We present a novel design framework enabling the development of social robotics applications by cross-disciplinary teams of programmers and interaction designers. By combining a modular back-end software architecture with an easy-to-use graphical interface for developing interaction sequences, this system enables programmers and designers to work in parallel to develop robot applications and tune the subtle details of social behaviors. In this paper, we describe the structure of our design framework, and we present an experimental evaluation of our system showing that it increases the effectiveness of programmerdesigner teams developing social robot applications. Keywords-human-robot interaction; software development; social robotics; programming interfaces;


When did we last see a Hollywood film with a heroic male entrepreneur at its center - a self-made captain (or even lieutenant) of industry, an Andrew Carnegie or Bill Gates, who begins with little or nothing and achieves success by virtue of his own diligence and ingenuity? In a 2005 paper titled "Wall Street and Vine: Hollywood's View of Business," Larry Ribstein, a scholar of business law, surveyed Hollywood films from the 1930s to the present and found that with rare exceptions - the Tom Hanks nice-guy businessmen, for example, in You've Got Mail (1998) and Cast Away (2000) - American films have portrayed business negatively. Indeed, several archetypal Hollywood entrepreneurs whom Ribstein counts as exceptions seem more to uphold his point than to refute it: Charles Foster Kane, who ends tragically corrupt and self-deluded, business empire notwithstanding, and Oskar Schindler, who redeems himself and his Jews only by renouncing both wealth and enterprise.1 Remarking on the very same Hollywood rule of thumb, New York Times entertainment writer Michael Cieply offers several more unexceptional exceptions: Preston Tucker (Jeff Bridges), the electric car visionary of Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), who ultimately falls prey to big business; and Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), the amoral arms dealer of Jon Favreau's Iron Man (2008), who literally reinvents himself as a prosthetically enhanced superhero.2 Much more often, Ribstein and Cieply concur, Hollywood businessmen have played the heavy. "The big bad businessman," writes Cieply, citing the 1917 film Greed, "has been a film archetype since before talkies." Both writers list such classic examples as Mr. Potter, the villainous banker of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946), and the equally malevolent Gordon Gecko of Wa// Street (1987), Oliver Stone's damning portrait of Reagan-era capitalism. Cieply also includes Daniel Plainview, "the oil maddened entrepreneur" of Paul Thomas Anderson's Oscar winning There Will Be Blood (2007).3 Then there are the numerous films, from William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) through the likes of Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) and Steven Soderbergh's Erin Brokovich (2000), in which evil is embodied by faceless - and heartless - corporations. Arguably, Ribstein suggests, Hollywood's most iconic, if not heroic, entrepreneurs are the father-and-son patriarchs of the criminal Corleone family, who represent "parodies of ruthless businessmen, using literal rather than merely figurative 'cut-throat' tactics."4 Ribstein entertains several possible explanations for Hollywood's apparent anti-business bias: that it is a famously left-wing town dominated by crypto-Marxists, that it caters to the American audience's popular prejudice in favor of "the little guy," even that its sour portrait of business "might actually be right." But none of these addresses what he views - and one must surely agree - as the ultimate irony: "that movies, themselves, are big business." Why, he asks, "would film companies attack themselves?" Ribstein's own suggestion is that this seeming paradox reflects the internal tension between filmmakers, who view themselves as artist-mavericks, and the capitalists who fund their art. The former resent their dependence on the latter, and their films express that resentment in the form of "an anti-capital message." Movie companies, meanwhile, do not interfere "as long as the message does not interfere with selling tickets."5 Perhaps so. But I would argue that Ribstein's solution merely pushes the question one step further back: why would an anti-business message sell tickets in the first place, especially to American audiences? Has not the myth of the self-made entrepreneur come virtually to define the American Dream? Have not the American "apostles of the self-made man," in John Cawelti's phrase, such as Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Horatio Alger, celebrated economic success and the virtues - industry, perseverance, enterprise - that yield it? …


Manufacturing bulk nanostructured materials with least grain growth from initial powders is challenging because of the bottle neck of bottom-up methods using the conventional powder metallurgy of compaction and sintering. In this study, bottom-up type powder metallurgy processing and top-down type SPD (Severe Plastic Deformation) approaches were combined in order to achieve both full density and grain refinement of metallic powders. ECAP (Equal-Channel Angular Pressing), one of the most promising processes in SPD, was used for the powder consolidation method. For understanding the ECAP process, investigating the powder density as well as internal stress, strain and strain rate distribution is crucial. We investigated the consolidation and plastic deformation of the metallic powders during ECAP using the finite element simulations. Almost independent behavior of powder densification in the entry channel and shear deformation in the main deformation zone was found by the finite element method in conjunction with a pressure dependent material yield model. Effects of processing parameters on densification and density distributions were investigated.


Abstract Purpose: Physical activity participation is essential for the healthy development of basic locomotor skills and for the overall wellbeing of children. Unfortunately, for children with visual impairments the opportunities to engage in physical activity are limited compared with their peers without disabilities. The purpose of this study was to determine and analyze the intentions of parents to include their children with visual impairments, as well as their entire family in physical activities after participating in a physical activity intervention. Methods: This descriptive-qualitative study was situated in the theory of planned behavior. On completion of a series of workshops, 10 parents took part in individual semi-structured interviews that were subsequently transcribed and analyzed using a thematic line-by-line analysis. Results: Through the data analysis three major themes emerged: (a) increased confidence, (b) influence on future intentions, and (c) conditional intentions. Conclusions: Results revealed that the physical activity intervention provided parents with an opportunity to engage their child in physical activities and to gain a deeper understanding of their child's disability. Consequently, the intervention enhanced parent's perceived teaching abilities and skills regarding physical activity. Implications for rehabilitation Results of this study demonstrated that a physical activity intervention have the potential to enhance intentions to engage in physical activity among children with visual impairments and their parents. As a result of this study, parents acquired the skills necessary to confidently engage their children in physical activity. The current physical activity intervention provided parents with an opportunity to engage their child in physical activities and to gain a deeper understanding of their child's disability. Physical activity interventions targeting children with visual impairments and their parents should consider the inclusion of oral presentations combined with written supplements or written manuals, and physical activity equipment.


The authors briefly review the deaths, injuries, and diseases attributed to hurricanes that made landfall in the United States prior to Hurricane Katrina; recent hurricane evacuation studies and their potential for reducing death, injury, and disease; information available to date about mortality, injury, and disease attributed to Hurricane Katrina; and psychological distress attributable to hurricanes. Drowning in salt water caused by storm surges has been reduced over the past thirty years, while deaths caused by fresh water (inland) flooding and wind have remained steady. Well-planned evacuations of coastal areas can reduce death and injury associated with hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina provides an example of what happens when evacuation is not handled appropriately. Preliminary data indicate that vulnerable elderly people were substantially overrepresented among the dead and that evacuees represent a population potentially predisposed to a high level of psychological distress, exacerbated by severe disaster exposure, lack of economic and social resources, and an inadequate government response.


This article analyzes the implications of implicit bias in the legal profession, focusing on how the implicit biases of attorneys impact litigants. Part one summarizes research in the cognitive science field defining bias and explains some of the Harvard Implicit Association Tests (IAT). Part two describes some studies conducted on juror and judicial bias in the courtroom, as well as those dealing with the bias of attorneys in criminal cases. Using this background, part three provides an analysis of the impact of an attorney's implicit bias on her strategic decision making and conduct of civil litigation, its results for clients, and its impact on the justice system. Part three also provides an argument for the American Bar Association's (ABA) proposed rule for a negligence standard regarding ethical regulations intended to ensure that lawyers work harder to overcome biases to better serve justice. The conclusion in part four proposes a framework for interrupting biased behaviors.


Metal Inert Gas welding (MIG) process is an important welding operation for joining ferrous and non ferrous metals. The MIG input welding parameters are the most important factors affecting the quality of the welding and weld quality is strongly characterized by weld bead geometry. This paper presents the effect of welding parameters like welding current, welding voltage, welding speed on penetration depth of AISI 1020 steel during welding. A plan of experiments based on Taguchi technique has been used to plan the experiment, acquire the data and to optimize the welding parameters as well as the process. Finally the conformations tests have been carried out to get the difference between the predicated values with the experimental values to find the effectiveness in the analysis of penetration.


In this paper, we developed a fully textile sensing fabric for tactile touch sensing as the robot skin to detect human-robot interactions. The sensor covers a 20-by-20 cm2 area with 400 sensitive points and samples at 50 Hz per point. We defined seven gestures which are inspired by the social and emotional interactions of typical people to people or pet scenarios. We conducted two groups of mutually blinded experiments, involving 29 participants in total. The data processing algorithm first reduces the spatial complexity to frame descriptors, and temporal features are calculated through basic statistical representations and wavelet analysis. Various classifiers are evaluated and the feature calculation algorithms are analyzed in details to determine each stage and segments' contribution. The best performing feature-classifier combination can recognize the gestures with a 93.3% accuracy from a known group of participants, and 89.1% from strangers.


Information Retrieval (IR), which is also known as text or document retrieval, is the process of locating and retrieving documents that are relevant to the user queries. In hypertext environments, document databases are organized as a network of nodes which are interconnected by various types of links. This study introduces a hypertext-based text retrieval system, HypIR. In HypIR, the semantic relationships among documents are obtained using a clustering algorithm. A new approach providing the advantages of system maps and history list is introduced to prevent the user from being lost in the IR hyperspace. The paper presents the underlying concepts and implementation details. HypIR is based on the object-oriented paradigm of Hypercard.


This research applied framing theory, in combination with the protest paradigm, to the specific context of a significant protest event in Hong Kong's history. A total of 191 news stories concerning the "Occupy Central" crisis were examined to delineate how the events were framed in the UK, the U.S., mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The newspapers in all five media markets were found to have differing news stories about the same event or the same issue. News framing was analyzed in terms of selection and description biases, including news perspective, favorability toward the protesters or the government, sourcing pattern, and attribution of responsibility. The results show significant differences among the five markets, not only between contrasting media systems, but also between comparable ones. The frames employed in the coverage are interpreted in terms of the markets' ideological differences. The reasons for these differences and theoretical implications are explored.


Local graph clustering and the closely related seed set expansion problem are primitives on graphs that are central to a wide range of analytic and learning tasks such as local clustering, community detection, nodes ranking and feature inference. Prior work on local graph clustering mostly falls into two categories with numerical and combinatorial roots respectively. In this work, we draw inspiration from both fields and propose a family of convex optimization formulations based on the idea of diffusion with p-norm network flow for $p\in (1,\infty)$. In the context of local clustering, we characterize the optimal solutions for these optimization problems and show their usefulness in finding low conductance cuts around input seed set. In particular, we achieve quadratic approximation of conductance in the case of $p=2$ similar to the Cheeger-type bounds of spectral methods, constant factor approximation when $p\rightarrow\infty$ similar to max-flow based methods, and a smooth transition for general $p$ values in between. Thus, our optimization formulation can be viewed as bridging the numerical and combinatorial approaches, and we can achieve the best of both worlds in terms of speed and noise robustness. We show that the proposed problem can be solved in strongly local running time for $p\ge 2$ and conduct empirical evaluations on both synthetic and real-world graphs to illustrate our approach compares favorably with existing methods.


NOISE SPECTRUM OF PHOTOGRAPHIC EMULSIONS It is the purpose of this thesis to measure the energy spectrum, re£erred to in this thesis as the noise spectrum, of the granularity of photographic emulsions. This was accomplished by using an optical diffraction device as a spatial spectrum analyzer. A uniformly exposed developed emulsion is illuminated by a plane wave, and the diffraction pattern obtained gives the grain energy distribution; i. e., the noise spectrum, as a function of spatial frequency. The analyzer is composed of a point source which coherently illuminates a uniformly exposed developed emulsion in the aperture of a positive lens, with monochromatic light, and a device for photographing the diffraction pattern at the Fraunhofer plane. The targets were chosen so as to cover the films commercially available and a l so obtain data on co a,rse, medium and fine grain emulsions. These films were Royal X Pan, Super XX and Micro-File (5402). Three uniform average densities of 0. 28, I. 00, and I. 76 of each film type were used. These targets were placed in the target plane (lens aperture) and a picture of the diffraction pattern was taken by placing a sheet of Royal Pan film in the Fraunhofer plane. A picture was taken of the diffraction pattern of each of the nine targets. These pictures were then reduced to density vs. distan ce t r aces then converted to energy distribution curves. Some inherent reflected and stray light was discovered present in the analyzer. This reflected and stray light was caused by lens surface reflections and low quality lens surfaces. The energy spectrum of the granularity noise was reduced by the amount of this inherent reflected and stray light which was transmitted through the target. A historical development of previous work done on the problem is presented in two parts, the earlier approaches, and the later application of Communication Theory to this problem. Then the new approaches to the problem developed as a result of this Communication Theory outlook on optics are discussed. The analytical considerations of the F ou r ier approach to the problem used in this thesis are also discussed. The results of this investigation indicated that the fine grain emulsion had a narrow n oi se spectrum as compared to the coarse grain e rnu l sion. This proved to be in direct opposition to theory. The theory is presented in the appendix. It was finally concluded that the approach used in this case is invalid because the inter -reflections between the multiple grain layers in the emulsion destroy the true diffraction pattern. A means of verifying this con clusion is also presented.


Humans and machines have competing strengths for tasks such as natural language processing and image understanding. Whereas humans do these things naturally with potentially high accuracy, machines offer greater speed and flexibility. CrowdFlow is our toolkit for a model for blending the two in order to attain tighter control over the inherent tradeoffs in speed, cost and quality. With CrowdFlow, humans and machines work together to do a set of tasks at a user-specified point in the tradeoff space. They work symbiotically, with the humans providing training data to the machine while the machine provides first cut results to the humans to save effort in cases where the machine's answer was already correct. The CrowdFlow toolkit can be considered as a generalization of our other domain-specific efforts aimed at enabling cloud computing services using a variety of computational resources to achieve various tradeoff points.


On June 23, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. City of New London, 505 U.S. 469 (2005) that the Public Use Clause allows governments to take private property for transfer to new private owners for the purpose of promoting "economic development." Our theoretical model identifies the circumstances under which Kelo and subsequent state laws affect business formation. We show that business creation can be encouraged, unaffected, or discouraged as the probability of takings increases, depending on the level of compensation for the takings and the magnitude of the owners' public use benefits. We also show that utility-maximizing entrepreneurs' choices of investment depend on the probability of takings and the level of government compensation for the taking. Our empirical results yield three insights. First, states and municipalities can pass laws protecting property rights without fear of retarding business formation. Second, we identify explanations why Kelo and these laws do not measurably affect business formation in our empirical work. Specifically, we believe that either government entities correctly compensate entrepreneurs for the disruption in their businesses through eminent domain legislation, or that the change in the probability of such takings is very small, so that any effect on business formation is too small to measure. Third, takings open the possibility for political corruption and distortions in the economy by encouraging overpayment or underpayment for takings. Under this interpretation, local laws against takings are not pro-business laws or anti-business laws. Rather, they are anti-corruption laws.


Seven physical health practices have been found to be related to both physical health and mortality in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. The practices include adequate rest, sufficient exercise, eating breakfast, no snacking, maintaining a reasonable body weight, no smoking, and use of alcohol in moderation. The purpose of this study was to describe physical health practices in the United States Air Force (USAF) and to compare them to those in the US adult population. In 1977 the USAF conducted a Health Survey that included questions concerning the seven physical health practices, and the National Center for Health Statistic's Health Interview Survey included a Health Practices Supplement. The results indicated a lower level of breakfast eating and more snacking in the USAF compared to other U.S. adults, but the difference may have been due to the relatively younger age distribution in the USAF. Air Force members reported sleeping less, and the females and older persons in both populations reported less physical activity. Air Force females reported drinking more than other females, but there appeared to be less heavy drinking in the USAF. Cigarette smoking in the USAF was slightly higher. The validity of self-reported health practice data is of considerable importance in these studies. However, there is no reason to suspect meaningful differences in reporting between the USAF and US populations.


Since 1998 the growing importance of the Caspian Sea's oil reserves for the international markets has put a new pressure on Georgia's energy transit capacities. One of the new transit facilities – the Kulevi Oil Terminal located on the country's ecologically-sensitive central Black Sea coast - has emerged as a controversial development evoking several cross-cutting environmental policy, economic and political conflicts at the international, national, and local levels. This paper explores and tracks the nature of this multi-level environmental conflict over land-use and reveals it to be a complex product of the interplay between social, political and economic power. From a political ecological perspective it is possible to interpret the controversy over Kulevi as a 'regional' conflict of interests between different land managers. Our analysis discloses the links between these conflicts and their triggers at different spatial scales with a view to articulating an emerging political ecology of oil for Georgia and the Caucasus. The paper reflects on how the threat of economic loss has forced environmentally unfriendly decisions in the region, causing internal problems and a derogation of the reputation of Georgia at the international arena. Several suggestions for resolution are offered, but their success depends on the contribution of the main players in the conflicts and their commitment to fulfill their obligations. Keywords: Georgia, Oil, Kulevi, Political Ecology


How has the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act affected student achievement? This is no idle question, as the landmark federal law is long overdue for reauthorization. The Obama administration has recently urged Congress to add the issue to its already crowded 2010 agenda, even going so far as to include an additional $1 billion for K-12 education in its budget proposal if the law is reauthorized this year (a wholly symbolic gesture, given that it is Congress that sets spending levels, but one that indicates the administration's priorities). Yet heightened attention to NCLB has not produced consensus over its consequences for students. No Child Left Behind was a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the central federal legislation relevant to K-12 schooling. NCLB dramatically expanded the law's scope by requiring that states introduce school-accountability systems that applied to all public schools and students in the state. NCLB requires annual testing of students in reading and mathematics in grades 3 through 8 (and at least once in grades 10 through 12) and that states rate schools, both as a whole and for key subgroups, with regard to whether they are making adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward their state's proficiency goals. Supporters and critics, in their various approaches to discerning NCLB's impact, share a significant problem: because NCLB applies to all public school students, researchers lack a suitable comparison group and so have been unable to distinguish the law's effects from the myriad other factors at work over the past eight years. The new research we present below takes on this challenge. Our basic insight is that the test-based accountability provisions that are the defining characteristic of NCLB did not come from nowhere, but rather were modeled quite closely on reforms adopted by many states in the 1990s. For states with such accountability systems in place before 2002, NCLB's most important components may have created some logistical headaches but were largely irrelevant. In contrast, NCLB forced the remaining slates to enact accountability systems for the first time. We can therefore estimate the impact of NCLB's accountability mandates by comparing test-score changes in states that did not have NCLB-style accountability policies in place when the law was implemented to test-score changes in those that did. We find that the accountability provisions of NCLB generated large and statistically significant increases in the math achievement of 4th graders and that these gains were concentrated among African American and Hispanic students and among students who were eligible for subsidized lunch. We find smaller positive effects on 8th-grade math achievement. These effects are concentrated at lower achievement levels and among students who were eligible for subsidized lunch. We do not, however, find evidence that NCLB accountability had any impact on reading achievement among either 4th or 8th graders. Assessing NCLB The broad interest in understanding whether NCLB has influenced student achievement, both overall and for key subgroups, has motivated careful scrutiny of trend data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and other sources. For example, the authors of a report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) note that achievement trends on both state assessments and NAEP were "positive overall and for key subgroups" through 2005. Using more recent data, a report by the Center on Education Policy concludes that reading and math achievement as measured by state assessments has increased in most states since 2002 and that there have been smaller but similar patterns in NAEP scores. Both reports were careful to stress that these national gains are not necessarily attributable to the effects of NCLB. Other studies have taken a less sanguine view of these achievement gains, arguing that they are misleading because states have made their assessment systems less rigorous over time. …


Heart has to find a safe haven for her beloved unicorns. With Lord Dunraven looking for them -- and Heart's friends aware that helping her will bring Dunraven's anger -- she has nowhere to turn. If only she knew where her family was -- or "who" they were. In a mysterious bundle of paper in Dunraven's castle Heart finds a drawing that looks like the design on her baby blanket. The paper is covered with tiny symbols. If she can find out what they mean will they unlock the secrets of the dreams that have been haunting her?


Dental informatics is an emerging discipline applying computer and information science to dental practice, research, education, and management. To date, the dental informatics research literature has not been comprehensively reviewed. This study reports an initial analysis of the dental informatics literature. We developed an initial, comprehensive retrieval strategy to locate dental informatics citations in MEDLINE (1966–April 2003), including three concepts: dentistry, computers, and research. After refinement of the search, we manually classified the final set into four categories: (1) non-dental; (2) dental, but neither dental informatics nor IT-related; (3) dental informatics; and (4) IT in dentistry. We analyzed informatics and IT-related citations regarding their distribution across journals, growth rate, the number of authors and their publication frequency, and content as expressed by Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). The final set of citations (n = 3872) consisted of: 12% non-dental articles; 59% dental, but not informatics- or IT-related articles; 16% informatics-related articles; and 13% IT-related articles. Informatics-related citations appeared in 176 journals, and IT-related citations in 206 journals. Approximately 50 papers are currently published in both categories yearly. While a great many authors have contributed to this literature, very few have published more than three papers. Main topics of articles included "Imaging and Image Processing", "Computer-aided Diagnosis and Therapy", "Computer-aided Instruction", and "Other". The dental informatics literature is small, but growing. Imaging and image processing predominate as research topics.


In this article we investigate the effect of: 1) the context, and 2) the position of the vectors, on 2D vector addition tasks. We administered a test to 512 students completing introductory physics courses at a private Mexican university. In the first part, we analyze students' responses in three isomorphic problems: displacements, forces, and no physical context. Students were asked to draw two vectors and the vector sum. We analyzed students' procedures detecting the difficulties when drawing the vector addition and proved that the context matters, not only compared to the context‐free case but also between the contexts. In the second part, we analyze students' responses with three different arrangements of the sum of two vectors: tail‐to‐tail, head‐to‐tail and separated vectors. We compared the frequencies of the errors in the three different positions to deduce students' conceptions in the addition of vectors.


AD 71. Germania Libera: dark dripping forests, inhabited by bloodthirsty barbarians and legendary wild beasts, a furious prophetess who terrorises Rome, and the ghostly spirits of slaughtered Roman legionaries. Enter Marcus Didius Falco, an Imperial agent on a special mission: to find the absconding commander of a legion whose loyalty is suspect. Easier said than done, thinks Marcus, as he makes his uneasy way down the Rhenus, trying to forget that back in sunny Rome his girlfriend Helena Justina is being hotly pursued by Titus Caesar. His mood is not improved when he discovers his only allies are a woefully inadequate bunch of recruits, their embittered centurion, a rogue dog, and its innocent young master; just the right kind of support for an agent unwillingly trying to tame the Celtic hordes.


A composite containing cellulose (CEL) and chitosan (CS) synthesized by a simple and recyclable method by using butylmethylimmidazolium chloride, an ionic liquid, was found to exhibit remarkable enantiomeric selectivity toward the adsorption of amino acids. The highest adsorption capacity and enantiomeric selectivity are exhibited by 100% CS. A racemic amino acid can be enantiomerically resolved by 100% CS in about 96-120 h. Interestingly, adsorption by 50:50 CEL/CS is more similar to that by 100% CS than to 100% CEL. Specifically, whereas 100% CEL has the lowest adsorption capacity and enantiomeric selectivity, 50:50 CEL/CS has sufficient enantiomeric selectivity to enable it to be used for chiral resolution. This is significant because in spite of its high enantiomeric selectivity 100% CS cannot practically be used because it has relatively poor mechanical properties and undergoes extensive swelling. Adding 50% CEL to CS substantially improves the mechanical properties and reduces its swelling while it retains sufficient enantiomeric selectivity to enable it to be used for routine chiral separations. The kinetic results indicate that the enantiomerically selective adsorption is due not to the initial surface adsorption but rather to the subsequent stage in which the adsorbate molecules diffuse into the pores within the particles of the composites and consequently are adsorbed by the interior of each particle. The strong intermolecular and intramolecular hydrogen bond network in CEL enables it to adopt a very dense structure that makes it difficult for adsorbate molecules to diffuse into its interior, thereby leading to low enantiomeric selectivity. Compared to hydroxy groups, amino groups cannot form strong hydrogen bonds. The hydrogen bond network in CS is not as extensive as in CEL, and its inner structure is relatively less dense than that of CEL. Adsorbate molecules can, therefore, diffuse from the outer surface to its inner structure relatively more easily than in CEL, thereby leading to higher enantiomeric selectivity for 100% CS.


Older African Americans face substantial barriers to state-of-the-art cancer care. Implementing culturally appropriate support throughout cancer therapy is critical to improving cancer outcomes and quality of life for this vulnerable population. The purpose of this study was to obtain experiential data regarding cancer diagnosis and treatment, and analyze survivors' recommendations regarding treatment-related needs, psychosocial support, and strategies and resources. Four main issues emerged from the study: (a) the need for more health-related and cancer-specific education, (b) the importance of faith and spirituality, (c) the availability of support, and (d) participants' difficulty identifying and articulating financial needs. Few participants reported requesting or receiving assistance (financial or otherwise) outside of the family during their cancer experience. However, treatment-related medication costs posed a significant hardship for many.


A genomic expression library of P.falciparum has been differentially screened with a number of immune sera. The response of 9 clones to the various sera is presented, together with the DNA sequence encoding the epitopes. All but one clone are extremely A+T rich and unlike the other P.falciparum epitopes described, are not composed of amino acid repeats. One clone, which responds specifically with a protective serum, has been analysed in detail. The epitope is carried on a 160kd antigen which is transcribed from a single gene to give a protein expressed in all of the erythrocytic forms. DNA sequence of this clone reveals it to have more than one open reading frame, only one of which is transcribed in the blood stages. The possible significance of the other open readings frames is discussed.


Phytoplankton concentrations display strong temporal variability at different time scales. Recent advances in automated moorings enable detailed investigation of this variability. In this study, we analyzed phytoplankton fluctuations at four automated mooring stations in the North Sea, which measured phytoplankton abundance (chlorophyll) and several environmental variables at a temporal resolution of 12 to 30 minutes for two to nine years. The stations differed in tidal range, water depth and freshwater influence. This allowed comparison of the environmental drivers of phytoplankton variability across different time scales and geographical regions. We analyzed the time series using wavelet analysis, cross correlations and generalized additive models to quantify the response of chlorophyll fluorescence to various environmental variables (tidal and meteorological variables, salinity, suspended particulate matter, nitrate and sea surface temperature). Hour-to-hour and day-to-day fluctuations in chlorophyll fluorescence were substantial, and mainly driven by sinking and vertical mixing of phytoplankton cells, horizontal transport of different water masses, and non-photochemical quenching of the fluorescence signal. At the macro-tidal stations, these short-term phytoplankton fluctuations were strongly driven by the tides. Along the Dutch coast, variation in salinity associated with the freshwater influence of the river Rhine played an important role, while in the central North Sea variation in weather conditions was a major determinant of phytoplankton variability. At time scales of weeks to months, solar irradiance, nutrient conditions and thermal stratification were the dominant drivers of changes in chlorophyll concentrations. These results show that the dominant drivers of phytoplankton fluctuations differ across marine environments and time scales. Moreover, our findings show that phytoplankton variability on hourly to daily time scales should not be dismissed as environmental noise, but is related to vertical and horizontal particle transport driven by winds and tides. Quantification of these transport processes contributes to an improved predictability of marine phytoplankton concentrations. This chapter is based on the paper: Blauw, A.N., Benincà, E., Laane, R.W.P.M., Greenwood, N., Huisman, J., (submitted) Phytoplankton as plant, particle and passive tracer: an analysis of chlorophyll fluctuations across different time scales and regions of the North Sea.


This thesis examined how place is performed in the films There Will Be Blood (2007), No Country for Old Men (2008), and The Tree of Life (2011). The goal of this thesis was to show that these particular films can be understood as composing a category called "topophilic films," in which characters, driven by a strong sense of place, uncover the cultural identity of a place and determine the terms by which they belong or do not belong to it. Such a category can assist filmmakers and critics by comprising a useful framework to place films into broader cultural contexts. Through looking at key scenes selected from the three films, three specific ways in which the characters determine their belonging to place can be extracted. The first is belonging as home: the characters identify with, and feel valued and protected by, the norms of the dominant culture. The second is belonging as ownership: through monetary and personal processes, the characters bypass cultural norms to take possession of objects, and cast out rival possessors. The third way is belonging as the center of cultural norms claimed by the characters, which may or may not reflect the norms of dominant culture and are independent of what the characters do or do not possess. This study could be used by practitioners and film scholars alike to better understand how film characters shape, are shaped by, and dwell within specific cultural contexts engendered by the performance of place.


Peripheral blood is an accessible adult stem cell source for both basic and applied research including clinical applications. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were reported to possess multipotent progenitor cell populations and has the potential to differentiate into blood cells, endothelial cells, hepatocytes, cardiomyogenic cells, smooth muscle cells, osteoblasts and so on. They can be used to predict in vivo toxicity only if independent exposure and pharmacokinetic disposition and metabolism studies are available. In the present study adaptogenic herbs with beneficial properties such as Withania somnifera, Ocimum sanctum, Phyllanthus amarus were tested for inducing proliferative activity on blood derived stem cell population. It was observed that the blood progenitor cells treated with tested herbs were not toxic and there were no significant adverse effects on the livability of cultured cells during the observation period. The extracts of Withania somnifera, Ocimum sanctum, Phyllanthus amarus showed synergistic activity on stimulation of cell proliferation.


Research with Keynesian-style models has emphasized the importance of the output gap for policies aimed at controlling inflation while declaring monetary aggregates largely irrelevant. Critics, however, have argued that these models need to be modified to account for observed money growth and inflation trends, and that monetary trends may serve as a useful cross-check for monetary policy. We identify an important source of monetary trends in form of persistent central bank misperceptions regarding potential output. Simulations with historical output gap estimates indicate that such misperceptions may induce persistent errors in monetary policy and sustained trends in money growth and inflation. If interest rate prescriptions derived from Keynesian-style models are augmented with a cross-check against money-based estimates of trend inflation, inflation control is improved substantially.


M etals have been adopted by biological systems because of their catalytic versatility, but their reactivity can also make them toxic at low concentrations. Hence they are classified as nutrients or poisons. But this is a misleading division, because many enzyme catalysts have reaction centers with diverse and variable metal associates. Such flexibility is useful for organisms living in metal-poor environments that may have to take what they can get, but it is potentially dangerous. Thus, the availability of trace metals may govern an organism's nutritional strategy in a particular environment. This special issue explores the double-edged nature of metal chemistry, how it can be exploited for our benefit, and the consequences if it is not tamed.

![Figure][1]

CREDIT: PHOTODISK

Transition metals, such as iron and copper, with their multiple oxidation states are vital for the cascades of electron transfer reactions that are characteristic of cellular processes. Without iron, life on our planet would be unrecognizable. It is the key to oxygen transport, photosynthesis, nitrogen fixation, and respiration in most modern organisms. How the complexity and organization of these processes originated is a matter of conjecture, but the traces of these beginnings may lie in the modern preponderance of iron-sulfur clusters in key enzymes (Rees and Howard, p. [929][2]). Normal, healthy cells may concentrate high levels of several metals, and to avoid poisoning, metals must be sequestered and transported by specific proteins. Ensuring easy and rapid transfer of such enveloped metals to their target proteins requires unusual coordination chemistry (Finney and O'Halloran, p. 931). Metals in cells are substantially influenced by cell signaling networks [see this week's STKE Focus issue ( )]. For example, nitric oxide affects the regulation of iron metabolism in response to inflammation (Bouton and Drapier in [STKE][3]). Zinc is also emerging as a transynaptic messenger, and zinc-sensitive dyes and imaging techniques have galvanized neurobiology (Li et al. and Frederickson in [STKE][3]).

Complexation in a larger nontoxic molecule is also the key to exploiting metal chemistry for therapeutic purposes (Thompson and Orvig, p. [936][4]). But there is still a fine line between poisoning and salvation. Despite Paul Ehrlich's pioneering use of the arsenic-containing drug salvarsan to treat syphilis, arsenic is now more known for its contamination of borehole water supplies in southern and central Asia. Although those water supplies are no longer contaminated by pathogens, other bacteria capable of metabolizing arsenic appear to be involved in mobilizing the poison into the groundwater (Oremland and Stolz, p. 939). In contrast, the ubiquity of other metals in the environment sometimes makes it hard to discern their impact. For example, manganese is an essential trace element in the human diet, but when inhaled in mines it can trigger psychotic behavior and Parkinson's-like symptoms; it's unclear, however, whether low-dose exposures from car exhausts are harmful (see the News story by Kaiser, p. 926).

In the oceans, metals are vanishingly scarce. Despite this dearth, microscopic plankton are the source of more than half the planet's primary production via metal-driven reactions. To be productive in these metal "deserts," special salvage molecules have to be employed by planktonic organisms, but identifying such agents in the vastness of the open ocean is challenging. In this environment, both microorganisms and scientists are operating at the limits of what is biologically and experimentally feasible (Morel and Price, p. 944). In the world of the "metallome," it is indeed a narrow path between poison and nutrient.

 [1]: pending:yes
 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1083075
 [3]: http://www.stke.org/
 [4]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1083004


The non-ionized form of ammonia is very toxic to many aquatic species. It is especially important in several aspects of fish biology. A large range of organismal strategies for coping with environmental stressors is usually observed in living organisms. Among those, the responses for managing chemical stressors are well studied. The present work compares biochemical responses of two evolutionarily close species, Hoplias malabaricus and Hoplerythrinus unitaeniatus, exposed to environmental ammonia. Adult fish were submitted to 1.0 mg/L of ammonium chloride for 24 hours, and plasma ammonia and urea levels were determined. The activities of OUC enzymes OCT and ARG, and the accessory enzyme GS, were quantified in liver extract and are expressed below in mumol/min/mg of wet tissue. Increases in OUC enzymes (GS from 1.14 to 2.43, OCT from 0.81 to 1.72, and ARG from 3.15 to 4.23), plasma ammonia (from 0.95 to 1.42 mmol/L), and plasma urea (from 0.82 to 1.53 mmol/L) were observed (p < 0.05) in H. malabaricus exposed to 1 mg/L of ammonia chloride. The GS in H. unitaeniatus increased from 1.43 to 1.84, however the OCT, ARG, and plasma urea from H. unitaeniatus did not change. These data indicate that each species responds differently to the same environmental stressor.


Using a model as well as extensive empirical tests, the present paper investigates the effects of a large-scale debt waiver program on the post-waiver debt repayment behavior of borrowers in a typical rural credit market in an emerging economy. In this market the farmers borrow from banks at a subsidized rate and from private moneylenders at a substantially higher rate, debt contract enforcement is imperfect, and political interventions in the credit market in the form of waiver of overdue debt can happen even in normal states of the economy. Our model includes all classes of borrowers: those who receive full debt relief, those who receive partial debt relief, and those who do not benefit at all from the program as they do not have overdue loans. The effects are negative for all groups. In the post-waiver period, all borrowers, behaving strategically, default as well as take longer to repay their loans than in the pre-waiver period, causing ex-post inefficiency in the credit market. Interestingly, the effects are most negative for the formerly good borrowers who did not default before. Expectations about similar debt relief in future coupled with extensions on loan repayment granted by bankers who find debt recovery difficult drive our results. Further, rationally anticipating adverse borrower behavior, the lending institutions ration credit, generating ex ante inefficiency as well. Ironically, access to credit declines for poor households following unconditional debt relief. We confirm the predictions of the model with extensive tests using loan accounts data for a large sample of rural borrowers before and after a nation-wide debt relief program undertaken by the Indian government in 2008, one of the largest such programs in history.


Achieving full compliance with the accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal legislation poses major challenges for most of the nation's states. Structured, open-ended interviews were conducted with ranking representatives from a number of so-called high-readiness states: California, Florida, New York, South Carolina, and Texas. (Collectively, these states enroll over 16 million children, or approximately 35 percent of the nation's total school-attending population.) Most policy makers are reportedly confident their respective state school systems are able to meet NCLB standards. Yet while each state's situation is unique, limited resources coupled with dramatically increased expectations for public schools may spell trouble ahead. Lessons learned so far by several states as they engage the NCLB mandate are discussed and analyzed. Ultimately, patience and flexibility on the part of federal officials, it is argued, will be critical to the long-term success of the No Child Left Behind reform initiative.


Over forty-four million Americans owe more than $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. This debt is nearly impossible to discharge in bankruptcy. Attempting to do so may require costly and contentious litigation with the Department of Education. And because the Department typically fights every case, even initial success can be followed by years of appeals. As a result, few student loan borrowers attempt to discharge their student loan debt in bankruptcy.

In this Article, we call on the Department of Education to develop a set of ten easily ascertainable and verifiable circumstances in which it will not contest a debtor's attempt to discharge their student loan debt. Nearly every category of no-contest discharge we recommend represents a circumstance where the debtor would clearly suffer an undue hardship if forced to continue to attempt repayment. In those circumstances, the Department of Education should conserve taxpayer dollars by consenting to discharge. Specifically, we urge the Department of Education to allow a no-contest discharge when the debtor's income is less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level and at least one of the following:

(1) the debtor's household income has been at or below the federal poverty level for the last four years;
(2) the debtor receives disability benefits under the Social Security Act;
(3) the debtor receives disability benefits because of military service;
(4) the debtor's income is derived solely from retirement benefits;
(5) the debtor is a caregiver of an adult or child as defined in the Lifetime Respite Care Act;
(6) the debtor is a family caregiver of an eligible veteran;
(7) the debtor did not receive a degree from the institution, or the institution closed;
(8) the debtor's student loan balance is less than $5,000;
(9) the debtor made at least three hundred monthly payments (twenty-five years' worth) towards their student loans, regardless of whether those payments were made continuously; or
(10) the debtor is over the age of sixty-seven.

Our proposal will not solve every problem, but it would go a long way toward resolving many of the grosser inequities currently associated with student loans and their treatment in bankruptcy.


The present opinion has the format of a risk profile and presents potential biological and chemical hazards as well as allergenicity and environmental hazards associated with farmed insects used as food and feed taking into account of the entire chain, from farming to the final product. The opinion also addresses the occurrence of these hazards in non-processed insects, grown on different substrate categories, in comparison to the occurrence of these hazards in other non-processed sources of protein of animal origin. When currently allowed feed materials are used as substrate to feed insects, the possible occurrence of microbiological hazards is expected to be comparable to their occurrence in other non-processed sources of protein of animal origin. The possible occurrence of prions in non-processed insects will depend on whether the substrate includes protein of human or ruminant origin. Data on transfer of chemical contaminants from different substrates to the insects are very limited. Substrates like kitchen waste, human and animal manure are also considered and hazards from insects fed on these substrates need to be specifically assessed. It is concluded that for both biological and chemical hazards, the specific production methods, the substrate used, the stage of harvest, the insect species and developmental stage, as well as the methods for further processing will all have an impact on the occurrence and levels of biological and chemical contaminants in food and feed products derived from insects. Hazards related to the environment are expected to be comparable to other animal production systems. The opinion also identifies the uncertainties (lack of knowledge) related to possible hazards when insects are used as food and feed and notes that there are no systematically collected data on animal and human consumption of insects. Studies on the occurrence of microbial pathogens of vertebrates as well as published data on hazardous chemicals in reared insects are scarce. Further data generation on these issues are highly recommended.


Interaction of effluent dissolved organic matter (DOM) with native soil organic matter (OM), B complexation with DOM, and adsorption of B by soil all play an important role in assessing B transport in soil. However, no information is available yet on the impact of these reactions on B mobility in soil. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effect of B-DOM complexation on B mobility in soils irrigated with treated effluents. Soil column displacement experiments were conducted to measure the B mobility in the presence of DOM extracted from municipal treated sewage plants. To describe B transport in the presence of DOM, a traditional multicomponent transport model was used. The model took into account the B-DOM-soil reactions (obtained from batch experiments). It was observed that the presence of OM molecules in soil solution enhanced B transport in soil due to B-OM complexation. The concentration of this complex in soil solution increases with the concentration of the dissolved OM (from both effluent and native soil).The model simulated well the effect of DOM on B transport in soil.


We introduce a hierarchical partitioning scheme of the Euclidean plane, called circular partitions. Such a partition consists of a hierarchy of convex polygons, each having small aspect ratio, and satisfying specified volume constraints. We apply these partitions to obtain a natural extension of the popular Treemap visualization method. Our proposed algorithm is not constrained in using only rectangles, and can achieve provably better guarantees on the aspect ratio of the constructed polygons.
 Under relaxed conditions, we can also construct circular partitions in higher-dimensional spaces. We use these relaxed partitions to obtain improved approximation algorithms for embedding ultrametrics into d-dimensional Euclidean space. In particular, we give a polylog(Delta)-approximation algorithm for embedding n-point ultrametrics into R^d with minimum distortion (Delta denotes the spread of the metric). The previously best-known approximation ratio for this problem was polynomial in n [Badoiu et al. SoCG 2006]. This is the first algorithm for embedding a non-trivial family of weighted graph metrics into a space of constant dimension that achieves polylogarithmic approximation ratio.


Time series of laser glint counts from the ocean surface exhibit fractal behavior. Glint-count histogram widths do not follow Gaussian statistics, and histogram shapes are approximately log normal. Fractal dimensions for the statistically self-similar glint-count time series are found from the power spectra, which have an inverse power-law form. Glint counts in one spatial dimension from a linearly scanning laser and glint counts in two spatial dimensions from a laser glint imager behave similarly. In both sets of data, spectral density peaks exist at frequencies corresponding to swell and long wind waves. This implies that the glint-count process contains information related to long-wave modulation of surface roughness.


Geobotanical research, realized to support the elaboration of the Park Naturalistic Plan, is presented. Synphytosociological and geosynphytosociological studies have highlighted the dynamic models of botanical landscape and the soil/plant relationship. The integrated study of the landscape allowed to carry out the Vegetation Map and the Landscape Units Map in which it is possible to identify 6 landscape ecological units, deriving from a whole of vegetation series. The integration of this map with the Soils Map will allow to define some multidimensional landscape units to which correspond sets of ecosystems which are related each other through some mechanism. The knowledge of these mechanism could steer us into a most rational management of the territory.


Ultrafast (femtosecond pulse) laser irradiation provides unique laser-material interactions associated with high instantaneous electric fields and short timescales that lead to a nonequilibrium state between excited electrons and phonons. These interactions result in material modifications that differ from conventional chemical, physical, and thermal processing at much longer timescales, and an opportunity to address material and device processing challenges associated with wide-bandgap materials such as Ga2O3. In this work, we explore ultrafast laser irradiation (Ti:sapphire, 150 fs pulse width) of bulk (010) Sn-doped β-Ga2O3 under two different wavelengths, fundamental (780 nm) and frequency-doubled (390 nm), and a range of laser fluences. We identified a regime for laser-induced damage threshold resulting in material ablation, thermally-induced straight crack formation, and recrystallization. Rastering on a β-Ga2O3 substrate created surface nanostructures including laser-induced periodic surface structures at a high spatial frequency (period ~250 nm). These highly aligned periodic structures can be controlled by laser polarization and wavelength, presenting a means for direct writing of surface nanostructures. Enhanced atomic movement associated with a transient metallic state can provide a means for intentional generation of point defects via the laser irradiation. These point defects may offer a means of electrical modification, which was demonstrated as more than five orders of the magnitude enhancement of lateral conductance on rastered β-Ga2O3. Moreover, a hydrophobic surface of β-Ga2O3was achieved by ultrafast laser irradiation.


The neuronal activity in the primary somatosensory cortex was collected when monkeys performed a haptic–haptic DMS task. We found that, in trials with correct task performance, a substantial number of cells showed significant differential neural activity only when the monkeys had to make a choice between two different haptic objects. Such a difference in neural activity was significantly reduced in incorrect response trials. However, very few cells showed the choice-only differential neural activity in monkeys who performed a control task that was identical to the haptic–haptic task but did not require the animal to either actively memorize the sample or make a choice between two objects at the end of a trial. From these results, we infer that the differential activity recorded from cells in the primary somatosensory cortex in correct performance reflects the neural process of behavioral choice, and therefore, it is a neural correlate of decision-making when the animal has to make a haptic choice.


To the dismay of many commentators – who had hoped the world was evolving into a more tolerant and multicultural community of nations united under the umbrellas of supranational movements like the European Union – the nationalism that was such a potent force in the history of the 20th-century has made a comeback in recent years. Now, more than ever, it seems important to understand what it is, how it works, and why it is so attractive to so many people. A fine place to start any such exploration is with Ernest Gellner's seminal Nations and Nationalism, a ground-breaking study that was the first to flesh out the counter-intuitive – but enormously influential – thesis that modern nationalism has little if anything in common with oldfashioned patriotism or loyalty to one's homeland. Gellner's intensely creative thesis is that the nationalism we know today is actually the product of the 19th-century industrial revolution, which radically reshaped ancient communities, encouraging emigration to cities at the same time as it improved literacy rates and introduced mass education. Gellner connected these three elements in an entirely new way, contrasting developments to the structures of pre-industrial agrarian economies to show why the new nationalism could not have been born in such communities. He was also successful in generating a typology of nationalisms in an attempt to explain why some forms flourished while others fizzled out. His remarkable ability to produce novel explanations for existing evidence marks out Nations and Nationalism as one of the most radical, stimulating – and enduringly influential – works of its day.


The effective extinction law (attenuation behavior) in galaxies in the emitted ultraviolet (UV) regime is well known only for actively star-forming objects and combines effects of the grain properties, fine structure in the dust distribution, and relative distributions of stars and dust. We use Galaxy Evolution Explorer, XMM Optical Monitor, and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data to explore the UV attenuation in the outer parts of spiral disks which are backlit by other UV-bright galaxies, starting with the candidate list of pairs provided by Galaxy Zoo participants. New optical images help to constrain the geometry and structure of the target galaxies. Our analysis incorporates galaxy symmetry, using non-overlapping regions of each galaxy to derive error estimates on the attenuation measurements. The entire sample has an attenuation law across the optical and UV that is close to the Calzetti et al. form; the UV slope for the overall sample is substantially shallower than found by Wild et al., which is a reasonable match to the more distant galaxies in our sample but not to the weighted combination including NGC 2207. The nearby, bright spiral NGC 2207 alone gives an accuracy almost equal to the rest of our sample, and its outer arms have a very low level of foreground starlight. Thus, this widespread, fairly "gray" law can be produced from the distribution of dust alone, without a necessary contribution from differential escape of stars from dense clouds. Our results indicate that the extrapolation needed to compare attenuation between backlit galaxies at moderate redshifts from HST data, and local systems from Sloan Digital Sky Survey and similar data, is mild enough to allow the use of galaxy overlaps to trace the cosmic history of dust in galaxies. For NGC 2207, HST data in the near-UV F336W band show that the covering factor of clouds with small optical attenuation becomes a dominant factor farther into the UV, which opens the possibility that widespread diffuse dust dominates over dust in star-forming regions deep into the UV. Comparison with published radiative-transfer models indicates that the role of dust clumping dominates over differences in grain populations at this coarse spatial resolution.


Chemical cross-linking coupled to mass spectrometry is a powerful tool to study protein-protein interactions and protein conformations. Two linked peptides are ionized and fragmented to produce a tandem mass spectrum. In such an experiment, a tandem mass spectrum contains ions from two peptides. The peptide identification problem becomes a peptide-peptide pair identification problem. Currently, most tools do not search all possible pairs due to the quadratic time complexity. Consequently, missed findings are unavoidable. In our previous work, we developed a tool named ECL to search all pairs of peptides exhaustively. Unfortunately, it is very slow due to the quadratic computational complexity, especially when the database is large. Furthermore, ECL uses a score function without statistical calibration, while researchers1-3 have proposed that it is inappropriate to directly compare uncalibrated scores because different spectra have different random score distributions. Here we propose an advanced version of ECL, named ECL2. It achieves a linear time and space complexity by taking advantage of the additive property of a score function. It can search a data set containing tens of thousands of spectra against a database containing thousands of proteins in a few hours. Comparison with other five state-of-the-art tools shows that ECL2 is much faster than pLink, StavroX, ProteinProspector, and ECL. Kojak is the only one that is faster than ECL2, but Kojak does not exhaustively search all possible peptide pairs. The comparison shows that ECL2 has the highest sensitivity among the state-of-the-art tools. The experiment using a large-scale in vivo cross-linking data set demonstrates that ECL2 is the only tool that can find the peptide-spectrum matches (PSMs) passing the false discovery rate/q-value threshold. The result illustrates that the exhaustive search and a well-calibrated score function are useful to find PSMs from a huge search space.


Objective. The objective of the present study was to compare 2 different computer-assisted analysis systems with respect to the measurement of interproximal bone loss on radiographs. Study Design. In 14 patients with untreated advanced periodontal disease, 90 standardized radiographs were taken presurgically and during postoperative follow-up. During periodontal surgery for 30 vertical bone defects and 28 adjacent sites (22 vertical, 3 horizontal, and 3 without bone loss), the distances from the cementoenamel junction (CEJ) to the alveolar crest (AC) and from the CEJ to the bottom of bony defect (BD) were measured. In all radiographs, the linear distances from the CEJ to the AC and from the CEJ to BD were assessed by using 2 computer-assisted analysis devices: linear measurement (LMSRT) and FRIACOM (FRIADENT, Mannheim, Germany). A comparison between the radiographic and intrasurgical assessments was performed by using the paired t test. Results. With respect to the linear distance from the CEJ to the BD, the study failed to detect statistically significant differences between the computer-assisted techniques and intrasurgical measurement as the gold standard (LMSRT,: 0.26 +/- 2.16 mm [P >.05]; FRIACOM, 0.35 +/- 2.5 mm [P >.05]). In terms of the distance from the CEJ to the BD and from the CEJ to the AC, the correlation between both computer-assisted methods was excellent (r(s) > or = 0.75) and there were no statistically significant differences detectable between LMSRT and FRIACOM for both distances. With regard to the distance from the CEJ to the AC, both techniques overestimated interproximal bone loss as compared with intrasurgical measurements (CEJ-AC, LMSRT: 1.63 +/- 2.52 mm [P <.01]; FRIACOM: 2.00 +/- 2.48 mm [P <.01]). The amount of overestimation of interproximal bone loss did not differ significantly in either computer-assisted technique (P >.05). For double measurements, both LMSRT and FRIACOM showed excellent reproducibility with coefficients of variation that ranged between 3.8% and 4.5% (CEJ-BD) and between 5.7% and 6.6% (CEJ-AC). There were no statistically significant differences between the reproducibilities of both computer-assisted techniques (P <.05). Conclusions. Both LMSRT and FRIACOM are reproducible methods to measure the distances from the CEJ to the BD and from the CEJ to the AC on radiographs and can be recommended for clinical use. With respect to the distance from the CEJ to the AC, it must be kept in mind that both computer-assisted methods tend to overestimate the real distance on an average of 1.5 to 2.0 mm.


Recently, we have witnessed an increasing use of the sourcefilter model in music analysis, which is achieved by integrating the source filter model into a non-negative matrix factorisation (NMF) framework or statistical models. The combination of the source-filter model and NMF framework reduces the number of free parameters needed and makes the model more flexible to extend. This paper compares four extended source-filter models: the source-filter-decay (SFD) model, the NMF with timefrequency activations (NMF-ARMA) model, the multi-excitation (ME) model and the source-filter model based on -divergence (SFbeta model). The first two models represent the time-varying spectra by adding a loss filter and a time-varying filter, respectively. The latter two are extended by using multiple excitations and including a scale factor, respectively. The models are tested using sounds of 15 instruments from the RWC Music Database. Performance is evaluated based on the relative reconstruction error. The results show that the NMF-ARMA model outperforms other models, but uses the largest set of parameters.


Water polo is an aquatic team sport that requires endurance, strength, power, swimming speed, agility, tactical awareness, and specific technical skills, including ball control. Unlike other team sports, few researchers have examined the nutritional habits of water polo athletes or potential dietary strategies that improve performance in water polo match play. Water polo players are typically well muscled, taller athletes; female players display higher levels of adiposity compared with their male counterparts. Positional differences exist: Center players are heavier and have higher body fat levels compared with perimeter players. Knowledge of the physical differences that exist among water polo players offers the advantage of player identification as well as individualizing nutrition strategies to optimize desired physique goals. Individual dietary counseling is warranted to ensure dietary adequacy, and in cases of physique manipulation. Performance in games and during quality workouts is likely to improve by adopting strategies that promote high carbohydrate availability, although research specific to water polo is lacking. A planned approach incorporating strategies to facilitate muscle glycogen refueling and muscle protein synthesis should be implemented following intensified training sessions and matches, particularly when short recovery times are scheduled. Although sweat losses of water polo players are less than what is reported for land-based athletes, specific knowledge allows for appropriate planning of carbohydrate intake strategies for match play and training. Postgame strategies to manage alcohol intake should be developed with input from the senior player group to minimize the negative consequences on recovery and player welfare.


Political scientists are only now beginning to come to terms with the importance of the Internet to politics. The most promising way to study the Internet is to look at the role that causal mechanisms such as the lowering of transaction costs, homophilous sorting, and preference falsification play in intermediating between specific aspects of the Internet and political outcomes. This will allow scholars to disentangle the relevant causal relationships and contribute to important present debates over whether the Internet exacerbates polarization in the United States, and whether social media helped pave the way toward the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011. Over time, ever fewer political scientists are likely to study the Internet as such, as it becomes more and more a part of everyday political life. However, integrating the Internet's effects with present debates over politics, and taking proper advantage of the extraordinary data that it can provide, requires good causal arguments and attention to their und...


extract] Until WCP Limited v Gambotto & Anor it appeared that, subject to certain changes specifically set out in the Corporations Law, and in the absence of some type of special circumstances, it was not possible for the majority to change the articles in order to compulsorily acquire the shares of a minority shareholder. However, the Gambotto decision has tipped the balance in favour of the majority shareholders. This paper examines Gambotto, both at first instance and on appeal, in relation to the 'bona fide for the benefit of the company as a whole' doctrine and the ability of the majority to alter the articles to force a compulsory acquisition of the shares of a minority shareholder.


Background: Decrease in Glomerular Filtration Rate occurs with advancing age. Average age of diagnosis of   CKD in Nigeria is below 45 years of age and male gender has been shown to be a risk factor for worsening CKD. . The influence of age and gender on prevalence of anaemia in CKD differs across the world, thus this study aims to determine the prevalence of anaemia and to evaluate associations between age, gender and anaemia in patients with CKD.
Method: This was a cross-sectional descriptive study of patients with CKD. Age, gender, primary renal disease, stage of CKD and associated clinical conditions as well as blood samples of study subjects were analyzed for complete blood counts, creatinine, and Ferritin levels.
Results: Mean age of the participants was 45.8±14.6 years with 59.3% diagnosed at or greater than 45 years of age, male-to-female ratio 1:1.2. Mean haemoglobin concentration (Hb) was 11.0±2.8g/dl, red cell indices were normal. Prevalence of anaemia was 61.5%, and it was very common among both genders; 74.7% of males and 62.0% of females.  Mean serum ferritin and RDW-CV were 70.57±46.43ng/ml and 16.29±3.70 % respectively. Chi Square for trend for age at diagnosis and worsening stage of CKD was statistically significant (χ2 = 4.387, df=4, p=0.036). Similarly, a statistically significant trend was observed between the degree of anaemia and stage of CKD (χ2= 11.888, df=4, p=0.001).
Conclusion: There is a high prevalence of anaemia among CKD patients and the burden is relatively higher in the male gender at and or above 45 years of age.


The presence of noise and small scale structures usually leads to large kernel estimation errors in blind image deblurring empirically, if not a total failure. We present a scale space perspective on blind deblurring algorithms, and introduce a cascaded scale space formulation for blind deblurring. This new formulation suggests a natural approach robust to noise and small scale structures through tying the estimation across multiple scales and balancing the contributions of different scales automatically by learning from data. The proposed formulation also allows to handle non-uniform blur with a straightforward extension. Experiments are conducted on both benchmark dataset and real-world images to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. One surprising finding based on our approach is that blur kernel estimation is not necessarily best at the finest scale.


We propose the Wasserstein Auto-Encoder (WAE)---a new algorithm for building a generative model of the data distribution. WAE minimizes a penalized form of the Wasserstein distance between the model distribution and the target distribution, which leads to a different regularizer than the one used by the Variational Auto-Encoder (VAE). This regularizer encourages the encoded training distribution to match the prior. We compare our algorithm with several other techniques and show that it is a generalization of adversarial auto-encoders (AAE). Our experiments show that WAE shares many of the properties of VAEs (stable training, encoder-decoder architecture, nice latent manifold structure) while generating samples of better quality, as measured by the FID score.


Urban development is rapidly expanding across the globe and is a major driver of environmental change. It is important to understand how bird species responds to urbanization. Therefore I conducted a qualitative study of birds associated with waste sites such as dumpsite and sewage stabilization ponds was carried out on Moshi municipal. The study assessed the diversity between dumpsite and sewage stabilization ponds using the "Timed species count" method. A total of 15 bird families and 17 species were recorded at both sites. 13 species in 12 bird families at dumpsite and 14 species in 13 bird families at sewage stabilization pond were recorded respectively. There was significant difference in species diversity within the two sites (p<0.05) because of good breeding sites at sewage stabilization ponds which include a wide variety of resources, high productivity and moderate levels of disturbance compared to dumpsite. This study was carried out to enhance conservation awareness. These site serve as biodiversity reservoirs, urban planners should involve interdisciplinary team to make decisions from an ecological perspective when designing urban areas. From this micro-survey It is worth concluding that waste stabilization ponds contains number of resource that attracts bird's species, as birds are bio indicators of ecosystem health.


This dissertation examines the socio-politics of urban performance and ceremonial imagery in the nascent independent communes of late medieval Lazio. It explores the complex manner in which these central Italian cities both emulated and rejected the political and cultural hegemony of Rome through the ideological and performative reinvention of its cult icons. In the twelfth century the powerful urban center of Tivoli adopted Rome's grandest annual public event, the nocturnal Assumption procession of August 14-15, and transformed it into a potent civic expression that incorporated all sectors of the social fabric. Tivoli's cult of the Trittico del Salvatore and the Inchinata procession in which the icon of the enthroned Christ was carried at the feast of the Assumption and made to perform in symbolic liturgical ceremonies were both modeled on Roman, papal exemplars. The Tiburtine procession, however, became a ritual communal act and its Savior icon an apotropaic palladium that protected the city from spiritual and material dangers. Rather than a mere imitation of Roman practices, the Inchinata was a unique, site-specific rite that preserved communal memory and constructed new religious and social narratives. The sacred geography of the procession drew all of the city's most strategic religious, defensive, and historical monuments into a self-referential spatial and ritual matrix that sacralized the city's defensive structures, invoked its protector saints, and celebrated its sacred history and local mythology. Through this ritual, Tivoli, a perennial military rival of Rome, "branded" itself as a formidable political and cultural rival as well. I contextualize this tradition by examining a spectrum of analogous cases in Lazio where other late medieval processional "copies" of Rome's Acheropita icon were in reality powerful local symbols of communal identity and indices of an evolving civic self-awareness. My treatment of this phenomenon addresses fundamental underlying questions about the origins of religious drama and the evolution of urban culture in a transformative period for the Italian city, a period characterized by fierce political ambition, rapid secularization, and artistic innovation.


Long read sequencing technology has allowed researchers to create de novo assemblies with impressive continuity[1,2]. This advancement has dramatically increased the number of reference genomes available and hints at the possibility of a future where personal genomes are assembled rather than resequenced. In 2016 Pacific Biosciences released the FALCON-Unzip framework, which can provide long, phased haplotype contigs from de novo assemblies. This phased genome algorithm enhances the accuracy of highly heterozygous organisms and allows researchers to explore questions that require haplotype information such as allele-specific expression and regulation. However, validation of this technique has been limited to small genomes or inbred individuals[3]. As a roadmap to personal genome assembly and phasing, we assess the phasing accuracy of FALCON-Unzip in humans using publicly available data for the Ashkenazi trio from the Genome in a Bottle Consortium[4]. To assess the accuracy of the Unzip algorithm, we assembled the genome of the son using FALCON and FALCON Unzip, genotyped publicly available short read data for the mother and the father, and observed the inheritance pattern of the parental SNPs along the phased genome of the son. We found that 72.8% of haplotype contigs share SNPs with only one parent suggesting that these contigs are correctly phased. Most mis-phased SNPs are random but present in high frequency toward the end of haplotype contigs. Approximately 20.7% of mis-phased haplotype contigs contain clusters of mis-phased SNPs, suggesting that haplotypes were mis-joined by FALCON-Unzip. Mis-joined boundaries in those contigs are located in areas of low SNP density. This research demonstrates that the FALCON-Unzip algorithm can be used to create long and accurate haplotypes for humans and identifies problematic regions that could benefit in future improvement.


Decapod crustaceans such as Callinectes sapidus, the blue crab, provide a unique opportunity to study proteins involved in biomineralization. Subsequent to each molt, the majority of the exoskeleton (e.g. dorsal carapace) calcifies while morphologically similar cuticle at the joints (arthrodial membrane) remains uncalcified. Several proteins from both types of cuticle contain the chitin-binding Rebers-Riddiford (RR) consensus sequence, Gx8Gx7YxAxExGYx7Px2P. This study obtained sequence and expression data for four transcripts containing the RR consensus sequence from hypodermal tissue of C. sapidus. Expression analyses using Northern blots and quantitative PCR revealed that two of the transcripts, CsAMP8.1 and CsAMP6.0, are found only in arthrodial membrane and expressed uniformly both before and after the molt. Analyses of the remaining two transcripts, CsCP8.5 and CsCP8.2, revealed that both are expressed solely in pre-molt carapace, indicating possible involvement in the postmolt mineralization of the pre-exuvial cuticle. NCBI BLAST results for CsAMP8.1 and CsAMP6.0 identified sequence homology with proteins containing the RR consensus sequence found in the uncalcified membranes of Cancer pagarus, Penaeus japonicus, and Homarus americanus. NCBI BLAST results for CSCP8.5 and CSCP8.2 identified sequence homology with calcification-associated peptides containing the RR consensus sequence obtained from the calcified cuticle of Procambarus clarkii. These results add C. sapidus to the list of arthropods containing cuticular proteins with the characteristic RR consensus sequence. The differential expression of these four genes is consistent with the hypothesis that RR-containing proteins play an important role in regulating calcification.


Efficient drive cycle simulation of longitudinal vehicle propulsion models is an important aid for design and analysis of power trains. Tools on the market today mainly use two different methods for such simulations, forward dynamic or quasi-static inverse simulation. Here known theory for stable inversion of non linear systems is used in order to combine the fast simulation times of the quasi-static inverse simulation with the ability of including transient dynamics as in the forward dynamic simulation. The stable inversion technique with a new implicit driver model together forms a new concept, inverse dynamic simulation. This technique is demonstrated feasible for vehicle propulsion simulation and specifically on three powertrain applications that include important dynamics that can not be handled using quasi-static inverse simulation. The extensions are engine dynamics, drive line dynamics, and gas flow dynamics for diesel engines, which also are selected to represent important properties such as zero dynamics, resonances, and non-minimum phase systems. It is shown that inverse dynamic simulation is easy to set up, gives short simulation times, and gives consistent results for design space exploration. This makes inverse dynamic simulation a suitable method to use for drive cycle simulation, especially in situations requiring many simulations, such as optimization over design space, powertrain configuration optimization, or development of powertrain control strategies. Optimal vehicle propulsion control is developed with special focus on heavy trucks used for long haulage. The power to mass ratio for a typical heavy duty truck makes even moderate road slopes significant in the sense that it is impossible to keep a constant cruising speed. This gives an interesting problem how to control vehicle speed such that fuel consumption is minimized. Todays telematic systems together with three dimensional roadmaps can provide the vehicle control system with information of the road topography. This enables intelligent cruise controllers that utilize this information to control engine fueling and gear shifting such that an optimal speed trajectory is obtained. First the optimal control problem is solved numerically by dynamic programming, giving a controller with real time capabilities that can be used on-line in the vehicles control system. Simulations of such a system on authentic road profiles show that it has potential for significant fuel savings. To achieve knowledge about the underlying physics that affects the optimal solution, the optimal control problem is solved in detail and analytical expressions for the conditions of optimality are derived. Those expressions are then used to find optimal solutions on constructed test road profiles. Such test cases point out the typical behavior of an optimal solution and also which parameters that are decisive for the fuel minimization problem, and also how they quantitatively influence the behavior. It is for example shown that small non-linearities in the engine torque characteristics have significant effect on the optimal control strategy. The solutions for the non linear engine model have a smoother character but also require longer prediction horizons. For optimal gear ratio control it is shown that the maximum fueling function is essential for the solution. For example, in the case of a continuously variable transmission it is shown that the gear ratio never is chosen such that engine speed exceeds the speed of maximum engine power. For a discrete step transmission the gear shifting losses are essential for the optimal shift positions, but over all the solutions are close to continuous solutions.


Donald M. Robertson III A study of the creation of a pupil assistance committee improvement plan that facilitates an effective committee by utilizing a collaborative leadership approach. 2003/2004 Dr. Dennis Hurley School Administration The Pupil Assistance Committee (PAC) was created by New Jersey's Department of Education to assist educators in identifying and implementing instructional strategies that would best address the needs of struggling students. PAC committees throughout the State face increased referral rates and limited program options, making for a frustrating situation. The Pupil Assistance Committee of the Dr. Joyanne D. Miller Elementary School is faced with these same problems. To reduce the feelings of frustration among the committee members and increase committee effectiveness a review of PAC procedures must take place and a renewed focus of PAC goals must be facilitated. A transformational leadership approach was used to best utilize the individual member's strengths in the review process and promote a positive reaction from committee members. The project resulted in an improved PAC committee by utilizing surveys and intern observation of the PAC committee. In considering staff input the committee addressed staff concerns and solicited faculty involvement in the PAC process.


Flying insects and birds are able to fly smartly in an unpredictable environment. Many animals have been found to rely mainly on optic flow. Optic flow can be defined as the vector field of the apparent motion of objects, surfaces, and edges in a visual scene generated by the relative motion between an observer (an eye or a camera) and the scene. Optic flow is particularly interesting for short-range navigation because it depends on the ratio between (i) the relative linear speed of the visual scene with respect to the observer and (ii) the distance of the observer from obstacles in the surrounding environment, this does not require any measurement of either speed or distance. Optic flow is therefore suitable for various navigational tasks such as: takeoff or landing along vertical or longitudinal axes, terrain following, speed control in a cluttered environment, lateral and frontal obstacle avoidance and visual odometry. Our survey focuses on feedback-loops which use optic flow to control robots in the same way as the Gibsonian approach which sometimes enhances robot perception, by a distance or speed measurement, even though the direct measurement of distance or linear speed does not exist in flying insects and birds. Optic flow is likely to be one of the most important visual cues that could be used during the next decade to enhance robot reactivity in unpredictable environments. Conversely, the biorobotic approach can therefore help to better understand how flying animals can move smartly in such an environment.


Abstract : A method is presented for sub-pixel mapping and classification in hyperspectral imagery, using learned blockstructured discriminative dictionaries, where each block is adapted and optimized to represent a material in a compact and sparse manner. The spectral pixels are modeled by linear combinations of subspaces defined by the learned dictionary atoms, allowing for linear mixture analysis. This model provides flexibility in the sources representation and selection, thus accounting for spectral variability, small-magnitude errors, and noise. A spatial-spectral coherence regularizer in the optimization allows for pixels classification to be influenced by similar neighbors. We extend the proposed approach for cases for which there is no knowledge of the materials in the scene, unsupervised classification and provide experiments and comparisons with simulated and real data. We also present results when the data have been significantly under-sampled and then reconstructed, still retaining high-performance classification, showing the potential role of compressive sensing and sparse modeling techniques in efficient acquisition/transmission missions for hyperspectral imagery.


Three experiments were conducted to elucidate the alleviation effects of Mycofix plus 3.0 on Newcastle antibody formation during aflatoxicosis in broiler chickens. Three levels of Mycofix (0.05%, 0.15%, and 0.25%) and aflatoxin (2.5ppm, 3.5ppm, and 5ppm) were used. Chickens were vaccinated at 8 and 18 days of age. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and Haemagglutination inhibition tests were employed for determination Newcastle antibody titers at 28 days. The results showed that, Mycofix , and only at its high level of addition (0.25%) was effective in ameliorating the negative effect of aflatoxin at the rates 2.5ppm and 3.5 ppm levels of inclusion on antibody production but not at the high level of 5ppm on antibody production, comparing with titers in control groups.


CONTEXT
Concern exists that current guidelines for care of patients with severe sepsis and septic shock are followed variably, possibly due to a lack of adequate education.

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether a national educational program based on the Surviving Sepsis Campaign guidelines affected processes of care and hospital mortality for severe sepsis.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS
Before and after design in 59 medical-surgical intensive care units (ICUs) located throughout Spain. All ICU patients were screened daily and enrolled if they fulfilled severe sepsis or septic shock criteria. A total of 854 patients were enrolled in the preintervention period (November-December 2005), 1465 patients during the postintervention period (March-June 2006), and 247 patients during the long-term follow-up period 1 year later (November-December 2006) in a subset of 23 ICUs.

INTERVENTION
The educational program consisted of training physicians and nursing staff from the emergency department, wards, and ICU in the definition, recognition, and treatment of severe sepsis and septic shock as outlined in the guidelines. Treatment was organized in 2 bundles: a resuscitation bundle (6 tasks to begin immediately and be accomplished within 6 hours) and a management bundle (4 tasks to be completed within 24 hours).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Hospital mortality, differences in adherence to the bundles' process-of-care variables, ICU mortality, 28-day mortality, hospital length of stay, and ICU length of stay.

RESULTS
Patients included before and after the intervention were similar in terms of age, sex, and Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II score. At baseline, only 3 process-of-care measurements (blood cultures before antibiotics, early administration of broad-spectrum antibiotics, and mechanical ventilation with adequate inspiratory plateau pressure) we had compliance rates higher than 50%. Patients in the postintervention cohort had a lower risk of hospital mortality (44.0% vs 39.7%; P = .04). The compliance with process-of-care variables also improved after the intervention in the sepsis resuscitation bundle (5.3% [95% confidence interval [CI], 4%-7%] vs 10.0% [95% CI, 8%-12%]; P < .001) and in the sepsis management bundle (10.9% [95% CI, 9%-13%] vs 15.7% [95% CI, 14%-18%]; P = .001). Hospital length of stay and ICU length of stay did not change after the intervention. During long-term follow-up, compliance with the sepsis resuscitation bundle returned to baseline but compliance with the sepsis management bundle and mortality remained stable with respect to the postintervention period.

CONCLUSIONS
A national educational effort to promote bundles of care for severe sepsis and septic shock was associated with improved guideline compliance and lower hospital mortality. However, compliance rates were still low, and the improvement in the resuscitation bundle lapsed by 1 year.


At the dawn of the twenty-first century, three ideas dominate the world: peace as the preferred basis for relations between and among different countries, democracy as the optimal way to organize political life, and free markets as the indispensable vehicle for the creation of wealth. While not practiced everywhere, these ideas have--for the first time in history--no serious rivals. And although the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were terrible and traumatic, they did not "change everything," as so many commentators have asserted. Instead, these events served to illuminate even more brightly the world that emerged from the end of the Cold War. In The Ideas That Conquered the World, Michael Mandelbaum describes the uneven spread (over the past two centuries) of peace, democracy, and free markets from the wealthy and powerful countries of the world's core, where they originated, to the weaker and poorer countries of its periphery. And he assesses the prospects for these ideas in the years to come, giving particular attention to the United States, which bears the greatest responsibility for protecting and promoting them, and to Russia, China, and the Middle East, in which they are not well established and where their fate will affect the rest of the world. Drawing on history, politics, and economics, this incisive book provides a clear and original guide to the main trends of the twenty-first century, from globalization to terrorism, through the perspective of one of our era's most provocative thinkers.


Device drivers constitute a significant portion of an operating system's source code. The effort to develop a new driver set is a sobering hurdle to the pursuit of novel operating system ventures. A practical solution is to reuse drivers, but this can contradict design goals in a new operating system. We offer a new approach to device-driver reuse, with a focus on promoting novel operating-system construction, which insulates the new operating system from the invariants of the reused drivers, while also addressing development effort. Our solution runs the drivers along with their original operating systems inside virtual machines, with some minor reuse infrastructure added to the driver's operating system to interface with the rest of the system. This approach turns the drivers into de-privileged applications of the new operating system, which separates their architectures and reduces cross-influences, and improves system dependability. Virtual machines help reuse drivers, but they also penalize performance. The known solution for improving virtual machine performance, para-virtualization, modifies the operating system to run on a hypervisor, which has an enormous cost: substantial development effort, and abandonment of many of virtualization's benefits such as modularity. These costs contradict our goals for driver reuse: to reduce development effort, and to easily reuse from a variety of operating systems. Thus we introduce a new approach to constructing virtual machines: pre-virtualization. Our solution combines the performance of para-virtualization with the modularity of traditional virtual machines. We still modify the operating system, but according to a set of principles called soft layering that preserves modularity, and via automation which reduces implementation costs. With pre-virtualization we can easily reuse device drivers. We describe our driver-reuse approach applied to a real system: we run virtual machines on the L4Ka::Pistachio microkernel, with reused Linux drivers. We include an evaluation and demonstrate that we achieve throughput comparable to


This paper presents a survey on the various power saving techniques used in wireless networking today. The work presented covers topics ranging from the use of energy harvesting techniques at the physical layer to partitioning the load of power hungry computations across multiple devices at the application layer. While research in this area continues to grow, few standards have yet to emerge that incorporate the use of each of these techniques. De facto standards do exist, however, and tend to be driving the development of power aware devices in industry at the moment. This paper explores the various techniques used for preserving the energy consumed at each layer of a wireless networking protocol stack. The types of wireless networks considered include Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs), and Wireless Sensor Networks. Existing standards for performing power management in each of these networks are discussed, and their effective use is analyzed. The role that these standards play in industry as well as the role played by current research in this area is also introduced.