In this dissertation project comparative morphological studies on the nervous system, mandible
structure and sensory equipment of Decapoda and Peracarida are presented and interpreted with
regard to the evolution of the taxa. This is a cumulative dissertation and the results were obtained
in several separate publications. Both larval and adult characters as well as the ontogeny of
certain features were included and analysed using various sets of imaging techniques ranging
from conventional light microscopy to ultrastructure research with transmission electron
microscopy. Attention was focused on the description and development of previously unexplored
sets of characters which can be included in a reconstruction of crustacean phylogeny.
The adult nervous system in Decapoda has been extensively studied for a long time and shows
very specific taxon generic adaptations. In the present thesis now also the larval nervous system
was comparatively investigated in its entirety for the first time. By use of computer assisted 3D
reconstruction general and species specific features were analysed and basic elements were
described, including the segmental ganglia and their neuropils as well as the segmental nerves.
The larval nervous system is in a transitory stage to the adult organization, already showing well
differentiated basic elements. Likewise the phase-specific structure reflects adaptations to larval
life. The studied species respectively represent one of the three decapod main lineages, i.e.
Caridea, Anomura and Brachyura. Against this background variations in the differentiation of
3certain ganglia can best be explained with shifts in the timing of morphogenetic events, i.e.
heterochrony. The studies on heterochrony as motors of evolution are another core topic of this
project. Along with the latter study also the morphology and finestructure of decapod mandibles
during larval development was investigated, based on two closely related species, showing
different feeding modes in the zoea I. Thus, it could be tested whether the mandible structure in
early larval stages only depends on feeding modes or an evolutionary ground pattern is
recognizable even in species with non-feeding zoea I. In case of a comparison of mandibles,
restricted only to the features of the zoea I, adaptations to food preferences may obscure taxon-
specific features. In detailed inspection, however, it could be shown that even in species with
non- feeding zoea I apomorph basic features of the related taxon can be recognized. This supports
the hypothesis of the presence of phylogenetic relevant character sets in larval mandible
morphology.
The monophyly of the Mandibulata is manly based on hypotheses defending the homology of the
mandibles in Myriapoda, Hexapoda and Crustacea, nevertheless, knowledge on sensory
structures located on the gnathal lobe is astonishingly limited, even less is known about their
ultrastructure. The development of this complex of characteristics represents a further aim of this
project. For this purpose the ultrastructure of the mandibular gnathal lobe of the zoea I of a
rockpool prawn was analysed. Besides external structure and location and an analysis of the
modality specific structures, special attention was paid to the features of the lacinia mobilis. In
total a number of seven different types of sensilla, innervated by four different types of dendrites,
could be described and compared, including (1) mechanoreceptive hair-sensilla and (2) putative
contact-chemo-receptors, as well as (3) sensilla without external structures and (4) sensilla
associated with inflexible spines. The results reveal new insights into the functional morphology
of larval decapod mandibles and constitute a significant character complex including fine- and
ultrastructural features. Following-up the character complex was completed by investigations of
respective features of a peracarid representative. The results also present an overview of the
sensory elements of the mandible as well as a detailed analysis of the lacinia mobilis based on
their ultrastructure and features related to ecdysis. By comparison it can be shown, that the lacinia
mobilis on the right mandible in Peracarida and also the respective structure in Decapoda are
mechanosensitive sensilla. In conclusion the hypothesis of a possible homology of the latter
structures gains further support. Concerning the structures on the left mandible a differentiated
consideration is necessary. No unambiguous conclusions can be made and it remains to be resolved if the lacinia mobilis on the left mandible is a derived sensillum or a compound structure
equipped with multiple sensilla.
With the application of many different state-of-the-art technics and the overall discussion of the
results an important contribution to eumalacostracan phylogeny, maybe even crustacean
phylogeny, could be made. Character sets comprising different levels of organization of the
arthropod body could be established. Primarily phylogenetic relevant signal in the basic elements
of the larval nervous system and the mandibles in Decapoda could be presented. Furthermore,
highly complex and detailed character sets of the mandible ultrastructure were developed,
revealing a comprehensive presentation of the sensory capacities of eumalacostracan mandibles
and by comparison already allowed conclusions about the homology of the lacinia mobilis. Thus,
also the phylogenetic position of the respective taxa can be confirmed.


Towards Controlling Latency in Wireless Networks Nader Bouacida Wireless networks are undergoing an unprecedented revolution in the last decade. With the explosion of delay-sensitive applications in the Internet (i.e., online gaming and VoIP), latency becomes a major issue for the development of wireless technology. Taking advantage of the significant decline in memory prices, industrialists equip the network devices with larger buffering capacities to improve the network throughput by limiting packets drops. Over-buffering results in increasing the time that packets spend in the queues and, thus, introducing more latency in networks. This phenomenon is known as "bufferbloat". While throughput is the dominant performance metric, latency also has a huge impact on user experience not only for real-time applications but also for common applications like web browsing, which is sensitive to latencies in order of hundreds of milliseconds. Concerns have arisen about designing sophisticated queue management schemes to mitigate the effects of such phenomenon. My thesis research aims to solve bufferbloat problem in both traditional half-duplex and cutting-edge full-duplex wireless systems by reducing delay while maximizing wireless links utilization and fairness. Our work shed lights on buffer management algorithms behavior in wireless networks and their ability to reduce latency resulting from excessive queuing delays inside oversized static network buffers without a significant loss in other network metrics. First of all, we address the problem of buffer management in wireless full-duplex networks by using Wireless Queue Management (WQM), which is an active queue management technique for wireless networks. Our solution is based on Relay FullDuplex MAC (RFD-MAC), an asynchronous media access control protocol designed 5 for relay full-duplexing. Compared to the default case, our solution reduces the endto-end delay by two orders of magnitude while achieving similar throughput in most of the cases. In the second part of this thesis, we propose a novel design called "LearnQueue" based on reinforcement learning that can effectively control the latency in wireless networks. LearnQueue adapts quickly and intelligently to changes in the wireless environment using a sophisticated reward structure. Testbed results prove that LearnQueue can guarantee low latency while preserving throughput.


"Going green" is no longer a fringe topic. The green revolution has already started, and is going green from the bottom up and the top down. Going green is about sustainability. Corporations exhaust resources, pollute the environment, generate large amount of waste and engage themselves in tons of unsustainable practices. These practices become an expense to the nation. Businesses are finding ways to protect the environment, particularly though developing standards and green certification programs. Some corporations are responding to the requirements of consumers to buy products with less impact on the environment (i.e) in their creation, packaging, marketing, use, and disposal. Furthermore with scientific and global consensus that human activities and carbon emissions contribute significantly to climate change, corporations no longer have the choice to ignore being environmentally sensitive. Green practices can be rewarding in the long run as it ensures that natural resources can be sustained as long as possible. Many investors are also prepared to put their money into green businesses because they see that sustainable practices are actually more profitable in the long term. Recent developments in technology have made it easier to protect the environment, and many businesses have learned that a sustainable supply chain is a valuable asset. Furthermore green companies are now gaining greater consumer acceptance as they are portrayed as the more responsible business. The Top 500 companies ranked by the 2009 Newsweek Green Rankings shows a noteworthy green attitude which consumers adore, therefore the publicity which these companies get will in turn translate into more customers and improve their profits ultimately. This study focuses on the green ranked companies thereby analyzing whether the returns of these companies meet the broad market return.


For newly settled coral reef fishes, survival advantages may be associated with specific early life history traits or condition levels that lead to differences in behavior. To identify physiologi- cal and behavioral characteristics associated with different condition levels, bluehead wrasse Thalas- soma bifasciatum recruits were collected immediately after settlement from reefs in the upper Florida Keys, USA, and transported to the laboratory for experimental analysis. Quantification of swimming capabilities was coupled with otolith analysis to identify early life history traits associated with swim- ming performance. Fish with the highest critical swimming speeds were those that grew faster as lar- vae, had shorter pelagic larval durations, and were smaller at settlement, although these individuals represented only 10% of the total sample. To further investigate condition-associated behaviors, a feeding treatment established fish of 2 different condition levels for comparison. Recruits fed for 1 wk at higher levels grew faster, had greater standardized weight (Fulton's condition factor), and swam faster than food-deprived recruits. In additional behavioral trials, high condition recruits evaded a simulated predator threat at faster speeds than the low condition recruits. High condition fish also exhibited less risk-taking behavior by sheltering more in the presence of a predator threat and con- suming less food. For both high and low condition recruits, the number that sought shelter increased and food consumption rates decreased in the presence of a predator threat. These results link early life history traits and physiology with associated condition-based differences in behavior, likely underlying the observation that mortality in T. bifasciatum is frequently selective for condition.


Studying the co-authorship network of a scientific community have been useful in characterizing the properties and dynamics of the community. In this study, the co-authorship network of the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD) from 1996 to 2016 was analyzed using statistical measures and social network analysis. Results show that like other co-authorship networks, there have been an increase in collaboration between authors in UPD. There is also significant (p ≤ 0.001) positive correlation between the centrality scores of the authors and the number of papers they published with betweenness centrality having a stronger correlation than degree and closeness centrality. Visualization of the co-authorship network is presented with the communities detected revealing a large number of communities which is a characteristic of a multidisciplinary institution.


This update is a little shorter than in recent years, reflecting the fewer original papers published. However, the trend for a large number of review articles has continued and these cover a wide range of important topics. In the 2012 update, a noticeable increase in work involving very small samples was evident. These observations continue through into the current review. This was particularly seen with sample introduction systems used for ICP-MS. A microflow device for aerosol generation, based on thermal inkjet technology, provided for analysis of highly dissolved solids at a flow rate of 1 μL min−1 while other high performance arrangements were described which operated at slightly larger delivery rates. As in previous years, major topics include investigations of the metabolism of As and Se. We have also previously reported on the techniques to measure Pt–DNA adducts, developed in the last few years. It is encouraging to see that these are now being applied to studies of platinum anti-cancer treatments in cell cultures and in patients. There are some interesting new methodologies. Quantum dots appeared for the first time in this review with an indirect assay for measuring very low concentrations of protein in urine. A protein conjugate formed with CdTe quantum dots was isolated and the Cd measured by ICP-MS. XRF has poor sensitivity for low atomic number elements but in another indirect assay, Li in mineral water was determined by forming a potassium lithium periodatoferrate complex and measuring the Fe. Magnetic particles are used in some immunoassays to effect separation of reagents and a similar approach was developed using Fe3O4 magnetite nanoparticles modified with 1-(p-acetyl)phenyl)-3-(o-ethoxyphenyl)triazene to extract and preconcentrate Hg from water and fish samples. Concern over the amount of As in fish and rice and the potential for this element to appear in other food products is evident from studies involving fish oils and organic brown rice syrup. Anyone tempted to eat alligator meat can be reassured that concentrations of Cd, and Pb are very low. We are pleased to have a new contributor to this review; Sarah Hill has considerable experience with ICP-MS techniques including the use of this technique for imaging.


Abstract. Ship tracks provide an ideal test bed for studying aerosol–cloud interactions (ACIs) and for evaluating their representation in model parameterisations. Regional modelling can be of particular use for this task, as this approach provides sufficient resolution to resolve the structure of the produced track including their meteorological environment whilst relying on the same formulations of parameterisations as many general circulation models. In this work we simulate a particular case of ship tracks embedded in an optically thin stratus cloud sheet which was observed by a polar orbiting satellite at 12:00 UTC on 26 January 2003 around the Bay of Biscay. The simulations, which include moving ship emissions, show that the model is indeed able to capture the structure of the track at a horizontal grid spacing of 2 km and to qualitatively capture the observed cloud response in all simulations performed. At least a doubling of the cloud optical thickness was simulated in all simulations together with an increase in cloud droplet number concentration by about 40 cm−3 (300%) and decrease in effective radius by about 5 μm (40%). Furthermore, the ship emissions lead to an increase in liquid water path in at least 25% of the track regions. We are confident in the model's ability to capture key processes of ship track formation. However, it was found that realistic ship emissions lead to unrealistic aerosol perturbations near the source regions within the simulated tracks due to grid-scale dilution and homogeneity. Combining the regional-modelling approach with comprehensive field studies could likely improve our understanding of the sensitivities and biases in ACI parameterisations, and could therefore help to constrain global ACI estimates, which strongly rely on these parameterisations.


A new technique for the measurement of constant-curvature (bend) loss as a function of bend radius is described, and it is shown that the influence of transition (microbend) losses can be essentially eliminated. Based on this technique and via the application of curve-fitting procedures and the Newton-Raphson method for two variables, a sensible equivalent step index can be obtained if stress-induced changes in the bent fiber are taken into account. However, the prediction of bend losses at other wavelengths is coarse, and it is shown that, for our fiber, agreement between theory and experiment can be considerably improved via an empirically deduced stress-induced dependence that is far stronger than predicted by published theory.


Amazon is one of the world's largest e-commerce sites and Amazon Search powers the majority of Amazon's sales. As a consequence, even small improvements in relevance ranking both positively influence the shopping experience of millions of customers and significantly impact revenue. In the past, Amazon's product search engine consisted of several hand-tuned ranking functions using a handful of input features. A lot has changed since then. In this talk we are going to cover a number of relevance algorithms used in Amazon Search today. We will describe a general machine learning framework used for ranking within categories, blending separate rankings in All Product Search, NLP techniques used for matching queries and products, and algorithms targeted at unique tasks of specific categories --- books and fashion.


We report efficient, diode-pumped, self-frequency doubling (SFD) in the newly developed laser crystal Nd3+:Na3La9O3(BO3)8 (Nd:NLBO). More than 730 mW of fundamental output power at 1072 nm was achieved with a slope efficiency of 16.2%. With incident pump power of 8 W, 29 mW of green cw laser emission at 536 nm was observed with proper phase matching. This initial performance and the good optical properties of the crystalline host are encouraging for the development of a high power diode-pumped SFD visible light laser source.


This Article explores the revolutionary period and the early national period of American constitutionalism, examining popular sovereignty as the foundation of American governance and political power. It intends to challenge standard perspectives on American constitutionalism, in particular the notion that the United States Constitution was the model constitution and reflected the mature, complete understanding of how to translate revolutionary theory into republican practice. The Federal Constitution was not the culmination of the 'correct' understanding of popular sovereignty, but merely one version that ultimately produced a distinct constitutional tradition. An alternative vision, however, existed, survived, and gave coherence to a rather different tradition of constitution-making and revision. The validity and vitality of that tradition has largely been muted by two hundred years of Federal Constitution worship.


The current curriculum for schools in British Columbia is an expanding collection of subjects each with its own listing of goals, prescribed learning outcomes, recommended resources and suggested activities. Educators are increasingly frustrated with trying to satisfy the demands of this growing array of discrete curricula within timetables and budgets that have not expanded accordingly. A commonly voiced complaint is that trying to achieve so many goals for so many distinct subjects is resulting in the attainment of too few goals for each with the final consequence being a diluted education for students. It is a dissatisfying situation for all concerned. In recognition of this current milieu of discontent, the RADICAL Weaving Approach (RWA) seeks to provide a means for integrating the goals of separate disciplines through the thoughtful, collaborative development of multidisciplinary learning themes. The RWA synchronously employs two models—Weave a Theme and RADICAL, in the process of collaborative, multidisciplinary theme creation. The former is a content model that provides a framework for dealing with integration of learning goals from various curricular areas by weaving them together using the fundamental learning elements of critical thinking, problem solving, media literacy, collaboration, and information management into one whole multidisciplinary theme. The latter model offers a. process that serves as a guide or framework for educators to use when planning collaborative themes. The fundamental learning elements of the RWA-critical thinking, problem solving, media literacy, information management, and collaboration play crucial roles in each of the models as they form an inherent part of learning content, are used to integrate the goals of separate disciplines, and serve to strengthen and expedite the entire theme planning process. Successful use of the approach is based on a solid, basic understanding of these elements along with a willingness and an ability to purposefully infuse them into curricular content and use them in the design and development processes of multidisciplinary learning theme creation. The utilization of technology for communication, collaboration, and the recording and processing of information helps to maximize time and collective expertise thereby being another contributing factor to the success of the approach.


SUMMARY In order to summarize the available clinical evidence for the efficacy of physiotherapy, 400 randomized clinical trials were identified from the literature. Studies were found by using bibliographic databases, citation track-ing, and correspondence with researchers in the field. Focus-ing on disorders of the musculoskeletal system, a number of criterion based meta-analyses were performed on 180 trials in order to summarize the available evidence For each randomized clinical trial in each meta-analysis a methodological score was calculated using a set of explicit criteria and weighting factors applied by two or three independent reviewers who were blinded as to the outcomes, the journal and the authors of the publication. In each meta-analysis the randomized clinical trials were ordered hierarchically depending on their score for methodological quality. Meta-analyses were performed for spinal manipulation, exercise therapy, traction, ultrasound, and laser therapy, and for disorders of the back, neck, shoulder and knee. In general, the methodological quality of the studies appeared to be low, and the efficacy of physiotherapy was shown to be convincing for only a few indications and treatments. On the other hand, because of the prevalence of serious methodological flaws, it cannot be concluded that physiotherapy has no effect.


This study was designed to determine if oral clonidine or lidocaine, injected into the scalp before head-holder (H-H) insertion, would attenuate the hemodynamic effects associated with intubation and H-H placement. Thirty-four patients undergoing skull base procedures were randomized to four groups. Group 1 received clonidine 5 mcg/kg po before surgery with 10 to 15 ml of 1% lidocaine infiltrated at pin insertion sites; Group 2 received clonidine with saline infiltration; Group 3 received a placebo preoperatively and had lidocaine infiltrated at pin sites; and Group 4 received a placebo with saline infiltrated. All patients had a standard anesthetic titrated to a 10 to 14 Hz EEG endpoint during laryngoscopy and H-H placement. Mean arterial pressure (MAP) was similar between groups during intubation, but heart rate (HR) increased in patients who did not receive clonidine. H-H application increased HR and MAP in Group 4. HR also increased after H-H placement in patients who received oral clonidine, while patients receiving scalp lidocaine or both clonidine and scalp lidocaine had little change in either value. Clonidine attenuated HR increases after laryngoscopy but not after H-H placement. Lidocaine injected at the pin sites reduced HR, and MAP increased after H-H insertion. The combination of oral clonidine and scalp lidocaine blunted hemodynamic responses to both intubation and H-H placement.


Abstract Since its inception, digital and interactive art has been forced to negotiate the tension between the inherently spectacular nature of the technologies it uses and the desire of creators to embed relevant critical stances within the work. With the recent rise of "maker" or DIY culture, this negotiation has become even more pronounced as the production of technologies becomes more accessible and (allegedly) more democratized. In addition, our relationship with technology is becoming increasingly intimate. Whereas machines once could have been read as tools, through which we would enact our individualized wills, they now implicate themselves into our mental processes, our bodies and (one could argue) our very being. Within this cyborgian construction we risk mindless acceptance and integration of the particular logical models technology and its producers bring to the merger. A tension arises between our need to understand or recognize the logic which drives our lives and the technology, which often seeks to obfuscate that logic. This paper, through the application of philosophy of technology to a specific maker subculture - as it has been adopted by a movement in fine art (art and technology) - situates making as a form of artistic practice at the intersection of these ideas. As a mode by which technologically inclined artists can navigate the spectacular and the critical in their work, making allows these artists to enact criticality through revealing underlying technical (and social) logic in the systems (and objects) with which they engage. Thus, this paper will trace the philosophical foundations of this critical approach and finally analyse a series of works that reveal strategies through which "making" as a mode of "revealing" has been refined by artists as a critical approach to embedded technological systems.


Twenty-two patients with unilateral acoustic neuromas and preoperative speech discrimination scores of 35% or more had intraoperative monitoring of the electrocochleogram (ECoG) using a transtympanic electrode, and of the brain-stem auditory evoked potentials (BAEP's) using scalp electrodes. Rapid feedback was provided about the status of the cochlear microphonics from the hair cells of the inner ear (CM of the ECoG), the compound action potential of the auditory nerve (N-1 of the ECoG or Wave I of the BAEP's) and the potentials from the lower brain stem (Wave V of the BAEP's). All patients had total removal of the tumor. In 21, the cochlear nerve was anatomically preserved, and 20 had good postoperative facial nerve function. Correlation of tumor size with postoperative hearing was as follows: discrimination scores of more than 35% in three of four patients with 1-cm tumors, two of eight with 1.5-cm tumors, two of six with 2- to 2.5-cm tumors, and one of four with tumors of 3 cm or more. Two other patients with 1.5-cm tumors had discrimination scores of less than 35%, and one patient with a 2-cm tumor had only sound perception. In two patients, the discrimination scores improved. At the end of the operation, all patients with hearing had a detectable N-1, and, when recorded, CM. All but one patient with no hearing had lost N-1, and CM was absent or reduced. Unless Wave V was unchanged, it was a poor predictor of postoperative hearing, and its absence did not preclude preservation of good hearing. The electrophysiological changes during each stage of the operation were analyzed and correlated with events during surgery. Areas in which there was an increased risk of loss of the potentials were determined. In some patients monitoring was unnecessary, because either there were no significant changes or the changes were abrupt and no recovery occurred. However, in other patients, monitoring alerted the surgeon to a possible problem and the method of dissection was altered. Possible mechanisms of hearing loss were suggested from the changes in the recordings.


textabstractThis thesis consists of four studies on the interactions of capital structure and product market competition, and on several aspects of governance, firm financing and growth. The first study investigates how competitive behavior and market uncertainty affect the capital structure of a firm in the U.S. manufacturing. We show that demand uncertainty is positively related to leverage for firms in both the Cournot and the Bertrand samples. Cost uncertainty has a significantly positive impact on the leverage of Cournot firms, but plays a negligible role for Bertrand firms. In the second study, we examine the joint determination of capital structure and market share in U.S. manufacturing firms. We provide evidence that in Cournot (Bertrand) competition, leverage negatively (positively) affects market share. Market share is shown to have a negative impact on leverage in Cournot firms, but no impact on leverage in Bertrand firms. Both studies highlight the role of firms' competitive behavior in the product market in their capital structure decisions. The third study analyzes the importance of firm-specific and country-specific factors in the leverage choice of firms from 42 countries around the world. We find that firm-specific determinants of leverage differ across countries, while prior studies implicitly assume equal impact of these determinants. Although we concur with the conventional direct impact of country-specific factors on the capital structure of firms, we show that there is an indirect impact because country-specific factors also influence the roles of firm-specific determinants of leverage. Finally, in the forth study, we provide a firm-level analysis of the relation between corruption, growth, and public governance in Vietnam. Our results indicate that corruption significantly hinders the growth of Vietnam's private sector. However, corruption is not detrimental for the growth in state sector. Our study emphasizes the role of local institutions and governance factors in affecting corruption.


To put Scandinavian employment in perspective, we ask whether wage compression hampers employment rates, or not. We answer by reviewing the most important theoretical arguments and the most informative regularities across countries with different wage distributions. The pattern seems to be that countries with compressed wage distributions tend to have higher employment, and countries with higher wage inequality tend to have lower employment. This also holds when we consider the rate of labor force participation. In line with the theoretical arguments, coordination in wage bargaining seems to contribute to both employment expansion and wage compression. There is a clear positive correlation between coordination and employment even when we control for inequality, country, and year-specific effects.


High-performance networking technologies and services are being rapidly developed and deployed across the nation and around the globe to support the transfer of large data sets generated by next-generation scientific applications for collaborative data processing, analysis, and storage. However, these networking technologies and services have not been fully utilized mainly because their use often requires considerable domain knowledge and many application users are even not aware of their existence. The main goal of our work is to provide end users an integrated solution to discovering system and network resources and composing end-to-end paths for large data transfer. By leveraging the resource discovery capability previously developed in Network-Aware Data Movement Advisor (NADMA), we propose novel profiling and modeling approaches to characterize various types of resources that are available in end systems, edge segments, and backbone networks, taking into consideration a comprehensive set of performance metrics and network parameters in different phases including device deployment, circuit setup, and data transfer. Based on these profiles and models, we formulate a class of transport-support workflow optimization problems where an appropriate set of technologies and services are selected to compose the best transport-support workflow to meet the user's data transfer request in terms of various performance requirements. We conduct wide-area network experiments to validate the cost models and illustrate the efficacy of the proposed workflow-based transport solution.


An alternative to using a single forecasting method is to average the forecasts obtained from several methods. In this paper we investigate empirically the impact of the number and choice of forecasting methods on the accuracy of simple averages. It is concluded that the forecasting accuracy improves, and that the variability of accuracy among different combinations decreases, as the number of methods in the average increases. Thus, combining forecasts seems to be a reasonable practical alternative when, as is often the case, a "true" model of the data-generating process or a single "best" forecasting method cannot be or is not, for whatever reasons, identified.


We analyze the impact of an individual's tendency to worry on willingness to pay (WTP) for a protective measure. We report on the results of a controlled experiment with real objects at stake. Worry was measured with the Worry Domains Questionnaire, an instrument determining an individual's tendency to (non-pathological) worry. Although the loss probability was relatively high and exactly specified, we find that the tendency to worry has in general a positive effect on WTP for protective measures. However when the objects at stake are given to our respondents, high worriers significantly reduce their WTP for protection whereas low worriers are unaffected. We call this tendency of high worriers a safety illusion and relate it to findings on automatic self- regulation, transitional objects in childhood, and studies on the illusion of control. High worriers appear to make more use of all these mechanisms than low worriers because they have more experience in easing their anxiety.


An analytical method was developed for the rapid determination of sensory quality deviations of
hazelnuts. The method is based on the investigation of aroma spectra via direct thermal desorption
of lipids and on the identification of relevant components using a time of flight mass spectrometer
after chromatographic separation (DTD/Fast-GC/TOF-MS).
 The sample preparation is quite simple and the application as fast-GC shortens the analysis time
substantially. Small deviations in the sensory impression correlated with measurable changes in
the aroma profile obtained by the developed method. A classification and consequently an
evaluation of the quality of the nuts was achieved using different models of statistical evaluation
and discriminant analysis.
 The compounds used as markers for quality deviations of hazelnuts in the DTD/Fast-GC/TOF-MS
analysis were identified by applying aroma extract dilution analysis (AEDA) and olfactory
investigations of thermal desorbed oils from hazelnuts (TCT-HRGC-O). We identified
homologous aldehydes from hexanal to undecanal as well as 2,4-(E,E)-nonadienal and
2,4-(E,E)-decadienal as autoxidation products of lipids and original constituents like the
monoterpenes α- and β-pinene, camphene and Δ-3-caren.
 To clarify the cause of peroxidative deterioration of hazelnuts, hydroperoxy fatty acids as
precursors of aroma compounds from peroxidation products were investigated using HPLC and
MEKC. It was shown that the peroxidative damage of hazelnuts was mostly caused by
lipoxygenase activity.


As a newly developed coherent diffraction-imaging (CDI) imaging method, the ptychographical iterative engine not only can bypass the difficulty of having high-quality optics in x-ray microscopy by a numerical reconstruction algorithm, but also has obvious advantages on traditional CDI methods in both converging speeds and view fields. However, like in the other CDI methods, the reconstruction of the image from the intensity data of a weakly diffracting specimen is still difficult because of the low signal to noise ratio. To improve this situation, a modification to the currently used algorithms is suggested to double the presence of high spatial frequencies in the diffraction pattern and accordingly to enhance the contrast and fine details of the reconstructions. The simulation and experimental results are presented, and the results can be extended to other CDI methods also.


Progress in particle physics has largely been determined by development of more capable particle accelerators. This trend continues today with the advent of high-luminosity electron-positron colliders at KEK and SLAC operating as ldquoB factories,rdquo the imminent commissioning of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and the worldwide development effort toward the International Linear Collider. Looking to the future, one of the most promising approaches is the development of muon-beam accelerators. Such machines have very high scientific potential, and would substantially advance the state-of-the-art in accelerator design. A 20-50 GeV muon storage ring could serve as a copious source of well-characterized electron neutrinos or antineutrinos (a neutrino factory), providing beams aimed at detectors located 3000-7500 km from the ring. Such long baseline experiments are expected to be able to observe and characterize the phenomenon of charge-conjugation-parity (CP) violation in the lepton sector, and thus provide an answer to one of the most fundamental questions in science, namely, why the matter-dominated universe in which we reside exists at all. By accelerating muons to even higher energies of several TeV, we can envision a muon collider. In contrast to composite particles like protons, muons are point particles. This means that the full collision energy is available to create new particles. A muon collider has roughly ten times the energy reach of a proton collider at the same collision energy, and has a much smaller footprint. Indeed, an energy frontier muon collider could fit on the site of an existing laboratory, such as Fermilab or BNL. The challenges of muon-beam accelerators are related to the facts that i) muons are produced as a tertiary beam, with very large 6D phase space, and ii) muons are unstable, with a lifetime at rest of only 2 . How these challenges are accommodated in the accelerator design will be described. Both a Neutrino Factory and a muon collider require large numbers of challenging superconducting magnets, including large aperture solenoids, closely spaced solenoids with opposing fields, shielded solenoids, very high field (40-50 T) solenoids, and storage ring magnets with a room-temperature midplane section. Uses for the various magnets will be outlined, along with R&D plans to develop these and other required components of such machines.


Generative models in vision have seen rapid progress due to algorithmic improvements and the availability of high-quality image datasets. In this paper, we offer contributions in both these areas to enable similar progress in audio modeling. First, we detail a powerful new WaveNet-style autoencoder model that conditions an autoregressive decoder on temporal codes learned from the raw audio waveform. Second, we introduce NSynth, a large-scale and high-quality dataset of musical notes that is an order of magnitude larger than comparable public datasets. Using NSynth, we demonstrate improved qualitative and quantitative performance of the WaveNet autoencoder over a well-tuned spectral autoencoder baseline. Finally, we show that the model learns a manifold of embeddings that allows for morphing between instruments, meaningfully interpolating in timbre to create new types of sounds that are realistic and expressive.


An historiographical analysis of the present political debates regarding land reform in Scotland provides the point of departure for a case study of the Isle ofEigg and the 1997 purchase of the island by the Isle ofEigg Heritage Trust. The case study details the island community's historical development and researches the building pressures that culminated in two successive campaigns for community ownership in 1992 and 1996-7. Through interviews, focus groups, and 3 years of regular visits to the island a comprehensive social history of Eigg is consequently compiled and analysed, within which, particular attention is given to the role of island proprietors and their problematic relationships with the resident community. Using a highly participative methodology of research, the author took an active role in the facilitation and promotion of the islanders' ideas for community ownership. This is detailed together with the participative management plan that resulted from planning workshops and exhaustive interviews with island households. The process of community empowerment is traced through the workshops, the drafting of the management plan and the unique partnership that was eventually formed between the islanders, the Highland Council, and the Scottish Wildlife Trust. This is followed by an 'insider's view' ofthe Isle ofEigg Appeal, which had as much impact on the island as it did in the national media. The most successful public appeal in the Highlands and Islands to date is also examined from a marketing perspective, that explains how indeed, 64 islanders managed to raise £1.6 m in just 8 months without mains electricity nor Lottery backing. Finally, the central lessons of the community's success are used to highlight the importance of community development in any future policies of land reform in Scotland. The conclusion thereby emphasises the importance of integrated planning, community participation, and appropriate packages of support in establishing similar community trust models of ownership.


Aim: The objective of this work was to study the effects of formulation variables on the release kinetics of paracetamol tablet formulation. Materials and Methods: Paracetamol tablets were formulated using wet granulation (WG) and direct compression (DC) using two predetermined pressures. Avicel, dicalcium phosphate (DCP) and pregelatinized starch (PGS) were used as directly compressible excipients for the DC method while corn starch, gelatin and acacia were used as binders for the WG methods. Tensile strength (TS) and the dissolution times of the tablets were determined. The drug release data were fitted into different kinetic models to determine the drug release mechanism(s) for the paracetamol tablets. Noyes-Whitney plots were further used to obtain release processes for formulations having r2 of best fit from kinetic modeling. Results and Discussion: The TS and dissolution times increased with increase in compressional pressure for all tablet formulations. The ranking of TS for tablets was starch > gelatin > acacia > avicel > DCP > PGS. Drug release kinetics indicated that the drug release was best explained by first order model for direct compression formulation. However, first-order and Higuchi equations gave the best fit with the highest correlation coefficient for the formulation prepared through wet granulation. Korsmeyer's plots indicated an n value ranging from 1.227 to 1.839 which indicates that the drug release mechanism from the formulations was by super case II transport. Generally, r2 values were higher for tablets with lower compression pressures and higher for those with binders than direct compression excipients. Conclusion: The release kinetics of paracetamol tablets were observed to be influenced by the interplay of variables involved like compressional pressure, formulation excipient and method. Wet granulation was also found to produce optimum release than direct compression. Keywords: Paracetamol tablets, Release kinetics, Compression pressure, Formulation methods, Formulation excipients.


Background and aims of the work: Hip fracture is a dramatic event especially in the elderly and the return to the pre-fracture functional and social state is often difficult to achieve. In the post-acute, the intensive rehabilitation period aims to recover as much autonomy as possible to these patients, but not always its duration is sufficient to ensure an effective and lasting result in returning home, hence the need for additional rehabilitation services. Our aim was to evaluate the use of additional rehabilitation services by patients who underwent hip fracture after an intensive rehabilitation treatment period performed at our hospital. Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study. We involved patients aged 45 years and older, admitted at our intensive rehabilitation, who joined a rehabilitation program for a hip fracture. Results: Our results showed how the use of further physiotherapy is associated with the type of surgical intervention and with higher Cumulative Illness Rating Scale CIRS scores. Similarly, the loss of autonomy is associated with the type of intervention, the increase in CIRS and the duration of the physiotherapy, and negatively associated with the duration of each session. The re-hospitalizations for each cause is positively associated with CIRS and negatively associated with the further use of physiotherapy. Conclusions: Our conclusion is that rehabilitation needs a personalized schedule, because the real discriminating factor in the management of frail patients should therefore be the quality, and not the quantity (i.e. longer session), of the rehabilitative intervention prescribed. (www.actabiomedica.it)


Explicit bounds are given on the norms of prime ideals generating arbitrary subgroups of ray class groups of number fields, assuming the Extended Riemann Hypothesis. These are the first explicit bounds for this problem, and are significantly better than previously known asymptotic bounds. Applied to the integers, they express that any subgroup of index $i$ of the multiplicative group of integers modulo $m$ is generated by prime numbers smaller than $16(i\log m)^2$, subject to the Riemann Hypothesis. Two particular consequences relate to mathematical cryptology. Applied to cyclotomic fields, they provide explicit bounds on generators of the relative class group, needed in some previous work on the shortest vector problem on ideal lattices. Applied to Jacobians of hyperelliptic curves, they allow one to derive bounds on the degrees of isogenies required to make their horizontal isogeny graphs connected. Such isogeny graphs are used to study the discrete logarithm problem on said Jacobians.


Through illustrations notoriously difficult to interpret, even when considered in conjunction with the chapters they presumably depict, the sixteenth-century manuscript Splendor Solis exemplifies the highly symbolical approach to representing alchemical processes. The central images of the pictures are typically characterized by the fantastic: mythic animals, beheading, and allusions to the classical gods. Yet, among all the wondrous creatures and allegorical scenes, one very familiar, even ordinary animal regularly appears in the illustrations of this particular manuscript—the horse. Its very ubiquity offers insight into the larger picture of alchemy: some of the uses of the animal are unique to alchemy; others reflect the daily life or ordinariness of the alchemist's culture. This article examines those illustrations in which horses appear and discusses how their depiction contributes to understanding the alchemical processes represented in the visual and verbal texts of the manuscript.


Inclusion in the capital gains tax (CGT) cost base of the investment property of interest denied deductibility under a split loan because of Part IVA of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 (ITAA 1936) (general antiavoidance rule (GAAR)) is a troublesome issue. It raises fundamental structural issues concerning the effect of the GAAR, the effect of the compensating adjustment mechanisms, and the effect and the relationship between the GAAR, the compensating adjustment mechanisms in Part IVA and other rules in the income tax. This article has come about in response to feedback on a previous article I had written. That previous article was highly critical of a determination (Taxation Determination TD 2005/33) issued by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) dealing with the inclusion of further interest and compound interest in the cost base of the investment property under a split loan. The ATO's determination rejected cost base inclusion. The central criticism in that previous article was that the determination was technically flawed. Feedback on the original article raised two issues: (1) Does the application of the GAAR have the effect of setting aside the relevant scheme, or does the GAAR only set aside the relevant tax benefit? And (2) What is the proper order of application of the relevant tax rules in regard to a split loan? The answer to these questions may be determinative of the issue debated here. Regrettably, there is little judicial consideration of these issues in the authorities. This article has two main parts. Section 1 deals with the effect of the GAAR operating in regard to a scheme. Section 2 deals with the order in which relevant tax rules apply. As a matter of policy, the further interest and the compound interest under a split loan should not be included in the cost base of the investment property. However, the conclusion in this article is that, unless the ATO can make the GAAR apply to the further interest and the compound interest as a tax benefit in the form of cost base inclusion ‐ something the ATO has not yet asserted let alone analysed ‐ cost base inclusion is very unlikely to be defeated.


SEVERAL MODELS OF TIME ESTIMATION HAVE BEEN developed in psychology; a few have been applied to music. In the present study, we assess the influence of the distances travelled through pitch space on retrospective time estimation. Participants listened to an isochronous chord sequence of 20-s duration. They were unexpectedly asked to reproduce the time interval of the sequence. The harmonic structure of the stimulus was manipulated so that the sequence either remained in the same key (CC) or travelled through a closely related key (CFC) or distant key (CGbC). Estimated times were shortened when the sequence modulated to a very distant key. This finding is discussed in light of Lerdahl9s Tonal Pitch Space Theory (2001), Firmino and Bueno9s Expected Development Fraction Model (in press), and models of time estimation.


Current Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP) are used to track companies' finances, human resources, and logistics. Upcoming market-driven requirements focus on outside connectivity and up-to-date information supply, including business-to-business support, e-commerce, and virtual enterprises. How can these requirements be met by applying emerging information technologies? This paper focuses on future development of ERP systems emphasizing on technical aspects of information technology application as enabler. It briefly discusses existing research approaches and potential research and development issues.


Dr Garth Raybould writes: While Dr Phillips has given a lucid account of solution-transfer and its role in fibrous vein formation, which accords with the work of Durney (1972), he implies that fibre growth always takes place from the centre of the vein outwards. Raybould (1974) has described fibrous quartz veins from the Craigypistyll anticline of mid-Wales in which there is ample evidence that crystal growth took place from the walls inwards, and Durney & Ramsay (1973) have given detailed descriptions and explanations of both types of growth in veins and pressure shadows. Clearly, the growth mechanism which Dr Phillips suggests is applicable to only one type of fibrous vein. Dr Phillips attributes the formation of low-angle fractures to hydraulic lifting of impermeable beds during consolidation, and this implies that fibrous veins are concordant. Such is not always the case. Some of the Craigypistyll veins are concordant but where bedding is steep the veins become discordant in order to maintain a low dip angle. In this case the vein orientation is related to the former stress orientation within the fold. Dr Phillips suggests that fibrous veins usually show an up-dip displacement of the upper part of the vein, related to subsidence and crustal shortening during sedimentation. Conversely, the Craigypistyll veins almost always show a down dip displacement. The writer suggests that displacement may be either up-dip or down-dip, according to the position of the veins within the particular tectonic feature containing them. Dr W.J. Phillips replies: Dr Raybould is quite


Taming unstable inverse problems François Monard This thesis explores two mathematical routes that make the transition from some severely illposed parameter reconstruction problems to better-posed versions of them. The general introduction starts by defining what we mean by an inverse problem and its theoretical analysis. We then provide motivations that come from the field of medical imaging. The first part consists in the analysis of an inverse problem involving the Boltzmann transport equation, with applications in Optical Tomography. There we investigate the reconstruction of the spatially-dependent part of the scattering kernel, from knowledge of angularly averaged outgoing traces of transport solutions and isotropic boundary sources. We study this problem in the stationary regime first, then in the time-harmonic regime. In particular we show, using techniques from functional analysis and stationary phase, that this inverse problem is severely ill-posed in the former setting, whereas it is mildly ill-posed in the latter. In this case, we deduce that making the measurements depend on modulation frequency allows to improve the stability of reconstructions. In the second part, we investigate the inverse problem of reconstructing a tensor-valued conductivity (or diffusion) coefficient in a second-order elliptic partial differential equation, from knowledge of internal measurements of power density type. This problem finds applications in the medical imaging modalities of Electrical Impedance Tomography and Optical Tomography, and the fact that one considers power densities is justified in practice by assuming a coupling of this physical model with ultrasound waves, a coupling assumption that is characteristic of so-called hybrid medical imaging methods. Starting from the famous Caldeŕon's problem (i.e. the same parameter reconstruction problem from knowledge of boundary fluxes of solutions), and recalling its lack of injectivity and severe instability, we show how going from Dirichletto-Neumann data to considering the power density operator leads to reconstruction of the full conductivity tensor via explicit inversion formulas. Moreover, such reconstruction algorithms only require the loss of either zero or one derivative from the power density functionals to the unknown, depending on what part of the tensor one wants to reconstruct. The inversion formulas are worked out with the help of linear algebra and differential geometry, in particular calculus with the Euclidean connection. The practical pay-off of such theoretical improvements in injectivity and stability is twofold: (i) the lack of injectivity of Calderón's problem, no longer existing when using power density measurements, implies that future medical imaging modalities such as hybrid methods may make anisotropic properties of human tissues more accessible; (ii) the improvements in stability for both problems in transport and conductivity may yield practical improvements in the resolution of images of the reconstructed coefficients.


Abstract. The hygroscopicity of an aerosol strongly influences its effects on climate and, for smaller particles, atmospheric lifetime. While many aerosol hygroscopicity measurements have been made at lower relative humidities (RH) and under cloud formation conditions (RH>100%), relatively few have been made at high RH (99 to 100%), where the Kelvin (curvature) effect is comparable to the Raoult (solute) effect. We measured the size of droplets at high RH that had formed on particles composed of one of seven compounds with dry diameters between 0.1 and 0.5 μm. We report the hygroscopicity of these compounds using a parameterization of the Kelvin term, in addition to a standard parameterization (κ) of the Raoult term. For inorganic compounds, hygroscopicity could reliably be predicted using water activity data (measured in macroscopic solutions) and assuming a surface tension of pure water. In contrast, most organics exhibited a slight to mild increase in hygroscopicity with droplet diameter. This trend was strongest for sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), the most surface-active compound studied. The results suggest that, for single-component aerosols at high RH, partitioning of solute to the particle-air interface reduces particle hygroscopicity by reducing the bulk solute concentration. This partitioning effect is more important than the increase in hygroscopicity due to surface tension reduction. Furthermore, we found no evidence that micellization limits SDS activity in micron-sized solution droplets, as observed in macroscopic solutions. We conclude that while the high-RH hygroscopicity of inorganic compounds can be reliably predicted using readily available data, surface-activity parameters obtained from macroscopic solutions with organic solutes may be inappropriate for calculations involving micron-sized droplets.


Vehicular Networks, including Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANETs) and Vehicular Sensor Networks (VSNs), stimulate a brand new variety of services, ranging from driver safety services, traffic information and warnings regarding traffic jams and accidents, to providing weather or road condition, parking availability, and advertisement. 3G networks and sophisticated Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), including deploying costly roadside base stations, can indeed be used to offer such services, but these come with a cost, both at network and hardware levels. In this paper we introduce Cooperation as a service (CaaS): A novel architecture that will allow providing a set of services for free and without any additional infrastructure, by taking advantage of Vehicle-to-Vehicle communications. CaaS uses a hybrid publish/subscribe mechanism where the driver (or subscriber) expresses his interests regarding a service (or a set of services) and where cars having subscribed to the same service will cooperate to provide the subscriber with the necessary information regarding the service he subscribed to, by publishing this information in the network. CaaS structures the network into clusters, and uses Content Based Routing (CBR) for intra-cluster communications and geographic routing for inter-cluster communications.


The existence of metastable liquid-liquid phase transitions (LLPTs) in tetrahedral liquids such as water, silicon, and silica has been the subject of vigorous scientific debate. Because high crystallization rates hinder experimental investigation at deeply supercooled conditions, computer simulation has been widely employed to investigate the existence of LLPTs in molecular models of tetrahedral liquids. The Stillinger-Weber (SW) model of silicon (and more generally, the SW family of models) has been actively studied along these lines. Whereas some studies observe evidence of an LLPT in this model, others report that only a single metastable liquid exists under deeply supercooled conditions. Here, we perform extensive state-of-the-art free energy calculations to investigate the possibility of an LLPT in the SW model of silicon. A similar analysis is also presented for the generalized SW family of models constructed by varying the strength of the three-body energetic term. Our analysis does not show any evidence of an LLPT in SW silicon nor in the generalized family of SW models over the parameter ranges studied. Explanations for the aforementioned discrepancies between previous studies are provided, along with explicit demonstrations of how these discrepancies may have occurred. Outstanding ambiguities and directions for future work are also discussed. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT


Reliable crop prediction based on seasonal climate forecasts can be achieved when a strong climate- crop relationship exists and there are reliable forecasts of the climatic constraints on crops. Here, we present global assessments of the climatic constraints on crops (maize, soybeans, rice, and wheat), the degree of the climate-crop relationship, and the reliability of seasonal forecasts of dominant climatic constraints based on statistical crop models and ensemble seasonal climate forecasts. We then classify the reliability of within-season crop prediction into four categories based on the degree of the climate-crop relationship and the reliability of the climate forecasting: (I) reliable; (II) less reliable due to the low reliability of climate forecasting; (III) not reliable due to the low reliability of climate forecasting and a weak climate-crop relationship; and (IV) less reliable due to a weak climate-crop relationship. The results showed that a strong climate-crop relationship exists in the area that produces 24-38% of the global crop production. On a global scale, 51-59% of the maize and soybean production is sensitive to soil moisture level during the reproductive growth period, whereas 47-53% of the rice and wheat production is sensitive to temperature. Due to the greater reliability of temperature forecasts, crop prediction is reliable in those areas in which the crop yield is temperature-sensitive and temperature forecasts are reliable. The categorized reliability of crop prediction indicated that improvements of soil moisture forecasts in 30-50°N during July- October and in 30-40 ? S during February-April are needed for better maize and soybean prediction, whereas improved temperature forecasts in 20-60 ° N during March-August are keys to rice and wheat prediction. This study established a novel way of assessing the reliability of crop prediction, which will enable decision-making and allow researchers to prioritize the direction of new research to improve crop prediction in a given area for global food prediction.


Post-secondary education, often referred to as "the new buffalo," is a contentious but critically important issue for First Nations and the future of Canadian society. While First Nations maintain that access to and funding for higher education is an Aboriginal and Treaty right, the Canadian government insists that post-secondary education is a social program for which they have limited responsibility. In The New Buffalo, Blair Stonechild traces the history of Aboriginal post-secondary education policy from its earliest beginnings as a government tool for assimilation and cultural suppression to its development as means of Aboriginal self-determination and self-government. With first-hand knowledge and personal experience of the Aboriginal education system, Stonechild goes beyond merely analyzing statistics and policy doctrine to reveal the shocking disparity between Aboriginal and Canadian access to education, the continued dominance of non-Aboriginals over program development, and the ongoing struggle for recognition of First Nations run institutions.


What fundamental forces account for procedural change in majoritarian voting institutions? I address this question by defining majoritarianism as a variable with two attributes: a numeric component that sets a threshold of assent among decision-makers, and a contextual component that defines the objects and stages of choice to which a given majority or supermajority threshold applies. Conceptualized as such, majoritarianism may be studied as a manipulable phenomenon that, in large part, defines the degree of consensus that a voting organization demands of itself in making decisions about rules, amendments, and law. Majoritarianism is often a central concern in institutional reforms that reallocate individual procedural rights to members. Majoritarian tension inevitably arises among decision-makers due to their simultaneous and conflicting desires for consensus (widespread endorsement of a decision), timeliness (rapid action), and wisdom (prudent, informed decision-making). Two broad empirical expectations based on the majoritarian-tension framework are assessed by revisiting of the extensively studied, so-called Reed Revolution in the late 19th Century House of Representatives. I suggest that this ostensibly critical event was both less significant and more bipartisan than any extant account suggests, and that my alternative interpretation is consistent with the fundamental forces of majoritarian tension.


Muscle synergies are thought to be the building blocks used by the central nervous system to control the underdetermined problem of muscles activation. Decoding these synergies from EEG could provide useful tools for BCI-controlled orthotic devices. In this paper, we assess the possibility of decoding muscle synergies from EEG slow cortical potentials in two healthy subjects and two stroke patients performing a center-out reaching task. We were able to successfully decode the extracted muscle synergies in both healthy subject and one patient.


Grey theory deals with systems with inadequate, poor and uncertain information. Modeling against insufficient sample and saturated sequence, Grey Verhulst model has its particular perfection. Its modeling process is easy and high prediction accuracy can be achieved. In this paper, the application of a Grey Verhulst model in studying the global ICT development was presented; Moreover a new Grey Verhulst model and Fourier residual Grey Verhulst model were suggested to improve the forecasting accuracy. Data of the world fixed-telephone subscriptions which is one of ICT indicator from 2001 to 2010 were used as a forecasted example. Finally we increased the precision by employing the Grey Markov model which is the mixture of the GM(1,1) and a Markov model


As the United States' economy struggles in the wake of the recent residential real estate market implosion, scholars, commentators, and average citizens alike continue to debate the relative blameworthiness of uninformed consumers, overzealous lenders, and lackluster federal regulation as contributing causal factors. In light of the backlash in the national media against predatory lending practices, it might be surprising to some that there is still only one federal remedial statute that specifically regulates residential real estate settlements - the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act of 1974. Perhaps even more surprising is that this Act, tailored to prevent abuses in the settlement process, contains blatant ambiguities that make it difficult in many cases to ascertain whether a service provider has violated its terms.This Note analyzes those ambiguities and the resulting split of authority among the federal courts of appeals. The principle question explored in this Note is whether section 8(b) of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act of 1974 prohibits a single service provider from charging a purely unearned fee in connection with a federally related mortgage. There are several critical ancillary issues that must also be addressed in the search for a resolution that is faithful both to the language and intent of the statute as well as the analytical methodology mandated by the Supreme Court of the United States. Such issues include the degree of deference to accord the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) interpretations of the statute and whether the Act prohibits overcharging for services in the settlement process. To this end, the author identifies three types of unearned fees that could potentially be prohibited by the Act: purely unearned fees, markup fees, and overcharge fees.After a detailed and critical analysis of the positions advanced by HUD and the courts of appeals, the author concludes that because the text of the statute is ambiguous and because neither the structure of the statute, its stated purposes, nor its legislative history are dispositive of the issue, courts should follow the guidance of Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. and accord complete deference to HUD's interpretation, which advocates that a single service provider charging purely unearned fees violates the Act. The author urges, however, that overcharge fees, while arguably within the purview of the statute according to a plausible plain-language interpretation, are not proscribed by the Act based upon the clear legislative intent to avoid becoming price control regulation. Finally, the author concludes that whether markup fees violate section 8(b)'s prohibitions must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, the standard being whether the markup fee was charged for services that were actually rendered.


This study addresses how political attitudes are shaped across national contexts. It does so by investigating the influence of nation-specific political articulation and framing on the relationship between human values and political attitudes. Based on the literature, two attitude dimensions can be identified. First, the socioeconomic dimension captures the tension between economic equality and equity (rewarding achievements and effort). Second, the sociocultural dimension captures the tension between individual/civil liberties and traditions/conservative norms. Very few comparative studies systematically investigate the influence of a coherent structure of more basic and abstract motivations (values) on political attitudes. We fill this gap by examining the influence of basic human values on the socioeconomic and sociocultural attitude dimensions across national contexts. To investigate the impact of human values and political attitudes, individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS 2008) from 2008 are analyzed using multi-group structural equation modeling (MGSEM). Moreover, we also explore political discourse as a key contextual factor at the country level modifying the relationships between values and attitudes. Specifically, we use data from the Comparative Manifesto Project to investigate the moderating influence of political articulation, i.e., the articulation of socioeconomic and sociocultural issues in political party manifestos, on the relationship between values and political attitudes across countries. Results indicate substantial cross-national variation in the link between values and sociopolitical attitudes, and that this variation can be partly explained by the articulation of sociopolitical issues.


This study examined the methods used by fourth graders when answering number sense-related questions. Eighth fourth graders who were classified as high, medium, and low achievers in mathematics were recruited from three public elementary schools in south Taiwan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with all students, in which they responded to a series of number sense-related questions. The findings showed that all students tended to use rule-based methods to solve the questions. However, low and medium achievers were more inclined than high achievers to use rule-based methods to solve the problems. Additionally, the findings suggest that students' thinking is limited to memorizing the methods they have learned in schools; thus, they cannot use meaningful approaches to solve problems.


In his latest book, fairy tales expert Jack Zipes explores the question of why some fairy tales "work" and others don't, why the fairy tale is uniquely capable of getting under the skin of culture and staying there. Why, in other words, fairy tales "stick." Long an advocate of the fairy tale as a serious genre with wide social and cultural ramifications, Jack Zipes here makes his strongest case for the idea of the fairy tale not just as a collection of stories for children but a profoundly important genre. Why Fairy Tales Stick contains two chapters on the history and theory of the genre, followed by case studies of famous tales (including Cinderella, Snow White, and Bluebeard), followed by a summary chapter on the problematic nature of traditional storytelling in the twenty-first century.


"War in the Wilderness" is the most comprehensive account ever published of the human aspects of the Chindit war in Burma. The word 'Chindit' will always have a special resonance in military circles. Every Chindit endured what is widely regarded as the toughest sustained Allied combat experience of the Second World War. The Chindit expeditions behind Japanese lines in occupied Burma 1943 - 1944 transformed the morale of British forces after the crushing defeats of 1942. The Chindits provided the springboard for the Allies' later offensives. The two expeditions extended the boundaries of human endurance. The Chindits suffered slow starvation and exposure to dysentery, malaria, typhus and a catalogue of other diseases. They endured the intense mental strain of living and fighting under the jungle canopy, with the ever-present threat of ambush or simply 'bumping' the enemy. Every Chindit carried his kit and weapons (equivalent to two heavy suitcases) in the tropical heat and humidity. A disabling wound or sickness frequently meant a lonely death. Those who could no longer march were often left behind with virtually no hope of survival. Some severely wounded were shot or given a lethal dose of morphia to ensure they would not be captured alive by the Japanese. Fifty veterans of the Chindit expeditions kindly gave interviews for this book. Many remarked on the self-reliance that sprang from living and fighting as a Chindit. Whatever happened to them after their experiences in Burma, they knew that nothing else would ever be as bad. There are first-hand accounts of the bitter and costly battles and the final, wasteful weeks, when men were forced to continue fighting long after their health and strength had collapsed. "War in the Wilderness" continues the story as the survivors returned to civilian life. They remained Chindits for the rest of their days, members of a brotherhood forged in extreme adversity.


When using remote sensing and geographic information systems, accurately scaling- up spatial data of a variable and their uncertainties from a finer to a coarser spatial resolution is widely required in mapping and managing natural resources and ecological and environmental systems. In this study, four up-scaling methods were derived based on simple and ordinary cokriging estimators and a sequential Gaussian cosimulation algorithm for points and blocks. Taking spatial variability of variables into account in the up-scaling process made it possible to simultaneously and accurately obtain estimates and estimation variances of larger blocks from sample and image data of smaller supports. With the aid of Thematic Mapper imagery, these methods were compared in a case study where overall vegetation and tree covers were scaled up from a spatial resolution of 30/spl times/30 m/sup 2/ to 90/spl times/90 m/sup 2/ with a stratification method at 90/spl times/90 m/sup 2/. The results showed that the methods Point simple coKriging/spl I.bar/Point co-Simulation scaling UP (PsK/spl I.bar/PSUP) and PsK/spl I.bar/Block co-Simulation (PsK/spl I.bar/BS) led to smaller errors and better reproduced spatial distribution and variability of the variables than the other methods. Choosing PsK/spl I.bar/PSUP or PsK/spl I.bar/BS depends on the users' emphasis on accuracy of estimates and variances, computational time, etc. The methods can be applied to multiple continuous variables that have any distribution. It is also expected that the general idea behind the methods can be expanded to scaling-up spatial data for categorical variables.


The trend toward domain-specific languages leads to an ever-growing plethora of highly specialized languages. Developers of such languages focus on their specific domains rather than on technical challenges of language design. Generic features of languages are rarely included in special-purpose languages. One very important feature is the ability to formulate partial programs in separate encapsulated entities, which can be composed into complete programs in a well-defined manner. This paper presents a language-independent approach for adding useful constructs for defining components. We discuss the underlying concepts and describe a composition environment and tool supporting these ideas ‐ the Reuseware Composition Framework. To evaluate our approach we enrich the (Semantic) Web query language Xcerpt with an additional useful reuse concept—modules.


In the 21st century, technology and material flows constitute an ever-growing set of global environmental change. In particular, electronic wastes are emerging as a major transnational problem. Industrial nations are shipping millions of obsolete computers to Asia yearly; Asian countries are emerging as generators of e-waste in their own right. This article argues that an environmental justice approach can help illuminate the impacts of technology and material flows. To do so, however, environmental justice definitions and methodologies need to account for how and why such flows occur. Using the case of computers, the article analyses some factors shaping the e-waste recycling chain, shows how e-waste risks depend on design and manufacturing chains, and evaluates inequalities in the ecological and health impacts of e-wastes across Asia. It proposes a definition of environmental justice as obviating the production of risk, using a framework that brings together the global production system, development models, and regulatory action.


The Samaritans and Early Judaism: A Literary Analysis, by Ingrid Hjelm. JSOTSup 303. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Pp. 318. $85.00. All tradition is, of course, story. As such, it involves the coherent retelling of beginnings, other past events, and even future ones, interpreted from the center of a people's experience in the world at a particular time and place. Then again, the story may be told from an outsider's point of view. Hjelm's excellent monograph on the historically elusive Samaritans provides yet another lesson that the prevailing tradition offers merely a collective perspective (albeit an ultimately meaningful one for those who celebrate it) on "what actually happened," and that sometimes other meaningful perspectives are required for bringing a clearer view of historical reality into focus. Hjelm asserts that the origin and history of the Samaritans cannot be drawn at face value from the accounts of Josephus, the literature of the prevailing Pharasaic-rabbinic Jewish tradition, the NT, or even the Samaritan sources themselves. Rather, a critical evaluation of authorial intent must be made on the basis of all available sources in order to determine where and to what extent authors and editors have accommodated historical realities for ideological purposes. Carefully applied, this methodology results in a historian's perspective of the traditions in question, relatively free of the biases produced by meaningful stories competing for preeminence or, as our author puts it, "the problematic presence of past traditions over against present innovations, and two groups who claim authority for each of their own" (. 266). Hjelm's thesis in nuce is that the prevailing view of Samaritan origins and history, often described in terms of questionable heritage, expulsion, and dissidence, must be abandoned. Underlying this view is the ideologically revisionist standpoint of a relatively late, Jerusalem-centered Judaism. Indeed, the historical hot-spot for any real Jewish-- Samaritan conflict is to be found in the second and first century B.c.F., with the emergence and maintenance of an independent Judaean temple state campaigning for political consolidation in the region. On the other side of the polemic, the Samaritan historiography, Hjelm rightly notes, "is as little reliable at face value as the similar Jewish historiography. We cannot simply read such `historiographies, independently of each other" (p. 272). The methodology is theoretically sound, but it still leaves much to the reader for testing the weight of Hjelm's assertions. The chapters of the book follow in logical order. Chapter 1 provides the necessarily selective overview of a century of scholarship on the Samaritan question, beginning with variations of the paradigm that viewed Samaritan origins on the basis of the Assyrian resettlements (2 Kgs 17); one or another later accounts (a priestly expulsion in Neh 13, the accounts of Josephus, or the books of Maccabees concerning the Hellenistic period); and, finally, the irreconcilable break resulting from John Hyrcanus's second-century B.C.E. destruction of the Samaritan temple. Chapter 2 provides the current state of Samaritan studies, focusing especially on alternative theories that, on the one hand, posit a relatively later date for the origin of a distinctive Samaritan tradition or, on the other hand, view the Samaritans as original Israelites. The most notable champion of the latter view is E. Nodet of the Ecole Biblique, whose influence on Hjelm's own work is apparent. The next three chapters offer a broad but cursory overview of relevant Samaritan and non-Samaritan primary texts. …


First- and second-generation youth of color are vulnerable to racialized images of gender and sexuality as reflected in and perpetuated by dominant forms of popular and consumer cultures. These popular images inform the process of Americanization, including racialized sexualization, for first- and second-generation Americans. This paper examines the way first- and second-generation Asian American girls and young women interpret and reinterpret popular representations of their positions in the United States. Data from two qualitative studies on Asian American young women will be presented. Scholars from various fields have written about the powerful impact of popular and consumer cultures on youth identities and cultures (Appadurai, 1990; Giroux, 1992, 1994; Pyke, 2000; Silverstone, 1994). For youth from immigrant families, popular and consumer cultures are significant sources of information about "America" and being "American" (Olsen, 1997; Pyke, 2000). First- and second-generation youth of color, in general, are affected by the dominant messages of Whiteness, which pervade popular and consumer culture (Olsen, 1997; Pyke, 2000). Young women, in particular, are vulnerable to racialized images of gender and sexuality as reflected in and promoted by dominant forms of popular and consumer cultures. Gender, race, and class inform the process of Americanization, including racialized sexualization, for first- and second-generation Asian American young women. This paper examines the way first- and second-generation Asian American women interpret and reinterpret popular representations of their positions in the United States. It includes a review of the literature, a brief description of two qualitative studies, data from a sample of Asian American high school girls and a sample of college students, and discussion of the implications of the findings. POPULAR AND CONSUMER CULTURE AND THE GENDERED RACIALIZATION OF ASIAN AMERICANS Research on immigrant students of color (Lee, 2001b; Lei, 2001; Olsen, 1997) reveals that students undergo a process of racialization as they are incorporated into the existing racial hierarchy of the United States-one that places White people at the top and defines them as the only true Americans. While the formal curriculum and organization of schooling are implicated in this process, popular and consumer cultures, operating both within and outside of schools, leverage considerable power in the creation and re-creation of this racialized notion of American identity (Hall, 1995). As cultural studies theorists like Thomas Nakayama (1994) have observed, "It is as if there is a natural-as opposed to cultural, social, historical-relation between whiteness and Americanness" (pp. 168-69). Whiteness, in consumer culture, is both pervasive and invisible as the unmarked norm. Significantly, unmarked Whiteness is a classed racial category, determined by an equally unmarked middle class status, such that the norm for Americanness is both middle class and White (Kenny, 2000; Ong, 2000). Of equal significance is the multiple ways in which Blackness is constructed in popular cultures and by students as the readers or consumers of those cultures. While Whiteness is constructed in dominant popular culture as all that is quintessentially good and right with Americanness, Blackness is constructed as the Other which defines that goodness-it functions to maintain the dichotomy of good and bad in American culture and society (hooks, 1989, 1992). As julia Koza (1994) points out, Black rap music is discursively characterized in mainstream media as rejecting what is right and legitimate about dominant American (read: White) values. It is portrayed as violent, resistant, sexist, and dangerous. Simultaneously, White families are portrayed as the normal American family; while Black families, with few notable exceptions, are portrayed as either absent or dysfunctional and deficient. This elaborates Nakayama's point that the collapsing of Whiteness and Americanness is achieved through the construction of a Black-White binary. …


Background and purpose: In recent years, the importance of human cloning is discussed by researchers. But its scientific and legal advantages and disadvantages have received less attention. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of human cloning according to sporadic legal and scientific viewpoints and Islamic jurisprudence. Materials and methods: In this review, data was collected using relevant keywords form university libraries, Qom and Najaf Hawzas and electronic databases (Persian and English). The search results were categorized according to the views on human cloning and its advantages and disadvantages. Results: The advantages and drawbacks of cloning was defined according to scientific and legal perspectives. None of the different views investigated in this study accept human cloning, because of its negative implications. Conclusion: Human cloning is an important subject since it has many complications and impacts, therefore, its procedures should be done under the supervision of scientific committees and


Proton-exchanged planar waveguides have been fabricated on Z-cut and X-cut lithium niobate crystals by using a new proton source formed by a mixture of benzoic and adipic acids. Waveguide index profiles and optical characteristics have been obtained at different values of the adipic-benzoic acid concentration ratio. The samples have been structurally characterized by Raman and infrared (IR) absorption spectroscopy and double-crystal X-ray diffraction. Good quality samples have been fabricated by using 30 mol% ratio dilution, showing very low scattering levels (<0.1 dB/cm), relatively high electrooptic coefficient (r/sub 33/=0.88 pm/V), and low relative percentage of interstitial protons (26%). The main factor limiting the waveguide optical properties is the substitutional-interstitial proton ratio, which can be easily controlled to produce good quality waveguides. A demonstration of the repeatability of the exchange process in the acid mixture is also provided.


The anvil clouds of tropical mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) in West Africa, the Maritime Continent and the Bay of Bengal have been examined with TRMM and CloudSat satellite data and ARM ground‐based radar observations. The anvils spreading out from the precipitating cores of MCSs are subdivided into thick, medium and thin portions. The thick portions of anvils show distinct differences from one climatological regime to another. In their upper portions, the thick anvils of West Africa MCSs have a broad, flat histogram of reflectivity, and a maximum of reflectivity in their lower portions. The reflectivity histogram of the Bay of Bengal thick anvils has a sharply peaked distribution of reflectivity at all altitudes with modal values that increase monotonically downward. The reflectivity histogram of the Maritime Continent thick anvils is intermediate between that of the West Africa and Bay of Bengal anvils, consistent with the fact this region comprises a mix of land and ocean influences. It is suggested that the difference between the statistics of the continental and oceanic anvils is related to some combination of two factors: (1) the West African anvils tend to be closely tied to the convective regions of MCSs while the oceanic anvils are more likely to be extending outward from large stratiform precipitation areas of MCSs, and (2) the West African MCSs result from greater buoyancy, so that the convective cells are more likely to produce graupel particles and detrain them into anvils. Copyright © 2009 Royal Meteorological Society


PURPOSE
The purpose of this work is to develop a non-coplanar cone beam CT (CBCT) image reconstruction method from limited angle of projections.

METHODS
Planning CT or CBCT acquired at neutral position (without couch rotation/translation) serves as the prior images for successive reconstruction. During the course of radiation therapy, subsequent CBCT scans are acquired from limited angle of projections. An iterative reconstruction algorithm, using prior image constrained compressed sensing (PICCS) framework and rigid image registration, is incorporated to reconstruct the patient image under non-coplanar geometry. The prior reconstructed image is rotated/translated according to the nominal couch rotation/translation to serve as the prior input of the compressed sensing based iterative optimization. First, The PICCS framework can be solved iteratively using the total variation minimization step and the iterative image reconstruction step with simultaneous algebraic reconstruction technique (SART). Then, rigid image registration between the reconstructed image and the rotated/translated prior image is applied to further calibrate the rotation/translation of the prior image. The iterations of PICCS algorithm and rigid image registration continue until the registration results are below the predetermined threshold. The proposed reconstruction algorithm is evaluated with both digital phantom simulations and experimental data.

RESULTS
The proposed CBCT reconstruction algorithm significantly improved the image quality from projections with angular range as small as 72 degrees. It can reduce the rigid translational setup errors under from 8 mms to below 1 mm and the rigid rotational setup error from 5 degrees to below 1 degree. Compared with the original PICCS algorithm alone, the rigid registration step helps to improve the convergence of algorithm significantly.

CONCLUSIONS
The proposed algorithm provides an accurate remedy for solving the problem of non-coplanar CBCT reconstruction from limited angle of projections by taking advantage of the combination of PICCS framework and rigid image registration.


This thesis presents research into the development of sustainable methodology for the synthesis of amides, esters and polypropionate fragments. As well as a literature review of efficient natural product synthesis. Acylals are a known class of reagent that have been utilized within literature for a wide range of synthetic methodologies. Herein we present acylals as new highly active reagents for the N-/O-acylation of amines and alcohol nucleophiles for the synthesis of a range of formamides, acetamides, formate esters and acetate esters. It has been demonstrated that a range of acyl groups can be transferred including short and long chain alkyls, acryloyl, benzoyl, phenyl acetyl and biologically important trifluoroacetyl group, thus enabling the synthesis of a range of benzylamides and esters. These acylation reagents have also been shown to demonstrate inherent N-/O- selectivity towards the amine and alcohol groups of serine methyl ester. The scope and limitations of these reagents of the use of acylals has been investigated through the N-formylation of a range of unprotected amino acids, and for the synthesis of the biologically important tripeptide f-MLP. As well as the acylation/formylation of the ω-amino residue of a lysine residue within a decapeptide. Finally, it has also been demonstrated that a simple switch in pH from basic to acidic conditions for diols can change from O-acylation to acetal formation. The synthesis of enantiomerically enriched dihydropyrans from the heteo-Diels-Alder reaction of 1-alkoxy dienes and ethyl glyoxalate has been presented. A series of stereoselective derivatisation reactions were developed including, hydroboration, hydrogenation, epoxidation, dihydroxylation and epimerization which procced with stereoselectivity to afford a range of complex enantiomerically enriched polypropionate based building blocks, which are ideally suited for the synthesis of polyketide natural products through a "plug and play" approach. Chemistry has also been presented which makes use of the orthogonally addressable synthetic handles of the pyran building blocks. Utilization of either the masked aldehyde character or the ester functionality present allows for further elaboration of the pyran building blocks by selectively introducing new functionality.


The ability to mechanically manipulate and control the spatial arrangement of biological materials is a critical capability in biomedicine and synthetic biology. Ultrasound has the ability to manipulate objects with high spatial and temporal precision via acoustic radiation force, but has not been used to directly control biomolecules or genetically defined cells. Here, we show that gas vesicles (GVs), a unique class of genetically encoded gas-filled protein nanostructures, can be directly manipulated and patterned by ultrasound and enable acoustic control of genetically engineered GV-expressing cells. Due to their differential density and compressibility relative to water, GVs experience sufficient acoustic radiation force to allow these biomolecules to be moved with acoustic standing waves, as demonstrated within microfluidic devices. Engineered variants of GVs differing in their mechanical properties enable multiplexed actuation and act as sensors of acoustic pressure. Furthermore, when expressed inside genetically engineered bacterial cells, GVs enable these cells to be selectively manipulated with sound waves, allowing patterning, focal trapping and translation with acoustic fields. This work establishes the first genetically encoded nanomaterial compatible with acoustic manipulation, enabling molecular and cellular control in a broad range of contexts.


From publisher's description:

Gay style actually sets trends. Its what straight people take fashion from. Tony Woodcock From the New Edwardians and muscle boys to Radical Drag and Genderfuck, gay mens dress has had a profound impact on fashion. However, it is easy to forget that, with few exceptions, gay men earlier in the century took great pains to conceal their sexual identity. Men such as Quentin Crisp, while highly influential, were far from the norm. Most gay men resorted to a number of subtle dress codes to identify themselves to other gay men -- from Oscar Wilde's famous green carnation, which was still being worn in the 1930s, through to suede shoes. Beginning with a look at the subcultural world of gay men in the early part of this century -- particularly in New York and London -- this fascinating book analyzes the trends in dress adopted by gay men as well as the challenge gay style has made to mainstream mens fashion. The importance of dress choice to the formation of sexual identity is highlighted, as is gay influence on punk and the fashion industry as a whole. The rise of new dress choices in the wake of gay liberation is analyzed with particular emphasis on the masculinization of gay dress. The importance of the body to gay culture is addressed, from the physique magazines of the 1950s, through to tattooing and body piercing, and their origins in the SM scene.


Geminiviruses are a group of small plant viruses responsible for devastating crop damage worldwide. The emergence of agricultural diseases caused by geminiviruses is attributed in part to their high rates of recombination, leading to complementary function between viral components across species and genera. We have developed a mastreviral reporter system based on bean yellow dwarf virus (BeYDV) that replicates to high levels in the plant nucleus, expressing very high levels of GFP. To investigate the potential for complementation of movement function by other geminivirus genera, the movement protein (MP) and nuclear shuttle protein (NSP) from the bipartite begomovirus Bean dwarf mosaic virus (BDMV) were produced and characterized in Nicotiana benthamiana leaves. While overexpression of MP and NSP strongly inhibited GFP expression from the mastreviral reporter and caused adverse plant symptoms, optimizing the expression levels of MP and NSP allowed functional cell-to-cell movement. Hybrid virus vectors were created that express BDMV MP and NSP from mastreviral replicons, allowing efficient cell-to-cell movement comparable to native BDMV replicons. We find that the expression levels of MP and NSP must be fine-tuned to provide sufficient MP/NSP for movement without eliciting the plant hypersensitive response or adversely impacting gene expression from viral replicons. The ability to confer cell-to-cell movement to mastrevirus replicons depended strongly on replicon size: 2.1-2.7 kb replicons were efficiently moved, while 3 kb replicons were inhibited, and 3.9 kb replicons were very strongly inhibited. Optimized expression of MP/NSP from the normally phloem-limited Abutilon mosaic virus (AbMV) allows efficient movement in non-phloem cells.