Sperm whales were tracked visually and acoustically in the waters west of the Galapagos between February and April 1985. A method for photographically identifying individual sperm whales is described. Measures of the photograph quality were compared with the certainty with which individuals were identified. A total of 210 females or immatures, 7 large adult males and 6 calves were recognized with certainty and individually identified. A simple model suggested that up to 9% of the females/immatures could not be identified using this method of photographic identification, despite high quality photographs. It was shown that these individuals have a lower number of unique marks on their flukes than the 210 identified females/immatures. The assumption of random sampling when taking photographs of individual sperm whales is discussed. The time and geographical positions of the re-sightings of known individuals suggest that the sperm whales preferred a rich upwelling area. -- The identified females/immatures were clustered into 23 discrete groups. Thirteen of these groups contained more than six associated members. Observations of calves and the high frequency of dorsal fins with a callus suggested that the groups of sperm whales off the Galapagos fell into the category of "mixed groups". Whales recorded as escorting a calf were most probably females. Different females/immatures were observed to escort the same calf, and identified females/immatures were observed with several different calves. -- Large males were observed either as singles, pairs or a set of three. In the observations of identified individuals there was no indication that particular pairs of large males, or large males of a similar size, were preferred companions. No fresh wounds or agonistic behaviour between large males was observed. The lack of sightings of medium-sized males suggest that they do not take part in reproduction in this area. The proportion of large males to mature females suggests that all large males do not migrate to the breeding grounds and do not participate in breeding every year. Identified large males were observed with different mixed groups and, further, different large males were associated with particular mixed groups. There was no indication that some mixed groups associated more with large males, than others. Large males seemed to follow a strategy of searching for mixed groups, instead of holding harems. -- During an attack by killer whales on sperm whales a high degree of coordination of the sperm whales' behaviour was noted. Twenty-one percent of the sperm whale flukes had tooth mark scars of which a majority were probably derived from shark attacks. A difference in the number of unique marks on the flukes between different geographical areas suggests that the method of individual photographic identification relying on uniquely marked flukes may be less successful in other areas.


Electricity is the basic need of most economic sectors within a national economy. Electricity generation not only directly affects the amount of CO2 emissions, but it also indirectly affects a country's economic system. For Thailand, the electricity generation sector represents the largest source of CO2 emissions, so it is necessary to investigate the potential factors contributing to the changes in CO2 emissions from this power sector. Here, a decoupling method was used to evaluate the relationships between energy consumption and the CO2 emissions from Thailand's thermal power generation that were caused by economic developments during 2000–2011. Key factors affecting the evolution of CO2 emissions from Thailand's thermal power sector were analyzed by Divisia index decomposition. Changes in the emission coefficient, heat rate, fuel intensity, electricity intensity and economic growth were investigated. The results reveal that energy consumption and CO2 emissions were coupled during 2000–2005, whereas a relative decoupling appeared for 2006–2011. Moreover, the economic effect was the critical factor for increased CO2 emissions from Thailand's thermal power generation, while electricity intensity played a dominant role in decreased CO2 emissions. Since the CO2 emissions released from Thailand's electricity generation are rapidly increasing, the Thai government will be required to reduce CO2 emissions in the future by enhancing energy conservation, reconstructing the fuel mix in power generation, promoting a shift in the economic structure toward less energy-intensive services, and orienting Thailand's power industry towards low carbon electricity generation.


Representatives of six butterfly species, flying freely in the field or in simulated field conditions, were filmed with a high-speed cine camera and subjected to kinematic and morphometric analysis. This is the first detailed investigation on an insect performing the varied patterns of 'natural' flight. Kinematic parameters in representative sequences of selected flight modes were calculated and compared, and wing shapes were characterized using aspect ratio and non-dimensional moment parameters.

The analyses and field observations of these and other butterflies suggest possible correlations between flight performance and wing shape. The behaviour of individual species conforms reasonably well with crude predictions based on aspect ratio, wing loading and wing inertia.


Satellite‐based observations indicate that seasonal patterns in canopy greenness and productivity in the Amazon are negatively correlated with precipitation, with increased greenness occurring during the dry months. Flux tower measurements indicate that the canopy greening that occurs during the dry season is associated with increases in net ecosystem productivity (NEP) and evapotranspiration (ET). Land surface and terrestrial biosphere model simulations for the region have predicted the opposite of these observed patterns, with significant declines in greenness, NEP, and ET during the dry season. In this study, we address this issue mainly by developing an empirically constrained, light‐controlled phenology submodel within the Ecosystem Demography model version 2 (ED2). The constrained ED2 model with a suite of field observations shows markedly improved predictions of seasonal ecosystem dynamics, more accurately capturing the observed patterns of seasonality in water, carbon, and litter fluxes seen at the Tapajos National Forest, Brazil (2.86°S, 54.96°W). Long‐term simulations indicate that this light‐controlled phenology increases the resilience of Amazon forest NEP to interannual variability in climate forcing.


In exchange for the rights provided by a patent, § 112 of the Patent Act requires patentees to clearly explain what their invention is (a requirement known as claim definiteness), as well as how to make and use it (the disclosure requirements of enablement and written description). Many concerns about the modern patent system stem from failures to enforce these requirements adequately. Patents cannot serve as efficient property rights if no one can determine the boundaries of those rights, and disclosure failures can lead to patents that cover far more than was actually invented. Better enforcement of § 112 may be the best way to address the problem of "patent trolls" asserting overbroad and unclear patents. But despite the critical importance of § 112 to the functioning of the patent system, there is surprisingly little empirical data about how it has been applied in practice. For example, although the conventional wisdom is that courts have reached different outcomes when applying § 112 to different technologies and industries, these assertions are based on only a handful of prominent cases.To remedy this reliance on anecdotes, we have created a hand-coded dataset of 1,144 reported court decisions from 1982 to 2012 in which U.S. district courts or the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rendered a decision on the enablement, written description, or claim definiteness requirements of § 112. We coded validity outcomes under these three doctrines on a novel five-level scale so as to capture significant subtlety in the strength of each decision, and we also classified patents by technology and industry categories. We also coded for a number of litigation characteristics that could arguably influence outcomes. Although one must be cautious about generalizing from reported decisions due to selection effects, our results show some statistically significant disparities in § 112 outcomes for different technologies and industries, although fewer than the conventional wisdom suggests, and not always in the direction that many have believed. Just as importantly, our analysis reveals the effects of other variables on § 112 outcomes, including whether a district court or the Federal Circuit made the last decision in a case, whether a patent claim was drafted in means-plus-function format, and whether a case was decided before or after Markman v. Westview Instruments (holding that interpretation of patent claims is for the court, not the jury).Patent disclosure and definiteness have been the focus of much recent debate about the patent system. Commentators have argued, for example, that the written description doctrine should be eliminated and that the enablement and definiteness requirements should be significantly revised, and the Supreme Court set forth a new test for indefiniteness in 2014, the contours of which remain uncertain. Our results on how § 112 has been applied in practice will be helpful in evaluating current proposals for reform, and our rich dataset will enable more systematic future studies of these critical doctrines.


In the last quarter century, no one has played a stronger role in hand and wrist fracture management, especially using AO principles, than Jesse Jupiter. This long awaited book is the culmination of his work, along with other pioneers in the field, and presents all key developments in biomechanics, design, materials, and state-of-the-art AO techniques. Organized in a case-based format, the book focuses on fractures of the hand, scaphoid, and distal radius (including soft-tissue injuries). For each case, you'll review patient history, planning, approach, reduction, fixation, and rehabilitation, along with hundreds of full-color illustrations, intraoperative pictures, and x-rays. Online access to videos demonstrating step-by-step intraoperative procedures is included with the book. Along with detailed surgical techniques, you'll also find a wealth of guidelines on indications, choice of surgical approach, preoperative planning, and postoperative management. This is a book no orthopedic surgeon should be without.


A new simple local monitoring method in core alignments of single-mode fibers is presented. We have investigated cladding-mode leakage light characteristics in fibers coated with different materials. In view of the results of the study, we have developed an arc-fusion splicer with a simple photoreceiver for monitoring the leakage light power. Using the splicer, we have obtained a surprisingly good result of an average splice loss of 0.03 dB with transmitted optical power of only 1 μW at the butt-joint point. This method can be used for final splicings between repeaters in long-haul optical fiber digital transmission systems.


We obtained X-ray XMM-Newton observations of the open cluster Berkeley 87 and the massive star-forming region (SFR) ON 2. In addition, archival infrared Spitzer Space Telescope observations were used to study the morphology of ON 2, to uncover young stellar objects, and to investigate their relationship with the X-ray sources. It is likely that the SFR ON 2 and Berkeley 87 are at the same distance, 1.23 kpc, and hence are associated. The XMM-Newton observations detected X-rays from massive stars in Berkeley 87 as well as diffuse emission from the SFR ON 2. The two patches of diffuse X-ray emission are encompassed in the shell-like H ii region GAL 75.84+0.40 in the northern part of ON 2 and in the ON 2S region in the southern part of ON 2. The diffuse emission from GAL 75.84+0.40 suffers an absorption column equivalent to AV ≈ 28 mag. Its spectrum can be fitted either with a thermal plasma model at T ≳ 30 MK or by an absorbed power-law model with γ ≈ −2.6. The X-ray luminosity of GAL 75.84+0.40 is LX ≈ 6 × 1031 erg s−1. The diffuse emission from ON 2S is adjacent to the ultra-compact H ii (UCH ii) region Cygnus 2N, but does not coincide with it or with any other known UCH ii region. It has a luminosity of LX ≈ 4 × 1031 erg s−1. The spectrum can be fitted with an absorbed power-law model with γ ≈ −1.4. We adopt the view of Turner & Forbes that the SFR ON 2 is physically associated with the massive star cluster Berkeley 87 hosting the WO-type star WR 142. We discuss different explanations for the apparently diffuse X-ray emission in these SFRs. These include synchrotron radiation, invoked by the co-existence of strongly shocked stellar winds and turbulent magnetic fields in the star-forming complex, cluster wind emission, or an unresolved population of discrete sources.


(Book). Charlie Byrd, Herbie Mann, and others brought in bags full of discs from a trip to Brazil in 1961. Stan Getz listened to them and recorded "Desafinado," which stayed for 70 weeks on the Billboard charts. Since then, no one can deny bossa nova's global appeal and influence upon jazz and world music. While celebrating bossa nova's 50-year presence in the United States, we can learn more about the movement's champion, Jobim, through poet and novelist Helena Jobim's Antonio Carlos Jobim: An Illuminated Man . His personal, intellectual, and professional history comes alive. With a vast, intimate, and revealing set of photographs, and an engaging, elegant and unique prose, this is the story of a true 20th-century's genius. Helena Jobim does justice to her brother's poetic voice. The composer of "Waters of March" read, questioned, and re-created the world he lived in not only through mesmerizing melodies, but also through down-to-earth poetry. The biography also reveals Antonio Carlos Jobim's serious ecological concerns. To his 400 songs of inexplicable grace he has added his own epigraph in An Illuminated Man: "Every time a tree is cut down here on Earth, I believe it will grow again somewhere else, in another world. So, when I die, it is to this place that I want to go, where forests live in peace."


This article articulates a one-world narrative, which reconfigures human mobility in dialogical response to the ideational borders of the European Union. Fifty-two semi-structured interviews, in Scotland and Sweden, bring participants, ranging from people with refugee status to the generationally nonmobile, into dialogue with the integration ideals of the European Union. Within this ideational space, participants employ I-positional dialogical capacities such as "outsideness" and "multivoicedness" to articulate a postnational "one-world" solidarity narrative (OWN). OWN is revealed as distinct from a posthuman "one-earth" sustainability narrative, which was found to "border" and delimit mobility. Three dimensions of OWN, (a) borders as constructed; (b) citizen of the world; and (c) accidental nature of existence, together repoliticise depoliticised technocratic reasoning, culturalism, and the asymmetries of humanitarian narratives on refugees. In conclusion, articulating the public's dialogical capacities is key to moving beyond public opinion towards public dialogue on vexed political questions such as immigration.


Clone City brings architecture, for the first time, into the mainstream of debates about Scottish cultural identity. It analyses polemically the ways in which contemporary market-led globalisation has fragmented and debased the Scottish urban environment. It examines the pointers to possible solutions provided by history, and especially by the lessons of the 20th-century Modern Movement. Building on these examples, it sketches out ways in which a more socially organic and place-specific architecture can be reconciled with modernity's pressure of freedom and individuality and it shows how that process can actively help in the building of a Scottish identity under home rule. * Integrates architecture and the built environment into mainstreamScottish cultural identity debates; introduces architectural issues to the wider Scottish public * The first book to set out a critical, polemical position on Scottish architecture * Sets contemporary Scottish architecture and city planning issues in a comprehensive historical context * Examines the relevance of the ideas of Patrick Geddes to the contemporary Scottish city


Objective To determine current practice and to assess the value of routine follow-up procedures for endometrial cancer surveillance. To discuss whether such procedures are feasible and effective to identify asymptomatic recurrences and describe the pattern of relapse detected by procedures. Methods The records of 282 consecutive women with recurrent endometrial cancer treated from 1986 to 2005 were retrospectively collected in 8 Italian institutions. Primary disease, clinical history, and recurrence features and data were analyzed. Results Thirty-five (12.4%) of 282 patients had recurrence in vaginal vault, 51 patients (18.0%) had recurrence in central pelvis, 14 patients (4.9%) had recurrence in pelvic wall, and 39 patients (13.8%) had recurrence in lymph nodes. One-hundred twenty-eight patients (45.3%) showed a distant relapse, whereas 15 patients (5.3%) developed both distant relapse and local relapse. The site of relapse influenced survival because the patients with vaginal vault recurrences lived significantly longer than the patients with recurrences in other sites. Eighty (28.4%) of the 282 patients became symptomatic and anticipated the scheduled visit, 37 (13.1 %) of the patients reported their symptoms during the follow-up meeting, and 165 (58.5 %) of the patients were asymptomatic and the diagnostic path was introduced by a planned visit or examination. Among the asymptomatic patients, the first procedure that led to further examinations was clinical visit alone for 60 (36.4%) of 165 patients, imaging for 103 patients (62.4%), and cytologic examination for 2 patients (1.2%). Symptoms at recurrence can predict survival: patients with an asymptomatic recurrence had a median survival time from relapse of 35 months versus 13 months if they had a symptomatic repetition (P = 0.0001). Conclusions Follow-up after endometrial cancer treatment varies in Italy. In this retrospective study, women with asymptomatic recurrence have shown a better clinical outcome compared with those with symptomatic relapse. The optimal approach is actually unknown, and guidelines comparing follow-up protocols have not been established. Prospective cost-effectiveness studies are needed.


The present research investigates the implementations of different computational geometry technologies in isogeometric analysis framework for computational fracture mechanics. NURBS and T-splines are two different computational geometry technologies which are studied in this work. Among the features of B-spline basis functions, the possibility of enhancing a B-spline basis with discontinuities by means of knot insertion makes isogeometric analysis method a suitable candidate for modeling discrete cracks. Also, the repetition of two different control points between two patches can create a discontinuity in and demonstrates a singularity in the stiffness matrix. In the case of a pre-defined interface, non-uniform rational B-splines are used to obtain an efficient discretization. T-splines constitute a type of computational geometry technology with the possibility of local refinement and with no topologically rectangular arrangement of control points. Therefore, T-splines can decrease superfluous control points which do not have any major effects on the geometry. Various numerical simulations demonstrate the suitability of the isogeometric approach in fracture mechanics.


This paper presents methods of generating compact pictorial summarizations of video. By calculating a measure of shot importance video can be summarized by de-emphasizing or discarding less important information, such as repeated or common scenes. In contrast to other approaches that present keyframes for each shot, this measure allows summarization by presenting only the most important shots. Selected keyframes can also be resized depending on their relative importance. We present an efficient packing algorithm that constructs a pictorial representation from differently-sized keyframes. This results in a compact and visually pleasing summary reminiscent of a comic book.


The entitlement to sell or dispose of one's ownership interest in a lawful copy of a copyrighted work has long been recognized by both Congress and the courts. This "first sale" entitlement, established by a line of cases stretching back to the nineteenth century and expressly reaffirmed by Congress, embraces not only property dispositions such as resale or donation, but also limited acts of alteration and reproduction necessary to facilitate disposition. While advances in digital technology have complicated the first sale doctrine's application, they cannot eradicate it as the District Court suggested. In fact, Congress understood the need for a copyright law that adapts to changes in technology and nothing in 17 U.S.C. § 109(a) indicates otherwise.
If allowed to stand, the opinion below will undermine copyright law's careful balance between the rights of copyright holders and consumers, leading to unanticipated and absurd results contrary to settled law and reasonable consumer expectations. For example, the District Court's rule would require an owner of a digital song to sell her $800 smartphone to alienate a single $1 song. It would be as if selling a book at a garage sale required you to sell your bookshelf and all its contents along with it. After all, the smartphone contains not only that $1 song, but likely thousands more, along with personal photos, communications, and financial records. This outcome contradicts the plain language of § 109(a) and the longstanding history of copyright exhaustion that underlies it.
Moreover, it is inconsistent with the legislative history of the Copyright Act, the property rights of digital consumers, and aspects of the District Court's own holding. Finally, the District Court ignored the fact that the purpose of any incidental copies created by the ReDigi system was to facilitate the first sale rights consumers are entitled to effectuate under § 109(a). As a result, the District Court's fair use analysis is fatally flawed.
* NYU Technology Law & Policy Clinic Teaching Fellow Amanda Levendowski and students Cassandra Deskus, Kristen Iglesias, and Ari Lipsitz contributed heavily to this brief.


Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), also known bird flu, is a serious infectious disease of chickens causing high mortality in flocks and economic damage for farmers. The control strategy to control an outbreak of HPAI in the Netherlands will include culling of infected flocks and depopulation of neighbouring flocks. Because of the high costs and the killing of large numbers of, often healthy, poultry, this strategy needs improvement. Better understanding of the spread of virus such as transmission routes of the virus between farms is a first step in this direction. The research described in this thesis provides a contribution. One of the hypothesised routes of virus transmission in an epidemic is by air and dust particles. It was however unknown whether and if so to which extent this occurs. Experiments were carried out to investigate the airborne transmission of a HPAI virus strain. The results of this study showed that airborne transmission between chickens over short distances up to 1.1m was possible, but the risk of transmission was relatively low. In another trial, airborne transmission between hens housed in different stables was studied. Also in this set up, transmission occurred, but the risk of transmission even lower. These studies showed that transmission via air and dust particles could indeed be one of the transmission routes for virus. Determining the origin of a virus infection in the field is extremely difficult, as the number and variation of contacts between farms is large. Molecular epidemiology is a tool that might help to elucidate which flock infected which other flock. To investigate what the variation in genetic make up is between isolates collected from infected chickens, virus isolates from samples from the experiments were genetically analysed with next generation sequencing in a so-called phylogenetic study. The aim was to determine whether this technique could help to follow virus transmission between chickens. It was however not possible to reconstruct the transmission route, because the genetic variation between newly arising viruses was too large, not only between chickens but even within one particular chicken. Instead of preventive culling, vaccination is considered to be an alternative measure to control HPAI outbreaks. Studies from the field show, however, that even in vaccinated flocks, outbreaks may occur, possibly because chickens received a dose that is too low to be efficacious. This hypothesis was also investigated. Despite the finding that virus was detected in the trachea of vaccinated and infected birds, none of unvaccinated contact chickens became infected. This study suggested that, under experimental conditions, also lower vaccine doses than recommended provide sufficient immunity to prevent further spread of the virus The studies described in this thesis show that airborne transmission is a causal pathway of HPAI virus transmission between poultry flocks, and that dust may act as a mechanical vector of the virus. Finally, phylogenetic studies to reconstruct the indirect transmission routes during an outbreak are hampered by the large genetic variation of the virus that arises in (a flock of) chickens


Drying is a major contributor to total energy consumption in manufacturing processes. As fluidised bed technology is a common method of particle drying, improvements in efficiencies are widely desirable. Low frequency flow pulsation has been found in the literature to reduce gas pumping requirements in fluidised beds and increase drying rates. However, research to date has used pulsation frequency range that tends to be within a 1-15 Hz limit. Consequently, a high pulsation frequency range of 200-300 Hz was applied to a selection of fluidised bed indicators to determine if a high frequency flow pulsation altered fluidisation when compared to a continuous flow regime. This is the first study to investigate the effects of high frequency flow pulsation of fluidised bed dynamics and drying.
The effect of high frequency flow pulsation was studied at three scales: single particle level, 2-dimensional lab scale fluidised bed, and a 3-dimensional fluidised bed. Experiments were designed to directly compare pulsed and continuous flow. The high frequency flow pulsation was achieved using a type of fluidic oscillator. This used no additional energy input to pulse the gas flow. A range of pulsation frequencies and amplitudes were achieved through altering the length of a feedback tube on the oscillator and increasing or decreasing the gas flow rate. It was found that the oscillator operated through both the conventional double outlet mode, but also through a single outlet when one was closed off. This allowed for a comparison between both regimes, with the single outlet mode creating a preferable gas flow distribution.
The high frequency pulsed flow regime was found to produce a higher pressure drop over the 3D bed distributor plate than the continuous flow regime. On a single particle level, large Group D single particles were studied through a drying curve whilst suspended in a static crucible in the gas flow or fluidised within a tube. These experiments showed that, in some particles, the pulsed flow regime inhibited or enhanced drying. It also demonstrated that a fluidised single particle has a greater variation in movement under a pulsed flow regime. In the 2D fluidised bed, bubbles were observed to be larger and more populous in a Group A powder under the pulsed flow regime compared to the continuous flow regime. Bed expansion was found to be greater under the pulsed flow regime in the 3D bed.
Many of the observed differences between pulsed and continuous flow were small, making it difficult to form firm scientific conclusions. However, these results suggest that the addition of a high frequency flow pulsation to a fluidised bed dryer may change the fluidisation regime and characteristics. Whilst low frequency flow pulsation creates a physical interaction between the gas flow pulse cycles and particle displacement or bubble formation, high frequency flow pulsation is shown by this study to potentially influence fluidised bed indicators through gas vibration or boundary layer alteration.


CONTRIBUTORY FACTORS TO TEACHERS' SENSE OF COMMUNITY IN PUBLIC URBAN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS The purpose of this study was to investigate factors that contribute to teachers' sense of community within public, urban, elementary schools. Because previous research has touted the benefits of teacher communities within schools (Kruse, 2001; Leana & Pil, 2006; Ware & Kitsantas, 2007) educational leaders are challenged with creating school environments that foster a sense of commitment and cohesiveness among staff within our current accountability climate in schools. Research that focuses on best practices of successful school principals in cultivating such things as teacher communities is scarce at the elementary level (Crum & Sherman, 2008). This study employed a descriptive, quantitative, cross-sectional research design. The data used for this analysis was from public elementary teachers' responses to specific questions from the 2003-2004 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) administered through the United States Department of Education's National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES). The strength in using the SASS is that it provides a large sample of elementary teachers across the United States. In the first part of the study the independent variables of principal leadership behaviors, collaborative school structures and teacher empowerment were examined to see their influence on the dependent variable, teachers' sense of community. For the second part of the study, teachers' sense of community within a building was viewed as the independent variable to see the effect this sense of community had on teacher satisfaction and on their perception of state and district content standards (dependent variables). Hierarchical regression analysis was used on the data to determine relationships and predictabiiity of the variabies. Of ail the non-policy amenable and independent variables explored, principal leadership activities were by far the strongest predictor of teachers' sense of community. The principal leadership activities variable was also found to be the strongest predictor of satisfaction with teaching and perception of state and district standards.


The evaluation of the equilibrium of a system of forces that fulfils specified boundary conditions is a core question of theory of structures. This paper reviews three methods, related to procedures introduced at the end of the 19th century, to evaluate the global equilibrium in three dimensions using graphic statics. The paper is specifically focused on one of these methods, which is grounded on the use of projections. Based on this method, a given system of forces can be reduced to three skew resultants, which are parallel to three initially chosen unit vectors. The three resultants can be composed into two resultants thanks to the construction of a simple 3D auxiliary structure or reduced to one resultant and a couple. Given the three resultants, the reactions at the supports can be evaluated according to specified boundary conditions in both cases of externally statically determinate and indeterminate systems.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the fatigue life of an endosseous root-form dental implant using finite element analysis. A conventional Brånemark dental implant system was redesigned to utilize the biocompatible, lightweight magnesium alloy which promotes bone growth. ANSYS Workbench 11.0 was used to generate a three-dimensional mesh of a model created with the actual size specifications. Regulations and schematic of test set-up from ISO 14801 - "Fatigue test for endosseous dental implants" were strictly followed to simulate the fatigue test. To validate the credibility of calculated fatigue life, actual prototypes were built with the design specifications and tested using Material Test System 810. Result of finite element analysis displayed a close approximation of experimental fatigue behavior both displaying that the proposed implant would achieve a fatigue limit of 5 × 106 cycle suggested by the ISO at 150 N. The main advantage of performed computer simulations is that it is fast, efficient and cheap. A comparison of the calculated fatigue life with experimental fatigue life data displayed the accuracy and reliability of the computer simulation method.


Subcellular organelles in living cells were inactivated by tightly focusing femtosecond laser pulses inside the cells. Photodisruption of a mitochondrion in living cells was experimentally confirmed by stacking three-dimensional confocal images and by restaining of organelles. The viability of the cells after femtosecond laser irradiation was ascertained by impermeability of propidium iodide as well as by the presence of cytoplasmic streaming.


Recently, attention-based Visual Question Answering (VQA) has achieved great success by utilizing question to selectively target different visual areas that are related to the answer. Existing visual attention models are generally planar, i.e., different channels of the last conv-layer feature map of an image share the same weight. This conflicts with the attention mechanism because CNN features are naturally spatial and channel-wise. Also, visual attention models are usually conducted on pixel-level, which may cause region discontinuous problem. In this paper we propose a Cubic Visual Attention (CVA) model by successfully applying a novel channel and spatial attention on object regions to improve VQA task. Specifically, instead of attending to pixels, we first take advantage of the object proposal networks to generate a set of object candidates and extract their associated conv features. Then, we utilize the question to guide channel attention and spatial attention calculation based on the con-layer feature map. Finally, the attended visual features and the question are combined to infer the answer. We assess the performance of our proposed CVA on three public image QA datasets, including COCO-QA, VQA and Visual7W. Experimental results show that our proposed method significantly outperforms the state-of-the-arts.


ABSTRACT The multiplex PCR system including six microsatellites from Haliotis discus hannai , consisting of dinucleotide and trinucleotide repeat units, is developed. The six loci were coamplified in a single reaction employing dye-labeled primers. Alleles from these loci were sized using an internal standard by automated sample processing in an ABI3100 Genetic Analyser. Amplified alleles in profiles containing selected microsatellites were typed clearly, providing easily interpretable results. In this results suggest that the presented multiplex PCR system may be a useful tool in a selective breeding program of H. discus hannai in which genetic identification will allow different genotypes to be reared together from fertilization. This should have a great impact as it will make selective breeding more efficient. Moreover, it will be useful in a variety of applications, including strain and hybrid identification, parentage assignment, pedigree reconstruction, estimating genetic diversity and/or inbreeding.Keywords: Abalone, Selective breeding, Microsatellite DNA marker, Multiplex PCR


The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters, by R. S. Sugirtharajah. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. x + 306. $70.00/$25.00. Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation, by R. S. Sugirtharajah. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 231. $17.95 (paper). To suggest that R. S. Sugirtharajah's The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters (2001) and Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (2002) are important books of "hybrid" genre is at once to acknowledge Sugirtharajah's success in advancing the causes of postcolonial criticism in biblical interpretation and to observe the uneasiness, the disjointedness, of the proximity in which the two subjects continue to lie. Perhaps this is because, as Sugirtharajah argues in his second text, "there has been a remarkable unwillingness to mention imperialism as shaping the contours of biblical scholarship" (PC, 25). If so, these two recent works-which borrow greatly from each other and function as two volumes-make great strides in redressing this oversight. We turn first to The Bible and the Third World: in ch. 1, "Before the Empire: The Bible as a Marginal and a Minority Text," Sugirtharajah contextualizes the Bible prior to its introduction to Europe, citing its influence as one among many religious documents. He describes the Bible's introduction to India through the simplified text of the Peshitta and the rare, untranslated Syriac version. In a discussion of the Bible's relationship to China, Sugirtharajah demonstrates how selected portions from the NT introduced by the Nestorians were translated and modified: the Monument text, for example, contains Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian references and omits the death of Christ. Thus, Sugirtharajah emphasizes, "the Christian Gospel was seen as validating the ancient social customs of the Chinese-loyalty to the Emperor and fidelity to family" (p. 25). African Donatists, in this account, were able to use the text of the Bible to understand their oppression and to evoke God even as they bypassed the church officials who were also their persecutors. As Sugirtharajah concludes, prior to the alignment of Christianity with Europe, the theology introduced in the Bible often had to be altered in order to signify, was usually known only through small portions rather than the complete work, was understood through liturgy or as a mystical object rather than its text, and was one among many compatible religious documents. Chapter 2, "White Men Bearing Gifts: Diffusion of the Bible and Scriptural Imperialism," begins with the Bible's translation from Latin into English, the British and Foreign Bible Society's mass distribution of the Bible (at or below cost), the difficult translation of the Bible into foreign languages, and the call for British missionaries. The bulk of the chapter testifies to the Bible's use as a colonial tool; Sugirtharajah emphasizes the ways in which the Bible was interpreted to "inculcate" European values and customs; and biblical Scriptures were drastically altered to "encroach" upon cultural histories, so that to explain "sin" among the Panare, for example, the Bible was rewritten to make the natives responsible for Christ's crucifixion. Alternately, local non-authoritarian leadership might need to be "displaced" before the Bible's mores could be "properly" understood; through "analogies and implication," the violence of colonialism could be explained and defended as just punishment for sinful, ignorant lives. Instead of native oral traditions, written communication was privileged; and whereas belief in the Bible was confirmed as historically accurate, other religious tests and artifacts were dismissed as superstitious and inauthentic. Despite this exploitation, "resistant" biblical readings by colonized people were also possible. Sugirtharajah exposes subversive techniques and recovers several important but overlooked critics in ch. …


In this thesis, a detailed tectonic and stratigraphic reconstruction of the development of the southern part of the Late Palaeocene - Oligocene Dutch North Sea Basin is presented. The research concentrates on fault geometry and sedimentary architecture in response to tectonic activity. The aim of this research is to gain an improved insight in the mechanics of inversion tectonics, when multiple inversion phases occurred in separate pulses. The research is based on seismic and well data, which cover a significant part of the Dutch offshore territory. Tectonic subsidence and uplift are quantified, and sources of lithospheric stress identified. Sequence stratigraphic correlation improves the temporal resolution of reconstructions.
The Dutch part of the North Sea Basin has experienced distinct pulses of tectonic activity since the Late Palaeozoic. Activity started with rifting, which resulted in the formation of the Broad Fourteens Basin (BFB), and continued with tectonic inversion and associated uplift during the Mesozoic and Early Cenozoic.
After cessation of the Palaeocene Laramide phase, several episodes of minor tectonic activity have been detected, which occurred from the Late Ypresian to the Bartonian. These tectonic pulses resulted in reduced subsidence and uplift. Unfortunately, Early Oligocene erosion removed much of the Ypresian-Bartonian sediments in the study area, which obscured the evidence of these intervals of tectonic activity. It is, therefore, not a surprise that this activity has been unnoticed until now. However, the events can be correlated to intervals of tectonic activity in areas surrounding the Netherlands territory, which indicates their regional importance.

The inverted BFB and the southern North Sea were uplifted in response to compressional stress associated with the Eocene-Oligocene Pyrenean phase. The response is of a different nature than during earlier phases of compression. An area more than twice the width of the Mesozoic BFB was uplifted. This is probably the result of a difference in the direction of the Pyrenean compressive stress field with respect to earlier pulses of inversion. The thick Palaeocene and Eocene sedimentary cover, which had been deposited in the area after cessation of the Laramide phase, might have enhanced this effect by deflecting the local stress directions even further and by favouring reactivation of normal faults in a strike-slip sense over formation of new, low-angle thrust faults.

After the Oligocene, tectonic activity ceased in the study area. The neighbouring Roer Valley Graben, which until the Oligocene experienced a similar tectonic evolution as the BFB, was tectonically reactivated in response to stress induced by the Alpine orogenic belt. The Roer Valley Graben experienced rapid subsidence, which continues until present times. A comparison of both areas shows that this different evolution is not caused by a difference in local stress or existing fault directions. Again, overburden thickness might have been an important factor in prohibiting the reactivation of faults in the southern North Sea. Additionally, absorption of compressive stress emanating from the Alpine belt by the grabens of the West European Rift System might result in a decrease in intensity of tectonic activity towards the southern North Sea.


Embedded system security is often compromised when "trusted" software is subverted to result in unintended behavior, such as leakage of sensitive data or execution of malicious code. Several countermeasures have been proposed in the literature to counteract these intrusions. A common underlying theme in most of them is to define security policies at the system level in an application-independent manner and check for security violations either statically or at run time. In this paper, we present a methodology that addresses this issue from a different perspective. It defines correct execution as synonymous with the way the program was intended to run and employs a dedicated hardware monitor to detect and prevent unintended program behavior. Specifically, we extract properties of an embedded program through static program analysis and use them as the bases for enforcing permissible program behavior at run time. The processor architecture is augmented with a hardware monitor that observes the program's dynamic execution trace, checks whether it falls within the allowed program behavior, and flags any deviations from expected behavior to trigger appropriate response mechanisms. We present properties that capture permissible program behavior at different levels of granularity, namely inter-procedural control flow, intra-procedural control flow, and instruction-stream integrity. We outline a systematic methodology to design application-specific hardware monitors for any given embedded program. Hardware implementations using a commercial design flow, and cycle-accurate performance simulations indicate that the proposed technique can thwart several common software and physical attacks, facilitating secure program execution with minimal overheads


The research on a number of welding problems, for instance microstructural evolution, weld induced distortion and welding residual stresses, necessitates comprehensive information about the thermal history of the weldment and welded structures. In the present work, an efficient thermal model using finite element method (FEM) is developed for linear fiber laser welding process on 316 stainless steel of 3mm thick plate. In this modeling approach, the thermal conductivity of molten material is increased artificially for several folds to account the enhanced heat transfer due to high convective flow of liquid molten metal within the weld pool. In order to validate the developed FE model, a series of welding experiments are carried out using highly focused fiber laserwith 800 W - 1000 W laser power and 13.33 mm/s - 18.33 mm/s laser scanning speed. The computed weld pool shapes and dimensions are compared with the experimental results at similar welding conditions. Relatively fair agreement between the numerical simulation and experimental results designates the robustness of the modeling approach followed here.


The kinetic Monte Carlo method and its variants are powerful tools for modeling materials at the mesoscale, meaning at length and time scales in between the atomic and continuum. We have completed a 3 year LDRD project with the goal of developing a parallel kinetic Monte Carlo capability and applying it to materials modeling problems of interest to Sandia. In this report we give an overview of the methods and algorithms developed, and describe our new open-source code called SPPARKS, for Stochastic Parallel PARticle Kinetic Simulator. We also highlight the development of several Monte Carlo models in SPPARKS for specific materials modeling applications, including grain growth, bubble formation, diffusion in nanoporous materials, defect formation in erbium hydrides, and surface growth and evolution.


Background: Preeclampsia, a pregnancy-specific syndrome, causes derangement in liver and kidney functions. Increase in maternal age increases the pregnancy-associated complications. Aim: The aim of this study was to compare liver and kidney functions among two groups of pregnant women presenting with preeclampsia: age <35 years and age ≥35 years (i.e., elderly gravidae). Materials and Methods: Pregnant women presenting with preeclampsia in age <35 years comprised the control group and pregnant women in age ≥35 years comprised the study group. Both the groups were tested for serum bilirubin, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase and alkaline phosphatase for assessing liver function and serum urea, creatinine and uric acids for assessing kidney function. The mean value of measured parameters was compared by unpaired t-test with α = 0.05. Results: The mean age in control group (n = 50) was 22.44 ± 3.60 years and in study group (n = 50) was 36.22 ± 2.39 years. Liver function test parameters did not show any statistically significant difference in control and study groups. Urea and uric acid in study group (38.18 ± 7.28 mg/dL and 7.31 ± 0.84 mg/dL, respectively) were significantly higher than control group (32.92 ± 8.91 mg/dL and 6.19 ± 0.96 mg/dL, respectively). Conclusion: Elderly gravidae with preeclampsia showed a higher level of urea and uric acid when compared with women <35 years of age presenting with preeclampsia. Hence, an increase in maternal age in preeclampsia may increase the risk of kidney function deterioration.


Background The extent of resection for brain tumors is a critical factor in determining the oncologic outcome for a patient. However, a balance between preservation of neurological function and maximal resection is essential for true bene fi t. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is one of the approaches that augments the neurosurgeon ' s ability to attain maximal safe resection by providing preoperative mapping. It may not be possible to perform awake craniotomy with intraoperative localization by direct cortical stimulation in all patients, such as children and those with neurocognitive impairment. Task-based fMRI may have limited value in these cases due to low patient cooperability. Methods In this article we present in a case-based format, the various clinical scenarios where resting state fMRI (rs-fMRI) can be helpful in guiding neurosurgical resection. rs-fMRI of the patients has been acquired on Philips 1.5 Tsystem. Seed voxel method has been used for processing and analysis. Conclusion rs-fMRI does not require active patient cooperation to generate useful information and thus can be a promising tool in patients unable to cooperate for task-based studies.


In a city that has lost its shimmer, Lindanathi and his two friends Ruan and Cecelia sell illegal pharmaceuticals while chasing their next high.
Lindanathi, deeply troubled by his hand in his brother?s death, has turned his back on his family, until a message from home reminds him of a promise he made years before.
When a puzzling masked man enters their lives, Lindanathi is faced with a decision: continue his life in Cape Town, or return to his family and to all he has left behind.
Rendered in lyrical, bright prose and set in a not-so-new South Africa, The Reactive is a poignant, life-affirming story about secrets, memory, chemical abuse and family, and the redemption that comes from facing what haunts us most.


Evidence suggests that when ferrocytochrome c (the substrate) reduces cytochrome c oxidase (COX), electrons from the former enter the latter via Trp-104. What is still to be determined is the method by which electrons are transferred from ferrocytochrome c to Trp-104 and the method by which electrons arriving at Trp-104 are moved on to Cu(A), the first of the enzyme's four redox centres to be reduced. To shed light on this process, we used the computer to create and analyse an enzyme-substrate complex formed from the published structure of the two proteins. It was found that the front haem edge of ferrocytochrome c was in close proximity to Trp-104 of COX and that inclusive of Trp-104, only nine amino acid residues from COX lie along a broad channel stretching from Trp-104 to the enzyme's Cu(A) centre. Six of the nine residues, Trp-104, Tyr-105, His-102 Trp-106, Asp-158 and Glu-198, had the ideal chemical properties and were properly aligned to facilitate electron transfer. Here we propose that the reduction of Trp-104 and the subsequent reduction of Cu(A) occur by a hydride/hydrogen ion relay system similar to that seen at the active site of chymotrypsin.


DICER is a key enzyme that processes microRNA and small interfering RNA precursors into their short mature forms, enabling them to regulate gene expression. Only a single Dicer gene exists in the mouse genome, and it is broadly expressed in developing tissues. Dicer-null mutants die before gastrulation. Therefore, to study Dicer function in the later event of lung formation, we inactivated it in the mouse lung epithelium using a Dicer conditional allele and the Sonic Hedgehogcre (Shhcre) allele. Branching arrests in these mutant lungs, although epithelial growth continues in distal domains that are expanded compared with normal samples. These defects result in a few large epithelial pouches in the mutant lung instead of numerous fine branches present in a normal lung. Significantly, the initial phenotypes are apparent before an increase in epithelial cell death is observed, leading us to propose that Dicer plays a specific role in regulating lung epithelial morphogenesis independent of its requirement in cell survival. In addition, we found that the expression of Fgf10, a key gene involved in lung development, is up-regulated and expanded in the mesenchyme of Dicer mutant lungs. Previous studies support the hypothesis that precise localization of FGF10 in discrete sites of the lung mesenchyme serves as a chemoattractant for the outgrowth of epithelial branches. The aberrant Fgf10 expression may contribute to the Dicer morphological defects. However, the mechanism by which DICER functions in the epithelium to influence Fgf10 expression in the mesenchyme remains unknown.


Abstract This paper aims to establish the interface conditions influence on the flexible pavement structures life. The methodology consists in using the interface constitutive model available in the Alizé calculation program to calculate the stresses and strains in the flexible pavement structures. The design criteria related to limiting fatigue cracking of asphalt layers and permanent deformations at the subgrade level from the road bed are used to estimate the flexible pavement structures lifetime. When calculating the critical stresses and strains, most mechanical design methods of the flexible pavement structures considers that the road layers at interfaces are perfect bonded or total unbonded. Proper modeling of the interface binding condition is an important aspect in understanding the real behaviour of in-service flexible pavement structures.


Discrimination is fundamental to the business of auto and homeowners insurance. Yet state insurance law does remarkably little to police against the risk that this discrimination will unfairly harm minority or low-income communities. Not only do state insurance regulators completely ignore the prospect that facially-neutral insurance practices might disparately impact vulnerable populations, but they affirmatively suppress the production and dissemination of data that would advance a better understanding of this risk. Meanwhile, most states continue to cling to an antiquated, ineffective, and inefficient scheme of "public utility style" rate regulation that purports to prohibit "excessive, inadequate, or unfairly discriminatory" insurance rates. This scheme not only undermines the operation of efficient insurance markets, but also helps to shield the industry and state regulators from scrutiny regarding how insurance practices impact larger social goals—like facilitating socio-economic mobility. This Article argues that insurance law should scrap its regime of public utility style rate regulation in favor of a civil rights approach to anti-discrimination law. Such an approach should, at a minimum, promote the collection and public disclosure of company specific, transaction-level data on insurance applications, purchases, losses, and policyholder membership in legally protected groups—much in the manner of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Further paralleling modern anti-discrimination regimes in consumer finance, this civil rights approach should afford private parties a cause of action against insurers based on a modified disparate impact theory that reflects the important role of risk-based discrimination in insurance markets. This could be accomplished by recognizing that insurance discrimination based on factors that genuinely predict claim frequency or severity, even after controlling for prohibited characteristics, constitutes a "legitimate non-discriminatory" practice under the familiar burden-shifting scheme for disparate impact liability.


Unless evidence based decisions are made based on local contexts, the low prevalence level of contraceptive use and the corresponding higher total fertility rate will make Ethiopia to remain the most populous country in Africa. The purpose of this study was to assess the status of modern contraceptive use among married women in Debre Birhan district, Ethiopia. A community based cross-sectional study was conducted among married women of reproductive age. Systematic random sampling technique was used to choose 851 study subjects. Before data collection, ethical clearance was obtained from the institution, and data was collected by trained diploma nurses using pretested structured questionnaire and analyzed by statistical package for social sciences (SPSS), version 20. Logistic regression analysis was employed to identify the predictors of modern contraceptive use. Modern contraceptive prevalence rate among married women was 46.9%. Injectables were the most frequently used type of modern contraceptive method (62.9%), followed by intrauterine device (16.8%), pills (14%), norplant (4.3%), male condom (1.2%) and female sterilization (0.8%). Multiple logistic regression model revealed that the need to have more children [AOR 95% CI: 9.27 (5.43 to 15.84)], husband approval [AOR 95% CI: 2.82 (1.67 to 4.80)] and husband-wife communication about contraceptives [AOR 7.32, 95% CI (3.60 to 14.86)] were found to be an independent predictors for the use of modern contraceptives. There were no statistical significant differences between modern contraceptive use and other socio-demographic and reproductive health related variables after an adjustment. Modern contraceptive use declined among married women in the district. The culture of publicly discussing the use of contraceptives and breaking the silence among the people demands substantial efforts. Considering users of contraceptives as deviant also requires paradigm shift in thinking.

 Key words: Debre-Birhan, married women, modern contraceptive, use.


This study examined how cultural distance, acculturative stress, and social support interacted to influence emotional responses among international students studying in the northern part of Cyprus. Acculturation models and the stress-buffering hypothesis served as theoretical frameworks. The research questions involved understanding whether international students experienced more negative emotional responses compared to students from the home culture and whether social support moderated acculturative stress and reactions to being in the northern part of Cyprus. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) examined differences in emotional reactions between home and international students while hierarchical multiple regression was used to examine the moderation hypotheses. ANOVA results indicated that Turkish-Cypriots had more positive emotional responses than international students to being in the host culture. Results did not support social support as a moderator for either international students' acculturative stress or their emotional reactions. However, results suggested that unmet expectations, less financial satisfaction, and less social support predicted acculturative stress, while being in a relationship, higher Turkish proficiency, unmet expectations, and higher acculturative stress predicted more negative emotional responses. These results may help universities design programs to support psychological adaptation among international students, which could ultimately facilitate student retention.


INTRODUCTION: Strength is the neuromuscular capacity to overcome or counter resistances through muscular activity and is closely linked to all the motor actions that the human being develops, and to his body mass index. OBJECTIVE: To determine the level of correlation between body mass index (BMI) and the isometric strength of the dominant hand of university students. METHOD: The strength was evaluated with a TAKEI SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT 5401 dynamometer to 70 university students using a random sampling method using a descriptive transactional design. We obtained data that were processed with a bivariate correlation obtaining the Pearson coefficient. We used SPSS ver. 15. RESULTS: The studied age was 23 ± 1.9 years, with a length of 165.6 cm. ± 7.72 for women and 173.7 cm. ± 7.95 men, as well as a weight in women of 64.1 ± 14.82 kg and men 82.3 ± 14.72 kg, which results in a BMI for women of 25.01 ± 4.405 m2/kg and 25.06 with ± 4.398 m2/kg for men. On the other hand, the female isometry strength was 3.08. ± 0.613 Kg and for men was 3.68 ± 0.839 Kg. In females, there was not correlation between the BMI and isometric strength (Sig = .192). Contrary, in males, there was a significant and negative correlation grade between the BMI and isometric strength (r = -0,452; Sig. = 0.035). CONCLUSIONS: In this study, it was observed that as BMI increases, strength does not grow. Therefore, other variables should be evaluated to understand what is related to the overweight or obesity of students.


The core habitat of Eryngium campestre is in open grass land over profound and calcareous soils. In Central Europe the occurrence of the species is focused on dry and warm areas. It needs for germination and establishing open vegetation, whereas nutrients like nitrate support the development only in low concentrations. The coenologic amplitude is from steppes and dry grassland of the class Festuco-Brometea over meadow communities (class Molinio-Arrhenatheretea) to different ruderal communities of the class Artemisietea. In contrary to the usual classification in the Central European (German) literature E. campestre exceeds the class Festuco-Brometea remarkably which is documented by the communities growing along the big rivers Rhine and Elbe. In Southern Europe E. campestre is seen as a character species of Onopordetalia acanthi, sometimes even as an agressive weed. The question raised with the title can therefore be answered as follows: E. campestre is a species of dry grassland, a river corridor plant as well as a ruderal plant. E. campestre is found frequently at disturbed, ruderalized places; a certain pioneer character is not questionable. This enables E. campestre to spread along big rivers, in which its ability to germinate below water possibly supports the spreading. A connection to a single class should only be valid within local scale if ever. A field of future investigations is the question, wether E. campestre also accumulates at disturbed and ruderalized places in areas where its focus is within dry grassland (class Festuco-Brometea).


In light of the federal government's plenary collection powers, the states have, for several years, sought and, with the help of Congress, managed to secure the assistance of the United States in obtaining various forms of revenue. As early as 1975, Congress authorized the Department of the Treasury to collect past-due, child-support payments in the same manner in which it assessed and collected certain federal taxes under emergency or exigent circumstances (i.e., jeopardy assessment/collection). Because such collection procedures were often considered cumbersome and costly, however, Congress soon authorized the direct seizure of pending income tax refunds as a more efficient means of reaching the assets of deadbeat dads (or the occasional deadbeat mom). The result has been a smashing success. Child-support-related refund seizures have resulted in the collection of billions of dollars of revenue. In fiscal year 2004 alone, child-support offsets totaled $1.49 billion, and in 2003, the Treasury offset almost 24 million advance child-tax-credit payments, resulting in the collection of $14.2 billion. Given the success of this approach to revenue collection, its rapid deployment to other areas should come as no surprise. In the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984 (DEFRA), Congress authorized the seizure of amounts due to federal agencies (e.g., student loan default amounts or overpayments of Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI or Social Security)). And more recently, in 1998, Congress authorized federal refund seizures to pay outstanding state income tax liabilities. In this Article, I argue that despite various protective measures, procedural improvements are needed to minimize or eradicate erroneous refund-based property deprivations as an initial matter, especially with respect to nonobligated spouses. I proceed to argue, based largely on an intratextualist reading of the Constitution's major tax provisions, that regardless of whatever procedural safeguards exist or happen to be put in place, refund seizures, as a class, are unjustified as a matter of substantive due process because both the Sixteenth Amendment and Article I, section 8 of the Constitution expressly limit Congress's income taxing powers. Federal courts have had no recent opportunity to address substantive due process issues because the governing statute itself serves as a bar to jurisdiction.


The Sundarban, covering about one million ha in the delta of the rivers Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna at the point where it merges with the Bay of Bengal, is the single largest block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world shared between Bangladesh (62%) and India (38%), which supports a large, biodiversityrich unique ecosystem. With its array of trees and wildlife the forest is a showpiece of natural history. It is also a center of economic activities, such as extraction of timber, fishing and collection of honey. The area of Sundarban experiences a subtropical monsoonal climate with an annual rainfall of 1600-1800 mm and severe cyclonic storms. Enormous amount of sediments carried by the three rivers contribute to its expansion and dynamics. Salinity gradients change over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Interestingly, the Bangladesh and Indian portion of the forest are listed in the UNESCO world heritage list separately as the Sundarban i.e.the "beautiful forest" and Sundarban National Park respectively, though they are simply parts of the same forest. The Sundarban is intersected by a complex network of tidal waterways, mudflats and small islands of salt-tolerant mangrove forests, and presents an excellent example of ongoing ecological processes. The area is known for its wide range of flora and fauna. The most famous among these are the maneating Royal Bengal Tigers, but numerous species of birds, spotted deer, crocodiles and snakes also inhabit it. The mangroves have been extensively exploited over centuries for timber, fish and prawns, honey, fodder, or converted for paddy and aquaculture and now it faces the serious challenges for its existence. Javan rhino, wild buffalo, hog deer, and barking deer are already extinct from the area. While conservation efforts have focused on wildlife, particularly tiger, through creation of several sanctuaries and a biosphere reserve, reduced freshwater inflows are a serious threat as salinity is rising. Heritiera fomes (from which Sundarban derives its name), Nypa fruticans and Phoenix paludosa are declining rapidly. Other threats to biodiversity come from the growing human population, pollution, and a rise in sea level.


Introduction Informed consent, as one of the first principles of medical law, (1) requires physicians to obtain a patient's informed consent before undertaking medical treatment. (2) In Canada, courts have established comprehensive rules for the application of the principle of informed consent through sophisticated analyses in cases such as Hopp v. Lepp (3) and particularly in Reibl v. Hughes. (4) In China, (5) informed consent was not asserted within Chinese laws until the 1980s. Although there is no legislation specifically explaining the principle of informed consent, its requirement has been embodied in a series of legal documents. For example, Article 40 of the 1982 Regulations on Medical Work (6) and Article 33 of the 1994 Managerial Regulations of Medical Institutions (7) require physicians to gain consent from their patients before providing medical treatments. Article 26 of the 1998 Law on Medical Practitioners (8) and Article 11 of the 2002 Regulations on Handling Medical Accidents (9) require that physicians should inform their patients about planned treatments. In 2009, the National People's Congress promulgated the Tort Law of the People's Republic of China. (10) Chapter 7 of the Tort Law regulates the liability of medical malpractice. It explicitly states that medical staff must explain the diagnosis and relevant medical measures to their patients. Where any medical staff member fails to fulfill the duties of informed consent and causes harm to a patient, the medical institution shall assume liability for compensation. In clinical practice, the last decade in China has witnessed patients' growing awareness of health care rights protection. (11) Doctors and patients have gradually begun to understand the principle of informed consent. A 2009 survey indicated that doctors and patients were relatively clear about the content of informed consent, especially that patients have the right to know about their illnesses, relevant medical measures, risks and effects of medical measures, and expense of diagnoses and treatments. (12) On the other hand, the survey also demonstrated that doctors and patients did not fully understand the principle of informed consent. For instance, they knew very little about a patient's right to choose and deny medical measures and a patient's right to choose their health care providers. (13) Also, most doctors and patients believed that both patients and their relatives give informed consent. (14) The sensational Xiao Zhijun case in 2007 (15) revealed misunderstandings about informed consent in practice. The following sections of this paper explore problems with the relevant Chinese laws and regulations and suggest improvements to provide clearer guidelines for informed consent in China. It examines four aspects of China's current informed consent protocols. They include who shall inform, who shall be informed, what they shall be informed about, and exceptions to disclosure. Key Consent Issues (1) Who shall inform? In China, according to Article 55 of the 2009 Tort Law (16) and Article 26 of the 1998 Law on Medical Practitioners, (17) during diagnosis and treatment, medical staff are responsible for informing patients about their condition, treatment measures, medical risks and other related matters. (18) "Medical staff" mainly refers to doctors and, in China, three or four doctors of different levels take charge of one patient in a department. Medical personnel are divided into four types, namely, resident, attending, associate chief physician and chief physician. (19) Generally, a more senior doctor supervises a lower level doctor in a department. The residents are the primary level medical staff and they are the doctors, in most medical institutes, who directly deal with patients. (20) This system was designed to achieve a better quality of health care and to protect a patient's right to make decisions. Residents are the medical staff members who most often carry out the duty to inform a patient. …


For many years, the problem to be resolved by those charged with achieving local economic development has been 'How does this locality become competitive against other localities?' The processes of economic and spatial integration, understood generally as globalisation, have only served to broaden the definition of those localities that could be described as competitors. Equally, the policy prescriptions that surround this discourse follow an internal logic dominated by market liberalisation in the context of creating some form of competitive advantage over other localities. The research and policy-making process involves scouring the world for examples of best practice to measure, codify, emulate and transfer. Inevitably, under this conceptualisation, most localities are doomed to fail. More recently, the concept of eco-industrialisation has come into prominence as a means to achieve sustainable local development, but again the discourse is one dominated by place promotion and a narrowly determinist interpretation of the ecology metaphor. That is, eco-industrialism as local development has been difficult to distinguish from other forms of place promotion. This paper argues that sustainable local development requires an innovative discourse predicated on the ecological metaphors of diversity, difference and 'fit' with unique local characterisations. It is a discourse that must reach beyond the confines of contemporary economic rationality, and in so doing lay the foundations for a radically redefined concept of local development.


In recent decades, the stability of large power system has attracted much attention. There are many different factors that leading to power system collapse and cause large area blackouts. For example, as demands of consumption grows, the influence of harmonic components and reactive power constraints may cause failure in the power system (Jiao 2011).These factors are usually very difficult to predict in the real world. One of the most important parts of modern power system is the transmission line. With the increased demand for electricity and the scale-up of power networks, the number of long distance transmission lines has increased. They are exposed to different environments such as different weather conditions such as high temperatures or lightning and different terrains such as mountains or canyons. When a line outage happens, it can be very hard to detect the fault's location and searching and replacing the power line may take quite a long time. This can cause inestimable damage to customers and nations. Even after successfully restoring the power, continuous monitoring of the power system is still needed. Improved monitoring of the power system status could avoid future failure events that could render significant losses to the economy.

The recent method called synchronized phasor measurement allows for real-time monitoring of the entire power system and therefore can be used to detect faults as they occur. Actually, it is the only method that can observe multiple buses in the power system. One such application is the detection of line outages in remote or unobserved parts of the system (Mahoney 2011). A novel algorithm based on DC power flow which can detect line outages effectively will be introduced in this thesis report. Reviewing the concept of DC power flow is an essential part of this report. The simulation softwares used in the report are Power Factory and MATLAB. Finally, the efficiency of the novel algorithm will be assessed. Some suggestions for future works will be presented at the end of this report.


The ongoing debate whether cyberwar exists or not is odd and to large extent based on an Industrial age view of the definition of war. The ongoing digital revolution ends the industrial age and it was in the context of the industrial age that the Clausewitzian theories of war were defined. The industrial age was built upon machines and physical objects, and the theories of war in this era were also based on these elements. However, when the importance of physical values is vanishing and replaced by other values, as information and knowledge, the fundamental elements of war in the industrial age becomes week. An extension of the theories of war in the information age is that destruction of digital assets is representing the same element of violence, if it potentially cripples an enemy to defeat. When a society's valuable assets are in the digital form and not necessarily even present within the geographical area of a sovereign state one maybe have to reconsider the understanding of war. This paper explores the discourse framing war in the information age, and conducts a discussion on how to define peace and war in cyberspace, especially in the context of digital violence.


Background: Headache is a significant problem often seen following traumatic brain injury (TBI) in U. S. military veterans. Cervicogenic headache, which originates from the soft tissues and bones of the neck, is a subtype of headache often associated with TBI. Methods: In this case series of military veterans with a history of TBI at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center outpatient clinic, we examined the efficacy of Osteopathic Manipulative Therapy (OMT) in reducing the severity of pain associated with cervicogenic headache as measured on a 0-10 numeric pain rating scale. Secondary outcome measures include the percentage of patients who reported feelings of sadness and anxiousness, measures of neck range of motion pre-treatment and post-treatment, total score on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and incidence of adverse events. Subjects: Patients included were at least eighteen years of age, had been previously diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injury and cervicogenic headache, had clinical symptoms and radiographic imaging study findings of cervical spine degeneration, had at least two OMT treatments for cervicogenic headaches and completed a follow up evaluation. Results: In eight patients included in the case series, there were consistent reductions in headache pain as determined by a pain scale score after the treatments. There were statistically significant improvements in some measures of neck range of motion and a statistically significant reduction in anxiety after only one treatment. There was not a statistically significant improvement in sad mood or sleep, and one self-limited adverse event was reported. Conclusion: Osteopathic Manipulative Therapy is an effective and safe technique in the treatment of cervicogenic headache in patients with mild traumatic brain injury.


The incrementalism of carbon pricing, which includes carbon taxes and emissions trading, has led us astray. It has been proffered as a key component of climate policy, yet evidence clearly shows that its effects are marginal. It provides limited emissions reductions and has provoked considerable political controversy in key large-emitting countries. More importantly, pricing carbon means viewing climate change as a market failure, rather than as a problem of societal transformation. But rapid decarbonization will require more than market corrections; it demands strong state intervention to reorganize the economy. In this maximalist view, the state must create public goods, rather than merely prevent public bads. This article seeks to expand our collective political imagination about climate policy, moving beyond mundane fights about the appropriate design of carbon pricing. Instead, we need to think bigger. Aggressive climate policy begins with a reassertion of state sovereignty. Multinational corporations use "offshore" tax havens to evade paying taxes. By closing loopholes on corporate tax evasion, states reaffirm one of their fundamental functions: taxation. This reform would repatriate billions of dollars in missing capital, and help create the political conditions for meaningful action on decarbonization. Tax reform, not just carbon pricing, is climate policy too.


Hypothesis: Blockade of tumor necrosis factor-α with tumor necrosis factor-α antibody will reduce the extent of cochlear injury and hearing loss associated with Streptococcus pneumoniae meningitis. Background: Inflammatory mediators play a significant role in the morbidity associated with bacterial meningitis, including hearing loss and labyrinthitis ossificans. Previous studies have shown the attenuation of hearing loss by the nonspecific blockade of such pathways. Methods: Fifty Mongolian gerbils were divided into four groups. Auditory brainstem response testing was conducted to measure hearing thresholds. Streptococcus pneumoniae meningitis was induced in Groups 1 and 2. Group 2 was then given a single intraperitoneal injection of tumor necrosis factor-α antibody, whereas Group 1 received phosphate-buffered saline. Uninfected animals in Groups 3 and 4 were implanted with osmotic pumps that delivered a continuous 8-day intrathecal flow of either tumor necrosis factor-α (Group 4) or phosphate-buffered saline (Group 3). After 6 weeks, auditory brainstem response testing was repeated. The cochleas were harvested and analyzed histomorphometrically. Results: Group 2 animals with Streptococcus pneumoniae meningitis that also received tumor necrosis factor-α antibody developed significantly less hearing loss than Group 1 animals with meningitis alone. The decrease in the average threshold at 4, 8, 16, and 32 kHz was 31, 30, 25, and 28 dB sound pressure level, respectively (p < 0.0092 for each). Furthermore, histomorphometric analysis showed significantly less damage to the organ of Corti, spiral ganglion, spiral ligament, and stria vascularis in Group 2. Conversely, tumor necrosis factor-α induced meningitis animals (Group 3) showed increased hearing loss compared with phosphate-buffered saline controls (Group 4), with p < 0.0001 at all frequencies. Conclusion: Tumor necrosis factor-α plays an important role in cochlear injury after bacterial meningitis. Blockade of tumor necrosis factor-α reduces postmeningitic hearing loss and cochlear injury. Induction of meningitis with intrathecal tumor necrosis factor-α also resulted in hearing loss and cochlear injury similar to bacterial meningitis.


The purpose of this thesis has been to explore the discursive production of delirium in people over the age of 65 years. The philosophical approaches underpinning the study were derived from the field of critical gerontology, postmodernism and the utilisation of a Foucauldian understanding of discourse and power/knowledge. Data sources included published documents on delirium, interviews with people over the age of 65 years who had been delirious (as well as their clinical notes), family members, registered nurses and a doctor. Textual analysis revealed the presence of two contesting and contradictory discourses that impacted on being an older person who had delirium. These were identified as the discourse of delirium as a syndrome and a personal discourse of delirium. The discourse of delirium as a syndrome is underpinned by the biomedicalisation of the ageing process. This process utilises scientific methods as the foundation from which to understand, research and provide a health service to older people with delirium. Any personal perspectives on delirium are rendered unimportant and relegated to marginalised positions. Nursing through its vicarious relationship to medicine is interpellated into deploying the discourse of delirium as a syndrome and has largely ignored the personal dimensions associated with this phenomenon. Consequently, the older delirious 'body' is known and inscribed as unruly, problematic, physically unwell, cognitively impaired and at risk. Conversely, a personal discourse of delirium privileges the individual narratives of people who have been delirious and provides a different perspective of delirium. The deployment of a personal discourse of delirium offers another position that views this group of older people as bringing to the health care setting a rich tapestry of life experiences that are more than a cluster of signs and symptoms. It is these varied life experiences that need to be included as a legitimate source of knowledge about delirium. This thesis demonstrates how nursing needs to espouse a critical gerontological position when working with older people who have delirium. Critical gerontology provides nurses with the theoretical tools to challenge the status quo and uncover the multiple, varied, contradictory and complex representations of delirium in older


Abstract Trips-Viz (https://trips.ucc.ie/) is an interactive platform for the analysis and visualization of ribosome profiling (Ribo-Seq) and shotgun RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data. This includes publicly available and user generated data, hence Trips-Viz can be classified as a database and as a server. As a database it provides access to many processed Ribo-Seq and RNA-seq data aligned to reference transcriptomes which has been expanded considerably since its inception. Here, we focus on the server functionality of Trips-viz which also has been greatly improved. Trips-viz now enables visualisation of proteomics data from a large number of processed mass spectrometry datasets. It can be used to support translation inferred from Ribo-Seq data. Users are now able to upload a custom reference transcriptome as well as data types other than Ribo-Seq/RNA-Seq. Incorporating custom data has been streamlined with RiboGalaxy (https://ribogalaxy.ucc.ie/) integration. The other new functionality is the rapid detection of translated open reading frames (ORFs) through a simple easy to use interface. The analysis of differential expression has been also improved via integration of DESeq2 and Anota2seq in addition to a number of other improvements of existing Trips-viz features.


Heparin is the highest negatively charged biomolecule, which is a polysaccharide belonging to the glycosaminoglycan family, and its role as a regulator of various proteins, cells and tissues in the human body makes it an indispensable macromolecule. Heparin-based hydrogels are widely investigated in various applications including implantation, tissue engineering, biosensors, and drug-controlled release due to the 3D-constructs of hydrogels. However, heparin has supply and safety problems because it is usually derived from animal sources, and has the clinical limitations of bleeding and thrombocytopenia. Therefore, analogous heparin-mimicking polymers and hydrogels derived from non-animal and/or totally synthetic sources have been widely studied in recent years. In this review, the progress and potential biomedical applications of heparin-based and heparin-inspired hydrogels are highlighted. We classify the forms of these hydrogels by their size including macro-hydrogels, injectable hydrogels, and nano-hydrogels. Then, we summarize the various fabrication strategies for these hydrogels including chemical covalent bonding, physical conjugation, and the combination of chemical and physical interactions. Covalent bonding includes free radical polymerization of vinyl-containing components, amide bond formation reaction, Michael-type addition reaction, click-chemistry, divinyl sulfone crosslinking, and mussel-inspired coating. Hydrogels physically conjugated via host-guest interaction, electrostatic interaction, hydrogen bonding, and hydrophobic interaction are also discussed. Finally, we conclude with the challenges and future directions for the fabrication and the industrialization of heparin-based and heparin-inspired hydrogels. We believe that this review will attract more attention toward the design of heparin-based and heparin-inspired hydrogels, leading to future advancements in this emerging research field.


GLM|LIC Working Paper No. 18 | August 2016 Allocative Efficiency of Non-Farm Enterprises in Agricultural Households Evidence from Malawi* According to standard economic theory, households will equate marginal revenue products of inputs across different activities within the household. We test this prediction using data on agricultural plots and non-farm enterprises in Malawi. Specifically, we test whether the marginal product of labor is equal across agricultural and non-agricultural production within a household. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such test using non-farm data. We are able to control for many household characteristics using household fixed effects and we find the marginal product of labor is consistently higher in non-farm production than agricultural production. However, when focusing the analysis on households that operate both types of enterprises in the same year, we are unable to reject the null hypothesis of allocative efficiency. JEL Classification: D13, J43, O12, Q12


This paper uses newly available data to describe the distribution of crime victimization and other criminal activities (including drug trafficking and corruption) around the world. The paper then documents a negative (positive) correlation between measures of criminal activity and happiness and measures of positive (negative) emotions. The paper also studies the correlation between ideological beliefs and criminal activity, finding that crime victims are more likely to believe that hard work does not pay and that the government should increase the amount of redistribution to the poor.


The Taiping movement began as the Pai Shang-ti Hui (the Society of God-Worshippers), founded in Kwangsi province in 1846 by Hung Hsiu-ch'uan. A sickly individual of questionable sanity. Hung had become subject to visions which interpreted as demonstrating that he was Jesus Christ's 'Divine Younger Brother', with God's mandate to govern China. This fascinating work by Ian Heath examines the organisation, dress and weapons of forces on both sides of the Taiping Rebellion a conflict which saw the involvement of around 10 million troops during 15 years of conflict; as many as 600 cities change hands time and time again; and 20-30 million deaths."


OBJECTIVES: We undertook a process improvement initiative to expedite rapid identification of potential sepsis patients based on triage chief complaint, vital signs, and initial lactate level. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: Seven hundred-bed tertiary care hospital with ≅65,000 patient visits/yr. PATIENTS: Patients presenting to emergency department (ED) triage who met the following criteria: greater than or equal to two of the three systemic inflammatory response syndrome criteria assessable in triage, a chief complaint suggestive of infection, emergency severity index 2 or 3, and ambulatory to ED. INTERVENTIONS: A computer-generated lactate order was created, staff education and resources increased, and point-of-care lactate testing was introduced. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Primary endpoints include the following: percent of patients having a lactate level drawn, percent of lactate samples resulting before room placement, and time intervals from triage to lactate blood draw and to lactate result. Secondary endpoints were percentage of patients admitted to the hospital, percentage admitted to the ICU, and in-hospital mortality. Six thousand nine hundred six patients were included: 226 historic controls (HCs) and 6,680 intervention group patients. The mean serum lactate level was 1.77 ± 1.18 mmol/L. The percentage of patients having a lactate resulted increased from 27.4% in the HC period to 79.6%. The percentage of these lactate results available while the patient was still in the waiting room increased from 0.4% during the HC period to 33.7% during Phase 5 (p < 0.0001). In the intervention period, time from triage to lactate result decreased (78.1–63.4 min; p < 0.0001) and time to treatment room decreased (59.3–39.6 min; p < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Implementation of a computerized lactate order using readily available data obtained during ED triage, combined with point-of-care lactate testing, improves time to lactate blood draw and lactate result in patients at risk for severe sepsis. Initial lactate levels correlated with admission to the hospital, admission to the ICU, and in-hospital mortality.


As one of the most popular range detection methods, lidar is commonly used in various robotic applications. Although most robotic platforms easily adopt 2D lidar for range sensing, 3D lidar is rarely used in mobile robots, owing to its high cost. Some methods reported in the literature obtain 3D range information by rotating a single 2D lidar device. However, for most of these methods, there is a trade-off between 3D scan frequency and measurement density. Existing methods discussed in the literature for increasing the measurement density in high-frequency lidar have high time complexity and require certain conditions on data distribution. In a previous work, we showed the usability of an image super-resolution method, the Papoulis–Gerchberg (P–G) algorithm, on range data represented in the form of a greyscale image. However, the low convergence rate of the original P–G algorithm impedes its use for online applications. In this study, we advanced the P–G algorithm to drastically reduce the convergence time and improve performance by utilizing previous range images. The proposed algorithm now supports application on a mobile robot with online measurement density enhancement for 3D range images collected by rotating a 2D lidar device around its pitch axis with a high 3D scan frequency. We show illustrative examples for different scenarios to present the effectiveness of the proposed method on a 3D range sensor mounted on a mobile robot.


Physisorbed and covalently bound Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) monolayers of sulfur-bearing lipids on mica and on gold substrates, resp., have been studied. Scanning force microscopy, in topog. and friction modes as well as in contact and non-contact modes have been used to investigate these films in the region of coexisting phases. For the first time, a detailed and complex internal structure of solid-analogous monolayer domains, reflecting their sym. morphol., has been obsd. Comparisons of physisorbed monolayers on mica with chemisorbed monolayers on gold show distinct differences in the structure and stability of the films caused by the different substrate/film interactions. If is found that the use of a substrate to which the film can bind covalently does not result in changes to the morphol. of solid-analogous domains in the films. The structure of covalently bound monolayers is well-preserved over long time periods and is stable at solid/fluid interfaces. However, the covalently bound LB monolayers are more susceptible to damage by the SFM tip than the physisorbed films on mica. [on SciFinder (R)]


With the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, confusion and panic rippled not only through the United States, but across the world as well. The U.S. Army bases and airfields around Manila in the Philippines readied for the imminent attack from the Japanese. U.S. troops fought against the Japanese in the Philippines, but in late December of 1941, Manila was declared an open city. The document "Aboard Ship on Way to States" was written by American citizen Carr Hooper, who, accompanied with his wife Ruth, became a prisoner at Japanese internment camp Santo Tomas in the Philippines from 1942 to 1945. Throughout the pages of "Aboard Ship on Way to States," Hooper very accurately recalls specific dates, names, and events from the war. The document was typed on a typewriter and there are several handwritten additions, corrected spellings, and omissions. Due to the age of the document, the pages are yellowed.


The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many aspects of human well-being including air quality. The present study aims at quantifying this effect by means of ground-level concentrations of NO2, PM2.5, as well as aerosol optical depth (AOD) measurements and tropospheric NO2 column number density (NO2 TVCD), during the imposed governmental restrictions in spring 2020. The analyses were performed for both urban and non-built-up areas across the whole of Poland accompanied by Warsaw (urban site) and Strzyzow (a background site). The results revealed that mean PM2.5 concentrations in spring 2020 for urban and non-built-up areas across Poland and for Warsaw were 20%, 23%, 15% lower than the 10-year average, respectively. Analogous mean NO2 concentrations were lower by 20%, 18%, 30% and NO2 TVCD revealed 9%, 4%, 9% reductions in 2020 as compared to 2019. Regarding mean AOD, retrieved from MERRA-2 reanalysis, it was found that for the whole of Poland during spring 2020 the reduction in AOD as compared to the 10-year average was 15%. The contribution of the lockdown within total air pollution reduction is not easily assessable due to anomalous weather conditions in 2020 which resulted in advection of clean air masses identified from MERRA-2 reanalysis and Strzyzow observatory.


Since a society's tax system is one of its most basic and essential social institutions, the justice or fairness of this tax system is an important subject for social and political theory, as well as for practical politics. In order to assess the fairness of any particular tax or the tax system as a whole, however, it is essential to consider the purpose of the tax and the tax system in general.While the most obvious purpose of most taxes is to raise revenue to finance public expenditures, taxes are also employed to regulate social and economic behaviour and to shape the distribution of economic resources. For this reason, the concept of tax fairness is necessarily pluralistic, depending on the particular purpose for which the tax is imposed.Where a tax is designed to affect the distribution of economic resources, principles of tax fairness dissolve into broader considerations of distributive justice which determine the manner in which economic resources are fairly distributed and the respective roles of taxes and transfer payments to achieve this distributive goal. Although conceptions of distributive justice differ significantly, widely shared and normatively defensible principles of distributive justice support progressive taxes on income and wealth transfers in order to moderate inequalities that would otherwise prevail in the distribution of income and wealth, as well as the opportunities that result from substantial inheritances.