Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease found only in humans, which is caused by a spirochete (Treponema pallidum). It infects the genital area, lips, mouth, or anus of both men and women. Patients usually get syphilis from sexual contact with someone who has it. It can also pass from mother to baby during pregnancy. The early stage of syphilis usually causes a single, small, painless sore. Sometimes it causes swelling in nearby lymph nodes. If you do not treat it, syphilis usually causes a non-itchy skin rash, often on your hands and feet. Many people do not notice symptoms for years. Symptoms can go away and come back. The sores caused by syphilis make it easier to get or give someone HIV during sex. If you are pregnant, syphilis can cause birth defects, or you could lose your baby. In rare cases, syphilis causes serious health problems and even death. Syphilis is easy to cure with antibiotics if you catch it early. Correct usage of latex condoms greatly reduces, but does not completely eliminate, the risk of catching or spreading syphilis.


Tape and disc media have their own specific fields of application in magnetic, magneto-optic and optical recording. Tape media are commonly used where a large storage capacity is needed. To meet the increasing demands for larger storage capacities industry has investigated the possibility to use the method of vacuum evaporation for the production of magnetic recording tape. This has resulted in a commercial product called Metal Evaporated tape. In ME-tape production one takes advantage of the special properties of magnetic films evaporated under oblique vapour incidence, a method which has been discovered in 1959 in laboratory experiments. The difference however between industrial production of ME-tape and laboratory scale evaporation of thin film is extreme. The results obtained in the 35 years of experiments with oblique evaporation cannot be used unconditionally for the industrial production of ME-tape. Therefore the necessity for a model relating process conditions to structural and magnetic film properties is evident. In this thesis such a model is constructed using theoretical and experimental results already published in literature, combined with new theory and experiments. A number of experiments with Co80Ni20 evaporated at high angles of incidence are presented, including the first results on experiments with small-scale ME-tape production. In chapter 2 the relation between process conditions and film structure is discussed. The special structure of obliquely evaporated films has its origin in shadowing phenomena during film growth. Because of shadowing the film consists of bundles of inclined columns, the bundles being aligned perpendicularly to the vapour incidence direction. The column inclination angle lies in-between the film normal and the vapour incidence direction. Different models found in literature relating process parameters and film structure are discussed. It is shown that surface diffusion plays an important role, especially the difference between random and directional surface diffusion. The latter is induced by the oblique evaporation process. An attempt is made to give a quantitative expression for the relation between process conditions and surface diffusion including the influence of substrate temperature, rate and contamination with residual gasses. Using the models found in literature and adding the new calculations the relation between surface diffusion and film structure is discussed in detail and compared with measurements found in literature. In chapter 3 the relation between film structure and magnetic properties of obliquely evaporated magnetic thin films is treated. The tilted columnar structure results in a magnetic shape anisotropy. Two methods to calculate the shape anisotropy are compared, one is especially developed for this purpose. Next to the columnar structure also the anisotropic texture orientation and stress distribution contribute to the magnetic anisotropy. All these effects lead to an easy axis of magnetisation tilted out of the film plane. To determine the magnetic anisotropy in such films a measurement method using a torque-magnetometer is presented, leading to a general formulation of the anisotropy energy in arbitrary systems. The magnetic reversal is strongly affected by the magnetic anisotropy and the exchange between spins in adjacent columns. In films where the exchange is continuous throughout the film the tilted easy axis leads to specific magnetic domain structures which are only found in obliquely evaporated magnetic films. With increasing columnar separation the magnetic reversal turns to a mechanism of rotation of magnetisation in magnetically isolated particles, accompanied by a strong increase in coercivity. Furthermore the tilted easy axis causes a dependence of the recording properties on the tape running direction. In chapter 4 and 5 several experiments performed in the CNRS and MESA laboratories are discussed. Where possible a relation with the theory of chapter 2 and 3 is given. For each evaporation set-up used an estimate of the run-to-run reproducibility is made. It is concluded that the run-to-run scatter is mainly caused by small variations in the angle of incidence. This could be prevented by using an improved substrate holder. It is shown that the structural and magnetic properties of obliquely evaporated Co80Ni20 films depend on layer thickness up to a thickness of about 150 nm. Above this thickness the film properties remain constant. It was concluded that the difference is not caused by the change in substrate temperature during evaporation but by the film growth process itself. In preparation of the tape deposition set-up the rate of evaporation had to be increased. Therefore a short investigation on the effect of increase in evaporation on films prepared on Si substrates has been performed. An increase in rate from 0.5 to 20 nms-1 resulted in an increase in coercivity and anisotropy of the film. Since the columnar inclination and the apparent saturation magnetisation remain almost constant, it was concluded that the changes are mainly caused by an increase in crystal anisotropy. The influence of stress however should not be excluded. The observed change in film properties with increasing evaporation rate might be caused by the expected decrease in contamination with H2O molecules. To enable recording experiments, Co80Ni20 is evaporated on tape by the method of continuously varying angle of vapour incidence. For this a special "mini roll coater" was constructed which resembles the much larger roll-coaters used in industry for the production of ME-tape. This mini roll coater is used to study the effect of addition of oxygen on the film structure and its magnetic and recording properties. The recording performance of the tape prepared with this mini-roll coater are still bad in comparison with commercially available ME tape. The aim of the experiment however is not to produce commercial tape but to investigate the relation between process conditions, film structure, magnetic and recording properties. From this perspective the first results are encouraging.


Objective To gauge the potential risk of sexually transmitted infection (STI) as a cause of proctitis in a cohort of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and to gauge whether this cohort could benefit from STI testing in the future. Design Patients attending the IBD clinic were given an anonymous questionnaire recording demographics, sexual behaviour, rectal symptoms, history of receptive anal intercourse (RAI), STIs and attitudes towards sexual health screening. Setting A gastroenterology teaching hospital IBD clinic. Patients 280 consecutive patients attending a teaching hospital IBD clinic over a consecutive 6-week period. All patients had an endoscopic, radiological and/or histological diagnosis of IBD. Results 280 questionnaires were distributed and 274 analysed (3 incomplete, 2 not returned, 1 no sexual activity). 167 female (median: 46 years, range 17–81 years) and 107 males. Two males disclosed RAI and were used as a control. Of the 167 females, 96% were heterosexual, 2.4% were same-sex partners and 1.2% were bisexual. 14% had a history of RAI—this group had more previous STIs (40%) versus those with no history RAI (5%) (p<0.0001; relative risk (RR) 13.41). Chronic rectal pain was more frequent in women with RAI (RR 2.4; p≤0.03). No difference in rectal discharge (RR 1.75; p=0.72) or bleeding (p=0.3). Conclusions This is the first report of sexual behaviours in a non-genitourinary medicine clinic; giving a unique insight into sexual practices in a cohort of patients with IBD. A past history of STI and RAI can identify risk and we propose testing for those with a history of STI, RAI, men who have sex with men and women aged under 25 years.


INTAL Connection informs on integration and trade in Latin America and the Caribbean and disseminate IADB activities on this topics.


Transition-metal-catalyzed coordination–insertion polymerization of olefins is an indispensable tool in polymer synthesis. When polar monomers with polar functional groups are employed, however, the catalysts are often deactivated owing to side reactions such as σ-coordination and β-elimination of the functional group. Nevertheless, recent progress in late transition metal catalysis has enabled the synthesis of many types of functional polymers from polar monomers through coordination–insertion polymerization methods. This account describes our achievements in the palladium-catalyzed coordination–insertion (co)polymerization of polar monomers for the syntheses of a variety of functional polymers, ranging from functionalized polyolefins via olefin/polar monomer copolymerization to o-arylene-containing polymers via formal aryne polymerization.


Experimental and numerical results as presented here demonstrate the adverse effects of a Travelling HeaterMethod (THM) in (Bi2Te3)0.25(Sb2Te3)0.75 thermoelectric crystallization, onmass transport. Growthwith THMreveals that there is a considerable effect from the deflection of the solid–liquid interface, whereas the Bi2Te3 stoichiometry does change significantly. At defined length measurements of the thermoelectric crystallized ingot, electrical conductivity was carried out at intervals of defined length (6mm). A sensible gradient was observed in the reading along the ingot from a fulfilled tip to the end. To understand this variation by taking into account all practical experiences of a crystal growth,wemust conduct a numerical study because it gives vast information on a crystal growing process. Simulating the crystallization process and characterization of the ingots disclose a variation in the measured values of the thermoelectric parameters which was attributed to the deviation of Bi2Te3 concentration along the ingot.


The aim of this article is to provide an informed plea for more explicitly identifying, naming and unravelling the linkages between water control and gender in irrigation. The fact that power, expertise and status in irrigation tend to have a strong masculine connotation is by now quite well established, and underlies calls for more women in water decision making, engineering education and professions. Yet, the questions of how and why water control, status and expertise are linked to masculinity, and of whether and how such links work to legitimize the exercise of power, are seldom asked. To date, associations between masculinity and professional water performance have largely been taken for granted and remained unexamined. The resulting perceived normalcy makes mechanisms of (gendered) power and politics in water appear self-evident, unchangeable, and indeed gender-neutral. The article reviews examples of the masculinity of irrigation in different domains to argue that exposing and challenging such hitherto hidden dimensions of (gendered) power is important for the identification of new avenues of gender progressive change, and for shedding a new and interesting light on the workings of power in water. KEYWORDS: Irrigation, water, gender, politics, masculinities, engineers


Heuristic search is a core area of Artificial Intelligence, successfully applied to planning, constraint satisfaction and game playing. In real-time heuristic search autonomous agents interleave planning and plan execution and access environment locally which make them more suitable for Artificial Life style settings. Over the last two decades a large number of real-time heuristic search algorithms have been manually crafted and evaluated. In this paper we break down several published algorithms into building blocks and then let a simulated evolution re-combine the blocks in a performance-based way. Remarkably, even relatively short evolution runs result in algorithms with state-of-the-art performance. These promising preliminary results open exciting possibilities in the field of real-time heuristic search.


Eastman, P D. Go, Dog, Go! New York: Random House Children's Books, 2011. Print. This classic children's book by P.D. Eastman has been re-released in 2011 in a special 50 th Anniversary Party edition format, complete with a shiny and colourful foil-like cover. Written exclusively for children just learning how to read, this story takes the reader on a whimsical and light-hearted course through colours, numbers, time, and more. Dogs in all shapes, sizes, and colours are doing multiple actions on various forms of vehicles, and a large number of them are on their way to an unnamed location, which we find out at the end is a party atop a tree. Kids can explore movement and direction with lines like "The blue dog is in. The red dog is out." The book also teaches prepositions and proximity to other objects with declarations such as "Two dogs in a house on a boat in the water. A dog over the water. A dog under the water." The book consists of large print and sentences being broken down into 2-3 words per line: "Three dogs at a party on a boat at night." This approach makes the book much less intimidating for beginning readers, and allows them to explore the book at an appropriate pace. The words are simple and easier for pronunciation, so children trying to read along with parents will likely not be frustrated by this book. The words are often repeated so the reader will actually recognize phrases and terms previously used in the book, and "Go, dog. Go!" is an amusing repeated chant used to encourage the dogs on their journey.  Along with this, colourful and quirky drawings accompany each of the phrases, allowing kids to understand the context better through visual reinforcement. Aside from being a great tool for teaching, this book is also a humorous tale for the reader. Several times throughout the book, one dog wearing a simple hat asks another dog whether or not he likes it. He bluntly replies, "I do not like that hat," and the two part ways. This happens several more times with several more plain hats, and each time the dog replies "I do not like that hat." At the large dog party at the end of the book, the first dog is wearing an over-the-top, outlandish party hat that is borderline ridiculous; it is at this time that the second dog agrees that it is a great hat, and the two ride off into the sunset together. Overall, this book is great for preschool and beginning readers, and would also be an excellent read-along book for parents to share with their toddlers as part of an early literacy program. The variety of words and pictures are exciting for the new reader, and will prove to be an enjoyable first reading experience. This book has a unique and timeless appeal; it has been a popular go-to book for beginning literacy for the past 50 years and will continue to enchant young readers well into the future. Highly-recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Diana Keto Diana is originally from the Washington, D.C. area, where she worked for several years at a government library. She received her MLIS in 2009 and works at University of Alberta as a Public Services Librarian in the Humanities and Social Sciences Library.


Can there be a non-reductivist, source-based explanation of the use of normative language in statements describing the law and legal situations? This problem was formulated by Joseph Raz, who also claimed to have solved it. According to his well-known doctrine of 'detached' statements, normative legal statements can be informatively made by speakers who merely adopt, without necessarily sharing, the point of view of someone who accepts that legal norms are justified and ought to be followed. In this paper I defend two theses. I argue, first, that the notion of a detached statement cannot be made to work, and that Raz's problem is thus not thereby solved. But the problem itself, I also suggest, is a false one.


Objective: To evaluate the effect of a Web-based calculator and decision-support system on infusion ordering errors and to estimate error frequency in pharmacy infusion preparation. Design: Data on ordering error frequency and typology were collected before and after implementation of an online infusion ordering system. Data on pharmacy preparation errors of infusions were collected. Setting: A children's hospital at an academic medical center. Patients: None. Data were abstracted from infusion orders. Interventions: Introduction of a voluntary-use Web-based calculator into infusion ordering workflow. Observation only. Main Outcome measures: Number and type of errors in handwritten and calculator-generated orders. Number and type of errors in pharmacy infusion preparation. Results: Before calculator deployment, 129 sequential handwritten infusion orders were collected over 5 weeks. After deployment, of 162 sequential infusion orders, 88% (142) were calculator-generated. Calculator-generated infusion orders contained 83% fewer (p < .001) orders containing one or more errors than handwritten orders. Calculator-generated orders contained no high-risk errors (incorrect decimal, dose, or unit of measure) when compared with handwritten orders and were associated with fewer pharmacy interventions. In 118 sequential pharmacy infusion preparations over 4 wks, there were no errors observed. Conclusion: A Web-based calculator reduced significantly the total number of errors and eliminated all high-risk errors in the prescribing process for continuous pediatric infusions. With no observed errors in pharmacy preparation, this study provides data to support the use of computerized ordering as an independent safe and viable method for ordering continuous pediatric infusions.


Neuronal synapses contain dozens of protein species whose expression levels and localizations are key determinants of synaptic transmission and plasticity. The spectral properties of fluorophores used in conventional microscopy limit the number of measured proteins to four species within a given sample. The ability to perform high-throughput confocal or super-resolution imaging of many proteins simultaneously without limitation in target number imposed by this spectral limit would enable large-scale characterization of synaptic protein networks in situ. Here, we introduce PRISM: Probe-based Imaging for Sequential Multiplexing, a method that sequentially utilizes either high affinity Locked Nucleic Acid (LNA) or low affinity DNA probes to enable diffraction-limited confocal and PAINT-based super-resolution imaging. High-affinity LNA probes offer high-throughput, confocal-based imaging compared with PAINT, which uses low affinity probes to realize localization-based super-resolution imaging. Simultaneous immunostaining of all targets is performed prior to imaging, followed by sequential LNA/DNA probe exchange that requires only minutes under mild wash conditions. We apply PRISM to quantify the co-expression levels and nanometer-scale organization of one dozen cytoskeletal and synaptic proteins within individual neuronal synapses. Our approach is scalable to dozens of target proteins and is compatible with high-content screening platforms commonly used to interrogate phenotypic changes associated with genetic and drug perturbations in a variety of cell types.


This study discusses the relationship between a country's happiness, and relevant country characteristics including gender inequality, levels of corruption, and the percentage of women in parliamentary positions. The aim of the study is to understand how these variables change according to female representation in political leadership. Secondary source data was collected and correlation analyses were performed between the variables using the SPSS statistical program. Results show that the lower the Gender Inequality Index, the higher the percentage of Women in Parliament Positions and the higher the Happiness Index. Furthermore, the results indicate that a higher number of women in leadership position is associated with a lower corruption level and a higher degree of Happiness. Results suggest that the context in which women reach political positions is characterized by less corruption and gender inequality alongside greater happiness in the country.


As an important chapter of Estonian literary history, Young Estonia has been relatively well researched and interpreted. However, its influence as a cultural and intellectual movement in Estonian society in the opening decades of the last century requires further study and verification. What stands reflected in Young Estonia is actually a larger groundswell of history, along with a rupture that took place throughout Estonian society in the course of its modernization. Discussions of the meaning of Young Estonia must therefore concern themselves with literary discourse, but much more so with what transpired outside the boundaries of literary pursuits, in the contexts of social and political history and the history of ideas. In view of historiography, there is no consensus on the definition of Young Estonia: it has been referred to as a movement, a group, or a cluster of seminal ideas. The founding of the group is generally located at the publication of the first Young Estonia album near the high tide of the Russian Revolution of 1905. Young Estonia disintegrated during the First World War, with its ending marked both by the publication of the fifth and final album in 1915 and by the journal Vaba Sona (Free Word), which carried on the ideology of Young Estonia in the years 1914–1916. Although there are strong parallels between Young Estonia and similar movements and associations in Western and Central Europe in the nineteenth century, the greatest influence being exerted by the politicalliterary movement Nuori-Suomi (Young Finland), the respective group in Estonia was largely autochthonic in its time and milieu. In the rhetoric of the era of national awakening, Baltic Germans referred to Estonian national activists as "Young Estonians"; the term was also under discussion in the Estonian press, yet there is no direct conceptual connection between this polemic and Young Estonia as a group. The Young Estonia group was mostly composed of young educated people, who according to their birth year belonged to the generational cohort of 1886, which made them 20 years old in 1905. This generational concentration explains the mutual solidarity of these young intellectuals and the spread of their radical ideas. Young Estonia's emergence dovetailed with the Russian Revolution of 1905, but the Young Estonians who rallied to the movement of liberation formed neither a political fighting band nor a party; rather they remained a group of like-minded intellectuals. The achievements of Young Estonia should be seen in terms of their cultural and aesthetic revolution, which found expression in their publications (the Young Estonia albums, the journal Free Word), in book design, a programme for language reform, and efforts toward the renewal of style and rhetoric. An earmark of the Young Estonia movement was the furtherance of public discussion of the women's movement and women's education; indeed, the discussion of the "woman question" in the works of male authors created widespread polemic. Works of literature and scholarship translated by the Young Estonians markedly enriched Estonian intellectual life on the eve of the First World War. The writings and ideas of the Young Estonians came under criticism from their contemporaries ideologically situated on both the right and the left, from conservatives on the one hand, to left-wing socialists on the other. Reviewers saw the neoromanticist thought to be characteristic of the group's literary works as the fruit of German and French literary and philosophical influences. Young Estonians were faulted for their decadence, "aristocratism", eroticism, egoism, skepticism, individualism, aestheticism, etc. The leftleaning tendency of many of the members of the group was in keeping with the temper of the age; often it was a matter of conviction, though for the most part knowledge of the teachings of Marxism and socialism remained rather superficial and eclectic. The basic character of Young Estonia has generally been recognized as the gist of its famous call to action: "More culture! Let there be more European culture! Let us be Estonians, but let us also become Europeans!" However, the interpretation of this call has been ambivalent. The spirit of the group seems to be a claim to set modern European culture in opposition to old Estonian folk culture. However, to see Young Estonia issuing a principled challenge to the mediation of German and Russian culture, which also in effect suppressed Estonian culture, would be misleading. Young Estonia's anti-German or anti-Russian attitudes are primarily social-political and not limited to the sphere of culture. On the other hand, the European orientation of Young Estonia cannot be seen as a reneging of Estonian nationalism: it must be acknowledged that there was a diversity of views on nationalism in Estonian society at the brink of World War I. Estonian public discourse nowadays tends to use the ideological legacy of Young Estonia as a source of political arguments supporting the European Union. The question has also been raised to what extent Estonian culture meets European standards, if historically the integration of the Estonian forebears took place in the thirteenth century through military conquest, Christianization, and colonization. Thus in Young Estonians' attitudes toward old Estonian (peasant) culture one can see an expression of the inferiority complexes of a young, urbanized generation. Attempts have been made to regard Young Estonia from postcolonial perspectives as a project devoted to the mimicry of colonial discourse, a project of self-colonization and the unconscious importation of colonial discourse into Estonian society. To see the intellectual legacy of Young Estonia as a besmirched, self-colonized culture and mindset is a statement of cultural pessimism, or even nihilism, and is unfounded from a historicist point of view. Before making such dubitable claims, the centuries-long history of Estonian culture calls for interdisciplinary analysis of the colonial past. The cultural creativity of the Young Estonia group in the period between two Russian revolutions signals the birth of a professional and elite culture for the first time in the history of the Estonians. This corresponds to the aspirations and ideals of a new, educated generation, not as yet very numerous, as well as to the Young Estonians' esteem for literature and art as individual creations of aesthetic value. A large part of classical Estonian culture today can be genetically traced to the legacy of Young Estonia, which marked the beginning of modern Estonian culture


In this introductory article, we call for a new anthropology of bureaucracy focused on 'the public good'. We aim to recapture this concept from its classic setting within the discipline of economics. We argue that such a move is particularly important now because new public goods – of transparency, fiscal discipline and decentralization – are being pressed into the service of states and transnational organizations: it has therefore become critical to focus on their techniques, effects and affects through fine-grained ethnography that challenges the economization of the political. We demonstrate our approach through some ethnographic findings from different parts of India. These show how fiscal austerity leads to new limited social contracts and precarious intimacies with the post-liberalization Indian state. This relationship between new public goods and forms of precarious citizenship is then further illuminated by the six articles that follow in this special issue.


This Article challenges the prevailing view that Title VII and Title IX provide a single conceptual model that fit all forms of sexual harassment. In particular, it questions the assumption that coerced sexual intercourse in the workplace and in the academy is merely another form of sexual harassment that can be addressed within the current legal framework. Rather, the current paradigm must be critically revisited in order to provide an alternative account of these "submission cases" that separately categorizes them and acknowledges their distinctive harms. Accordingly, this Article suggests that these cases should be criminalized, and elaborates upon the justifications and policy goals that support this choice and make it a desirable remedy. This Article further explores the practical ramifications of an alternative account by examining which criminal model is better suited to criminalize coerced submission. Comparing and contrasting a lack of consent model and a sexual coercion model, the Article hypothetically applies them to various cases that were litigated under the sexual harassment framework. This exercise demonstrates that the sexual coercion model provides a more comprehensive and pragmatic construct for criminalization. Therefore, this Article proposes the adoption of a specialized criminal statute based on the sexual coercion model that would criminalize supervisory sexual abuse of power within the workplace and the academy and identify several conditions that suggest that submission resulted from this abuse. Such a proposal would carefully target sexually abusive situations that may be plausible candidates for criminalization and offer a narrowly crafted prohibition that is both gender-and race-neutral and limited in scope to avoid over-criminalization.


Many examples have shown that the activity accompanying underground mining works can be hazardous both to underground staff and mining installations, as well as to ground structures. Magnitude of the strongest seismic events in copper mines of Legnica-Glogow Copper District (LGCD) in Poland exceeds 4.0. Furthermore, due to shallow focal depth, events of this size can give rise to peak ground acceleration of more than 2 m/s2. An accurate assessment of seismic hazard posed by mining-induced events is thus a problem of primary importance. Monitoring mining seismicity in LGCD is carried on both underground as well as from the surface. The underground seismic network is supposed to provide information about seismic sources. Yearly several thousands events are recorded and parameterized. The surface accelerometric ground motion monitoring aims at assessing seismic impacts to buildings and other man-made structures in this considerably urbanized area. The mining seismic events are weak earthquakes but the seismicity in mines significantly differs from the earthquake process. Firstly, mining event occurrence is predominantly controlled by time-varying mining works, therefore the active zones in mines are, by their nature, transient. Moreover, even during their lifetime, the activity of these zones changes considerably. In our approach to seismic hazard assessment in mines, locations and times of activity of the zones that will be active in the future are deduced from programs of mining operations. Characteristics of fracturing process in these zones are inferred from characteristics of the zones that were active in the past and can be considered as models for the future activity. The model zones are selected by expert judgment based on anticipated similarity between mining and geologic conditions of the past and future zones. The epistemic uncertainty of such selections is considered within the logic tree scheme. Secondly, due to the heterogeneity of the rockmass fracturing process, the magnitude distribution of seismic events induced by exploitation is often non-Gutenberg-Richter's, complex and multimodal. As a remedy the model-free approach with the non-parametric kernel estimator of magnitude density is applied. This approach ensures reliable estimates of probability functions of event size regardless the actual complexity of the underlying distribution of magnitude. The mentioned ways of analyzing the seismic hazard posed by mining-induced seismicity are illustrated by a practical example in which we predict future seismic activity and estimate limiting values for ground motion in the 20 years horizon.


In this case, a caesarean section was performed on 2 red deer aged 4 and 7 who underwent dystocia. When the deer were brought to our clinic, they had been in labour for 6 h and 1 day, respectively, and the calves were dead. The foetal forefeet were found hanging from the vulva at the general examination. Deer 1's parturition was human-assisted but the outcome was not good and it was decided to operate on the animal. In deer 2, parturition was taking too long and so it was decided to operate immediately. The deer were sedated and anaesthetised by infiltration of the left paralumbar fossa in order to perform the caesarean operations. The caesarean operations were performed successfully and both red deer are still alive. For a postoperative period of 5 days, an antibiotic and vitamin combination was administered to both deer. It is concluded that for red deer in whom dystocia is common a caesarean operation can be the treatment of choice.


Abstract. In this study the dynamics and sensitivity of Hans Tausen Iskappe (western Peary Land, Greenland) to climatic forcing is investigated with a coupled ice flow–mass balance model. The surface mass balance (SMB) is calculated from a precipitation field obtained from the Regional Atmospheric Climate Model (RACMO2.3), while runoff is calculated from a positive-degree-day runoff–retention model. For the ice flow a 3-D higher-order thermomechanical model is used, which is run at a 250 m resolution. A higher-order solution is needed to accurately represent the ice flow in the outlet glaciers. Under 1961–1990 climatic conditions a steady-state ice cap is obtained that is overall similar in geometry to the present-day ice cap. Ice thickness, temperature and flow velocity in the interior agree well with observations. For the outlet glaciers a reasonable agreement with temperature and ice thickness measurements can be obtained with an additional heat source related to infiltrating meltwater. The simulations indicate that the SMB–elevation feedback has a major effect on the ice cap response time and stability. This causes the southern part of the ice cap to be extremely sensitive to a change in climatic conditions and leads to thresholds in the ice cap evolution. Under constant 2005–2014 climatic conditions the entire southern part of the ice cap cannot be sustained, and the ice cap loses about 80 % of its present-day volume. The projected loss of surrounding permanent sea ice and resultant precipitation increase may attenuate the future mass loss but will be insufficient to preserve the present-day ice cap for most scenarios. In a warmer and wetter climate the ice margin will retreat, while the interior is projected to thicken, leading to a steeper ice cap, in line with the present-day observed trends. For intermediate- (+4 °C) and high- warming scenarios (+8 °C) the ice cap is projected to disappear around AD 2400 and 2200 respectively, almost independent of the projected precipitation regime and the simulated present-day geometry.


The seismic waves that spread out from the earthquake source to the entire Earth are usually measured at the ground surface by a seismometer which consists of three orthogonal components (Z (vertical), N (north-south), and E (east-west) or R (radial), T (transversal), and Z (vertical)). However, a complete representation of the ground motion induced by earthquakes consists not only of those three components of translational motion, but also three components of rotational motion plus six components of strain.
Altough theoretical seismologists have pointed out the potential benefits of measurements of rotational ground motion, they were not made until quite recently. This was mainly because precise instruments to measure ground rotational motion were not available.

The measurement of rotational motion induced by earthquakes is relatively new in the field of seismology. To the best of our knowledge, the first experiment to measure ground rotational motion using rotational sensor was done by Nigbor (1994}. He successfully measured translational and rotational ground motion during an underground chemical explosion experiment at the Nevada Test Site using a triaxial translational accelerometer and a solid-state rotational velocity sensor. The same type of sensor was also used by Takeo (1998} for recording an earthquake swarm on Izu peninsula, Japan. However, because of the limitation of the instrument sensitivity, this kind of sensor was only able to sensing the rotational ground motion near the earthquake sources of other artificial sources.
Another type of rotational sensor was assembled using two oppositely oriented
seismometers. This is possible since in principle the rotational component of the ground motions is equal to half the curl of the ground velocity. This kind of sensor was intensively researched and developed by the seismology group in Institute of geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences. However, they report several problems especially due to the small differences in the seismometer's response function. Like the solid state rotational sensors, this sensor was only able to measure rotational motion near the seismic sources.

The application of the Sagnac effect for sensing the inertial rotation using optical devices were intensively investigated, since the advent of lasers in the sixties. However, the first application of a ring laser gyroscope as a rotational sensor applied in the field of seismology was reported by Stedman et al. (1995}. Fully consistent rotational motions were recorded by a ring laser gyro installed at the fundamental station Wettzell, Germany (Igel et al., 2005). They showed that the rotational motions were compatible with collocated recordings of transverse acceleration by a standard seismometer, both in amplitude and phase. They mentioned that "standard" rotational sensors with sufficient resolution may be possible in the near future. Among the other type of rotational sensor, ring lasers seem more reliable in seismic applications since it has been provenable to sensing the ground rotational motion from near source as well as teleseismic earthquake events with a broad magnitude range (Igel et al., 2007}.

In earthquake engineering, observations of rotational components of seismic strong motions may be of interest as this type of motion may contribute to the response of structures to earthquake-induced ground shaking. Most of rotational/torsional studies of ground motion in earthquake engineering are so far still carried out by indirect
measurements. It can be done since the rotational component of motion is a linear combination of the space derivatives of the horizontal component of the motion. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no comparison of array-derived rotation rate and direct measurement from rotational sensors mentioned in the literature.

The first objective of my thesis is to study the effect of noise and various uncertainties to the derivation of rotation rate and to compare directly the result with the ring laser data. Here we present for the first time a comparison of rotational ground motions derived from seismic array with those observed directly with ring laser. Our study suggest that - given accurate measurements of translational motions in an array of appropriate size and number of stations - the array-derived rotation rate may be very close to the "true" rotational signal that would be measured at the center of the array (or the specific reference station). However, it is important to note that it may be dangerous to use only the minimally required three stations as even relatively small noise levels may deteriorate the rotation estimates. Furthermore, it is clear that the logistic effort to determine rotations from array is considerably larger than direct measurements. In the light of this, the necessity to develop field-deployable rotational sensors with the appropriate resolution for use in local and regional seismology remains an outstanding issue.

More recently, Igel et al. (2005) introduced a method to estimate the horizontal phase velocity by using collocated measurements from a ring laser and seismometer. A simple relationship between transverse acceleration and rotation rate (around a vertical axis) shows that both signals should be in phase and their ratio proportional to horizontal phase velocity. Comparison with synthetic traces (rotations and translations) and phase velocities determined in the same way showed good agreement with the observations.

The second objective of my thesis is to study the accuracy of phase velocity determination using collocated measurement of rotational and translational motion and derive the Love wave dispersion curve using spectral ratio for both synthetic and real observed data. Whether the accuracy of the dispersion curves derived with the approach presented in this thesis is enough for tomographic purposes remains to be evaluated. Nevertheless, the results shown here indicate that through additional measurements of accurate rotational signals, wavefield information is accessible that otherwise requires seismic array data. However, to make this methodology practically useful for seismology will require the development of an appropriate high-resolution six-component broadband sensor. Efforts are underway to coordinate such developments on an international scale (Evans et al., 2006).

The ground tilt is generally small but not negligible in seismology, especially in the strong-motion earthquake. It is well known that the tilt signal is most noticeable in the horizontal components of the seismometer. Ignoring the tilt effects leads to unreliable results, especially in calculation of permanent displacements and long-period calculations.

The third objective of my thesis is to study the array-derived tilt, a further application of measuring tilt. An interesting result concerning tilt study based on a synthetic study is the possibility to derive the Rayleigh wave phase velocity as well as Rayleigh wave dispersion curve from collocated measurement of tilt rate and translational motions. The synthetic study shows that there is a frequency dependent phase velocity from collocated radial acceleration and transverse tilt.


In this work, we discuss how the rich academic milieu left by different Italian political economy traditions after WWII paved the way to the development of a new generation of macroeconomic agent-based models. The K+S (Dosi et al., 2010, 2016a), CATS (Delli Gatti et al., 2005, 2011) and EURACE (Cincotti et al., 2010; Teglio et al., 2012) families of agentbased models are at the frontier of an alternative macroeconomic research paradigm which considers the economy as a complex evolving system. The three families of models are presented in details and their empirical performance and policy exercises discussed.


In protein biophysics, the separation between the functionally important residues (forming the active site or binding surface) and those that create the overall structure (the fold) is a well-established and fundamental concept. Identifying and modifying those functional sites is critical for protein engineering but computationally non-trivial, and requires significant domain knowledge. To automate this process from a data-driven perspective, we propose a disentangled Wasserstein autoencoder with an auxiliary classifier, which isolates the function-related patterns from the rest with theoretical guarantees. This enables one-pass protein sequence editing and improves the understanding of the resulting sequences and editing actions involved. To demonstrate its effectiveness, we apply it to T-cell receptors (TCRs), a well-studied structure-function case. We show that our method can be used to alter the function of TCRs without changing the structural backbone, outperforming several competing methods in generation quality and efficiency, and requiring only 10% of the running time needed by baseline models. To our knowledge, this is the first approach that utilizes disentangled representations for TCR engineering.


Sprat Sprattus sprattus larvae were used as model organisms to evaluate whether larval lipids reflect in situ feeding conditions and can thus identify match-mismatch situations. In detail, we determined larval lipid content, growth rates based on RNA:DNA ratios, and fatty acid (FA) composition during the spawning season in the Central Baltic Sea, and evaluated these in light of feeding, mortality and recruitment (which were determined in parallel within the project 'GLOBEC Germany'). Based on the opposing trend of RNA:DNA and lipid content, as well as on previous observations, we hypothesized that lipid content and current feeding conditions are largely uncoupled in the early life stages of sprat due to reduced lipid anabolism. However, lipids still provide information in several ways: (1) segmented generalised linear models proved to be a suitable tool for identifying phases of lipid catabolism during development, with the slope reflecting size-specific environmental starvation pressure. This method detected a previously identified mismatch situation with suitable prey in the early spawning season, which increased mortality of larger larvae. (2) Estimated starvation resistance, a proxy that accounts for temperature- and size-dependent metabolism, reflected the likelihood of near future starvation of individual larvae. (3) Principal component analyses on FAs identified monthly differences in diet composition. Biomarkers indicated a dinoflagellate and/or microbial loop based carbon flux to the larvae. (4) Regression analyses revealed lower docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) levels in spring, but no obvious effect on growth. Food quality was generally high, and its impact on larval survival was less evident than that of prey size suitability.


Section 46 of the Penal Code, which in essence gives the Minister the power to ban publications considered to be contrary to the public interest, was enacted during the colonial era. This provision was amended in 2010 during the Bingu wa Mutharika regime. Basically, this amendment required the Minister to exercise his or her discretion reasonably. As soon as Mrs Joyce Banda came to power in April 2012, the section was repealed. This article addresses the question whether the repeal of this law will correct the mischief for which the repeal was intended, namely, preventing the infringement of the right to press freedom by reducing the discretion of the Minister to control the press. Many other provisions in our statutes still remain which either expressly or impliedly restrict the right to press freedom. Not only that, most of those provisions give too much power to the Minister to regulate press freedom. This suggests that the repeal of section 46 of the Penal Code will not guarantee full respect for the right to press freedom. If the government is serious about the problem of properly regulating press freedom, it must take a holistic approach: it must review all the provisions discussed in this article and make appropriate amendments or repeal them where necessary.


We performed a study to define the key elements of feasible global climate policy scenarios for the post-2012 UNFCCC regime by contacting - through a series of questionnaires -149 stakeholders involved in climate-change discussions. We applied a Multiple Correspondence Analysis to the results. We then classified the stakeholders' views into three main groups which we associate with scenarios for post-2012 climate policy. Further, we identified three points with wide consensus among the stakeholders: (i) 2013 is the most likely starting point for the next climate agreement, (ii) flexibility mechanisms will most probably be pursued, and (iii) technology and financial transfers to developing countries are likely to be used as incentives for these countries to undertake a more meaningful climate policy. We found that the type of target for the United States largely determined the type of scenario the stakeholders' envisaged for the post-2012 climate regime. Finally, we can associate stakeholders with a certain scenario taking into consideration their experience in climate change negotiations.


Yemen encounters serious problems of scarcity of natural resources as well as soil
erosion and degradation. Agroforestry system is being promoted as a more
appropriate land use system than monocropping practices for smallholders
worldwide. Unfortunately, detailed studies on the sustainability of different land use
systems are limited and in this region land has started to deteriorate and many
farmers turned to traditional agriculture. The general objective of the study was to
evaluate the sustainability of agroforestry compared to monocropping systems in
terms of soil properties and farmers' perception. The first specific objective of this
study was to determine the effects of agroforestry practices on soil properties and
compare them with soil properties under monocropping system. The second
objective was to simulate the changes over a 20-year period in soil total organic N,
total organic P, and organic carbon, and depths which are the most important
elements affecting soil productivity. The third objective was to develop a bioeconomic
model to determine the role of agroforestry and other factors affecting soil conservation and net farm income. Three different methods were used to achieve the
above objectives. First, 72 composite soil samples were collected from two sites (36
from site 1 and 36 from site 2) based on RCBD split plot design (6 systems X 3
replications X 2 depths). Soil N, P, K, organic carbon, and bulk density were
determined. Second, the SCUAF model was used to predict the changes in soil
properties over a 20-year simulation period. The output was then used in cost benefit
analysis. Third, a questionnaire and direct interview with 162 agroforestry farmers
and 83 non-agroforestry were conducted to collect data to develop the bio-economic
model. The results showed that soil N, P, K and organic carbon were significantly
higher under agroforestry practices mixed trees with coffee (S1), and Muringa
(Cordia africana L.) with coffee (S2) at the two sites as compared to the Arabian
jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi L.) with maize (S3) and the monocropping systems
(P<0.01). It was lowest under monocropping maize (S5) in both sites. Other physical
soil properties were better under agroforestry practices (S1 and S2) than the
monocropping maize (S5). The results of the SCUAF modeling illustrated that soil
depth decline was negligible under agroforestry practices (S1 and S2) with soil loss
less than 1000 kg/ha/yr even without using chemical fertilizers. The predicted
decline of soil depth was highest under S5 followed by S3 which lost 43.1 % and 18
% of the top soil, respectively. Soil organic N and organic P are significantly higher
under S1 and S2 systems even without using chemical fertilizers. It declined
continuously under other systems at different rates during the simulation period.
However adding 55 kg/ha/yr super phosphate (46 % P) and 271 kg/ha/yr urea (46 %
N) to the systems (S1, S2, S4, and S6) resulted in maintaining soil fertility and led to
sustaining the yield over 20 years of the simulation period. The results of cost benefit
analysis showed that by using chemical fertilizers all systems were profitable at this level of the capital cost. The results also showed that Muringa coffee system (S2) and
monocropping coffee (S4) obtained the highest net present value (NPV) (YR
1,171,077 USD 6163.6/ha) and (YR 1,117,965 USD 5884/ha), respectively. The
lowest NPV (YR 55,116 USD 290.1/ha) was obtained under monocropping maize
(S5). Consequently, the agroforestry system (S2) using fertilizers predicted the
highest annualized net benefits (ANB) (YR 156,783 USD 825.2/ha/year), to the
farmers and the lowest ANB (YR 7378 USD 38.8/ha/yr) was from monocropping
maize (S5). The results of soil conservation model showed that educational level,
number of terraces and channels maintained during the last ten years, geographical
location, water efficiency, farmers' experience, and agroforestry index are
significantly influenced soil conservation in both models (OLS and SUR). The
results of income regression model showed that the net income increased in output
price and fixed inputs such as farm size, and decreased in input prices mainly wage
of labor, and price of fodder in both models (OLS and SUR). The coefficients of the
wage of labor (PLAB), fodder price (PFOD), are negative and significantly decreased
the net income in both models as well. Farm size and price of cows sold are
significantly affected the net farm income in models 1 and 2. The model shows that
agroforestry can improve soil properties. The calculated values suggest that soil
conservation generated productivity benefits in range of 4 to 9 percent of the current
farm income. Ii is equivalent to about 23261 YR/yr (US$ 122.4) for an average area
of 0.6 ha for each farmer. It can be concluded that agroforestry practices are more
profitable and sustainable compared to monocropping systems.


The internet is a tool that many students use to do research in the classroom. Students are asked to use the internet for a variety of activities ranging from general searches for information to completing a course online. The effectiveness of online courses is of interest to many educators who want to know if this method is worth pursuing. Teachers are also interested in understanding student attitudes toward online education. This study examined the effectiveness of online learning as a teaching method in an Honors American Government class that was taught using Blackboard as the delivery system. The participants in this class were students who met the criteria for the Honors program at Hutchinson High School, a high school in southern Kansas. Test and essay results showed that there was no significant difference concerning effectiveness between online learning and traditional learning methods. Survey results showed that students in the experimental group were motivated to achieve in all their classes, believed that interpersonal communication was important and that they were comfortable using the computer. Students also believed that receiving timely feedback and being self-motivated were important to success in an online class. Document Type Thesis Degree Name Master of Education (MEd) Department Graduate Education


Background Several medicines frequently used in neonates and infants contain potentially harmful excip-ients like ethanol, propylene glycol (PG), methyl-and propyl-parabens. Especially preterm neonates may bechronically exposed as a result of being poly-medicated for extended periods. Hence, safeties of such excipients in relation to age and developmental-status have be-come a hot topic. Adverse drug events (ADEs) due to the content of excipients may be difficult to detect. The preservative methyl-paraben has been shown to displace bilirubin-binding to albumin and may cause hyperbiliru-binemia in concentrations as low as 1.2 mg/kg. Likewise, ethanol and PG are known to be neurotoxic and may re-sult in delayed neurological development after early-life exposure. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has proposed tolerance limits of daily exposure rates (mg/kg/day) for some of these excipients in each drug prepa-ration. Tolerance limits of parabens only exist for meth-yl-paraben (10 mg/kg/day) and is based on data obtained after oral administrations -although commonly found in parenteral solutions. However, neonates may be more susceptible to excipient–excipient and/or drug–excip-ient pharmacokinetic-interactions compared to adults because of their reduced metabolic activity in the elim-ination pathways. Aim To quantify the cumulative daily exposure level of benzyl alcohol, ethanol, PG, methyl-paraben and pro-pyl-paraben (in mg/kg/day) administered to poly-medi-cated neonates and infants. Methods The study was conducted at the national hospital, Rigshospitalet, Denmark. All preparations ad-ministered to neonates receiving more than two drugs and infants receiving more than three drugs per day were registered. Levels were calculated based on quantities ob-tained from manufacturers or databases. Excipient levels were compared to tolerance limits outlined by the EMA. Results In total, 470 neonates and 160 infants were in-cluded covering 4207 prescriptions and 316 preparations. Ethanol was administrated to 38%, PG to 23%, and benzyl alcohol to 2% of the neonates and infants, respectively. Methyl-paraben was administered 31% and propyl-para-ben to 24% of the neonates and infants. In patients re-ceiving drugs containing ethanol, the cumulative level exceeded the daily tolerance limits in 53% (n=81) of neo-nates and 62% (n=53) of infants, respectively. In patients receiving PG, the cumulative level was exceeded in 40% (n=36) of the neonates and 57% (n=32) of the infants. Few infants (n=14) were exposed to benzyl alcohol. The cumulative level of methyl-paraben exceeded the tol-erance limits in less than one percent of both neonates (n=5) and infants (n=5). No tolerance limit for propyl-par-aben was available for comparison. Conclusion Tolerance limits for ethanol and PG pro-posed by the EMA are exceeded in more than 50% of poly-medicated neonates and infants due to the cumu-lative effect of these excipients. A constant awareness of potential pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and, excipient–excipient-interactions, especially in NICU neo-nates taking multiple medications cannot be highlighted enough. Further, EMA might propose a tolerance limit for methyl-paraben based on safety-data obtained from in-travenous administrations. References 1 Souza A et al. Eur J Pediatr. 2014 2 Nellis G et al. Arch Dis Child. 2015; Rasmussen LF et al. J Pediatr. 1976 3 Marek E et al. Curr Ther Res Clin Exp. 2014; European Medical Agency. 2003


We have carried out a detailed experimental study of the behavior of 200-fs pulses in highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber to elucidate the mechanisms for supercontinuum generation. To avoid unwanted polarization effects, our experiments were performed using polarization-maintaining fiber. The experimental evidence shows that, as in conventional fibers, Raman scattering leads to the breakup of higher-order solitons, which is accompanied by the generation of radiation at shorter wavelengths than the pump, leading eventually to an ultrabroad supercontinuum.


This thesis examines the emergence of church cricket clubs in Halifax and the Calder Valley between 1860 and 1920. It encompasses the years of mature factory-based industrial society following Chartism as well as the upheavals of the Great War and its immediate aftermath. Though a period of relative tranquillity, from 1873 the staple textile trades began to stagnate, bringing economic uncertainty only partially offset by industrial diversification and a brief post-war revival. From the mid-1880s this brought ndustrial unrest and the emergence of labour politics. Churches, having experienced growth, were also betraying signs of decline towards the end of the century. Their role in welfare and education was being eroded and denominational influence on party political allegiance was being replaced by that of social class. And yet, religious organisations became the area's biggest single source of popular organised cricket during its crucial formative decades.

This study evaluates why, from such an unpromising situation around 1850, religious bodies became involved in cricket and what were the nature, extent and relevance of this. It addresses several key questions. What was the contribution of clergymen? Who were involved in the clubs and what did this mean for them? What was the significance of grounds and their development? How did the clubs finance themselves? What did their rules reveal? What part did they play in their local communities? Within these themes will be evaluated crucial factors such as social class, gender, religious denomination, identity, topography and demography as will important concepts such as cultural diffusion, muscular Christianity, social control and secularisation.

This thesis shows that church sponsorship provided the platform for mainly working-class agency in developing cricket clubs. This agency manifested itself in a mutualism and self-reliance similar to that of the highly popular and consciously independent organisations such as Friendly Societies and Co-operatives, which operated in the same arduous economic context. Nonetheless, at a time when workers were becoming increasingly assertive in the world of industry and politics, church cricket exhibited class co-operation and harmony. Moreover, greater genuine popular adherence to ecclesiastical organisations was found to exist than has often been allowed. Those cricket clubs that became established initially reinforced their churches' identity, helping them to retain a profile in their localities, and so retard the advance of secularism. However, as those clubs' cricketing potential grew, they became ever more a part of their wider communities. This situation was aided by their crucial fundraising entertainments, which often secured a place in their districts' social calendar. Increasingly the clubs became an alternative attraction to the church in their communities and ultimately a small agent of secularism. It is, in summary, contended that church cricket in Halifax and the Calder Valley was more the product of industrial society, and the adaptation of ordinary men and women and their culture to that society, than it was of muscular Christianity or clerical influence.


Excerpt] This report examines three labor issues and arguments related to the pending proposed U.S.Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CFTA): violence against trade unionists; impunity (accountability for or punishment of the perpetrators); and worker rights protections for Colombians. Opponents of the pending U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement (CFTA) argue against it on three points: (1) the high rate of violence against trade unionists in Colombia; (2) the lack of adequate punishment for the perpetrators of that violence; and (3) weak Colombian enforcement of International Labor Organization (ILO) core labor standards and Colombia's labor laws. Proponents of the agreement argue primarily for the proposed Colombia FTA on the basis of economic and national security benefits. Accordingly, they argue, the CFTA would support increased exports, expand economic growth, create jobs, and open up investment opportunities for the United States. They also argue that it would reinforce the rule of law, spread values of capitalism in Colombia, and anchor hemispheric stability.


Organic solar cells have great potential for cost-effective and large area electricity production, but their applicability is limited by the relatively low efficiency. In this dissertation I report investigations of novel materials and the underlying principles of organic solar cells, carried out at the University of St Andrews between 2011 and 2015. Key results of this investigation: • The charge carrier mobility of organic semiconductors in the active layer of polymer solar cells has a rather small influence on the power conversion efficiency. Cooling solar cells of the polymer:fullerene blend PTB7:PC71BM from room temperature to 77 K decreased the hole mobility by a factor of thousand but the device efficiency only halved. • Subphthalocyanine molecules, which are commonly used as electron donor materials in vacuum-deposited active layers of organic solar cells, can, by a slight structural modification, also be used as efficient electron acceptor materials in solution-deposited active layers. Additionally these acceptors offer, compared to standard fullerene acceptors, advantages of a stronger light absorption at the peak of the solar spectrum. • A low band-gap polymer donor material requires a careful selection of the acceptor material in order to achieve efficient charge separation and a maximum open circuit voltage. • Metal structures in nanometer-size can efficiently enhance the electric field and light absorption in organic semiconductors by plasmonic resonance. The fluorescence of a P3HT polymer film above silver nanowires, separated by PEDOT:PSS, increased by factor of two. This could be clearly assigned to an enhanced absorption as the radiative transition of P3HT was identical beside the nanowires. • The use of a processing additive in the casting solution for the active layer of organic solar cells of PTB7:PC71BM strongly influences the morphology, which leads not only to an optimum of charge separation but also to optimal charge collection.


As a result of population aging and changing family structures, more Canadians than ever are balancing careers with family caregiving responsibilities. Previous research has suggested that different policy responses are required to support caregivers, depending on the intensity of their caregiving contributions. This discussion paper focuses on needed workplace supports for family caregivers in Canada, with a specific emphasis on the role for employers. Outlined are challenges faced by caregiving employees, the ways in which employers and governments are already supporting caregivers internationally, and options for how Canadian employers might participate in creating caregiver-friendly workplaces.


This paper presents algorithms for identifying parameters of an N degrees-of-freedom robotic manipulator. First, we outline the fundamental properties of the Newton-Euler formulation of robot dynamics from the view point of parameter identification. We then show that the Newton-Euler model, which is nonlinear in the dynamic parameters, can be transformed into an equivalent modified model which is linear in dynamic parameters. We develop both on-line and off-line parameter estimation procedures. To illustrate our approach, we identify the dynamic parameters of the cylindrical robot, and the three degree-of-freedom positioning system of the CMU DirecbDrive Arm II. The experimental implementation of our algorithm to estimate the dynamics parameters of the six degreesof-freedom CMU DD Arm II is also presented.


DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A HYBRID VIRTUAL/PHYSICAL NUSS PROCEDURE SURGICAL TRAINER Mohammad F. Obeid Old Dominion University, 2017 Director: Frederic D. McKenzie With continuous advancements and adoption of minimally invasive surgery, proficiency with nontrivial surgical skills involved is becoming a greater concern. Consequently, the use of surgical simulation has been increasingly embraced by many for training and skill transfer purposes. Some systems utilize haptic feedback within a highfidelity anatomically-correct virtual environment whereas others use manikins, synthetic components, or box trainers to mimic primary components of a corresponding procedure. Surgical simulation development for some minimally invasive procedures is still, however, suboptimal or otherwise embryonic. This is true for the Nuss procedure, which is a minimally invasive surgery for correcting pectus excavatum (PE) – a congenital chest wall deformity. This work aims to address this gap by exploring the challenges of developing both a purely virtual and a purely physical simulation platform of the Nuss procedure and their implications in a training context. This work then describes the development of a hybrid mixed-reality system that integrates virtual and physical constituents as well as an augmentation of the haptic interface, to carry out a reproduction of the primary steps of the Nuss procedure and satisfy clinically relevant prerequisites for its training platform. Furthermore, this work carries out a user study to investigate the system's face, content, and construct validity to establish its faithfulness as a training platform.


Interview with K.O. Dahlgren, civil engineer and Marine Corps veteran. The interview includes Dahlgren's personal experiences about being a PBJ co-pilot in the Southwest Pacific Theater during World War II, enlisting in the Navy, primary and secondary flight training through the Civilian Pilot Training Program, pre-flight training, basic and advanced flight training, and navigation school. Additionally, Dahlgren talks about his early interest in aviation, designation as an Aviation Cadet, the transition to multi-engine planes at Corpus Christi and his transfer to the Marine Corps, transferring to Cherry Point, North Carolina, crew formation and PBJ training at Cherry Point, advanced training, his personal views on combat and the Japanese, stationing to Green Island, "night heckling" missions to Rabaul, his assignment to and living conditions in Emirau, skip-bombing, strafing, and night bombing missions, rest and relaxation in Australia, his rotation back to the states, and his postwar career.


Two prevailing theories for explaining social group or community structure are cohesion and identity. The social cohesion approach posits that social groups arise out of an aggregation of individuals that have mutual interpersonal attraction as they share common characteristics. These characteristics can range from common interests to kinship ties and from social values to ethnic backgrounds. In contrast, the social identity approach posits that an individual is likely to join a group based on an intrinsic self-evaluation at a cognitive or perceptual level. In other words group members typically share an awareness of a common category membership.
In this work we seek to understand the role of these two contrasting theories in explaining the behavior and stability of social communities in Twitter. A specific focal point of our work is to understand the role of these theories in disparate contexts ranging from disaster response to socio-political activism. We extract social identity and social cohesion features-of-interest for large scale datasets of five real-world events and examine the effectiveness of such features in capturing behavioral characteristics and the stability of groups. We also propose a novel measure of social group sustainability based on the divergence in group discussion. Our main findings are: 1) Sharing of social identities (especially physical location) among group members has a positive impact on group sustainability, 2) Structural cohesion (represented by high group density and low average shortest path length) is a strong indicator of group sustainability, and 3) Event characteristics play a role in shaping group sustainability, as social groups in transient events behave differently from groups in events that last longer.


The marketing - entrepreneurship interface at corporate level has generated many debates and studies in the last two decades, both in marketing and entrepreneurship fields. Certain elements of marketing orientation and approach may be used in the development of entrepreneurial processes, while entrepreneurial orientation and behavior enhance the marketing performance of a company which operates in a dynamic environment. This paper presents the concept of entrepreneurial marketing, a proposed entrepreneurial marketing model, as well as the partial result of a preliminary test of this model.


We experimentally investigate polarization-switched quadrature phase-shift keying (PS-QPSK) with a symbol rate of 37.3 GBd corresponding to a bit rate of 112 Gb/s. In a wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) experiment with 50 GHz channel spacing, the transmission performance of PS-QPSK is compared to that of polarization-division multiplexed QPSK (PDM-QPSK) over an EDFA amplified ultra-large-effective-area fiber link. For a bit-error ratio (BER) of 3.8 × 10(-3), the achieved transmission distance is 11000 km for PS-QSPK and 10000 km for PDM-QPSK.


This paper seeks to summarize a stream of research that has previously explained how failures in corporate governance contributed to the global financial crisis. More precisely, it reviews how the current corporate governance systems failed to safeguard against aggressive risk taking, identifies gaps in the literature, and highlights the most promising future directions for this topic. In this paper, I review the literature that identifies corporate governance failures, attributes that contributed to the financial crisis, the impact and magnitude of these failures, and the recommendations that have been offered to correct the identified failures. This paper's main contribution is to summarize previous research. The outcomes of this paper is important to scholars who are interested in studying corporate governance and 2007-2008 financial crisis as it provides a thorough explanation of the relationship between corporate governance and the recent financial crisis.


The 20th century witnessed a transformative, "tectonic" shift in international law, from "absolute" to "restrictive" theories of sovereign immunity. As conventionally understood, however, this dramatic transformation represented only a shift in the default rule. Under absolute immunity, national courts could not hear lawsuits and enforce judgments against a foreign sovereign without its consent. Under restrictive immunity, foreign sovereigns were presumptively not immune when they engaged in commercial acts. We demonstrate that market practices undermine this conventional understanding. Using an extensive, two-century data set of contracts between foreign governments and private creditors, we show that contracting parties have long treated absolute immunity as akin to a mandatory rule, which they could not reliably change by contract. By contrast, we show that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in the U.S. and the State Immunities Act 1978 in the U.K. — two statutes largely overlooked by international law scholarship — fundamentally reordered a global market for contracts. We explore why the conventional narrative, which relies on analysis of traditional legal materials, is at such odds with the "law on the ground."


Abstract: SHRIMP dating of zircon from eclogites, their country rock gneisses and quartz veins from the northern and middle Adula nappe, Central Alps, accompanied by cathodoluminescence imaging and REE geochemistry of these dated zircon crystals revealed that the Adula nappe has been affected by two pre-Alpine high-pressure (HP) metamorphic events (northern: c. 330–340 Ma; middle: c. 370 Ma). In the northern Adula nappe, loss of radiogenic Pb of the c. 330–340 Ma zircon domains in combination with previous geochronological data argue for an overprinting Alpine HP event. In the middle Adula nappe, metamorphic zircon domains record in addition a 33–32 Ma event, interpreted to reflect HT metamorphism, already identified in the southern part of the nappe, where such SHRIMP ages have been related to HT (Lepontine) metamorphism. The Alpine HP event indicated by previous SHRIMP data in the southern Adula nappe at c. 35 Ma is not recorded in the zircons of the rocks dated herein. The absence in this dataset is probably because either no HP (c. 35 Ma) zircon domains were formed or such domains were completely reset during the 33–32 Ma HT event. Protolith ages of orthogneisses and eclogites are 470–457 Ma and 595–587 Ma, respectively, and maximum sedimentation ages of paragneisses 500–460 Ma. The lack of Hercynian protolith zircon ages implies pre-Hercynian formation for the precursors of the dated HP rocks. Our data suggest that the Adula nappe contains various Hercynian basement slivers that underwent subduction to HP conditions at c. 330–340 Ma and c. 370 Ma prior to the Alpine orogeny, similar to many other parts of the Hercynian basement in Central and Southern Europe. Supplementary material: U, Pb and Th SHRIMP data and REE and trace element analyses are availaible at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18367.


Most work in cognitive science, whether computationally or biologically based, relies on the idea of 'unconscious representations.' I argue that there are no such things. In contrast, conscious states do represent objects outside of the agent. My second main thesis concerns the 'explanatory gap' between brain states and mental states. I propose an analogy to enhance our understanding of just what is required to close the explanatory gap; I argue that a new science is needed. There is third main thesis, related to the second. Of all the currently available approaches to the study of brain activity, only nonlinear dynamics, chaos theory in particular, has a unique characteristic sufficient to close the explanatory gap. Every other approach to the study of the brain appears doomed to failure in this regard. Identification of an additional feature of chaotic systems provides the framework for the explanation of another conundrum, mental causation. Furthermore, given the chaotic model of the dynamics of perception arising from Walter J. Freeman's work, it appears that emotion plays a central role in perception. The application of chaos theory to brain activity dovetails with my first thesis, as nonlinear dynamics does not require state transitions from representations to representations, yet it has the resources to account for the representational nature of conscious states.


In this paper, we present the VISOR tool, which helps the user to explore data and their summary structures by visualizing the relationships between the size k of a data summary and the induced error. Given an ordered dataset, VISOR allows to vary the size k of a data summary and to immediately see the effect on the induced error, by visualizing the error and its dependency on k in an ϵ-graph and Δ-graph, respectively. The user can easily explore different values of k and determine the best value for the summary size. VISOR allows also to compare different summarization methods, such as piecewise constant approximation, piecewise aggregation approximation or V-optimal histograms. We show several demonstration scenarios, including how to determine an appropriate value for the summary size and comparing different summarization techniques.


Industrial and non-industrial processes such as production plans, robots, pumps, compressors, home applications, transportation of people and goods etc., require some kinds of motion control. The main functions of electromechanical drives are to adjust these processes by controlling the torque, speed or position. The objective of this paper is to perform the control of motion while minimizing power losses, that is ?Ridt, in process conversion of electrical energy to mechanical energy. The optimal control laws for our problem is find using the Euler – Lagrange principle. We consider three types of controlled drives: torque, speed and position. Each of them has different control laws. By implementation of these controls with Borland C++ and Matlab environment, substantial energy savings are obtained.


In general, results of epidemiological studies on schizophrenia performed during the last century have the remarkable feature that no significant differences in expectancies and incidences have been found, neither between different populations nor over time. Recently, however, some studies have tended to show a noteworthy decrease in the incidence, as measured by statistics of first admissions. Possible sources of error are discussed, partly on the basis of recent Danish investigations. Although it is uncertain whether a true change in the incidence of schizophrenia has occurred, one feature is becoming evident: under modern treatment and care of-schizophrenics the natural history of the disease is becoming increasingly different between the two sexes. This fact, in combination with one of the hardest facts in schizophrenia research, namely the higher age of onset in females, may be useful starting points for hypotheses on aetiology, or at least necessary components of such hypotheses.


BACKGROUND
The diabetes mellitus (DM) pandemic greatly affects developing countries. Self-care is an important part of management, guided by beliefs about health and illness. Dissimilarities in health-related behaviour in men and women have been described but not comparisons of their beliefs about health and illness.

AIM
To explore beliefs about health and illness that might affect self-care practice and healthcare-seeking behaviour in men and women with DM in Uganda.

METHODS
This was an exploratory study with a consecutive sample from an outpatient diabetes clinic at a university hospital. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 women and 10 men aged 21-70 years. Data analysis was conducted by qualitative content analysis.

FINDINGS
Men's and women's beliefs about health and illness indicated limited knowledge about the body and DM. Dissimilar were men's focus on socio-economic factors, particularly affordability of drugs, sexual function and lifestyle, while women valued well-being, support in daily life and household activities and had a higher risk-awareness of DM. Irrespective of gender, limited self-care measures were used, and health professionals were consulted about health problems.

CONCLUSION
Similarities and dissimilarities were found between men and women in beliefs about health and illness that affect self-care practice and healthcare seeking. Underlying living conditions, with different gender roles, appear to determine the beliefs about health and illness, which are based on individual knowledge. Measures to increase knowledge about DM are urgently needed in Uganda. In diabetes care, it is important to search for individual beliefs and consider gender and living conditions.


AVEX, a Japanese leading entertainment company, decided to withdraw from the Chinese market in 2013 due to its business failure. In contrast, SM Entertainment adapted to the Chinese market and has survived. Organizations are affected by their external environment and implement strategies to adapt and respond to this environment. This study investigates reasons for SM Entertainment's successful entry into China. We analyze how the corporation's strategies evolved to acclimatize to changes in the Chinese cultural industry policy from 1998 to 2014, and explored the results of these strategies. From this analysis, we argue that it is important for organizations to tailor their response strategies to changing external environments in order to acquire social support.


The Stanford Educational Data Archive (SEDA) is the first data set to allow comparisons of district academic achievement and growth from Grades 3 to 8 across the United States, shining a light on the distribution of educational opportunities. This study describes a convergent validity analysis of the SEDA growth estimates in mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA) by comparing the SEDA estimates against estimates derived from NWEA's MAP Growth assessments. We find strong precision-adjusted correlations between growth estimates from SEDA and MAP Growth in math (.90) and ELA (.82). We also find that the discrepancy between the growth estimates in ELA is slightly more pronounced in high socioeconomic districts. Our analyses indicate a high degree of congruence between the SEDA estimates and estimates derived from the vertically scaled MAP Growth assessment. However, small systematic discrepancies imply that the SEDA growth estimates are less likely to generalize to estimates obtained through MAP Growth in some states.


Introduction: There is a growing interest to save animals and cost in transdermal permeation studies, especially during the early screening phase of formulation development. The objective of this study was to establish a relationship between permeability of tocopherol (T) through synthetic and animal membranes and to predict ex vivo data from synthetic membrane results. Materials and Methods: The permeability of T from different liquid formulations (T1-T13) was studied using Spectra/Por® and neonatal rat skin. Isopropyl myristate (ISPM), polyethylene glycol 400 (PEG)-ethanol (1:1 v/v), ethanol, and propylene glycol (PG) were tested individually as carriers, as well as mixtures with dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and tocopheryl polyethylene glycol succinate (TPGS) as solubility and permeation enhancers. The permeation study was conducted in Franz diffusion cells over 24 h. The permeability coefficient (Ps) was calculated from the observed flux value (J). Good correlation was observed for the in vitro and ex vivo studies regarding J and Ps values. Results: The calculated Ps and J from the ex-vivo study were in-line with the corresponding values calculated from Spectra Por® (r = 0.84 and 0.82, for Ps and J, respectively) and followed the same order. The effect of vehicles tested on the permeation of T followed the same rank: PG> ethanol> PEG-ethanol> ISPM, for both the animal and synthetic membrane. The predicted Ps and J values for the neonatal rat skin, based on the correlation with Spectra Por®, followed also the same rank order, yet not the same observed values. Conclusion: Spectra Por® could serve as a good surrogate for the animal skin models for drug permeation studies during the early formulation and screening phase.


Objective: to understand maternal conceptions of infantile diarrhea, encouraging reflection on the importance of communication between mothers and health services. Methods: survey carried out in selected areas of six towns in the state of Pernambuco, all of which participated in the diarrhea control project coordinated by the State Health Secretariat. The information was obtained through interviews with 770 mothers, producing a representative sample of 1,026 children younger than five years. Results: in general, mothers associated the occurrence of diarrhea with some kinds of food (fatty or undercooked). Better educated mothers, regardless of their place of residence, attributed it to improper hygiene and sanitation, whereas illiterate and poorly educated mothers, from the metropolitan region of Recife, blamed it on hot weather, and those living in the countryside believe the occurrence of diarrhea is related to teething. Circa 24.2% (63.4% living in the countryside) do not know how to prevent the disease. The two preventive measures most frequently adopted consist in drinking treated water and cooking food thoroughly. Only 0.5% mentioned breast-feeding. The number of children still alive and their ages influence maternal conceptions. The main sources of information about the prevention of diarrhea are the support network (45.5%), the health sector (35.9%) and the media (33.2%). Conclusions: the insufficient participation of the health sector in the information network about diarrhea, misinformation, and sharp disagreement over maternal conceptions and technical knowledge, which are the cornerstone of institutional measures, show that it is necessary to value the communicative dimension of the educational approach in child care.


Public health agencies face considerable challenges trying to prevent overweight and obesity in society, primarily because a person's own behavior is often the root cause of the disease. Individuals make personal choices about their diet, exercise, and lifestyle, so disease is often thought of as a matter of personal, not governmental, responsibility. This Commentary shows how law can be used as a tool to prevent overweight and obesity (see Table). The tools discussed in this article include: - Disclosure - e.g., labels and consumer information - Tort liability - e.g., inadequate disclosure of risks, misleading advertisements, and targeting children - Surveillance - e.g., reporting of glycosylated hemoglobin for diabetes management - Targeting children and adolescents - e.g., restricting food advertising during children's programs; counter advertising to promote good nutrition and physical activity; limiting the use of cartoon characters; and restricting web-based games and promotions - Taxation of unhealthy food - e.g., "junk food," "snack," or "Twinkie" tax provides disincentive for purchasing calorie-dense, nutrient-poor foods; tax revenue could also be used to promote healthy nutrition - School policies - e.g., require schools to adhere to dietary guidelines and portion size; increase opportunities for nutrition education and physical activities - Built Environment - e.g., limit fast food restaurants, build recreational parks and bike paths, expand mass transportation, and provide lighting and playgrounds in housing developments - Food Prohibitions - e.g., ban trans fat from restaurants Despite the undoubted political risks, should public health agencies push for strong measures to control obesity, perhaps even banning hazardous foods? The justification lies with the epidemic rates of overweight and obesity, the preventable morbidity and mortality, and the stark health disparities based on race and socioeconomic status. Although the public dislikes paternalism, it is at least worth considering whether such an approach is ever justified to regulate harms that are apparently self-imposed, but which are deeply socially embedded and pervasively harmful to the public.


In this paper, we propose an overall optimization of discrete multitone (DMT) transmissions over polymer optical fiber (POF). The optimization is carried out from both a theoretical and experimental approach. At first, the parameters of the POF channel characteristics, resonant cavity light emitting diode (RC-LED) dynamic nonlinearity performance and analog-to-digital converter effective number of bits (ENOB), in our digital storage oscilloscope are measured. From the measured results, we investigate the channel capacity of a 50 m step-index POF system. Then the optimal DMT bandwidth is theoretically derived. We also optimize the system with different experimental setups. The optimal cyclic prefix length and RC-LED optimal working current are given. The ENOB can be improved by oversampling and averaging. The optimal oversampling factor is discussed. Furthermore, a joint DMT clipping and subcarrier number optimization is synthetically investigated. Based on the proposed approaches, an optimized DMT gigabit transmission over a real 50 m POF channel employing low-cost components is presented. Finally, a methodology for the practical design of the DMT transmission over POF is concluded.


Thousands die each day from infections related to water, as evidenced in the ongoing crises of cholera in Haiti, zika in the Western Hemisphere, and Legionnaire's Disease in Flint, Michigan. Yet water law focuses primarily on two agendas. First, the "Blue Agenda" aims to provide an equitable allocation of water to individuals and communities while encouraging sustainable water management. Second, the "Green Agenda" aims to efficiently protect water in the natural environment from pollution. These two agendas often ignore, and can be inconsistent with, the "Red Agenda." The Red Agenda addresses prevention of water-borne infections, like cholera, and the habitat of water-related disease vectors, like mosquitoes transmitting malaria. Additionally, the Red Agenda focuses on access to water for sanitation and hygiene, with implications for epidemics like Ebola. In simplified terms, the Blue Agenda is about water quantity, the Green Agenda about water quality, and the Red Agenda about water diseases. Laws made in pursuit of the Blue Agenda, like building a dam or irrigation system, can interfere with the Red Agenda by bringing mosquito habitat closer to human communities. And laws made in the pursuit of the Green Agenda, like prohibiting discharges of pesticides into a river, can interfere with the Red Agenda by preventing a response to a malaria outbreak. This Article is the first to introduce the Blue, Green, and Red framework for water law, and explains why these agendas often conflict with each other and how to more effectively integrate these agendas into water law.


The identification of orthologous genes in an increasing number of fully sequenced genomes is a challenging issue in recent genome science. Here we present KEGG OC (http://www.genome.jp/tools/oc/), a novel database of ortholog clusters (OCs). The current version of KEGG OC contains 1 176 030 OCs, obtained by clustering 8 357 175 genes in 2112 complete genomes (153 eukaryotes, 1830 bacteria and 129 archaea). The OCs were constructed by applying the quasi-clique-based clustering method to all possible protein coding genes in all complete genomes, based on their amino acid sequence similarities. It is computationally efficient to calculate OCs, which enables to regularly update the contents. KEGG OC has the following two features: (i) It consists of all complete genomes of a wide variety of organisms from three domains of life, and the number of organisms is the largest among the existing databases; and (ii) It is compatible with the KEGG database by sharing the same sets of genes and identifiers, which leads to seamless integration of OCs with useful components in KEGG such as biological pathways, pathway modules, functional hierarchy, diseases and drugs. The KEGG OC resources are accessible via OC Viewer that provides an interactive visualization of OCs at different taxonomic levels.


The incidence of esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) has increased exponentially in the last 3 decades. Barrett's esophagus (BE) is the only known precursor of EAC. Patients with BE have a greater than 40 folds higher risk of EAC compared with the general population. Recent years have witnessed a revolution in the clinical and molecular research related to BE. However, several aspects of this condition remain controversial. Data regarding the true prevalence of BE have varied widely. Recent studies have suggested a lower incidence of EAC in nondysplastic BE (NDBE) than previously reported. There is paucity of prospective data showing a survival benefit of screening or surveillance for BE. Furthermore, the ever-increasing emphasis on healthcare cost containment has called for reexamination of the screening and surveillance strategies for BE. There is a need for identification of reliable clinical predictors or molecular biomarkers to risk-stratify patients who might benefit the most from screening or surveillance for BE. Finally, new therapies have emerged for the management of dysplastic BE. In this paper, we highlight the key areas of controversy and uncertainty surrounding BE. The paper discusses, in detail, the current literature about the molecular pathogenesis, biomarkers, histopathological diagnosis, and management strategies for BE.


This thesis addresses the identities of 'white settlers' who chose to stay in Kenya and Zambia after independence from British rule. By focusing on these racially and materially privileged minority groups this thesis unearths the ways in which racial identities have been formed and contested, in contexts in which whiteness has been inescapably historically charged.

By analysing both Kenya and Zambia the thesis breaks new ground in comparing the postcolonial history of a settler colony and an African protectorate. In doing so it raises questions about the categorisations of 'settler' and the notion of being 'settled', as well as taking on the difficult label of 'white African' and its contested use in postcolonial Africa.

This research draws upon settler colonial history in Africa and contemporary whiteness studies. As such the thesis represents a social history of decolonisation and a history of a contemporary phenomenon, whites with a colonial heritage searching for belonging and legitimacy in postcolonial contexts which invalidate their history. The thesis traces the legacies of settler colonial rule through the spatial, sensorial, linguistic and temporal dimensions of whites' postcolonial lives. Research participants all drew upon a personal colonial lineage which connected their families to the longer colonial history of Kenya and Zambia. They represented a group of people whose life experiences mapped onto the historical 'period' of decolonisation. The timeframe of the thesis - from the mid-1950s to 2017 - utilises a periodisation which transcends the bounds of colonialism and postcolonialism, and as a result is able to assess continuity and change in how racial identity and privilege was constructed and reconfigured.

The thesis' originality lies not only in its comparative study of under-researched postcolonial whites, but in its synthesis of whiteness studies, settler colonial history, postcolonial history, the history of emotions and senses, and oral history.