Soil-transmitted helminthes (STH) deworming programs remain among the largest public health programs in low- and lower-middle-income countries as measured by coverage. The actual scale of these programs remains unknown but substantial, with more than 1 billion donated doses of medicines effective against STHs delivered by formal programs and supplemented by widespread self-treatment and unprogrammed activities. STH infection declines worldwide likely reflect the influence of improved hygiene and sanitation associated with global declines in poverty, but it also reflects control efforts during the twentieth century that have largely eliminated STHs as a public health problem in previously endemic areas of North America (Mexico and the United States), Japan, Korea, and upper- middle-income countries throughout southern and eastern Asia. Much of the treatment targets delivery through schools and targets school-age children. STH infection associates with clinical and developmental outcomes that prove largely reversible by treatment. Both historical and contemporary trials of targeted treatment of infected individuals have also demonstrated benefit from treatment.


Israeli-European Union (EU) relations have consisted of a number of conflicting trends that have resulted in the emergence of a highly problematic and volatile relationship: one characterized by a strong and ever-increasing network of economic, cultural, and personal ties, yet marked, at the political level, by disappointment, bitterness, and anger. On the one hand, Israel has displayed a genuine desire to strengthen its ties with the EU and to be included as part of the European integration project. On the other hand, Israelis are deeply suspicious of the Union's policies and are untrusting of the Union's intentions toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to the Middle East as a whole. As a result, Israel has been determined to minimize the EU's role in the Middle East peace process (MEPP), and to deny it any direct involvement in the negotiations with the Palestinians. The article summarizes some key developments in Israeli-European Community (EC)/EU relations since 1957: the Israeli (re)turn to Europe in the late 1950s; EC-Israeli economic and trade relations; the 1980 Venice Declaration and the EC/EU involvement in the MEPP; EU-Israeli relations in a regional/Mediterranean context; the question of Israeli settlements' products entering free of duty to the European Common Market; EU-Israeli relations in the age of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP); the failed attempt to upgrade EU-Israeli relations between the years 2007 and 2014; and the Union's prohibition on EU funding to Israeli entities beyond the 1967 borders. By discussing the history of this uneasy relationship, the article further offers insights into how the EU is actually judged as a global-normative actor by Israelis.


People learn differently. This fact is at the heart of an educational practice revolution; active learning is at the core. Solving for active learning in the formal learning place – the classroom – became the quest of this design case's author along with her Steelcase Education Solutions team. Active learning suggests people actually move in a classroom. Currently, classrooms are not designed for this type of activity as the modus operando is passive learning or an instructor stand and deliver situation. Much is changing in education from kindergarten through higher education. Therefore, figuring out how best to support an environment addressing active learning is important. This case shares the discovery of environmental supports for active learning and details the results of a six-step evidence-based research process that led to both the development of a furniture product that became Verb™ and a series of interior setting concept ideas for the formal learning environment.


In 1997 GDP per capita in East Germany was 57% of that of West Germany, wage rates were 75% of western levels, and the unemployment rate was at least double the western rate of 7.8%. One would expect that if capital flows and trade in goods failed to bring convergence, labor flows would respond, enhancing overall efficiency. Yet net emigration from East Germany has fallen from high levels in 1989-1990 to close to zero. Using state-level data for all of Germany, available from 1991-1996, I am able to explain the downward trend in east to west migration using wage and unemployment information. Convergence in hourly wages is the most important factor. Analysis of the eastern sample of the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1990-1997 suggests that commuting is unlikely to substitute substantially for emigration. The individual-level data further indicate that emigrants are disproportionately young and skilled, and that individuals suffering a layoff or non-employment spell are also much more likely to emigrate.


Background: Fitness to drive may be compromised by a variety of medical conditions, including stroke. Driving may legally be resumed 1 month after stroke if clinical recovery is deemed satisfactory. Advice available for patients and medical practitioners is unclear and inconsistent as to whether return to driving is influenced by aphasia. Information on the opinions of medical practitioners and aphasia therapists regarding resumption of driving with aphasia, the return to driving experience of people with aphasia, and their road sign recognition ability, has been largely anecdotal. Aims: (1) To determine the views and practice of medical practitioners and aphasia therapists on return to driving with aphasia caused by stroke and the experience and effects for aphasic people of resuming or not resuming driving. (2) To assess the road sign recognition ability of aphasic people who had returned to driving or wished to do so in relation to a comparable non-stroke population. Methods and Procedures: People with aphasia following stroke (n = 18) who had returned to driving or wished to do so, medical practitioners (n = 11), and aphasia therapists (n = 18) were interviewed to determine the patient experience and medical practitioners' and therapists' views on driving with aphasia. Road sign recognition was assessed in the aphasic and a matched non-brain-damaged control group (n = 18). Outcome and Results : The majority of medical practitioners and aphasia therapists thought that in some cases driving with aphasia was contra-indicated. Reading comprehension was the communication aspect considered to be most important for driving fitness. The aphasic group was significantly less proficient than the control group in road sign recognition and in understanding written and spoken road sign descriptions. Few aphasic drivers described new driving problems and most now drove less, more carefully, and for reduced distances. Those who had not returned to driving felt social activity and wellbeing had been affected. Conclusions : Despite difficulties with road sign recognition and related reading and auditory comprehension, people with aphasia are driving, including some whose communication loss is severe. Where relevant, practice in recognition of road signs and written road information might be included in speech and language therapy management.


SYNOPSIS In early 2010, Chile's democracy faced a stern test. A January presidential runoff election had paved the way for the first hand-over between opposing political coalitions since Chileans had pushed out autocrat Augusto Pinochet in 1990. Two decades of rule by a left-leaning coalition of political parties called Concertación had obviated the need for any formal transition process from 1990 to 2010. Now, with the election of the first conservative leader since the dictatorship, politicians and civil servants on both sides had to find ways to ensure a smooth transition. The complicated process had just begun when a massive earthquake devastated Chile's southern half, killing hundreds of people and causing damage equal to 17% of the country's gross domestic product. Preparation, including policy planning and staff recruitment early on by the Sebastián Piñera administration and briefings from the outgoing Michelle Bachelet team enabled the new president to get to work quickly. The hand-over demonstrated the strength of Chile's democracy and set a precedent for future cross-coalition transitions.


Loneliness, boredom, emptiness: These are the complaints that Rollo May encountered over and over from his patients. In response, he probes the hidden layers of personality to reveal the core of man's integration--a basic and inborn sense of value. Man's Search for Himself is an illuminating view of our predicament in an age of overwhelming anxieties and gives guidance on how to choose, judge, and act during such times.


The oxygen minimum zone (OMZ) of the Arabian Sea is the thickest of the three oceanic OMZ. It is of global biogeochemical significance because of denitrification in the upper part leading to N 2 and N 2 O production. The residence time of OMZ water is believed to be less than a decade. The upper few hundred meters of this zone are nearly anoxic but non-sulfidic and still support animal (metazoan) pelagic life, possibly as a result of episodic injections of O 2 by physical processes. We report on discrete measurements of dissolved O 2 and NO 2 – , temperature and salinity made between 1959 and 2004 well below the tops of the sharp pycnocline and oxycline near 150, 200, 300, 400, and 500 m depth. We assemble nearly all O 2 determinations (originally there were 849 values, 695 of which came from the OMZ) by the visual endpoint detection of the iodometric Winkler procedure, which in our data base yields about 0.04 mL L −1 (~ 2 μM) O 2 above the endpoint from modern automated titration methods. We acknowledge that much lower (nanomolar) O 2 values have been measured recently with the STOX (Switchable Trace amount OXygen) sensor in the eastern tropical South Pacific, and that similar conditions may also prevail in the Arabian Sea OMZ. In spite of the error in O 2 measurements at vanishingly low levels, we argue that the temporal trends of the historic data should still hold. We find 632 values acceptable (480 from 150 stations in the OMZ). The data are grouped in zonally paired boxes of 1° lat. and 2° long. centered at 8, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, and 21° N along 65 and 67° E. The latitudes of 8–12° N, outside the OMZ, are treated in passing. The principal results are as follows: (1) an O 2 climatology for the upper OMZ reveals a marked seasonality at 200 to 500 m depth with O 2 levels during the northeast monsoon and spring intermonsoon seasons elevated over those during the southwest monsoon season (median difference, 0.08 mL L −1 [~ 3.5 μM]). The medians of the slopes of the seasonal regressions of O 2 on year for each of the NE and SW monsoon seasons are −0.0043 and −0.0019 mL L −1 a −1 , respectively (−0.19 and −0.08 μM a −1 ; n = 10 and 12, differing at p = 0.01); (2) four decades of statistically significant decreases of O 2 between 15 and 20° N but an opposing trend toward an increase near 21° N are observed. The mechanisms of the balance that more or less annually maintain the O 2 levels are still uncertain. At least between 300 and 500 m, the replenishment is inferred to be due to isopycnal re-supply of O 2 , while at 200 (or 250?) m it is diapycnal, most likely by eddies. Similarly, recent models show large vertical advection of O 2 well below the pycnoclines and oxyclines. The NO 2 – distribution, taken as an indicator of active NO 3 – reduction, does not show a trend in the redox environment for a quarter of a century at a GEOSECS station near 20° N. In the entire OMZ, the regression slopes on year within seasons for the rather variable NO 2 – do not present a clear pattern but by other measures tended to an increase of NO 2 – . Vertical net hauls collect resident animal (metazoan) pelagic life in the NO 2 – maximum of the OMZ at O 2 levels well below the lower limit of the Winkler titration; the extremely low O 2 content is inferred from the presence of NO 2 – believed to be produced through microbial NO 3 – reduction. Instead of the difficult measurement by the STOX sensor, the relation between the very low O 2 inferred from presence of NO 2 – and mesozooplankton should be studied with 100 to 150 L bottles rather than nets. The spatial (within drift stations) and temporal (daily) variability in hydrography and chemistry is large also below the principal pycnocline. The seasonal change of hydrography is considerable even at 500 m depth. Future O 2 or nutrient budgets for the OMZ must not be based on single cruises or sections obtained during one season only. Steady state cannot be assumed any longer for the intermediate layers of the central Arabian Sea.


A custom-made media installation, diplorasis , will be used to explore the body in digital media. This mediated body attempts to re-think how the Deleuzian time-image is translated from its cinematic confinement to the space of new media. In diplorasis the digitized time-image becomes more directly incorporated with-in the bodily schema. Consequently, the thinking of the virtual and actual space of the body in diplorasis enables a questioning of bodily space-time, and particularly the relation between self and digitized self-image. It is thus crucial to re-frame how this digitized mediated body is distinct from a conventional notion of a metric and habitual space—one that is reinforced by, for example, the medium of linear perspective. The articulation of the mediated body will be used to in-form and extend Elizabeth Grosz's paradoxical reading of embodiment and utopia, by revisiting the notions of utopia as eu-topic/ou-topic. The spatio-temporality of the topos must be re-considered before utopia. Foucault's analogy of the mirror will then serve to superimpose the dual and slippery relations between utopia and the heterotopic. The digitized mediated body will thus seek to explore emerging ways by which to consider the utopic by conflating embodiment, time and space within an electronic topos. It is argued that as the sensing and cognitive body becomes increasingly pliable in relation to technological mediations, our very understanding of space-time is changing.


There is a subtle controversy in the petroleum industry regarding the relationship between reservoir architecture and recovery efficiency from petroleum reservoirs. Stratigraphers tend to believe that facies architecture and geometric shapes strongly govern recovery, whereas engineers stress factors such as permeability heterogeneity and anisotropy. To understand the relationship between architecture and recovery better, a suite of conceptual models of different channelized clastic reservoir architectures was constructed and pore-volume replacement waterflood simulations were performed on each. Three 11-member suites of models were constructed at net: gross values of 35%, 60% and 85%. The reservoir architecture features that were varied were channel width to thickness, thickness, sinuosity, stacking patterns, orientation and reservoir element type (point bar vs. channel). The three sets of models appear visually very different from a reservoir architecture standpoint. Permeability and porosity were simulated using geostatistical techniques but share the same conditioning population. The same water saturation, well count (110 acre spacing), fluid properties and relative permeability were used in each waterflood simulation. In this situation, in which the only significant variable was reservoir architecture, only a few percent spread in recovery was noted for each net: gross suite. Variation in recovery efficiency can be shown to be associated with reservoir connectivity, which is generally high for all models but shows some variation. Additional studies were made to address the influence of well count, mobility ratio, permeability heterogeneity and geostatistical seed number on recovery efficiency. Two stratigraphic factors are shown to influence recovery efficiency: reservoir connectivity and permeability heterogeneity. Both factors influence the volumetric sweep efficiency of reservoirs. Models that appear to be visually different, but have similar connectivity, well count and permeability heterogeneity, have similar sweep efficiencies and, therefore, recovery efficiencies. The practical importance of this observation for development studies is that building and flow-simulating suites of models with different reservoir architectures may not help to characterize recovery uncertainty unless the models are constructed to emphasize differences in sweep efficiency.


Warez traders have been blamed as a significant cause of copyright piracy, which has led to several dozen conviction of warez traders in the past two years. The article analyzes how criminal copyright infringement and other laws apply to warez trading. The article also describes the prosecutions of warez trading, including a comprehensive chart of all warez trading convictions. The article concludes with a brief policy discussion about the problems created by Congress' effort to criminalize warez trading.


Late Miocene (12–5 Ma) extension around the edges of the Gulf of California has been alternatively attributed to "Basin and Range" extension, back arc extension, or development of the Pacific-North America plate boundary. This extension was ENE directed and similar in structural style to extension in the Basin and Range province. Timing constraints permit nearly synchronous onset of this deformation in a belt extending SSE from northernmost Baja California to the mouth of the gulf. Where this extensional faulting continued through Pliocene time to the present, synchronous with motion on the modern transform plate boundary in the Gulf of California, no change in direction of extension can be resolved. Revised constraints on Pacific-North America plate motion support the development of this late Miocene extension as a component of Pacific-North America displacement that could not be accommodated by strike-slip displacement along the existing plate boundary west of the Baja California peninsula. This scenario implies that transfer of Baja California from the North America plate to the Pacific plate was a gradual process, beginning about 12–10 Ma, when motion of the Pacific plate relative to North America was partitioned into separate regimes of strike-slip and dip-slip displacement on opposite sides of Baja California.


The uniqueness of power system designs for oilfield distribution is seldom acknowledged or addressed. Utilities provide construction typical of either commercial or rural applications. Oilfields commonly have large concentrated loads separated by thousands of feet. To minimize line losses, medium-voltage power is distributed and stepped down at the point of use. In addition to common load flow analysis and protection coordination, transformers, surge arresters, and grounding connections are important considerations for reliable production operations. Recloser settings typical for residential distribution cause major damage to submersible pumps. In remote areas where long neutral wires are necessary, solidly grounded power contributes to equipment failure but is nevertheless necessary for safety in surface equipment. The corner-grounded delta connection eliminates the neutral wire and is often used by rural utilities, despite its dangers. High-voltage three-wire construction can cause ferroresonance. Grounding influences the effectiveness of lightning and switching surge protection.


Automatic diagnosis systems have attracted increasing attention in recent years. The reinforcement learning (RL) is an attractive technique for building an automatic diagnosis system due to its advantages for handling sequential decision making problem. However, the RL method still cannot achieve good enough prediction accuracy. In this paper, we propose a Generative Adversarial regularized Mutual information Policy gradient framework (GAMP) for automatic diagnosis which aims to make a diagnosis rapidly and accurately. We first propose a new policy gradient framework based on the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to optimize the RL model for automatic diagnosis. In our framework, we take the generator of GAN as a policy network, and also use the discriminator of GAN as a part of the reward function. This generative adversarial regularized policy gradient framework can try to avoid generating randomized trials of symptom inquires deviated from the common diagnosis paradigm. In addition, we add mutual information to enhance the reward function to encourage the model to select the most discriminative symptoms to make a diagnosis. Experiment evaluations on two public datasets show that our method beats the state-of-art methods, not only can achieve higher diagnosis accuracy, but also can use a smaller number of inquires to make diagnosis decision.


The bias estimation of passive sensors is considered based on information fusion in multi-platform multi-sensor tracking system. The unobservable problem of bearing-only tracking in blind spot is analyzed. A modified maximum likelihood method, which uses the redundant information of multi-sensor system to calculate the target position, is investigated to estimate the biases. Monte Carlo simulation results show that the modified method eliminates the effect of unobservable problem in the blind spot and can estimate the biases more rapidly and accurately than maximum likelihood method. It is statistically efficient since the standard deviation of bias estimation errors meets the theoretical lower bounds.


Yahoo! took the world by storm in the 1990s as a one-of-a-kind, searchable list of interesting web sites. But ten years later, it has expanded into a department store overflowing with useful and innovative tools and services-from email, blogging, social networking, and instant messaging, to news, financial markets, shopping, movie and TV listings, and much more. Today's Yahoo! keeps you connected with every aspect of your life and every corner of the Web. Yahoo! Hacks shows you how to use, expand, personalize, and tweak Yahoo! in ways you never dreamed possible. You'll learn how to: Fine-tune search queries with keyword shortcuts and advanced syntax Manage and customize Yahoo! Mail, using it as your universal email client to access all your other accounts Explore your social networks with Yahoo! 360, blogging your life, keeping up with friends, and making new contacts Store, sort, blog, feed, track, and otherwise share photos with Flickr and RSS Make My Yahoo! your Yahoo!, and personalize Yahoo!'s many properties Roll your own Yahoo! applications with Yahoo! new Web Services API and Perl, PHP, Java, Python, Ruby, or the programming language of your choice Visualize search results and topics, mash up images from around the Web, and remix other web content List (or hide) your site with Yahoo!, and integrate Yahoo! Groups, Messenger, contextual search (Y!Q), or other Yahoo! features Whether you want to become a power searcher, news monger, super shopper, or innovative web developer, Yahoo! Hacks provides the tools to take you further than you ever thought possible.


Abstract Background: Ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury is a potentially devastating condition, associated with a systemic inflammatory response. It occurs during shock, transplant procedures, or vascular surgery. Objective: We evaluated the protective effects of Fenofibrate (FEN) over intestinal I/R injury. Materials and methods: Intestinal I/R was induced in male Wistar rats by clamping the superior mesenteric artery for 60 minutes, followed by 60 minutes of reperfusion. Rats either received saline or FEN (100 mg/k, via gavage) daily, for three days before inducing I/R. Sham operated rats were used as normal controls. At the end of the procedure, tissue and blood samples were obtained. Serum concentrations of AST, ALT, LDH, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), malonaldehyde (MDA), and total antioxidant capacity (TAC) were determined. A histopathological analysis was also performed. Results: After I/R, there was evident tissue injury, as well as serum elevations of AST, ALT, and LDH concentrations. These alterations were reduced by FEN treatment. TNF-alpha concentrations were increased in saline treated animals when compared with FEN treated group (2.26±1 ng/ml vs. 0.23±0.41 ng/ml, respectively, p <0.05). A similar pattern was observed in MDA levels (7.42±1.72 μM/ml vs. 1.72±0.61 μM/ml, respectively, p <0.05). TAC was reduced in saline treated animals (2.05±0.36 Trolox-Equivalents), but preserved in the FEN treated group (3.08±0.36 Trolox-Equivalents, p <0.05). Conclusion: FEN reduced intestinal I/R injury, probably due to anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Its usefulness as a treatment for I/R should be studied.


In a multi‐parameter waveform inversion, the choice of the parameterisation influences the results and their interpretations because leakages and the tradeoff between parameters can cause artefacts. We review the parameterisation selection when the inversion focuses on the recovery of the intermediate‐to‐long wavenumbers of the compressional velocities from the compressional body (P) waves. Assuming a transverse isotropic medium with a vertical axis of symmetry and weak anisotropy, analytical formulas for the radiation patterns are developed to quantify the tradeoff between the shear velocity and the anisotropic parameters and the effects of setting to zero the shear velocity in the acoustic approach. Because, in an anisotropic medium, the radiation patterns depend on the angle of the incident wave with respect to the vertical axis, two particular patterns are discussed: a transmission pattern when the ingoing and outgoing slowness vectors are parallel and a reflection pattern when the ingoing and outgoing slowness vectors satisfy Snell's law. When the inversion aims at recovering the long‐to‐intermediate wavenumbers of the compressional velocities from the P‐waves, we propose to base the parameterisation choice on the transmission patterns. Since the P‐wave events in surface seismic data do not constrain the background (smooth) vertical velocity due to the velocity/depth ambiguity, the preferred parameterisation contains a parameter that has a transmission pattern concentrated along the vertical axis. This parameter can be fixed during the inversion which reduces the size of the model space. The review of several parameterisations shows that the vertical velocity, the Thomsen parameter δ, or the Thomsen parameter ε have a transmission pattern along the vertical axis depending on the parameterisation choice. The review of the reflection patterns of those selected parameterisations should be done in the elastic context. Indeed, when reflection data are also inverted, there are potential leakages of the shear parameter at intermediate angles when we carry out acoustic inversion.


Cancer can have a significant psychological impact on those diagnosed, and
their families. The ability of psychotherapy to reduce this impact has been
extensively studied internationally. However, New Zealand-based research in
this area remains limited. The present study aimed to investigate the
effectiveness of psycho-oncology interventions, provided by a New Zealand
psycho-oncology service, in reducing distress and improving quality of life for
cancer patients and their families/whanau. Eighteen clients (patients/family
members) of the service (intervention group) were recruited and matched for
initial distress and wellbeing with patients/family members located in an area
without a psycho-oncology service (control group). Wellbeing, wairua
(spirituality), distress, impact and coping were measured pre- and posttherapy,
and at follow-up. In addition, eight intervention group participants
were interviewed to examine their experiences of cancer and the psychooncology
service. Possible key factors influencing the effectiveness of service
interventions were also investigated. The results showed that participants who
had access to the psycho-oncology service showed significant improvements
in all outcome measures by the end of therapy. The majority of these were
maintained 3 months later. Improvements were also observed in the control
group. Reasons for accessing therapy centred on diagnosis/prognosis
concerns, communication with family, and talking to a non-family member
about their worries. Although clients had no specific expectations prior to
therapy, previous psychotherapy experiences influenced their perceptions of
its potential effectiveness. Therapists' personal and professional qualities
were also viewed as crucial. Five key themes were identified as most
beneficial - receiving individualised support, talking to someone who was not
family, receiving expert/professional support, regaining a sense of control, and
service availability/flexibility. Overall, psycho-oncology interventions had a
significantly positive impact on clients' lives, and were viewed as being
extremely beneficial for those experiencing cancer-related distress. This
research provides a unique contribution to the limited psycho-oncology
research in New Zealand.


Structural complexity and turbidity decrease predation by respectively providing a physical and visual refuge for prey. It is still unclear how the covariance between these variables could drive predation and prey selectivity. We experimentally simulated scenarios that are temporally observed in floodplain rivers. In the experiments, we crossed different prey types, structural complexity and turbidity. We hypothesised that the negative relationship between structural complexity and predation would become stronger with a linear increase in the turbidity level and that an increase in structural complexity and in turbidity would change prey selectivity from a selective to a random pattern. Our results showed that the effects of structural complexity and turbidity on predation may not covary; a linear increase in turbidity did not significantly change the patterns of predation or prey selectivity. In contrast, structural complexity significantly reduced prey consumption according to prey size. We argue that areas with low macrophyte cover may provide an efficient refuge for smaller prey, whereas an efficient refuge for larger prey can be attained only in areas with high macrophyte cover. In highly complex habitats, specificity in prey consumption is precluded because both prey species can hide amid the interstices of the macrophytes, leading to random prey selectivity.


Past attribution studies of climate change have assumed a null hypothesis of no role of human activities. The challenge, then, is to prove that there is an anthropogenic component. I argue that because global warming is "unequivocal" and 'very likely' caused by human activities, the reverse should now be the case. The task, then, could be to prove there is no anthropogenic component to a particular observed change in climate, although a more useful task is to determine what it is. In Bayesian statistics, this change might be thought of as adding a 'prior'. The benefit of doubt and uncertainties about observations and models are then switched. Moreover, the science community is much too conservative on this issue and too many authors make what are called 'Type II errors' whereby they erroneously accept the null hypothesis. Global warming is contributing to a changing incidence of extreme weather because the environment in which all storms form has changed from human activities. WIREs Clim Change 2011, 2:925–930. doi: 10.1002/wcc.142


Aging is an extremely complex and multifactorial process. Over time, the elderly begin exhibiting signs of function reduction. The aim of the present study was to assess the effects of homeopathic medicines on testicle histomorphometry in senescence/senility. The study was approved by the animal experimentation ethics committee of Santo Amaro University (07/2015). The rats (Wistar, all male, with 22-23 months of age were used) were caged with access to food and water ad libitum and 12-hour light cycle (7:00 am to 7:00 pm). The homeopathic medicines were prepared following the Brazilian Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia. The animals were randomly distributed in 4 groups (n= 6): control; hydroalcoholic solution; Calcarea carbonica 30cH (Calc) and Baryta muriatica 30cH (Bar-m). 5 globules of the medicines were added to each water dispenser; the containers were changed twice per week along 40 days. All investigators were blinded to the allocation groups. After 40 days all the animals were euthanized and the testicles collected. Based on their width and length, the testicles' volume was calculated by means of the ellipsoid formula. Slides were prepared and stained with PAS. Photographs were taken of the slides with 40x magnification under microscope; software Image J was used to measure the diameter of 50 seminiferous tubules per slide (animal), diameter of the parenchyma and lumen of each tubule. Statistical analysis was performed by means of ANOVA followed by Tukey's test; the significance level was set to p≤ 0.05. Increase of the testicles' volume, increased parenchymal diameter and decrease of the tubular lumen was found in groups Calc and Bar-m compared to controls and the group treated with hydroalcoholic solution (p ≤ 0.05). We conclude that the tested homeopathic medicines changed the testicle histomorphometry of animals in senescence/senility.

Keywords: Testicular histomorphometry, homeopathy, Calcarea carbonica, Baryta muriatica, Senescence/Senility


A mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) formulation for symbolic regression was proposed to identify physical models from noisy experimental data. The formulation was tested using numerical models and was found to be more efficient than the previous literature example with respect to the number of predictor variables and training data points. The globally optimal search was extended to identify physical models and to cope with noise in the experimental data predictor variable. The methodology was coupled with the collection of experimental data in an automated fashion, and was proven to be successful in identifying the correct physical models describing the relationship between the shear stress and shear rate for both Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids, and simple kinetic laws of reactions. Future work will focus on addressing the limitations of the formulation presented in this work, by extending it to be able to address larger complex physical models.


OBJECTIVES
To determine frequency and clinical criteria associated to the inadequate indication of blood products.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A cross-sectional study was performed between June and October 2002. Clinical charts and the laboratory tests from patients receiving blood transfusions were examined. A blood transfusion guideline was elaborated based on published consensus, and used to determine whether the indications for blood products transfusion was adequate or inadequate.

RESULTS
A total of 311 blood transfusions were evaluated. The global prevalence of inappropriate indication was of 33.8 %. Red blood cells (RBC) were used inappropriately in 25 %, fresh frozen plasma (FFP) in 59 %, platelets in 13 % and cryoprecipitate in 88 %. From surgery related transfusions half of the indications were inadequate. In internal medicine, ICU and emergency related transfusions, approximately one third of the indications were inadequate. The FFP is the worst used blood product.

CONCLUSIONS
We found a high frequency of inadequate blood transfusion. The identification of the specific clinical criteria used in inadequate indications transfusions will help in designing a better educational strategy towards a more rational use of the blood products.


Uganda's Youth Livelihood Programme (YLP) and the consequent Youth Livelihood Fund (YLF) are government programmes established under the National Youth Policy (NYP), designed to support young people to find employment by extending grants and other support to small groups of young entrepreneurs, to help them to start small businesses and thus create employment for other young jobseekers. Drawing on a study involving 177 rural and urban youths, this article discusses the design and implementation of the YLP. It argues that the NYP has fallen short in several respects. In addition to funding, employment generation requires additional support for youth in a range of areas, including awareness-raising about employment opportunities, enhancing vocational and entrepreneurial skills, and providing advice and guidance on starting up small businesses.


In insects, ecdysis is thought to be controlled by the interaction between peptide hormones; in particular between ecdysis-triggering hormone (ETH) from the periphery and eclosion hormone (EH) and crustacean cardioactive peptide (CCAP) from the central nervous system. We examined the behavioral and physiological functions of the first two of these peptides in Drosophila melanogaster using wild-type flies and knockout flies that lacked EH neurons. We used ETH from Manduca sexta (MasETH) to induce premature ecdysis and compared the responses of the two types of flies. The final release of EH normally occurs approximately 40 min before ecdysis. It is correlated with cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) production in selected neurons and tracheae, by an elevation in the heart rate and by the filling of the new tracheae with air. Injection of developing flies with MasETH causes all these events to occur prematurely. In EH cell knockouts, none of these changes occurs in response to MasETH, and these flies show a permanent failure in tracheal filling. This failure can be overcome in the knockouts by injecting them with membrane-permeant analogs of cGMP, the second messenger for EH. The basis for the 40 min delay between EH release and the onset of ecdysis was examined by decapitating flies at various times relative to EH release. In flies that had already released EH, decapitation was always followed within 1 min by the start of ecdysis. Immediate ecdysis was never observed when the EH cell knockout flies were decapitated. We propose that EH activates both ventral central nervous system elements necessary for ecdysis (possibly the CCAP cells) and descending inhibitory neurons from the head. This descending inhibition establishes a delay in the onset of ecdysis that allows the completion of EH-activated physiological processes such as tracheal filling. A waning in the inhibition eventually allows ecdysis to begin 30-40 min later.


LOGO-I (LOw COmplexity LOssless COmpression for Images) is the algorithm at the core of the new ISO/ITU standard for lossless and near-lossless compression of continuous-tone images, JPEG-LS. The algorithm was conceived as a "low complexity projection" of the universal context modeling paradigm, matching its modeling unit to a simple coding unit based on Golomb codes. The JPEG-LS standard evolved after successive refinements of the core algorithm, and a description of its design principles and main algorithmic components is presented in this paper. LOCO-I/JPEG-LS attains compression ratios similar or superior to those obtained with state-of-the-art schemes based on arithmetic coding. Moreover, it is within a few percentage points of the best available compression ratios, at a much lower complexity level.


Why do some leaders use praise as a means to motivate workers, while other leaders use social punishment? This paper develops a simple economic model to examine how leadership styles depend on the prevailing labor-market conditions for workers. We show that the existence of a binding wage floor for workers (e.g., due to trade union wage bargaining, minimum-wage legislation, or limited-liability protection) can make it attractive for firms to hire a leader who makes use of social punishment. While the use of social punishments generally is socially inefficient, it lessens the need for high bonus pay, which allows the firm to extract rents from the worker. In contrast, firms hire leaders who provide praise to workers only if it is socially efficient to do so. Credible use of leadership styles requires either repeated interaction or a leader with the right social preferences. Only moderately altruistic leaders offer praise, whereas only moderately spiteful leaders employ social punishment. Lastly, we show that when the leaders' and workers' reservation utilities give rise to a bigger income gap between leaders and workers, attracting spiteful leaders becomes relatively less costly and unfriendly leadership becomes more prevalent.


Significance Solitons, spatially localized, mobile excitations resulting from an interplay between nonlinearity and dispersion, are ubiquitous in physical systems from water channels and oceans to optical fibers and Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs). From our pulse throbbing at our wrists to rapidly moving tsunamis, solitons appear naturally at a wide range of scales. In nonlinear optical fibers, solitons can travel long distances with applications for communication technology and potential for use in quantum switches and logic. Understanding how random processes contribute to the decay and the diffusion of solitons is essential to advancing these technologies. We observed and controlled the Brownian motion of solitons. We launched solitonic excitations in highly elongated Rb87 Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) and showed that a dilute background of impurity atoms in a different internal state dramatically affects the soliton. With no impurities and in one dimension (1D), these solitons would have an infinite lifetime, a consequence of integrability. In our experiment, the added impurities scatter off the much larger soliton, contributing to its Brownian motion and decreasing its lifetime. We describe the soliton's diffusive behavior using a quasi-1D scattering theory of impurity atoms interacting with a soliton, giving diffusion coefficients consistent with experiment.


This paper describes a possible structure for the paracrystalline form of the sodium salt of deoxyribonucleic acid. The structure consists of two DNA chains wound helically round a common axis, and held together by hydrogen bonds between specific pairs of bases. The assumptions made in deriving the structure are described, and co-ordinates are given for the principal atoms. The structure of the crystalline form is discussed briefly.


This paper aims to show that the accuracy of real estate portfolio valuations can be improved through the simultaneous use of Monte Carlo simulations and options theory. Our method considers the options embedded in Continental European lease contracts drawn up with tenants who may move before the end of the contract. We combine Monte Carlo simulations for both market prices and rental values with an optional model that takes into account a rational tenant's behavior. We analyze to what extent the options exercised by the tenant significantly affect the owner's income. Our main findings are that simulated cash flows which take account of such options are more reliable that those usually computed by the traditional method of discounted cash flow. Moreover, this approach provides interesting metrics, such as the distribution of cash flows. The originality of this research lies in the possibility of taking the structure of the lease into account. In practice this model could be used by professionals to improve the relevance of their valuations: the output as a distribution of outcomes should be of interest to investors. However, some limitations are inherent to our model: these include the assumption of the rationality of tenant's decisions, and the difficulty of calibrating the model, given the lack of data. After a brief literature review of simulation methods used for real estate valuation, the paper describes the suggested simulation model, its main assumptions, and the incorporation of tenant's decisions regarding break options influencing the cash flows. Finally, using an empirical example, we analyze the sensitivity of the model to various parameters, test its robustness and note some limitations.


Red by Association: New Negro Communism and Wallace Thurman's The Blacker the Berry Maria Pack Milligan Department of English, BYU Master of Arts The decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union have seen an increased interest in uncovering the relationship between New Negro era authors and intellectuals and the radical leftism that had such a widespread influence in the twentieth century. Scholars are reanalyzing the life and works of figures like Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois and others in light of each author's interaction with and acceptance of communist and socialist ideals. These studies trace these radical connections in an effort to better understand New Negro authors and their work during a time of revolution and social upheaval. There is still much work to be done, however, in the study of those African American authors who were not directly allied with these movements, but nonetheless were vital voices in the radical atmosphere of the time. One such author is Wallace Thurman, an influential editor and writer who is connected to communism and socialism in undeniable ways, but also seems ideologically distant from his radical leftist peers. Examining Thurman's body of work as a part of a larger revolutionary trend reveals that though his views differed from and often reacted against communist rhetoric as he understood it, Thurman did use that rhetoric to form his own radical ideology. Thurman's most famous novel, The Blacker the Berry, gives insight into both the radical change that the author hoped for, as well as his vision of the best way to bring about that change. The novel's protagonist, Emma Lou Morgan, represents those individuals who cannot quite manage to fit into a mass movement because her dark skin and psychological issues with her own race and skin color prevent her from easily molding herself to the ideals of others. Emma Lou's struggle for mental independence reveals that though Thurman longed for large-scale, radical reform, he also insisted that no such reform was possible without first helping individuals to overcome their personal psychological barriers. This study of Thurman and his radicalism not only shows that not all revolutionaries of the time were communists, it also begins the work of tracing a New Negro radicalism that was connected to the communist and socialist movements, but also included veins unique to each author's social, racial, and geographic position.


• Theory and practice of environmental protection in the case of foundries in Europe and Asia • Experience resulting from the cooperation with the foundries in a few European countries, China and India • Phenomena and factors affecting the pollution of the natural environment and the implementation of measures aiming at the environmental protection Every specialist dealing with foundry processes and their impact on environmental pollution must have encountered in their professional careers numerous situations in which the theory of environmental protection confronts the stark reality. The discrepancy between theory and practice can particularly be noticed in foundry engineering in developing countries where the contrasts between different countries and casting plants are extremely striking. The comparison of working conditions in European and Asian foundries provides a vast scope for further observations and analyses. Environmental protection seems not only a concern of manufacturers of castings, but also of their customers whose opinion exerts a significant influence on both the acceptability of working conditions and on the approach to environmental pollution adopted in metal casting industry. The article presents a number of examples of various outlooks on environmental issues in foundries manufacturing a wide range of cast steel and cast iron castings, where different technologies and production processes are applied. Keyword: Environment pollution, Foundry industry, Comparison of environmental protection approach 1. Polish Foundry Industry vs.


Wind power generation is rapidly expanding. Although wind power is a low-carbon source of energy, it can impact negatively birds and bats, either directly through fatality or indirectly by displacement or habitat loss. Pre-construction risk assessment at wind facilities within the United States is usually required only on public lands. When conducted, it generally involves a 3-tier process, with each step leading to more detailed and rigorous surveys. Preliminary site assessment (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Tier 1) is usually conducted remotely and involves evaluation of existing databases and published materials. If potentially at-risk wildlife are present and the developer wishes to continue the development process, then on-site surveys are conducted (Tier 2) to verify the presence of those species and to assess site-speci c features (e.g., topography, land cover) that may in uence risk from turbines. The next step in the process (Tier 3) involves quantitative or scienti c studies to assess the potential risk of the proposed project to wildlife. Typical Tier-3 research may involve acoustic, aural, observational, radar, capture, tracking, or modeling studies, all designed to understand details of risk to speci c species or groups of species at the given site. Our review highlights several features lacking from many risk assessments, particularly the paucity of before-and-aftercontrol-impact (BACI) studies involving modeling and a lack of understanding of cumulative effects of wind facilities on wildlife. Both are essential to understand effective designs for pre-construction monitoring and both would help expand risk assessment beyond eagles.


Context: Every day increasing number of malwares are spreading around the world and infecting not only end users but also large organizations. This results in massive security threat for private data and expensive computer resources. There is lot of research going on to cope up with this large amount of malicious software. Researchers and practitioners developed many new methods to deal with them. One of the most effective methods used to capture malicious software is dynamic malware analysis. Dynamic analysis methods used today are very time consuming and resource greedy. Normally it could take days or at least some hours to analyze a single instance of suspected software. This is not good enough especially if we look at amount of attacks occurring every day. Objective: To save time and expensive resources used to perform these analyses, AMA: an automated malware analysis system is developed to analyze large number of suspected software. Analysis of any software inside AMA, results in a detailed report of its behavior, which includes changes made to file system, registry, processes and network traffic consumed. Main focus of this study is to develop a model to automate the runtime analysis of software which provide detailed analysis report and evaluation of its effectiveness. Methods: A thorough background study is conducted to gain the knowledge about malicious software and their behavior. Further software analysis techniques are studied to come up with a model that will automate the runtime analysis of software. A prototype system is developed and quasi experiment performed on malicious and benign software to evaluate the accuracy of the newly developed system and generated reports are compared with Norman and Anubis. Results: Based on thorough background study an automated runtime analysis model is developed and quasi experiment performed using implemented prototype system on selected legitimate and benign software. The experiment results show AMA has captured more detailed software behavior then Norman and Anubis and it could be used to better classify software. Conclusions: We concluded that AMA could capture more detailed behavior of the software analyzed and it will give more accurate classification of the software. We also can see from experiment results that there is no concrete distinguishing factors between general behaviors of both types of software. However, by digging a bit deep into analysis report one could understand the intensions of the software. That means reports generated by AMA provide enough information about software behavior and can be used to draw correct conclusions.


This paper discusses the dynamics of the optical response of a nematic liquid crystal with positive dielectric anisotropy for splay deformation of the layer and how it is affected by the shape of the electric-field oscillations. The efficiency of the action of sinusoidal, bipolar, and unipolar meanders with different frequencies and polarities is compared. It is shown that using a unipolar meander promotes a substantial acceleration of the liquid crystal's optical response when the electrical signal is simultaneously reduced.


Abstract. Beaded streams are widespread in permafrost regions and are considered a common thermokarst landform. However, little is known about their distribution, how and under what conditions they form, and how their intriguing morphology translates to ecosystem functions and habitat. Here we report on a circum-Arctic survey of beaded streams and a watershed-scale analysis in northern Alaska using remote sensing and field studies. We mapped over 400 channel networks with beaded morphology throughout the continuous permafrost zone of northern Alaska, Canada, and Russia and found the highest abundance associated with medium to high ground-ice content permafrost in moderately sloping terrain. In one Arctic coastal plain watershed, beaded streams accounted for half of the drainage density, occurring primarily as low-order channels initiating from lakes and drained lake basins. Beaded streams predictably transition to alluvial channels with increasing drainage area and decreasing channel slope, although this transition is modified by local controls on water and sediment delivery. The comparisons of one beaded channel using repeat photography between 1948 and 2013 indicate a relatively stable landform, and 14C dating of basal sediments suggest channel formation may be as early as the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. Contemporary processes, such as deep snow accumulation in riparian zones, effectively insulate channel ice and allows for perennial liquid water below most beaded stream pools. Because of this, mean annual temperatures in pool beds are greater than 2 °C, leading to the development of perennial thaw bulbs or taliks underlying these thermokarst features that range from 0.7 to 1.6 m. In the summer, some pools thermally stratify, which reduces permafrost thaw and maintains cold-water habitats. Snowmelt-generated peak flows decrease rapidly by two or more orders of magnitude to summer low flows with slow reach-scale velocity distributions ranging from 0.01 to 0.1 m s−1, yet channel runs still move water rapidly between pools. The repeating spatial pattern associated with beaded stream morphology and hydrological dynamics may provide abundant and optimal foraging habitat for fish. Beaded streams may create important ecosystem functions and habitat in many permafrost landscapes and their distribution and dynamics are only beginning to be recognized in Arctic research.


Epithelial cell-cell junctions, organized by adhesion proteins and the underlying actin cytoskeleton, are considered to be stable structures maintaining the structural integrity of tissues. Contrary to the idea that alpha-catenin links the adhesion protein E-cadherin through beta-catenin to the actin cytoskeleton, in the accompanying paper we report that alpha-catenin does not bind simultaneously to both E-cadherin-beta-catenin and actin filaments. Here we demonstrate that alpha-catenin exists as a monomer or a homodimer with different binding properties. Monomeric alpha-catenin binds more strongly to E-cadherin-beta-catenin, whereas the dimer preferentially binds actin filaments. Different molecular conformations are associated with these different binding states, indicating that alpha-catenin is an allosteric protein. Significantly, alpha-catenin directly regulates actin-filament organization by suppressing Arp2/3-mediated actin polymerization, likely by competing with the Arp2/3 complex for binding to actin filaments. These results indicate a new role for alpha-catenin in local regulation of actin assembly and organization at sites of cadherin-mediated cell-cell adhesion.


Introduction Clinical presentations and radiologic findings of lung adenocarcinoma often resemble benign pulmonary diseases such as community-acquired pneumonia and interstitial lung disease. We report a lung adenocarcinoma with widespread ground-glass opacities(GGO) mimicking interstitial lung disease, also it had shown remarkable response as complete remission to navelbine. Case Presentation A 66-year-old male patient admitted our hospital for cough, sputum and dyspnea aggravated 2 days ago. He also had suffered from chronic cough for one year. Chest CT revealed widespread GGO with patchy consolidations(Fig1A). After 2 weeks, we decided to perform open lung biopsy due to absence of improvement despite proper antibiotics. It revealed as adenocarcinoma with visceral pleural invasion. Although the patients had treated with multiple chemotherapies such as platinum doublet, erlotinib, gemcitabine and docetaxel for 2 years, disease progressed slowly. Finally, we treated with navelbine weekly at fifth line for 12 months and GGO was disappeared dramatically. It resulted in complete remission and maintained for 11 months(Fig1B). Conclusions Lung adenocarcinoma sometimes mimics benign lung disease. It is prone to delay diagnosis of cancer. Open lung biopsy will be a useful tool for precise diagnosis. Also, we discreetly consider navelbine could be a treatment option for chemotherapy refractory lung adenocarcinoma.


Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a highly-prevalent neural developmental disorder often characterized by social communicative deficits and restricted repetitive interest. The heterogeneous nature of ASD in its behavior manifestations encompasses broad syndromes such as, Classical Autism (AD), Highfunctioning Autism (HFA), and Asperger syndrome (AS). In this work, we compute a variety of multimodal behavior features, including body movements, acoustic characteristics, and turn-taking events dynamics, of the participant, the investigator and the interaction between the two directly from audiovideo recordings by leveraging the Autism Diagnostic Observational Schedule (ADOS) as a clinically-valid behavior data elicitation technique. Several of these signal-derived behavioral measures show statistically significant differences among the three syndromes. Our analyses indicate that these features may be pointing to the underlying differences in the behavior characterizations of social functioning between AD, AS, and HFA corroborating some of the previous literature. Further, our signal-derived behavior measures achieve competitive, sometimes exceeding, recognition accuracies in discriminating between the three syndromes of ASD when compared to investigator's clinical-rating on participant's social and communicative behaviors during ADOS.


The modernisation of human civilisation demands sacrifices of other species for work, food, clothing, medical research, space exploration – and human self affirmation. To enable the asymmetrical relations, a hierarchical dualism between Man and Animal has been constructed and is maintained by a mechanism of continual differentiation. My aim in this article is to consider how literary fiction may take part in the denaturalisation of this mechanism, named by Giorgio Agamben as the "anthropological machine". For this purpose I highlight five different meetings between apes and humans, as narrated in Swedish novels from the last decades, and analyse them from an ethical and animal discourse point of view. My readings demonstrate how literature can call acute attention to the recurrent human blockage of the face of the animal other, and to the emotional unsettlement evoked by this act. Hereby, I argue, the human/animal divide is put into question as a relevant basis of ethical decision.


The aim of the study was to evaluate the long-term environmental performance effectiveness of heating and cooling systems between 'sustainable' and conventional office buildings. The key research question that this study tried to answear is, 'To what extent do sustainable office buildings remain sustainable in the long run?' On this basis, two hypotheses (HP) were tested:
 HP1: Sustainable buildings remain sustainable in the long run.
 HP2: Current indicators fulfil the role for determining long term sustainability.
From the sustainability point of view, this study focused only on the environmental aspect. The word 'sustainable' has been used for identifying office buildings where environmental aspects have been taken into consideration through sustainability approaches. In order to address the first hypothesis, initially this study used a case study comparison approach to compare 'sustainable' with conventional office buildings, by comparing building design and heating-cooling system characteristics. This helped to raise understanding of the environmental characteristics that classify an office building as sustainable. Two case studies were used:
 The first case study comparison consists of a new 'sustainable' BREEAM excellent certified office building from 2009 and a conventional office building from the 1960s that had no refurbishments.
 The second case study comparison consists of a refurbished 'sustainable' BREEAM excellent certified office building compared to a conventional office building from the 1950s that had an upgrade in the heating system.
The study then focused on assessing the current environmental performance of heating and cooling between the case study buildings. Therefore Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) methods were used including site visits, interviews, recording of heating and cooling systems, collection of heating-cooling consumption data, conducting thermographic surveys, applying Heating Degree Data (HDD) Evaluation and undertaking Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
LCA has played a key role in evaluating the long run environmental performance of heating and cooling systems. The LCA evaluated two performance indicators: a) energy consumption of heating and cooling for 2 years of operation and b) the raw-material consumption of heating and cooling system production. Further, hypothetical long run scenarios were developed to consider the consequences of the existing operational and embodied raw-material emissions in the long run. Sensitivity LCA analysis was also used in order to evaluate the environmental impacts of alternative scenarios of different low/zero carbon technologies if they were installed in the case study buildings. Uncertainty analysis was used to assess the significance of uncertainty in the data evaluated.
The key outcome of this study was the need for developing a new Sustainability Indicator that can be used to support environment decision making in evaluating the long run environmental performance of heating and cooling systems in office buildings. The new indicator brings together all the research methods used in this study by developing further the existing energy indicator already integrated in existing Sustainable Assessment Methods (SAMs) and by developing a new indicator for raw-materials of heating and cooling systems. Suggestions for their integration on existing SAMs are also discussed. Finally the study ends with key conclusions and suggestions for further research.


How AI is perceived by the public can have significant impact on how it is developed, deployed and regulated. Some commentators argue that perceptions are currently distorted or extreme. This paper discusses the results of a nationally representative survey of the UK population on their perceptions of AI. The survey solicited responses to eight common narratives about AI (four optimistic, four pessimistic), plus views on what AI is, how likely it is to impact in respondents' lifetimes, and whether they can influence it. 42% of respondents offered a plausible definition of AI, while 25% thought it meant robots. Of the narratives presented, those associated with automation were best known, followed by the idea that AI would become more powerful than humans. Overall results showed that the most common visions of the impact of AI elicit significant anxiety. Only two of the eight narratives elicited more excitement than concern (AI making life easier, and extending life). Respondents felt they had no control over AI's development, citing the power of corporations or government, or versions of technological determinism. Negotiating the deployment of AI will require contending with these anxieties.


Since the mid 1990s, in a generally strongly performing property market, there has been a significant growth in the number of unlisted real estate funds. These funds have provided fund managers with the opportunity to charge performance fees, without the manager being able to provide clear evidence of historic out-performance against market benchmarks. typically been described in terns of their differing styles core, core plus, value-added, opportunity with different return targets, different levels of leverage and different fee and incentive structures. These factors all suggest different risk levels. With the events of the period 2008-2011, investor confidence in the unlisted real estate fund investment structure has been significantly dented, with some investors demanding a new level of transparency. An area where this is particularly important is in the charging of performance fees by fund managers. Opportunity funds (as defined by INREV) have generally taken higher risks, including more leverage, relative to core funds (again defined by INREV). It is questionable both whether high risk strategies such as those employed by opportunity funds have delivered the necessary higher returns, and also whether fund performance fees adequately distinguish between risk taking and genuine outperformance. Taking acceptable/agreed risks with investors' capital should earn higher returns, but the returns from pure risk-taking should not be rewarded. Hence three questions arise. How has the performance of core funds and opportunity funds compared over periods of market strength and market weakness? To what extent can the relative performance be explained by leverage? Have the performance fees paid to managers been fairly earned?


Organic aerosols (OAs) play important roles in multiple atmospheric processes, including climate change, and can impact human health. The physico-chemical properties of OAs are important for all these processes and can evolve through reactions with various atmospheric components, including oxidants. The dynamic nature of these reactions makes it challenging to obtain a true representation of their composition and surface chemistry. Here we investigate the microscopic viscosity of the model OA composed of squalene, undergoing chemical aging. We employ Fluorescent Lifetime Imaging Microscopy (FLIM) in conjunction with viscosity sensitive probes termed molecular rotors, in order to image the changes in microviscosity in real time during oxidation with ozone and hydroxyl radicals, which are two key oxidising species in the troposphere. We also recorded the Raman spectra of the levitated particles to follow the reactivity during particle ozonolysis. The levitation of droplets was achieved via optical trapping that enabled simultaneous levitation and measurement via FLIM or Raman spectroscopy and allowed the true aerosol phase to be probed. Our data revealed a very significant increase in viscosity of the levitated squalene droplets upon ozonolysis, following their transformation from the liquid to solid phase that was not observable when the oxidation was carried out on coverslip mounted droplets. FLIM imaging with sub-micron spatial resolution also revealed spatial heterogeneity in the viscosity distribution of oxidised droplets. Overall, a combination of molecular rotors, FLIM and optical trapping is able to provide powerful insights into OA chemistry and the microscopic structure that enables the dynamic monitoring of microscopic viscosity in aerosol particles in their true phase.


This report provides a comparative perspective on the application of quality regulation principles to financial sector regulators, in the US, Canada, Australia, the UK and France. The report compares key provisions of the codes of the Basle Committee and IOSCO, with the OECD's 2005 Guiding Principles for Regulatory Quality and Performance, and the 2009 Policy Framework for Effective and Efficient Financial Regulation (PFEEFR). The report analyses the independence and accountability of the regulators, as well as their powers. The analysis focuses on requirements for ex ante and ex post regulatory impact analyses, including burden reduction; for transparency and communication of decision making, as well as co-ordination and regulatory review; for improving the regulatory system over time and for regulating conflicts of interest. The report finds variation in the formal arrangements, and respective practices. It also finds that the requirements related to better regulation principles are often implemented too late in the decision-making process when regulations are set at the international level.


Our understanding of the moral philosophy of Aristotle is hampered by a number of modern assumptions we make about the subject. For a start, we are accustomed to thinking about ethics or moral philosophy as being concerned with theoretical questions about actions—what makes an action right or wrong? Modern moral philosophy gives two different sorts of answers to this question. One is in terms of a substantial ethical theory—what makes an action right or wrong is whether it promotes the greatest happiness, or whether it is in accordance with or violates a moral rule, or whether it promotes or violates a moral right. The other sort gives a meta-ethical answer—rightness and wrongness are not really properties of actions, but in describing actions as right or wrong we commend or object to them, express our approval or disapproval or our emotions concerning them. But the ancient Greeks start with a totally different question. Ethics is supposed to answer, for each one of us, the question 'How am I to live well?' What this question means calls for some discussion.


In 2003 the Joint Research Centre conducted a survey of mapping practices in eleven (11) new Member States (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) for eight (8) major natural and technological hazards such as floods, forest fires, storms, landslides, earthquakes, industrial installations, transport of dangerous goods and contaminated lands. This activity was funded as part of the project entitled "Management of Natural and Technological Risks". One fundamental project objective was to examine the existing situation in each of the surveyed countries, and compare different mapping methodologies in order to define guidelines for establishing compatible risk mapping systems, in particular multi-hazard risk mapping. This report describes the results of the industrial installations section of the risk mapping activity. Responses to the survey provide important information about the current status of industrial hazards and risk mapping in different countries and advantages and obstacles to developing a common methodology for multi-hazard risk mapping including this hazard in each country. The mission of the JRC is to provide customer-driven scientific and technical support for the conception, development, implementation and monitoring of EU policies. As a service of the European Commission, the JRC functions as a reference centre of science and technology for the Union. Close to the policy-making process, it serves the common interest of the Member States, while being independent of special interests, whether private or national.


This paper presents an assessment of the outcomes of research carried out under the Sustainable Wetlands Adaptation and Mitigation Programme (SWAMP). SWAMP aimed to inform national and international climate policy and practice by developing tools and methods to quantify greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, carbon stocks and flux in tropical wetlands due to land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF). This assessment modelled SWAMP's intended outcomes as a theory of change (ToC) and used qualitative methods to test the ToC and to evaluate whether and how the outcomes were achieved. It found that SWAMP research has helped raise academic and policy interest in wetlands, mangroves and peat forests as carbon reservoirs, and that SWAMP's recommendations informed policy discourse and supported the development of technical guidance and strategies of sustainable wetland management. However, the research had a weak effect on international and Indonesian climate change policies compared to other factors. The Paris Agreement and Indonesia's nationally determined contribution (NDC) do not include the quantification of carbon stocks from mangroves, which are not all located in the forest areas. Knowledge translation was achieved through a variety of mechanisms, with direct engagement identified as particularly important. The outcome evaluation approach proved useful as a way of conceptualising and organising the analysis of research impact on development outcomes.


The increased public exposure to the experiences of Latinx unaccompanied children seeking entry at the United States southern border has revealed the lived reality of the nation's pernicious immigration laws. The harrowing experiences of unaccompanied children are amplified by their interaction with a legal system plagued by a legacy of systemic racism and sustained racial caste. While immigration law currently affords minimal legal protections for these children, in application, the law continues to fall egregiously short of providing for the safety of unaccompanied children. Though critics have long attested to the legal system's neglect of unaccompanied children, subsequent legal analysis has overlooked the intersectional role of race as it pertains to their attempts to navigate entry. This Article uses the concept of racialization to explore the legal treatment of Latinx unaccompanied children as they navigate entry to the United States. This Article demonstrates that the legal framework creates structural inequality for Latinx unaccompanied children through a concept known as "adultification." Further, racist social and political narratives are incorporated into the law which contribute to the racialization of Latinx unaccompanied children and challenges the very vulnerability that lies at the foundation of the legal protections available for children. The Article concludes with a proposed intersectional vulnerability framework that reconceptualizes race and strengthens the rights and protections of unaccompanied children.


The recovery phase of an earthquake-affected settlement is a time-consuming and complex process that requires monitoring, which is now possible using UAS. The purpose of this paper is to present the methodology followed and the results obtained by the exploitation of UAS for rapid multitemporal 3D mapping during the recovery phase of Vrisa traditional settlement, Lesvos island, Greece, which was highly damaged by the earthquake (Mw=6.3) on 12 June 2017. More analytically, three (3) flight campaigns covering the period July 2017 – May 2020 took place by means of an UAS for collecting high-resolution images on: i) 19 May 2019, ii) 29 September 2019, iii) 17 May 2020. Structure from Motion (SfM) and Multi Stereo View (MSV) methods have been applied and produced: i) Digital Surface Models – DSMs, ii) 3D Point Clouds – 3DPC and iii) Orthophoto-maps, of Vrisa. In parallel, GIS capabilities has been exploit to calculate building volumes based on: a) DSM produced by UAS image processing, b) DEM produced by 233 RTK measurements and c) building footprints derived by the digitization of the orthophotomap of 25 July 2017. The methodology developed and implemented achieves extremely reliable results in a relatively easy, fast and economically feasible way, which is confirmed with great precision by field work. By applying the above-described methodology, it was possible to monitoring the recovery phase during July 2017 and May 2020 which 302/340 buildings that had been severely damaged by the earthquake have been demolished. A small number of new buildings have also been rebuilded and small number of buildings that have just begun excavations for their construction. An important parameter for obtaining reliable data and comparable results is the correct selection of flight parameters and their maintenance at all times when it is decided to take data, without affecting the accuracy of the results from taking photos or videos. Automation in the future of the proposed methodology can significantly accelerate the achievement of reliable results without the intermediate interpretation of orthophoto-maps.


Though addressing sources of uncertainty is an important part of doing science, it has largely been neglected in assessing students' scientific argumentation. In this study, we initially defined a scientific argumentation construct in four structural elements consisting of claim, justification, uncertainty qualifier, and uncertainty rationale. We consulted literature to characterize and score different levels of student performances on each of these four argumentation elements. We designed a test comprised of nine scientific argumentation tasks addressing climate change, the search for life in space, and fresh water availability and administered it to 473 students from 9 high schools in the United States. After testing the local dependence and unidimensionality assumptions, we found that the uncertainty qualifier element was not aligned with the other three. After removing items related to uncertainty qualifier, we applied a Rasch analysis based on a Partial Credit Model. Results indicate that (1) claim, justification, and uncertainty rationale items form a unidimensional scale, (2) justification and uncertainty rationale items contribute the most on the unidimensional scientific argumentation scale as they cover much wider ranges of the scale than claim items, (3) average item difficulties increase in the order of claim, justification, and uncertainty rationale, (4) students' elaboration of uncertainty exhibits dual characteristics: self-assessment of their own knowledge and ability versus scientific assessment of conceptual and empirical errors embedded in investigations, and (5) students who can make warrants between theory and evidence are more likely to think about uncertainty from scientific sources than those who cannot. We identified limitations of this study in terms of science topic coverage and sample selection and made suggestions on how these limitations might have affected results and interpretations. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 51: 581–605, 2014


© 2005 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Cough is one of the most common presenting symptoms to a general practitioner. Most cases are acute and self-limiting, although a significant minority with an isolated persistent cough are referred for a specialist opinion. The prevalence of chronic cough is variously estimated between 3% and 20% in the general population and is responsible for between 5% and 10% of respiratory outpatient referrals (1,2). These patients suffer considerable physical and psychological morbidity.


Vedic multiplier is a unique and prompt multiplier dependent on Vedic mathematics. The main component used in this procedure is adder. Vedic multiplier's performance can be enhanced by using fast adder. Hence in this paper we are using 64*64 bit multiplier using 32-bit Vedic multiplier and getting path delay lowest. For finding value of 64-bit multiplier, we need 32-bit multiplier for multiplication. Here we are applying Vedic Mathematics Sutra called "URDHVA TIRYAKABHYAM" for proposed 64*64 bit multiplier in Xilinx ISE 14.7. This design does not take more time for execution of the operation than comparison with available multiplier. This Vedic method is effective to improve the speed of image processing and digital signal processing. It works on high speed with great performance. This technique includes different types of wide area of image and digital signal processing. At the end, the result of proffered multiplier is compared with 64-bit multiplier using different adders.


The Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) time series shows high variability of surface chlorophyll at seasonal and intraseasonal time scales in the oligotrophic southern tropical Indian Ocean thermocline ridge called the Seychelles-Chagos thermocline ridge (SCTR). The SCTR is characterized by an open ocean upwelling due to local Ekman pumping, which annually maintains the mixed layer (ML) shallow and is responsive to atmospheric forcing and in particular to the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) at an intraseasonal time scale. Here we present an overview of SCTR biogeochemistry and investigate the physical processes driving the response observed at seasonal and intraseasonal time scales. Using satellite observations and biophysical ocean simulations, we show that seasonal and intraseasonal SeaWiFS signals (in austral winter and during MJO events, respectively) correspond to wind-induced mixing episodes. During such episodes, entrainment fertilizes the ML and allows phytoplankton production. Increased surface production is compensated by a decrease in the subsurface due to light limitation, leading to no significant change in integrated biomass and carbon export. Satellite observations and model results support the conclusion that the biogeochemical response to MJO is highly dependent on interannual variability of thermocline depth. Following Indian Ocean Dipole events, deepened nutrient-rich waters prevent nutrient input into the ML, decreasing the biogeochemical response to MJO. These results shed light on the physical processes at work in the strong surface temperature response to MJO in this region and suggest that entrainment cooling can play a role in the temperature signature to the MJO but is highly modulated by basin-scale interannual variability.


Basic thermodynamic considerations are used to rationalize the formation of thermotropic mesophases incorporating aromatic ligands for trivalent lanthanide metal ions (Ln). Standard flat and bent molecular interfaces, separating the central binding unit from the lateral, flexible alkoxy chains, provide programmed lamellar and columnar organization in the mesophases, which are removed upon complexation to Ln(NO3)3 and Ln(CF3CO2)3. Only significantly curved aromatic/aliphatic interfaces, found in polycatenar ligands, are able to overcome the considerable perturbations of the intermolecular interactions produced by the introduction of the bulky metallic core. A rich mesomorphism results, which can be tuned by a judicious control of the metallic coordination sphere. The exploitation of specific, metal‐centered luminescence for probing phase transitions and microscopic environments in mesophases is also discussed, as is the use of ionic liquids for producing tunable luminescent mesophases.


Access to performance-based funding from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, has enabled the Western Cape Province to race ahead with its antiretroviral (ARV) rollout. As of 2005, The Global Fund's contribution helped enable the province to provide antiretroviral treatment to 65% of those people who desperately need it (a figure in stark contrast to the then South African national average of 10%). This paper illustrates how the Global Fund grant, in its first year, clearly met and in some cases, exceeded its targets particularly in relation to ARV treatment. Based on the research carried out as part of the preparation for this paper, it becomes clear that the Western Cape's progressive and committed management team was a key contributing factor in successfully providing increased access to medical treatment. Other factors that have contributed to the success of the grant project include: the fact that in 1999, the province first initiated provision of ARV drugs to help prevent HIV-positive women transmitting the infection to their infants; and the experiences gained from both the introduction of treatment drugs and from the three-year ARV rollout projects in Khayelitsha and Gugulethu. This paper discusses the factors that have contributed to the success of the Western Cape ARV treatment programme and how, through funding from the Global Fund grant and other national funds, a foundation has been created for a successful programme.


Despite varying understandings of who or what a demagogue is or what a demagogue does, it is little surprise that demagoguery has long occupied rhetoricians, who are of course also interested in persuasion, argument, politics, public speech, affect, emotion, ethics, deliberative discourse, and essentially all the other realms of rhetorical action touched by the demagogue. Still, after more than two and a half millennia of deliberation on the matter, rhetoricians are still grappling with demagoguery—how to define it, how to identify who engages in it, how to explain its rhetorical character and effects, how to resist it, and how to reverse it, or if it's even possible to do so. The essays in this issue advance that effort in a time when demagoguery is once again on the rise.


Undergraduate students often start their academic course of studies with inadequate learning and thinking skills. Our college has a policy of setting high standards and demands, while supporting students' learning in a variety of ways. In this paper we present a distinctive course designed to aid students develop algorithmic problem-solving skills. The course is taught in parallel to a CS1 course and elaborates on activities such as analogical reasoning, prototyping problems, comparison between alternative solutions and reflection on problem-solving processes. It is one of the courses offered at our institution aimed at strengthening general learning and thinking skills, in addition to the regular disciplinary curriculum. Feedback from participants in the course demonstrates a developed awareness and appreciation of abstract ideas beyond programming knowledge. Students report on acquiring problem-solving skills that enable them to cope with compound problems. Additionally, students claimed that they had broadened their repertoire of algorithmic ideas leading to more efficient and elegant solutions.


Finally, a comprehensive fish identification guide covering the fish-rich reefs of the Pacific. It contains 2,500 underwater photographs of 2,000 species from four of the best marine life authors/photographers in the business. Their collaboration makes it possible for underwater naturalists to identify fishes from Thailand to Tahiti with a single, compact, easy-to-use, no-nonsense reference. 108 fish families are presented in one of 20 Identification groups based on a family's related visual or behavioural characteristics, such as Large Oval / Colourful or Sand/Burrow Dwellers. Likewise, every effort has been made to group similar appearing species together.


This innovative, interdisciplinary introduction to East Asian politics uses a thematic approach to describe the political development of China, Japan, and Koreas since the mid-nineteenth century and analyze the social, cultural, political, and economic features of each country. Unlike standard comparative politics texts which often lack a unifying theme and employ Western conventions of the 'state', "Political Systems of East Asia" avoids these limitations and identifies a common thread running through the histories of China, Korea, and Japan. This common thread is Confucianism, which has shaped East Asian perspectives of the universe and how it operates. The text describes and explains the ways in which each country has employed this shared tradition, and how it has affected the country's internal dynamics, responses to the outside world, and its own political development.


This article looks at the Kashmir conflict in South Asia, which has been going on since 1947, when India and Pakistan became independent from British colonial rule. After looking at some historical background, the article looks at both the external dimension as well as the internal dimension of the conflict. The external dimension tends to focus on Indo-Pak relations over Kashmir and the internal dimension looks at India's repressive state policies within the state of Kashmir. This article uses Mary Kaldor's "New War" thesis as a theoretical framework to understand the situation and pays special attention to the conflict's very complex and multifaceted nature. The article argues that although the levels of violence have differed from time to time in the region since 1947, today the conflict seems to have less to do with Indo-Pak relations or the external side of things and has more to do with the internal dimension and India's undemocratic ways within Kashmir. Today, Kashmir is one of the most militarised conflict zones in the world. The stationing of the Indian military and paramilitary forces in the region has only exacerbated the situation since it is the security personnel who cause much of the problem. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act gives these security forces extraordinary powers in the region, which they often abuse. The armed forces have no real understanding of the local culture or sympathy for local religious sentiments. Poverty, corruption, administrative failure, police brutality, identity politics and human rights abuses are some of the key features associated with this conflict. Methodologically, a number of interviews were carried out with the local people in the region recently. From the data gathered through the interviews, it is very obvious that the people still feel very oppressed and that the situation is still very volatile, fraught with uncertainty. Finally, after making an assessment of the situation, the article tries to suggest methods of peaceful building and conflict management as the way forward.


Pelvic fracture, cracking or breaking of a portion of the pelvis are extremely common injuries in the side impact collisions of motor vehicles. Due to both its shape and structural architecture, mechanics of the pelvic bone is complicated. There is a lack of knowledge regarding the dynamic behavior of the pelvis and its biomechanical tolerance under impact environment. Hence this study is aimed at the understanding of the mechanical response of the human pelvis with three-dimensional finite element (FE) models, under side impact load, applied through a structure, equivalent to a car door. The door structure was modeled, considering few layers, consisting of foam (Styrodur®, 3035 CS), plastic (UHMWPE), steel, glass and steel, putting them in series. A soft tissue layer (equivalent to fat) was also considered on the greater trochanter location. These FE models (with and without the car door structure) were analyzed with ANSYS-LS-DYNA® dynamic finite element software to compare the effect of the car door padding system for shock absorption. It was observed that with proper combination of shock absorbing material (foam, etc.) and its thickness, the transmission of impact load to the body part (pelvis, etc.) from the outer surface of the car door could be reduced.


Information security in naval environments is becoming increasingly important with the move towards distributed engineering and computing, increased automation, and systems based on non-developmental items (NDI). Naval applications have a broad range of communication timing requirements, from tens of seconds to sub-seconds. For example, the communication between geographically dispersed operational sites may require responses in the seconds or tens of seconds range, while the communication between applications in a shipboard combat system that are responsible for targeting weapons have much more constrained timing requirements. Additionally, there are mission critical applications that have hard real-time requirements in which the reception of data outside of specific timing limits results in system failure, as well as mission critical applications with near real-time requirements that can tolerate a wider boundary of communication response times. The integration of information security services in such an environment invariably conflicts with the timing requirements of these applications. However, security services are arguably needed most in environments with the tightest communication requirements (e.g., while engaging hostile targets). NSWC-DD has begun evaluating the applicability of Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) in naval environments. This paper describes current security architectures of naval platforms, potential future architectures, and desirable features of an IDS that may be integrated into these architectures.


With more than eighty colour and black-and white photographs, this book rivals the presentation of any coffee table book. A comprehensive, easy-to-use guide, Chameleons: Their Care and Breeding shows how to choose a healthy chameleon, house and feed it, diagnose and treat problems, successfully breed and raise popular chameleon species, and much more. Professional chameleon breeder Linda Davison wrote this book with the assistance of the most-respected breeders in the field.


With the rapid growth of Cloud Computing technologies, enterprises are increasingly deploying their services in the Cloud. Dynamically priced cloud resources such as the Amazon EC2 Spot Instance provides an efficient mechanism for cloud service providers to trade resources with potential buyers using an auction mechanism. With the dynamically priced cloud resource markets, cloud consumers can buy resources at a significantly lower cost than statically priced cloud resources such as the on-demand instances in Amazon EC2. While dynamically priced cloud resources enable to maximize datacenter resource utilization and minimize cost for the consumers, unfortunately, such auction mechanisms achieve these benefits only at a cost significant of private information leakage. In an auction-based mechanism, the private information includes information on the demands of the consumers that can lead an attacker to understand the current computing requirements of the consumers and perhaps even allow the inference of the workload patterns of the consumers. In this paper, we propose PADS, a strategy-proof differentially private auction mechanism that allows cloud providers to privately trade resources with cloud consumers in such a way that individual bidding information of the cloud consumers is not exposed by the auction mechanism. We demonstrate that PADS achieves differential privacy and approximate truthfulness guarantees while maintaining good performance in terms of revenue gains and allocation efficiency. We evaluate PADS through extensive simulation experiments that demonstrate that in comparison to traditional auction mechanisms, PADS achieves relatively high revenues for cloud providers while guaranteeing the privacy of the participating consumers.


'Customer experience' is a term that covers a wide range of activities that take place between suppliers and users of products and services. LaSalle and Britton define it as 'a holistic experience which involves a person - as opposed to a customer - as a whole at different levels and in every interaction between such person and a company' (2003). This research considers a key aspect of such an holistic experience: that which is embodied in the product or service under consideration. In the context of increasing mobile technology convergence, the paper considers new approaches that focus on developing the necessary underlying enablers and common interaction flows that are required to deliver a designed experience, taking into account the increasing number of mobile operating systems and service delivery platforms. Ultimately these models move towards allowing users to 'co-create their own unique experiences' (Pralahad and Ramswamy, 2004). The convergence between IT and telecommunications domains presents a unique challenge to product and service designers. Services are increasingly accessible via multiple delivery devices and delivery networks. This trend has been seen most recently in the advent of Internet based services being delivered via mobile phones where 'mobile service delivery and technologies have become the glue between previously secluded 'telecom' and "IT' domains' (Karrberg and Liebenau, 2006). At the same time network operators are trying to tighten their relationship with their customers by offering 'sticky' services aimed at raising the barriers to customer mobility. These two trends lead to a new design challenge: how to design a recognisably consistent and compelling product customer experience that applies over all delivery services, operating systems and networks. Solutions to this problem have to date been either technology led, focussing on integrated delivery platforms, or reliant on rule-based design. Crucial to this analysis is the 'role
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Our goal is to develop and clinically implement new technologies for high-precision and noninvasive intervention upon the nervous system. Every few millimeters of the brain is functionally distinct, and different parts of the brain may have counteracting responses to therapy. To better match our therapies to neuroscience, we develop techniques that allow intervention upon only the right part of the nervous system at the right time, using technologies like focused ultrasound and nanotechnology


Today in both virtualized and non-virtualized systems the entire I/O functionality is based on device drivers. They are central to any system structure; both anecdotal and informed evidence indicates device drivers as a major source of trouble in the classical OS and a source of scaling and performance issues in virtual I/O, due to "trusted intermediary" required for the shared I/O. We propose an architecture which virtualizes the entire I/O subsystem rather than each I/O device, and provides device-independent I/O at higher level of abstraction than the traditional I/O interfaces. In our suggested architecture the system robustness is increased by isolating drivers; efficient and scalable virtualization becomes possible by a complete separation of the I/O and compute function and introducing a protection model that does not require a trusted intermediary for I/O.