Nowadays, Web based platforms are quite common in any university, supporting a very diversified set of applications and services. Ranging from personal management to student evaluation processes, Web based platforms are doing a great job providing a very flexible way of working, promote student enrolment, and making access to academic information simple and in an universal way. Students can do their regular tasks anywhere, anytime. Sooner or latter, it was expected that organizations, and universities in particular, begin to think and act towards better educational platforms, more user-friendly and effective, where students find easily what they search about a specific topic or subject. Profiling is one of the several techniques that we can use to discover what students use to do, by establishing their user navigation patterns on Web based platforms, and knowing better how they explore and search the sites" pages that they visit. With these profiles Web based platforms administrators can personalize sites according with the preferences and behaviour of the students, promoting easy navigation functionalities and better abilities to response to their needs. In this article we will present the application of Markov chains in the establishment of such profiles for a target eLearning oriented Web site, presenting the system we implemented and its functionalities to do that, as well describing the entire process of discovering student profiles on an eLearning Web based platform.


This study evaluates the impact of business-development-support programs (credit, training, and a combination of both) on the performance of micro- and small enterprises (MSEs) in Ethiopia. Using 2015 Ethiopian urban survey data and employing endogenous-switching regressions for multiple treatments, we document a positive and significant effect of credit, training, and a combination of training and credit on MSEs. Our results highlight the heterogeneity in treatment effects between women- and men-owned MSEs: women-owned businesses do not benefit from access to treatments. Our results suggest that improving the performance of MSEs requires fine-tuned interventions that meet the specific needs of men and women who own small businesses rather than one-size-fits-all programs.


The amount of power consumed by data centres world wide is increasing, and due to growing electricity bills, service providers aim more attention on energy-efficient management of their data centres. In order to achieve this goal, a service provider need to make smart decisions regarding the deployment of his services. At the same time, in order to satisfy his end-users, a service provider needs to focus on delivery of services complying with the quality of service (QoS) requirements. Consequently, he needs to make decisions related to replication level of his services, as well. In this thesis, I propose two interrelated mixed integer linear programming (MILP) models aiming at supporting service providers in their decision making. The first MILP concerns energy-efficient deployment of a service provider's services in his own virtualized data center, where the objective is to minimized the cost of energy usage, while satisfying the response time and availability requirements of the end-users. The second MILP introduces the flexibility of Cloud computing by letting the service provider have the opportunity to deploy services in a public cloud, and hence the objective is to minimize the total cost of deployment, while still, ensuring satisfactory QoS levels. The proposed MILP models are tested on test instances of varying size with the intention to discuss scalability issues and commenting on modelling choices. The results show that the second model is the hardest to solve, in terms of closing the optimality gap, but nevertheless, it is depicted that good solutions are found early in the branch and bound search. Furthermore, different modelling choices illustrate the trade-off between energy-efficient management of data center resources and service performance.


Passive TCP session reconstruction essential for many kinds of network forensics and law enforcement operations, but it is is complicated by packet loss, retransmissions, and possible attacks by adversaries. The key problem is that participants in the TCP session may observe the TCP segments differently than the monitor. An Added complication is the lack of familiarity with network protocols by many forensic analysts, resulting in the need for tools that are easy-to-use and able to tolerate a wide range of data. To address these issues we rewrote the open source network forensics tool tcpow , making it more robust to anomalies that had been reported to us by users. We also improved the program's usability and performance on large packet captures, and added simple visualization that produces a one-page summary PDF for packet captures of any size.


The human genome is continuously evolving, hence the sequenced genome is a snapshot in time of this evolving entity. Over time, the genome accumulates mutations that can be associated with different phenotypes - like physical traits, diseases, etc. Underlying mutation accumulation is an evolution channel (the term channel is motivated by the notion of communication channel introduced by Shannon [1] in 1948 and started the area of Information Theory), which is controlled by hereditary, environmental, and stochastic factors. The premise of this thesis is to understand the human genome using information theory framework. In particular, it focuses on: (i) the analysis and characterization of the evolution channel using measures of capacity, expressiveness, evolution distance, and uniqueness of ancestry and uses these insights for (ii) the design of error correcting codes for DNA storage, (iii) inversion symmetry in the genome and (iv) cancer classification. The mutational events characterizing this evolution channel can be divided into two categories, namely point mutations and duplications. While evolution through point mutations is unconstrained, giving rise to combinatorially many possibilities of what could have happened in the past, evolution through duplications adds constraints limiting the number of those possibilities. Further, more than 50% of the genome has been observed to consist of repeated sequences. We focus on the much constrained form of duplications known as tandem duplications in order to understand the limits of evolution by duplication. Our sequence evolution model consists of a starting sequence called seed and a set of tandem duplication rules. We find limits on the diversity of sequences that can be generated by tandem duplications using measures of capacity and expressiveness. Additionally, we calculate bounds on the duplication distance which is used to measure the timing of generation by these duplications. We also ask questions about the uniqueness of seed for a given sequence and completely characterize the duplication length sets where the seed is unique or non-unique. These insights also led us to design error correcting codes for any number of tandem duplication errors that are useful for DNA-storage based applications. For uniform duplication length and duplication length bounded by 2, our designed codes achieve channel capacity. We also define and measure uncertainty in decoding when the duplication channel is misinformed. Moreover, we add substitutions to our tandem duplication model and calculate sequence generation diversity for a given budget of substitutions. We also use our duplication model to explain the inversion symmetry observed in the genome of many species. The inversion symmetry is popularly known as the 2nd Chargaff Rule, according to which in a single strand DNA, the frequency of a k-mer is almost the same as the frequency of its reverse complement. The insights gained by these problems led us to investigate the tandem repeat regions in the genome. Tandem repeat regions in the genome can be traced back in time algorithmically to make inference about the effect of the hereditary, environmental and stochastic factors on the mutation rate of the genome. By inferring the evolutionary history of the tandem repeat regions, we show how this knowledge can be used to make predictions about the risk of incurring a mutation based disease, specifically cancer. More precisely, we introduce the concept of mutation profiles that are computed without any comparative analysis, but instead by analyzing the short tandem repeat regions in a single healthy genome and capturing information about the individual's evolution channel. Using gradient boosting on data from more than 5,000 TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas) cancer patients, we demonstrate that these mutation profiles can accurately distinguish between patients with various types of cancer. For example, the pairwise validation accuracy of the classifier between PAAD (pancreas) patients and GBM (brain) patients is 93%. Our results show that healthy unaffected cells still contain a cancer-specific signal, which opens the possibility of cancer prediction from a healthy genome.


BACKGROUND
Many health indices have a relationship with anthropometric indices. This research attempts to provide a new measurement: a chronic disease risk factor score built into the regression model. This new model will help people visualize their health status and get multiple information during the process of the healthy examination.

METHODS
Data from 8,034 subjects were collected from the data bank of the Health Examination Center in Chang Gung Memorial Hospital. Related anthropometric indices and biochemical factors were selected and used to construct a regression model. The anthropometric indices used were body mass index, waist hip ratio, waist hip area ratio, health index, waist leg ratio and trunk leg ratio. Biochemical data included blood pressure, glucose, triglyceride, cholesterol and uric acid, combined to form an anthropometric chronic disease risk factor score.

RESULTS
Subjects under 45 years of age had the highest chronic disease risk factor score, and were selected to construct a regression model. The R-square of this model is 0.355; its predictive error is near 12%. After verification with a testing group, the regression model could be used to predict health status.

CONCLUSION
The purpose of this study was to develop a new anthropometric chronic disease risk factor score by combining anthropometric indices and biochemical data. A multiple regression model was used to illustrate health status via anthropometric chronic disease risk factor scores for the subjects participating in the health examination. The results show that the chronic disease risk factor score is useful for prescribing relevant medical treatment as well as for other research.


A core challenge for broad adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) is to ensure that its benefits are captured by a wide range of stakeholders. Taking a business network perspective, this study: i) examines the benefit potential of widespread IoT-based digitalization and service innovation; ii) identifies key barriers to capturing these benefits; iii) develops recommendations to overcome these barriers. A three-stage qualitative methodology (based on interviews, a focus group and Delphi-based inquiry) examines the case of an emergent IoT-based digital business network in the UK road transport industry. The research reveals the critical importance of managers involved in digitalization initiatives balancing their interests with those of the wider business network, if the potential benefits are to be captured. It provides fresh insights into: i) IoT-based digitalization as a business network phenomenon; ii) the interplay between digitalization and innovation in the sphere of service business models; iii) digitalization's disruptive impact on 'traditional' industries and the implications for future management research.


Ethylene behaves as a hormone in plants, regulating such aspects of growth and development as fruit ripening, flower senescence, and abscission. Ethylene insensitivity is conferred by dominant mutations in the ETR1 gene early in the ethylene signal transduction pathway of Arabidopsis thaliana. The ETR1 gene was cloned by the method of chromosome walking. Each of the four known etr1 mutant alleles contains a missense mutation near the amino terminus of the predicted protein. Although the sequence of the amino-terminal half of the deduced ETR1 protein appears to be novel, the carboxyl-terminal half is similar in sequence to both components of the prokaryotic family of signal transducers known as the two-component systems. Thus, an early step in ethylene signal transduction in plants may involve transfer of phosphate as in prokaryotic two-component systems. The dominant etr1-1 mutant gene conferred ethylene insensitivity to wild-type Arabidopsis plants when introduced by transformation.


All federal agencies must cope with the challenges of trying to achieve success on the multiple goals laid out for them by Congress, the President, or the public at large. Recent economics and political science literature provides a theoretical framework that helps explain why agencies might succeed in achieving some goals and fail in achieving others: Agencies will systematically underperform on goals that are hard to measure and that conflict with the achievement of other, more measurable goals. While agencies in theory might be able to improve their ability to measure performance through technological and organizational innovation, in many cases agency missions, historical inertia, and the professional orientation of agency staff will interfere with innovation. Principals (such as Congress) have various options to address this problem. Some options focus on changing the agency itself: (1) having the principal take back decision-making authority from the agency; (2) splitting agencies into components that pursue different goals; or (3) mandating that the agency innovate in developing information about undervalued goals. All of these intra-agency efforts have their limitations: Principals only have so much time and energy to make decisions themselves; splitting agencies is often not feasible; and agencies may be resistant to external cultural change. Another range of options involves having another agency monitor the decision-making agency to ensure minimal compliance with performance on one or more goals. This could include having one agency comment on the decision-making agency's performance on an undervalued goal (the agency as lobbyist model) or could extend to having another agency make legally binding determinations about whether the decision-making agency has met minimum standards for that undervalued goal (the agency as regulator model). The more stringent the inter-agency monitoring is, the more effective regulation might be at achieving minimum compliance with undervalued goals, but with the consequence of greatly increasing transaction costs such as litigation. Thus, principals will not only have to trade off agency performance among multiple goals, but will also have to trade off among the various solutions they might try to use to address the problems of multiple-goal agencies.


A wireless sensor network (WSN) typically consists of a large number of resource constrained sensor nodes. Wireless sensor networks are developed for deployment at locations without infrastructure support which may provide a solution to many applications. WSNs are mostly unguarded and the wireless medium is broadcast. This makes them more vulnerable to attacks. Without proper security measures, an enemy can launch various kinds of attacks in hostile environments. These attacks can disrupt the normal working of WSNs and can defeat the purpose of their deployment. Therefore security is an important aspect of these networks. Preventive mechanisms can be applied to protect WSNs against some types of attacks. However, there are some attacks for which there are no known prevention methods. For these cases, it is necessary to use some mechanism of intrusion detection. In this paper we present a distributed intrusion detection system (IDS) based on mobile agent technology that fits the demands and restrictions of WSNs.


Because of their excellent olfactory sense, dogs are often used to find bombs, mines, drugs, or people buried by avalanches. For such applications, autonomous mobile robots could be used in the future. Electronic sensors already exist for a wide variety of substances, and are still being actively researched. Mobile robots are an important area of research, too. But beyond a good sensor and a suitable robotic platform, a third component is required: odor source localization algorithms – and due to the complex propagation of odor molecules in the air, tracking down odor sources is still a big challenge.


Recent thinking on globalization places risk at the centre of contemporary life. Yet what if our perception of risk is misplaced? What if the greatest risk is not terrorism itself but the conditions that allow terrorism to flourish? This fascinating book illustrates that elevated perceptions of terrorism-related risks are having a deleterious impact on many societies, exacerbating feelings of exclusion among individuals and groups. Via their exploration of various societies, the expert contributors show that as a causal factor of terrorism, social exclusion can be remedied by inclusive, participatory and deliberative measures. They prescribe a recalibration of counter-terrorism policies to unite rather than divide multicultural societies.


Market forces are continuously driving public and private organisations towards higher productivity, shorter process and production times, and fewer labour hours. To cope with these changes, organisations are adopting new organisational models of coordination and cooperation that increase their flexibility, consistency, efficiency, productivity and profit margins. In this thesis an organisational model of coordination and cooperation is examined using a real life example; the technical integration of a distributed large-scale project of an international physics collaboration. The distributed resource constraint project scheduling problem is modelled and solved with the methods of distributed constraint satisfaction. A distributed local search method, the distributed breakout algorithm (DisBO), is used as the basis for the coordination scheme. The efficiency of the local search method is improved by extending it with an incremental problem solving scheme with variable ordering. The scheme is implemented as central algorithm, incremental breakout algorithm (IncBO), and as distributed algorithm, distributed incremental breakout algorithm (DisIncBO). In both cases, strong performance gains are observed for solving underconstrained problems. Distributed local search algorithms are incomplete and lack a termination guarantee. When problems contain hard or unsolvable subproblems and are tightly or overconstrained, local search falls into infinite cycles without explanation. A scheme is developed that identifies hard or unsolvable subproblems and orders these to size. This scheme is based on the constraint weight information generated by the breakout algorithm during search. This information, combined with the graph structure, is used to derive a fail first variable order. Empirical results show that the derived variable order is 'perfect'. When it guides simple backtracking, exceptionally hard problems do not occur, and, when problems are unsolvable, the fail depth is always the shortest. Two hybrid algorithms, BOBT and BOBT-SUSP are developed. When the problem is unsolvable, BOBT returns the minimal subproblem within the search scope and BOBT-SUSP returns the smallest unsolvable subproblem using a powerful weight sum constraint. A distributed hybrid algorithm (DisBOBT) is developed that combines DisBO with DisBT. The distributed hybrid algorithm first attempts to solve the problem with DisBO. If no solution is available after a bounded number of breakouts, DisBO is terminated, and DisBT solves the problem. DisBT is guided by a distributed variable order that is derived from the constraint weight information and the graph structure. The variable order is incrementally established, every time the partial solution needs to be extended, the next variable within the order is identified. Empirical results show strong performance gains, especially when problems are overconstrained and contain small unsolvable subproblems.


During the 1830s in Paris the quadrille, a five-movement figure dance, became musically omnipresent to the distress of many critics, who saw the genre as detrimental to French music and musical taste. Discussions
 of the dance in journalism and literature associate bourgeois women and girls and working-class men with promotion of the genre. As a figure dance with walking steps, the quadrille was enjoyed by respectable
 women who experienced it as a safe frame for civilized social interaction, although their male counterparts found the dance boring and uninviting. In contrast, working-class men were known for their engaging
 and energetic performances as cancanneurs , improvisatory dancers exhibiting a lack of control associated with political instability and revolution. Quadrilles were perceived to have a negative influence
 on musical education for girls, who resembled the cancanneurs in their mechanical and animalistic qualities, and who preferred quadrilles over more ambitious pieces for piano. More serious was the
 perceived damage that arrangements of operas as quadrilles inflicted on the original, reducing great works to the banal through simplification. By serving as an example of all that stands in opposition
 to art in French music, the quadrille contributed to the formulation of the concept of music as art.


We are witnessing the disappearance of the traditional paradigm that viewed the structural position as the determining factor in shaping collective action and social actors. Because of the structural and cultural changes that have occurred in the world and the region -the transformation of Latin America's weak national Statecentred industrial society and the break-up of the traditional relationships between State and society- collective action is tending to take shape mainly along four axes: political democratization; social democratization or the struggle against exclusion and for citizenship; the reconstruction and international reintegration of national economies or the reformulation of the economic development model, and the redefinition of a model of modernity. As a result, social actors are becoming less wedded to single causes, more concerned with sociocultural issues than politico-economic ones, and more focused on demands concerned with quality of life and inclusion than on projects of broader social change.


The Great Recession widened social-class divides, so social interactions across gaps in workplace status and in race generally may be more salient and more fraught. Different statuses and races both carry stereotypes that targets know (meta-perceptions, how they expect to be viewed by the outgroup). In both cross-status and cross-race interactions, targets may aim to manage the impressions they create. Reviewing literature and our own recent work invokes (a) the role of the Stereotype Content Model's two dimensions of social perception, namely warmth and competence; (b) the compensation effect, a tendency to tradeoff between them, especially downplaying one to convey the other; and (c) diverging warmth and competence concerns of people with lower and higher status and racial-group positions. Higher-status people and Whites, both stereotyped as competent but cold, seek to warm up their image. Lower-status people and Blacks, both stereotyped as warm but incompetent, seek respect for their competence. Overviews of two previously separate research programs and the background literature converge on shared findings that higher-status people, comparing down, display a competence downshift, consistent with communicating apparent warmth. Meanwhile, lower-status people, comparing up, often display less warmth, to communicate competence. Previous research and our diverse samples—online workplace scenarios, online cross-race interactions, and presidential candidates' speeches—suggest a novel, robust interpersonal mechanism that perpetuates race, status, and social-class divides.


The light-cone spreading of entanglement and correlation is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of homogeneous extended quantum systems. Here we point out that a class of inhomogenous Luttinger liquids (those with a uniform Luttinger parameter $K$) at low energy display the universal phenomenon of curved light cones: gapless excitations propagate along the geodesics of the metric $ds^2=dx^2+v(x)^2 d\tau^2$, with $v(x)$ being the calculable spatial dependent velocity induced by the inhomogeneity. We confirm our findings with explicit analytic and numerical calculations both in- and out-of-equilibrium for a Tonks-Girardeau gas in a harmonic potential and in lattice systems with artificially tuned hamiltonian density.


In 1990, clonal seedlings from twelve full-sib families of Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carr.) were planted at four contrasting sites throughout the UK; Newcastleton and Wauchope in the Scottish Borders; Scootmore m Morayshire; and Llandrindod in Wales. There were large differences in nutrient concentrations between sites, with Newcastleton generally having the highest nitrogen- and phosphorus- based nutrient concentrations and Wauchope the lowest. Both sites had a similar soil structure, with the soil at Scootmore having a lower ability to capture moisture. Scootmore experienced the highest temperatures during the growing season and Wauchope the lowest. There was little difference in precipitation levels between sites but there were large differences between years. After 10 years of growth in the field, height, diameter and wood density (using the Pilodyn® technique) were measured. The resulting data showed that Newcastleton and Wauchope were similar and had greater tree growth, whereas Scootmore and Llandrindod were also similar but had smaller tree growth but higher wood density. However, a high mortality rate at Llandrindod excluded this site from further analysis. The 10-year data were used to classify the clones into clusters, and a clone representative of each cluster was chosen for further analysis. The selected clones showed the same growth patterns between sites; C20177 had largest growth rate; C20211 had smallest growth rate but higher wood density; C20208 was intermediate in terms of growth and wood density. However, large variation was apparent at each site, a result of environmental impacts on the growth rates. Chlorophyll, total nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) were extracted from differently aged needles, at different heights in the canopy for each clone at each site. N and р did not vary between clones or heights in the canopy, although did increase with increasing needle age. The distribution of chlorophyll followed light intensity patterns (increasing in shaded older and lower canopy needles) and was significantly higher in C20177. All foliar constituents were higher in Newcastleton trees and lowest in Scootmore. Foliar constituents reflected the nutrient concentration in the soils, although Scootmore had lower foliar concentrations than expected, which may be a result of the reduced moisture availability at this site. The lower uptake of nutrients at Scootmore explains the lower growth rate at Scootmore. Photosynthetic light response curves showed highest photosynthetic and respiration rates at Newcastleton and showed lowest rates at Wauchope. There was little difference in rates between clones or position in the canopy. Various parameters of light efficiency showed little difference between clones, position in the canopy or site. Differences in total non-structural carbohydrates were evident between sites (Wauchope had the highest concentrations) and between clones (C20177 had the lowest). Lower carbohydrate levels in C20177 reflected the greater growth rates by this clone. Destructive biomass sampling of above-ground organs reflected the results of the earlier height, diameter and wood density measurements, indicating that the clones had not changed growth patterns between the years 2000 and 2004. Between sites, only C20177 showed a change in carbon (C) allocation, with a switch from allocating the majority of C to the trunk at favourable sites (Newcastleton) to allocating the majority of с to branches under nutrient or water stress (Wauchope and Scootmore respectively), с allocation below- ground showed no clear pattern between clones, although fine root density was lowest for C20177, suggesting this clone was less effected by nutrient or water stress. Differences in С allocation below-ground between Wauchope and the other two sites also suggested that nutrient concentration had a greater effect on coarse roots. Parameters were calculated from the observed data and used to simulate photosynthetic rates of Sitka spruce in a process-based model of tree evapotranspiration. A comparison between observed and simulated data showed that the model predicted seasonal, site and clonal differences but the absolute values were overestimated at Newcastleton and underestimated at Wauchope and Scootmore. A sensitivity analysis showed that six parameters largely affected the output of the model and, with the majority of these parameters extrapolated from the literature; they would explain the large differences between simulated and observed data.


Payment channel networks (PCNs) are viewed as one of the most promising scalability solutions for cryptocurrencies today. Roughly, PCNs are networks where each node represents a user and each directed, weighted edge represents funds escrowed on a blockchain; these funds can be transacted only between the endpoints of the edge. Users efficiently transmit funds from node A to B by relaying them over a path connecting A to B, as long as each edge in the path contains enough balance (escrowed funds) to support the transaction. Whenever a transaction succeeds, the edge weights are updated accordingly. In deployed PCNs, channel balances (i.e., edge weights) are not revealed to users for privacy reasons; users know only the initial weights at time 0. Hence, when routing transactions, users typically first guess a path, then check if it supports the transaction. This guess-and-check process dramatically reduces the success rate of transactions. At the other extreme, knowing full channel balances can give substantial improvements in transaction success rate at the expense of privacy. In this work, we ask whether a network can reveal noisy channel balances to trade off privacy for utility. We show fundamental limits on such a tradeoff, and propose noise mechanisms that achieve the fundamental limit for a general class of graph topologies. Our results suggest that in practice, PCNs should operate either in the low-privacy or low-utility regime; it is not possible to get large gains in utility by giving up a little privacy, or large gains in privacy by sacrificing a little utility.


Expelled from occupied New Orleans by Federal forces after refusing to pledge loyalty to the Union, Henri Garidel remained in exile from his home and family from 1863 to 1865. Lonely, homesick, and alienated, the French-Catholic Garidel, a clerk in the Confederate Bureau of Ordnance, was a complete outsider in the wartime capital of Richmond. In his faithfully kept diary, Garidel relates the trials and discomforts - physical, emotional, spiritual, and professional - of life in a city entirely foreign to him. Civil War Richmonders were predominantly white, evangelical Protestants in a relatively small, insular city. His living quarters devolved from a private home shared with his family in cosmopolitan New Orleans to a cramped, cold rooming house away from everything familiar. Trapped in Richmond for the last two years of the conflict and a witness to the eventual Federal occupation of the city, Garidel made daily entries that offer a striking and realistic blend of Southern domestic and political life during the Civil War. From his candid remarks about slavery and race, gender issues, military history, immigration, social class and structure, and religion, Henri Garidel's readers gain a revealing human picture of a major turning point in American history.


The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is a key political actor in the Chinese state. Together with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese state institutions, it makes up the political foundation of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In the early years after the founding of the PRC in 1949, the military played an important role in state consolidation and the management of domestic state affairs, as is expected in a state founded on Leninist principles of organization. Since the reform process, which was initiated in the late 1970s, the political role of the PLA has changed considerably. It has become less involved in domestic politics and increased attention has been directed toward military modernization. Consequently, in the early 21st century, the Chinese military shares many characteristics with the armed forces in noncommunist states. At the same time, the organizational structures, such as the party committee system, the system of political leaders, and political organs, have remained in place. In other words, the politicized structures that were put in place to facilitate the role of the military as a domestic political tool of the CCP, across many sectors of society, are expected to also accommodate modernization, professionalization, and cooperation with foreign militaries on the international arena in postreform China. This points to an interesting discrepancy between form and purpose of the PLA.
 The role of the military in Chinese politics has thus shifted over the years, and its relationship with the CCP has generally been interpreted as having developed from one marked by symbiosis to one of greater institutional autonomy and independence. Yet these developments should not necessarily be seen as linear or irreversible. Indeed, China of the Xi Jinping era has shown an increased focus on ideology, centralization, and personalized leadership, which already has had consequences for the political control of the Chinese armed forces. Chances are that these trends will affect the role of the PLA in politics even further in the early decades of the 21st century.


Within the European Union, the provision of dustbathing material in layer housing systems will be compulsory beginning in 2012. In cage systems, food particles are mainly used as litter material and are provided on scratching mats by an automatic transporting system. However, because dustbathing is a means for hens to remove stale lipids from their plumage, lipid content of a substrate may be an important asset with regard to its adequacy. This study analyzes dustbathing behavior as affected by lipid content of feed used as litter material. A total of 72 laying hens of 2 genotypes (Lohmann Selected Leghorn, Lohmann Brown) were kept in 12 compartments (6 hens each). Compartments were equipped with a plastic grid floor (G) and additionally contained 3 different dustbathing trays (each 1,000 cm(2)/hen) holding low-lipid (0.82%; L), normal-lipid (4.2%; N), and high-lipid (15.7%; H) food particles. The experiment began at 20 wk of life, and video recordings were done at wk 23, 26, and 29. Number of dustbaths, time spent dustbathing, average dustbath duration, foraging, and single behaviors within dustbaths were analyzed during the light period over 2 d in each observation week. Dustbaths occurred most frequently in the L compared with the N, H, and G treatments (all P < 0.001). Total time spent dustbathing was longest in the L treatment compared with the N and H treatments (P < 0.001). No difference in the average duration of single dustbaths was found between the L, N, and H treatments. However, when dustbath interruptions (less than 10 min) were excluded, the duration of single dustbaths was longer in the H compared with the L (P = 0.009) and N (P = 0.024) treatments. Foraging was most frequently observed in the N compared with the L, H, and G treatments (all P < 0.001). More body wing shakes occurred in the L compared with the N treatment, and the number of vertical wing shakes was higher in the N compared with the H treatment (all P ≤ 0.05). Our results showed that preference for a dustbathing substrate increased with decreasing lipid content, implying that food particles may not be a suitable dustbathing substrate.


This essay, written as a response to John F. Duffy and Richard Hynes, Statutory Domain and the Commercial Law of Intellectual Property, 102 VA. L. REV. 1 (2016), argues that the patent exhaustion (first sale) doctrine developed as a creature of federalism, intended to divide the line between the law of patents, which by that time had become exclusively federal, and the law of patented things, which were governed by the states. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century courts were explicit on the point, in decisions stretching from the 1850s well into the twentieth century.By the second half of the nineteenth century it was clear that federal supremacy controlled patent law, including patent infringement suits. The problem with the post-sale licensing restrictions that the patent exhaustion doctrine precluded is that enforcement of such restrictions via patent infringement suits would have applied federal supremacy so as to protect a set of practices (resale price maintenance, tying, and exclusive dealing) that state antitrust laws were just beginning to engage and often condemn. For example, if a tying or RPM restriction could be enforced via a patent infringement suit, the result would have been to preempt inconsistent state law declaring such practices anticompetitive. That was precisely the outcome that the Supreme Court reached in its Henry v. A.B. Dick decision in 1912, and that provoked Congress' almost immediate reaction in passage of the Clayton Act.


Because of limitations in survey-based measures of household consumption, a growing literature uses an alternative measure of consumer expenditures commonly referred to as "imputed consumption." This approach typically utilizes annual snapshots of household income and wealth from administrative tax registries to calculate household spending as the residual of the household budget constraint. In this paper we use transaction-level retail investment data to assess the measurement error that can result in imputed consumption due to intra-year changes in asset values and composition. We show that substantial discrepancies between imputed and actual spending can arise due to trading costs, asset distributions, variable trade timing, and volatile asset prices between two annual snapshots. While these errors tend to be quantitatively small and centered around zero on average, we demonstrate that they vary across individuals of different types and income levels and are highly correlated with the business cycle. We end by suggesting ways to minimize the impact of these imputation errors in future research and we discuss which research questions are least likely to suffer from such errors.


We already know that drug design has moved to new levels, where it is a process that is driven by innovation and technological breakthroughs that involve a combination of advanced experimental and computational methods. A broad variety of medicinal chemistry approaches can be used to identify hits, the generation of leads, as well as to accelerate the optimisation of leads into drug candidates. The quantitative structure-activity relationship formalisms are among the most important strategies that can be applied to successfully design new molecules, according to a paper that was published by Andrade et al on PubMed.


Objective The aim of the study was to assess serum chemerin concentration and s.c. adipose tissue (SAT) chemerin expression in relation to insulin sensitivity and obesity in young healthy subjects. Design We performed a cross-sectional study including 128 subjects, 44 with normal weight, 44 with overweight and 40 with obesity. Methods Hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp and SAT biopsy were performed. Next, 30 subjects with obesity underwent 12-week weight-reducing dietary intervention. Results Serum chemerin was higher and SAT chemerin expression was lower in subjects with obesity in comparison with other groups. The relationship of serum chemerin with SAT expression and insulin sensitivity were positive in normal weight and overweight individuals, and negative in individuals with obesity. In the entire study population, serum chemerin was also positively related to hsCRP, serum fetuin A and alanine aminotransferase. SAT chemerin was positively related to insulin sensitivity, SAT insulin signaling and adipogenic genes. Weight loss decreased serum chemerin, whereas SAT chemerin increased in subjects with the highest increase in insulin sensitivity. Conclusions Serum and SAT chemerin is differentially associated with insulin sensitivity and the relationship between serum chemerin and insulin sensitivity depends on adiposity. SAT chemerin is positively associated with insulin sensitivity across a wide range of BMIs and may be proposed as a biomarker of metabolically healthy SAT. Our results suggest that SAT is not the main source of serum chemerin in obesity.


The legal status of assisted death in Canada is in urgent need of clarification and reform. If this is to take place, however, the process must be informed by a careful, thorough, and thoughtful analysis of the issues. In Dying Justice, Jocelyn Downie provides an up-to-date and comprehensive review of significant developments in the current legal status of assisted death in Canada. She then recasts the framework for analysis in terms of the nature of the decision for assisted death. Refusals of treatment and requests for assisted suicide and euthanasia, the author believes, should be respected if they are made voluntarily by informed and mentally competent individuals. No one has yet proposed a regime for Canada that is both less restrictive than the status quo with respect to assisted suicide and euthanasia and more restrictive with respect to the withholding and withdrawal of potentially life-sustaining treatment. On the basis of a thorough review of all of the major arguments made against permitting assisted suicide and euthanasia, Downie's regime permits some assisted suicide and euthanasia, but also sets out and insists upon a test that must be met before refusals of treatment would be respected.


Stimuli-responsive nanocarriers have been limited for bench-to-bedside translation mainly because the stimuli sensitivity and responsive rate are not high enough to ensure sufficient drug concentration at the target sites for superior therapeutic benefits. Herein, we reported an enhanced bioreduction-responsive and biodegradable nanocarrier based on the amphiphilic poly(ester urethane) copolymers (PAUR-SeSe) bearing multiple diselenide groups on the backbone. The copolymer could spontaneously self-assemble into stable micelles in aqueous medium with an average diameter of 68 nm, which could be rapidly disassembled in a reductive environment as a result of the reduction-triggered cleavage of diselenide groups. Furthermore, the PAUR-SeSe micelles showed an enhanced drug release profile and cellular uptake compared with the disulfide-containing analogue (PAUR-SS). CCK8 assays revealed that the antitumor activity of DOX-loaded PAUR-SeSe micelles was much higher than that of DOX-loaded PAUR-SS micelles. Besides, the blank micelles and degradation products were nontoxic up to a tested concentration of 50 μg mL-1. Therefore, the enhanced therapeutic efficacy and good biocompatibility demonstrated that this drug nanocarrier had great potential for smart antitumor drug delivery applications.


The study examines the timing of 17 speakers and the intonation of 6 speakers of two Swiss German dialects. Results show that the relative mean duration of segments and final lengthening are only similar in the two dialects observed. A crucial difference is that Valais speakers generally speak at a faster rate. In terms of intonation, the Valais produce more accent commands than the Bernese; largely due to stressing more lexical words than the Valais. Phrase accents are fairly weak as opposed to standard German. The study shows phonetically motivated differences in dialectal prosody.


We previously demonstrated in pigs with acute liver failure (ALF) that albumin dialysis using the molecular adsorbents recirculating system (MARS) attenuated a rise in intracranial pressure (ICP). This was independent of changes in arterial ammonia, cerebral blood flow and inflammation, allowing alternative hypotheses to be tested. The aims of the present study were to determine whether changes in cerebral extracellular ammonia, lactate, glutamine, glutamate, and energy metabolites were associated with the beneficial effects of MARS on ICP. Three randomized groups [sham, ALF (induced by portacaval anastomosis and hepatic artery ligation), and ALFMARS] were studied over a 6-hour period with a 4-hour MARS treatment given beginning 2 hours after devascularization. Using cerebral microdialysis, the ALF-induced increase in extracellular brain ammonia, lactate, and glutamate was significantly attenuated in the ALFMARS group as well as the increases in extracellular lactate/pyruvate and lactate/glucose ratios. The percent change in extracellular brain ammonia correlated with the percent change in ICP (r 2 0.511). Increases in brain lactate dehydrogenase activity and mitochondrial complex activity for complex IV were found in ALF compared with those in the sham, which was unaffected by MARS treatment. Brain oxygen consumption did not differ among the study groups. Conclusion: The observation that brain oxygen consumption and mitochondrial complex enzyme activity changed in parallel in both ALF- and MARS-treated animals indicates that the attenuation of increased extracellular brain ammonia (and extracellular brain glutamate) in the MARS-treated animals reduces energy demand and increases supply, resulting in attenuation of increased extracellular brain lactate. The mechanism of how MARS reduces extracellular brain ammonia requires further investigation. (HEPATOLOGY 2007;46:1883-1892.)


List of Contributors. Preface. Acknowledgements. PART A. 1 Introduction - Setting the Scene (Michael Jones). 1.1 Introduction. 1.2 Exploring the Terms. 1.3 Structure of the Book. 1.4 Conclusion. 2 The Creative Accounting and Fraud Environment (Michael Jones). 2.1 Introduction. 2.2 The Main Actors. 2.3 Effective Corporate Governance. 2.4 Economic Environment. 2.5 Conclusion. 3 Motivations to Indulge in Creative Accounting and Fraud (Michael Jones). 3.1 Introduction. 3.2 Conclusion. 4 Methods of Creative Accounting and Fraud (Michael Jones). 4.1 Introduction. 4.2 Basic Principles. 4.3 Nature of Accounting. 4.4 Methods of Creative Accounting. 4.5 Simple Numerical Example. 4.6 Fraud. 4.7 Conclusion. 5 Evidence for Creative Accounting and Fraud (Michael Jones). 5.1 Introduction. 5.2 The Descriptive Studies. 5.3 The Statistical Studies. 5.4 Conclusion. 6 Impression Management (Michael Jones). 6.1 Introduction. 6.2 Conclusion. 7 Taking the Long View: Accounting Scandals over Time (Michael Jones). 7.1 Introduction. 7.2 Conclusion. PART B. 8 Accounting Scandals in Australia since the Late 1980s (Garry D. Carnegie and Brendan T. O'Connell). 8.1 Introduction. 8.2 Overview of Accounting Scandals during and since the 1890s. 8.3 Case Studies of Accounting Scandals since the Late 1980s. 8.4 HIH Insurance. 8.5 Corporate Governance Reforms Following the Accounting Scandals of the Early 2000s. 8.6 Conclusion. 9 Corporate Accounting Scandals in China (Catherine Huirong Chen, Yuanyuan Hu and Jason Zezhong Xiao). 9.1 Introduction. 9.2 Summary of Corporate Scandals. 9.3 A Case in Depth - Zhengzhou Baiwen. 9.4 Conclusion. 10 Accounting Scandals in Germany (Hansrudi Lenz). 10.1 Introduction. 10.2 Accounting Scandals Between 1985 and 2006. 10.3 Most Important Cases: Flowtex and Comroad. 10.4 Accounting Scandals and Regulatory Responses. 10.5 Examinations of the German Financial Reporting Enforcement Panel 2005-2006. 10.6 Conclusion. 11 Creative Accounting and Fraud in Greece (George Kontos, Maria Krambia-Kapardis and Nikolaos Milonas). 11.1 Introduction. 11.2 Two Accounting Scandals. 11.3 The Bank of Crete Scandal. 11.4 The Aftermath. 11.5 Conclusions. 12 Corporate Creative Accounting in India: Extent and Consequences (Bhabatosh Banerjee). 12.1 Introduction. 12.2 Some Examples of Creative Accounting in India. 12.3 Some Important Corporate Cases in India. 12.4 The Satyam Computer Services Ltd Scandal (2009). 12.5 Aftermath. 12.6 Conclusion. 12.7 Acknowledgements. 13 Creative Accounting and Accounting Scandals in Italy (Andrea Melis). 13.1 Introduction. 13.2 Creative Accounting Practices in Italy: A Case Study Analysis. 13.3 The Most Important Accounting Fraud in Italy: The Parmalat Case. 13.4 The Aftermath of the Parmalat Scandal and its Impact on Business and Society. 13.5 Conclusion. 14 Creative Accounting and Accounting Scandals in Japan (Kazuyuki Suda). 14.1 Introduction. 14.2 Accounting Regulations and Standards in Japan. 14.3 Short History of Accounting Scandals Before the 1980s. 14.4 Three Types of Accounting Scandal Post-1980s. 14.5 Consequences of the Accounting Scandals. 14.6 Conclusion. 15 Financial Accounting Scandals in the Netherlands (Henk Langendijk). 15.1 Introduction. 15.2 Some Minor Accounting Scandals. 15.3 Royal Ahold. 15.4 Conclusion. 16 Creative Accounting and Financial Scandals in Spain (Nieves Carrera). 16.1 Introduction. 16.2 Accounting Scandals in Spain Since the 1980s. 16.3 Investments in Stamps: The Latest Series of Financial Scandals in the Country. Afinsa and Forum Filatelico. 16.4 The Aftermath of the Scandals. 16.5 Conclusion. 17 Accounting Scandals in Sweden - A Long Tradition (Gunnar Rimmel and Kristina Jonall). 17.1 Introduction. 17.2 Fermenta and Prosolvia: Swedish Stock Market Darlings. 17.3 Two Scandals in Multinationals that Dominated the Swedish Media. 17.4 Conclusions. 18 Creative Accounting - The UK Experience (David Gwilliam and Richard H.G. Jackson). 18.1 Introduction. 18.2 Historical Background. 18.3 Some Recent Accounting Scandals. 18.4 Polly Peck. 18.5 The Immediate Aftermath. 18.6 Subsequent Developments. 18.7 Conclusions. 18.8 Acknowledgements. 19 Creative Accounting and Accounting Scandals in the USA (Charles W. Mulford and Eugene E. Comiskey). 19.1 Introduction. 19.2 Scandals since the 1990s. 19.3 Enron and Worldcom. 19.4 Aftermath of the Scandals. 20 Bank Failures and Accounting During the Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 (Simon D. Norton). 20.1 Introduction. 20.2 Kaupthing Bank. 20.3 Origins of the 'Credit Crunch'. 20.4 Financial Instruments Associated with the Credit Crunch. 20.5 Creative Accounting in the Banking Sector. 20.6 Lehman's, Madoff and Bear Stearns Failures and Consequences. 20.7 Conclusion. PART C. 21 Identifying Some Themes (Michael Jones). 21.1 Introduction. 21.2 Some Themes. 21.3 The Major Methods Used. 21.4 Methods of Fraud. 21.5 Incentives for Creative Accounting and Fraud. 21.6 Overstrong Personalities. 21.7 Failure of Internal Controls. 21.8 Failure of External Auditors. 21.9 Conclusion. 22 The Impact of Accounting Scandals and Creative Accounting (Michael Jones). 22.1 Introduction. 22.2 Short-term Immediate Effects. 22.3 Long-term Effects. 22.4 Cumulative Effects. 22.5 Conclusion. 23 Conclusion - Looking Backwards and Forwards (Michael Jones). 23.1 Overview. 23.2 Thematic Analysis. 23.3 Lessons for the Future. 23.4 Prognosis. 23.5 Conclusion. Appendix 1 Chronological List of Major Instances of Accounting Issues Across 12 Countries and Beyond. Appendix 2 Alphabetical List of Most Important Accounting Scandals Across 12 Countries and Beyond since about 1980. Index.


A sonar-based mapping and navigation system developed for an autonomous mobile robot operating in unknown and unstructured environments is described. The system uses sonar range data to build a multileveled description of the robot's surroundings. Sonar readings are interpreted using probability profiles to determine empty and occupied areas. Range measurements from multiple points of view are integrated into a sensor-level sonar map, using a robust method that combines the sensor information in such a way as to cope with uncertainties and errors in the data. The resulting two-dimensional maps are used for path planning and navigation. From these sonar maps, multiple representations are developed for various kinds of problem-solving activities. Several dimensions of representation are defined: the abstraction axis, the geographical axis, and the resolution axis. The sonar mapping procedures have been implemented as part of an autonomous mobile robot navigation system called Dolphin. The major modules of this system are described and related to the various mapping representations used. Results from actual runs are presented, and further research is mentioned. The system is also situated within the wider context of developing an advanced software architecture for autonomous mobile robots.


It is well established that atmospheric pressure glow discharges are capable of bacterial inactivation. Much less known is their ability to destruct infectious proteins, even though surgical instruments are often contaminated by both bacteria and proteinaceous matters. In this letter, the authors present a study of protein destruction using a low-temperature atmospheric dielectric-barrier discharge jet. Clear evidences of protein removal are presented with data of several complimentary experiments using scanning electron microscopy, electron dispersive x-ray analysis, electrophoresis, laser-induced fluorescence microscopy, and protein reduction kinetics. Considerable degradation is observed of protein fragments that remain on their substrate surface after plasma treatment.


This paper examines the relation between political connections and informed trading by corporate insiders in the context of the Financial Crisis. The unprecedented magnitude of government intervention, the substantial impact of this intervention on firm value, and the political nature of the intervention provide a powerful setting to examine the relation between political connections and informed trading. Consistent with political connections providing corporate insiders with an information advantage, we find strong evidence of a relation between political connections and the informativeness of their trades. Consistent with this relation stemming from private information related to government intervention, we find the relation is strongest during the period in which TARP funds were dispersed, and strongest among politically connected insiders at banks that received TARP funds. Examining insider trades around the announcements of TARP infusions, we find evidence of significant trading thirty days in advance of the announcement, and that these trades predict the market reaction to the announcement. Notably, we find these relations are present only for the trades of politically connected insiders. Overall, our results suggest that politically connected insiders had an information advantage during the Crisis and traded to exploit this advantage.


We consider the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm driven by a general stochastic sequence, including i.i.d noise and random walk on an arbitrary graph, among others; and analyze it in the asymptotic sense. Specifically, we employ the notion of `efficiency ordering', a well-analyzed tool for comparing the performance of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) samplers, for SGD algorithms in the form of Loewner ordering of covariance matrices associated with the scaled iterate errors in the long term. Using this ordering, we show that input sequences that are more efficient for MCMC sampling also lead to smaller covariance of the errors for SGD algorithms in the limit. This also suggests that an arbitrarily weighted MSE of SGD iterates in the limit becomes smaller when driven by more efficient chains. Our finding is of particular interest in applications such as decentralized optimization and swarm learning, where SGD is implemented in a random walk fashion on the underlying communication graph for cost issues and/or data privacy. We demonstrate how certain non-Markovian processes, for which typical mixing-time based non-asymptotic bounds are intractable, can outperform their Markovian counterparts in the sense of efficiency ordering for SGD. We show the utility of our method by applying it to gradient descent with shuffling and mini-batch gradient descent, reaffirming key results from existing literature under a unified framework. Empirically, we also observe efficiency ordering for variants of SGD such as accelerated SGD and Adam, open up the possibility of extending our notion of efficiency ordering to a broader family of stochastic optimization algorithms.


Abstract Engineers, Technology and Society presents topics intended to aid the practicing engineer in reflecting upon the nature and purpose of their own practice within the engineering profession and how that is related to and implicated in social, economic and political issues. The series will include external relations between engineering, economic systems and social and political practices, as well as power structures and working conditions within the organisation. In an increasingly competitive and hostile environment in which practicing engineers are forced to spend their lives fighting for higher profit margins, many engineers become despondent and often leave the profession just a few years after graduation. They do not feel they are engineering for those in need in the world but for a small minority who can pay. There are an increasing number of engineers in the workplace who feel dissatisfied with these issues but do not know where to begin to address them. It is hoped that these books will star...


While European restaurants race to footnote menus, reassuring concerned gourmands that no genetically modified ingredients were used in the preparation of their food, starving populations around the world eagerly await the next harvest of scientifically improved crops. Mendel in the Kitchen provides a clear and balanced picture of this tangled, tricky (and very timely) topic. Any farmer you talk to could tell you that we've been playing with the genetic makeup of our food for millennia, carefully coaxing nature to do our bidding. The practice officially dates back to Gregor Mendel -- who was not a renowned scientist, but a 19th century Augustinian monk. Mendel spent many hours toiling in his garden, testing and cultivating more than 28,000 pea plants, selectively determining very specific characteristics of the peas that were produced, ultimately giving birth to the idea of heredity -- and the now very common practice of artificially modifying our food. But as science takes the helm, steering common field practices into the laboratory, the world is now keenly aware of how adept we have become at tinkering with nature --which in turn has produced a variety of questions. Are genetically modified foods really safe? Will the foods ultimately make us sick, perhaps in ways we can't even imagine? Isn't it genuinely dangerous to change the nature of nature itself? Nina Fedoroff, a leading geneticist and recognized expert in biotechnology, answers these questions, and more. Addressing the fear and mistrust that is rapidly spreading, Federoff and her co-author, science writer Nancy Brown, weave a narrative rich in history, technology, and science to dispel myths and misunderstandings. In the end, Fedoroff arues, plant biotechnology can help us to become better stewards of the earth while permitting us to feed ourselves and generations of children to come. Indeed, this new approach to agriculture holds the promise of being the most environmentally conservative way to increase our food supply.


The aggressive expansion of anthropogenic activities is placing increasing pressure on biodiversity, particularly in tropical regions. Here, conservation efforts are hindered by poor understanding of species ecology and the failure of policy instruments to account for multiple stressors of land-use change. While protected areas are central to conservation strategies, there is a general consensus that the future of tropical biodiversity will be determined by how well modified landscapes are managed. In this thesis I advance our understanding of biodiversity persistence in modified tropical landscapes to inform emerging incentive-based policy mechanisms and supply-chain initiatives. Capitalising on recent advances in remote-sensing and hierarchical occupancy modelling, I provide a spatial appraisal of biodiversity in a modified landscape in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Fieldwork was conducted at the Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems (SAFE) project, a large-scale landscape modification experiment, comprising a degradation gradient of old growth forest, selectively logged forest, remnant forest patches and oil palm plantations. The assessment focused on camera-trapping of tropical mammals, as they are sensitive to anthropogenic stressors, occupy key trophic positions, and prioritised in conservation. In Chapter 2 I link mammal occupancy data to airborne multispectral remote-sensing information to show how the conservation value of modified landscapes is dictated by the intensity of the underlying land-use. Logged forests retained appreciable levels of mammal diversity, and oil palm areas were largely devoid of forest specialists and threatened taxa. Moreover, many mammal species disproportionately occupied forested areas that retained old growth structural characteristics. The most influential structural measures accounted for vertical and horizontal components in environmental space, which cannot currently be derived from conventional satellite data. Using a novel application of ecological threshold analysis, I demonstrate how multispectral data and multi-scale occupancy models can help identify conservation and restoration areas in degraded forests. In Chapter 3 I assess the potential for carbon-orientated policy mechanisms (High Carbon Stock, HCS, Approach and REDD+) to prioritise high carbon areas with corresponding biodiversity value in highly modified landscapes. The areas of highest carbon value prioritised via HCS supported comparable species diversity to old growth forest. However, the strength, nature and extent of the biodiversity co-benefit was dependent on how carbon was characterised, the spatial resolution of carbon data, and the species considered. In Chapter 4 I further scrutinised HCS protocols to evaluate how well they delineated high priority forest patches that safeguard species most vulnerable to land-use change (i.e. IUCN threatened species). The minimum core area required to define a high priority patch (100 ha) supported only 35% of the mammal community. In fact the core area criterion would need to increase to 3,199 ha in order to sustain intact mammal assemblages, and an order of magnitude higher if hunting pressure was considered. These findings underline the importance of integrating secondary disturbance impacts into spatial conservation planning. Provided landscape interventions are directed to where they will have the greatest impact, they can be financially sustaining and garner local support for conservation. To this end I provide recommendations to guide policy implementation in modified tropical landscapes to support holistic conservation strategies.


What explains the effect of external intervention on the duration of civil war? The literature on intervention has made some progress in addressing this question, but it has been hindered by an assumption that states intervene in civil wars either to help one side win or to facilitate negotiations. Often, however, external states become involved in civil war to pursue an agenda which is separate from the goals of the internal combatants. When states intervene in this fashion, they make wars more difficult to resolve for two reasons. First, doing so introduces another actor that must approve any settlement to end the war. Second, external states generally have less incentive to negotiate than internal actors because they bear lower costs of fighting and they can anticipate gaining less benefit from negotiation than domestic insurgents. Through Cox regressions using data on the goals of all interventions in civil wars since World War II, this article shows that when states intervene with an independent agenda, they make wars substantially longer. The effect of independent interventions is much larger than that of external interventions generally, suggesting that the established finding that external interventions prolong civil war is driven by a subset of cases where states have intervened in conflicts to pursue independent goals.


Malaysia's construction industry particularly the provision of public infrastructure projects faces various debatable issues of the government's belt-tightening budget, abandoned public projects, shoddy workmanship, over-budgeted project procurement and unresolved debts in public project provision. The current global economic downturns as well as the fluctuation in the oil prices worldwide have exacerbated the situation. Thus, in materialising the efficiency, accountability for performance, productivity and monetary policy set in confronting those controversial issues, several actions have been undertaken by Malaysian government including strengthening approval procedures, restructuring the implementation process, enhancing viability through risk distribution, reinforcing the institutional and regulatory framework as well as increasing Bumiputera participation in public infrastructure projects. Yet, these endeavours seem not to be the best solution in tackling those problems. Hence, there is a need of benchmarking the performance of Malaysia's construction industry especially the provision of public infrastructure projects by clearly stipulating the standard regular evaluation and audition through a performance measurement technique known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This paper provides a literature review of the philosophical, conceptual and functions of KPIs in improvising Malaysia's construction industry performance. The literature will guide the development of KPIs for the assessment of public infrastructure project provision in Malaysia which forms the major part of the research undertaken.


Densification is generally proposed as the solution to the excessive soil consumption that has characterized the urban development of European cities in the recent decades. Even if the "compact city" can generally be regarded as a preferred urban form over the "dispersed city", the strategy of densification is not applicable to any context, leaving aside the local conditions. Densification operations should consider the state of the environmental and urban context and assess threats and opportunities offered by the specific site. Thus, this paper describes a method for the environmental sustainability analysis of the built urban fabric. It proposes a set of sustainability objectives and pre-conditions to be evaluated in order to estimate the possibility to increase the urban density without compromising the environment, and it defines implementation measures, declined for the various environmental aspects which are considered to be affected by the densification interventions (water, soil, energy, electromagnetism, seismic, public facilities, waste, mobility, noise, air). The implementation measures are considered as guidelines for the inclusion of new volumes or for the completion of existing ones into the built areas, to be codified in the municipal building rules in order to guarantee the sustainability of the densification. The theme is explored both at the building scale and the urban scale, considering both the environmental aspects dealing with the building, such as the energy and seismic improvement, the urban morphology and the infrastructures capacity at urban scale, such as transport and green networks, water and road traffic flows.


Urban agglomerations show different development patterns and stages. Here, we describe, discuss and compare urban agglomerations in different continents. The introduction section gives a general overview of specific issues of urban agglomerations. Different characteristics in Europe, Asia and America are discussed as experienced by the article's co-authors, living in or working for urban agglomerations in these continents. First, the history of urbanization and agglomeration evolvement is described, then patterns, functional structures and relations, drivers as well as social and demographic characteristics are discussed (e.g. migration, aging, household structure, housing patterns, workplaces, etc.). Transportation infrastructure (roads, public transport systems) is also addressed as trigger for spatial dynamics causing certain effects (floor space, office and apartment rents releasing urban sprawl or hyper-densification), as well as gentrification. Further topics are urban governance and its impact on agglomeration development. Recent state and future trends will be debated, if important. A conclusion section summarizes the comparison of state, dynamics, drivers and trends.


Title of Dissertation: A SOCIAL COGNITIVE APPROACH TO COPING WITH ACCULTURATIVE STRESS IN INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS Ijeoma Ezeofor, Doctor of Philosophy, 2016 Dissertation directed by: Professor Robert W. Lent Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education The present study employed a cross-sectional design to test a model of coping with acculturative stress in an international student sample. Drawing from Lent's (2004) social cognitive model of restorative well-being, several direct and mediated paths were hypothesized to predict (negatively) acculturative stress and (positively) life satisfaction. Behavioral acculturation and behavioral enculturation (Kim & Omizo, 2006) were also examined as predictors of coping with acculturative stress among international students. Using a self-report survey, participants' ratings of acculturative stress, life satisfaction, social support, behavioral acculturation, behavioral enculturation, and coping selfefficacy were assessed. The results revealed that the variables of the model explained 16% of the variance in acculturative stress and 27% of the variance in life satisfaction. A final model, including the use of modification indices, provided good fit to the data. Findings also suggested that coping self-efficacy was a direct predictor of acculturative stress, and that behavioral acculturation and coping self-efficacy were direct predictors of students' life satisfaction. Limitations, future research, and practical implications are


We aim at developing vision-based controllers for microyers capable of ying autonomously in indoor environments. Although signicant advances have been made in this domain over the past decade, only subproblems have been successfully addressed (for example wall avoidance) and no ying robot is yet fully capable of achieving this goal. Since ying insects show remarkable indoor ight capabilities, they serve as a major source of inspiration at the level of both sensor suite and control. Traditional approaches that rely on inertial measurement units, GPS or active distance sensors are indeed impossible indoors due to the weight and consumption of these sensors. Ultimately, our research goal is a deeper understanding of the minimal set of me chanisms required by robots and insects to y in textured environments.


In recent years there has been a plethora of empirical papers by economists concerning the effects of academic rank in school or college on subsequent outcomes of students. We review this recent literature, describing the difficult identification and measurement issues, the assumptions and methodologies used in the literature, and the main findings. Accounting for ability or achievement and across a range of countries, ages, and types of educational institutions, students that are more highly ranked in their class or their grade have been found to have better long-term outcomes. The effect sizes are generally large when compared to magnitudes found for other factors and interventions. Rank effects can provide useful insight into other educational phenomena such as the extent to which students benefit from high ability peers and the presence of a gender gap in STEM. However, the state of knowledge has probably not reached the point where the empirical findings from this literature have practical implications for policy intervention to improve outcomes of students.


When a software engineer finds an inconsistency in a model, then the first question is why? What caused it? Obviously, there must be an error. But where could it be? Or is the design rule erroneous and if yes then which part? The cause of an inconsistency identifies the part of the model or design rule where the error must be. We believe that the visualization of an inconsistency ought to visualize the cause. Understanding the cause is of vital importance before a repair can even be formulated. Indeed, any automation (e.g., code generation, refactoring) has to be considered with caution if it involves model elements that cause inconsistencies. This paper analyzes the basic structure of inconsistent design rules as well as their behavior during validation and presents an algorithm for computing its cause. The approach is fully automated, tool supported, and was evaluated on 14,111 inconsistencies across 29 design models. We found that our approach computes correct causes for inconsistencies, these causes are nearly always a subset of the model elements investigated by the design rules' validation (a naive cause computation approximation), and the computation is very fast (99.8 percent of the causes are computable in <; 100 ms).


Glass sponge reefs (bioherms) are known to occur on glacial deposits but have not previously been observed to develop on fjord bedrock ridges. It is assumed that sexual reproduction dominates reef recruitment and that sedimentation can cover intact sponge skeletons. Over a decade of scuba diving research at a small fjordic bioherm, including installation of bar-coded marker stakes, transplants of loose fragments and survey transects of substrate depth with an avalanche probe have led to new insights into the dynamics of bioherm formation and persistence. We present evidence for recovery of sponge growth from scree slopes of collapsed fragments and logged the temporal changes associated with sponge fragmentation and recovery. Bar-coded stakes were installed in 2014 to enable verification of location and sponge identity through time. Photo documentation of growth, collapse, and regrowth is presented. Research on a sponge garden on glacial sediments reveals that earliest sedimentation may center around prostrate boot sponges and bristly tunicates among the cloud and vase sponges. Although hexactinellid boot sponges do not contribute to the geologic base of bioherms, they may take part as a successional community in the substrate conditioning that could result in the genesis of a glass sponge reef or bioherm.


Background. Concern with suicide measurement is a positive, albeit relatively recent, development. A concern with "the social loss from suicide" requires careful attention to appropriately measuring the phenomenon. This paper applies two different methods of measuring suicide data: the conventional age-standardized suicide (count) rate; and the alternative rate, the potential years of life lost (PYLL) rate. Aims. The purpose of applying these two measures is to place suicide in Queensland in a historical and comparative (relative to other causes of death) perspective. Methods. Both measures are applied to suicide data for Queensland since 1920. These measures are applied also to two "largish" causes of death and two "smaller" causes of death, i.e., circulatory diseases, cancers, motor vehicle accidents, suicide. Results. The two measures generate quite different pictures of suicide in Queensland: Using the PYLL measure, suicide is a quantitatively larger issue than is indicated by the count measure.Conclusions. The PYLL measure is the more appropriate measure for evaluation exercise of public health prevention strategies. This is because the PYLL measure is weighted by years of life lost and, thus, it incorporates more information than the count measure which implicitly weights each death with a somewhat partial value, viz. unity.


Abstract. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the sensitivity of ozone (O3) predictions in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) to meteorological initial uncertainties and planetary boundary layer (PBL) parameterization schemes using state-of-the-art meteorological and photochemical prediction models through ensemble forecasts. The simulated periods (3, 9, 15 and 29 March 2006) represent four typical meteorological episodes ("South-Venting", "O3-North", "O3-South" and "Convection-North", respectively) in the Mexico City basin during the MCMA-2006/MILAGRO campaign. Our results demonstrate that the uncertainties in meteorological initial conditions have significant impacts on O3 predictions, including peak time O3 concentrations ([O3]), horizontal and vertical O3 distributions, and temporal variations. The ensemble spread of the simulated peak [O3] averaged over the city's ambient monitoring sites can reach up to 10 ppb. The increasing uncertainties in meteorological fields during peak O3 period contribute to the largest unpredictability in O3 simulations, while the impacts of wind speeds and PBL height on [O3] are more straightforward and important. The magnitude of the ensemble spreads varies with different PBL schemes and meteorological episodes. The uncertainties in O3 predictions caused by PBL schemes mainly come from their ability to represent the mixing layer height; but overall, these uncertainties are smaller than those from the uncertainties in meteorological initial conditions.


A white light emitting CaxSr1-xAl2O4:Tb3+;Eu3+ phosphor was synthesized by a combustion method using metal nitrates as precursors and urea as a fuel. The X-ray diffraction patterns from the samples showed phases associated with monoclinic structures of CaAl2O4 and SrAl2O4. White photoluminescence with the CIE coordinates (x = 0.343, y = 0.325) was observed when the phosphor was optically-excited at 227 nm using a monochromatized xenon lamp. The white photoluminescence was a result of the combination of blue and green line emissions from Tb3+, and red line emission from Eu3+. The structure and photoluminescence properties of this phosphor are reported.


AIM
To evaluate associations between total serum GGT activity, metabolic risk factors and prevalent metabolic disease in MESA.

PATIENTS & METHODS
Continuous associations between GGT and fasting blood glucose (FBG), fasting insulin, HbA1c and Homeostasis Model Assessment Index of Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR) were evaluated in the entire MESA cohort and in metabolic disease subgroups using linear regression models incrementally adjusted for age, gender, site, race, lifestyle, traditional risk factors and medications. Cross-sectional odds of prevalent impaired FBG, metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes were calculated for GGT quintiles in the entire cohort and in subgroups defined by age (< or ≥65 years) and ethnicity.

RESULTS
In multivariable models, significant associations were present between GGT activity and FBG, fasting insulin, HbA1c and HOMA-IR, with the interaction between GGT and BMI affecting the association between GGT and HOMA-IR as well as the association between BMI and HOMA-IR (p < 0.0001). Adjusted odds ratios (95% CIs) of prevalent impaired FBG, metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes for quintile 5 versus 1 in the entire cohort were 2.4 (1.7-3.5), 3.3 (2.5-4.5) and 2.8 (1.8-4.4), respectively (p < 0.0001). GGT associations weakened with age. The significance of linear trends for increased prevalent metabolic disease by increasing GGT quintile varied by ethnicity.

CONCLUSION
GGT is strongly associated with both cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors, including prevalent metabolic disease, in the MESA cohort.


Developing Guidelines for Including Mobility-Based Performance Specifications in Highway Construction Contracts Shawn Jonas Larson Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, BYU Master of Science Construction zones can greatly affect the traffic flow on roadways, especially when lane closures are required. Traditionally, the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) has used traffic management specifications that only allow lane closures and road work to be done during predetermined hours or specifications that require a certain number of lanes to be open at all times. Recently, mobility-based work-zone traffic flow maintenance has been considered. This method requires continuous monitoring of mobility-based performance data and a mechanism to send alerts to the contractors when the mobility data does not meet the standards set by the specifications. UDOT recently tested mobility-based performance specifications at an urban arterial work zone and studied issues related to implementation of mobility-based performance specifications. Parallel to this experiment, UDOT funded a study to develop guidelines for implementing mobility-based performance specifications to manage traffic flow in work zones. Dynamically collecting mobility-based data such as travel time and speed is now feasible using technologies such as Bluetooth and microwave sensors. The core benefit of using mobilitybased performance specifications is that they can give the contractor more flexibility in construction work scheduling while maintaining an acceptable level of traffic flow. If the level of traffic flow is not maintained, then the contractor is assessed a financial penalty. The penalty is determined by the amount of time where the flow is not maintained at a predetermined condition. To discuss issues and develop guidelines, a task force consisting of UDOT representatives, several representatives from the construction industry, and researchers from Brigham Young University was formed. Through three task force meetings, a set of 12 guidelines were developed, including guidelines about when mobility-based performance specifications should be used and which mobility data should be used. Some of the issues were difficult for the task force members to agree on, and a decision-making theory called the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) was used to find best approaches to deal with some of the difficult issues associated with the implementation of mobility-based performance specifications in highway construction contracts. These guidelines should be reviewed as appropriate in the future as UDOT accumulates experience in using these types of specifications.


Goal-directed behaviour is often viewed as an essential char- acteristic of an intelligent system, but mechanisms to generate and manage goals are often overlooked. This paper addresses this by presenting a framework for autonomous goal gener- ation and selection. The framework has been implemented as part of an intelligent mobile robot capable of exploring unknown space and determining the category of rooms au- tonomously. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach by comparing the performance of two versions of our inte- grated system: one with the framework, the other without. This investigation leads us conclude that such a framework is desirable for an integrated intelligent system because it re- duces the complexity of the problems that must be solved by other behaviour-generation mechanisms, it makes goal- directed behaviour more robust in the face of a dynamic and unpredictable environments, and it provides an entry point for domain-specific knowledge in a more general system.


Title of dissertation: DEVELOPMENT OF A MIXED-FLOW OPTIMIZATION SYSTEM FOR EMERGENCY EVACUATION IN URBAN NETWORKS Xin Zhang, Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Dissertation directed by: Professor Gang-len Chang Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering In most metropolitan areas, an emergency evacuation may demand a potentially large number of evacuees to use transit systems or to walk over some distance to access their passenger cars. In the process of approaching designated pick-up points for evacuation, the massive number of pedestrians often incurs tremendous burden to vehicles in the roadway network. Hence, one critical issue in a multi-modal evacuation planning is the effective coordination of the vehicle and pedestrian flows by considering their complex interactions. The purpose of this research is to develop an integrated system that is capable of generating the optimal evacuation plan and reflecting the real-world network traffic conditions caused by the conflicts of these two types of flows. The first part of this research is an integer programming model designed to optimize the control plans for massive mixed pedestrian-vehicle flows within the evacuation zone. The proposed model, integrating the pedestrian and vehicle networks, can effectively account for their potential conflicts during the evacuation. The model can generate the optimal routing strategies to guide evacuees moving toward either their pick-up locations or parking areas and can also produce a responsive plan to accommodate the massive pedestrian movements. The second part of this research is a mixed-flow simulation tool that can capture the conflicts between pedestrians, between vehicles, and between pedestrians and vehicles in an evacuation network. The core logic of this simulation model is the Mixed-Cellular Automata (MCA) concept, which, with some embedded components, offers a realistic mechanism to reflect the competing and conflicting interactions between vehicle and pedestrian flows. This study is expected to yield the following contributions • Design of an effective framework for planning a multi-modal evacuation within metropolitan areas; • Development of an integrated mixed-flow optimization model that can overcome various modeling and computing difficulties in capturing the mixed-flow dynamics in urban network evacuation; • Construction and calibration of a new mixed-flow simulation model, based on the Cellular Automaton concept, to reflect various conflicting patterns between vehicle and pedestrian flows in an evacuation network. DEVELOPMENT OF A MIXED-FLOW OPTIMIZATION SYSTEM FOR EMERGENCY EVACUATION IN URBAN NETWORKS


Road accidents represent a serious social problem and are one of the leading causes of human death and disability on a global scale. To reduce the risk and severity of a road accident, a variety of new safety applications can be realized through wireless communications among vehicles driving nearby each other, or among vehicles and especially deployed road side units (RSUs), a technology known as a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET). Most of the VANET-enabled safety applications are based on broadcasting of safety messages by vehicles or RSUs, either periodically or in case of an unexpected event, such as a hard brake or dangerous road condition detection. Each broadcast safety message should be successfully delivered to the surrounding vehicles and RSUs without any excess delay, which is one of the main functions of a medium access control (MAC) protocol proposed for VANETs. This thesis presents VeMAC, a new multichannel time division multiple access (TDMA) protocol specifically designed to support the high priority safety applications in a VANET scenario. The ability of the VeMAC protocol to deliver periodic and event-driven safety messages in VANETs is demonstrated by a detailed delivery delay analysis, including queueing and service delays, for both types of safety messages. As well, computer simulations are conducted by using MATLAB, the network simulator ns-2, and the microscopic vehicle traffic simulator VISSIM, in order to evaluate the performance of the VeMAC protocol, in comparison with the IEEE 802.11p standard and the ADHOC MAC protocol (another TDMA protocol proposed for ad hoc networks). A real city scenario is simulated and different performance metrics are evaluated, including the network goodput, protocol overhead, channel utilization, protocol fairness, probability of a transmission collision, and safety message delivery delay. It is shown that the VeMAC protocol considerably outperforms the existing MAC schemes, which have significant limitations in supporting VANET safety applications.

In addition to enhancing road safety, in-vehicle Internet access is one of the main applications of VANETs, which aims at providing the vehicle passengers with a low-cost access to the Internet via on-road gateways. This thesis presents a new strategy for deploying Internet gateways on the roads, in order to minimize the total cost of gateway deployment, while ensuring that a vehicle can connect to an Internet gateway (using multihop communications) with a probability greater than a specified threshold. This cost minimization problem is formulated by using binary integer programming, and applied for optimal gateway placement in a real city scenario. To the best of our knowledge, no previous strategy for gateway deployment has considered the probability of multihop connectivity among the vehicles and the deployed gateways. In order to allow a vehicle to discover the existence of an Internet gateway and to communicate with the gateway via multihops, a novel data packet routing scheme is proposed based on the VeMAC…


Quiescent and aging hair follicle stem cells Stem cells enable normal cell homeostasis, but they also exist in a quiescent state, ready to proliferate and differentiate after tissue damage. Now, two studies reveal features of stem cells in the hair follicle, an epithelial mini-organ of the skin that is responsible for hair growth and recycling (see the Perspective by Chuong and Lei). Wang et al. found that the Foxc1 transcription factor is induced in activated hair follicle stem cells, which in turn promote Nfatc1 and BMP signaling, to reinforce quiescence. Matsumura et al. analyzed hair follicle stem cells during aging. They identified type XVII collagen (COL17A1) as key to hair thinning. DNA damage-induced depletion of COL17A1 triggered cell differentiation resulting in the shedding of epidermal keratinocytes from the skin surface. These changes then caused hair follicle shrinkage and hair loss. Science, this issue p. 559, p. 613; see also p. 10.1126/science.aad4395 Dynamic expression of a transcription factor sustains the quiescent cellular state in activated hair follicle stem cells during self-renewal. [Also see Perspective by Chuong and Lei] Stem cell quiescence preserves the cell reservoir by minimizing cell division over extended periods of time. Self-renewal of quiescent stem cells (SCs) requires the reentry into the cell cycle. In this study, we show that murine hair follicle SCs induce the Foxc1 transcription factor when activated. Deleting Foxc1 in activated, but not quiescent, SCs causes failure of the cells to reestablish quiescence and allows premature activation. Deleting Foxc1 in the SC niche of gene-targeted mice leads to loss of the old hair without impairing quiescence. In self-renewing SCs, Foxc1 activates Nfatc1 and bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling, two key mechanisms that govern quiescence. These findings reveal a dynamic, cell-intrinsic mechanism used by hair follicle SCs to reinforce quiescence upon self-renewal and suggest a unique ability of SCs to maintain cell identity.


Recently, constrained Markov Bayesian polynomial (CMBP) has been proposed as a data-driven rule-based model for dialog state tracking (DST). CMBP is an approach to bridge rule-based models and statistical models. Recurrent Polynomial Network (RPN) is a recent statistical framework taking advantages of rulebased models and can achieve state-ofthe-art performance on the data corpora of DSTC-3, outperforming all submitted trackers in DSTC-3 including RNN. It is widely acknowledged that SLU's reliability influences tracker's performance greatly, especially in cases where the training SLU is poorly matched to the testing SLU. In this paper, this effect is analyzed in detail for RPN. Experiments show that RPN's tracking result is consistently the best compared to rule-based and statistical models investigated on different SLUs including mismatched ones and demonstrate RPN's is very robust to mismatched semantic parsers.


24 hours to save the world...and get home for dinner. Meet Zac Power - the ultimate boy hero with a secret spying career. No mission is impossible for him. Zac tracks down the enemy and saves the day every time. He has super-cool gadgets: an amphibious submersible vehicle, total knock-out tissues to put the enemy to sleep, a mini-fighter jet and a stink bomb - to name but a few. Who is attacking the world's petrol tankers in the freezing Great Icy Pole? How can Zac find the Vanishing Tomb and rescue a secret agent? Can Zac stop a villianous spy agency from stealing gold bars from the world's most secure bank? How will Zac get to the sea-bed to protect the top-secret information stored there? If anyone can, Zac can!


Subdural empyema consists in a pus collection located between dura mater and arachnoid. Rhinosinusitis, otitis media and mastoiditis are the most common causes of subdural empyema. Computed tomography and magnetic resonance are essential in the diagnosis of this pathology. The treatment of subdural empyema consists in immediate surgical drainage through craniotomy or by burr hole placement. The authors describe a subdural empyema caused by chronic suppurative otitis media that was drained by otoneurosurgical approach.


Background Necrosis and inflammation in peri-implant soft tissues have been described in failed second-generation metal-on-metal (MoM) resurfacing hip arthroplasties and in the pseudotumors associated with these implants. The precise frequency and significance of these tissue changes is unknown. Method We analyzed morphological and immunophenotypic changes in the periprosthetic soft tissues and femoral heads of 52 revised MoM arthroplasties (fracture in 21, pseudotumor in 13, component loosening in 9, and other causes in 9 cases). Results Substantial necrosis was observed in the periprosthetic connective tissue in 28 of the cases, including all pseudotumors, and 5 cases of component loosening. A heavy, diffuse inflammatory cell infiltrate composed mainly of HLA-DR+/CD14+/CD68+ macrophages and CD3+ T cells was seen in 45 of the cases. Perivascular lymphoid aggregates composed of CD3+ cells and CD20+ B cells were noted in 27 of the cases, but they were not seen in all cases of component loosening or pseudotumors. Plasma cells were noted in 30 cases. Macrophage granulomas were noted in 6 cases of component loosening. In the bone marrow of the femoral head, a macrophage and T cell response was seen in 31 of the cases; lymphoid aggregates were noted in 19 of the cases and discrete granulomas in 1 case. Interpretation Our findings indicate that there is a spectrum of necrotic and inflammatory changes in response to the deposition of cobalt-chrome (Co-Cr) wear particles in periprosthetic tissues. Areas of extensive coagulative necrosis and a macrophage and T lymphocyte response occur in implant failure and pseudotumors, in which there is also granuloma formation. The pathogenesis of these changes is uncertain but it may involve both a cytotoxic response and a delayed hypersensitivity (type IV) response to Co-Cr particles.


We propose a hybrid approach to temporal anomaly detection in access data of users to databases — or more generally, any kind of subject-object co-occurrence data. We consider a high-dimensional setting that also requires fast computation at test time. Our methodology identifies anomalies based on a single stationary model, instead of requiring a full temporal one, which would be prohibitive in this setting. We learn a low-rank stationary model from the training data, and then fit a regression model for predicting the expected likelihood score of normal access patterns in the future. The disparity between the predicted likelihood score and the observed one is used to assess the "surprise" at test time. This approach enables calibration of the anomaly score, so that time-varying normal behavior patterns are not considered anomalous. We provide a detailed description of the algorithm, including a convergence analysis, and report encouraging empirical results. One of the data sets that we tested is new for the public domain. It consists of two months' worth of database access records from a live system. This data set and our code are publicly available at https://github.com/eyalgut/TLR anomaly detection.git.


"A friend in history," Henry David Thoreau once wrote, "looks like some premature soul." And in the history of friendship in early America, Caleb Crain sees the soul of the nation's literature. In a sensitive analysis that weaves together literary criticism and historical narrative, Crain describes the strong friendships between men that supported and inspired some of America's greatest writing--the Gothic novels of Charles Brockden Brown, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the novels of Herman Melville. He traces the genealogy of these friendships through a series of stories. A dapper English spy inspires a Quaker boy to run away from home. Three Philadelphia gentlemen conduct a romance through diaries and letters in the 1780s. Flighty teenager Charles Brockden Brown metamorphoses into a horror novelist by treating his friends as his literary guinea pigs. Emerson exchanges glances with a Harvard classmate but sacrifices his crush on the altar of literature--a decision Margaret Fuller invites him to reconsider two decades later. Throughout this engaging book, Crain demonstrates the many ways in which the struggle to commit feelings to paper informed the shape and texture of American literature.