concept of "fair use," or "exceptions and limitation on copyright," which provides for full access to books to any individual, library or archive as long as they are used for educational or scientific purposes.


In this paper I investigate the extent to which the Irish higher education system promotes inclusion or diversion in relation to social selectivity. In doing so, stratification processes are examined for two educational outcomes: inequality in the type of higher education institution attended (institutional differentiation) and the level of qualification pursued at higher education (qualification differentiation). The paper considers the individual and school level influences on these two educational outcomes and concludes that the Irish system is inclusive, but class disparities remain in terms of both institutional differentiation and qualification differentiation. Class disparities are largely mediated through educational attainment at the individual level and diversion is particularly evident in relation to the non-manual and skilled manual groups. Furthermore, school effects have a particular influence on those who do not obtain their preference of higher education course.


This study is concerned with the analysis of pottery collected during the excavation campaigns conducted by the Swiss Institute of Rome in the domus Tiberiana between 1984 and 1987, as well as with the archaeological context from which they originated. This work is composed of four parts. The first discusses the monument itself and describes the framework in which the research took place; the second part concerns the stratigraphy, its analysis, its interpretation and the presentation of the pottery strictly tied to its archaeological context; the third part is more specifically concerned with the pottery itself. The fourth and last part consists of a catalogue accompanied by plates that present the objects according to period.


Robust representations of sounds with a complex spectrotemporal structure are thought to emerge in hierarchically organized auditory cortex, but the computational advantage of this hierarchy remains unknown. Here, we used computational models to study how such hierarchical structures affect temporal binding in neural networks. We equipped individual units in different types of feedforward networks with local memory mechanisms storing recent inputs and observed how this affected the ability of the networks to process stimuli context dependently. Our findings illustrate that these local memories stack up in hierarchical structures and hence allow network units to exhibit selectivity to spectral sequences longer than the time spans of the local memories. We also illustrate that short-term synaptic plasticity is a potential local memory mechanism within the auditory cortex, and we show that it can bring robustness to context dependence against variation in the temporal rate of stimuli, while introducing nonlinearities to response profiles that are not well captured by standard linear spectrotemporal receptive field models. The results therefore indicate that short-term synaptic plasticity might provide hierarchically structured auditory cortex with computational capabilities important for robust representations of spectrotemporal patterns.


this article discribe about Educational Administration is the whole process of collaboration of two or more people by utilizing all available personnel and material resources and appropriate to achieve educational goals that have been set effectively and efficiently. and several types: leadership types namely authoritarian types, laissez faire types, democratic types and pseudo-democratic types


BACKGROUND
Neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) is a rare side-effect of neuroleptic medication. Most NMS reports have been on adults, and the incidence in children and adolescents is unknown.

OBJECTIVE
This report reviews cases of NMS to highlight possible risk factors for the development of NMS in adolescents.

METHOD
Four cases of probable NMS in adolescents diagnosed in the Western Cape between February 2009 and March 2010 are presented.

RESULTS
Risk factors in the development of the syndrome in adolescents in the Western Cape may be male gender, polypharmacy, the use of zuclopenthixol acetate (clopixol acuphase), a previous history of extra-pyramidal side-effects or NMS, and a history of substance misuse - in particular methamphetamine.

CONCLUSION
Caution must be applied in the apparent overuse of intramuscular antipsychotics, and especially zuclopenthixol acetate (clopixol acuphase), in neuroleptic-naïve and agitated psychotic adolescents where the short-term use of benzodiazepines is more appropriate.


BACKGROUND
Personalized cancer treatments can be applied to the clinical use of recombinant human tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (rhTRAIL). rhTRAIL holds great promise because of its selectivity for cancer cells. However, rhTRAIL clinical trials were conducted without the screening of patients' tumors for rhTRAIL-binding death receptor (DR)4 and DR5, and the unselected treatment resulted in a lack of clinical benefit. Here we propose an in vitro test to analyze tumor cells isolated from patients for the membrane expression of DRs to determine patient suitability for rhTRAIL treatment.

METHODS
Using a panel of malignant melanoma cell lines, the correlation between DR membrane expression and rhTRAIL sensitivity was evaluated. The membrane expression of DR4 and DR5 was examined through staining with anti-DR4 and -DR5 antibodies followed by fluorescence-activated cell sorting. rhTRAIL sensitivity was determined through Annexin-V and propidium iodide staining and Western blotting after rhTRAIL treatment.

RESULTS
Here we show a direct correlation between the membrane expression of DRs and rhTRAIL sensitivity. rhTRAIL-sensitive melanoma lines, on average, had nearly 4-fold more DR4 and >2-fold more DR5 than rhTRAIL-resistant lines. For a cancer cell to display rhTRAIL sensitivity, the optimum expression of DRs is essential. To overcome the apoptotic threshold, cancer cells must express DRs >2-fold higher compared with their benign counterpart.

CONCLUSION
These data show the potential of this flow cytometry-based assay for the analysis of isolated tumor cells for DR membrane expression. By first determining a patient's susceptibility to rhTRAIL-based treatments, they can be more appropriately placed in rhTRAIL clinical trials and improve rhTRAIL as an anticancer therapeutic.


This paper presents a concept for designing low-cost therapeutic training with biofeedback and virtual reality. We completed the first evaluation of a prototype a mobile learning application for relaxation training, primarily for adolescents suffering from tension-type headaches. The system delivers visual experience on a head-mounted display. A wirelessly connected wristband is used to measure user's pulse and adjust the training scenario based on the heart rate data. Repeating the exercise can make the user able to go through the scenario without using the app, learn how to relax, and ultimately combat tension-type headache. The prototype has been evaluated with 25 participants. The results demonstrate that the application provides a relaxing experience and the implementation of biofeedback is useful for therapeutic training. The results are discussed to evaluate the technological, therapeutic and educational potential of the prototype and to improve the conceptual framework.


 A parenteral syring filling line inside a closed cabin isolator was installed in an existing manufacturing space. To increase sterility assurance the isolator must be effectively biodecontamined by means of Vapor Hydrogen Peroxide (VHP) to provide a minimum of 6 logreductions and a residual concentration of VHP of less than 1ppm. During the cycle development phase the operating characteristic and parameters for the decontamination were tested and optimized following the proposed methodology in this article. Final adjustment of the injection quantities was based upon results of the worst case biological indicator tests performed during the study. Based on the results, parameters and validation testing were established to provide for complete destruction of all biological indicators. Key Terms  H2O2 decontamination, cycle development, biological indicator (BI), chemical indicator (CI)


The section studied is located at the eastern border of the Asiago plateaux close to the village of Foza. In this area, the Calcari Grigi are noticeably different from the classic succession subdivided into three members and characterizing the formation westwards. The whole Calcari Grigi formation of the Foza section is composed of a monotonous succession, mainly micritic, showing the typical facies of the Lower Member. This micritic unit fades upwards into a granular body, mainly composed of ooids and peloids, whose interpretation, owing to the absence of detailed biostratigraphic studies, has been long debated. Some authors considered this grainy body as equivalent to the late Liassic San Vigilio Oolite or, more recently, as a coeval to the Rotzo Member. An alternative hypothesis, whose demonstration is one of the aims of this paper, considers the granular unit at the top of the Foza section as the base of the Middle Oolitic Member and postulates the absence of middle Liassic deposits in the eastern sector of the Trento Platform. A detailed micropaleontological study, focused to different taxa of algae (particularly dasyclads) and forams, confirms that the youngest platform preserved deposits at the top of the Foza section are referable to the upper Sinemurian.


When constructing a classifier, the probability of correct classification of future data points should be maximized. We consider a binary classification problem where the mean and covariance matrix of each class are assumed to be known. No further assumptions are made with respect to the class-conditional distributions. Misclassification probabilities are then controlled in a worst-case setting: that is, under all possible choices of class-conditional densities with given mean and covariance matrix, we minimize the worst-case (maximum) probability of misclassification of future data points. For a linear decision boundary, this desideratum is translated in a very direct way into a (convex) second order cone optimization problem, with complexity similar to a support vector machine problem. The minimax problem can be interpreted geometrically as minimizing the maximum of the Mahalanobis distances to the two classes. We address the issue of robustness with respect to estimation errors (in the means and covariances of the classes) via a simple modification of the input data. We also show how to exploit Mercer kernels in this setting to obtain nonlinear decision boundaries, yielding a classifier which proves to be competitive with current methods, including support vector machines. An important feature of this method is that a worst-case bound on the probability of misclassification of future data is always obtained explicitly.


For analogues of global warming, the mid-Cretaceous is held up as both an archetype and a warning. Using a combination of theoretical models and geological evidence, a consensus is revealing that polar latitudes experience the greatest degree of warming during global greenhouse conditions. The Tupuangi Formation of the Chatham Islands, New Zealand, is the highest latitude (~ 75-80°S) floral assemblage ever discovered from the mid- Cretaceous; as such, the Chatham Islands provide an unprecedented perspective into the most extreme effects of global warming. This research has provided important climatic and evolutionary implications for the flora and fauna in both a regional (e.g. Zealandia, Australia and Antarctica) and global context. The Tupuangi Formation, and its fossil flora record, reveals a benign terrestrial polar environment amid the regional context of tectonic rifting, and a global context of extreme greenhouse conditions. Based on the timing of structural and sedimentological attributes of the Tupuangi Formation, the tectonic and palaeoenvironmental context of the region was established for the first time. It was concluded that these sediments were deposited in a terrestrial, failed-rift basin of Eastern Zealandia prior to the onset of seafloor spreading between Zealandia and Marie Byrd Land, West Antarctica. Without ongoing orogenesis in the region, a trend of fluvial aggradation and thermal subsidence followed this failed-rift event; this resulted in an upsequence transition from high to low fluvial flow-rate, with increasing prevalence of swamps, peats and paralic settings. This thesis includes a quantitative spore and pollen analysis to achieve comprehensive biostratigraphic correlations of the Tupuangi Formation and ecological interpretations of the mid-Cretaceous south polar region. As typical for terrestrial basins, the Tupuangi Formation features several age-old problems of spore and pollen biostratigraphy and ecological reconstructions, including preservation biases and the inclusion of older, reworked spores and pollen. This study demonstrates, that these variables can be minimised by employing a range of novel statistical measures, and the systematic removal of contaminated samples. This approach results in more reliable biostratigraphic correlations and ecological interpretations. This study documents seventy-seven distinct spore and pollen species, including five new pollen species (Araucariacites saganii, Balmeiopsis discus, Liliacidites exquisitus, Podocarpidites microradiatus and Trichotomosulcites hemisphaerius) and two fern spores (Klukisporites sphaerogoufus, Biretisporites labruplenus); a total of over one hundred spore-pollen species was found. Spore and pollen biostratigraphy was employed to derive the first island-wide stratigraphic correlation of the Tupuangi Formation. Three newly reported unconformities were identified; the uppermost of these is concurrent with the Zealandian 'breakup unconformity,' a time-gap of ~ 4-5 Ma demarcating the uplift phase of rifting between Zealandia and Antarctica. Aligning the spore and pollen assemblage into the global scheme, a Ngaterian to Mangaotanean (Cenomanian to Turonian; ~ 99-90 Ma) age was constrained for the sequence. The age of this sequence is concurrent with the initiation of two related global events: 1) the primary stage of flowering plant (angiosperm) diversification; and 2) the mid-Cretaceous thermal maximum. The palynological record of the Tupuangi Formation provides direct evidence for the first event, and indirect evidence of the second. Abundance data of spore and pollen species reveal an overall predominance of gymnosperm taxa in the floral ecology; conifers as the primary overstorey components, and an understorey comprised of smaller gymnosperms, ferns, angiosperms, bryophytes, lycopods and 'seed-ferns'. A tentative analogy is drawn to the conifer-dominated boreal forests of the Northern Hemisphere. There is increasing angiosperm diversity and abundance upsequence, and this work corroborates that the angiosperms spread to the high latitudes instep with the warming global climate of the time. As such, the increasing diversity and abundance of angiosperm pollen of such a high palaeolatitude locality corroborate an increasing global temperature. However, contrary to previous findings, this study reveals that the angiosperm diversification at south polar latitudes did not result in an ecological replacement of understorey taxa, but instead increased the overall species richness. As such, it is interpreted that the angiosperms formed new ecological niches, rather than invade and outcompete the established flora in pre-existing niches.


The Large Value Transfer System (LVTS) loss-sharing mechanism was designed to ensure that, in the event of a one-participant default, the collateral pledged by direct members of the system would be sufficient to cover the largest possible net debit position of a defaulting participant. However, the situation may not hold if the indirect effects of the defaults are taken into consideration, or if two participants default during the same payment cycle. The authors examine surviving participant total losses under both oneand two-participant default conditions, assuming the potential knock-on effects of the default. Their analysis includes the impact of a decline in value of LVTS collateral following an unexpected default. Simulations of participant defaults indicate that the impact on the LVTS is generally small; surviving participants do incur end-of-day collateral shortfalls, but only rarely and in small amounts. Under the two-participant default scenario, the likelihood of the Bank of Canada having to provide funds to ensure LVTS settlement is reasonably low, as is the average residual-coverage amount. The majority of LVTS participants pledge as collateral securities issued by other system members. However, the impact of an issuer of such collateral defaulting is generally not significant in the LVTS.


Density-functional theory (DFT) calculations of intrinsic point defect properties in zinc oxide were performed in order to remedy the influence of finite-size effects and the improper description of the band structure. The generalized gradient approximation (GGA) with empirical self-interaction corrections (GGA+U) was applied to correct for the overestimation of covalency intrinsic to GGA-DFT calculations. Elastic as well as electrostatic image interactions were accounted for by application of extensive finite-size scaling and compensating charge corrections. Size-corrected formation enthalpies and volumes as well as their charge state dependence have been deduced. Our results partly confirm earlier calculations but reveal a larger number of transition levels: (1) For both the zinc interstitial as well as the oxygen vacancy, transition levels are close to the conduction band minimum. (2) The zinc vacancy shows a transition rather close to the valence band maximum and another one near the middle of the calculated band gap. (3) For the oxygen interstitials, transition levels occur both near the valence band maximum and the conduction band minimum.


The perfect what-to, how-to and where-to guidebook and reference for inspired homeowners, house renovators, interior designers and residential architects. This exceptional style and source guide is the first book to examine residential architecture and design elements from both creative and practical perspectives. It is also the first to include extensive North American sources for high-end, custom and hard-to-find materials and services. Combining original photography of 70 superb homes with hundreds of hand-picked product shots, this stunning compendium is a superb resource and reference book for homeowners and professionals alike. Architectural Inspiration features the innovative ideas, inspiration and practical advice of renowned North American designers and architects. It also provides access to many of the same sources they turn to in residential home design and detailing. From the "Table of Contents" Part One: Styles Exteriors: North American Styles The evolution of residential styles in North America, from Colonial days to the present. Interiors: Living Spaces Great rooms, living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, hallways, staircases, converted lofts, reconstructed barns and more. Part Two: Details Exterior Details Doors and Windows Floors, Walls and Ceilings Architectural Details Light and Heat Kitchen Fittings Bathroom Fixtures Hardware Part Three: Sources Contact information for major North American manufacturers, suppliers and distributors of high-end, hard-to-find residential building materials and accoutrements.


Following a series of highly publicised environmental issues relating to subsidence of rivers, streams, lakes and other surface water bodies, as well as groundwater systems, the longwall coal mining approval and environmental management process in NSW now has a significant focus on predicting, monitoring, managing and rehabilitating adverse effects on surface water and groundwater systems. Due to the recent public and regulatory focus on the issue, future longwall layouts and approvals may be required to demonstrate that unacceptable effects will not be imposed on rivers and streams. This may result in significant changes to panel layouts, or if no acceptable management and rehabilitation measures are available, the worst case scenario may occur where an environmentally sensitive water body may not be undermined. The range of environmental effects that have been directly observed by the author, as well as reported effects, or effects that could be anticipated from subsidence in NSW coalfields are outlined. Measures required to assess the potential effects on environmental systems, potential rehabilitation requirements, potential risk assessment and management procedures relevant to water related issues are discussed. The effects of longwall subsidence are outlined for a range of geomorphological areas, whilst an indicative process that can be used to assess the potential severity of effects on surface water and groundwater systems, which leads to the degree of attention required to manage them, are described.


Silicon based solar cells are the dominant photovoltaic (PV) technology worldwide, but like
any technology they must be subject to regular development to maintain this position. The
refinement of raw silicon is an expensive process and significant cost reductions are
achievable by reducing the bulk material usage. An indirect band-gap semiconductor, silicon
is an inefficient absorber of light; therefore light trapping and absorption enhancing schemes
are necessary to permit effective reduction in material usage. This is described as making
the material optically thick but physically thin. A common approach to this problem is the
fabrication of nano and micro-scale rod-like structures on the surface of thin silicon devices
which decouple the optical absorption length from the electronic carrier collection distance.
This has the added benefit of reducing the material quality requirement which is typically
difficult to maintain for thin silicon as it would likely be deposited as a polycrystalline film
rather than utilising conventional single crystal or multicrystalline wafers.
This project investigates the fabrication and performance of rod-like PV structures which
have diameters on the low micron scale (1 µm and 10 µm). The design and fabrication of the
structures is described together with results on their optical properties. These demonstrate
an average reduction in reflection, compared to planar silicon, of 40% for the 1 µm diameter
features and 10-20% for the 10 µm diameter features.
Various rod configurations were modelled optically by finite difference time domain (FDTD)
simulations and comparisons of the modelled and measured reflection are presented. The
results demonstrate good correlation and lend confidence to the use of modelling to inform
the design of future structuring schemes. This was believed to be the first systematic study
of identical geometry modelled and fabricated devices, particularly on the micron scale.
Proximity rapid thermal diffusion (PRTD) is developed as a doping technique and applied for
emitter formation. It is believed that this is the first time that this process has been used in
conjunction with structured devices for PV purposes. This approach permitted the formation
of n-type emitters as shallow as ≈ 200 nm, with a diffusion time of less than three minutes
and without the use of toxic process gases or diffusion specific hardware. Work undertaken
to optimise the emitter formation process is described and results are presented which
support the premise that whilst good absorption is clearly important in a solar cell, without an
effective emitter, good efficiencies will remain out of reach.
Devices featuring 1 µm diameter rods confirmed this, proving challenging to form effective
emitter layers on and were limited to matching planar device performance (conversion
efficiency of 5.63% vs 5.64% for the planar control). Whilst subsequent refinement of the emitter diffusion process demonstrated the potential to exceed planar performance, it
reiterated the challenging nature of fabricating effective electronic devices involving features
on this scale.
Conversely, devices with 10 µm diameter rods, whilst exhibiting more modest absorption
improvements over equivalent planar devices, ultimately achieved peak efficiencies of
7.68%, a slightly greater than 2% absolute increase over their planar counterparts.
The open circuit voltage (Voc) of all devices with length-diameter aspect ratios of 1:1 was
found to be in the region 10-20 mV higher than that of a planar control device, whilst devices
with 2:1 aspect ratio exhibited Voc values which were broadly comparable to the control. This
was generally contradictory to the literature which commonly reports Voc reductions of
10-50 mV for devices with increased surface area compared to planar.
The development of various cell contacting schemes is discussed with a particular focus on
aluminium doped zinc oxide (AZO), a transparent conductive oxide (TCO). In addition to the
expected electronic properties, the sputter deposited films were found to possess useful antireflective
performance. Results are presented for conformal coatings of AZO applied to rod
structures, with 50-60% reduction in reflection demonstrated over planar silicon for 10 µm
diameter rods and over 70% for 1 µm diameter features.


Learning distance functions with side information plays a key role in many machine learning and data mining applications. Conventional approaches often assume a Mahalanobis distance function. These approaches are limited in two aspects: (i) they are computationally expensive (even infeasible) for high dimensional data because the size of the metric is in the square of dimensionality; (ii) they assume a fixed metric for the entire input space and therefore are unable to handle heterogeneous data. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme that learns nonlinear Bregman distance functions from side information using a non-parametric approach that is similar to support vector machines. The proposed scheme avoids the assumption of fixed metric by implicitly deriving a local distance from the Hessian matrix of a convex function that is used to generate the Bregman distance function. We also present an efficient learning algorithm for the proposed scheme for distance function learning. The extensive experiments with semi-supervised clustering show the proposed technique (i) outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches for distance function learning, and (ii) is computationally efficient for high dimensional data.


The performance of a shared memory multiprocessor system with a multiple-bus interconnection network is studied in this paper. The effect of bus and memory contention is modeled using a probabilistic model and a closed form solution for the acceptance probability of each processor is presented. It is assumed that each processor in the system has a distinct priority assigned to it and that arbitration is based on priority. Whenever a request from a processor is rejected due to bus or memory conflicts, the request is resubmitted until granted. Based on the model, individual processor acceptance probabilities are first estimated, from which the effective memory bandwidth is computed. The accuracy of the analytical model is verified based on simulation results. Results from the model are compared against other approximate models previously reported in literature. It is observed that the inaccuracy of the model measured in terms of error from simulation results is less than that in previously reported studies. Index Terms-Acceptance probability, effective memory bandwidth, interconnection network, multiple-bus, multiprocessor, performance modeling and evaluation. 1 ~NTRODUCTION


We introduce an intersection type system for the lambda-mu calculus that is
invariant under subject reduction and expansion. The system is obtained by
describing Streicher and Reus's denotational model of continuations in the
category of omega-algebraic lattices via Abramsky's domain-logic approach. This
provides at the same time an interpretation of the type system and a proof of
the completeness of the system with respect to the continuation models by means
of a filter model construction. We then define a restriction of our system,
such that a lambda-mu term is typeable if and only if it is strongly
normalising. We also show that Parigot's typing of lambda-mu terms with
classically valid propositional formulas can be translated into the restricted
system, which then provides an alternative proof of strong normalisability for
the typed lambda-mu calculus.


This volume brings together 200 previously unpublished images (28 in full colour) as it examines the earliest photographic process and its effect on the way we view ourselves. For this collection, John Wood selected active images of ordinary Americans living and working: at weddings, river baptisms, band concerts, and political meetings, on farms and in factories. In the eight essays that accompany the images, leading art, photographic, and social historians provide diverse and perceptive readings of the role the daguerreotype played in shaping America's self-image. Editor John Wood addresses the American portrait, David Stannard writes on sex and death in the daguerreotype, Peter Palmquist reviews the role of daguerreotypes in the settlement of the American West, John Stilgoe discusses landscape and daguerreotypes, Dolores Kilgo offers an alternative aesthetic to daguerreotypes, John Graf focuses on the militia as a social institution depicted visually in nineteenth-century America, Brooks Johnson deals with daguerreian images of Americans at work, and Jeanne Verhulst reveals how modern-day artists have revived the daguerreotype.


Normal liver has a great potential of regenerative capacity after partial hepatectomy. In clinic, however, most patients receiving partial hepatectomy are usually suffering from chronic liver diseases with severely damaged hepatocyte population. Under these conditions, activation of hepatic progenitor cell (oval cell in rodents) population might be considered as an alternative mean to enhance liver functional recovery. Vitamin K2 has been shown to promote liver functional recovery in patients with liver cirrhosis. In this study, we explored the possibility of vitamin K2 treatment in activating hepatic oval cell for liver regeneration with the classic 2-acetamido-fluorene/partial hepatectomy (2-AAF/PH) model in Sprague-Dawley rats. In 2-AAF/PH animals, vitamin K2 treatment induced a dose-dependent increase of liver regeneration as assessed by the weight ratio of remnant liver versus whole body and by measuring serum albumin level. In parallel, a drastic expansion of oval cell population as assessed by anti-OV6 and anti-CK19 immunostaining was noticed in the periportal zone of the remnant liver. Since matrilin-2 was linked to oval cell proliferation and liver regeneration after partial hepatectomy, we assessed its expression at both the mRNA and protein levels. The results revealed a significant increase after vitamin K2 treatment in parallel with the expansion of oval cell population. Consistently, knocking down matrilin-2 expression in vivo largely reduced vitamin K2-induced liver regeneration and oval cell proliferation in 2-AAF/PH animals. In conclusion, these data suggest that vitamin K2 treatment enhances liver regeneration after partial hepatectomy, which is associated with oval cell expansion and matrilin-2 up-regulation.


Objectives People with dementia are more vulnerable to complications in urgent health situations due to older age, increased comorbidity, higher dependency on others and cognitive impairment. This review explored the factors associated with urgent care use in dementia and the experiences of people with dementia, informal carers and professionals. Design Scoping review. The search strategy and data synthesis were informed by people with dementia and carers. Data sources Searches of CINAHL, Embase, Medline, PsycINFO, PubMed were conducted alongside handsearches of relevant journals and the grey literature through 15 January 2019. Eligibility criteria Empirical studies including all research designs, and other published literature exploring factors associated with urgent care use in prehospital and emergency room settings for people with dementia were included. Two authors independently screened studies for inclusion. Data extraction and synthesis Data were extracted using charting techniques and findings were synthesised according to content and themes. Results Of 2967 records identified, 54 studies were included in the review. Specific factors that influenced use of urgent care included: (1) common age-related conditions occurring alongside dementia, (2) dementia as a diagnosis increasing or decreasing urgent care use, (3) informal and professional carers, (4) patient characteristics such as older age or behavioural symptoms and (5) the presence or absence of community support services. Included studies reported three crucial components of urgent care situations: (1) knowledge of the patient and dementia as a condition, (2) inadequate non-emergency health and social care support and (3) informal carer education and stress. Conclusions The scoping review highlighted a wider variety of sometimes competing factors that were associated with urgent care situations. Improved and increased community support for non-urgent situations, such as integrated care, caregiver education and dementia specialists, will both mitigate avoidable urgent care use and improve the experience of those in crisis.


Mobile malware has grown in scale and complexity, as a consequence of the unabated uptake of smartphones worldwide. Malware writers have been developing detection evasion techniques which are rapidly making anti-malware technologies uneffective. In particular, zero-days malware is able to easily pass signature based detection, while dynamic analysis based techniques, which could be more accurate and robust, are too costly or inappropriate to real contexts, especially for reasons related to usability. This paper discusses a technique for discriminating Android malware from trusted applications that does not rely on signature, but on identifying a vector of features obtained from the static analysis of the Android's Dalvik code. Experimentation accomplished on a sample of 11,200 applications revealed that the proposed technique produces high precision (over 93%) in mobile malware detection, with an accuracy of 95%.


In this article, we examine debates that have unfolded over two controversial proposals, both introduced in 2011, about how to regulate mezcal. Mezcals are distilled agave spirits that have been produced in Mexico for at least the last four hundred years. Critics of the proposed regulations argued that they threatened the livelihoods of thousands of small mezcal distillers and aimed to consolidate the power of industrial tequila and mezcal producers. Surprisingly, a transnational movement of retailers and bartenders aligned themselves with small mezcal producers and defeated the industrial elites. Here, we show how arguments on both sides of the debate focused on the market and consumer rights. We argue that there is a need to move beyond market-based labels in order to create more democratic, participatory, and inclusive ways of protecting, valuing, and preserving local foods and drinks and the people who make them.


This exploratory study applies and extends a new model of media attendance to examine factors that determine current levels of sharing files through peer-to-peer networks among college students, and to predict downloaders' intentions to discontinue the behavior in the future. In a multiple regression analysis, downloading activity was found to be positively related to deficient self-regulation and the expected social outcomes of downloading behavior. Downloading activity was lessened by dissatisfaction with poor quality downloads. Those who are willing to discontinue downloading are motivated by fear of punishment, but skilled and habitual downloaders were unlikely to discontinue. Normative beliefs also affected downloading. The perception that downloading was morally unacceptable was positively related to intentions to discontinue downloading, while beliefs that the behavior was morally acceptable were positively related to current downloading activity.


Water is a vital element for our existence but secure supply is challenged by
population pressures and climate change. To ensure water security, it is essential to
explore new sources and to recycle water for non-potable applications to reduce
demand for the more valuable potable water. Membranes are key to the ability to treat
such water sources to the required quality. Seawater pretreatment for reverse osmosis
(RO) with microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) membranes is technically and
economically feasible with significant advantages over conventional granular media
filtration. In these applications, current commercial MF and UF membranes may have
shorter lifespans and can wear irreversibly over time, especially in the presence of
abrasive particles in seawater and other challenging water sources. Recent work in the
literature has shown that the physical strength, flux and antifouling properties of
membranes can be improved by incorporation of nanoparticles. In this work, advanced
nanocomposite membranes were prepared and studied for improvements in physical
durability with particular interest in resistance to abrasion. Very little is currently
published in the open literature on this subject possibly due to the economic and
regulatory sensitive nature of the issue.


A simple model for two-dimensional photonic crystal devices consists of a finite number of possibly different circular cylinders centered on lattice points of a square or triangular lattice and surrounded by a homogeneous or layered background medium. The Dirichlet-to-Neumann (DtN) map method is a special method for analyzing the scattering of an incident wave by such a structure. It is more efficient than existing numerical or semianalytic methods, such as the finite element method and the multipole method, since it takes advantage of the underlying lattice structure and the simple geometry of the unit cells. The DtN map of a unit cell is a relation between a wave field component and its normal derivative on the cell boundary, and it can be used to avoid further computation inside the unit cell. In this paper, an improved DtN map method is developed by constructing special DtN maps for boundary and corner unit cells using the method of fictitious sources.


Anxiety disorders in childhood and adolescence are extremely common and are often associated with lifelong psychiatric disturbance. Consistent with DSM-5 and the extant literature, this review concerns the assessment and treatment of specific phobias, separation anxiety disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder and agoraphobia. Evidence-based psychological treatments (cognitive behaviour therapy; CBT) for these disorders have been developed and investigated, and in recent years promising low-intensity versions of CBT interventions have been proposed that offer a means to increase access to evidence-based treatments. There is some evidence of effectiveness of pharmacological treatments for anxiety disorders in children and young people, however, routine prescription is not recommended due to concerns about potential harm.


Background. The objective of this study was to compare the sensitivity and specificity of 5 abdominal views for detecting free intraperitoneal fluid in trauma patients later diagnosed with hepatic or splenic injuries. Methods. This retrospective study conducted over a 17-month period enrolled patients with trauma. A Focused Abdominal Sonogram for Trauma (FAST) examination was done using 5 abdominal views. Exploratory laparotomy or computed tomography (CT) confirmed the presence of intraperitoneal fluid and associated injuries. The sensitivity and specificity were determined. Results. Of the 245 study patients, 29 had injuries to the liver or spleen or both. The 5-view FAST examination's sensitivity for detecting free intraperitoneal fluid associated with hepatic, splenic, or combined injuries was 77%, 90%, and 100%, respectively. The sensitivity of the single Morison's pouch view in detecting free intraperitoneal fluid associated with hepatic, splenic, or combined injuries was 38%, 20%, and 67%, respectively. Conclusion. For identifying free intraperitoneal fluid associated with hepatic or splenic injuries, no single view of the FAST examination could match the sensitivity provided by the 5-view technique.


Glutamate is best known as a neurotransmitter, but glutamate is also present in the blood, and various glutamate receptors are found in tissues that include pancreatic β cells and bone cells. Morrell et al. add an important new target for glutamate regulation--platelets. Platelets store glutamate and have glutamate transporters, and Morrell et al. used a real-time enzymatic assay to show that glutamate was released during aggregation of human platelets induced in vitro with thrombin. Immunoblotting showed that platelets express AMPA (α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid) receptors. Glutamate alone did not cause platelet activation, but it did enhance activation in response to thrombin receptor-activating peptide (TRAP-6), and pharmacological studies indicated that glutamate acted through AMPA receptors. The authors used studies with Na+-sensitive dye and electrophysiological experiments to determine that AMPA receptor activation increased Na+ influx and promoted depolarization of the plasma membrane. Platelets respond to many regulators, and AMPA receptor activation enhanced the response of platelets to agonists that act through heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide-binding protein (G protein)-coupled receptors. The authors also provided evidence from intravital microscopy to show that platelets from mice lacking the GluR1 subunit of the AMPA receptor had delayed thrombosis of experimentally damaged mesenteric arteries in vivo. Occlusion of arteries by thrombosis is a key mechanism in the deadly effects of cardiovascular disease and stroke. Thus, the authors suggest that AMPA receptors might provide a valuable new target for therapeutic inhibition of thrombosis. C. N. Morrell, H. Sun, M. Ikeda, J.-C. Beique, A. M. Swaim, E. Mason, T. V. Martin, L. E. Thompson, O. Gozen, D. Ampagoomian, R. Sprengel, J. Rothstein, N. Faraday, R. Huganir, C. J. Lowenstein, Glutamate mediates platelet activation through the AMPA receptor. J. Exp. Med. 205, 575-584 (2008). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Torrefaction is a thermo-chemical process that reduces the moisture content of wood and transforms it into a brittle, char-type material. The thermo-chemical process can reduce the mass of wood by 20-30% resulting in a denser, higher-valued product that can be transported more economically than traditional wood chips. Through torrefaction, wood may retain 90% of the energy value. This energy dense end-product can be used as a coal replacement or co-fired/co-milled with coal in electricity generating power plants. Torrefied wood can be used as a soil amendment, for backyard grilling, residential heating, or as a feedstock in gasification processes. This paper is a literature synthesis that will present (1) the torrefaction process, (2) current developments in commercial torrefaction equipment, (3) characteristics of and markets for torrefied wood, and (4) feedstock specifications for torrefaction.


We investigated the evolution of quaterrylene thin films on SiO(2) and on an octadecyltrichlorosilane self-assembled monolayer (OTS-SAM) to examine the impact of film strains on the growth processes and evolving structure. Surface modification by SAMs allowed tailoring of the growth process from a Stranski-Krastanov (SK) mode (layer-plus-island) on the SiO(2) surface to a Frank-van der Merwe mode (layer-by-layer) on the OTS surface. Detailed structural analysis by x-ray diffraction techniques confirmed that the SK mode was driven by lattice strain in the initial wetting layers on the SiO(2) surface. On the other hand, strain-free wetting layers were already formed at the beginning of growth on the OTS surface, thereby suppressing three-dimensional island formation. Moreover, the films on the SiO(2) surface were found to incorporate high microstrain induced by crystal defects such as dislocations and a mosaic structure. In contrast, few crystal defects were present in the films on OTS surface, demonstrating that OTS treatment enables marked improvement of the molecular alignment. These results clearly indicate that the lattice strain induced by the molecular-substrate interaction is essential for controlling the overall growth process.


The Generalized Minimum Residual (GMRES) method is one of the most widely-used iterative methods for solving nonsymmetric linear systems of equations. In recent years, techniques to avoid communication in GMRES have gained attention because in comparison to floating-point operations, communication is becoming increasingly expensive on modern computers. Since graphics processing units (GPUs) are now becoming crucial component in computing, we investigate the effectiveness of these techniques on multicore CPUs with multiple GPUs. While we present the detailed performance studies of a matrix powers kernel on multiple GPUs, we particularly focus on orthogonalization strategies that have a great impact on both the numerical stability and performance of GMRES, especially as the matrix becomes sparser or ill-conditioned. We present the experimental results on two eight-core Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs with three NDIVIA Fermi GPUs and demonstrate that significant speedups can be obtained by avoiding communication, either on a GPU or between the GPUs. As part of our study, we investigate several optimization techniques for the GPU kernels that can also be used in other iterative solvers besides GMRES. Hence, our studies not only emphasize the importance of avoiding communication on GPUs, but they also provide insight about the effects of these optimization techniques on the performance of the sparse solvers, and may have greater impact beyond GMRES.


The impact of hand osteoarthritis on the handwriting of elderly people: A clinical trial of assistive technology In New Zealand osteoarthritis affects seven percent of the population and most commonly affects hands. People with hand osteoarthritis report that decreased hand function affects the speed and legibility of their handwriting, thus there is the potential for assistive technology to be applied in this setting. The hypothesis of this research was that a new, prototype pen may improve comfort when writing and that script legibility may also be improved or at least not diminish. This new pen was compared for efficacy with a pen developed commercially for people with hand osteoarthritis and with participants' usual pens. Handwriting samples from 36 participants were evaluated where participants used either the prototype pen or the commercial pen and their usual pen. The research also included semi-structured interviews on the impact of living with arthritis. Over 78% of participants reported that handwriting was difficult for them, and more than 81% wrote daily and rated handwriting as essential: handwriting was described as a means of maintaining independence and social relationships. The mean writing speed was slower using the prototype pen than the usual or commercially available pen. There was no difference in writing legibility when using any of the pens; however, the commercially available pen was rated as better than the participant's usual pen for comfort. Customised pens may enable older people with hand osteoarthritis to maintain legible handwriting ensuring continued participation in their communities. Keywords; hand osteoarthritis, handwriting, writing aids


To elicit an affected population's preferences for, e.g., better health or environment stated preference (SP) methods are often used. SP methods are based on hypothetical market settings which necessitates validity tests of the results. This study describes a validity test on the basis of theoretical predictions and empirical findings for private and public safety measures. According to the test, public willingness to pay (WTP) should exceed private WTP.


The commentators have raised many pertinent points that allow us to refine and clarify our view. We classify our response comments into seven sections: automaticity; developmental and educational questions; priming; multiple representations or multiple access(?); terminology; methodological advances; and simulated cognition and numerical cognition. We conclude that the default numerical representations are not abstract.


Digital 3D models are key components in many industrial and scientific sectors. In numerous domains polygon meshes have become a de facto standard for model representation. In practice meshes often have a number of defects and flaws that make them incompatible with quality requirements of specific applications. Hence, repairing such defects in order to achieve compatibility is a highly important task – in academic as well as industrial applications. In this tutorial we first systematically analyze typical application contexts together with their requirements and issues, as well as the various types of defects that typically play a role. Subsequently, we consider existing techniques to process, repair, and improve the structure, geometry, and topology of imperfect meshes, aiming at making them appropriate to case-by-case requirements. We present seminal works and key algorithms, discuss extensions and improvements, and analyze the respective advantages and disadvantages depending on the application context. Furthermore, we outline directions where further research is particularly important or promising.


The radiated power emanating from a bent single-mode fiber is computed for various radii of curvature by a full-vectorial analysis. The only approximation is the truncation of a spectral series, the accuracy of which can be controlled. Hence, the complex propagation coefficient of the fundamental mode approaches the exact value and consequently, the bending loss does as well. Two widely accepted bending-loss formulas, based on asymptotic approximations to scalar-field theory, are compared with our full-vectorial results. Both have a limited region of validity. For simplicity, the comparison is performed on a step-index fiber with a cladding of infinite extent. However, the full-wave method is capable of dealing with arbitrary index profiles.


ABSTRACT Low-carbon mobility (LCM) features strongly in debates about the sustainability of cities and their resilience in the face of demographic, economic, and climate change. Transport is a major source of carbon emissions and there are indications that these continue to increase, despite the considerable recent advances in vehicle, engine, and fuel technologies. Reducing carbon emissions from transport may become more difficult, not easier. A particular issue relates to the New World cities, typified by those of North America and Australasia, which largely developed from the latter half of the nineteenth century onward and whose transportation systems were largely based around private vehicle ownership and usage. These cities are typically composed of low-density, dispersed suburbs, which are highly car dependent and resource and carbon emission intensive. This article develops a research agenda directed at determining and testing policy and planning measures relevant to the quest for low carbon mobility in New World cities. It suggests a rich agenda for essential research on LCM. Much of this agenda falls within the realm of the integration of transport and land use, with attention to urban design details to enhance the perceptions of and opportunities to use low carbon transport alternatives. Research topics identified for LCM research include (1) urban design and land use–transport integration (LUTI), (2) low carbon mobility policies directed at achieving widespread behavior change, (3) opportunities for new technology and its application, including requirements for systems and infrastructure, and (4) analysis and tools for informed decision making, including modeling, measurement, visualization, and especially assessment.


We present new tomographic models of the Nazca slab under South America from 6°S to 32°S, and from 95 km to lower mantle (895 km) depths. By combining data from 14 separate networks in the central Andes, we use finite-frequency teleseismic P-wave tomography to image the Nazca slab from the upper mantle into the mantle transition zone (MTZ) and the uppermost lower mantle on a regional scale. Our tomography shows that there is significant along-strike variation in the morphology of the Nazca slab in the MTZ and the lower mantle. Thickening of the slab in the MTZ is observed north of the Bolivian orocline, possibly related to buckling or folding of the slab in response to the penetration of a near-vertical slab into the higher-viscosity lower mantle, which decreases the sinking velocity of the slab. South of the orocline, the slab continues into the lower mantle with only minor deformation in the MTZ. In the lower mantle, a similar difference in morphology is observed. North of 16°S, the slab anomaly in the lower mantle is more coherent and penetrates more steeply into the lower mantle. To the south, the slab dip appears to be decreasing just below the 660 km discontinuity. This change in slab morphology in the MTZ and lower mantle appears to correspond to the change in the dip of the slab as it enters the MTZ, from steeply dipping in the north to more moderately dipping in the south.


Abstract The return accumulation approach used in studies on accounting-related anomalies cannot be replicated in a practical context because the number and identity of individual observations within a portfolio are assigned within a research context before the accounting information of all firms in the portfolio would actually be available in real time. We explore this issue by re-examining the results in Piotroski (2000) [Value investing: the use of historical financial statement information to separate winners from losers, Journal of Accounting Research, 38(supplement), 1−44]. We find that the relationship between Piotroski's fundamental signals and subsequent returns is partly driven by the choice of return accumulation periods. Because the method used in Piotroski is typical of those often employed in the accounting literature, this study suggests that evidence of profitable trading strategies and market inefficiency in the literature is likely to be overstated.


This project develops a new and unique obstacle detection sensor for horizontal directional drilling (HDD) equipment. The development of this new technology will greatly improve the reliability and safety of natural gas HDD construction practices. This sensor utilizes a differential soil impedance measurement technique that will be sensitive to the presence of plastic and ceramic, as well as metallic obstacles. The use of HDD equipment has risen significantly in the gas industry because HDD provides a much more cost-effective and less disruptive method for gas pipe installation than older, trenching methods. However, there have been isolated strikes of underground utilities by HDD equipment, which may have been avoided if methods were available to detect other underground obstacles when using HDD systems. GTI advisors from the gas industry have ranked the value of solving the obstacle detection problem as the most important research and development project for GTI to pursue using Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) funds available through its industry partner, GRI. GTI proposes to develop a prototype down-hole sensor system that is simple and compact. The sensor utilizes an impedance measurement technique that is sensitive to the presence of metallic or nonmetallic objects in the proximity of the HDDmore » head. The system will use a thin film sensor conformal with the drill head. The impedance of the soil will be measured with a low frequency signal injected through the drill head itself. A pair of bridge type impedance sensors, mounted orthogonal to one another, is capacitively coupled to the soil. Inclusions in the soil will cause changes to the sensor balance distinguishable from homogeneous soil. The sensor will provide range and direction data for obstacles near the HDD head. The goal is to provide a simple, robust system that provides the information required to avoid obstacles. This must be done within the size and ruggedness constraints of the HDD equipment. Imaging obstacles is not within the scope of this work, as it would require a more elaborate sensor than is practical within the HDD head.« less


Sodium-coupled bicarbonate absorption from renal proximal tubules (PTs) plays a pivotal role in the maintenance of systemic acid/base balance. Indeed, mutations in the Na+-HCO3 − cotransporter NBCe1, which mediates a majority of bicarbonate exit from PTs, cause severe proximal renal tubular acidosis associated with ocular and other extrarenal abnormalities. Sodium transport in PTs also plays an important role in the regulation of blood pressure. For example, PT transport stimulation by insulin may be involved in the pathogenesis of hypertension associated with insulin resistance. Type 1 angiotensin (Ang) II receptors in PT are critical for blood pressure homeostasis. Paradoxically, the effects of Ang II on PT transport are known to be biphasic. Unlike in other species, however, Ang II is recently shown to dose-dependently stimulate human PT transport via nitric oxide/cGMP/ERK pathway, which may represent a novel therapeutic target in human hypertension. In this paper, we will review the physiological and pathophysiological roles of PT transport.


The use of computer-aided prototyping (CAP) with the RPM Emulation System is described. RPM creates a hardware functional prototype from an ASIC or full-custom chip netlist. It reads the chip netlist and then converts the chip design gates into a prototype design. It then synthesizes the prototype design, obtaining the information it needs to configure the reprogrammable hardware, primarily with partitioning and placement and routing technology. Finally, it physically implements the prototype design by electronically configuring the reprogrammable hardware. RPM includes embedded tools for interactive debugging with access to any internal design node, and a facility for handling quick incremental changes to the design. It is argued that other techniques such as silicon prototyping and manual prototyping are not practical; silicon has a poor debugging ability, and manual prototyping cannot handle large designs. The practical benefits of CAP are discussed.<<ETX>>


The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of action research by ten preservice teachers earning their associate's degree in early childhood education from a small university in the West. Their goal was to assess the impact of their teaching on student learning with children birth to 8 years of age. This study represents the use of undergraduate action research in early childhood at the associate degree level, and also contributes to the early childhood teacher education knowledge base in the use of the action research method in early learning centers as a means of professional development as well as a tool to guide daily instruction, problem solving, and decision making. Using a variety of informal assessment procedures, the preservice teachers studied the effects of specific learning strategies or activities, first upon the development and learning of the young children they taught, and then upon the results from the assessments in order to guide further instruction.


We address the question of what software verification can do for the audio community by showcasing some preliminary design ideas and tools for a new framework dedicated to the formal reasoning about Faust programs. We use as a foundation one of the strongest current proof assistants, namely Coq combined with SSReflect. We illustrate the practical impact of our approach via a use case, namely the proof that the implementation of a simple low-pass filter written in the Faust audio programming language indeed meets one of its specification properties. The paper thus serves three purposes: (1) to provide a gentle introduction to the use of formal tools to the audio community, (2) to put forward programming and formal reasoning paradigms we think are well suited to the audio domain and (3) to illustrate this approach on a simple yet practical audio signal processing example, a low-pass filter.


Background: Residential proximity to agricultural pesticide use has been associated with neural tube defects and autism, but more subtle outcomes such as cognition have not been studied. Objectives: We evaluated the relationship between prenatal residential proximity to agricultural use of potentially neurotoxic pesticides and neurodevelopment in 7-year-old children. Methods: Participants included mothers and children (n=283) living in the agricultural Salinas Valley of California enrolled in the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) study. We estimated agricultural pesticide use within 1 km of maternal residences during pregnancy using a geographic information system, residential location, and California's comprehensive agricultural Pesticide Use Report data. We used regression models to evaluate prenatal residential proximity to agricultural use of five potentially neurotoxic pesticide groups (organophosphates, carbamates, pyrethroids, neonicotinoids, and manganese fungicides) and five individual organophosphates (acephate, chlorpyrifos, diazinon, malathion, and oxydemeton-methyl) and cognition in 7-year-old children. All models included prenatal urinary dialkyl phosphate metabolite concentrations. Results: We observed a decrease of 2.2 points [95% confidence interval (CI): −3.9, −0.5] in Full-Scale IQ and 2.9 points (95% CI: −4.4, −1.3) in Verbal Comprehension for each standard deviation increase in toxicity-weighted use of organophosphate pesticides. In separate models, we observed similar decrements in Full-Scale IQ with each standard deviation increase of use for two organophosphates (acephate and oxydemeton-methyl) and three neurotoxic pesticide groups (pyrethroids, neonicotinoids, and manganese fungicides). Conclusions: This study identified potential relationships between maternal residential proximity to agricultural use of neurotoxic pesticides and poorer neurodevelopment in children. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP504


There is continued investment and attention being paid to programs of disengagement and deradicalization (D&D) for Islamist terrorists. Whilst there is some evidence of positive effects of different programs, it is widely acknowledged that rehabilitative efforts with terrorists are in their infancy and that there is a great deal of potential for learning, development and refinement. The present article examines rehabilitation programs for Islamist militants in light of the literature on rehabilitative interventions for "ordinary" criminal offenders, which have been in development now for more than 50 years. Principles of best practice as well as challenges in the field of criminal corrections are outlined, and the extent to which these may be applicable in the context of dealing with terrorists is discussed. Although the content of criminal and terrorist rehabilitation programs will always differ, criminology can help to clarify issues, improve practice, and develop realistic expectations for rehabilitation of Islamist terrorists.


A recurring problem in security is reverse engineering binary code to recover high-level language data abstractions and types. High-level programming languages have data abstractions such as buffers, structures, and local variables that all help programmers and program analyses reason about programs in a scalable manner. During compilation, these abstractions are removed as code is translated down to operations on registers and one globally addressed memory region. Reverse engineering consists of "undoing" the compilation to recover high-level information so that programmers, security professionals, and analyses can all more easily reason about the binary code.
In this paper we develop novel techniques for reverse engineering data type abstractions from binary programs. At the heart of our approach is a novel type reconstruction system based upon binary code analysis. Our techniques and system can be applied as part of both static or dynamic analysis, thus are extensible to a large number of security settings. Our results on 87 programs show that TIE is both more accurate and more precise at recovering high-level types than existing mechanisms.


A five-storey benchmark building model is base-isolated using six identical rubber bearings, and subjected to four different ground motions including the Northridge 1994, Hachinohe 1968, El- Centro 1940, and Kobe 1995 earthquakes. Vibration responses of the building model with and without rubber bearings were calculated from the corresponding equations of motion. It was found that the isolation effectiveness offered by the bearings to the vibration inputs is strongly dependent on the type of earthquake motion. For example, the vibration response of the isolated model was improved when subjected to the Northridge 1994, Hachinohe 1968, and Kobe 1995 earthquakes, but the best results were obtained when the Hachinohe earthquake was applied. The maximum accelerations, displacements, inter-storey drifts and base shear force as well as over-turning moment for the baseisolated model are significantly reduced, and the vibration amplitude of the accelerations, and interstorey drifts decreased much more quickly with time than those without rubber bearings. The contribution of the second vibration mode to earthquake response was also identified. On the other hand, the present isolators failed to produce an effective protection against the El-Centro 1940 earthquake.


ABSTRACT An exceptionally complete and extensive new exposure of the Catskill Formation (Upper Devonian) in the Susquehanna Valley of central Pennsylvania demonstrates that fluctuations of relative sea level of at least two orders in the Milankovitch range affected its depositional history well into the Famennian Stage. Seven incised-valley-fill (IVF) units, ranging in thickness from 10 to 33 m, are present up to about 600 m above the base of the Sherman Creek Member. Where fully developed, they have the three-part vertical sequence recently proposed as the signature of IVFs: (1) above a basal scour surface, cross-stratified sandstone and conglomerate deposited in environments that were initially high-intensity braided fluvial but that became increasingly affected by marine storm processes; (2) a medial unit of green-gray fissile mudrock containing symmetrical sandstone ripples in flaser and linsen forms accumulated in the anoxic calm of the central zone of an estuary; and (3) an upper unit of wave-rippled sandstone and/or channelform sandstone representing progradational bayhead filling of the estuary. Other marine influences on deposition of the Sherman Creek Member are indicated by a diverse suite of brachiopods and by wave-rippled sandstone. A rough estimate suggests that these marine incursions into the Catskill coastal-alluvial plain represent fourth-order fluctuations of relative sea level. Features of the Irish Valley Member confirm that deposition of fissile mudrock took place on the marine shelf under low-energy, anoxic conditions only intermittently interrupted by storms, and that thicker (> 2 m) sandstone units represent sharp-based shelf sand bars. Fifth-order fluctuations of relative sea level produced numerous, repetitious shallowing-upward sequences in both paralic and shelf facies of the Irish Valley. These interpretations provide the basis for sequence-stratigraphic analysis of both members of the Catskill Formation as a unified depositional system. In lowstand phases, Catskill streams erosionally incised their courses into the coastal-alluvial plain, bypassing coarser sediment to the shelf, where it accumulated as lowstand shelf fans. In the transgressive phase, incised valleys were drowned as transgressive surfaces moved diachronously upvalley, changing braided fluvial systems to storm-wave-influenced marginal-marine sand environments, followed by the establishment of anoxic, deeper estuarine conditions. On the shelf, transgressions restored muddy conditions of low-energy and anoxia. Highstand conditions resulted in filling of the incised valley by aggradation in the estuary and progradation at the bayhead, gradually returning the area to pre-incision coastal-alluvial plain conditions.


Airspace encounter models, covering close encounter situations that may occur after standard separation assurance has been lost, are a critical component in the safety assessment of aviation procedures and collision avoidance systems. Of particular relevance to Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) is the potential for encountering general aviation aircraft that are flying under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) and are not in contact with air traffic control. In response to the need to develop a model of these types of encounters, Lincoln Laboratory undertook an extensive data collection and modeling effort involving more than 96,000 unconventional aircraft tracks. The outcome of this effort was nine individual models encompassing ultralights, gliders, balloons, and airships. The models use Bayesian networks to represent relationships between dynamic variables and to construct random trajectories that are statistically similar to those observed in the data. The intruder trajectories can be used in fast-time Monte Carlo simulations to estimate collision risk. The model described in this report is one of three developed by Lincoln Laboratory. A correlated encounter model has been developed to represent situations in which it is likely that there would be air traffic control intervention prior to a close encounter. The correlated model applies to encounters involving aircraft receiving Air Traffic Control (ATC) services and with transponders. An encounter with an intruder that does not have a transponder is uncorrelated in the sense that it is unlikely that there would be prior intervention by air traffic control. The uncorrelated model described in this report is based on global databases of pilot-submitted track data. This work is a follow-on to an uncorrelated conventional model developed from recorded radar tracks from aircraft using a 1200 transponder code. A byproduct of this encounter modeling effort was the extraction of feature distributions for unconventional aircraft. This provides an extensive collection of unconventional aircraft behavior in the airspace.


Covers iOS 7 and Xcode 5 Learning iOS Developmentis the perfect first book for every new iOS 7 developer. It delivers a complete foundation for iOS development, including an introduction to the Objective-C language, Xcode development tools, best-practice user interface development, and best practices for all aspects of app development and deployment. Throughout Learning iOS Development, you explore the iOS development process as you create and expand a handy car valet app.The hands-on projects enable you to create meaningful code as soon as possible, building confidence and mastery.The annotated code listings work with all the latest iOS technology, so youll be ready to jump into this exciting development field. With Learning iOS Development, its easy to learn at your own pace, on your own--or to deepen the knowledge you may be gaining in a classroom or workplace. Coverage includes Installing all the tools, programs, and devices you need to create iOS apps Building your first app and mastering the essentials of Objective-C Making the most effective use of device memory Storyboarding your interface and connecting it to your underlying code Using Auto Layout to support devices with different sizes and orientations Managing app data with Core Data Creating sophisticated custom gestures Deploying your app through Apples App Store Quickly localizing your app for multiple languages and countries Implementing scrolling, navigation, table views, and other core iOS features Mastering advanced table views and navigation, including iPad split views Passing code encapsulated in blocks for communicating between parts of your app and with the system Tuning and debugging your apps for the best performance and quality Discovering great resources to take your next steps as an iOS developer


Abstract
An attempt at a comprehensive measurement of illness documented by physicians and infection in man caused by dengue and chikungunya viruses was made in Bangkok and Thonburi during all or portions of 1962–1964. Inpatient data were collected directly from all metropolitan hospitals. Outpatients were studied only at Children's Hospital. In 1962, a seroepidemiologic study of arbovirus infection was made in 7,093 Bangkok households in 19 separate areas, from five of which mosquitoes were collected for enumeration and attempts to isolate virus. During the study, 10,194 patients with hemorrhagic fever were admitted to Bangkok hospitals, and 559 died. At least 80% of these cases were caused by dengue virus. In 1962 alone, it was estimated that between 181,000 and 287,000 dengue illnesses and 44,000 to 70,000 chikungunya illnesses were seen by physicians in outpatient children. Agespecific hospitalization rates peaked at less than 1 year and again at 3 or 4 years, few cases occurring after the age of 15. Hospitalizations were rare in infants during the first 3 months of life; rates then rose abruptly, peaking at 8 months then declining markedly. Hospitalization rates for girls over the age of 1 were consistently higher than for boys. Dengue- and chikungunya-infection rates measured in 1,887 persons bled before and after the rainy season in 1962 were 41% and 31%, respectively. Hospitalization rates varied directly with dengue-virus infection rates but not with income or ethnic group. Hospitalizations occurred within families at almost four times the expected rate. Disease progressed throughout the city and within study areas in a "brush-fire" manner. In contrast to the observations of others, we isolated dengue and chikungunya virus almost exclusively from Aedes aegypti. Although Culex tritaeniorhynchus and Culex gelidus were numerous in light-trap collections, they were rarely attracted to man. These observations suggest a low level of anthropophilia in these species in Thailand and the possibility of a biological barrier to transmission of arboviruses by them to man.


This paper presents the results of an investigation into the influence of hydrodynamics on a preflotation process for the copper sulfide ore from the Fore-Sudetic Monocline deposits in Poland in a flotation machine. The main aim of the preflotation stage for Polish copper ore is to remove the easy-to-float organic matter — organic carbon — that causes serious problems in metallurgical processes. The organic matter is connected with the presence of shale ore. This paper describes the preflotation experiments conducted to investigate the effect of various stirrer speeds. The upgrading selectivity of copper and organic carbon were analyzed and compared. The results show that the effectiveness of separation between organic carbon and copper decreases with increased stirrer speed in the laboratory flotation machine. The more intensive the mixing of the flotation suspension, the lower the selectivity of the preflotation experiment. Lower stirrer speed probably provides lower mechanical entrainment and flotation of copper minerals.


Objective Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) has been reported to improve fatigue and reduced well-being. Both are major problems in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), even with quiescent disease. Low serum DHEA levels are common in SLE. The present work investigates the effects of DHEA administration on fatigue, well-being and functioning in women with inactive SLE. Methods In a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled study, 60 female patients with inactive SLE received 200 mg oral DHEA or placebo. Primary outcome measures were general fatigue, depressive mood, mental well-being and physical functioning. Assessments were made before treatment, after 3, 6 and 12 months on medication, and 6 months after cessation of treatment. Results Patients from the DHEA and placebo group improved on general fatigue (p<0.001) and mental well-being (p=0.04). There was no differential effect of DHEA. The belief that DHEA had been used was a stronger predictor for improvement of general fatigue than the actual use of DHEA (p=0.04). Conclusions The trial does not indicate an effect of daily 200 mg oral DHEA on fatigue and well-being, and therefore DHEA treatment is not recommended in unselected female patients with quiescent SLE. Clinical Trials Registration Number NCT00391924


New Zealand primary school children in technology lessons often design and create an artifact in response to a scenario that relates to their interests and experiences. Usually the task is undertaken over several days. In this paper we draw on data generated within the INSiTE study, a three-year study exploring the nature of effective student-teacher interactions around science and technology ideas. The teacher in this paper planned for her children to create a mask for their forthcoming school production: 'How Maui found the secret of fire'. As the children worked on the macro task, that of designing and making a mask, meso and micro tasks emerged. The teacher assisted the children to identity and resolve these, hearing in mind that the ultimate aim was their successful participation in the school production. When teachers assist children to maintain a focus on the overall or macro task goals their artifact fulfils the specifications of the scenario and children's technology understandings and skills are fostered.


This paper shows the production of foamed concrete reinforced with carbon fibers. Firstly, different mortar mixes were prepared by varying ratio of sand/cement. Continuously, the selected mortar mix was used for the foamed concrete produced due to the results of density, compressive strength, splitting tensile strength and flexural strength test. Secondly, different foam agent amounts (0.8, 1, 1.2 and 1.4 kg/m 3 ) with 10% of silica fume were included in the selected mortar mix to produce the optimum foamed concrete mix depending on the same set of tests mentioned above. Lastly, various volumetric fractions of carbon fibers (0.5, 1 and 1.5%) were incorporated with the optimum foamed concrete mix and the same set of tests was done to examine such foamed concrete reinforced with carbon fibers. The results give acceptable ranges of strength for mortar mix using 1.9 sand/cement ratios. Besides, the foamed concrete produced by the inclusions of foaming agent 1 kg/m 3 shows acceptable ranges of density and strength to be suitable for the reinforcing by carbon fibers. The carbon fiber included in the foamed concrete exhibit significant increases for the strengths. Such increases are varied from about 35% using 1% carbon fibers to 44% and 116% using 1.5% carbon fibers for compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strength, respectively


In this article, we will introduce a co-design method called Storytelling Group that has been developed and tested in three service design cases. Storytelling Group combines collaborative scenario building and focus group discussions. It inspires service design by providing different types of user information: a fictive story of a customer journey is created to illustrate a 'what if' world, users tell real-life stories about their service experiences, users come up with new service ideas, and they are also asked about their opinions and attitudes in a focus-group type of discussion. The method was developed for service design cases where a longer time perspective has an important role. Moreover, the method is a quick start for actual design work but still includes users in the process.


Since the Supreme Court reinforced the state-action doctrine in the early Seventies and ruled that privately owned shopping malls could not qualify as a public forums under the First Amendment, efforts to protect free expression at privately-owned public gathering places have shifted to state courts. In 1980, the California Supreme Court became the first state high court to rule that under its own Constitution shopping malls were public forums. In 1995, the New Jersey Supreme Court was even more emphatic that under its Constitution human rights must prevail over property rights when the two came into conflict. The Court held that when suburban shopping malls replaced the old town squares as public gathering places, free speech had to move to the malls along with the populace. As the drive toward privatization of formerly public space accelerates, courts must now consider the constitutional obligation of private communities. Again, New Jersey courts are taking the lead. Stepping off from the Supreme Court's shopping mall opinion, the Appellate Division has ruled that residential condominiums cannot be turned into "political isolation booths." In a case involving a high-rise condominium, the court held that once the condo association opens a forum for some speech, it must allow access to opposing speech. Professor Askin traces the constitutional history of public forum doctrine under federal and state law -- including the specific incorporation by the New Jersey Supreme Court of the principle of Marsh v. Alabama (the company town case) under the state constitution. The article then explores the implications for the condominium explosion of the New Jersey Supreme Court's observation that: "We do not believe that those who adopted a constitutional provision granting free speech wanted it to diminish in importance as society changed, to be dependent on the unrelated accidents of economic transformation, or to be silenced because of a new way of doing business."


Dutch existing building stock has, according to Dutch governmental policy derived from the European goals, to be renovated towards NetZero in about 2050. However, this goal will not be reached without new digitalized tools, like BIM, 3D scanning and printing, automation and robotization of production processes. To make automation and robotization possible, standardization must be developed through the design, production and maintenance process. But there is already a standardization present in the current building stock, that can be put to use. For the professionals throughout building industry this means that new proficiency and new knowledge has to be achieved. 21st century skills have to be developed, but only after the 21st century skills for professionals have been researched and defined. This paper aims at explaining the interconnection between ICT innovation, recognizing patterns in the building stock and development of personal skills and proficiency for automation in Dutch NetZero building renovation.