In this thesis I consider the account of religious non-realism in the work of Don Cupitt and in other prominent writers belonging to the 'Sea of Faith' network. I argue that the appropriate context of the non-realists understanding of religious belief is provided by philosophical pragmatism as this is presented in the work of John Dewey and Richard Rorty. This context outlines important aspects of the 'Sea of Faith' religious non-realists' self-understanding; and provides them with an argumentative resource which they can employ against alternative critical-realist approaches to religious belief I show that John Dewey's understanding of religious faith coheres with many of the ideas expressed by religious non-realists and that Rorty's pragmatism provides religious non-realism with a contemporary philosophical articulation of its theology. In order to defend this assertion I argue that Rorty's pragmatism does not necessarily lead to radical subjectivism nor to a dangerous political ideology as some interpreters have suggested. Further, I argue that his ideas are open to theological appropriation and that his rejection of religious belief is tempered by a tolerance toward those who still find a use for it. Rorty, I claim, has such a use. He employs the term 'God' as a backdrop against which he can present his own account of a pragmatic culture. I show that his work contains positive references to the influence that religious belief has had on the development of such a culture and argue that this pragmatic culture fits well with a non-realist understanding of religious belief


Precedent exists for the early development and subsequent down-regulation of neurotransmitter receptor systems in the vertebrate central nervous system, but the function of such embryonic receptors has not been established. Here we show that stimulation of early-developing dopamine receptors in avian retina cells greatly inhibits the motility of neuronal growth cones. Neurons from embryonic chicken retinas were cultured in low-density monolayers, and their growth cones were observed with phase-contrast or video-enhanced-contrast-differential-interference-contrast (VEC-DIC) microscopy. Approximately 25% of the neurons responded to micromolar dopamine with a rapid reduction in filopodial activity followed by a flattening of growth cones and retraction of neurites. The response occurred at all ages examined (embryonic day-8 retinal neurons cultured on polylysine-coated coverslips for 1-7 days), although neurite retraction was greatest in younger cultures. Effects of dopamine on growth cone function could be reversed by haloperidol or (+)-SCH 23390, whereas forskolin elicited a response similar to dopamine; these data show the response was receptor-mediated, acting through a D1-type system, and are consistent with the use of cAMP as a second messenger. The experiments provide strong support for the hypothesis that neurotransmitters, besides mediating transynaptic signaling in the adult, may have a role in neuronal differentiation as growth regulators.


Abstract Objective To assess the association between the employment status of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected individuals and adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART). Methods We searched the Medline, Embase and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials databases for studies reporting ART adherence and employment status published between January 1980 and September 2014. Information from a wide range of other sources, including the grey literature, was also analysed. Two independent reviewers extracted data on treatment adherence and study characteristics. Study data on the association between being employed and adhering to ART were pooled using a random-effects model. Between-study heterogeneity and sources of bias were evaluated. Findings The meta-analysis included 28 studies published between 1996 and 2014 that together involved 8743 HIV-infected individuals from 14 countries. The overall pooled odds ratio (OR) for the association between being employed and adhering to ART was 1.27 (95% confidence interval, CI: 1.04–1.55). The association was significant for studies from low-income countries (OR: 1.85, 95% CI: 1.58–2.18) and high-income countries (OR: 1.33, 95% CI: 1.02–1.74) but not middle-income countries (OR: 0.94, 95% CI: 0.62–1.42). In addition, studies published after 2011 and larger studies showed less association between employment and adherence than earlier and small studies, respectively. Conclusion Employed HIV-infected individuals, particularly those in low- and high-income countries, were more likely to adhere to ART than unemployed individuals. Further research is needed on the mechanisms by which employment and ART adherence affect each other and on whether employment-creation interventions can positively influence ART adherence, HIV disease progression and quality of life.


Ubinas volcano has had 23 degassing and ashfall episodes since A.D. 1550, making it the historically most active volcano in southern Peru. Based on fieldwork, on interpretation of aerial photographs and satellite images, and on radiometric ages, the eruptive history of Ubinas is divided into two major periods. Ubinas I (Middle Pleistocene >376 ka) is characterized by lava flow activity that formed the lower part of the edifice. This edifice collapsed and resulted in a debris-avalanche deposit distributed as far as 12 km downstream the Rio Ubinas. Non-welded ignimbrites were erupted subsequently and ponded to a thickness of 150 m as far as 7 km south of the summit. These eruptions probably left a small collapse caldera on the summit of Ubinas I. A 100- m-thick sequence of ash-and-pumice flow deposits followed, filling paleo-valleys 6 km from the summit. Ubinas II, 376 ky to present comprises several stages. The summit cone was built by andesite and dacite flows between 376 and 142 ky. A series of domes grew on the southern flank and the largest one was dated at 250 ky; block-and-ash flow deposits from these domes filled the upper Rio Ubinas valley 10 km to the south. The summit caldera was formed between 25 and 9.7 ky. Ash-flow deposits and two Plinian deposits reflect explosive eruptions of more differentiated magmas. A debris-avalanche deposit (about 1.2 km3) formed hummocks at the base of the 1,000-m-high, fractured and unstable south flank before 3.6 ka. Countless explosive events took place inside the summit caldera during the last 9.7 ky. The last Plinian eruption, dated A.D.1000-1160, produced an andesitic pumice-fall deposit, which achieved a thickness of 25 cm 40 km SE of the summit. Minor eruptions since then show phreatomagmatic characteristics and a wide range in composition (mafic to rhyolitic): the events reported since A.D. 1550 include many degassing episodes, four moderate (VEI 2-3) eruptions, and one VEI 3 eruption in A.D. 1667.
Ubinas erupted high-K, calc-alkaline magmas (SiO2=56 to 71 % ). Magmatic processes include fractional crystallization and mixing of deeply derived mafic andesites in a shallow magma chamber. Parent magmas have been relatively homogeneous through time but reflect variable conditions of deep-crustal assimilation, as shown in the large variations in SrN and LREEJHREE. Depleted HREE and Y values in some lavas, mostly late mafic rocks, suggest contamination of magmas near the base of the >60-km-thick continental crust. The most recently erupted products (mostly scoria) show a wide range in composition and a trend towards more mafic magmas.
Recent eruptions indicate that Ubinas poses a severe threat to at least 5,000 people living in the valley of the Rio Ubinas, and within a 15-km radius of the summit. The threat includes thick tephra falls, phreatomagmatic ejecta, failure of the unstable south flank with subsequent debris avalanches, rain-triggered lahars, and pyroclastic flows. Should Plinian eruptions of the size of the Holocene events recur at Ubinas, tephra fall would affect about one million people living in the Arequipa area 60 km west of the summit.


Frequency Response Analysis (FRA) is regarded as the most effective technique for detecting mechanical faults in transformer windings. However, the main challenge in applying the FRA technique lies in the correct interpretation of the differences between the diagnosis and the reference frequency spectra. A transformer can be modeled as an equivalent circuit network comprising inductances (L) and capacitances (C), where L and C are electrical parameters dependent on the winding geometry; a relationship exists between the winding geometry, the electrical components of the equivalent circuit network and the measured FRA spectra. Through electromagnetic circuit analysis, this paper provides a theoretical basis to develop a fundamental understanding of FRA spectra and their resulting interpretation. The FRA spectra are first explained for a single air core winding with uniform structure, and then the complexity is gradually increased by taking into consideration the iron core, the mutual inductive coupling between parts of the same winding and then between the separate windings of the transformer. Mathematical expressions are developed to represent the relationship between the FRA characteristics and the corresponding electrical components of the equivalent circuit network model.


In this paper we develop the outlines of a theory for the firm, in response to von Hippel and von Krogh's (2015, henceforth Hippel-Krogh) critique of the problem solving perspective as a theory of value creation. Hippel-Krogh argue that (a) problems and solutions cannot always be separated as they often emerge as problem solution or need-solution pairs that are discovered serendipitously, and (b) deliberately formulating or choosing a single, fixed problem restricts the firm from accessing the vast array of external problem solvers and restricts the firm from valuable reformulations of the problem and "rich landscape search." While Hippel-Krogh raise interesting and important arguments, we claim that they miss what is most central about the problem solving approach: the comparative, organizational and strategic aspects of the theory. But, their critique is also important as it draws attention to a critical void in the problem solving perspective, namely, the need to develop a firm specific theory of value creation.We argue that a theory for the firm links problem solving with a broader theory of value creation, thus responding to the concerns raised by Hippel-Krogh. We discuss how firms theorize the process of value creation by articulating an overall architecture and bundle of problems around which it uniquely needs to organize and govern in order to create value. We provide two brief, informal examples (Starbucks and Apple) to illustrate our points, linking these examples to the need-solution landscape proposed by Hippel-Krogh. In all, we provide a broad sketch and outline of a theory of value creation as it relates to problem finding and problem solving while concurrently responding to points raised by Hippel-Krogh.


Whether basic entrepreneurship can be inculcated amongst the poorest in society and serve as a route out of poverty remains an open question. We provide evidence on this issue by looking at the effects of a large-scale asset transfer and training programme which is targeted at the poorest women in rural Bangladesh. We use a randomized control trial research design, and survey all households in the community. This allows us to map the full social network of the beneficiaries, on multiple dimensions of interaction. We find that beneficiaries' wealth levels and occupational structure converge to that of lower-middle class households. Beneficiaries use their newly found wealth to purchase household durables, and improve their human capital, as measured by business skills and their health status. We find the programme affects the composition of beneficiary households' networks: they form ties to wealthier residents after the programme. The programme also affects outcomes among social network members, but has no effect on households that are not socially connected to beneficiaries. Our findings suggest that such programs have effects beyond beneficiary households, and that the network structures and outcomes in targeted communities are transformed by them.


The economic potential of guarana relies on the energetic and medicinal properties of its seeds, which can be used to produce soft drinks, sticks, powder, and syrup. Brazil is the only guarana producer on a commercial scale, and the guarana crop system is the main agricultural activity in Maués, Amazonas. Although several types of technology have been developed to reduce costs and increase guarana productivity, the most important optimization of seedling production by cutting still needs to improve the rooting percentage and reduce mortality rates. However, the use of rooting inducers for guarana is still unestablished. Therefore, we evaluated the rooting potential of herbaceous cuttings from three guarana cultivars under different indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) concentrations. We recorded qualitative data from the roots of the cuttings. The IBA doses did not increase the percentage of rooted cuttings; however, they increased the root system quality of the guarana cuttings. We present this rooting method for the guarana plant as the most appropriate and least costly for small producers.


Abstract. The El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most important source of global climate variability on interannual timescales and has substantial environmental and socio-economic consequences. However, it is unclear how it interacts with large-scale climate states over longer (decadal to centennial) timescales. The instrumental ENSO record is too short for analysing long-term trends and variability and climate models are unable to accurately simulate past ENSO states. Proxy data are used to extend the record, but different proxy sources have produced dissimilar reconstructions of long-term ENSO-like climate change, with some evidence for a temperature–precipitation divergence in ENSO-like climate over the past millennium, in particular during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA; AD  ∼  800–1300) and the Little Ice Age (LIA; AD  ∼  1400–1850). This throws into question the stability of the modern ENSO system and its links to the global climate, which has implications for future projections. Here we use a new statistical approach using weighting based on empirical orthogonal function (EOF) to create two new large-scale reconstructions of ENSO-like climate change derived independently from precipitation proxies and temperature proxies. The method is developed and validated using model-derived pseudo-proxy experiments that address the effects of proxy dating error, resolution, and noise to improve uncertainty estimations. We find no evidence that temperature and precipitation disagree over the ENSO-like state over the past millennium, but neither do they agree strongly. There is no statistically significant difference between the MCA and the LIA in either reconstruction. However, the temperature reconstruction suffers from a lack of high-quality proxy records located in ENSO-sensitive regions, which limits its ability to capture the large-scale ENSO signal. Further expansion of the palaeo-database and improvements to instrumental, satellite, and model representations of ENSO are needed to fully resolve the discrepancies found among proxy records and establish the long-term stability of this important mode of climatic variability.


Metal toxicity is implicated in neurotoxicity, nephrotoxicity, aging and cancer. Protein oxidation resulting from oxidative stress is now known to be involved in metal toxicity. However, proteomic responses to metal induced oxidative stress have not been characterized. By using the yeast as a model, we characterized these changes occurring in response to sub-lethal doses of metals. Several proteins involved in protein synthesis, ribosome assembly decreased while antioxidant defenses, proteins involved in sulfur metabolism, and glutathione synthesis and ubiquitin increased following metal exposure. We also show that metals induced temporal and targeted protein oxidation independent of protein abundance. Among the targets were glycolytic enzymes and heat-shock proteins. As a consequence, glycolytic enzyme activities decreased whereas the levels and activities of the enzymes of the alternative pathway for glucose metabolism, pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) increased. True to prediction, we also found increased flow through the PPP as measured by elevated levels of NADPH and glutathione. NADPH and glutathione are crucial for maintaining the redox balance in the cell. Thus, rerouting of glucose metabolism into PPP is considered to be beneficial to the organism. Among the oxidation targets is a glycolytic protein, glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) that is required for apoptosis in neuronal cells. We show that not only is GAPDH required for metal induced apoptosis in yeast but also the levels of GAPDH transcript and protein increase in the cytosol and the nucleus in an isoform specific fashion. Such changes strongly implicate the role of GAPDH in yeast apoptosis. This work provides evidence for the involvement of targeted protein oxidation in metal toxicity, shows the overlaps and differences in the mechanism of copper and cadmium toxicity, allows comprehension of how metabolic processes respond to metal stress and explores the potential of GAPDH as a sensor of oxidative stress and mediator for


We consider a plasma of point ions in the presence of a non-uniform neutralising background. This background. the source of an external field, may have some of its parameters (density, form of surface profile, etc) modified, as long as the total charge is maintained. By considering such modifications in the context of the density-functional formalism for the ions, we prove sum rules giving the first and second moments of the ion density p(z) in terms of other properties (bulk pressure and temperature derivative of surface tension). The Poisson-Boltzmann functional is considered in detail. We show that the first and second momenr conditions on p(z) are verified. We calculate p ( z ) exactly for this system, and also perform variational calculations: comparison shows the importance of respecting the asymptotic behaviour of p(z). Variational calculations have been performed, using the density-functional formalism in the square-gradient approximation. for systems with plasma parameter r from 1 to 10. For r > 3, important oscillations appear in the profile, as shown by recent Monte Carlo calculations. The profiles calculated variationally also show increasing oscillations. but are not in good agreement with the Monte Carlo results. The surface energies are poor even for r = 1 showing the inadequacy of the square-gradient expansion for this system.


Abstract. A realistic simulation of physical and dynamical processes in the Arctic atmosphere and its feedbacks with the surface conditions is still a challenge for state-of-the-art Arctic climate models. This is of critical importance because studies of, for example, transport of pollutants from middle latitudes into the Arctic rely on the skill of the model in correctly representing atmospheric circulation including the key mechanisms and pathways of pollutant transport. In this work the performance of the Weather Research and Forecast model (WRF) with two land surface model schemes (Noah and NoahMP) and two reanalysis data sets for creation of lateral boundary conditions (ERA-interim and ASR) is evaluated focusing on meteorological surface properties and atmospheric dynamics. This includes the position and displacement of the polar dome and other features characterizing atmospheric circulation associated to sea ice maxima/minima extent within the Eurasian Arctic. The model simulations analyzed are carried out at 15-km horizontal resolution over a period of five years (2008 to 2012). The WRF model simulations are evaluated against surface meteorological data from automated weather stations and vertical profiles from radiosondes. Results show that the model is able to reproduce the main features of the atmospheric dynamics and vertical structure of the Arctic atmosphere reasonably well. The influence of the choice of the reanalyses used as initial and lateral boundary condition and of the LSM on the model results is complex and no combination is found to be clearly superior in all variables analyzed. The model results show that a more sophisticated formulation of land surface processes does not necessarily lead to significant improvements in the model results. This suggests that other factors such as the decline of the Arctic sea ice, stratosphere-troposphere interactions, atmosphere-ocean interaction, and boundary layer processes are also highly important and can have a significant influence on the model results. The "best" configuration for simulating Arctic meteorology and processes most relevant for pollutant transport (ASR + NoahMP) is then used in a simulation with WRF including aerosols and chemistry (WRF-Chem) to simulate black carbon (BC) concentrations in and around the Arctic and to assess the role of the modeled atmospheric circulation in the simulated BC concentrations inside the Arctic domain. Results from simulations with chemistry are evaluated against aerosol optical depth from several Aeronet stations and BC concentrations and particle number concentrations from several stations from the EBAS database. The results with WRF-Chem show a strong dependency of the simulated BC concentration on the modeled meteorology and the transport of the pollutants around our domain. The results also show that biases in the modeled BC concentrations can also be related to the emission data. Significant improvements of the models and of our understanding of the impact of anthropogenic BC emissions on the Arctic strongly depends on the availability of suitable, long-term observational data of concentrations of BC and particulate matter, vertical profiles of temperature and humidity and wind.


In Nigeria, hundreds of government-hired enumerators armed with GPS-enabled smartphones have systematically been visiting schools, water points, and health facilities across the country. At each location they take a photo, record a GPS point, and with the aid of a mobile data collection form, assess local capacity based on the availability of necessary human and material resources--such as basic infrastructure, staffing, furniture, and tools--to deliver a given service. For example, is a water point functional and being used? Does a clinic have adequate equipment, medicines, and staffing to deliver care? Does a school have a roof, teachers, desks, and books? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The goal of this ambitious effort by the government of Nigeria, with technical support by the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is to quickly develop a complete, accurate, and timely understanding of the issues related to access to vital services that are critical to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially by the rural poor. To date, this consisted of nation-wide mapping exercises representing an inventory of over 250,000 facilities and service points. Collected in the span of only a few months, this rapid assessment has provided specific and actionable data required by policy makers and planners, both at a local and national level, to properly understand the resources required to address the identified gaps in service provision. This data collection exercise is part of the Conditional Grants Scheme (CGS), a Nigerian development initiative introduced in 2007 by the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs in order to enable the federal government to use debt-relief funds to provide technical and financial support to state and local governments to achieve the MDGs. The conditions attached to grants are designed to ensure greater responsibility in public expenditure by decentralizing the planning, budgeting, and implementation of MDG-related programs to Nigeria's 774 local government authorities (LGAs). The overarching goal is to enhance government accountability by improving transparency in decision-making and resource allocation, while increasing local planning capacity and ownership. Quickly mapping Africa's most populous nation is admittedly an audacious goal, but one that is now possible with the help of the mobile phone. Planning in the Fog Traditional paper-based data collection is a costly and time-consuming process that involves the physical collection of surveys, manual data entry, data cleaning, and data synthesis. As a result, government data is usually out of date by the dine it is released, making it impossible for policy makers to adequately plan for and allocate the necessary resources to achieve the MDGs. Though it is possible to collate GPS coordinates with paper surveys, it is a cumbersome and error-prone process. This weakness in paper-based systems has led planning agencies to over-rely on simple metrics such as facility-to-population ratios, without taking into account proper consideration of important factors such as population density when trying to assess access to services. This is demonstrated when trying to make sense of national-level performance indicators in an LGA with a large urban center, as they usually distort or mask rural conditions. That 70 percent of the population has access to energy in an urban area provides no reliable indication of the reality facing people in neighboring rural areas. Geospatial analysis and good data, which can help disambiguate these indicators, require a trained Geographic Information System (GIS) specialist--a resource to which few district planners have access. Given the high costs and resources required for such data collection efforts, the process is often funded centrally, with the resulting data usually flowing up to and closely guarded by the collecting agency. …


Second Life is an online virtual world that is three dimensional and uses rich graphics to allow the user to be engaged in this environment. There has been a significant increase in people using this virtual world and of those conducting research in it in the recent past. This research study analyses a project where pre-service education students accessed Second Life as part of a fourth year elective course. The students had not used this virtual world prior to being introduced to it in class. They completed a problem based learning experience in Second Life that allowed the students to explore the virtual world as well as develop an activity that could be taught to a high school class. This study used case study methodology within a qualitative research framework. Although it was only a small pilot study, results suggest that the students learned how to navigate around Second Life and were open to this new technology. Half the students reported that they would use this technology or similar technologies in the future.


The thesis is an exposition and defence of Bayesianism as the preferred methodology of reasoning under uncertainty in social contexts. Chapter 1 gives a general outline of the foundations of probabilistic reasoning, as well as a critical exposition of the main non- Bayesian approaches to probability. After a brief discussion of the formal theory of probability, the thesis examines some non-Bayesian interpretations of the probability calculus, and purports to show their insufficiency. Chapter 2 provides an outline of the Bayesian (subjectivist) research programme. The opening sections of the chapter contain a historical overview of Bayesianism, as well as a defence of the assumptions on which it rests. The concluding sections then examine some of the key issues of contention between Bayesians and their critics, such as the nature of empirical confirmation and learning from experience. Since it is the author's contention that any sound methodology should be applicable, if necessary with modifications, across a wide range of contexts, the concluding two chapters make a Bayesian case first in a theoretical, and next in a practical setting. In particular, Chapter 3 discusses the issue of simplicity as a theoretical virtue. It argues that a Bayesian can coherently and successfully account for the structural or formal simplicity of the hypotheses that he entertains, by using his assignments of subjective prior probabilities in the process known as 'Bayesian Conditionalisation'. It also argues that some of the recent criticisms voiced against the Bayesian account of simplicity are inconsistent and/or question-begging. The process known in statistics as 'curve-fitting' provides the material for the discussion. Finally, Chapter 4 presents an extension of the Bayesian methodology to practical decision-making, using the context of investing activity. It purports to show that the most convincing picture of economic agents' investing behaviour is best explained by assuming that in the course of such behaviour, the agents maximise their expected utility, as is stipulated by the Bayesian decision theory. The argument revolves around the 'Efficient Markets Hypothesis' in the theory of finance, and the conclusion hinges both on the empirical adequacy of the various versions of this hypothesis and on its behavioural underpinnings. The thesis contains two appendices, intended to illustrate certain points made in the main body. The first appendix is a critical appraisal of a popular non-Bayesian account of causal inference in statistical contexts, with a bearing on the discussion in Chapter 3, while the second appendix provides a real-life illustration of some of the issues raised in Chapter 4. The overall structure of the thesis is intended to show how, from highly plausible assumptions, one can derive a powerful theory of reasoning under uncertainty that faithfully and uniformly represents both the theoretical and the practical concerns of the human mind.


This paper examines the role of social protection through different channels (education, health, social transfers, subsidies, etc.) which are helpful in reducing poverty in Pakistan. Unlike the existing literature, the paper considers the quantitative model of social protection policies to reduce the poverty. To handle this issue, a time series data set containing thirty-one observations, is used for the period 1982–2012. An Autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) is used to identify the long-run, as well as the short-term relationship between the social protection indicators and the poverty. It is concluded that outreach of social protection via expenditures on education, foreign aid and zakat play a significant role in poverty reduction. Moreover, the autocratic period has proved itself a mechanism to reduce poverty by social protection provisions as compared to the democratic period but remain insignificant.


One electron oxidn. of the beta-Diketiminate vanadium (III) bis-neopentyl complex (Nacnac)V(CH2tBu)2 (Nacnac-=[Ar]NC(Me)CHC(Me)N[Ar], Ar=2,6-(CHMe2)2C6H3) promotes alpha-abstraction to afford the cationic four-coordinate neopentylidene vanadium complex [(Nacnac)V=CHtBu(THF)][BPh4]. The neutral vanadium neopentylidene complex (Nacnac)V=CHtBu(I) was prepd. by the reaction of cationic complex [(Nacnac)V=CHtBu(THF)][BPh4] with I-. This family of alkylidene complexes are one electron paramagnets and display well-resolved EPR spectra at room temp. The thermal stability of these systems was explored in addn. to its reactivity. In conjunction with the above studies, novel four-coordinate vanadium(IV) phosphinidene complexes (Nacnac)V=PR(CH2tBu) (R=2,4,6-iPr3C6H2, 2,4,6-tBuC6H2) were also prepd. from salt metathesis of (Nacnac)V=CHtBu(I) with LiPHR. Solid and soln. magnetic measurements, EPR spectra, and single crystal X-ray diffraction studies have been carried out for all the complexes described. Two electron-oxidn. and double alpha-hydrogen abstraction starting from (Nacnac)V(CH2tBu)2 lead to the first four coordinate neopentylidyne complex (Nacnac)V.tplbond.CtBu(Otf) which showed a distinct alkylidyne carbon resonance at 375 ppm at -50 DegC. [on SciFinder (R)]


This thesis challenges the deeply entrenched stereotypical image which depicts early modern urban dwellers throwing rubbish and effluent directly out of their windows and doors into the streets below almost as is this was a normal and widely permissible waste disposal practice. This 'chamber pot in the window' myth has become almost synonymous with the early modern period itself in the current, popular, historical imagination, especially in relation to urban settlements. But the majority of urban inhabitants and their local governors alike valued clean outdoor public spaces. They had a vested interest in keeping the areas in which they lived and worked clean and they invested substantial time and energy into upholding their collective standards of acceptable cleanliness in the neighbourhoods, wards, towns and cities of which they were so proud. The small minority of householders who flouted sanitation bylaws by disposing of their waste problematically and by creating insanitary nuisances in public spaces encountered substantial resistance from their neighbours. Contemporaries were not afraid to approach the courts to complain about less fastidious neighbours, whose inadequate waste disposal arrangements and noxious trades threatened to undermine their daily life quality. While the contents of chamber pots were thrown from some early modern urban windows, this was by no means a normal, common or widespread practice, at least before 1700.

The main task of this thesis is not to establish how clean early modern urban streets actually were, but rather to explore cultural attitudes towards outdoor salubrity and waste, both among local governors and urban inhabitants. The thesis focuses on Edinburgh and York in a comparative framework, shedding light on the complex relationship between how governors organised street cleaning, managed waste disposal and regulated the cleanliness of the outdoor environment, top-down, and how typical urban inhabitants self-regulated their neighbourhoods, bottom-up. The ways in which the respective cities' waste disposal and sanitation systems and processes were undermined, adapted and improved over time, as inner Edinburgh's population swelled while York's remained relatively stagnant, are also analysed.

While focusing on Edinburgh and York, the thesis also discusses the challenge of pre-modern urban waste disposal, in the context of both necessary urban agriculture and rudimentary technology, in a much broader context and with reference to several smaller towns in Scotland and northern England. The relationship between neighbourhood, urban and national politics is a recurring theme in the thesis and the relevant sub-topics of the urban-rural manure trade and Sir John Harrington's water closet invention of 1596 are also analysed.

The thesis is split into five chapters. The first is an introduction to the topic, to the cities of Edinburgh and York, to the existing historiography, to the modern-day misconceptions surrounding the topic and to the methodology. The second chapter explains the character of the environmental challenge in early modern urban Britain. The third chapter explains the legal, governmental and administrative context of environmental regulation in Edinburgh and York, respectively. The fourth chapter compares the management and provision of street cleaning and waste disposal in Edinburgh and York while the fifth compares how insanitary nuisances were regulated in the two cities. The conclusion relates the two case studies to the
rest of early modern Britain, comparing them to several smaller urban settlements in lowland Scotland and northern England, as well as highlighting just how differently, and sometimes just how similarly, this area of urban government was managed in different urban settlements.


Mme Lesbazeille-Souvestre's translation of Jane Eyre, published in 1854, was the first to appear in French and has been re-edited numerous times, most recently in 2001. This analysis uses both the translator's preface and the translation itself to explore how the translator constructed what was often seen as a problematically "feminine" text into a normatively "feminine" one and, in so doing, asserted herself as an author in her own right. In her translator's preface, Lesbazeille-Souvestre aims to assure her readers that in translating she felt a duty of fidelity to the text and to the text's author, and thus that they are reading a linguistically faithful translation. In the translation itself, however, and in contradiction to her stated goal, she actively attempted to construct Jane Eyre as a text that is proper both for a female writer to have produced and for female readers to consume by consistently negating the so-called "masculine" elements she found in the novel. The character of Jane Eyre is significantly altered in the translation in ways that bring her more in line with conventional feminine values. Lesbazeille-Souvestre's protestations of complete fidelity in her preface must therefore be questioned and viewed through the lens not only of what it meant to translate in the nineteenth century but of what it meant to translate and to write as a woman.


The Riemann Hypothesis-Peter B. Borwein 2008 The Riemann Hypothesis has become the Holy Grail of mathematics in the century and a half since 1859 when Bernhard Riemann, one of the extraordinary mathematical talents of the 19th century, originally posed the problem. While the problem is notoriously difficult, and complicated even to state carefully, it can be loosely formulated as "the number of integers with an even number of prime factors is the same as the number of integers with an odd number of prime factors." The Hypothesis makes a very precise connection between two seemingly unrelated mathematical objects, namely prime numbers and the zeros of analytic functions. If solved, it would give us profound insight into number theory and, in particular, the nature of prime numbers. This book is an introduction to the theory surrounding the Riemann Hypothesis. Part I serves as a compendium of known results and as a primer for the material presented in the 20 original papers contained in Part II. The original papers place the material into historical context and illustrate the motivations for research on and around the Riemann Hypothesis. Several of these papers focus on computation of the zeta function, while others give proofs of the Prime Number Theorem, since the Prime Number Theorem is so closely connected to the Riemann Hypothesis. The text is suitable for a graduate course or seminar or simply as a reference for anyone interested in this extraordinary conjecture.


Zipper frames are intended to improve on the behavior of conventional inverted-V-braced frames, which show poor performance taking place from the early buckling of braces in the lower story. A zipper frame affords better performance by forcing simultaneous buckling of all braces. In this article, seismic behaviors of zipper braced frames and three types of eccentrically braced frames are evaluated using finite element simulation. Two dimensional finite element models have been created for three-story onebay frames for various bay lengths and different arrangement of braces. Seismic response of frames subjected to near-fault ground motions (LA21) has been studied through dynamic analysis, considering nonlinearity of geometry and materials. For this purpose, SAP2000 has been used. Results have been compared and structural response of steel frames and some other parameters such as ductility of frames, maximum base shear and optimized link length have been investigated. Against other researches, in this article, the ratio of maximum shear over the weight of structure and its relation to behavior of structure has also been studied. It was found that optimized link length in EBF systems which caused to maximum ductility of frame is about 30 percent of the bay length. Moreover, the results showed that zipper frames provide desirable post buckling behavior and exhibit more ductility.


The problem of computing a microscope objective corrected for visible light and for ultraviolet light is reviewed. As it does not seem possible to achieve freedom from chromatic aberrations over this interval with purely refractive objectives of large numerical apertures, a study of catadioptric objectives limited to spherical surfaces is initiated. Catadioptric objectives containing two mirror surfaces may be described as deriving from either the Newtonian or the Schwarzschild telescope objective. Construction data are given for Newtonian objectives which have numerical aperture 1.0 and which are corrected from 220 mμ through the visible spectrum. These modified Newtonian objectives have one serious defect: a large central portion of the aperture is obscured.


The Nuclear Research Center of Algiers (CRNA) organises each year radiation protection training courses to the benefit of such users from both the industrial and the medical fields. The Algerian Atomic Energy Commission (COMENA) has taken active steps towards the incorporation and adoption of ICT-based training modules in nuclear science and technology and related applications. The objective of such courses is mainly to train and sensitise the largest number of persons concerned with this field and improve the quality of such training. In this paper, we propose a solution based on an ICT module to complement and enhance this training. We present the material and the human resources that were required in order to implement such a project. This interactive CD-ROM is being finalised and will be tested on a sample of users.


We investigate the effects of Hypericum perforatum (HP) and Hippophae rhamnoides (HR) extracts on indomethacin-induced gastric injury. Rats were divided into five groups each containing 10 animals. The first group received HP extract, the second group received HR, and the third group received a combination of HP:HR extract at a ratio of 60:40. Fourth group had indomethacin (control group). Fifth group was untreated healthy group. First four groups of animals were gavaged indomethacin and the degree of gastric injury was recorded. Glutathione (GSH), malondialdehyde (MDA) and DNA injury products from the gastric tissue were measured. In the indomethacin-treated control group, the ulcer area was 78.8±2.5/mm2 and was significantly larger than the animals of HP, HR, HP+HR groups. When the groups were compared with the indomethacin-treated control group for GSH, MDA and DNA injury, the differences between all the groups were statistically significant. The mixture of HP and HR extracts showed maximum protective effects on indomethacin-induced gastric injury.


The United States (US) is the only developed country which does not have universal health insurance. Free healthcare clinics are operated largely by volunteers for the purpose of providing healthcare services to populations who are under- or un- uninsured in the US. Few qualitative studies have been conducted on patient experience and satisfaction at free clinics and, of those that do exist; most have been administered through focus groups. Thus, the purpose of this study is to explore perceptions and satisfaction among patients at a free clinic using a qualitative approach. Free clinic patients (N=649) participated in a survey with one open-ended question asking about their perceptions of the free clinic in 2017. This study analyzed the qualitative data from the openended question only. On average, the participants responded as being grateful and satisfied with the services provided by the free clinic. However, participants felt that they would benefit from further continuity of care and a higher number of medical providers, as well as more specialists. Future services to be modified or added, as indicated by the participants, include a greater variety of class times for health education and exercise classes, as well as the addition of urgent care services. To improve patient satisfaction, it is recommended to increase promotions for volunteer opportunities in addition to more training. Furthermore, it is necessary to give patients better access to referrals to community resources that offer the additional services that they are interested in.


By performing three-dimensional (3D) simulations that demonstrate the neutrino-driven core-collapse supernovae aided by the standing accretion shock instability (SASI), we study how the spiral modes of the SASI can impact the properties of the gravitational-wave (GW) emission. To see the effects of rotation in the nonlinear postbounce phase, we give a uniform rotation on the flow advecting from the outer boundary of the iron core, the specific angular momentum of which is assumed to agree with recent stellar evolution models. We compute fifteen 3D models in which the initial angular momentum and the input neutrino luminosities from the protoneutron star are changed in a systematic manner. By performing a ray-tracing analysis, we accurately estimate the GW amplitudes generated by anisotropic neutrino emission. Our results show that the gravitational waveforms from neutrinos in models that include rotation exhibit a common feature; otherwise, they vary much more stochastically in the absence of rotation. The breaking of the stochasticity stems from the excess of the neutrino emission parallel to the spin axis. This is because the compression of matter is more enhanced in the vicinity of the equatorial plane due to the growth of the spiral SASI modes, leading to the formation of the spiral flows circulating around the spin axis with higher temperatures. We point out that recently proposed future space interferometers like Fabry–Perot-type DECIGO would permit the detection of these signals for a Galactic supernova.


Background: Characterisation of preserved autofluorescence (PAF) area in choroideremia (CHM) and its validity for monitoring disease progression in clinical trials is of importance. Methods: Eighty patients with molecularly confirmed CHM were recruited. PAF area was measured manually by 2 graders and half-life was calculated based on exponential decay model. Results: Mean age at baseline and follow-up examination was 38.1 (range, 10–69) and 40.7 (range, 11–70) years. Mean follow-up interval was 29 months (range, 6–104). The median LogMAR visual acuity was 0.10 (OD) and 0.18 (OS). Interobserver repeatability for PAF area was −0.99 to 1.03 mm2 (−6.46 to 6.49% of area). There was a statistically significant relationship between age and rate of PAF area loss (r2 = 0.28, p = 0.012). The half-life for PAF area was 13.7 years (range, 1.7–216.0 years). The correlation between half-life and age was stronger than between half-life and log transformed baseline PAF area, although neither was statistically significant. Conclusions: The intra- and inter-observer PAF area measurement variability provides a baseline change, which must be overcome in a clinical trial if this metric were to be used. Treatments must slow progression to alter the exponential decay in a timely manner accounting for naturally slow progression patterns.


The introduction of tyrosine kinase inhibitors into clinical practice now offers most patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia lengthy remissions and the possibility of normal life expectancies. These improved survivals have resulted in the need to address issues relating to quality of life, including fertility and procreation. Treatment may require lifelong daily therapy with drugs that might inhibit proteins essential to gonadal function, implantation, and embryogenesis. Animal data suggest that imatinib at standard dosages is unlikely to impair fertility in either adult male or female animals. However, human data remain limited, particularly in children and adolescents. Children born to men who are actively taking imatinib at conception seem healthy, and current advice is not to discontinue treatment. In contrast, data are less encouraging for children born to women exposed to imatinib during pregnancy. Although numbers are small, a disturbing cluster of rare congenital malformations has prevented imatinib from being recommended safely, particularly during the period of organogenesis. Alternative strategies for managing pregnancy in chronic myelogenous leukemia include one or both of regular leukapheresis and interferon-alpha. Pregnancy in advanced-phase disease presents particular problems.


Neural text-to-speech synthesis (NTTS) models have shown significant progress in generating high-quality speech, however they require a large quantity of training data. This makes creating models for multiple styles expensive and time-consuming. In this paper different styles of speech are analysed based on prosodic variations, from this a model is proposed to synthesise speech in the style of a newscaster, with just a few hours of supplementary data. We pose the problem of synthesising in a target style using limited data as that of creating a bi-style model that can synthesise both neutral-style and newscaster-style speech via a one-hot vector which factorises the two styles. We also propose conditioning the model on contextual word embeddings, and extensively evaluate it against neutral NTTS, and neutral concatenative-based synthesis. This model closes the gap in perceived style-appropriateness between natural recordings for newscaster-style of speech, and neutral speech synthesis by approximately two-thirds.


This book introduces the reader to a recent theory in Computer Vision yielding elementary techniques to analyse digital images. These techniques are inspired from and are a mathematical formalization of the Gestalt theory. Gestalt theory, which had never been formalized is a rigorous realm of vision psychology developped between 1923 and 1975. From the mathematical viewpoint the closest field to it is stochastic geometry, involving basic probability and statistics, in the context of image analysis. The authors maintain a public software, MegaWave, containing implementations of most of the image analysis techniques developped in the book. The book is intended for researchers and engineers. It is mathematically self-contained and requires only the basic notions in probability and calculus.


Unilateral vocal cord paralysis (UVCP) in children is a rare and challenging disorder for the pediatric otolaryngologist. The overall etiology differs from that in adults, iatrogenic causes are the commonest, followed by traumatic - birth or intubation trauma and neurologic causes. Prolonged spontaneous recovery occurs in up to 50% of cases. Management strategies used for adults have evolved and been utilized in children, with increasing reports of surgical intervention over the last decade. However, number of children treated remains small with no long-term follow-up. We used the terms vocal cord palsy, vocal cord paresis, vocal fold immobility each limited by paediatric, children, to search Medline, Embase, PubMed, Cochrane, and CINHAL. Reference lists were crosschecked to include relevant studies. Only English language literature was searched. Studies specifically relating to unilateral vocal cord or containing relevant data were identified and analyzed. We present our review of literature on pediatric UVCP with emphasis on various interventions for management, especially the growing experience with laryngeal re-innervation.


The load bearing capacity, global ductility and overall stability of steel frame can be improved significantly through the use of buckling-restrained braces (BRBs). Based on the open resource platform OpenSees, finite element models of two types of steel frame buildings, one is nine story steel frame (SF) building and another is buckling-restrained braced steel frames (BRBFs) buildings are developed. The structures were analyzed using both deterministic and probability analysis approach. No component-removal random incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) and component-removal random IDA are used to analyze collapse resistance of the buildings under seismic load. The collapse modes of SF and BRBFs under earthquakes are discovered. The nonlinear dynamic responses of SF and BRBFs are analyzed before and after the removal of certain critical components using the alternative path method (APM) approach stipulated by GSA and vertical IDA method respectively. Correspondently, the probabilistic fragility function of collapse likelihood of SF and BRBFs are also derived based on random vertical incremental dynamics analysis approach. The analytical results show that the use of buckling-restrained braces ensures alternative load path, therefore changes the failure modes and improve collapse resistance of structures.


Giving protein folding a helping hand The reversible phosphorylation of proteins controls virtually all aspects of cell and organismal function. Targeting phosphorylation offers a broad range of therapeutic opportunities, and thus kinases have become important therapeutic targets. As targets, phosphatases should be as attractive, but in fact they are more challenging to manipulate. Das et al. have found a safe and specific inhibitor, called Sephin1, that targets a regulatory subunit of protein phosphatase 1 in vivo. Sephin1 binds and inhibits PPP1R15A, but not the related regulatory phosphatase PPP1R15B. In mice, Sephin1 prolonged a stress-induced phospho-signaling pathway to prevent the pathological defects of the unrelated protein-misfolding diseases Charcot-Marie-Tooth 1B and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Science, this issue p. 239 Sephin1 selectively inhibits a protein phosphatase to prevent two protein misfolding diseases in mice. Protein phosphorylation regulates virtually all biological processes. Although protein kinases are popular drug targets, targeting protein phosphatases remains a challenge. Here, we describe Sephin1 (selective inhibitor of a holophosphatase), a small molecule that safely and selectively inhibited a regulatory subunit of protein phosphatase 1 in vivo. Sephin1 selectively bound and inhibited the stress-induced PPP1R15A, but not the related and constitutive PPP1R15B, to prolong the benefit of an adaptive phospho-signaling pathway, protecting cells from otherwise lethal protein misfolding stress. In vivo, Sephin1 safely prevented the motor, morphological, and molecular defects of two otherwise unrelated protein-misfolding diseases in mice, Charcot-Marie-Tooth 1B, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Thus, regulatory subunits of phosphatases are drug targets, a property exploited here to safely prevent two protein misfolding diseases.


Hayek gives the main arguments for the free-market case and presents his manifesto on the "errors of socialism." Hayek argues that socialism has, from its origins, been mistaken on factual, and even on logical, grounds and that its repeated failures in the many different practical applications of socialist ideas that this century has witnessed were the direct outcome of these errors. He labels as the "fatal conceit" the idea that "man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes." "The achievement of The Fatal Conceit is that it freshly shows why socialism must be refuted rather than merely dismissed—then refutes it again."—David R. Henderson, Fortune . "Fascinating. . . . The energy and precision with which Mr. Hayek sweeps away his opposition is impressive."—Edward H. Crane, Wall Street Journal F. A. Hayek is considered a pioneer in monetary theory, the preeminent proponent of the libertarian philosophy, and the ideological mentor of the Reagan and Thatcher "revolutions."


Sudan, Africa's largest country has been plagued by civil war for more than fifty years. The war broke out before independence in 1956 and the last round of talks ended in a peace agreement early in 2005. The war started as a war between two different religions embedded in different cultures. The Islamic government constitutionalised their religious beliefs and imposed them on the whole country. This triggered heavy reaction from the Christian and animist people in the South. They were not willing to adhere to strict marginalising Islamic laws that created cleavages in society. The Anya-Anya was the first rebel group to violently oppose the government and they fought until the Addis Ababa peace accord that was reached in 1972. After the peace agreement there was relative peace before the government went against the peace agreement and again started enforcing their religious laws on the people in the South. This new wave of Islamisation sparked renewed tension between the North and the south that culminated in Dr John Garang and his SPLM/A restarting the conflict with the government in 1982. This war between the SPLA and the government lasted 22 years and only ended at the beginning of 2005. The significance of this second wave in the conflict is that it coincided with the discovery of oil in the South. Since the discovery of oil the whole focus of the war changed and oil became the centre around which the war revolved. Through this research I intend to look at the significance of oil in the conflict. The research question: how religious is Sudan' Religious war? asks the question whether resources have become more important than religion.


The International Poverty Centre (IPC), with the support of GTZ and UNFPA, has recently undertaken an impact evaluation of the pilot of Tekopora, a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme in Paraguay. Previously, IPC analysed the logical framework of this programme and its implementation challenges, and assessed its targeting mechanisms. This Evaluation Note presents a summary of the impacts of the programme on household behaviour and well-being, as reported in Soares et al. (2008). The evaluation of a pilot project can offer important inputs into the decision-making process on the feasibility of the scaling-up of the programme, the effectiveness of its design and the assessment of problems that limit its potential. The evaluation of Tekopora shows positive impacts on per capita income and consumption, poverty reduction, school attendance, investment in agricultural production, access to credit, savings and social participation. Indeed, these results easily justify its scaling-up. However, the pilot has not been successful in reducing child labour or increasing child immunizations. Thus, addressing these aspects needs to be a key part of any redesign of the programme when it is scaled up. Tekopora seeks to reduce extreme poverty by using direct cash transfers to poor households with children and diminish the potential for future poverty by encouraging investment in human and social capital. The programme intends to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty through investments in the health and education of children. The transfers are conditional on school attendance, regular visits to health centres and updating of immunizations. The programme also includes a family support initiative that, among having other effects, should increase the productive potential of the household and its social participation. (...)


A high-power fiber laser in an all-fiber format is reported. The system consists of 36 pump ports, which use both counter and forward pump configuration. In the experiment, 1 008-W output power is obtained when 24 pump ports are used with a total pump power of 1 477 W. The optical-to-optical conversion efficiency is 68% and the 3-dB bandwidth of laser output increases with output power. Presently, the output power is only limited by the pump source. It can be predicted that the laser power can be further scaled if more pump sources are utilized.


[1] We examined plasma and magnetic field observations from all three Ulysses polar orbits of the Sun to study the properties of the slow and fast solar wind and interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs). We derived equations to characterize the radial and latitudinal variations for these three types of heliospheric plasma and identify distinguishing features in their spatial variations. Most notably, the slow-wind proton temperature falls less rapidly with distance than does the fast wind, indicating a source of enhanced heating in the low-speed wind. After removing the radial variations from the measurements, only minor latitudinal gradients were identified. The fast wind has now been shown to be only weakly dependent on solar latitude for two successive solar minima. The spatial variations in the ICME properties do not differ significantly from the slow and fast solar wind, although the variability in their parameters is much larger. We also investigated solar cycle variations in the fast polar coronal hole (PCH) flows by comparing their properties measured over Ulysses' 1st and 3rd orbits. While the latitudinal gradients were similar, slight differences were observed in the radial dependence for the proton density and magnetic field strength. Also, a slight reduction in the proton speed at 1 AU, along with more significant decreases in the proton temperature, density, dynamic pressure, and magnetic field strength, was observed for the 3rd orbit relative to that for the 1st. These results are consistent with recent observations of weaker PCH flows for the current solar minimum.


This pathbreaking book documents the transformation of reproductive practices and politics on Indian reservations from the late nineteenth century to the present, integrating a localized history of childbearing, motherhood, and activism on the Crow Reservation in Montana with an analysis of trends affecting Indigenous women more broadly. As Brianna Theobald illustrates, the federal government and local authorities have long sought to control Indigenous families and women's reproduction, using tactics such as coercive sterilization and removal of Indigenous children into the white foster care system. But Theobald examines women's resistance, showing how they have worked within families, tribal networks, and activist groups to confront these issues. Blending local and intimate family histories with the histories of broader movements such as WARN (Women of All Red Nations), Theobald links the federal government's intrusion into Indigenous women's reproductive and familial decisions to the wider history of eugenics and the reproductive rights movement. She argues convincingly that colonial politics have always been--and remain--reproductive politics.
By looking deeply at one tribal nation over more than a century, Theobald offers an especially rich analysis of how Indigenous women experienced pregnancy and motherhood under evolving federal Indian policy. At the heart of this history are the Crow women who displayed creativity and fortitude in struggling for reproductive self-determination.


Few medical specialties in the United States are as opaque as assisted reproductive technology (ART). ART operates free of regulation about serious and preventable kinds of errors that might be called ART "never events": the destruction, contamination, misdiagnosis, and switching of materials that cannot be chalked up to inevitable slips of hand or reasonable lapses in judgment. Elsewhere in health care delivery, these kinds of mistakes — surgery on the wrong body part or patient, for example — are publicly reported by mandate in 25 states and the District of Columbia. But no system exists to track similar such transgressions when they take place at fertility clinics, sperm banks, egg vendors, or surrogacy agencies.

Crowd-sourcing can help enhance market transparency about ART never events in the absence of regulation or remedy under public law, private law, or professional associations. This chapter introduces a user-generated platform that solicits reflections from reproductive patients about the care they received. Aggregated and detailed never-event reporting enable patients to select providers who deliver the quality care that's most relevant to their risks, needs, preferences. This system of patient reviews faces unique challenges, however, beyond the usual concerns about unrepresentative samples, distorted metrics, and the risk of misleading evaluations. It must also account for factors like the stigmatized care, intangible injuries, and out-of-pocket expenses that distinguish medical treatment within the reproductive context.


We report preliminary results obtained using Godunov methods of a centred type for hyperbolic systems of conservation laws for which the analytical solution of the Riemann problem is too difficult to develop. For this purpose, we consider a mathematical model used for modelling an unsteady compressible non-equilibrium mixture two-phase flow which results in a well-posed initial value problem in a conservative form. The mathematical two-phase flow model consists of six first-order partial differential equations that represent one-dimensional mass, momentum and energy balances for a mixture of gas-liquid and gas volume concentration, gas mass concentration and the relative velocity balances. This system of six partial differential equations has the mathematical property that its six characteristic roots are all real with a complete set of independent eigenvectors which form the basic structure of the solution of the Riemann problem. The construction of the solution of the Riemann problem for the model poses several difficulties. Since the model possesses a large number of non-linear waves, it is not easy to consider each wave separately to derive a single non-linear algebraic equation for the unknown region, the star region, between the left and right waves. We propose numerical techniques of a centred type specifically developed for high speed single-phase gas flows. A main feature of centred methods is that they do not explicitly require the solution of the Riemann problem. This is a desirable property which guarantees that the methods can handle the solution of the Riemann problem numerically and resolve both rarefaction and shock waves for the model in a simple way with good accuracy. Finally, we present some numerical simulations for the gas-liquid two-phase flow Riemann problem to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed schemes.


Do individuals from different cultures perceive scenes differently? Does culture have an influence on visual attention processes? This thesis investigates not only what these influences are, and how they affect eye movements, but also examines some of the proposed mechanisms that underlie the cultural influence in scene perception. Experiments 1 & 2 showed that Saudi participants directed a higher number of fixations to the background of images, in comparison to the British participants. British participants were also more affected by background changes, an indication of their tendency to bind the focal objects to their contexts. Experiments 3 & 4 revealed a higher overall number of fixations for Saudi participants, along with longer search times. The intra-group comparisons of scanpaths for Saudi participants revealed less similarity than within the British group, demonstrating a greater heterogeneity of search behaviour within the Saudi group. These findings could indicate that the British participants have the advantage of being more able to direct attention towards the goals of the task. The mechanisms that have been proposed for cultural differences in visual attention are due to particular thinking styles that emerge from the prevailing culture: analytic thinking (common in individualistic cultures) promotes attention to detail and a focus on the most important part of a scene, whereas holistic thinking (common in collectivist cultures) promotes attention to the global structure of a scene and the relationship between its parts. Priming methodology was used in Experiments 5, 6 & 7 to cue these factors, although it did not reveal any significant effects on eye movement behaviours or on accuracy at recognition of objects. By testing these explanations directly (Experiment 8), findings have mainly suggested the holistic-analytic dimension is one of the main mechanisms underlying cultural diversity in scene perception. Taken together, these experiments conclude that the allocation of visual attention is also influenced by an individual's culture.


As a result of increasing awareness of the implications of global climate change, shifts are becoming necessary and apparent in the assumptions, concepts, goals and methods of urban environmental planning. This review will present the argument that these changes represent a genuine paradigm shift in urban environmental planning. Reflection and action to develop this paradigm shift is critical now and in the next decades, because environmental planning for cities will only become more urgent as we enter a new climate period. The concepts, methods and assumptions that urban environmental planners have relied on in previous decades to protect people, ecosystems and physical structures are inadequate if they do not explicitly account for a rapidly changing regional climate context, specifically from a hydrological and ecological perspective. The over-arching concept of spatial suitability that guided planning in most of the 20th century has already given way to concepts that address sustainability, recognizing the importance of temporality. Quite rapidly, the concept of sustainability has been replaced in many planning contexts by the priority of establishing resilience in the face of extreme disturbance events. Now even this concept of resilience is being incorporated into a novel concept of urban planning as a process of adaptation to permanent, incremental environmental changes. This adaptation concept recognizes the necessity for continued resilience to extreme events, while acknowledging that permanent changes are also occurring as a result of trends that have a clear direction over time, such as rising sea levels. Similarly, the methods of urban environmental planning have relied on statistical data about hydrological and ecological systems that will not adequately describe these systems under a new climate regime. These methods are beginning to be replaced by methods that make use of early warning systems for regime shifts, and process-based quantitative models of regional system behavior that may soon be used to determine acceptable land uses. Finally, the philosophical assumptions that underlie urban environmental planning are changing to address new epistemological, ontological and ethical assumptions that support new methods and goals. The inability to use the past as a guide to the future, new prioritizations of values for adaptation, and renewed efforts to focus on intergenerational justice are provided as examples. In order to represent a genuine paradigm shift, this review argues that changes must begin to be evident across the underlying assumptions, conceptual frameworks, and methods of urban environmental planning, and be attributable to the same root cause. The examples presented here represent the early stages of a change in the overall paradigm of the discipline.


To investigate the importance of symbiont‐derived nutrition to host sponges, we coupled manipulative shading experiments with stable isotope analyses of isolated symbiont and host cell fractions. Experiments were conducted with four common reef sponges: Aplysina cauliformis, A. fulva, Neopetrosia subtriangularis, and Niphates erecta. The sponge N. erecta lacks photosymbionts, had a higher growth rate under shaded conditions, and displayed no difference in chlorophyll a (Chl a) concentrations across treatments. Isotope values suggested that this sponge obtains nutrition from particulate organic matter in the water column. In contrast, sponges hosting cyanobacterial symbionts (Aplysina spp. and Neopetrosia) had lower growth rates and lower Chl a concentrations under shaded conditions, suggesting that these hosts rely on photosymbiont nutrition. δ15N and δ13C values of sponge and microbial cell fractions demonstrated that, while both carbon and nitrogen are transferred from symbionts to host cells in A. cauliformis, only carbon is transferred in N. subtriangularis, and only nitrogen is transferred in A. fulva. Under shaded conditions, shifts in symbiont δ13C values were coupled to shifts in host δ13C values in some, but not all, host species, suggesting that the stability of these interactions varies across host species. Symbiont‐derived nutrients are transferred to the cells of host sponges, and the variability observed among host species indicates that these interactions are more complex than originally hypothesized.


Due primarily to today's rigorous safety standards the focus of non-destructive testing
(NDT) has shifted from flaw detection to quantitative NIDT, where characterisation of
flaws is the objective. This means information such as the type of flaw and its size is
desired. The Pulsed Eddy Current (PEC) technique has been acknowledged as one of the
potential contenders for providing this additional functionality, due to the potential
richness of the information that it provides. The parameters mainly used to obtain
information about the detected flaws are the signal's peak height and arrival time.
However, it has been recognised that these features are not sufficient for defect
classification. In this research, based on a comprehensive literature survey, the design of
PEC systems and the interpretation of PEC signals, mainly for flaw classification, are
studied.
A PEC system consisting of both hardware and software components has been designed
and constructed to facilitate the research work on PEC signal interpretation. After a
comparative study of several magnetic sensing devices, probes using Hall device magnetic
sensors have also been constructed. Some aspects related to probe design, such as coil
dimensions and the use of ferrite core and shielding have also been studied.
A new interpretation technique that uses the whole part of PEC responses and is able to
produce more features has been proposed. The technique uses Principal Component
Analysis (PCA) and Wavelet Transforms, and attempts to find the best features for
discrimination from extracted time and frequency domain data. The simultaneous use of
both temporal and spectral data is a logically promising extension to the use of time
domain only with the signal-peak-based technique. Experiments show that the new 1 technique is promising as it performs significantly better than the conventional technique using peak value and peak time of PEC signals in the classification of flaws. A hierarchical
structure for defect classification and quantification has been presented.
Experiments in the project have also shown that the signal-peak-based technique cannot be
used for flaw detection and characterisation in steels, both with and without magnetisation.
The new proposed technique has shown to have potential for this purpose when
magnetisation is used. The new technique proposed in the report has been successfully
used for ferromagnetic and non-ferromagnetic materials. It has also been demonstrated that
the new proposed technique performs better in dynamic behaviour tests, which shows its
better potential for on-line dynamic NDT inspection which is required in many industrial
applications. In addition to testing calibrated samples with different discontinuities, a study
case using an aircraft lap joint sample from industry has further supported the statement
regarding the potential of the new technique.


In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court held that noncitizens detained at Guantanamo Bay have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus. The case can be given multiple interpretations, including a narrow reading under which it follows straightforwardly from Eisentrager. But Justice Kennedy's majority opinion omits consideration of a factor that plays a role in Eisentrager, namely, the limited constitutional status of the noncitizen. For this reason, the most distinctive element of Justice Kennedy's reasoning is its cosmopolitanism, not its libertarianism. The cosmopolitan elements of Boumediene recall the debate about the use of foreign law to interpret provisions of the U.S. Constitution, of which Justice Kennedy is a major proponent, and it is argued that critics of judicial cosmopolitanism should reject Boumediene as well.


After 18 years as a senior clinical psychiatrist at a New England inner-city mental health clinic, Dr Lawrence Climo was understandably surprised and saddened when he was given 2 weeks' notice that his services were no longer needed. Financial constraints meant the clinic was replacing him with a nurse. Although his wife told him it was an opportunity, he remembers thinking that health care reform made him feel that his professional skills were "almost irrelevant or at least unmarketable."


Austropuccinia psidii (myrtle rust) has long been considered a significant threat to Australian plant industries and ecosystems. A. psidii was detected for the first time in Australia in April 2010, on the central coast of New South Wales. The distribution of A. psidii continues to expand, with detections extending from Tasmania, along the eastern coast of Australia to Cape York Peninsula, and most recently in the Tiwi Islands and Northern Territory. The current host list for Australia includes 347 species from 57 genera. A. psidii severely affects key species in natural ecosystems, including threatened species with restricted natural ranges as well as widespread species with a broad native range (e.g. Rhodomyrtus psidioides and Rhodamnia rubescens).

Our studies have demonstrated severe impacts of myrtle rust on plant communities and the potential for A. psidii to negatively affect Australia's biodiversity in the short- and long-term. A. psidii has caused significant disturbance in wet sclerophyll environments, where Myrtaceae dominate the rainforest understorey, and regeneration of coastal heath following wildfire. Significant dieback caused by repeated A. psidii infection has seen once dominant species in severe decline with little evidence of potential for regeneration. Impacts on keystone species such as Melaleuca quinquenervia include tree death, decline in tree vigour and reduced flowering rates, with additional decline associated with interactions with insect damage.

Continued monitoring programs are required to identify species and plant communities at greatest risk. The implementation of a disease screening and tree breeding program may be required for some species as without human intervention regaining lost genetic diversity within these species populations may not be possible. Already, as a direct result of myrtle rust impacts, two species have been recommended for legislative listing as being critically endangered.


New ways of organizing businesses, such as the freelance and sharing economies, may bring entirely new meaning to those fundamental ideas that are believed to underpin business exchanges. Through the lens of social and economic ties, this paper sets to address how these new ways of organizing business change the view on business exchanges. The purpose of the paper is to discuss the role of social ties in the freelance and sharing economies. The paper adopts a multiple case study approach to illustrate the structural, cognitive, and relational dimensions of social and economic ties in the freelance and sharing economies. Findings point at how networks are increasingly emphasized, while at the same time, the relational dimension of social ties is altered for transactional platforms. There is also the disconnection between the economic ties and the social ties as the payment and delivery solutions become more and more complex. Un-socialization, a new meaning of trust, and a second platform-driven cycle of entrepreneurship indicate new ideas to current understandings of business exchanges and entrepreneurship.


This paper studies the effect of organized labor on social policy commitment in Latin America. Contrary to the idea that unions are not expected to be major promoters of social state development due to being weakened by dictatorship and structural adjustment, I argue for the incorporation of this variable in statistical analysis of social spending. Through pooled time-series regressions of 10 South American countries from 1980 to 2010, this paper finds that union strength has a statistically significant and positive effect on social spending. This analysis also confirms that democracy and the concentration of power in the executive all have a significant effect with regard to predicting changes in the levels of social spending.


To maintain data integrity hash functions are generally used. Hash function is one type of cryptographic primitives, which provide an assurance for data integrity. NAS has designed SHA hash functions which are the set of cryptographic hash function. There are so many SHA function existing in which SHA-1 produces message digest that is of 160 bits long. Later in SHA-1 has been identified security flaws, namely that a possible mathematical weakness might exist. This point out that stronger hash function would be desirable. In this paper we are proposing a new hash function, say SHA-176 that has more strength than the existing. In this we are fulfilling basic security principle i.e. integrity. Basically this hash function is developed to improve the security. Presented results are showing the performance of the proposed SHA-176 in terms of efficiency and security.


Historians suspicious of absolutist political models have in recent decades drawn attention to the effectiveness of legal institutions in Muscovite and imperial Russia. This attention has produced a compelling corrective to widespread images of Russian government as arbitrary, corrupt, and generally dysfunctional. More often than not, liberal historians in late imperial Russia and Euro-American scholars in the era of the Cold War stood ready to paint Russian government with the broad brush of despotism, a readiness that led them to overlook the social dynamism and nuanced political relationships characteristic of Muscovite, imperial, and even Soviet Russia. (1) Nancy Kollmann and Jane Burbank count among the most influential voices that have been calling for a reappraisal of Russian government and legal culture. (2) In the articles presented here, as well as in previously published work, both historians document the beneficial effects of legal institutions and judicial practices over several centuries of Russian history. Both see in the Russian system of justice a source of social integration and political legitimacy. Bolstered by years of archival research, the conclusions of Kollmann and Burbank derive from deep knowledge of legal prescriptions and, more important, judicial practices. Through their descriptions of how tsarist subjects from a range of social statuses successfully employed judicial institutions to address everyday needs, it becomes clear that law played a central role not only in government policy but also in the functioning of society. The strengths of the approach taken by Nancy Kollmann and Jane Burbank are easy to identify; however, the whole is the sum of the parts, and I remain uneasy with the broad implications of the discussion. Across Western and Central Europe--in Britain, France, Austria, and even Germany--limited monarchy, and eventually parliamentary government and the rule of law, arose from the cumulative effects of institutional competition and juristic posturing among recognized corporate bodies. In need of resources but short of effective power, early modern monarchs who asserted a divine right to absolute sovereignty had little choice but to mobilize their nations through cooperation with, or opposition to, these bodies. In a study of the cameralist Policeystaat published some 20 years ago, Marc Raeff drew attention to the absence in Russia of corporate bodies--guilds, diets, parlements, provincial estates, Estates General, and the English Parliament--and to the consequences of that absence. (3) In Russia, the monarch did not need to compete for social and political authority with historically sanctioned and legally constituted bodies that exercised either local territorial or translocal authority. Lordship in Russia carried no administrative or judicial powers beyond the boundaries of the individual noble's private estate, and the "self-government" of peasants and townspeople did not extend to any territorial or national body outside the immediate community. Nor did local customs and practices become codified as customary law on the model of the provincial coutumes in France. (4) Except for the Church, which the reforms of Peter I (1689-1725) effectively separated from the sphere of secular government, Russia's corporate bodies and civic institutions came to life by order of the cameralist Policeystaat. Monarchs decreed the creation of these bodies, which tsarist subjects then were called upon to fill. Historians seeking to situate Russia within the broad spectrum of European history cannot attach enough importance to the absence of corporate bodies. No matter how historians ultimately define Muscovy's Assembly of the Land (zemskii sobor) or Boyar Duma, there is no evidence that these bodies exercised legislative, administrative, or judicial authority indepen dent of the monarch--a state of affairs that stood in stark contrast to the role of corporate bodies further west. …


Abstract Evidence shows that people have difficulty understanding complex aspects of retirement planning, which leads them to under-utilize annuities and claim Social Security benefits earlier than is optimal. To target this problem, we developed vignettes about the consequences of different annuitization and claiming decisions. We evaluated our vignettes using an experiment with a representative online panel of nearly 2,000 Americans. In our experiment, respondents were either assigned to a control group with no vignette, to a written vignette, or to a video vignette. They were then asked to give advice to hypothetical persons on annuitization or Social Security claiming, and were asked factual questions about these concepts. We found evidence that being exposed to vignettes led respondents to give better advice. For example, the gap between advised claim age for a relatively healthy person versus a relatively sick person was larger by nearly a year in the vignette treatments than in the control group. Furthermore, the vignettes increased financial literacy related to these concepts by 10–15 percentage points. Interestingly, the mode of communication did not have a significant impact – the video and written vignettes were equally effective.


The US sees itself as being locked into a confrontation with Iran, its number one enemy since the invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But, as Roger Howard argues in this compelling and provocative new book, by attempting to isolate Iran, the US may in fact be undermining its own power. For, if the US forces the rest of the world to choose between Iran and America, Iran has a trump card to play: some of the largest deposits of gas and petroleum on the planet. With global energy demands at an all-time high and supplies becoming increasingly inaccessible, Iran's oil and gas have already started to lure former US allies such as Pakistan and India away from American influence. Over the next decade, Iran's energy supplies look set to radically reformulate the security and diplomatic relationships of Asia and the Middle East. Furthermore, because of US trade embargoes on Iran, it is only the US's rivals, such as China, who are able to fully exploit Iran's natural resources, thus powering a new alliance of countries which will act as a counterweight to US global power. By pursuing such a hostile agenda to a country with so much petro-clout, America is, according to Howard, writing its obituary as the world's only superpower.


Background: The decision to proceed with intra-arterial (IA) reperfusion therapy is typically made late in the course of in-hospital treatment for acute ischemic stroke. Early anticipation of candidacy for IA reperfusion therapy based on clinical stroke subtypes would be useful for guiding stroke management. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the clinical Oxfordshire Community Stroke Project (OCSP) classification and MRI results taken within a 4.5-hour time window from stroke onset, with the hypothesis that the persistence of major arterial occlusion and extended ischemic penumbra, key criteria for proceeding with IA reperfusion therapy, would be distinctive between the clinical stroke subtypes. Methods: A total of 161 patients with acute ischemic stroke in the anterior circulation were included in this study. All patients were treated with intravenous alteplase, and MRI scans were performed following alteplase initiation. Prior to treatment, the patients were categorized, based on the OCSP classification scheme, as having total anterior circulation infarcts (TACI), partial anterior circulation infarcts (PACI), or lacunar infarcts (LACI). The relationship between OCSP subtypes, MRI parameters, and clinical variables was analyzed. Results: Overall, 40/161 patients (24.8%) were candidates for IA rescue reperfusion. With respect to the classification, 30/69 TACI (43.5%), 6/33 PACI (18.2%), and 4/59 LACI patients (6.8%) were candidates (p < 0.001). Major arterial occlusion was found in 56/161 patients (34.8%), and 46/69 TACI (66.7%), 6/33 PACI (18.2%), and 4/59 LACI patients (6.8%) had a major arterial occlusion (p < 0.001). A perfusion-diffusion mismatch greater than 20% was found in 85/161 patients (52.8%). More specifically, 40/69 TACI (58.0%), 25/33 PACI (75.8%), and 20/59 LACI patients (33.9%) had a perfusion-diffusion mismatch (p < 0.001). However, in terms of the total area of mismatch, 66.0% of patients with ASPECTSDWI-PWI ≥2 (Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score) were classified as TACI patients (p < 0.001) and of the patients with ASPECTSDWI-PWI ≥3, 74.3% were classified as TACI patients (p < 0.001). Relative to candidates for IA rescue reperfusion, the clinical TACI group showed 75.0% sensitivity, 67.8% specificity, a positive predictive value of 43.5%, and a negative predictive value of 89.1%. Conclusions: In this study, patients classified as having clinical TACI were significantly more likely to be candidates for IA rescue reperfusion. Additionally, they incurred a higher incidence of persistent major arterial occlusion and had a penumbra area that was significantly larger than normal. Therefore, clinical OCSP can be used as an 'early warning system' for IA reperfusion candidacy, which can allow for advanced preparation of IA therapy and theoretically shorten treatment time and reduce infarction.


Difficulties associated with manipulating plankton in situ have limited the ability of investigators to assess among-habitat variation in predation risk for plankton. We used plankton teth- ering units (PTUs) to tether zooplankton in a variety of reef and seagrass habitats, and used field and laboratory assays to test PTUs for tethering artifacts. Tethering did not affect the survivorship of 5 species of plankton (sizes <1 to 6 mm), indicating that the method works with a range of planktonic organisms. We then used the reef mysid Mysidium columbiae in additional assays and found that: (1) mysids remained on PTUs unless they were attacked by predators; (2) PTUs did not prevent planktivorous fishes from consuming tethered mysids; (3) untethered mysids commonly evaded predators, while mysids on PTUs did not; (4) the same types of predators consumed untethered and tethered mysids in the field; and (5) fishes were neither attracted to nor repelled from PTUs. We used PTUs and mysids to assess predation risk for plankton over various coral reef or seagrass habitats. Risk of attack varied among habitats and was correlated with abundance of planktivorous fishes. On the reef, attack rates were most intense over a topographically complex reef ledge, less intense over the less structurally complex center of the reef, and least intense over a structurally simple sand plain. Within the seagrass bed, attack rates were highest at the edge of the bed and less intense to the center of the seagrass bed and over an adjacent sand plain. Thus, attack rates at these sites varied tremendously over small spatial scales (meters).


Abstract Against the background of the alleged democratic deficit of EU institutions, this case study explores how politicization and emerging transnational public spaces in European protest movements innovate existing practices of discursive or grassroots deliberative democracy in national social movements. I studied the European Social Forum (ESF) process, a transnational participatory democracy platform created by civil society groups and social movement organizations. I explored discourse and decision-making in the small-scale European Assemblies in which hundreds of activists have met six times a year since 2002 to organize the ESFs, and form campaigns on issues such as global and social justice, peace, climate change, migration, health, or education. Comparing activists' democratic norms and discourse practices in these frequently occurring European Assemblies with social forum assemblies at the national level in Germany, Italy and the UK, I arrived at a surprising result: European Assemblies reflect a higher degree of discursive inclusivity, dialogue and transparency in decision-making and discussion compared to national social forum assemblies. In this paper I discuss structural, strategic and cultural changes that occur in the process of a Europeanization "from below", that is, when social movement activists work together transnationally across a certain time period. I argue that European protest as a form of contentious Europeanization has developed new social practices and actors that innovate existing practices of participatory democracy at the national level, showing the relevance of social movements to democratize European integration.


ABSTRACT This article examines the growing relationship between security and education, particularly in the light of the UK government's Prevent Duty that seeks to tackle radicalisation in a variety of milieus, including universities. However, rather than seeing this process as being merely one-way, through a so-called securitisation of education (in the parlance of the Copenhagen School of International Relations), what is explored here is the dialectic between these two spheres. It is suggested that a heightened sensitivity to the supposed consequences of inflammatory rhetoric on the well-being of supposedly suggestible or vulnerable students has been in existence within education for quite some time. In that regard, the securitising efforts of politicians and officials are pushing against an open door. What's more, it is proposed that the inability of the authorities to hold the line in support of absolute freedom of expression, within academia and beyond, tacitly encourages the very people the government would hope to detract.


ABSTRACT The encounter between the cinema image, originally created to be seen on a large screen, and the mobile phone used as screening device, stands as one of the most striking instances of what Erkki Huhtamo calls the 'Gulliverisation' of our contemporary environments: "a two-directional optical-cultural 'mechanism'" that works "against the idea of a common anthropomorphic scale". In what follows, I focus on the aesthetic impact of the coexistence of images coming from extremes of the representational scale, from the cinema to the monumental projections that typify the contemporary trend in spectacular displays in museums and public spaces, to the tiny screens of our mobile phones. With reference to practices of collecting, archiving and possessive viewing, as well as to the relationship between off- and on-screen space, I suggest that strategies of making strange help us historicize, as well as appreciate the aesthetic complexity such shifts in scale produce.


Abstract The study of humanitarian intervention typically focuses on the human victims and saviours in armed conflict and natural disasters. Moreover, explanations of the virtues of humanitarian norms and ethics emphasise the importance of the university of suffering and the empathic nature of humanitarian efforts. In contrast, this article explores the neglected world of 'non-human humanitarians'. Specifically, the article outlines three cases of non-human actors that expand and complicate international humanitarian practices: dogs, drones, and diagrams. Drawing on new materialist and posthuman literatures, the article argues that non-humans possess distinct capacities that vastly expand and transform humanitarian efforts in ranging from relief, to medicine, to conflict resolution. Highlighting non-human humanitarians thus offers a new perspective on the resources available for redressing mass violence and conflict, but also complicates existing definitions of humanitarian norms. To the contrary, the article demonstrates that non-humans often maximise humanitarian services to a degree greater than their human counterparts, but have also introduced changes into humanitarian practices that have problematic unintended consequences. Non-human humanitarians reveals previously discounted participants in international politics and the key roles they play in various international interventions.


The International Journal of Genomics and Proteomics, ISSN: 0976-4887 & E-ISSN: 0976-4895, is aims to publish all the latest and outstanding research articles, reviews and letters in all areas of genetic and functional genomic and proteomics studies on organisms. Current emphasis is on the genes and proteins basis for common and complex diseases and on the functional mechanism, architecture and evolution of gene networks, studied by experimental perturbation. Each issue contains a series of timely, in-depth written articles by leaders in the field, covering a wide range of the integration of multidimensional challenges of life science.