Social-ecological organization is a multidimensional phenomenon that combines material and symbolic processes. However, the coupling between social and ecological subsystem is often conceptualized as purely material, thus reducing the symbolic dimension to its behavioral and actionable expressions. In this paper I conceptualize social-ecological systems as doubly coupled. On the one hand, material expressions of socio-cultural processes affect and are affected by ecological dynamics. On the other hand, coupled social-ecological material dynamics are concurrently coupled with subjective dynamics via coding, decoding, personal experience, and human agency. This second coupling operates across two organizationally heterogeneous dimensions: material and symbolic. Although resilience thinking builds on the recognition of organizational asymmetry between living and nonliving systems, it has overlooked the equivalent asymmetry between ecological and socio-cultural subsystems. Three guiding concepts are proposed to formalize double coupling. The first one, social-ecological asymmetry, expands on past seminal work on ecological self-organization to incorporate reflexivity and subjectivity in social-ecological modeling. Organizational asymmetry is based in the distinction between social rules, which are symbolically produced and changed through human agents' reflexivity and purpose, and biophysical rules, which are determined by functional relations between ecological components. The second guiding concept, conscious power, brings to the fore human agents' distinctive capacity to produce our own subjective identity and the consequences of this capacity for social-ecological organization. The third concept, congruence between subjective and objective dynamics, redefines sustainability as contingent on congruent relations between material and symbolic processes. Social-ecological theories and analyses based on these three guiding concepts would support the integration of current structuralist-functionalist methods, which sufficiently and appropriately characterize ecological organization, with ethnographic and narrative methods exploring human intentionality, reflexivity, and biographical development.


This article is an empirical‐theoretical mapping of the Czech participation in the peacebuilding reconstruction of Afghanistan in the form of the Czech Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). As will become clear, an important part of such a study is a focus on the analysis of the influence of the security context and external factors on the participation and form of the Czech PRT. The study is divided into two basic parts. The first part gives the reader a necessary and sensible grounding. Specifically, it presents a contextual frame for the participation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Afghanistan. What then follows is an analysis of the domestic political debate in the Czech Republic. One of the findings is that any proper domestic political debate was absent, instead there was a polarization of the relationship between the government of the Czech Republic and the parliamentary opposition on the issue of the Czech PRT Logar. The article concludes with a question concerning the motives of the Czech government for sending the Czech PRT into Afghanistan.


The USDOE has initiated an impact assessment of existing vadose zone contamination at the Hanford Site SX tank farm in southeastern Washington State. The assessment followed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Corrective Action process to address the impacts of past tank waste releases to the vadose zone at the single‐shell tank farm. Numerical models were developed that consider the extent of contamination presently within the vadose zone and predict contaminant movement through the vadose zone to groundwater. The transport of representative mobile (technetium‐99) and immobile (cesium‐137) constituents was evaluated in modeling. The model considered the accelerated movement of moisture around and beneath single‐shell tanks that is attributed to bare, gravel surfaces resulting from the construction of the underground storage tanks. Infiltration, possibly nearing 100 mm yr−1, is further amplified in the tank farm because of the umbrella effect created by percolating moisture being diverted by the impermeable, sloping surface of the large, 24‐m‐diameter, buried tank domes. For both the base case (no‐action alternative) simulation and a simulation that considered placement of an interim surface barrier to minimize infiltration, predicted groundwater concentrations for technetium‐99 at the SX tank farm boundary were exceedingly high, on the order of 106 pCi L−1 The predicted concentrations are, however, somewhat conservative because of our use of two‐dimensional modeling for a three‐dimensional problem. A series of simulations were performed, using recharge rates of 50, 30, and 10 mm yr−1, and compared to the base case (100 mm yr−1) results. As expected, lowering meteoric recharge delayed peak arrival times and reduced peak concentrations at the tank farm boundary.


This study investigated the extent of apparent losses due to water meter under-registration in South Africa. This was done by first estimating the under-registration of new meters due to on-site leakage, and then the  additional under-registration due to meter aging. The extent and flow distributions of on-site leakage were  determined through field studies in Cape Town, Mangaung and Johannesburg, by measuring the flow through  new water meters when no legitimate consumption occurred on the property. The results were used in  combination with the accuracy curves of new meters to estimate meter underregistration. The eThekwini meter replacement database was used to estimate the effect of meter age on meter accuracy. By combining these results with the average age of meters in South Africa, estimated from the National Water Demand Archive, it was possible to estimate the average meter under-registration due to meter aging. The study  concluded that apparent losses due to water meter under-registration are around 5% of consumption for  domestic consumers.


[See more from this special section on inequality][1]

In 2011, the wrath of the 99% kindled Occupy movements around the world. The protests petered out, but in their wake an international conversation about inequality has arisen, with tens of thousands of speeches, articles, and blogs engaging everyone from President Barack Obama on down. Ideology and emotion drive much of the debate. But increasingly, the discussion is sustained by a tide of new data on the gulf between rich and poor.

This special issue uses these fresh waves of data to explore the origins, impact, and future of inequality around the world. Archaeological and ethnographic data are revealing how inequality got its start in our ancestors (see pp. [822][2] and [824][3]). New surveys of emerging economies offer more reliable estimates of people's incomes and how they change as countries develop (see p. [832][4]). And in the past decade in developed capitalist nations, intensive effort and interdisciplinary collaborations have produced large data sets, including the compilation of a century of income data and two centuries of wealth data into the World Top Incomes Database (WTID) (see p. [826][5] and Piketty and Saez, p. [838][6]).

It is only a slight exaggeration to liken the potential usefulness of this and other big data sets to the enormous benefits of the Human Genome Project. Researchers now have larger sample sizes and more parameters to work with, and they are also better able to detect patterns in the flood of data. Collecting data, organizing it, developing methods of analysis, extracting causal inferences, formulating hypotheses—all of this is the stuff of science and is more possible with economic data than ever before. Even physicists have jumped into the game, arguing that physical laws may help explain why inequality seems so intractable (see p. [828][7]).

![Figure][8]

PHOTO: STEVE RAYMER/CORBIS

In the United States, the new information suggests a wide rift between top and bottom. Tax data from the WTID suggest that today the top 1% control nearly 20% of U.S. income, up from about 8% in the 1970s. But inequality is increasing within the 99%, too, as a consequence of a growing premium on college and postgraduate education: The fates of the tech-savvy worker at Google and the blue-collar employee at General Motors have been decoupled (see Autor, p. [843][9]). According to surveys by the Census Bureau, in 2012 the richest 20% of Americans enjoyed more than 50% of the nation's total income, up from 43% in 1967. The middle 20%—the actual middle class—received only about 14% of all income, and the poorest got a mere 3% (see p. [820][10]).

Flip to a world map, and America's inequality, despite reaching levels last seen in the Gilded Age, turns out to be far from extreme. Many nations, especially emerging economies, have even larger chasms between the super-rich and the poor. One widely used metric, the Gini coefficient, estimates inequality as an index between 0—at which point everyone has exactly equal incomes—to 1, in which a single person takes all the income and the rest get nothing. The U.S. Gini, at 0.40 in 2010, seems relatively high compared with, for example, Japan at 0.32. But South Africa is a sky-high 0.7.

Many assume that governments in emerging economies have chosen to favor growth even at the cost of inequality on the grounds that "a rising tide lifts all boats." But evidence that this trade-off is necessary is sparse, and recent data show that policies to reduce inequality need not stymie growth (see Ravallion, p. [851][11]).

What of those at the bottom? Research has established a base of knowledge about the harmful effects of disadvantageous circumstances on education and health. These influences can begin early in life, even prenatally (see Aizer and Currie, p. [856][12]). But researchers are still exploring whether the stress of being low-ranked itself adds to the poor's burden, causing illness and even early death (see p. [829][13]). In addition, psychological mechanisms may spur a negative feedback loop in which poor individuals behave in ways that help keep them poor (see Haushofer and Fehr, p. [862][14]).

Harsh as life can be for those at the bottom, the opportunity to move up the ladder can compensate. Newly available data from taxes and other records promise to yield insights into intergenerational mobility, in which children advance from their parents' socioeconomic status. But so far, researchers have a relatively limited view of how and why people move into different social, as well as economic, classes (see p. [836][15] and ; also see Corak, p. [812][16]).

Few would deny that excessive inequality can be unhealthy for societies and economies, but the new data don't pinpoint a desirable level. They do show that the forces that foster inequality—from the patchy distribution of resources among ancient hunter-gatherers to the sheer earning power of capital today—are many and potent. It is up to society to decide whether, and how, to restrain them (see p. [783][17]).

 [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/site/special/inequality/index.xhtml
 [2]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/822.full
 [3]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/824.full
 [4]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/832.full
 [5]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/826.full
 [6]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/838.full
 [7]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/828.full
 [8]: pending:yes
 [9]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/843.full
 [10]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/820.full
 [11]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/851.full
 [12]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/856.full
 [13]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/829.full
 [14]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/862.full
 [15]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/836.full
 [16]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/812.1.full
 [17]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/783.full


Observer preferences in the color reproduction of pictorial images have been a topic of debate for many years. Through a series of three psychophysical experiments we are trying to better understand the differences and trends in observer preferences for pictorial images, determine if cultural biases on preference exist, and finally generate a set of preferred color reproduced images for future experimentation and evaluation. The first experiment was a survey of observers rating the importance of commonly used image characteristics terms in correlation to color image quality. The data collected demonstrated that observer preferences remain relatively constant while judging color attributes between different media and for various image content. Experiment I also aided in the decision to utilize five dimensions of manipulation to generate preferred color reproductions, for Experiments II and in. The dimensions were, lightness (gamma adjustment to L*), contrast (sigmoid adjustment to L*), chroma (multiplicative factor on Cab* at a given hab), hue rotation, and color balance (additive adjustments to a* and b*). The second experiment was a rank order of image preference conducted at several research facilities around the world. The results yielded that statistical difference between peak preferences of image quality between cultures may exist but that the cultural difference is most likely not of practical significance for most applications. Furthermore, the shape of the preference curves across cultures is very similar so any cultural bias present is small. The final experiment was an adjustment experiment, in which observers were asked to generate the most preferred image possible. The observer variability (inter-observers) and repeatability (intra-observer) in generating preferred images were analyzed. The analysis of Experiment HI yielded that the intra-observer repeatability of an observer is about half of the variation between observers. Furthermore the analysis demonstrated that preferences on images with faces have a much tighter range of preference in comparison to images without faces. Finally, a cross analysis ofExperiment II and HI was completed by the generation of preferred image sets from the results of the two experiments. The resultant images proved to be a good visualization of the range of variability in making preferred images from the color dimensions provided, and also visually demonstrated that the two techniques, (making one color adjustment at a time verses compounding color adjustments) of generating preferred images result in similar solutions.


Magnesium salt–polyacrylamide composite polymers have been prepared by blending magnesium chloride and magnesium hydroxide, respectively, with polyacrylamide aqueous solution. The thermal behavior of the dried magnesium salt–polyacrylamide composite polymers has been studied. Differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) analysis and thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) were carried out to investigate the changes of the composite polymers' behavior with temperature. The kinetics of the thermal decomposition of magnesium salt–polyacrylamide composite polymers was investigated over temperature range of 35–800°C with three heating rates of 10, 20, and 40°C/min under nitrogen atmosphere. Flynn and Wall's model was usedto determine the activation energies of thermal decomposition for magnesium salt–polyacrylamide composite polymers. The activation energies needed to decompose 50 wt% of magnesium hydroxide-polyacrylamide (MHPAM) composite polymer ranged from of 28.993–174.307 kJ/mol which are higher than the values for magnesium chloride–polyacrylamide (MCPAM) composite polymer (21.069–39.412 kJ/mol). Therefore, MHPAM composite polymer has a better thermal stability compared with MCPAM composite polymer. The morphological properties of magnesium salt–polyacrylamide composite polymers were studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy was used to determine the composition of the chemical elements. POLYM. COMPOS., 2011. © 2011 Society of Plastics Engineers


The objective of this study was to compare the fatty acid profile of caprine milk or cheese from animals raised under extensive, semi-extensive or full confinement production system in Mexico. Feeding systems particularly grazing have been shown to affect essential fatty acid profiles, particularly the ω6/ω3 balance. Utilization of concentrates probably raises the omega 6 contents, or decreases omega 3 concentration, often exceeding 4:1 ω6/ω3 ratio, diminishing beneficial effects of ω3 regarding consumer health. The present study was conducted for two years (2016 and 2017) on 5,079 lactating goats from the states of Queretaro, Guanajuato, Colima, San Luis Potosi and Michoacan in Mexico. Average milk production was 1.5/d liters (DS ± 0.9). Of the 98 farms studied, 35% were in full confinement, feeding basically alfalfa hay and concentrate (18% CP), 22% grazed rye grass, 17% pastured alfalfa (45% of these grazing systems were supplemented), finally 26% grazed were in silvopastoral surroundings, mainly without supplement. The use of concentrate in more than 35% of total feed consumption had an effect on the profile of essential fatty acids exceeding ω6/ω3 4/1 ratio. In 36 of the studied farms levels of ω6/ω3 exceeded 4:1, all of them were supplemented with 700 g /d or more concentrate. In those units the use of the supplement decreased ω3 or increased ω6.


The aims of the paper are to study the financial performance between the independent finance companies and the integrated finance companies over the period 2001-2011. From total 194 finance companies in the industry, the finance companies who affiliate with bank or automotive manufacturer are 65 companies that contribute to 71% of total asset of the industry. The banking industry that provides majority of funding, has made finance companies as part of their integration business model. The automotive manufacturers and dealers that provide the products of financing, have the similar strategy. The acquisition of finance companies has reached more than 30 transactions from 2002 until 2012. We analyzed seven micro key financial ratios (profitability, efficiency, growth, firm size, liquidity, solvability and risk). We use non parametric Mann Whitney and parametric Panel Data Dummy Regression. Our sample consists of 100 finance companies which continuously published their financial statement from 2001 until 2011. The empirical results show that the integrated finance companies are better in efficiency, profitability, size and growth. However, the integrated finance company has higher reserve policy and lower liquidity. On the other side, we also compare between the backward integration with bank and the forward integration with automotive manufacturer.


Introduction: Improving the understanding of factors contributing to poor outcomes, and identifying beneficial elements of interventions, can assist better management of patients who have had a stroke. Part 1 Aim: To investigate associations between risk factors and long-term outcomes after stroke. Methods: Using data obtained for a community-based study of stroke, we undertook Cox proportional hazards regression analyses to identify factors associated with the risk of stroke, acute myocardial infarction or death. Results: For the first time, we found evidence that smoking at the time of stroke (hazard ratio [HR]: 1.30, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.06 – 1.60, p=0.012) and a systolic blood pressure <121 mmHg at 5 years post-stroke (HR: 1.54, 95% CI: 1.04 – 2.31, p=0.033) were associated with the risk of poor long-term outcomes when compared to the absence of these factors. Part 2 Aim: To better understand each component of a secondary stroke prevention intervention provided in the Shared Team Approach between Nurses and Doctors For Improved Risk factor Management randomised controlled trial (STAND FIRM RCT). Methods: Firstly, to further advocate the use of new interventions for post-stroke care we analysed qualitative data obtained from GPs participating in our stroke education activity. Following a seminar on secondary stroke prevention, GPs audited patients with stroke managed in their clinic and reported on how the secondary prevention management of their patients could be improved. Secondly, we monitored the utilisation of individualised management plans (IMPs) developed for patients in the intervention arm of the STAND FIRM RCT. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was conducted to investigate whether utilisation of the IMPs was associated with improvements in secondary prevention management. Education visits were provided to patients in the intervention arm of the STAND FIRM RCT. Nurses documented issues related to post-stroke care and secondary prevention reported by the patients and the information they provided to the patients to resolve these issues. We conducted qualitative analysis of these notes. Results: GPs indicated that improvements could be made to the pharmacological and non-pharmacological management, and the documentation of risk factors in the patients they audited. There was evidence that IMPs had been utilised for 60% of patients in the STAND FIRM RCT. Compared to patients whose GPs did not utilise IMPs, patients for whom GPs utilised IMPs did not have a detectable difference in prescription of new secondary prevention medications (odds ratio [OR]: 0.18, 95% CI: 0.03 – 1.09, p=0.061), but were more often provided lifestyle education (OR: 2.0, 95% CI: 1.06 – 3.82, p=0.032). At the education visits conducted for patients in the STAND FIRM RCT, nurses provided information to resolve several issues related to the use of secondary prevention medications. Overall conclusions: The findings on risk factors should provide further impetus for physicians to provide smoking cessation interventions and optimise blood pressure control in survivors of stroke. Implementing the findings of these studies and other aspects of stroke management into clinical practice may be assisted by providing patients with IMPs and by educating patients.


Abstract : This survey quantifies the relationship between the application of Systems Engineering (SE) best practices to projects and programs and the performance of those projects and programs. The survey population consisted of projects and programs executed by defense contractors who are members of the Systems Engineering Division (SED) of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDlA). The deployment of SE practices on a project or program was measured through the availability and characteristics of specific SE-related work products. Project Performance was measured through typically available project measures of cost performance schedule performance and scope performance. Additional project and program information such as project size project domain and other data was also collected to aid in characterizing the respondent's project. Analysis of the survey responses revealed moderately strong statistical relationships between Project Performance and several categorizations of specific of SE best practices. Notably stronger relationships are apparent by combining the effects of more than one the best practices categories. Of course, Systems Engineering Capability alone does not ensure outstanding Project Performance. The survey results show notable differences in the relationship between SE best practices and performance between more challenging as compared to less challenging projects. The statistical relationship between Project Performance and the combination of SE Capability and Project Challenge is quite strong tor survey data of this type.


The Court of Justice's endorsement in InnoLux Corp v. Commission of the concept 'direct European Economic Area (EEA) sales through transformed products' for EU competition law fining purposes is not wholly uncontroversial. Infelicitous consequences arising from the application of this novel concept potentially include: (i) the imposition of excessive and disproportionate penalties, and (ii) the same sales being penalized by a competition authority in a country in which internal sales were made in addition to being penalized by the European Commission. The authors therefore advocate that the EU rules determining which acts can be taken into account for the purposes of determining a fine should be strictly coterminous with the rules on jurisdiction and that third-country competition authorities be encouraged to adopt a similar approach. It is believed that greater legal certainty can be achieved by having symmetry between the rules on jurisdiction and the rules on the sales to be taken into account for the purposes of determining fines. This solution does not exclude an application of the 'qualified effects' doctrine to downstream sales by related parties, provided there is adequate evidence to establish the existence of the 'qualified effects' in the first place. The rigours of that doctrine are necessary to ensure that the objective of ensuring effective deterrence does not become an autonomous and unruly principle of policy.


In Australia, Indigenous students' education outcomes, as represented by assessments that accompany the current neo-liberal performativity and accountability agendas, are well below those of their non-Indigenous counterparts. While there has been a flurry of policy and rhetoric around 'closing the gap', one aspect of the lived experience of some Indigenous Australian Peoples – temporary mobility – goes largely ignored by education systems that, through policy and its enactment, represent schooling stability as 'normal'. While not all mobility has a negative effect, existing research shows that when accompanied by other risk factors such as low socio-economic status, mobility can have a 'compounding' effect (KPMG Consulting, Australian Council for Education Research, Department of Defence, & Commonwealth Department of Education Science and Training, 2002) and, when multiple school moves occur in the early years, learning is highly likely to be disrupted (Heinlein & Shinn, 2000; KPMG Consulting et al., 2002; Rumberger, 2003). Indigenous mobility, as an educational issue, is largely absent from education policy and this absence, coupled with ongoing literacy policy reform in Queensland, serves to provide little guidance for teachers and schools in regional urban communities working to meet the literacy learning needs of this underserved cohort of students.

This case study was conducted as a critical participatory action research project exploring teaching practices that support the literacy learning of mobile Indigenous students. It was undertaken in a state primary school serving a regional Queensland suburban community characterised by low educational outcomes and low socio-economic status. The study formed part of a larger collaborative action research project investigating Indigenous student mobility, with a focus on literacy and numeracy outcomes, and trialling targeted interventions in 14 low socio-economic primary schools in a range of locations across Queensland. While the larger project actively focused on responding to the needs of mobile Indigenous students by building school capacity and engaging with the local community, this study, working in parallel, has focused sharply on the work of teachers in relation to supporting literacy learning for mobile Indigenous students. Through all phases of both research projects, an Indigenous reference group from within the Queensland Department of Education and Training provided guidance and support. Additionally, extensive consultations with Indigenous stakeholders were undertaken to ensure the research was consistent with the concerns and interests of the local community.

Over four school terms in 2009 and 2010, I facilitated a participatory action research project involving three classroom teachers working in Years 1 and 3, the school's Community Liaison Officer, the Mobility Support Teacher and the Curriculum Coordinator. Data were gathered and generated through a range of methods including, but not limited to, professional learning activities, professional conversations within whole group meetings, classroom observations and semi-structured interviews.

The methodology was informed by a critical theory approach, underpinned by Habermas' (1984, 1987, 1996) theories of knowledge constitutive interests, communicative action and the public sphere. I also drew upon the notion of 'Disciplined Dialogue' (Swaffield & Dempster, 2009) to ensure professional conversations retained both their focus on literacy teaching practice and on the data that were generated through the participatory action research cycle.

Data collected and generated from the project were managed through the use of QSR NVivo software. This software was used to code the collective data. Over time, as analysis progressed and patterns and ideas took shape, these were organised and reorganised into hierarchical, branching structures or 'tree' nodes which allowed the researcher to organise the coding according to conceptual relationships – as one way of identifying patterns in the data.

This research identified that the practice architectures of the neoliberal state serve as a barrier to teachers' work with mobile Indigenous students through a reduced and narrowed curriculum (Lingard, 2010) and a focus on testing as accountability (Luke & Woods, 2008) that is removed from classroom purposes. Additionally, the lack of a coherent literacy policy in Queensland marginalises this cohort of students and reduces teachers' capacity to support their literacy learning needs. These practice architectures shape teachers' work in ways that draw their work away from the cultural interface (Nakata, 2007a, 2007b) and provide spaces for deficit discourses and low expectations of mobile Indigenous students and their families.

Within this action research project it was found that when temporal and discursive space supported by 'Disciplined Dialogue' is made available, teachers and specialist support staff are able to 'see' local and systemic practice architectures (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008) and, in doing so, strategise critical place-based (Gruenewald, 2008) pedagogical responses that meet the needs of students in the school at that time. Evidence demonstrated that providing this space for praxis can serve to render visible the lived experiences of mobile Indigenous students and their families. Coming to "see" mobile Indigenous students and their families can reshape aspects of teachers' habitus (Bourdieu, 1990) and provide professional renewal and growth that has, potentially, positive impact for the literacy learning of mobile Indigenous students.


Arctic marine ecosystems support fisheries of significant and increasing economic and nutritional value. Commercial stocks are sustained by pelagic food webs with relatively few keystone taxa mediating energy transfer to higher trophic levels, and it remains largely unknown how these taxa will be affected by changing climate and the influx of boreal taxa. Calanus species store large quantities of lipids, making these zooplankton a critical link in marine food-webs. The Arctic Calanus species are usually larger and, importantly, have been suggested to contain disproportionately larger lipid stores than their boreal congeners. Continued climate warming and subsequent changes in primary production regimes have been predicted to lead to a shift from the larger, lipid-rich Arctic species, Calanus glacialis and Calanus hyperboreus, toward the smaller, boreal Calanus finmarchicus in the European Arctic, with negative consequences for top predators. Our data show that lipid content is closely related to body size for all three species, i.e. is not a species-specific trait, and that there is considerable overlap in size between C. finmarchicus and C. glacialis. A trait-based life-history model was used to examine an idealized scenario where, in a changed Arctic with a longer period of primary production, C. glacialis- and C. hyperboreus-like copepods are indeed replaced by C. finmarchicus-like individuals, whether through competition, plasticity, hybridization, or evolution. However, the model finds that transfer of energy from primary producers to higher predators may actually be more efficient in this future scenario, because of the changes in generation length and population turnover rate that accompany the body-size shifts. These findings suggest that Arctic marine food webs may be more resilient to climate-related shifts in the Calanus complex than previously assumed.


Industrial process plants such as chemical refineries and electric power generation are examples of continuous-variable dynamic systems (CVDS) whose operation is continuously monitored for abnormal behavior. CVDSs pose a challenging diagnostic problem in which values are continuous (not discrete), relatively few parameters are observable, parameter values keep changing, and diagnosis must be performed while the system operates.

We present a novel method for monitoring CVDSs which exploits the system's dynamic behavior for diagnostic clues. The key techniques are: modeling the physical system with dynamic qualitative/quantitative models, inducing diagnostic knowledge from qualitative simulations, continuously comparing observations against fault-model predictions, and incrementally creating and testing multiple-fault hypotheses. The important result is that the diagnosis is refined as the physical system's dynamic behavior is revealed over time.


This chapter is concerned with an intercultural perspective on the reporting of a single entity (i.e. Cambodia) by two publications having different cultural imprints. The Economist magazine, based in London, is a global publication with a mission to spread its ideology of democracy, rule of law and free markets (Moore 2005a). Phnom Penh Post , based in the Cambodian capital, is a local English-language publication that claims to be "Cambodia's newspaper of record". How Cambodia is represented in these two publications is described and contrasted using a systemic functional linguistic approach which theorises the relationships between culture, text and lexicogrammar. The two publications' different cultural contexts of creation and reception are shown to directly influence the text types and wordings of their articles.


Developing constitutive models for particle phase rheology in gas-fluidized suspensions through rigorous statistical mechanical methods is very difficult when complex inter-particle forces are present. In the present study, we pursue a computational approach based on results obtained through Eulerian–Lagrangian simulations of the fluidized state. Simulations were performed in a periodic domain for non-cohesive and mildly cohesive (Geldart Group A) particles. Based on the simulation results, we propose modified closures for pressure, bulk viscosity, shear viscosity and the rate of dissipation of pseudo-thermal energy. For non-cohesive particles, results in the high granular temperature $T$ regime agree well with constitutive expressions afforded by the kinetic theory of granular materials, demonstrating the validity of the methodology. The simulations reveal a low $T$ regime, where the inter-particle collision time is determined by gravitational fall between collisions. Inter-particle cohesion has little effect in the high $T$ regime, but changes the behaviour appreciably in the low $T$ regime. At a given $T$ , a cohesive particle system manifests a lower pressure at low particle volume fractions when compared to non-cohesive systems; at higher volume fractions, the cohesive assemblies attain higher coordination numbers than the non-cohesive systems, and experience greater pressures. Cohesive systems exhibit yield stress, which is weakened by particle agitation, as characterized by $T$ . All these effects are captured through simple modifications to the kinetic theory of granular materials for non-cohesive materials.


The influence of climatic variability on the European history of Tasmania has largely been neglected as a field of study. It is demonstrated here that severe weather events, such as drought, floods, storms, extreme cold and bushfires, have had a significant impact on that history. Drought affected farming operations, town water supplies, mining and industry, and later hydro-electric power generation. Floods and storms disrupted transport and communication networks and damaged property in towns and in the country. Bushfires also periodically wrought widespread property damage.
An environmental history approach is employed to explore the dominant images and perceptions of Tasmania"s climate, the impacts of severe weather events on the population, the responses made to them, and how these changed over time from 1803 to the 1960s. For ease of analysis, the thesis is divided into four periods of post settlement history: early European settlement from 1803 to the 1810s; the period of pastoral expansion from the 1820s to 1855; from self-government in 1856 to 1900; and from Federation in 1901 to the 1960s. Scrutiny of a range of primary and secondary source material, including official despatches, government department records, meteorological data, emigrant guides, scientific papers, newspaper accounts, farm diaries and private correspondence, published and unpublished works on the histories of towns or regions, industries, government agencies, land settlement policies and Tasmanian identity and promotion, resulted in new insights into the role played by severe weather events on Tasmanian history. The thesis also advances knowledge of these events and their impacts on Tasmanian society, economics and politics.
From the first years of settlement Tasmania was widely promoted and regarded as an "Antipodean England" – relatively free of the harsh climatic extremes of mainland Australia. It is argued here that this image was both inaccurate and inappropriate – inaccurate because drought, floods, storms and bushfires are all part of the natural weather cycles of Tasmania and have, at times, severely affected the Tasmanian population; and inappropriate, because it downplayed the potential risks posed by climatic variability and contributed to a state of unpreparedness by government and the wider population.
The thesis demonstrates that severe weather events have long affected Tasmanian history, that they occur within a wider environmental, cultural and societal context that influences their human consequences, and that the nature and severity of these impacts changed over time.


This study examines the lives of individual Sundanese women and the cultural framework in which their lives are lived. Utilizing data collected from participant observation and in-depth, semi-structured interviews, their status as women is investigated as well as how gender relations are constructed within the context and constraints of the local community and wider social influences. The entry point for examining their lives through this gendered lens is the lifecycle rituals. These ritual productions help women move from one life stage into the next. At these important junctures it is possible to see the competing hegemonic discourses on the role and position of women and how individual women and their families respond to various influences in the decisions they make regarding the rituals. These decisions in the ritual context reveal how women negotiate their role and position in Sundanese society more generally. In the life-story analysis, this study investigates how gender discourses have been communicated to individual women at different stages of their lives and how there is variation in individual perceptions of gender relations within a single community. This study shows that Sundanese women play an important role in maintaining and (re)creating rituals and practices, which enables them to nurture and (re)produce the traditional social order in which they have relatively high status. From this foundation women have the power to negotiate the disparate gender discourses that influence their lives.


A high energy piping (HEP) program is important for the safety of plant personnel and reliability of the generating units. HEP weldment failures have resulted in serious injuries, fatalities, extensive damage of components, and significant lost generation. Since creep/fatigue is a typical failure mechanism, the probability of HEP failures increases with unit age. The main steam (MS) piping system is one of the most critical HEP systems. Weldment failures are typically due to a combination of high temperature creep and fatigue. Industry best practices include (1) the evaluation of historical operating conditions; (2) examinations of critical weldments to reveal nondestructive examination (NDE) indications, microstructural material damage, and detailed geometry data; (3) hot and cold walkdowns to document the field piping system behavior and anomalies; (4) simulation of as found piping displacements to estimate actual stresses; (5) ranking of critical weldments; (6) recommendations for support repairs and adjustments; (7) recommendations for future examinations; and (8) remaining life estimates at critical weldments. Appropriate examinations, condition assessments, and recommendations for corrective actions are provided as a cost-effective life management process to maintain the piping system integrity. This paper provides examples demonstrating that the girth welds ranked below the top five to six welds are subject to significantly less applied stress and have substantially more creep/fatigue life than the top ranked welds. Hanger adjustments, along with selective identification, NDE, and possible repairs of top ranked welds provide substantially greater life to MS piping systems. Some fitness for-.service and risk-based programs for MS piping system girth weldments recommend a stress evaluation using typical pressure vessel or boiler tube calculations, in which the hoop stress is the principal stress. In some cases, the effective weldment stresses can be more than 50% above the hoop stress, resulting in the estimated remaining lives less than 15% of the life estimates using the hoop stress methodology. Some HEP life management programs may vaguely discuss using the principal stress based on a finite element analysis of the piping system. These principal stress values may be based on a conventional as-designed piping stress analysis. In the majority of the as found piping stress analyses performed by the author, the maximum as-found stresses are substantially greater than the maximum conventional as-designed piping stresses. In the example case study, the maximum effective weldment stress was more than three times greater than the estimated as-designed piping stress at the same location. This paper illustrates than an as-designed piping stress analysis will typically overestimate the life of an HEP system and typically not predict the locations of maximum creep/fatigue damage.


Many tax authorities changed the mode of interacting with taxpayers from physical to online as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, to diminish the spread of the virus. Eswatini, the country under study, mandated the use of online tax filing through the e-Tax system for all income tax payers, coupled with a zero-cash-handling policy for tax payment. By means of a difference-in-difference (DID) strategy, reinforced by a propensity score matching (PSM), this paper offers an impact evaluation of the mandate on taxpayer filing and payment behaviour. We present three sets of results. First, we describe which firms are most likely to register for e-Tax – mostly large firms and those in the primary and tertiary sectors. Second, we show that e-Tax uptake significantly improves filing behaviour, as well as payment behaviour. E-Tax registered taxpayers are less likely to file nil (by 60 per cent), declare more turnover and taxable income, and are 70 per cent more likely to pay conditional on filing. Third, we shed light on the mechanisms behind our main findings, showing that the technology improved accuracy and reduced compliance costs. E-Tax-registered treated taxpayers are more likely to file on time, file for VAT, report more accurately, and, on the payment side, to pay their liabilities in full.


Re-using knowledge in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms can lead to greater competitive advantage, improved designs, and more effective management of constructed facilities. This paper discusses the importance of exploration and discovery of reusable knowledge from a corporate archive as opposed to simple search and retrieval. We describe and illustrate through a scenario of use an exploration framework and prototype, CoMemTM that formalizes the added value of exploration in the process of knowledge reuse. We discuss two exploration activities: (i) Breadth- Only overview exploration that assist a user to rapidly localize pockets of re-usable knowledge from the large corporate archive and (ii) Iterative breadth-depth exploration that enables a user to identify those re-usable components of the Corporate Memory that may yield design issues that were not originally considered.


The aim of the present thesis was to assess the occurrence of early lower extremity arterial disease (LEAD) in patients with diabetes and to assess novel potential risk markers for development or worsening of LEAD in the same patients. In parallel different measures of impaired peripheral circulation were evaluated.The measurement of ankle-to- brachial blood pressure index (ABI) to screen for asymptomatic LEAD in diabetic subjects is unreliable since a large proportion of patients have stiff ankle arteries (mediasclerosis) and thus may display a too high ABI. We studied type 1-, type 2 diabetic and non-diabetic subjects without a previous history of LEAD and a composite variable of ankle – plus toe blood pressures and indices was compared to ABI alone in detecting LEAD. Significantly more subjects with reduced peripheral circulation were detected using the composite variable compared to ABI alone. This was particularly true in diabetic subjects, about 30% of whom had signs of impaired peripheral circulation. Thus, it was found that toe blood pressure measurements, alone or in combination with ankle blood pressure measurements, increase the sensitivity for finding early asymptomatic LEAD in diabetic subjects. No significant difference in reproducibility between measurements of absolute ankle- and toe blood pressure and indices was found, but a correlation between systemic (brachial) and toe blood pressure variations over time may suggest that indices are more correct in assessing peripheral arterial circulation.Furthermore, toe blood pressure measurements can be performed using either the great toe or dig II and a strong concordance is found between these measurements. In addition, since the pole-test, another non-invasive method to measure peripheral blood pressure which is less sensitive to the presence of mediasclerosis compared to ABI, correlated significantly with toe blood pressure measurements this method may be used as an alternative screening method in subjects with previously known LEAD.Age, hypertension and glycemic control are well known risk factors and, in addition, high tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) activity turned out to be a novel early marker for asymptomatic LEAD in diabetic subjects, particularly in patients with type 2 diabetes. Age and hyperglycemia are the most important risk factors for development and progression of subclinical lower extremity arterial disease in type 2 diabetic subjects. No independent associations between markers of inflammation, such as CRP, interleukin-6 and TNF-α and early asymptomatic LEAD were seen among non-diabetic or diabetic subjects.In conclusion, impaired arterial circulation in the lower extremities is common in diabetic subjects even in the absence of symptoms. Including toe blood pressure measurement when screening for asymptomatic LEAD in diabetic subjects improves the ability to detect reduced peripheral circulation and this method avoids falsely elevated blood pressures readings due to mediasclerosis in the ankle arteries. Moreover, an altered fibrinolytic activity should be further evaluated as an early marker of atherosclerosis and LEAD.


ABSTRACT Guayusa (Ilex guayusa) is a native tree of the western Amazon region grown by indigenous farmers in traditional agroforestry systems. Its leaves are used as a drink similar to tea, which is now commercialized and marketed outside of the Amazon. To assess the impacts from the early stages of commercial guayusa production, we conducted interviews in four commercial guayusa-producing communities with indigenous guayusa farmers in the Ecuadorian Amazon. We focus on their experiences and critically discuss and speculate about the socio-ecological implications of the expanding commercialization of guayusa, particularly in relation to propositions of this special issue. Results reveal that revenues from guayusa have not overtaken those from other cash crops. Commercializing guayusa can have benefits for farmers and the environment, provided that rigorous criteria that measure social and environmental impacts are adhered to. Furthermore, guaysa production is characterized by vertical integration where many individual farmers supply one processing and wholesale company in a short value chain fostering a locally tailored certification approach that is able to exert the continuation of the traditional agroforestry practices. Yet, sustainability initiatives, standards and certification only provide partial solutions for protecting ecosystem services in the Ecuadorian Amazon. EDITED BY Beria Leimona


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the effectiveness of uterotonics misoprostol and oxytocin on reducing blood loss during laparoscopy-assisted vaginal hysterectomy (LAVH).

DESIGN
Randomised, double-blind placebo-controlled trial.

SETTING
University hospital.

POPULATION
One hundred and seventy-three women underwent LAVH for symptomatic uterine myomas and were randomly allocated to uterotonics (n = 91) or placebo (n = 82).

METHODS
Women underwent LAVH for symptomatic uterine myomas and were randomly assigned to receive either rectal misoprostol (400 microg) and intravenous oxytocin (10 IU/hour) or placebo during LAVH. Parameters related to surgical outcome were compared.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
The main outcome measure was intra-operative blood loss.

RESULTS
Patient characteristics and indications for LAVH were similar in both groups. Mean [SD] for all continuous data estimated weight of blood loss (198.1 [123.2] vs 396 [337.6] g; P < 0.0001), mean operation time (106.2 [39.4] vs 116.6 [34.6] minutes; P = 0.02), mean change in haemoglobin (1.5 [1.0] vs 1.9 [1.2] g/dL; P = 0.02) and haematocrit levels (4.8 [2.9]% vs 5.8 [3.6]%; P = 0.04) and mean hospitalisation period (3.3 [0.8] vs 3.9 [1.1] days; P < 0.0001), which were significantly less in the group given rectal misoprostol and intravenous oxytocin than in the placebo group, respectively. There was no significant difference in complications and side effects between the two groups (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSION
Combined rectal misoprostol and intravenous oxytocin is a feasible and effective method of reducing blood loss and operation time in LAVH.


Gopher tortoises on lands to be developed may be translocated as a conservation measure, sometimes to areas already occupied by the species. We assessed the success of this type of translocation by monitoring the movements, spatial positioning, health, and reproductive activity of translocated and resident individuals at a site in central Florida from 2001 to 2004. By several criteria, the translocation was a success. Most translocated individuals remained on-site for at least one year, home ranges of resident individuals were not significantly different before and after translocation, home ranges of translocated individuals fit within the range of estimates reported in the literature, and neither body condition nor reproduction of either group of individuals could be shown to be affected by the translocation. On the other hand, several resident individuals altered their habitat use after translocation and the spatial positioning of resident individuals was different than that of individuals throughout; so, some potential exists for future off-site movements. The study illustrates two practical problems in assessing translocation success: lack of adequate pre-translocation data for both resident and translocated individuals, which interferes with documentation of translocation effects, and the necessarily small sample sizes, which reduces statistical power.


Ecological risk assessment of O3 impact requires consideration of many factors that, perhaps, are not of concern in human health risk assessment. The episodic nature of O3 exposure, functional complexity of species assemblages, and the broad spatial and temporal scales characteristic of natural ecosystems make ecological risk assessment extremely difficult. The majority of exposure studies using plants have examined the sensitivity of individual species, growing under controlled conditions. Research has shown that individuals growing in plant mixtures may not respond the same way to O3 as when growing alone. In addition, other naturally occurring stresses can modify plant response to O3. Understanding the effect of O3 on natural systems and protecting vegetation resources represent significant scientific and regulatory challenges. Here we review several factors that need to be considered when evaluating ecosystem response to O3. Then we briefly present two examples of controlled seedling studies that were conducted to better understand mechanisms of tree response to O3. In the first example controlled exposure studies revealed responses in tree roots that led to hypothesis testing in the field in ponderosa pine ecosystems. Field experiments have confirmed a similar response in root biomass and carbohydrates across a natural O3 gradient in S. California, suggesting at least a partial role for O3 in the response. The second example illustrates the difficulty of understanding mechanistic interactions to O3 stress even in controlled chamber studies. The second example also illustrates the difficulty of using chamber studies to understand responses in the field. While our knowledge of vegetation response to O3 is extensive and compelling, important questions remain about how to quantify these effects in the field, assess their magnitude, and establish a suitable standard that is protective of ecosystems.


This research is a cross-national comparison of longitudinal studies, designed to
compare the quality of life, to identify the physical, mental, social, environmental
factors contributing to quality of life, and predict the relationship between quality of
life and mortality in old age. Although previous research has suggested that health,
functional ability, psychological well-being, social relationships, socioeconomic
status, and environmental conditions can affect quality of life among older people,
little research has compared quality of life in old age across Asia-Western countries.
The overall aim of this study was to compare the factors affecting quality of life
among older people in the UK and Taiwan. Data were derived from the 1989 and
1993 waves of two nationally-representative samples of older people: the Nottingham
Longitudinal Study of Activity and Ageing (NLSAA) in the UK, and the Survey of
Health and Living Status of the Elderly in Taiwan. Data from the two studies were
harmonised to ensure their comparability for the statistical analyses, and life
satisfaction was used as a measure of quality of life.
Secondary analysis was performed on the harmonised data sets containing data from
690 (1989) and 410 (1993) NLSAA participants and 1,438 (1989) and 1,003 (1993)
SHLSET participants. Factors related to physical (e.g., self-rated health, perceived
health relative to peers, specific diseases) and mental health (e.g., loneliness,
depression), social factors (e.g., attending religious groups, having a TV or radio,
having friends), demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, marital status, income),
and life satisfaction (as a measure of quality of life) were examined using MannWhitney
tests, chi-square tests, stepwise multiple regression, and logistic regression.
The association between quality of life and mortality was assessed using Cox
proportional hazards regression models. Cluster analysis was used to examine the
patterns among older people in terms of life satisfaction, and the relationship of these
clusters with mortality was assessed.
The results of this research suggested that the sample of older people from the UK had
higher life satisfaction scores than their peers in Taiwan; however, this difference did
not remain in the multivariate analyses. The analyses also identified that self-rated
health, mental health (loneliness and depression), income satisfaction, and using a
walking aid were common predictors affecting quality of life in the two countries. The
results from Chapter 5 showed that the study location variable had an interactional
effect with particular variables on life satisfaction between the two countries, i.e.,
people in the UK who were married, had excellent self-rated health, smoked, had
heart, stomach, dizziness, high blood pressure or walking problems, used a walking
aid, and those with high level of depression. People in these groups in the UK tended
to report a high level of life satisfaction compared with their counterparts in Taiwan.
Older people in Taiwan without friends had lower life satisfaction than their
counterparts who had no friends in the UK.
Survival analyses showed that life satisfaction is associated with mortality in the two
countries, especially older people who reported positive feelings in life satisfaction
tended to have a decreased risk of mortality. Life satisfaction had a less persistent
effect on mortality for the sample of older people in Taiwan, suggesting that other
factors explain the relationship with mortality in older people in Taiwan, or that they
are more resilient. However, in the UK people who had higher life satisfaction scores
had improved survival, independent of demographic, physical and mental health, and
social engagement. There was no relationship between change in life satisfaction
(1989-1993) and mortality. Finally, patterns of life satisfaction were related to
mortality - older people with patterns of higher life satisfaction within cluster were
more likely to live longer.
Statistically significant differences were found between most the of factors of life
satisfaction in the two countries. For instance, older people in Taiwan tended to live
with someone, suggesting that the extended families are more in Taiwan than the UK.
While some of the differences found, such as depression and loneliness, may be due
to cultural variations, further research is required to identify further predictors of life
satisfaction.
Finally, the term 'life satisfaction' is one component of quality of life, and life
satisfaction was used as a measure of quality of life in the research. This comparative
research described and explained the differences and similarities in quality of life
among older people living in two different cultures and societies. To conclude, a
common data set is a unique opportunity to identify the factors affecting quality of life
and to compare quality of life between the UK and Taiwan for increasing our
understanding of older people.


The nutritional environment during fetal and neonatal life is a key determinant affecting the risk for adult‐onset diseases, such as diabetes and obesity. We previously showed that chronic parenteral (PN) compared to enteral (EN) nutrition in neonatal pigs for two weeks leads to increased glucose intolerance, insulin resistance and fat deposition. Our aim was to test whether glucose intolerance, insulin resistance and fat deposition in the liver and body persist into late infancy and adolescence. Term newborn pigs, were fed PN or EN (N=12/group) for 2 wk followed by ad lib feeding of a high‐fat (30%) and sucrose (20%) diet for 5 mon. Body composition was measured by dual‐emission X‐ray absorptiometry at 2 wk, 8 wk, and 5 mon, and serum chemistry and fasting intravenous glucose tolerance test (IVGTT; 1 g glucose/kg x sample 90 min) were obtained at 5 mon. At 2 and 8 wk of age, body weight was similar, but % fat was higher and % lean was lower in PN vs EN pigs. At 5 mon, there were no differences in serum markers of liver injury or lipidemia, however, the 90‐min area‐under‐curve (AUC) for both glucose and insulin were lower (p<0.05) in PN than EN pigs, but the ratio of AUC insulin:glucose was not different between groups. We conclude that PN during the neonatal period increased adiposity transiently into early infancy but PN‐induced glucose intolerance was not sustained into adolescence even when challenged with an obesogenic diet.


A large literature in behavioral and social sciences has found that human wellbeing follows a U-shape over age. Some theories have assumed that the U-shape is caused by unmet expectations that are felt painfully in midlife but beneficially abandoned and experienced with less regret during old age. In a unique panel of 132,609 life satisfaction expectations matched to subsequent realizations, I find people to err systematically in predicting their life satisfaction over the life cycle. They expect -- incorrectly -- increases in young adulthood and decreases during old age. These errors are large, ranging from 9.8% at age 21 to -4.5% at age 68, they are stable over time and observed across socio-economic groups. These findings support theories that unmet expectations drive the age U-shape in wellbeing.


Sampling-based solutions to the motion planning problem, such as the probabilistic roadmap method (PRM), have become commonplace in robotics applications. These solutions are the norm as the dimensionality of the planning space grows, i.e., d >; 5. An important primitive of these methods is the local planner, which is used for validation of simple paths between two configurations. The most common is the straight-line local planner which interpolates along the straight line between the two configurations. In this paper, we introduce a new local planner, Toggle Local Planner (Toggle LP), which extends local planning to a two-dimensional subspace of the overall planning space. If no path exists between the two configurations in the subspace, then Toggle LP is guaranteed to correctly return false. Intuitively, more connections could be found by Toggle LP than by the straight-line planner, resulting in better connected roadmaps. As shown in our results, this is the case, and additionally, the extra cost, in terms of time or storage, for Toggle LP is minimal. Additionally, our experimental analysis of the planner shows the benefit for a wide array of robots, with DOF as high as 70.


Collision avoidance design plays an essential role in autonomous vehicle technology. It's an attractive research area that will need much experimentation in the future. This research area is very important for providing the maximum safety to automated vehicles, which have to be tested several times under different circumstances for safety before use in real life. This thesis proposes a method for designing and presenting a collision avoidance maneuver by using a model predictive controller with a moving obstacle for automated vehicles. It consists of a plant model, an adaptive MPC controller, and a reference trajectory. The proposed strategy applies a dynamic bicycle model as the plant model, adaptive model predictive controller for the lateral control, and a custom reference trajectory for the scenario design. The model was developed using the Model Predictive Control Toolbox and Automated Driving Toolbox in Matlab. Builtin tools available in Matlab/Simulink were used to verify the modeling approach and analyze the performance of the system. The major contribution of this thesis work was implementing a novel dynamic obstacle avoidance control method for automated vehicles. The study used validated parameters obtained from previous research. The novelty of this research was performing the studies using a MPC based controller instead of a sliding mode controller, that was primarily used in other studies. The results obtained from the study are compared with the validated models. The comparisons consisted of the lateral overlap,lateral error, and steering angle simulation results between the models. Additionally,this study also included outcomes for the yaw angle. The comparisons and other outcomes obtained in this study indicated that the developed control model produced reasonably acceptable results and recommendations for future studies.


This study focuses on student listening needs in the context of the English for Academic Purposes program taught by distance education at the University of the South Pacific. It explores the relationship between learners' awareness of the learning strategy they use for developing their listening skills and their teachers' knowledge of the strategy use and listening needs of learners.
Using an ethnographic case study approach, the study was conducted at various campuses and centres of the University of the South Pacific. Interviews were conducted with five EAP/study skills teachers; five subject/course teachers; 19 past learners and 10 present learners of the EAP/study skills course. Questionnaire data was also obtained from 19 past learners and 153 present learners. In addition, a course material analysis was carried out.
The study confirms and adds weight to the conclusions of earlier researchers such as Berne (1998), and Mendelsohn (2001) who explain that discrepancies exist between L2 listening research and practice. The findings of this research indicate that teachers differ from their learners in terms of learners' knowledge and understanding of listening skills and learning strategies in use. The findings also indicate that even though learning had taken place in this distance education context some face-to-face teaching would have been desirable. A combination of distance teaching with longer teacher–learner contact for distance teaching of listening skills is recommended, since regular contact between teachers and learners is seen by learners as very beneficial and more likely to lead to a better development of listening skills. It also helps create an awareness of learners' present and future listening needs. The nature of distance teaching at the University of the South Pacific, and the challenges faced by both teachers and learners are discussed in this study, and the requirement for further needs analysis in regard to distance EAP courses are noted.
The study concludes with recommendations for strategy training for distance learners as well as for raising teacher awareness about the importance of strategy teaching. It is also recommended that similar studies be undertaken in other language skills courses offered by distance at universities like USP such as reading, writing and speaking courses.


Abstract Past studies using penned deer provide conflicting results on the age when reliable predictions about antler growth potential in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) can be made. We captured wild whitetail males via aerial net gun on 12 ranches in 5 counties in south Texas, USA, from 1999 to 2007 to determine if a reliable juvenile-to-adult relationship in antler development existed. We individually marked and released captured animals at the trap site after we took antler and body measurements. We recaptured marked animals as possible in subsequent years or until we obtained final measurements after legal harvest. Amount of growth in the first set of antlers in whitetail males was a poor predictor of antler growth at maturity. By 4.5 years of age there were no differences (P > 0.05) in antler measurements regardless of the amount of development of the first set of antlers at 1.5 years. We concluded culling of yearling males based on number of antler points would have little positive effect on overall antler quality in future years.


The Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 has been the subject by contemporary and modem historians alike of a plethora of studies on most aspects of the conflict, including its military operations. None, however, has focussed specifically on the response ofthe Colony ofNatal, which formed an important base of military operations, nor on the conduct and effectiveness of its force of Volunteer soldiers. This study seeks to fill this significant gap in the historiography of the war. The central theme to emerge in this investigation of the response ofNatal to the war is that of a distinct gap between the perception ofthe scale and consistency of the commitment to military operations and the mobilization of colonial resources on the one hand, and, on the other, the socio-economic, political and military reality. The Natal Volunteer forces, especially the mounted infantry units such as the Natal Carbineers, were never able to exercise a significant influence on the conduct ofthe war in the Colony. There were several reasons for this. In terms ofimmediate military factors, the force was not considered sufficiently reliable by the British Army, and was therefore seldom deployed effectively, particularly in the formal phase of the war. This Volunteer force was also the victim of British strategic errors, such as that which led to the investment of Ladysmith by Boer forces from 2 November 1899 to 28 February 1900. The bulk ofthe Volunteer force was effectively removed from the war effort in the Colony for this period. Its marginalisation was, however, also evidence ofa conflicting and fickle mobilization for war by the Natal government and the Colony's Englishspeaking settler population. Cultural and Imperial affinity to Britain was countered by parochial regional interests such as economic affiliation with the Transvaal, which meant that Natal did not welcome a British war for confederation in the region. Qualified official and popular support in Natal for the war lasted only as long as the invading Boer forces posed a perceived threat to the Colony, from October 1899 to October 1900. In fact, from the date of the relief of L~dysmith, Natal colonial interests directed by a ruling settler agricultural, legal and mercantile elite which controlled political authority, as well as economic policy agitated for a reduction ofmilitary and economic corriiTIitment to the war. -----~ Natal's commitment to the British military effort, and the political policy that underwrote it, was retrospectively embellished in the immediate wake ofthe war as British hegemony in the region appeared to have been restored. However, this masked what effectively had been a muted and disputed response to the Anglo-Boer War.


Age at death will increasingly cluster in the 90s and the life expectancy of men and women will converge, according to a study by academics from Cass Business School in partnership with the ILC-UK.

Over the coming decades, men in particular will live longer, increasing the need for the country to face the challenges of an ageing society.

Based on historical mortality data from England and Wales, the researchers developed a new method for forecasting life expectancy – the results will be beneficial to individuals, government policy makers, pension providers and insurers as the new forecasts provide more certainty with which to plan.

One of great success stories in the United Kingdom is that people are living longer and men's life expectancy is catching up with women's. Male life expectancy at birth is now almost 80 years, having advanced 14 years since 1950 thanks to reductions in smoking, a decline in hazardous occupations, better health care and higher standards of living.

This success presents the country with a huge economic opportunity if these extra years are spent in prosperity and good health, but significant economic danger if they are not.

Realising the full potential of older citizens of the United Kingdom will be central to the Government's response to changing economic circumstances and the drive to build a strong, fair economy for the twenty-first century. However, the challenges posed by an ageing society come at a cost in terms of pensions, higher health and social care costs and infrastructural change.

Professor Mayhew and co-author David Smith used a pioneering new mathematical technique known as decomposition - or the 'jam-jar model' - to produce contributions to life expectancy for each 10 year age band (e.g. 70 to 80). The method provides more certainty over which age groups are experiencing significant gains and more accurate information about possible limits to life expectancy.

Talking about the model, Professor Mayhew said: "Each decade of retired life can be imagined as a jam-jar which if filled to the brim with life years would give a maximum of 10 years. As each jam-jar approaches the brim, extra life years are transmitted to the next decade of life in a predictable wave-like fashion until all are full."

To illustrate this, in 1950, when male life expectancy at 60 in England and Wales was 15 years, the contribution from the decade of life between 80 and 90 was only 9.1% of the total. By 2009, when life expectancy was 22 years, this decade of life contributed 18.5%


The era of ubiquitous access to a rich selection of interactive and high quality multimedia has begun; with it, the term "data tsunami" has been coined to describe the impending wave of data traffic set to overwhelm mobile networks. Understandably, this has focused the efforts of the research community, achieving notable advances in compression algorithms, further reducing the bitrate of multimedia, as well as spectral efficiency improvements on the channels with which it is delivered. As it stands, these advances alone will soon be outpaced by the continued growth of demand. Research into this problem from a higher viewpoint reveals two diverging trends: Mobile Broadcast is expected to play a significant role in reducing the burden of delivering next generation multimedia to mobile devices. For any reasonable efficiency gains using mobile broadcast technology, interest from multiple users, in the same content is required. Meanwhile, content creators and broadcasters are diverging from traditional single stream offerings, providing greater personal choice for media consumption as well as tailoring services for more capable devices though enhancements of live broadcast streams.

Given the unique and complex problem the aforementioned diverging trends present, the research herein explores the development of a standards compliant, multi-stream aware framework for implementation within mobile network infrastructure. Providing a multimedia centric, hybrid use of unicast and broadcast delivery methods, the framework allows mobile network operators the efficiency gains of broadcast whilst continuing to offer personalised experiences to customers. First, an open source system level LTE simulation platform is extended to support broadcast. This work is then characterised and validated to be 3GPP standards compliant. Next a Hybrid Unicast Broadcast Synchronisation (HUBS) framework is developed for multi stream multimedia content. This has the capability to dynamically vary broadcast resource allocation, increasing cell efficiency whilst minimising the time error between streams. Finally the HUBS framework is further expanded, making use of scalable video content for more precise synchronisation and resource utilisation.


We present a detailed investigation of the dynamical behavior of mimetic gravity with a general potential for the mimetic scalar field. Performing a phase-space and stability analysis, we show that the scenario at hand can successfully describe the thermal history of the universe, namely the successive sequence of radiation, matter, and dark-energy eras. Additionally, at late times the universe can either approach a de Sitter solution, or a scaling accelerated attractor where the dark-matter and dark-energy density parameters are of the same order, thus offering an alleviation of the cosmic coincidence problem. Applying our general analysis to various specific potential choices, including the power-law and the exponential ones, we show that mimetic gravity can be brought into good agreement with the observed behavior of the universe. Moreover, with an inverse square potential we find that mimetic gravity offers an appealing unified cosmological scenario where both dark energy and dark matter are characterized by a single scalar field, and where the cosmic coincidence problem is alleviated.


In this paper, we introduce a framework for building a secure and private peer to peer communication used in supervisory control and data acquisition networks with a novel Mobile IPv6-based moving target defense strategy. Our approach aids in combating remote cyber-attacks against peer hosts by thwarting any potential attacks at their reconnaissance stage. The IP address of each host is randomly changed at a certain interval creating a moving target to make it difficult for an attacker to find the host. At the same time, the peer host is updated through the use of the binding update procedure (standard Mobile IPv6 protocol). Compared with existing results that can incur significant packet-loss during address rotations, the proposed solution is loss-less. Improving privacy and anonymity for communicating hosts by removing permanent IP addresses from all packets is also one of the major contributions of this paper. Another contribution is preventing black hole attacks and bandwidth depletion DDoS attacks through the use of extra paths between the peer hosts. Recovering the communication after rebooting a host is also a new contribution of this paper. Lab-based simulation results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the method in action, including its overheads. The testbed experiments show zero packet-loss rate during handoff delay.


The accuracy of a machine tool is affected by the heat generated during the machining process. Also, varying environmental conditions produce thermal gradients that flow through the machine structure. The heat passes through assembly joints and structural linkages in the machine where the roughness and form of the contacting surfaces affects the heat transfer coefficients. Measurement of the thermal behaviour and associated deformations in the structure is a time consuming procedure where machine downtime is a dominant issue. This paper discusses a novel offline technique using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to simulate the thermal distribution and deformations during the spindle heating and cooling cycle in static conditions on a small Vertical Machining Centre (VMC) CNC machine. Detailed experimental testing of the temperature distribution in the machine and heat transfer work to obtain accurate values of the thermal contact resistance across the joints is reported. The obtained experimental results are evaluated and applied to the FEA software to obtain thermal distribution and associated deformations in a machine tool structure offline. The FEA simulated results are presented and are in close correlation with the obtained experimental results. FEA simulation enables efficient offline assessments of temperature distribution and displacements in the machine tool structures that result in a significant reduction in machine non-productive downtime while enabling characterisation under variable environmental conditions.


A new report quantifies the carbon stored aboveground in tropical forests that are legally owned or traditionally held by Indigenous Peoples and local communities in 37 countries across tropical America, Africa, and Asia. The report launches a long term collaboration among the Woods Hole Research Center, Rights and Resources Initiative, and World Resources Institute to continue tracking Indigenous Peoples' and local communities' role in carbon sequestration globally, with goals of adding data over time for additional countries, relevant non-forest ecosystems, and traditionally held lands that lack formal recognition. This work is a continuation of groundbreaking studies from 2014 and 2015 initiated by a dedicated group of scientific, policy, and indigenous organizations.


Purpose

Patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present with specific assessment, specific difficulties, needs and therapeutic issues and therefore are a challenging group for forensic services. Given the challenge that individuals with ASD present to forensic services, the suggested increase in the number of this group within this setting and the relatively little amount of research which suggests they face a number of difficulties within the prison environment, the purpose of this paper is to identify and review all the studies which have been carried out investigating any aspect of ASD in relation to secure hospital settings.

Design/methodology/approach

Seven internet-based bibliographic databases were used for the present review. The review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines.

Findings

A total of 12 studies were included in this review; 3 looked at the prevalence of ASD in secure psychiatric hospitals. One study evaluated the clinical utility of the AQ screening tool to assess self-reported autistic traits in secure psychiatric settings. Three explored any type of characteristics of patients with ASD detained in secure psychiatric hospitals. One study investigated the experiences or quality of life of patients with an ASD detained in secure psychiatric care. Two studies investigated awareness, knowledge and/or views regarding patients with ASD held by staff working within secure psychiatric hospitals. Lastly, three studies (one of which was also included in the prevalence category above) looked at the effectiveness of interventions or treatment of patients with ASD in secure psychiatric hospitals. Clinical recommendations and future research directions are discussed.

Originality/value

To the author's knowledge, this is the first review to explore what research has been carried out looking specifically at patients with ASD in relation to secure forensic settings.


We consider the assignment of gates to arriving and departing flights at a large hub airport. This problem is highly complex even in planning stage when all flight arrivals and departures are assumed to be known precisely in advance. There are various considerations that are involved while assigning gates to incoming and outgoing flights (such a flight pair for the same aircraft is called a turn) at an airport. Different gates have restrictions, such as adjacency, last-in first-out gates and towing requirements, which are known from the structure and layout of the airport. Some of the cost components in the objective function of the basic assignment model include notional penalty for not being able to assign a gate to an aircraft, penalty for the cost of towing an aircraft with a long layover, and penalty for not assigning preferred gates to certain turns. One of the major contributions of this paper is to provide mathematical model for all these complex constraints that are observed at a real airport. Further, we study the problem in both planning and operations modes simultaneously, and such an attempt is, perhaps, unique and unprecedented. For planning mode, we sequentially introduce new additional objectives to our gate assignment problem that have not been studied in the literature so far(i) maximization of passenger connection revenues, (ii) minimization of zone usage costs, and (iii) maximization of gate plan robustnessand include them to the model along with the relevant constraints. For operations mode, the main objectives studied in this paper are recovery of schedule by minimizing schedule variations and maintaining feasibility by minimal retiming in the event of major disruptions. Additionally, the operations mode models must have very, very short run times of the order of a few seconds. These models are then applied to a functional airline at one of its most congested hubs. Implementation is carried out using Optimization Programming Language, and computational results for actual data sets are reported. For the planning mode, analyst perception of weights for the different objectives in the multi-objective model is used wherever actual dollar value of the objective coefficient is not available. The results are also reported for large, reasonable changes in objective function coefficients. For the operations mode, flight delays are simulated, and the performance of the model is studied. The final results indicate that it is possible to apply this model to even large real-life problems instances to optimality within short run times with clever formulation of conventional continuous time assignment model. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The precise mass dependence of respiratory O2 consumption underpins the "oxygen triple-isotope" approach to quantifying gross primary productivity in modern and ancient environments. Yet, the physical-chemical origins of the key 18O/16O and 17O/16O covariations observed during respiration have not been tied to theory; thus the approach remains empirical. First-principles calculations on enzyme active-site models suggest that changes in the O-O bond strength upon electron transfer strongly influence respiratory isotopic fractionation. This is a non-peer reviewed pre-print submitted to Earth ArXiv. This manuscript has been submitted to ACS Earth and Space Chemistry for peer review. 2 However, molecular diffusion may also be important. Here, we use measurements of the relative abundances of rare isotopologues 17O18O and 18O18O as additional tracers of mass dependence during dark respiration experiments of lacustrine water. We then compare the experimental results to first-principles calculations of O2 interacting with heme-oxidase analogues. We find a significantly steeper mass dependence, supported by theory, than has been previously observed. Enrichments of 17O18O and 18O18O in the O2 residue suggest that q values are strongly influenced by chemical processes, rather than being dominated by physical processes (i.e. by bond alteration rather than diffusion). In contrast, earlier data are inconsistent with theory, implying that analytical artifacts may have biased those results. Implications for quantifying primary productivity are discussed. Table of


Results are presented from a prototype phase-shifting interferometer capable of measuring both the real and the imaginary part of the complex index of refraction and the surface profile of a test surface. The three parameters of interest are extracted from the measured data by maximum-likelihood estimation theory. The performance of the system is quantitatively assessed with Cramer-Rao lower bounds. The results are shown to be strongly dependent on the quantization of the interferograms from the 8-bit CCD camera, the incident electric field amplitude, and the relative amplitude and phase difference of each polarized component through each arm of the interferometer.


Abstract A new compound, ideally CuZnCl(OH)3, was found on a metallic mining artifact of copper composition at the Rowley mine, Maricopa County, Arizona, U.S.A., and studied with electron microprobe analysis, single-crystal X-ray diffraction, and Raman spectroscopy. It is isostructural with botallackite [Cu2Cl(OH)3] with space group P21/m and unit-cell parameters a = 5.6883(5), b = 6.3908(6), c = 5.5248(5) Å, β = 90.832(2)°, V= 200.82(3) Å3. The crystal structure of CuZnCl(OH)3, refined to R1 = 0.018, is characterized by brucite-type octahedral sheets made of two distinct and considerably distorted octahedra, Ml and M2, which are coordinated by (5OH + 1C1) and (4OH + 2C1), respectively. The octahedral sheets are parallel to (100) and connected by O-H∙∙∙Cl hydrogen bonding. The major structural difference between CuZnCl(OH)3 and botallackite is the complete replacement of Cu2+ in the highly angle-distorted Ml site by non-Jahn-Teller distorting Zn2+. The CuZnCl(OH)3 compound represents the highest Zn content ever documented for the atacamite group of minerals, in conflict with all previous reports that botallackite (like atacamite) is the most resistant, of all copper hydroxylchloride Cu2Cl(OH)3 polymorphs, to the substitution of Zn2+ for Cu2+, even in the presence of large excess of Zn2+. Its discovery, along with the recently described new mineral iyoite, CuMnCl(OH)3, implies that more botallackite-type compounds or minerals with the chemical formula CuMCl(OH)3 (M= Ni2+, Co2+, Fe2+, Mn2+, Cd2+, and Mg2+) may be synthesized or found in nature.


Zebra mussels, an aquatic invasive species, cost millions of dollars each year to control due to their extensive attachment on essential industrial structures and detrimental effects on the native ecosystem. Reducing mussel attachment would allow researchers to control what surfaces these mussels attach to, and this reduction would prevent dangerous situations in industrial piping that occur when mussels prevent water flow. The goal of this research was to identify nontoxic materials that were effective in preventing or reducing the strength of zebra mussel attachment. We tested two materials, Sharklet and Netminder, that were designed to prevent biofouling of aquatic organisms, as well as two control materials, PVC pipes and a lake rock. The first experiment determined that Sharklet cannot prevent adult mussel attachment, but there was a statistically significant difference in attachment strength between Sharklet, the uncovered PVC pipe, and the rock. The second experiment determined that Netminder likewise cannot prevent adult mussel attachment and does not have a statistically significant difference in attachment strength with an uncoated PVC pipe. Since the Sharklet demonstrated some ability to deter mussel attachment, the material, along with other micro-engineered surfaces, warrant further study. Netminder likewise requires future study to determine its effect on zebra mussel veligers in a natural environment.


The development of self-supporting binder-free catalysts is of great significance for the practical application of the electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In this work, we report a rationally assembled two dimensional (2D) free-standing film based on 1D molybdenum carbide nanoribbons between nitrogen doped graphene nanolayers (Mo2C nanoribbon/N-G). Due to multichannel and expeditious charge and mass transport, the integrated Mo2C nanoribbon/N-G film exhibits a remarkable HER performance with a low onset potential of 84 mV (vs. the RHE), a small Tafel slope of 57 mV dec−1, and an overpotential of 162 mV (vs. the RHE) to reach a current density of 10 mA cm−2, superior to most transition metal based free-standing catalysts reported previously. This work provides a great advance for designing and fabricating cost-effective, applicable catalysts for hydrogen evolution and water splitting.


Like other majority Muslim regions of the former Soviet Union, the republic of Dagestan, on Russia's southern frontier, has become contested territory in a hegemonic competition between Moscow and resurgent Islam. In this authoritative book the leading experts on Dagestan provide a path breaking study of this volatile state far from the world's gaze. The largest and most populous of the North Caucasian republics, bordered on the west by Chechnya and on the east by the Caspian Sea, Dagestan is almost completely mountainous. With no majority nationality, the republic developed a distinctive system of calibrated power relations among ethnic groups and with Moscow, a system that has been undermined by the spillover of the wars in Chechnya, Wahhabi and Islamist recruiting efforts targeting youth, and Moscow's reassertion of the 'power vertical'. Underdevelopment, high birthrates, transiting pipelines, and the rising incidence of terrorist violence and assassinations add to the explosive potential of the region. Authors Ware and Kisriev combine analysis of the dynamics of domination and resistance, and the distinctive forms of social organization characteristic of mountain societies that may be applicable to other areas such as Afghanistan. They draw on decades of field research, interviews, and data to offer unique perspective on the civilizational collision course under way in the Caucasus today.


OBJECTIVE
To examine the association of clinical chorioamnionitis on cesarean delivery in a national sample of hospital discharges.

DATA SOURCE
Hospital discharge data from the 1998-2010 Nationwide Inpatient Sample.

STUDY DESIGN
We performed a cross-sectional study and general linear modeling was used to determine the association of clinical chorioamnionitis on risk of cesarean delivery.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS
A total of 10,843,682 deliveries and 51,799,431 nationally weighted deliveries were identified. Clinical chorioamnionitis was present in 2.9 percent of cesarean and 1.3 percent of vaginal deliveries (p < .001). In multivariate analysis, clinical chorioamnionitis was associated with a 1.39-fold increased risk of cesarean delivery. Compared with women without clinical chorioamnionitis at an urban/teaching hospital, women with clinical chorioamnionitis at an urban/teaching, urban/nonteaching, and rural hospital were 1.4-1.5 times more likely to have cesarean delivery. Compared with women without clinical chorioamnionitis in the Midwest, the relative risk for cesarean in women with clinical chorioamnionitis was 1.54 for women in the South, 1.47 in the Northeast, 1.39 in the Midwest, and 1.34 in the West.

CONCLUSIONS
Women with clinical chorioamnionitis were more likely to have cesarean delivery than those without clinical chorioamnionitis, and the risk of cesarean delivery varied significantly by hospital location, teaching status, and U.S. region.


Pancreatic islets adapt to metabolic requirements and the hormonal milieu by modifying their size and hormone secretions. Maternal glucose demands and hormonal changes occur after weaning, to rapidly re-establish bone mineralization. Minimal information exists about glucose metabolism and pancreatic islets after lactation. This study investigated islet morphology and glucose homeostasis for 14 days after lactation in C57BL/6NHHsd mice. Compared to the day of weaning, rapid increases in the islets' area and number of beta cells were found from the first day post lactation, attaining maximum values on the third day post weaning. These changes were accompanied by modifications in glucose-induced insulin secretion, glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity. Islet-cell proliferation was already augmented before lactation ceased. Serum undercarboxylated osteocalcin concentrations increased significantly post lactation; however, it is unlikely that this enhancement participates in earlier cell proliferation augmentation or in decreasing insulin sensitivity. Islet serotonin content was barely expressed, and serum calcium concentrations decreased. By the 14th day post weaning, islets' area and glucose homeostasis returned to age-matched virgin mice levels. These findings recognize for the first time that increases in islet area and insulin secretion occur during physiological post-weaning conditions. These results open up new opportunities to identify molecules and mechanisms participating in these processes, which will help in developing strategies to combat diabetes.


Vernal pools are small depressional wetlands found in seasonal climates throughout the world. In California, they are among the few ecosystems still dominated by native flora and are critical habitat for numerous endemic and rare species. In this study, we show that geology is a dominant control on the physical and chemical hydrology of contrasting vernal pools on clay-rich and hardpan soils, the two most common types of vernal pools in the Central Valley, California. The vernal pools on clay-rich soils formed on alluvium derived primarily from sedimentary and metasedimentary rocks of marine origin and deposited in relatively low-gradient environments. The clay-rich soils are fine grained and moderately to strongly saline and sodic. The vernal pools on clay-rich soils are perched surface-water systems in which surface waters are relatively saline, sodic, and turbid and in which primary productivity may be nitrogen and light limited. The vernal pools on hardpan soils formed on alluvium derived primarily from coarse-grained igneous rocks and deposited in relatively high-gradient environments. Surface soils are coarse grained and underlain by a clay-rich argillic horizon and a silica- and iron-cemented duripan. The vernal pools on hardpan soils are surface-water and perched ground-water systems in which surface waters are relatively fresh and non-turbid and in which primary productivity may be phosphorus limited. While surficially similar, these vernal pools differ in their physical and chemical hydrology, and therefore should be treated differently in resource conservation, restoration, and management efforts.