The authors examine simultaneously the causal links connecting monetary policy variables, real activity, and stock returns. Their interest lies in the fact that the dynamics of asset prices can provide key insights--in terms of information--for the conduct of monetary policy, since asset prices constitute a class of potentially leading indicators of either economic activity or inflation. This is of particular interest in the context of an inflation-targeting regime, where the monetary policy stance is set according to inflation forecasts. While most empirical studies on causality have examined this issue using Granger's (1969) original definition, the authors examine the causality relations through the generalization proposed in Dufour and Renault (1998). For the United States, the authors find no support for stock returns as a leading indicator of the macroeconomic variables considered, or for stock returns being influenced by those macroeconomic variables, except for one case: fluctuations in M1 tend to anticipate fluctuations in stock returns. Furthermore, the authors' empirical methodology allows them to infer that monetary aggregates may have significant predictive power for income and prices at longer horizons. It is therefore incorrect to dismiss the importance of monetary aggregates based on the usual Granger causality criteria. The causality pattern inferred by the authors' procedure is consistent with the Phillips curve (for the inflation dynamics) and with the Taylor rule in the case of the interest rate. For Canada, the results are much different. The authors show that there is a potential role for asset prices as a predictor of some important macroeconomic variables, namely interest rates, inflation, and output at policy-relevant horizons. Furthermore, some measures of monetary aggregates tend to dominate the interest rate as robust causal variables for output growth and inflation. However, the authors do not find strong evidence in favour of the Phillips curve and the Taylor rule. Finally, for both Canada and the United States, the authors show that seasonal adjustments can highly distort the inferred causality structure.


In June, 2017, the Wuhan Intermediate People's Court became the first Chinese court to recognize a U.S. judgment in the case of Liu Li v. Tao Li & Tong Wu. The Liu case is a significant development in Chinese private international law, but represents more than a single decision in a single case. It is one piece of a developing puzzle in which the law on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in China is a part of a larger set of developments. These developments are inextricably tied to the "One Belt and One Road," or "Belt and Road" Initiative first announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping on a visit to Kazakhstan in 2013. This article traces the development of the Liu case, from the first judgment in California to the decision to recognize and enforce that judgment in Wuhan, China. It then provides the context within which the decision on recognition and enforcement was made, and the way the decision fits within President Xi's "Belt and Road" Initiative and the pronouncements of the Chinese People's Supreme Court which have encouraged the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments as part of that Initiative.


Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most common congenital malformation and causes major morbidity and mortality. Prenatal detection improves the neonatal condition before surgery, resulting in less morbidity and mortality. In the Netherlands a national prenatal screening programme was introduced in 2007. This study evaluates the effects of this screening programme.


We demonstrate an approach to the development of many-body interatomic potentials for monoatomic metals with improved accuracy and reliability. The functional form of the potentials is that of the embeddedatom method, but the interesting features are as follows: ~1! The database used for the development of a potential includes both experimental data and a large set of energies of different alternative crystalline structures of the material generated by ab initio calculations. We introduce a rescaling of interatomic distances in an attempt to improve the compatibility between experimental and ab initio data. ~2! The optimum parametrization of the potential for the given database is obtained by alternating the fitting and testing steps. The testing step includes a comparison between the ab initio structural energies and those predicted by the potential. This strategy allows us to achieve the best accuracy of fitting within the intrinsic limitations of the potential model. Using this approach we develop reliable interatomic potentials for Al and Ni. The potentials accurately reproduce basic equilibrium properties of these metals, the elastic constants, the phonon-dispersion curves, the vacancy formation and migration energies, the stacking fault energies, and the surface energies. They also predict the right relative stability of different alternative structures with coordination numbers ranging from 12 to 4. The potentials are expected to be easily transferable to different local environments encountered in atomistic simulations of lattice defects. @S0163-1829~99!05005-5#


This Note analyzes transactions involving VRDBs, to determine whether they comply with the strictures of IRC section 103(c) and, hence, qualify for the tax exemption. Initially, this Note provides an overview of the tax-exempt bond market by examining the factors that led to the development of VRDBs. It then demonstrates how a reasonable interpretation of the language of IRC section 103(c), gleaned from its legislative history and Treasury promulgations, requires that almost all VRDBs lose their tax-exempt status. More specifically, this Note concludes that the inability to calculate the yield for VRDBs creates an impermissible potential to earn arbitrage profits. Based on this conclusion, this Note suggests that it is incumbent upon the Treasury Department to issue regulations that will limit the tax exemption for transactions involving VRDBs. Finally, this Note proposes measures that delineate the proper scope of the tax exemption for VRDBs and incorporates them in a model Treasury Regulation.


A new method has been proposed to accurately determine longitudinal additional force in continuous welded rail (CWR) by two Fiber Bragg Grating sensors with a little difference center wavelength but hetero-cladding diameters. As shown in the test results, the linearity between relative wavelength difference and longitudinal additional force is greater than 0.9999. Moreover, the relative wavelength difference is not affected by the temperature changing with the hetero-cladding FBG. Compared to theoretical results, the accumulated error is controlled within 2.2i¼… in harsh environment.


This paper proposes a novel mechanism to discover delay-optimal diverse paths using distributed learning automata for Voice-over-IP (VoIP) routing in service overlay networks. In addition, a novel link failure detection method is proposed for detecting and recovering from link failures to reduce the number of dropped voice sessions. The main contributions of this paper are a decentralized, scalable method for minimizing delay on both a primary and secondary path between all pairs of overlay nodes, while at the same time maintaining the link disjointness between the primary and the secondary optimal paths. Simulations of a 50-node model of AT&T's backbone network show that the proposed method improves the quality of voice calls from unsatisfactory to satisfactory, as measured by the R-factor. With the proposed link failure detection mechanism, the time to recover from a link failure is considerably reduced.


This study represents an attempt to understand the U.S. firearms market – the largest in the world – in economic terms. A model of the underlying interplay of legal firearms supply and demand is a prerequisite for reliably evaluating the effectiveness of pertinent existing state and federal firearms policies, and to amend them as necessary. The stakes are high: compared to other nation-states, per capita firearms-related harm in the United States (including suicides and homicides) is exceptionally high and, within constitutional strictures, state and federal firearms policymakers increasingly view it as a major and pressing society-wide problem. Virtually all firearms in the U.S. are initially manufactured and sold legally. Solving a simultaneous equation model using the instrumental variable of natural disasters and employing a unique dataset of U.S. firearms prices and quantities, this paper models – we believe for the first time in the literature – the U.S. market supply of, and demand for, firearms. Encouragingly, we find that this market operates as any other would be expected to, with the notable exception that lagged nonmilitary firearms stocks generate new market demand in a positive feedback loop. We test as predictors of market performance federal firearms legislation as instances of policy, as well as of extraterritorial armed conflict, firearms industry concentration, crime, and technology gaps between U.S. and imported firearms. Except for the time-limited Federal Assault Weapons Ban (1994-2004), we find (restrictive) firearms legislation not to influence sales. We also find that acute external violent conflict and certain levels of violent crime, including homicides and mass shootings, drive up unit sales, and that higher industry concentrations in certain submarkets boost quantity supplied, suggesting economies of scale. Taken together, this study's findings may provide some empirical support for firearms stock reduction programs to reduce the total volumes of civilian arms.


Risk management and asset pricing benefit from simple functional descriptions of the distribution of real asset returns. Recently, several authors have proposed that asset returns in real stock markets are distributed according to a hyperbolic distribution. While asset returns are generated by trades over time, the natural question is: What does economic theory imply concerning return distributions? We propose a simple model of price formation and, thus, return distribution which is based on economic reasoning. The market's behavior is represented by a pair consisting of a time-constant strategy and a dynamical trading strategy generating a flow between funds. Simulations of the price dynamics generate returns with fat-tail behavior in line with that of a hyperbolic distribution, and also volatility clustering, which is a mayor stylized fact of asset returns.


A finite volume method is proposed to study the dynamics of unsteady, falling liquid films carrying monodisperse spheres in Newtonian regime under the action of gravity. The Navier–Stokes equations were rewritten to implement a numerical scheme with interface capturing capability, able to compute discontinuities in the solid volumetric concentration and free surface flows. The interface capturing property is checked with simple benchmarks, showing that experimental data for a vertical settler and the dynamics of the wetting front in a thin liquid film are reproduced with success. Also, the numerical scheme computes with accuracy Kapitza instability or viscous roll waves. This work concludes illustrating the applicability of the model to study viscous resuspension phenomenon in a unsteady, falling suspension film. V C 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 58: 2601–2616, 2012


The single-source shortest path problem (SSSP) frequently arises in practical applications of todays Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). E.g. for route planning or traffic assignment, several variants of Dijkstra's algorithm or the A* algorithm have been used. Several performance-accelerated extensions of the exact A* approach are known. Interesting examples are approximate algorithms where the used heuristic function is inflated by a weight (often referred to as weighted A*). These methods guarantee a bounded suboptimality. During the last nine years, a couple of prototype ITS applications based on Floating Car Data (FCD) of taxi fleets have been developed at German Aerospace Center (DLR). A core application is a route guidance and dynamic navigation system based on current and historical road segment travel times. Recently, it has been used in the German funded project SmartTruck, run by a consortium consisting of the German logistics key player DHL, DLR and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). This project aimed at the use of historical and real-time traffic information for energy-efficient, optimized offline planning and dynamic replanning of the tours of DHL express delivery trucks. The mentioned applications have to tackle the SSSP or multi-source variants of the problem. This paper describes the use of an integrative approach to efficiently compute shortest or almost shortest paths in the prementioned applications. Hereby, the choice of a particular variant of Dijkstra or A* reacts to the respective requirement of solution quality and the different levels of severity of the problem. As a technical result, for epsilon > 0, the (1 + epsilon)-admissibility of a novel variation of the method A_epsilon of Ghallab and Allard is shown. The paper also answers the question whether inflation of the cost function g (instead of the usual inflation of the heuristic h) can be (1 + epsilon)-admissible and whether this is beneficial. An experimental evaluation demonstrates the efficiency of the described integration of algorithms.


We present a Montecarlo simulator developed in Matlab® for the analysis of a Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD)-based Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) flash Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) system. The simulation environment has been developed to accurately model the components of a flash LIDAR system, such as illumination source, optics, and the architecture of the designated SPAD-based CMOS image sensor. Together with the modeling of the background noise and target topology, all of the fundamental factors that are involved in a typical LIDAR acquisition system have been included in order to predict the achievable system performance and verified with an existing sensor.


Vibrio alginolyticus, Vibrioparahaemolyticus and Vibrio harveyi is a notorious seafood borne pathogen with a high mortality rate. This is ubiquitously present in marine environments, particularly in tropical water.in these studies the prevalence of vibrio sp in fishes caught off Chennai coast of Indian Ocean are determined. Commercially important fishes were analyzed for the occurrence of Vibrios of which some of them were harbored fishes. The prevalence of vibrio Harvey constitutes about 14%, 17% and 8% of total vibrio isolated from fish. Other clinical Vibrios are also isolated and identified. Vibriosp were detected by conventional cultural and molecular methods using PCR and sequencing of 16SrDNA. This study is an initial step to provide a baseline for future molecular research targeting Vibrio spfood borne illness.


One of the most basic laws of a web application is that the client, not the server, must initiate any communication between the two. There are a number of commonuse cases where, ideally, the server would like to talk to the clientdashboards and monitoring apps, chat rooms and other collaborations, and progress reports on longrunning processes. Comet (a.k.a. Reverse Ajax) provides a mechanism for enabling this. Comet is moderately complex to implement. But this practical, handson book gets you going. In Part 1 of this book, we start by examining the use cases, and look at the simple alternatives to Comet and how far they can satisfy your needs. In some situations, though, only Comet will do. In Part 2, we demonstrate how to set up and run a Cometbased application. With this book, be a part of the next generation, Ajax 2.0. What youll learn Find out what Comet is and the trouble with HTTP. See how to achieve push, polling, piggybacking, raw sockets, and more. Explore some common use cases and a worked example on magnetic poetry. Understand what some issues and techniques are including the tworequest limit, pubsub and server architectures, and continuations vs. native Comet. Use implementations of Comet, including Cometd/Bayeaux, Reverse Ajax in DWR, and more. Work through the final example using DWR Framework. Who is this book for? This firstPress title is for Ajax developers who are intrigued by Comet/Reverse Ajax, key to the next generation Ajax 2.0.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Recent research on life satisfaction in retirement explores gender differences but yields inconsistent patterns and does not consider gendered sources of satisfaction. We use a gender relations framework to examine whether women and men experience different changes in life satisfaction with retirement, and whether observed differences are a consequence of different assessments of the leisure, family, and financial situations that characterize their post-retirement lives.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
We use longitudinal data drawn from men and women in the Health and Retirement Study who transitioned into retirement between ages 62-72 for the first time between 2008 and 2016 (N=593). We employ Ordinary Least Squares regression and mediation tests to assess gender differences in overall and domain-specific life satisfaction (i.e., leisure, family, finances).

RESULTS
Men reported increased life satisfaction following retirement, but women did not. No gender differences related to leisure or family life post-retirement emerged. Gender was associated with post-retirement satisfaction with finances (p<0.001), with men reporting higher financial satisfaction. Mediation models confirmed a gender disparity in overall life satisfaction mediated by satisfaction with finances post-retirement (p<0.01), explaining approximately one-third of the disparity.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
This study shows men derive greater improvements in life satisfaction in association with retirement than do women, and some of this disparity relates to women's lower satisfaction with their finances. These findings should caution policy-makers from assuming how women's increased labor force participation influences financial security in retirement, and encourage scholars to consider how gender influences subjective assessments of later life.


The Learning Analytics Dashboard (LAD) is an application to show students' online behavior patterns in a virtual learning environment. This supporting tool works by tracking students' log-files, mining massive amounts of data to find meaning, and visualizing the results so they can be comprehended at a glance. This paper reviews previously developed applications to analyze their features. Based on the implications from the review of previous studies as well as a preliminary investigation on the need for such tools, an early version of the LAD was designed and developed. Also, in order to improve the LAD, a usability test incorporating a stimulus recall interview was conducted with 38 college students in two blended learning classes. Evaluation of this tool was performed in an experimental research setting with a control group and additional surveys were conducted asking students' about perceived usefulness, conformity, level of understanding of graphs, and their behavioral changes. The results indicated that this newly developed learning analytics tool did not significantly impact on their learning achievement. However, lessons learned from the usability and pilot tests support that visualized information impacts on students' understanding level; and the overall satisfaction with dashboard plays as a covariant that impacts on both the degree of understanding and students' perceived change of behavior. Taking in the results of the tests and students' open- ended responses, a scaffolding strategy to help them understand the meaning of the information displayed was included in each sub section of the dashboard. Finally, this paper discusses future directions in regard to improving LAD so that it better supports students' learning performance, which might be helpful for those who develop learning analytics applications for students.


This paper explores methodologies for using the IssueCrawler research tool to map the interconnections of individual blogs in sections of the blogosphere. It uses the case of Australian–born Guantanamo detainee David Hicks as a case study, mapping the distributed discussions of this case in that part of the Australian blogosphere which is concerned with debating news and politics. Its findings indicate the presence of a strong and sustained engagement with this case by Australian political bloggers, and point to a tendency for discussions to cluster around a handful of sites which are defined by their political orientation. The network maps also suggest a lack of sustained coverage of the case by bloggers outside of Australia, and indicate only limited engagement between bloggers and the mainstream media.


"This study explores the meaning of justification in the framework of Latin American theology of liberation, which is a particular way of doing theology welcomed by both Catholics and Protestants. In this theology, the poor, 'oppressed and believing, ' constitute the privileged locus of theology. That is to say, theology is done from their reality of oppression-liberation and their experience of God. Every great theological theme, every biblical reading, must be reexamined from that angle of vision." (from the Introduction, by Elsa Tamez)


The Coursebook is divided into 12 units each with relevant sections, such as grammar, vocabulary, reading and writing. Exam practice is embedded at the end of each unit to prepare students for high-stakes tests like IELTS and PTE Academic. Every lesson in New Language Leader has a scenario with a case study and Meet the Expert video or a Study Skills section with skills videos to support students in tertiary education: *"Meet the Expert" aspirational videos with leading professionals in different fields stretch students' ability to understand real-life English. Experts act as role models and inspire students to work harder. *Study Skills videos teach your students how to do their best in academic studies. They give advice on how to better understand lectures, take notes, participate in discussions and give many other useful academic tips. All the course audio and video are available for free online.


Fusarium wilt, caused by the soil-borne fungus Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense (Foc), is a serious vascular disease of bananas in most subtropical and tropical regions of the world. Twenty-four vegetative compatibility groups (VCGs) and three pathogenic races have been identified in Foc, reflecting a relatively high genetic diversity for an asexual fungus. To characterise a South African population of Foc, a collection of 128 isolates from diverse geographic origins were isolated from diseased Cavendish bananas and subjected to VCG analysis and sequencing of the translation elongation factor 1-α (TEF) gene region. The presence of mating type genes was also determined using MAT-1 and MAT-2 specific primers. VCG 0120 was established as the only VCG of Foc present in the South African population studied. Only the MAT-2 idiomorph was present in all the local isolates of Foc. A phylogenetic analysis of DNA sequences of the TEF gene region revealed that the South African isolates grouped closely with VCG 0120 isolates from Australia and Asia. These results suggest that the South African population of Foc was most likely introduced in a limited number of events and that it had spread with infected planting material within the country. The presence of only one mating type and the limited diversity in this pathogen render it unlikely to rapidly overcome disease management strategies involving host resistance.


This paper aims to improve wear resistance of bare Babbitt modified by CuLa and evaluates the effect of different sliding modes on tribological properties of bare Babbitt, Babbitt modified by 0.5 wt% CuLa (marked by mbabbitt-1), and Babbitt modified by 1 wt% CuLa (marked by mbabbitt-2). First, bare Babbitt was modified with different contents of CuLa. The microstructure, microhardness, and wettability of Babbitt were tested and studied. Then, the tribological properties of bare Babbitt, mBabbitt-1, and mBabbitt-2 were conducted by the reciprocating mode and unidirectional mode under the lubricated condition. The results showed that the SnSb grain of the modified Babbitt was refined and uniformly distributed. The microhardness of mBabbitt-1 was higher than that of bare Babbitt and mBabbitt-2. Compared with bare Babbitt, the wettability of mBabbitt-1 and mBabbitt-2 was improved. Anti-friction and wear resistance of specimens under the reciprocating mode were better than that of specimens under the unidirectional mode, which was attributed to low strain and equivalent stress of bare Babbitt under the reciprocating mode. Moreover, anti-wear of bare Babbitt was improved by adding CuLa due to refined grain and high microhardness.


Due to the great morbidity and mortality in the risk groups of the pandemic COVID-19 caused by the emerging coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and in the absence of effective therapeutic or preventive measures, quarantines, social distancing and the use of masks were the measures most used by health systems to reduce infections. The social, economic and health impact caused by these measures have begun to be evaluated in the different countries. These analyses lead to underestimations because in general they evaluate disease confirmed by a laboratory test and in some cases by epidemiological link without considering asymptomatic or oligosymptomatic infection. Therefore, mitigating fast circulation of the virus requires continuous tracking, detection, and isolation of cases, for which active surveillance able to address asymptomatic cases can make a valuable contribution over the dynamics of the disease in a given society, and to allocate adequate health resources and evaluate the effectiveness of control measures. Mathematical models such as the Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Removed (SEIR) allow not only to improve the estimates of the evolution of the pandemic at the local level, but also to evaluate health strategies. In the context of large testing requirements and the expansion of such testing capacity, it is also essential to develop approaches that improve the efficient use of these resources. Active surveillance undoubtedly contributes to improving estimates of virus circulation and it is of particular importance in vulnerable groups of high population density that have one or more risk factors, difficult access to the health system, and inhabit semi-closed facilities such as residential care homes, mental hospitals, prison houses, police stations housing prisoners, etc. Group testing strategies are especially useful for routine community survey and for monitoring of cohesive groups. While the frequency of infection in a population, who have only some symptoms compatible with the disease or do not have any symptoms, may be low, diagnosing even a single positive person typically requires quarantine of the entire group to prevent further spread in the community. In these surveillance strategies, pooling may allow more routine monitoring and detection of low frequency of carriage, thereby improving estimates, informing policy makers, reducing transmission, and alleviating the strain on healthcare services. By means of molecular tests based on RT-qPCR, the pooling strategy has been assayed with different algorithms also for COVID-19, particularly in the asymptomatic population, since a low prevalence of the disease is expected there. This has increased SARS-CoV-2 testing throughput while maintaining high sensitivity. Here, we discuss the relevance of some active surveillance strategies to determine key facts about COVID-19 pandemics and review different testing strategies that different countries have applied for tracking SARS-CoV-2.


This thesis discusses the study and further developments of boron-mediated amidation reactions. Chapter I introduces the conventional and recent methods and developments for the direct amidation of carboxylic acids and their derivatives. An overview of boron-mediated transformations is also given with the focus on stoichiometric methods and boronic acid catalysts. Chapter II describes the utilisation of B(OCH2CF3)3 in the synthesis of medicinally-relevant amides, selective monoacylation of symmetrical diamines, and amidation of unprotected amino acids. Design of Experiments (DoE) is applied as the optimisation method for the improvement of efficiency of the amidation reaction and therefore the yield of one of the medicinally relevant amides. Furthermore, a convenient derivatisation method of amino amide products is applied to determine enantiopurity of the products. Chapter III discusses investigations performed with the aim of understanding boron-mediated amidation reactions. A spectroscopic study is provided along with the proposed tentative mechanism. Chapter IV describes the design and synthesis of a potential boronic acid amidation catalyst, which incorporates a borate moiety. Conclusions and future developments as well as an outlook of the applications of borates in organic synthesis are described in Chapter V. Chapter VI provides experimental details of this work and full characterisation of compounds synthesised throughout this project. Chapter VII contains an appendix that includes chiral HPLC and spectroscopic data from Marfey's reagent derivatisation of chiral amino acid amide products. Moreover, spectra from 11B NMR study of boron-mediated amidations and the DoE study for the optimisation of decarboxylation of amino acids are included.


We generalize a previous model of time-delayed reaction–diffusion fronts (Fort and Méndez 1999 Phys. Rev. Lett. 82 867) to allow for a bias in the microscopic random walk of particles or individuals. We also present a second model which takes the time order of events (diffusion and reproduction) into account. As an example, we apply them to the human invasion front across the USA in the 19th century. The corrections relative to the previous model are substantial. Our results are relevant to physical and biological systems with anisotropic fronts, including particle diffusion in disordered lattices, population invasions, the spread of epidemics, etc.


I. INTRODUCTION TO THE PRIVATE PRISON INDUSTRY AND THE NONDELEGATION DOCTRINE A. The Advantages of Private Prisons B. The Disadvantages of Private Prisons C. The History of Private Prisons in the United States D. The Nondelegation Doctrine II. ANALYSIS A. Private Prisons Are Outside the Scope of the Nondelegation Doctrine 1. Supreme Court Authority Used to Challenge the Constitutionality of Private Prisons is Inapplicable 2. Circuit Court Authority Used to Challenge the Constitutionality of Private Prisons is Inapplicable B. Is the Nondelegation Doctrine Obsolete? III. RECOMMENDATIONS A. The Social Arguments Against Private Prisons B. The Political Argument Against Private Prisons C. Simplifying the Issue D. Specific Solutions IV. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION TO THE PRIVATE PRISON INDUSTRY AND THE NONDELEGATION DOCTRINE Despite the fact that property (1) and violent (2) crime rates have declined since 1973, in the years between 1988 and 1997, the U.S. prison population increased drastically. (3) The factors contributing to the increase in the prison population included: a number of legislative enactments toughening drug and weapon penalties (4); enactments encouraging mandatory minimum sentencing; preventive detention; reduced use of parole; and increased penalties for habitual offenders. (5) During this same time, state and federal legislators were unreceptive to legislation involving new taxes and construction bonds, (6) the most utilized methods of financing state and local prisons. (7) In a little less than a decade, the U.S. prison population nearly doubled, rising from 627,600 inmates in 1988 to 1,244,554 inmates in 1997.8 In 1997, the federal prison system reported functioning at 19% over capacity, (9) and state prisons reported functioning at 24% over capacity. (10) These facts, combined with a 1992 executive order issued by President George Herbert Walker Bush requiring all federal agencies to encourage state and local governments to utilize private prisons, (11) led governments to look to private prisons (12) as a necessary supplement to public ones. (13) A. The Advantages of Private Prisons At first glance, private prisons seem to have a number of advantages over public prisons. Private prison advocates claim that private prisons save taxpayers money. (14) Because they are subject to less bureaucracy than public prisons, private prison corporations claim they can build and staff their prisons more quickly and less expensively than can public prisons. (15) While state or federal governments take at least two years to build a prison, private prison corporations claim they can build a prison in less than 18 months. (16) Private prisons have the advantage of being able to test new incarceration philosophies without the hindrance of the lengthy approval procedures that bind public prisons. (17) They also have the luxury of strategically locating themselves in states that provide the greatest economic benefit, giving governments the option to transfer prisoners to states in which prisoners can be held at the least expense. (18) Additionally, as a result of privatization, governments face potentially less liability in suits brought by prisoners and prison staff. (19) B. The Disadvantages of Private Prisons While private prisons have some advantages over public prisons, they pose a number of social and logistical disadvantages as well. Opponents of prison privatization question the implications of the potential to profit from incarceration (20) and the resulting disincentive to curb the influx of new inmates. (21) On May 3, 2006, Corrections Corporation of America (stock symbol CXW), the largest private prison corporation in the United States, posted a $21.3 million first quarter profit and raised its full-year profit outlook by ten cents per share. (22) "We've never seen the wind at our back like it is today," Chief Executive John Ferguson said that day in a shareholder conference call. …


This paper reports the results of a research project investigating the use that Distance Education (DE) students at university make of the learning materials that are supplied to them. The research is based on a survey of 998 DE students enrolled in ten undergraduate subjects spread across all five Faculties at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in New South Wales, Australia. CSU is Australia's largest DE provider of higher education. The project addressed the following questions: • The extent to which DE undergraduate students use their learning materials. • The extent to which students undertake the learning activities that are often incorporated in learning materials. • The extent to which students obtain learning materials beyond the printed learning materials, especially their use of library facilities and the internet to research topics in their study programs. • The way in which DE undergraduate students approach their study and the study strategies that they adopt. The paper reports the major conclusions from the survey. It was found that the majority of students read most or all of the learning materials that were sent to them. They relied heavily upon the prescribed textbooks, did some additional reading as recommended, to a limited extent carried out additional reading beyond that recommended, and worked through the provided learning materials in a methodical manner. They generally completed, in their minds if not always on paper, the study tasks embedded in the learning materials. Those students that read less and paid less attention to study tasks tended to study in a way that was focused on passing assessment tasks. Overall the study provides a strong argument for the retention of printed learning materials as students seem to work well with them, and the more effectively students use them the better they seem to perform.


A leading authority on classical games here provides a comprehensive study of the practice of combat sports in the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, and the Near East. Describing and analyzing the sports of boxing, wrestling, stick-fighting, and pankration, Michael B. Poliakoff discusses such topics as the function of competition and violent games in ancient society; on the social background of the participants, showing the broad spectrum of Greek athletic personnel; on the significance of the appearance of combat sport in myth and literature; and on the alleged cultic functions of the ancient combat sports. The book is copiously illustrated with photographs of numerous objects rarely or never before published.


Zernike polynomials are used in the study of single- and multiple-circular-aperture optical systems that are affected by atmosphere turbulence. Expressions for mean-square wave-front distortion, correlation functions, Zernike covariance coefficients, and anisoplanatism are derived and calculated for Kolmogorov atmospheric statistics. The mathematical tools provided here, however, can readily be extended to non-Kolmogorov turbulence spectra.


As a medical student, you are exposed to death from day one. I still remember going to get my ID card headshot 5 years ago. We had just had our 'Welcome to 6 years of medicine!!' lectures, and we were marched in alphabetical order to get our photos taken. A few students at a time, we walked into a clean, white, windowless room containing little more than 48 stretchers, neatly lined up and covered by white plastic sheets. It was only when I was being told, 'Smile for the camera!' that my brain fully processed what was going on. We were in the dissection room, and the dead outnumbered the living by 10:1. I look pretty uncomfortable in that photo.

It is a part of human behaviour that when you are repeatedly exposed to something, you gradually become more accustomed to it, desensitised even. One progresses from the cold, stiff, embalmed cadavers of the dissection theatres to the peacefully sleeping bodies in the morgue. From studying diseases that cause the body to fail, to talking with patients suffering from those very conditions, learning a few days later that they have passed away. But, I …


This study reports on the trends of operational costs of farmer owned and operated irrigation enterprises (irrigation districts and canal companies) in five intermountain states. Administrative costs have risen faster then operation and maintenance costs. While salaries of employees have not risen significantly over time, legal costs have greatly escalated.


Throughout its history, reflection on human society has been torn apart by the opposing views of atomism and holism. Traditional societies, the city state of ancient Greece as well as the medieval perfect society apparently resemble a whole with its parts. Early modernity continued this holistic inclination for a while, but soon reverted to atomistic theories of the (hypothetical) social contract. Modern humanism dominated the subsequent views articulated in terms of the dialectical tension between nature and freedom (science ideal and personality ideal) – including mechanistic and vitalistic approaches as well as the more recent acknowledgment of irreducibly complex systems (Behe, 2003). In Wiener's (1954; 1956) "technologicism" human responsibility and freedom are sacrificed. An alternative view is advanced in terms of the normativity of societal life as well as its many-sidedness. It is shown that theories of social systems increasingly tend to explore avenues transcending the limitations of the atomistic additive approach and the boundary-leveling whole-parts scheme entailed in social systems theory. This development is used as a starting point for the classification of social interaction and for underscoring the scope of the principle of sphere-sovereignty for a multidisciplinary understanding of social systems.


Background and Objective: Enormous advances have been made in adhesives; however, the problem of post-operative sensitivity has dragged along. Enough literature exists on the effect of air abrasion over bond strength of composites. However, not much is reported on its relation with microleakage and post operative sensitivity. Therefore, the aim of the study was to compare and evaluate dentinal hypersensitivity and microleakage associated with composite restorations in cavities preconditioned with air abrasion. Study Design: Fifteen patients were selected for the study who had to undergo extractions of both maxillary first premolars. On each patient, occlusally placed Class V cavities were made using rotary burs on both the premolars. On the right side premolar, restoration was done using total etch technique. On the left side premolar, restoration was done in similar way after preconditioning of the cavity with air abrasion. Sensitivity levels were recorded on a modified visual analogue scale preoperatively and post operatively at 1 week and one month time period. Following extraction, dye penetration test was done and 1 sample each from one group was subjected to Scanning Electron Microscope for evaluation of tooth restoration interface. Results: Clinically significant difference was there in post operative sensitivity levels after one month between the two groups. Increase in sensitivity was less in teeth restored after preconditioning with air abrasion. Dye penetration was also less in teeth restored after preconditioning with air abrasion. However, penetration at the gingival wall was more than the occlusal wall in both the groups. Conclusion: The study consolidates the fact that microleakage and post operative sensitivity are linked directly. It also proves that air abrasion can help in reducing the post operative sensitivity to a level; however, a larger sample size would be needed to obtain more robust results with stronger validation.


The Mahoning River drains the densely populated and industrialized WarrenYoungstown area in northeastern Ohio. Significant chemical constituents and physical properties generally regarded as important in establishing waterquality standards for the Mahoning River are evaluated on the basis of hydrologic conditions and water use. Most of the interpretations and the appraisal of water-quality conditions are based on data collected from January 1963 to December 1965. Generally, streamflow during this period was lower than during a selected long-term reference period; however, extremely low flows that occurred in the reference period did not occur in the 3-year study period. Water temperatures of the Mahoning River at Pricetown and Leavittsburg were not affected by thermal loading. Water temperatures at those stations ranged from the freezing point to 78°F during the 1963-65 period. Downstream from Leavittsburg the use of large quantities of water for industrial cooling caused critical thermal loading during periods of low streamflow. Maximum water temperature were 108°F and 104°F at Struthers and Lowellville, respectively. Water temperatures of the Mahoning River were lower during high water discharges and increased with higher steel-production indices. Flow augmentation and modifications in industrial processes have improved the water-temperature conditions in recent years. A combination of oxygen-consuming materials and warmed water from industrial and municipal wastes discharged into the lower reaches of the Mahoning River frequently depleted the dissolved-oxygen content. At Lowellville, the river water had a dissolved-oxygen content of 5 ppm (parts per million) or less for 67 percent of the time and 3 ppm or less for 16 percent of the time during the study period. The percentage of saturation of dissolved oxygen followed a similar trend. Both the dissolved-oxygen concentration and the percentage of saturation were noticeably lower downstream from Leavittsburg during the warm months when water temperatures were high and streamflow was low. The dissolved-oxygen content in the Mahoning River at Leavittsburg and Pricetown was almost always at acceptable levels. The calculated dissolved-solids concentration of the Mahoning River ranged from 150 to 450 ppm at Leavittsburg and from 200 ppm to 650 ppm at Lowellville. Industrial use of the water caused an increase in the dissolved-solids* concentraCl C2 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HYDROLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES tion at Lowellville. During one steel-mill shutdown the average dissolved-solids concentration decreased from about 360 to about 280 ppm. Chloride concentrations in the Mahoning River ranged from 42 ppm at Pricetown to 108 ppm at Struthers. The chloride load at 50-percent flow duration was 9 and 69 tons per day at Pricetown and Lowellville, respectively. The chloride content of the Mahoning River was well within acceptable levels. Sulfate from wastes disposal and acid mine drainage made up the largest quantity of dissolved-solids load in the Mahoning River. The sulfate load at 50-percent flow duration increased from 38 tons per day at Pricetown to 300 tons per day at Lowellville. At Pricetown the sulfate load ranged from about 2 to 588 tons per day, while at Lowellville, downstream from the industrialized area, the range was from 106 to 2,420 tons per day. Comparison of sulfate loads during periods of steel production with periods of steel-mill shutdown indicated that during low flow about half the sulfate load at Lowellville was derived from steel-mill wastes when the production index was 100. The alkalinity load of the Mahoning River at 50-percent flow duration increased from Pricetown (23 tons per day) to Lowellville (41 tons per day). During steel production the alkalinity of the water showed a marked decrease from Leavittsburg downstream to Lowellville. However, during steel-mill shutdowns the chemical composition of the river at Youngstown and Lowellville was similar to that at Leavittsburg. Acid mine drainage and pickle-liquor wastes reduced the alkalinity and lowered the pH of the river downstream from Warren. Between Warren and Niles, the pH was less than 6.0 for some periods. The total iron concentration of the Mahoning River upstream from Leavittsburg was generally less than 2 ppm. From Leavittsburg downstream to Lowellville, total iron concentrations were frequently greater than 20 ppm.


The Barcelona process so far has been a valuable systemic/institutional advance in Euro-Med relations and a confidence-building measure on a large scale. But it has not been a sufficient driving force to have created a momentum of economic, political and social advance in the partner states. It is therefore quite plausible that the EU should seek some new advance – through the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) – to build on the positive features of Barcelona and so try to introduce some new driving force. The Action Plans currently being adopted seek to make the often vague intentions of the Association Agreements of the Barcelona process more operational by linking them to either domestic policy programmes of the partner state or to EU policy norms and standards as an external anchor. In this paper we first crystallise alternative approaches for the ENP to become a real driving force under the headings of 'conditionality' and 'socialisation'. The conditionality concept would mean that the EU sets out i) what incentives it offers, and ii) the conditions on which these incentives would be delivered. The socialisation concept relies essentially on a learning process that comes from the extensive interaction between actors in the partner states and the EU, which induces the partner states to engage in policy reforms that are to a degree modelled on EU norms or derive some inspiration from them. For the EU to become a driving force for reform in the region also requires that it does not have to face an uphill struggle against negative tendencies, for example in the widening and deepening of radical Islam – and here the issue of coherence in the approaches of the EU and US together is paramount.


Metal-organic coordination polymers are a class of organic–inorganic materials consists of metal ions linked together through multi-dentate organic ligands, to form a polymeric chain. These materials have received a great deal of attention in a wide range of different areassuch as catalysis, sensing, luminescence, separation and storage used . The new nano flowerPb(II) 1Dmetal-organic chain {[Pb(phen)(μ-CH3COO)]•(BF4)}n(1) (phen=1,10-phenanthroline) was synthesized by a sonochemical irradiation assisted method. The compound was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), elemental analysis, FT-IR spectroscopy, X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) and single crystal X-ray analysis. The X-ray analysis reveals a 1Dchain metal-organic coordination polymer structure for 1 thatis further extended into a 3D supramolecular structure by π-π and other labile interactions. The coordination number of the lead(II) ions is determined was abouteight, PbF2N2O4. The lead oxide nanoparticles were prepared at 180 °C by the thermolysis of 1. The average diameter of the nanoparticles to be 27 nm. The size and morphology of the prepared PbO samples were further observed using SEM.


Legislation with respect to the recovery and environmentally friendly processing of discarded products may be an opportunity for companies to increase profits by creating components from the discarded products. This research was directed to the profitability of the disassembly of some of the components of a product to use them in the assembly of new products or for service aims. In order to get experience and knowledge, this research has been focused on computers. A mathematical model has been developed based upon the technical, operational and economic control of the recovery processes. With this model, some preliminary simulation runs have been executed. The results obtained from the simulations were in accordance with the expectations.


Compared to the OLED with planar substrate, the luminous current efficiency and luminous power efficiency of the device are shown 25% and 36% enhancement, respectively, by attaching the microlens array film (MAF) having a fill factor of 0.788 and a height ratio of 0.46. Both the luminous current efficiency and luminous power efficiency of the organic light-emitting device (OLED) increased monotonically with increasing the fill factor of MAFs, regardless of their arrangements. However, the curve-fitting equation of the luminous power efficiency has a negative second-order term, which shows a saturation phenomenon. Based on the experimentally verified configuration, simulation showed that the luminous current and power efficiencies also increase along with increasing height ratio and they were found to have more pronounced saturation phenomena. As for the spectral characteristics, the peak wavelength of the planar OLED spectra got blue-shift and the full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) of its spectra decreased with increasing the viewing angles due to the microcavity theories. After MAFs are attached to the OLED, the FWHM of the OLED spectra decreased linearly by increasing the fill factor of the MAFs. We also observe blue shifts at different viewing angles which is the evidence that the waveguiding modes are being extracted. The saturation phenomena of efficiency enhancement imply that high fill factor and large height ratio of MAFs will certainly benefit for efficiency enhancement, however, full factor cases are not always the most desirable. Optimal fill factor and height ratio, which may be less than unity, will gain the best efficiency enhancement, suffer from less color deviation, and make fabrication easier.


In evolutionary robotics, we evaluate individuals by placing them in an initial configuration in the environment, and then measure their fitness over a period of time. The choice of initial configuration has a direct impact on the fitness of an individual and thereby also the overarching evolutionary process. In this paper, we propose the concept of dynamic initial configurations, which is an initial configuration that is neither random nor fixed, but develops dynamically in response to the evolutionary process. As an example we have implemented a competitive co-evolutionary algorithm where initial configurations and controllers are evolved together to solve an obstacle avoidance task of a mobile robot. We show that, while a evolutionary approach taken from literature consistently fails, the co-evolutionary approach succeeds in 22 out of 25 runs. This example demonstrates the benefit of dynamic initial configurations, but more work is needed to establish if the concept generalizes to more complex tasks, environments and morphologies.


Small mammals were studied in two southern Chilean temperate rainforests in the precor-dillean Andes during 2 low-rainfall years following the 1982 El Nino event. Forests had somewhat different levels of canopy, shrub, and herbaceous cover, and species richness of trees but most of the same plants. Most captures were of four sigmodontine rodents, Akodon olivaceus, Abrothrix longipilis, Abrothrix sanborni , and Oligoryzomys longicaudatus ; five other species and a putative hybrid were recorded. Maximum numbers were in January–July (late summer to winter) and lower numbers in August–December (late winter to early summer). All species had seasonal reproduction in September–April (spring to autumn). A. olivaceus and A. longipilis generally were long-lived, whereas survival rates were low for O. longicaudatus . Responses after the 1982 El Nino were small, and some populations increased during 1984. Populations of A. olivaceus fluctuated more than those of A. longipilis ; those of A. sanborni were low and O. longicaudatus was sporadic and irruptive. Lower-elevational Chilean and precordilleran Argentine forests have similar species composition, but differences in demography and dominance of the former by more widespread, omnivorous A. olivaceus , animalivorous-fungivorous Abrothrix , and granivorous O. longicaudatus . Opportunities for immigration may explain greater homogeneity of populations of small mammals in Chilean rainforests relative to Argentine ones. Although responses to El Nino and subsequent droughts were weak, flowering episodes of bamboo ( Chusquea ) can have strong effects due to increased availability of food.


NON-LINREAR EVALUATION OF CONCRETE-FILLED STEEL TUBULAR COLUMNS by Mohammad H. Shams Concrete-filled steel tubular (CFT) columns have become increasingly popular in structural applications due to their high strength, high ductility, and large energy absorption capacity. These structural properties are the result of integral behavior of the concrete core and the steel tube. This research provides an analysis of the interaction of the concrete core and the steel tube in CFT columns. While there have been many experimental studies of CFT columns, there has been no analytical work modeling the confining effect of the steel tube on the concrete core. Furthermore, current design procedures tend to underestimate the ultimate strengths of CFTs since they neglect the confining effect of the steel tube on the concrete core. Since experimental programs are expensive, time consuming and limited to small ranges of parameters, it is important to develop an analytical model for CFT members. In this study emphasis is placed on the non-linear response of CFT columns subjected to axial and combined loadings. A three-dimensional finite element model is developed for CFT columns. The concrete core is modeled with 3-D solid elements which use the Pramono-William concrete model and the steel tube is modeled using shell elements which allow large deformation and contain a von Mises plasticity model with kinematic hardening. Gap elements are used to model concrete and steel interface. The finite element model is calibrated against existing experimental results. Analyses of columns under axial loading indicate that the stress-strain properties of the concrete core are highly affected by the geometrical configuration of the columns as well as material properties of concrete core. CFT columns exhibit high flexural capacity with a hardening type of behavior due to higher ductility and larger compressive capacity of concrete core which is provided by confining effect of steel tube. The circular CFTs show a hardening type of response under axial loading while, a degrading type of behavior is observed in square columns. Simple models are developed in order to define the axial and flexural capacity of CFT columns. The proposed methodology is calibrated against experimental data. NON-LINEAR EVALUATION OF CONCRETE-FILLED STEEL TUBULAR COLUMNS


In real-world applications of natural language generation, there are often constraints on the target sentences in addition to fluency and naturalness requirements. Existing language generation techniques are usually based on recurrent neural networks (RNNs). However, it is non-trivial to impose constraints on RNNs while maintaining generation quality, since RNNs generate sentences sequentially (or with beam search) from the first word to the last. In this paper, we propose CGMH, a novel approach using Metropolis-Hastings sampling for constrained sentence generation. CGMH allows complicated constraints such as the occurrence of multiple keywords in the target sentences, which cannot be handled in traditional RNN-based approaches. Moreover, CGMH works in the inference stage, and does not require parallel corpora for training. We evaluate our method on a variety of tasks, including keywords-to-sentence generation, unsupervised sentence paraphrasing, and unsupervised sentence error correction. CGMH achieves high performance compared with previous supervised methods for sentence generation. Our code is released at https://github.com/NingMiao/CGMH


BACKGROUND Bococizumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody targeting proprotein convertase subtilisin–kexin type 9 (PCSK9), reduces levels of low‐density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. However, the variability and durability of this effect are uncertain. METHODS We conducted six parallel, multinational lipid‐lowering trials enrolling 4300 patients with hyperlipidemia who were randomly assigned to receive 150 mg of bococizumab or placebo subcutaneously every 2 weeks and who were followed for up to 12 months; 96% were receiving statin therapy at the time of enrollment. The patients were assessed for lipid changes over time, stratified according to the presence or absence of antidrug antibodies detected during the treatment period. RESULTS At 12 weeks, patients who received bococizumab had a reduction of 54.2% in the LDL cholesterol level from baseline, as compared with an increase of 1.0% among those who received placebo (absolute between‐group difference, ‐55.2 percentage points). Significant between‐group differences were also observed in total cholesterol, non–high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol, apolipoprotein B, and lipoprotein(a) (P<0.001 for all comparisons). However, high‐titer antidrug antibodies developed in a substantial proportion of the patients who received bococizumab, which markedly diminished the magnitude and durability of the reduction in LDL cholesterol levels. In addition, among patients with no antidrug antibodies, there was wide variability in the reduction in LDL cholesterol levels at both 12 weeks and 52 weeks. Major cardiovascular events occurred in 57 patients (2.5%) who received bococizumab and in 55 (2.7%) who received placebo (hazard ratio, 0.96; 95% confidence interval, 0.66 to 1.39; P=0.83). The most common adverse event among patients who received bococizumab was injection‐site reaction (12.7 per 100 person‐years). CONCLUSIONS In six multinational trials evaluating bococizumab, antidrug antibodies developed in a large proportion of the patients and significantly attenuated the lowering of LDL cholesterol levels. Wide variation in the relative reduction in cholesterol levels was also observed among patients in whom antidrug antibodies did not develop. (Funded by Pfizer; SPIRE ClinicalTrials.gov numbers, NCT01968954, NCT01968967, NCT01968980, NCT02100514, NCT02135029, and NCT02458287.)


A computer simulation model, LINKFLOW, was developed to calculate the movement of water during various water table management practices, namely subsurface drainage, controlled drainage, and subirrigation. The model can simulate water movement through a heterogeneous and anisotropic saturated soil and includes an unsaturated flow component with a zone of water extraction by plant roots. The computer program links a newly developed one-dimensional unsaturated water flow model to an existing but modified three-dimensional saturated water flow model, MODFLOW. The water movement is simulated for a region of the field, and results obtained define water conditions in the root zone for a wide range of soil, topography, drain location, and weather conditions. LINKFLOW is unique among soil water flow models because of the following features: 1) it can simulate soil-water conditions beneath a crop on land with varying topography; 2) it can determine 3-D flows from drains in a heterogeneous, anisotropic soil; and 3) it can simulate the effects of different automated control strategies for subirrigation. Results can be presented in tabular format, contour map format, and/or a 3-D surface format to help understanding flow behavior of the system. A subirrigation case simulation is presented to illustrate just one example of the model's use in water table management studies. This article focuses on the development of the simulation model.


The United States and Iraq are about to conclude a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) designed to replace UN Security Council resolutions as the legal basis for a continued U.S. troop presence in Iraq. But it appears the Iraqi Prime Minister and the Iraqi Parliament are divided on the desirability of a SOFA, the former favoring the agreement and the latter opposing it. Because the United States has pushed very hard to complete an agreement, one possible scenario is that the Iraqi Parliament will refuse to ratify the SOFA. What would happen if the Iraqi Prime Minister nonetheless signed the agreement, representing that his signature was sufficient to bind the state of Iraq? Few dispute that such an act would violate the 2005 Iraqi constitution, which requires parliamentary approval of all treaties. This article inquires into the international legal effect of such a national law violation. It concludes that under Article 46 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the SOFA would be voidable at the discretion of future Iraqi governments. Three arguments support this conclusion. First, the 2005 Iraqi constitution clearly requires Parliamentary approval of treaties. The United States has been acutely aware of this requirement throughout the negotiations, and for it to claim that a SOFA lacking parliamentary approval was nonetheless valid would be an act of blatant bad faith. The U.S. made the new Iraqi constitution possible by deposing the Saddam regime, set the constitutional drafting process in motion during its control of the country from May 2003 to June 2004 and was intimately involved in the drafting process itself. The international law of treaties allows such "manifest" violations of national law to serve as a basis for voiding treaties. Second, one of the reasons international law has taken account of national law violations in assent to treaties is to support the democratic institutions involved in treaty ratification. To affirm a treaty assented to in violation of separation of powers principles would be to abet the degradation of those principles. Democracy promotion has emerged as an important international goal since the end of the Cold War, giving new life to this aspect of treaty law. That goal has particular resonance for a U.S.-Iraqi agreement. The United States has made democracy promotion its central justification for the 2003 invasion and has spent countless dollars and political capital creating functional democratic institutions in the country. For the U.S. to claim the benefit of an agreement defying those institutions' doctrinal core - the constitution - would also be an act of extraordinary bad faith. Third, the profound implications of a SOFA for the Iraqi people require input from their elected representatives. Under current Security Council authorization, Iraq may demand the U.S. troops leave at any time. Under a SOFA withdrawal may be substantially more difficult and, at a minimum, take much more time. In addition, the SOFA's likely provision of immunity to U.S. troops (and potentially private contractors) from the jurisdiction of Iraqi courts may, in reality, mean complete impunity. Iraqi victims will bear the consequences of such a lack of accountability. Both these issues involve difficult political decisions. The Iraqi Parliament, elected on the understanding that it would pass judgment on all treaties, should not be excluded from these decisions with the stakes this high.


Over the last decade emerging market (EM) sovereign debt has become a firmly established strategic asset class. Besides Dollar-denominated debt, local currency emerging market debt has also been developing to become an attractive and complementary investment asset class. EM countries have been successful to reduce currency mismatches and maturity problems by implementing sound fiscal and monetary policies. Analyzing the period from 2002 to July 2009, we show that the local currency debt provides significant additional alpha and diversification to traditional bond portfolios. In particular, first, EM local currency bond returns are less correlated to the US stock market, treasury and high-yield bond markets, and global risk premia compared to the a case of EM equity and Dollar-denominated bond markets. Second, we document that yields and excess returns on local currency debt depend largely on expected depreciation of the exchange rate against Dollar, while excess returns on Dollar-denominated EM debt are for the most part compensation for bearing the global risk. Third, we report that EM sovereign local currency bond returns beat other emerging market and mature market asset classes by providing higher risk adjusted excess returns and diversification. We believe that our results will have important policy implications not only for international investors but also for the EM governments. We suggest that the development of local currency bond markets in EM countries could contribute to global financial stability by reducing currency mismatches and reliance on foreign currency debt, which in turn is linked to growth and poverty reduction.


Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) is a popular growth method, which has been successfully used for fabricating thin films. Compared to continuous deposition (like molecular beam epitaxy) the pulse intensity can be used as an additional parameter for tuning the growth behavior, so that under certain circumstances PLD improves layer-by-layer growth. We present kinetic Monte-Carlo simulations for PLD in the submonolayer regime and give a description of the island distance versus intensity. Furthermore we discuss a theory for second layer nucleation and the impact of Ehrlich-Schwoebel barriers on the growth behavior. We find an exact analytical expression for the probability of second layer nucleation during one pulse for high Ehrlich-Schwoebel barriers.


We develop a new multiscale modeling framework for characterizing positive-valued data with long-range-dependent correlations (1/f noise). Using the Haar wavelet transform and a special multiplicative structure on the wavelet and scaling coefficients to ensure positive results, the model provides a rapid O(N) cascade algorithm for synthesizing N-point data sets. We study both the second-order and multifractal properties of the model, the latter after a tutorial overview of multifractal analysis. We derive a scheme for matching the model to real data observations and, to demonstrate its effectiveness, apply the model to network traffic synthesis. The flexibility and accuracy of the model and fitting procedure result in a close fit to the real data statistics (variance-time plots and moment scaling) and queuing behavior. Although for illustrative purposes we focus on applications in network traffic modeling, the multifractal wavelet model could be useful in a number of other areas involving positive data, including image processing, finance, and geophysics.


Like many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Uganda has focused its energy sector investments largely on increasing energy access by increasing energy supply. The links between energy efficiency and energy access, the importance of energy efficiency in new energy supply, and the multiple benefits of energy efficiency for the level and quality of energy available, have been largely overlooked. Implementing energy efficiency in parallel with expanding both the electricity grid and new clean energy generation reduces electricity demand and helps optimize the power supply so that it can serve more customers reliably at minimum cost. Ensuring efficient appliances are incorporated into energy access efforts provides improved energy services to customers. Energy efficiency is an important contributor to access to modern energy. This Energy Efficiency Roadmap for Uganda (Roadmap) is a response to the important role that electrical energy efficiency5 can play in meeting Uganda's energy goals. Power Africa and the United Nations Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) initiatives collaborated with more than 24 stakeholders in Uganda to develop this document. The document estimates that if the most efficient technologies on the market were adopted, 2,224 gigawatt hours could be saved in 2030 across all sectors, representing 31% of the projected load. This translates into 341 megawatts of peak demand reductions, energy access to an additional 6 million rural customers and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by 10.6 million tonnes in 2030. The Roadmap also finds that 91% of this technical potential is cost-effective, and 47% is achievable under conservative assumptions. The Roadmap prioritizes recommendations for implementing energy efficiency and maximizing benefits to meet the goals and priorities established in Uganda's 2015 SEforALL Action Agenda. One important step is to create and increase demand for efficiency through long-term enabling policies and financial incentives combined with development of technical expertise in the labor force to allow for the promotion of new business models, such as energy service companies. A combination of enabling policies, financial schemes, regulations, enforcement, and skill development are needed to open the energy efficiency market.


As the human development took place a phenomena of noise also emerged. Noise emerges from different instrument and machinery. Among these instruments personal listening devices are affecting the hearing of our youth. This research took place to estimate the extent of damage caused by musical noise. The study was performed in the department of Physiology Liaquat university of Health Sciences from January 2019 to May 2019. One hundred and fifty participants were selected. Fifty were control group who were not exposed to 35 hrs per week of music noise exposure and hundred were test group who were exposed to prescribed level of music noise exposure. The participants who were exposed to musical noise, 52% were suffering from hearing loss while 13% were suffering from tinnitus. It was also noted that ratio of hearing loss and tinnitus increased as the intensity and duration of noise increased. It was concluded that there is a strong relationship between noise and hearing loss.


Information about the future may be instrumentally useful, yet scary. For example, many patients shy away from precise genetic tests about their dispositions for severe diseases. They are afraid that a bad test result could render them desperate due to anticipatory feelings. We show that partially revealing tests are typically optimal when anticipatory utility interacts with an instrumental need for information. The same result emerges when patients rely on probability weighting. Optimal tests provide only two signals, which renders them easily implementable. While the good signal is typically precise, the bad one remains coarse. This way, patients have a substantial chance to learn that they are free of the genetic risk in question. Yet even if the test outcome is bad, they do not end in a situation of no hope.


With grass-fed beef popping up on menus across North America, and more small-farm owners venturing into this growth area, the time is right for a comprehensive book on how to raise, manage, and market grass-fed cattle. "Grass-Fed Cattle", the newest addition to Storey's library of best-selling livestock books, covers every aspect of raising and care, including herd selection, breeding, yearly cycles, cultivating and maintaining healthy soil and grass, fencing and pasture rotation, winter grazing, pests and diseases, and necessary equipment. Author Julius Ruechel, who has been raising beef cattle on his family's farm since his start as a 4-H member, packs this handbook with every thing a farmer needs to know, regardless of herd size and acreage. His advice and systems are applicable to the smallest backyard hobby farms as well as the largest commercial herds and ranches. In addition to essential farming information, Ruechel devotes a major section of the book to marketing. He discusses niche market opportunities, scheduling the selling and buying of cattle for the greatest profit, finishing the beef and arranging for slaughter, labelling, dynamic marketing, and financial planning and record keeping. He also includes chapters specially addressed to the conventional farmer who is transitioning to natural production, the farmer who is considering leasing or buying land, and the farmer who wishes to pursue organic certification.


This study of the 1923 Ruhr crisis makes plain the devastating human and political cost of France's abortive attempt to extract reparations from Germany by force. Economic ruin combined with moral and political crisis left the Weimar Republic hopelessly compromised. This is one of the great untold tragedies of European history which paradoxically contained the seeds of the contemporary European Union. It is a ground-breaking contribution to the history of inter-war Germany. In assessing the Ruhr Crisis, Fischer does not view the occupation itself as a symbol of Weimar's endemic weakness. Instead, he stresses that the willingness of the Ruhr population to engage in a passive resistance campaign (January-September 1923) against the occupation highlights the widespread legitimacy that the Weimar Republic actually enjoyed in the eyes of its populace. Popular identification with republican values awakened by the crisis, in fact, held the potential of solidifying the gains of the 1918 Revolution and allowing an 'other Germany,' based on liberal democratic values, to take root permanently. Additionally, Fischer suggests that the conflict offered the opportunity, given the political will to compromise, of creating a new western European economic order along the lines of the post-World War II European Coal and Steel Community, in which trade and industrial links between Germany and France would be strengthened.


The barriers to initiating and holding conversations about sexual and relationship health with young people are under researched within the acute paediatric care setting, with the majority of research focussing on these discussions within primary care settings. This qualitative research study aimed to explore how healthcare professionals discussed sexual and relationship health with young people within an acute care context. Six semi-structured focus groups were held with healthcare professionals (n = 24) from within an acute children's hospital. This inquiry highlighted different approaches of professionals to initiating and engaging in conversations with young people, which included avoidance, reluctance and confidence. The professionals' ability to open dialogues with young people was influenced by their levels of knowledge and information, their personal beliefs and the availability of private time and space. Those conversations that did take place focussed on physiology, fertility or medication and did not frequently explore issues of relationships and sexuality. Further training and education is needed to equip staff to initiate and engage in discussions about sexual health.


Contested, multiparty elections are conventionally viewed as either an indicator of the start of democracy or a measure of its quality. In practice, the role that elections play in the transition from authoritarian rule is much more significant. Using as a starting point Guillermo O'Donnell and Phillipe C. Schmitter's 1986 classic, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, and Robert Dahl's original formulation of democratization as the outcome of increasing the costs of repression while decreasing the costs of toleration, this volume subjects to critical empirical tests the thesis that repeated elections positively affect democratic rights and processes. The first section uses global and quantitative regional studies based on new and unique data sets to present and rigorously evaluate the debate on the democratizing power of elections. The second section looks closely at specific electoral mechanisms and types of elections in Africa, post-Communist Europe and Eurasia, Latin America, the Middle East, and North Africa to uncover those that support the long-term institutionalization of a democratic transition. The concluding section develops and formalizes a theory of democratization by elections. Each chapter includes in-depth discussions of policy implications and a wealth of statistical information. Featuring contributions by leading scholars of democracy, original research, and worldwide and country-specific data on elections and democracy, this collaborative exploration of the effect of elections on democratic transitions represents the cutting edge of comparative democratization studies. Contributors: Jason Brownlee, Valerie J. Bunce, Larry Diamond, Axel Hadenius, Jonathan Hartlyn, Marc M. Howard, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jennifer L. McCoy, Bryon Moraski, Pippa Norris, Ellen Lust-Okar, Lise Rakner, Philip G. Roessler, Andreas Schedler, Jan Teorell, Nicolas van de Walle, Sharon L. Wolchik


Abstract A qualitative practitioner research study was conducted with 31 high school students studying religion contemporary Israeli society. The purpose of the study was to understand how using cartoons written and illustrated by the religious Jewish-Israeli settler Shay Charka challenged students to think about religion in Israeli society in new ways and whether introducing perspectives that were foreign to their North American Jewish education led to new ways of relating to and understanding Jewish-Israeli communities. Results of this small-scale study yielded that the comics were successful in introducing new ways of thinking about religion and in introducing a more complex portrait of Israeli society. As a pedagogical device, comics proved to be of salience and interest to the learners, which also led students to be motivated to study them. Students were particularly interested in the ways that Charka subverted their assumptions of gender in religious-Israeli communities and this specifically led to increased awareness of religious diversity in Israeli society.


Software systems are increasingly open, handle large amounts of personal or other sensitive data and are intricately linked with the daily lives of individuals and communities. This poses a range of privacy requirements. Such privacy requirements are typically treated as instances of requirements pertaining to compliance, traceability, access control, verification or usability. Though important, such approaches assume that the scope for the privacy requirements can be established a priori and that such scope does not vary drastically once the system is deployed. User data and information, however, exists in an open, hyper-connected and potentially "unbounded" environment. Furthermore, "privacy requirements - present" and "privacy requirements - future" may differ significantly as the privacy implications are often emergent a posteriori. Effective treatment of privacy requirements, therefore, requires techniques and approaches that fit with the inherent openness and fluidity of the environment through which user data and information flows. This paper surveys state of the art and presents some potential directions in the way privacy requirements should be treated. We reflect on the limitations of existing approaches with regards to unbounded privacy requirements and highlight a set of key challenges for requirements engineering research with regards to managing privacy in such unbounded settings.


The article focuses on the concept of yue (music) in Confucian tradition, moving from the distinction between "proper" and "lascivious" music drown by Confucius in the Lunyu (Dialogues). As the term yue translates both "music" and "joy", the article explores the shifting from the former to the latter meaning particularly on the basis of Xunzi's theories, as the philosopher , in his Yuelun (On Music) uses the very term with both meanings. Being Xunzi deeply imbedded in the Confucian tradition, a key question is what yue really describes (if simply "music", or rather "proper music" or "correct musical performance" ). Elisa Sabattini offers her own proposals for translation and understanding on the basic of a broad number of philosophical sources, directly or indirectly connected with the theories on music and its role in the "educational program" of a junzi (Confucian man of letters, "gentleman").


This special issue is devoted to a selection of papers from CO2004, a conference held at Lancaster University, UK, from 28th to 31st March 2004. The conference is one in a series of international symposia that are usually held biennially. Since 1994, the symposia have taken place alternately in the UK and in one of the countries of continental Europe. The Lancaster conference attracted about 90 participants, many from overseas. Three parallel streams ran throughout the conference allowing over 75 papers to be presented. In addition, there were four invited plenary speakers. Bill Cook (Georgia Institute of Technology) discussed the solution of large Traveling Salesman Problems, Kathryn Dowsland (Gower Optimal Algorithms Ltd. and University of Nottingham) showed how problem specific information in real-life problems can be used to aid their solution, Silvano Martello (University of Bologna) presented some recent results on packing problems and Gerhard Woeginger (University of Twente, Netherlands) surveyed issues concerning exact algorithms—a paper based on his plenary presentation is included in this collection. The following papers have been selected from those submitted to be revised and included in this special issue: • Chlebik and Cheblikova study the weighted version of the well-known Vertex Cover Problem. They propose some interesting crown reductions that enable the graph to be reduced in size without losing the optimal solution. • Dowsland and Thompson describe an ant colony optimization heuristic for the graph coloring problem. They demonstrate how a series of improvements to an existing approach leads to a competitive algorithm. • Hoai An and Tao address a class of concave cost supply management problems. They use a deterministic continuous approach based on DC (Difference of Convex functions) programming. • Mannino, Rossi, Sassano and Smriglio examine a problem that arises in the new Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB-T) system that is being introduced in European countries. They show how the combinatorial structure of the problem can be exploited and demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach on data from the Italian broadcasting system. • Miralles, Garcia, Andres and Cardos introduce a new problem called the Assembly Line Worker Assignment and Balancing Problem. As well as providing a solution method, the authors describe how this work is applicable to sheltered work centers for the disabled. • Reinelt and Theis examine the 0/1-polytope associated with the General Routing Problem. They provide a node-lifting result, prove the facet-defining property for some types of valid inequalities and study more general associated polyhedra. • Reinelt, Theis and Wenger propose an algorithm for finding the finest mincut partitions of a graph. They apply their approach to the exact solution of the General Routing Problem. • Woeginger is interested in exponential time solutions for NP-hard problems with a relatively good worst-case behaviour. Some known results and open questions are described. We would like to thank all the authors who submitted papers for this special issue and the referees who reviewed them. We are grateful to Peter Hammer, the Editor-in-Chief of Discrete Applied Mathematics and his assistant Katie D'Agosta for their cooperation in the preparation of the issue. In the final stages of preparing this special issue we heard of the tragic death of Dr. Hammer. We were shocked and saddened to hear this news and extend our condolences to his family and friends. We would like to record our gratitude to Dr. Hammer who supported the series of CO conferences by publishing several special issues devoted to papers from this source.


Cocaine addiction is a chronic, relapsing disorder. Stress and cues related to cocaine are two common relapse triggers. We have recently shown that exposure to repeated restraint stress during early withdrawal accelerates the time‐dependent intensification or "incubation" of cue‐induced cocaine craving that occurs during the first month of withdrawal, although craving ultimately plateaus at the same level observed in controls. These data indicate that chronic stress exposure during early withdrawal may result in increased vulnerability to cue‐induced relapse during this period. Previous studies have shown that chronic stress exposure in drug‐naïve rats increases neuronal activity in the basolateral amygdala (BLA), a region critical for behavioral responses to stress. Given that glutamatergic projections from the BLA to the nucleus accumbens are critical for the incubation of cue‐induced cocaine craving, we hypothesized that cocaine withdrawal and chronic stress exposure produce separate increases that additively increase BLA neuronal activity. To assess this, we conducted in vivo extracellular single‐unit recordings from the BLA of anesthetized adult male rats following cocaine or saline self‐administration (6 h/day for 10 days) and repeated restraint stress or control conditions on withdrawal days (WD) 6‐14. Recordings were conducted from WD15 to WD20. Interestingly, cocaine exposure alone increased the spontaneous firing rate in the BLA to levels observed following chronic stress exposure in drug‐naïve rats. Chronic stress exposure during cocaine withdrawal further increased firing rate. These studies may identify a potential mechanism by which both cocaine and chronic stress exposure drive cue‐induced relapse vulnerability during abstinence.


The choices of a geoscientist while carrying out his/her activity are always accompanied by ethical implications, because they can have a strong impact on the population, the natural environment, the economy, the landscape and the cultural resources of the affected area. It is not uncommon for a geoscientist to be faced with ethical dilemmas that are problems with a difficult solution, since options to solve such dilemmas will have negative consequences. How does one make a choice in these circumstances? What is the ethical duty of geoscientists and what has to be their professional attitude? In which cases do they have the duty to take action or the duty to not act (duty of omission)? A brief review of the concepts formulated by philosophers in reference to ethics can serve to provide some answers to the above questions and to understand how geoscientists can best serve society.


Abstract The Ring-necked Parakeet, Psittacula krameri, an invasive bird species, first appeared in Oman in 1950 but apparently died out and was not seen again until 1965, when it was re-introduced, probably through the escape or release of captive birds. From then on the species has gradually spread to its present distributional range that includes the Musandam Peninsula, all of the northern Batinah coast, the capital area of Muscat, occasional inland towns, and the area around Salalah in southern Oman. Its introduction to Masirah Island appears to have failed to establish a breeding population. The number of sightings of parakeets in Oman has increased from one per year in the late 1960's to over 65 per year in 2001–2002. Despite the sightings of a few large flocks, flock size has remained fairly small, increasing from a mean of 1–2 individuals in the late 1960's and early 1970's to a mean of 7–8 for most years between 1985 and 2002. To date, the parakeets have been observed in areas that are inhabited by humans and in areas of agricultural development. Thus, the spread of this species within Oman is strongly linked to human activities, probably due to the increased availability of food in such areas. This species has the potential to be a serious pest in Oman consuming cash crops, particularly dates and grains.


"The Solaris™Internals volumes are simply the best and most comprehensive treatment of the Solaris (and OpenSolaris) Operating Environment. Any person using Solaris--in any capacity--would be remiss not to include these two new volumes in their personal library. With advanced observability tools in Solaris (likeDTrace), you will more often find yourself in what was previously unchartable territory. Solaris™ Internals, Second Edition, provides us a fantastic means to be able to quickly understand these systems and further explore the Solaris architecture--especially when coupled with OpenSolaris source availability."--Jarod Jenson, chief systems architect, Aeysis"The Solaris™ Internals volumes by Jim Mauro and Richard McDougall must be on your bookshelf if you are interested in in-depth knowledge of Solaris operating system internals and architecture. As a senior Unix engineer for many years, I found the first edition of Solaris™ Internals the only fully comprehensive source for kernel developers, systems programmers, and systems administrators. The new second edition, with the companion performance and debugging book, is an indispensable reference set, containing many useful and practical explanations of Solaris and its underlying subsystems, including tools and methods for observing and analyzing any system running Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris."--Marc Strahl, senior UNIX engineerSolaris™ Internals, Second Edition,describes the algorithms and data structures of all the major subsystems in the Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris kernels. The text has been extensively revised since the first edition, with more than 600 pages of new material. Integrated Solaris tools and utilities, including DTrace, MDB, kstat, and the process tools, are used throughout to illustrate how the reader can observe the Solaris kernel in action. The companion volume, Solaris™ Performance and Tools, extends the examples contained here, and expands the scope to performance and behavior analysis. Coverage includes: Virtual and physical memory Processes, threads, and scheduling File system framework and UFS implementation Networking: TCP/IP implementation Resource management facilities and zonesThe Solaris™ Internals volumes make a superb reference for anyone using Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris.


A large number of studies have previously examined the effect of interest rate changes on the securitised real estate market. However, the majority have focused on aggregate index level data. Few studies have been undertaken on micro-level data. These lead to a question of whether previous findings can be generalised to individual firms. This study considers the impact of interest rate changes on European listed real estate companies. Using data since 1990 we examine both the aggregate index level sensitivity of European public real estate and also consider the micro-level firm specific sensitivity. Specifically, the study examines the following questions:1: Do interest rate changes have a significant impact on European real estate stocks? 2: Do real estate stocks in different markets behave differently in terms of their interest rate sensitivities?3: Do firm characteristics affect the interest rate sensitivity of real estate stocks?4: Has the interest rate sensitivity of real estate stocks changed pre, during and post financial crisis and quantitative easing ?By answering these questions, this study will offer contributions to the following areas. First, we extend the limited studies on interest rate sensitivity to European real estate markets, particularly emerging European property markets. Second, this study is the first to explicitly examine the linkages between real estate firm characteristics and interest rate sensitivity based on an international large sample. Thirdly, this is one of the first pieces of research to examine the impact of the financial crisis and quantitative easing on the interest rate sensitivity of listed real estate vehicles. The volatility of interest rates in Europe since the GFC means that a fuller understanding of interest rate sensitivity of real estate stocks over different market conditions is of importance for investors' decision-making.


A received wisdom is that automated decision-making serves as an anti-bias intervention. The conceit is that removing humans from the decision-making process will also eliminate human bias. The paradox, however, is that in some instances, automated decision-making has served to replicate and amplify bias. With a case study of the algorithmic capture of hiring as heuristic device, this Article provides a taxonomy of problematic features associated with algorithmic decision-making as anti-bias intervention and argues that those features are at odds with the fundamental principle of equal opportunity in employment. To examine these problematic features within the context of algorithmic hiring and to explore potential legal approaches to rectifying them, the Article brings together two streams of legal scholarship: law and technology studies and employment & labor law.

Counterintuitively, the Article contends that the framing of algorithmic bias as a technical problem is misguided. Rather, the Article's central claim is that bias is introduced in the hiring process, in large part, due to an American legal tradition of deference to employers, especially allowing for such nebulous hiring criterion as "cultural fit." The Article observes the lack of legal frameworks that take into account the emerging technological capabilities of hiring tools which make it difficult to detect disparate impact. The Article thus argues for a re-thinking of legal frameworks that take into account both the liability of employers and those of the makers of algorithmic hiring systems who, as brokers, owe a fiduciary duty of care. Particularly related to Title VII, the Article proposes that in legal reasoning corollary to extant tort doctrines, an employer's failure to audit and correct its automated hiring platforms for disparate impact could serve as prima facie evidence of discriminatory intent, leading to the development of the doctrine of discrimination per se. The article also considers other approaches separate from employment law such as establishing consumer legal protections for job applicants that would mandate their access to the dossier of information consulted by automated hiring systems in making the employment decision.


Data annotation is the most labor-intensive part for the acquisition of a multimodal corpus. 3D vision technology can ease the annotation process, especially when continuous surface deformations need to be extracted accurately and consistently over time. In this paper, we give an example use of such technology, namely the acquisition of an audio-visual corpus comprising detailed dynamic face geometry, transcription of the corpus text into the phonological representation, accurate phone segmentation, fundamental frequency extraction, and signal intensity estimation of the speech signals. By means of the example, we will discuss the advantages and challenges of integrating non-invasive 3D vision capture techniques into a setup for recording multimodal data.


A primary difficulty when researching mobile entertainment is that of definition. It is recognized that, as mobile entertainment is a social and commercial process as well as a technical one, a diversity of other definitions for mobile entertainment is held by numerous industry producers, manufacturers and end consumers as well as researchers of different background. This paper presents a framework to examine mobile entertainment from multiple points of views concerning the service, network and device related sectors. This allows future research to be conducted with the clarity of distinguishing mobile entertainment services of different domains. The paper also tries to collate and rationalize possibilities and restrictions of existing and emerging mobile entertainment technologies with respect to this framework. The paper explores a number of scenarios to reflect the understanding on the value Web. This paper serves as foundation for further studies concerning factors influencing adoption of mobile entertainment in Malaysia.