It is widely recognized that carbon dioxide (CO2) is an important agent in global warming, and much recent activity has focused on finding ways to reduce, eliminate, or sequester CO2 in order to minimize its impact on the environment. In addition, miscible CO2 floods have become increasingly important as an EOR (enhanced oil recovery) method for recovering residual or bypassed oil, and as an effective mechanism for long-term storage of CO2. Clearly, an understanding of the effects of CO2 on rock-fluid systems, together with an ability to accurately map CO2 fronts during injection, are crucial for improving recovery rates, optimizing well patterns, locating bypassed oil and minimizing the cost of injected CO2. This paper describes a new method to predict and quantify the effects of CO2 injection in porous saline and oil/brine reservoirs using time-lapse seismic data. Unlike many inversion methods, this model-based approach is flexible enough to invert for multiple reservoir properties and their uncertainti...


Objectives: Platinum compounds are commonly associated with significant anemia. Erythropoietin administration has been found effective in correcting anemia in patients with solid tumors receiving chemotherapy. We conducted a randomized, open label study to assess the efficacy of erythropoietin in preventing transfusions and significant anemia (hemoglobin <10 g/dl) in patients with solid tumors receiving platinum-based chemotherapy. Methods: One hundred forty-four patients with hemoglobin <13 g/dl were included in this study (72 in each arm). Patients in the treatment arm received 10,000 U of recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEPO) thrice weekly s.c. during platinum-based chemotherapy, while patients in the control arm received no treatment. Results: All patients were evaluable for efficacy. Transfusions were reduced by the administration of rHuEPO (15.3 vs. 33.3%, p = 0.019), and fewer patients developed significant anemia (16.6 vs. 45.8%, p < 0.0001). Subgroup analysis showed that patients with observed to predicted (O/P) serum erythropoietin levels ≤0.9 and responders to chemotherapy benefited from erythropoietin administration in contrast to patients with O/P >0.9 or non-responders. Conclusions: rHuEPO at a dose of 10,000 U thrice weekly prevents transfusions and development of significant anemia in patients with solid tumors receiving platinum-based chemotherapy.


Background Occlusal appliances are still widely used instruments in the management of orofacial pain in dentistry, yet alone or as a part of multimodal therapy. However, some of those modalities have been lacking thorough randomized assessment, and there is a conflicting evidence available. It is hypothesized that pain symptoms might improve faster and in more tangible way due to combined therapy. Also, to our best knowledge, nimesulide was never examined in this aspect, too. Objective The aim of this study was to compare early effectiveness of routine intervention methods in patients with myofascial pain (MP) after 3 weeks' notice. Three modalities were evaluated: occlusal appliance (OA) with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) therapy (nimesulide), occlusal appliance with dry needling (DN), and occlusal appliance (OA-control group) therapy. Design Randomized controlled clinical trial (RCT) in which ninety patients with MP, who met the inclusion criteria, were randomly assigned to one of the three treatment groups. Sealed, opaque envelopes were used. Methods For evaluation, each patient completed a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and Sleep and Pain Activity Questionnaire (SPAQ) twice, first at the beginning of the study and again after 3 weeks (0–3). Results Posttreatment test comparison between the control group and both treated groups reveal significant differences between the control and the NSAID + occlusal appliance groups. There were also differences reported between the control and the DN + occlusal appliance groups, but these differences were, however, not statistically significant. Conclusions Occlusal appliances in conjunction with NSAID showed better orofacial pain relief after 3 weeks of therapy, compared to the use of occlusal appliances alone or in conjunction with dry needling. Additionally, differences between pain perception and quality of life between OA and DN + OA groups were not found to be statistically significant.


Robust natural language interpretation requires strong semantic domain models, "fail-soft" recovery heuristics, and very flexible control structures. Although single-strategy parsers have met with a measure of success, a multi-strategy approach is shown to provide a much higher degree of flexibility, redundancy, and ability to bring task-specific domain knowledge (in addition to general linguistic knowledge) to bear on both grammatical and ungrammatical input. A parsing algorithm is presented that integrates several different parsing strategies, with case-frame instantiation dominating. Each of these parsing strategies exploits different types of knowledge; and their combination provides a strong framework in which to process conjunctions, fragmentary input, and ungrammatical structures, as well as less exotic, grammatically correct input. Several specific heuristics for handling ungrammatical input are presented within this multi-strategy framework.


The future surrounding our world is unknown and difficult to foresee. There is a desire to communicate the innumerable amount of data produced from advanced scientific research about our present and predicted world into mediums that are comprehensible to the general audience.

This research explores the opportunity for data to be translated into an easily interpretable visual and physical medium. By using a procedural system, this allows for an undetermined number of outcomes to be explored efficiently, including those which are initially unknown or cannot be perceived. This is in contrast to traditional 3D modelling software, where the designer must fully control and manipulate the finer details of a model.

In this research portfolio, a Research Through Design methodology is utilised to enable practical experimentation based on a design criterion, incrementally developed alongside the progression of the experiments. Through screen-based visualisations, the possible products of a procedural system are presented as a morphological timeline¹. The designer's implementation and influence of this procedural system guide the direction of this timeline through parameter manipulation, without having a precise vision for the output.

Through extracting models at desired points along the morphological timeline and applying a voxel-based 3D printing approach on the Stratasys J 750 to encapsulate them in resin (VeroClear), the models are introduced into the tangible dimension. This translates the screen-based model into a physical fossil to communicate information through a tangible medium. These fossils intend to elicit discussion around production of artefacts that are not yet known or cannot be perceived. Acting as a viewpoint, the procedural system may visually anticipate these products before privileging the physical. Hence the 3D printed object is provided as a new spatial understanding to communicate information.

¹ Morphological Timeline: A frame based timeline within the software Houdini that visually simulates the possible variations in form.


In this hypothesis paper we argue that a simple Hebbian learning mechanism, along with reinforcement through well-known neuromodulatory systems, can form the basis of a computational theory of learning that can support both low level learning and the development of human level intelligence. We show that when driven by example behavior Hebbian learning rules can support procedural, episodic and semantic memory. For humans, we hypothesize that the abilities to manipulate an off-line world model and to abstract using language allow for the generation and communication of rich example behavior, respectively, and thereby support human learning and a gradual increase of collective human intelligence across generations. We also compare the properties of Example Based Hebbian (EBH) learning with those of backpropagation-based learning and argue that the EBH mechanism is more consistent with observed characteristics of human learning.


This study investigates the effectiveness of imitation and self-imitation techniques for the acquisition of L2 prosody. For this purpose 19 elementary Chinese learners of L2 Italian were involved in individual sessions of prosody training, devoted to the exercise of the Italian melodic pattern of 2 assertions, 2 orders and 2 requests. The items used for the self-imitation training were obtained by transferring suprasegmental features from 2 native speakers' voices, used as control group, to the L2 ones. The influence of both techniques was assessed by comparing pre- and post-training performances through a perceptual test, in which 46 native Italian listeners evaluated the accentedness and the communicative function of the L2 productions. Both teaching strategies promoted a general improvement in learners' performances, but results vary depending on the communicative function considered.


Experimental simulation to a line source has been realized at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) Fusion Neutronics Source within the U.S. Department of Energy/JAERI collaborative program on fusion neutronics. This simulation, achieved by cyclic movement of an annular Li 2 O test assembly relative to a stationary point source, was a step forward in better simulation of the energy and angular distributions of the incident neutron source found in tokamak plasmas. Thus, compared with other experiments previously performed with a stationary point source, the uncertainties (that are system dependent) in calculating important neutronics parameters, such as tritium production rate (TPR), will be more representative of those anticipated in a fusion reactor. The rectangular annular assembly used is 1.3 x 1.3 m and 2. 04 m long with a square cavity of 0.42 x 0.42 m cross section where the simulated line source (2 m long) is located axially at the center. To characterize the incident neutron source, flux mapping with foil activation measurements was performed in the axial direction (Z=-100 cm to Z = 100 cm) at the front surface of the assembly in the cavity with the annular blanket in place, and comparison was made to the bare line-source case (without annular blanket). Three phases of experiments were performed. In Phase-IIIA, a 1.5-cm-thick stainless steel first wall was used. An additional 2.45-cm-thick carbon layer was added in Phase-IIIB, and a large opening (42.55 x 37.6 cm) was made at one side at the center of the annular assembly in Phase-IIIC. Calculations were performed independently by the United States and JAERI for many measured items that included TPR from 6 Li(T 6 ), 7 Li(T 7 ), in-system spectrum measurements, and various activation measurements. In this paper, the calculated-to-measured values for the aforementioned measured items are given, as obtained separately by the United States and JAERI. In addition, the mean value of the prediction uncertainties of the local and line-integrated TPR and the associated standard deviations are given based on the calculational and experimental results obtained in all the experiments.


PB The Annals of Family Medicine encourages readers to develop a learning community of those seeking to improve health care and health through enhanced primary care. You can participate by conducting a RADICAL journal club and sharing the results of your discussions in the Annals online discussion for the featured articles. RADICAL is an acronym for Read, Ask, Discuss, Inquire, Collaborate, Act, and Learn. The word radical also indicates the need to engage diverse participants in thinking critically about important issues affecting primary care and then acting on those discussions.1


Despite increasing awareness on the importance of rivers in maintaining human well- being, there has not been a comprehensive inventory of watershed-scale ecosystem services across the USA. Here, we analyze and summarize the scientific literature within the context of the supply and demand for ecosystem services across 18 major watersheds of the continental US. We reviewed 305 articles and found that 68 provided infor- mation on both the biophysical delivery (supply) and the sociocultural and economic values (demand) of ecosystem services. Maintaining populations and habitats, water fil - tration, and nutrient sequestration/storage were the most extensively assessed services, while educational and aesthetic values were the least frequently studied. Biophysical assessments were the most frequent valuation followed by economic approaches. The majority of the studies were conducted in the eastern US, while the region least studied was the southwest. In addition to identifying the knowledge gaps in watershed-scale ecosystem services, we highlight the need for a common framework for assessing eco- system services that includes both the assessment of the supply and demand of ecosystem services provided by US watersheds. There is an urgent need to incorporate the role that cultural services and values can play in water resources management and planning in the USA.


The host-cell restriction factor SERINC5 potently suppresses the infectivity of HIV, type 1 (HIV-1) particles, and is counteracted by the viral pathogenesis factor Nef. However, the molecular mechanism by which SERINC5 restricts HIV-1 particle infectivity is still unclear. Because SERINC proteins have been suggested to facilitate the incorporation of serine during the biosynthesis of membrane lipids and because lipid composition of HIV particles is a major determinant of the infectious potential of the particles, we tested whether SERINC5-mediated restriction of HIV particle infectivity involves alterations of membrane lipid composition. We produced and purified HIV-1 particles from SERINC5293T cells with very low endogenous SERINC5 levels under conditions in which ectopically expressed SERINC5 restricts HIV-1 infectivity and is antagonized by Nef and analyzed both virions and producer cells with quantitative lipid MS. SERINC5 restriction and Nef antagonism were not associated with significant alterations in steady-state lipid composition of producer cells and HIV particles. Sphingosine metabolism kinetics were also unaltered by SERINC5 expression. Moreover, the levels of phosphatidylserine on the surface of HIV-1 particles, which may trigger uptake into non-productive internalization pathways in target cells, did not change upon expression of SERINC5 or Nef. Finally, saturating the phosphatidylserine-binding sites on HIV target cells did not affect SERINC5 restriction or Nef antagonism. These results demonstrate that the restriction of HIV-1 particle infectivity by SERINC5 does not depend on alterations in lipid composition and organization of HIV-1 particles and suggest that channeling serine into lipid biosynthesis may not be a cardinal cellular function of SERINC5.


Peppermint (Mentha x piperita L.) oil is one of the most popular and widely used essential oils, mostly because of its main components menthol and menthone. Peppermint oil is used for flavouring pharmaceuticals and oral preparations. Corn mint is the richest source of natural menthol. Carvonescented mint plants, such as spearmint (M. spicata), are rich in carvone and are widely used as spices, and they are cultivated in several countries. Studies were made into the yield and essential oil content of several mint species and the original. The general aim of the work was to examine the optimal conditions for cultivating mint in Northern Finland. The specific aims of the study were (first) to investigate the differences in the oil content for several mint species and (secondly) to compare the effect of various factors such as plant spacing (10, 20 and 30 × 50 cm), liming (0, 4, 8, 12 and 16 tons ha-1), propagation methods (micropropagated and conventionally propagated plants) and harvest date (once at the end of August in comparison with first cut at the beginning of August and second cut in mid September) on the cultivation success, quality and quantity of the plants. The constituents of the essential oil were analysed from leaf samples using GC-MS. Among the peppermints of different origins studied, peppermint of USA and Egypt origin ('Black Mitcham') contain the highest menthol and optimum oil yield. Corn mint and Sachalin mints both had high menthol content. Due to several reasons, such as no significant differences between the different densities and oil composition, markedly higher amount of weeds at 30 × 50 cm than at 10 × 50 and 20 × 50 cm spacing and the high seedling costs and the danger of fungi and disease at a 10 × 50 cm spacing, a plant optimum of 20 × 50 cm spacing is recommended for Northern Ostrobothnia. If the pH value is lower than 6, or levels of Mg and Ca are low, liming at a rate of 4–8 t ha-1 for sandy soils in Finland is recommended in order to achieve higher fresh and oil yields. In the first year, there were no differences in the dry leaf yield of micropropagated and conventionally propagated plants, but the menthol content was significantly higher in conventionally than in micropropagated plants. In the second year, only the dry leaf yield of micropropagated plants was higher than that of their conventionally propagated counterparts. Cutting peppermint only once during full bloom (the end of August) gives the maximum oil yield of good quality. In conclusion, it is possible to achieve as high as or even higher oil quality and dry yield in North Ostrobothnia than it is in central Europe or south Asia. However, this requires observing certain cultivation factors such as having the right type of mint, soil pH, planting density, harvesting time and propagation method In addition, mints must be cultivated in the same place for only two and a maximum for three years.


The emotion work of management has long been a focus in organisation studies – even early orthodox writers such as Barnard (1938) and Fayol (1949) speak of the 'esprit de corps', though they are also keen to recommend that 'feelings' remain outwith the process of management. This, however, is definitely not the case in contemporary descriptions of the work of managers. In recent accounts the focus on management and emotion has become especially dominant as the call continues for the development of more 'passionate' managers and involving and empowering forms of management (Hatcher, 2003; Mann, 1997). With the acceptance of 'new' managers as leaders, facilitators and network co-ordinators, the effective management of emotion (their own and employees) is now seen as 'an important tool in every manager's kit' (Ashkanasay and Daus, 2002: 82). As conflicting reports emerge of managerial work as both intensifying and, yet at the same time, de-bureaucratising, it is little wonder that confusion has arisen over how best to conceptualise the managerial labour process and, most especially, its emotional elements. As a result we now have a vast array of research studies that draw on terms such as emotional intelligence, emotion work and emotional labour as conceptual frameworks. These accounts offer some interesting description of the life of managers without ever really considering the analytical ability of each frame to capture the reality of the emotion work that managers do (Caruso and Salovey, 2004; George, 2000; Hort et al, 2001; Huy, 2002; Mann, 1997; Turnbull, 1999). Indeed, some terms such as emotional intelligence and emotional labour have been stretched beyond recognition, bringing little sense or meaning to debates concerning the changing nature of managerial work. This paper attempts to address the conceptual confusion surrounding the emotion work of managers by going back to basics and considering what is it that managers do as part of their day-to-day labour process. Utilising labour process theory and recreating Hales' (1986, 2002) list of nine managerial functions into four core areas - leader, negotiator, communicator and controller - we examine the emotion work that managers do. Drawing on qualitative data gathered from a cross-section of middle-managers, in a number of different sectors, we offer a revised conceptual landscape of managerial work by clearly defining what is (and is not) emotional intelligence, emotional labour and emotion work within the managerial labour process.


Purpose: This piece of research quantifies and analyses empirically the given economic differences among public service television in Spain according to the adopted management model (classic or outsourced). Design/methodology/approach: In so doing, an average contrast of different economic variables studied in the literature is conducted (audience share, total assets, public subsidies, cost of personnel, suppliers spending and profit after taxes). In addition, these variables are related so as to calculate productivity obtained by each two groups of television operators. This analysis is conducted for period 2010-2013, featured by a crisis context in the Spanish economy. Findings: Management model adopted by each regional broadcaster impacts on different economic variables as obtained share, total assets, public subsidies, cost of personnel, suppliers spending or profit after taxes. Moreover, those public corporations adopting an outsourced management model present better productivity values. Research limitations/implications: Only one country has been analyzed for a 4 years period. Practical implications: Regional public service broadcasters with an outsourced model present less economic losses and require less public subsidies by their corresponding regional governments. Social implications: Outsourcing part of the value chain can be useful so as to guarantee sustainability of regional public service television. Originality/value: It has been proven empirically that the management model of a regional public service television impacts its economic results.


Abstract Deuterium ion implantation experiments into Li2TiO3 and TiO2 were performed with various ion fluences to elucidate the role of lithium on deuterium retention behavior in Li2TiO3. The experimental results showed that there were four deuterium trapping states in TiO2; two of them were interacted near the surface and the others were deuterium trapped by E'-center and bound to oxygen with forming TiO-D bond in bulk. For Li2TiO3, there were five trapping states; four of them were the same as those in TiO2 and the other was that bound to oxygen with forming LiO-D bond. The implanted deuterium was preferentially trapped by E'-center with forming hydroxide. LiOD phase was formed as increasing ion fluence. The retention of deuterium trapped by E'-center for Li2TiO3 was less than that for TiO2, indicating that the migration of lithium via irradiation defects during implantation refrains the deuterium retention in Li2TiO3.


Abstract The effect of waxes on the injection molding of carbonyl iron powder with low-density polyethylene (LDPE) have been examined. Four waxes, paraffin wax (PW), polyethylene wax (PEW), carnauba wax (CW) and acrawax (AW) were selected and compared. Experimental results indicated that the LDPErich phase was found to be separated from the wax-rich phase in the binder mixture containing AW, CW or PW. Polar AW or CW showed stronger interactions or adsorptions with iron powder than other nonpolar waxes. AW/LDPE and CW/LDPE mixtures appeared to exhibit higher viscosity, greater pseudoplasticity and lower flow activation energy than PW/LDPE and PEW/LDPE mixtures. Tensile bar specimens of all binder mixtures could be injection molded at an injection temperature of around 170–190 °C. and a pressure of around 5–6 MPa. Except for the PEW/LDPE mixture the parts derived from the other three binder mixtures showed good surface appearance following debinding and sintering. Specimens based on the PW/LDPE mixture exhibited the highest tensile strength in the resulting sintered parts, followed those based on CW/LDPE, AW/LDPE, and PEW/LDPE mixtures. The difference in tensile strength of each part results from different flow properties of each wax/LDPE mixture


Climate change increasingly affects the livelihoods of people, and poor people experience especially negative impacts given their lack of capacity to prepare for and cope with the effects of a changing climate. Among poor people, women and men may experience these impacts differently. This review presents and tests two hypotheses on the gender-differentiated impacts of climate change on women and men in developing countries. The first hypothesis is that climate-related events affect men's and women's well-being and assets differently. The second hypothesis is that climate-related shocks affect women more negatively than men. With limited evidence from developing countries, this review shows that climate change affects women's and men's assets and well-being differently in six impact areas: (i) impacts related to agricultural production, (ii) food security, (iii) health, (iv) water and energy resources, (v) climate-induced migration and conflict, and (vi) climaterelated natural disasters. In the literature reviewed, women seem to suffer more negative impacts of climate change in terms of their assets and well-being because of social and cultural norms regarding gender roles and their lack of access to and control of assets, although there are some exceptions. Empirical evidence in this area is limited, patchy, varied, and highly contextual in nature, which makes it difficult to draw strong conclusions. Findings here are indicative of the complexities in the field of gender and climate change, and signal that multidisciplinary research is needed to further enhance the knowledge base on the differential climate impacts on women's and men's assets and well-being in agricultural and rural settings, and to understand what mechanisms work best to help women and men in poor communities become more climate resilient.


Abstract TouchNoise is a multitouch interface for creative work with noise. It allows direct and indirect manipulation of sound particles, which are added together in a panning and frequency space. Based on the mechanics of a multiagent system and flocking algorithms, novel possibilities for the creation and modulation of noise and harmonic spectra are supported. TouchNoise underwent extensive revisions and extensions throughout a three-year, iterative development process. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the final TouchNoise concept and its approach to mapping and interaction, from which a variety of unique sonic capabilities derives. This article is based on our experiences with a fully functional prototype implementation, and focuses on the systematic exploration and discussion of these new sonic capabilities and corresponding playing techniques, which differ strongly from traditional synthesis interfaces.


Ecosystem services (ES) are critical to human well-being, especially in developing countries. Improved understanding of the status of ES is required to help people improve their quality of life. The status of ES is largely unknown in many regions of Nepal. This study was carried out in one of Nepal's biodiversity hotspots, the Panchase Mountain Ecological region (PMER), to identify, prioritize and map the major ES in the region. Primary data for the study were collected through key informant interviews, focus group discussions, a transect walk, and field observations. Similarly, secondary data were obtained from published and unpublished reports and satellite images of the study area. The data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Thirty-seven ES were identified from the study landscape. Among them, nine were provisioning services, thirteen regulating services, nine cultural services, and six supporting services. Interestingly, the prioritization of ES among stakeholders differed on the basis of their background, particular features of their landscape, professional engagement, and individual interests. For instance, forest users prioritized provisioning services for their daily needs whereas forest managers prioritized regulating and cultural services for overall ecosystem management and aesthetic values. Mapping of the ES from the landscape for 1995 and 2015 identified that forest area and associated ES have likely increased, especially in the upland regions, while agricultural land and their associated ES have decreased. The study can be used as a reference by planners and policy makers in managing ES in the PMER to increase synergies and reduce trade-off among various services.


We introduce a method for hydro turbine biological performance assessment (BioPA) to bridge the gap between field and laboratory studies on fish injury and turbine engineering design. Using this method, a suite of biological performance indicators is computed based on simulated data from a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of a proposed hydro turbine design. Each performance indicator is a measure of the probability of exposure to a certain dose of an injury mechanism. If the relationship between the dose of an injury mechanism (stressor) and frequency of injury (dose–response) is known from laboratory or field studies, the likelihood of fish injury for a turbine design can be computed from the performance indicator. By comparing the values of the indicators from various turbine designs, engineers and biologists can identify the more-promising designs and operating conditions to minimize hydraulic conditions hazardous to passing fish. In this paper, the BioPA method is applied to estimate barotrauma induced mortal injury rates for Chinook salmon exposed to rapid pressure changes in Kaplan-type hydro turbines. Following the description of the general method, application of the BioPA to estimate the probability of mortal injury from exposure to rapid decompression is illustrated using a Kaplan hydro turbine at the John Day Dam on the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest region of the USA. The estimated rates of mortal injury increased from 0.3% to 1.7% as discharge through the turbine increased from 334 to 564 m3/s for fish assumed to be acclimated to a depth of 5 m. The majority of pressure nadirs occurred immediately below the runner blades, with the lowest values in the gap at the blade tips and just below the leading edge of the blades. Such information can help engineers focus on problem areas when designing new turbine runners to be more fish-friendly than existing units.


Firstly, this paper answered one interesting question: what is orthogonal in ICA? We discussed the non-orthogonality of ICA transformation and claimed that the independent components (ICs) by the FastICA algorithm are orthogonal. Based on this orthogonality, an orthogonal ICA representation (OICA) of images was proposed. Experiments on ORL database, Yale database and CMU database with OICA were performed. More work is needed to discover any advantage of OICA.


Bilateral temporomandibular joint (TMJ) dislocation is very rare in children with only three cases previously reported in the literature. We report a case of a 26-month-old female child who presented to the emergency department of a tertiary care hospital with complaints of inability to close her mouth and drooling of saliva for the last two hours. Clinical examination and X-ray of the TMJ revealed bilateral TMJ dislocation. Bilateral TMJ reduction was achieved with the Hippocratic method after giving analgesia and procedural sedation. The child was able to close her mouth post-reduction, and was discharged with post-TMJ reduction instructions given to the mother and with maxillofacial clinic follow up. Our report is the first case of a child presenting to the emergency department with bilateral TMJ dislocation.


The primary responsibility of a student is to study if he is to attain the high standard in his course. The University of Manchester (2001) released a student's study reading plan which requested them to engage in one study activity or the other everyday including weekends. One effective way to exhibit and demonstrate such intensive study reading exercise is through the practice of self-communication. Using Ruesch and Bateson's (2016) seven traits of intrapersonal communication, this study investigated students' display of selfcommunication traits before and during examination. The Self Communication Questionnaire was administered on four hundred randomly selected students from four polytechnics. Results showed lower practice of, an insignificant correlation of, and a significant difference between, self communication displays associated with study reading before and during examination (r=.46; t(399)=-6.851; p<.05) . The study concluded that students delayed study reading till examinations were imminent and recommended that students' study reading practices must be regulated and monitored at institutional level to assist students in effective time management in an environment full of coand extracurricular distractions.


Footprint 19 focuses on the more recent roles of architecture in the contemporary spaces of conflict. Departing from a spatial understanding of geopolitical, climatological and economical conflicts, the various contributions highlight the large scale and phenomenal transitions in the physical world and in society by extrapolating, through examples, the abundance of relations that can be traced between conflict, territory and architecture. Conflict areas often prove to be fertile grounds for innovation and for the emergence of new spatial forms. The issue reports on the state of perpetual global unrest in architecture through a series of articles and case studies that highlight the consequences of conflicts in the places and spaces that we inhabit. In the introduction, these are discussed as an interlinked global reality rather than as isolated incidents. In doing so, the contemporary spaces of conflict are positioned in the context of emerging global trends, conditions, and discourses in the attempt to address their indicative symptoms while reflecting on their underlying causes.


The design of biofuel processes is realised using a computer aided process system design methodology that aim at defining the type and the size of the technologies, the way they are interconnected and the way they are operated for a given socio-economical and environmental context. The method is using thermo-economic and environomic models of sub-systems that are structured in an equipment data base. In order to build the process, the equipment are assembled to build a flowsheet that represents the conversion of the raw materials (biomass) into products and by-products. Considering the different technological options to be used to build the flowsheet, a superstructure approach is used to systematically include all the possible combinations into a single process model from which the best flowsheet will be extracted using optimization techniques. In the process, energy is the driving force of the conversion. Therefore in the process design method, it is important to consider not only the mass flow interactions in the flowsheet but also the heat recovery and the combined heat and power production. The process integration is used to analyse, model and optimize the possible interactions between the equipments in the flowsheet. In the biofuel production processes, optimizing the process integration is of a major importance especially in thermo-chemical processes since the resource is also the energy source. Therefore increasing the efficiency of the energy conversion will at the sime time optimize the conversion efficiency of the raw material, maximizing the fuel production per unit of biomass. Several aspects of the process integration in biofuel production will be discussed and illustrated based on examples of synthetic natural gas and liquid fuels production from lignocellulosic biomass using thermo-chemical processes.


Background A parasitological survey of Schistosoma haematobium and S. intercalatum infection among primary schoolchildren in capital area of Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe (DRSTP) was undertaken. Methods Subjects with positive infection were confirmed by the detection of S. haematobium ova in the urine or S. intercalatum ova in the stool by using centrifugation concentration or merthiolate-iodine-formalin concentration method. Totally, 252 urine and stool samples, respectively, were obtained from apparently healthy schoolchildren, of which 121 from boys (9.8 ± 1.4 yr) and 131 from girls (9.7 ± 1.3 yr). Results None of participating schoolchildren were found having S. haematobium ova in the urinary specimen. While, among 4 primary schools studied, only schoolchildren from Saint Marçal were detected with S. intercalatum ova in the fecal specimen, making the overall prevalence of S. intercalatum infection among schoolchildren was 2.4% (6/252) and girls had insignificantly higher prevalence (3.1%, 4/131) than that (1.7%, 2/121) in boys (χ2 = 0.5, P = 0.5). Conclusion Water control and sanitation as well as snails eliminated by molluscicides are urgently needed to reduce S. intercalatum infection in DRSTP inhabitants.


Indigenous peoples in Chile have suffered dispossession and discrimination by colonizing forces, like many Indigenous peoples globally, and did not have a fair say in the development of successive constitutions establishing new political systems on their land. In the October 2020 referendum, Chileans voted to create a new constitution. This presents an opportunity for Indigenous peoples to create a fairer power relationship with the Chilean state. For the first time, the constitutional convention includes a specific quota for 17 Indigenous representatives. This will enable Indigenous peoples to contribute to the constitutional design process. This report presents comparative examples of self-determinative institutional mechanisms that empower Indigenous peoples to be heard by and influence decision making in state institutions. The focus of the paper is on options for institutional structures that enable Indigenous representation, participation and consultation with respect to Indigenous peoples' own affairs.


This paper examines the incentives for integration when the market for consumer durables (hardware) is oligopolistic and the market for complementary services (software) is monopolistically competitive. We find that the equilibrium industry structure will depend on the magnitude of the fixed costs of software development. If the software development costs are relatively large, the equilibrium industry structure is unintegrated, that is, neither hardware firm integrates; if the software development costs are relatively small, the equilibrium industry structure is integrated, that is, both hardware firms integrate. Under the integrated industry structure, hardware profits are lower, less varieties are provided, and hardware prices are lower than under the unintegrated industry structure. The game has a prisoners' dilemma structure when the software development costs are relatively small because of a foreclosure effect. Strategically increasing the number of software varieties provides an avenue for an integrated hardware firm to increase its market share and profits by reducing the number of software varieties available for an unintegrated rival technology. Although consumer surplus is higher under an integrated industry structure, the total surplus associated with the unintegrated industry structure exceeds that of the integrated industry structure.


NON-LINEAR DIGITAL CONTROL OF A MCKIBBEN MUSCLE SYSTEM by Surinkumar Patel McKibben muscles are pneumatic actuators that have potential application in the rehabilitation of persons with physical impairments. These actuators have been known to exhibit similarities in human musculoskeletal systems. In order to better understand and improve the closed — loop control of these pneumatic muscles, a physical joint model was constructed with an agonist and an antagonist muscle operating under non-linear control. With the use of LabVIEW software, compliant McKibben air muscles and Flock-of-Birds sensor, the author was able to implement and compare a standard bang-bang controller and experimental non-linear digital Proportional (P) controller. The feedback mechanism is based on the input given from Flock-of-Birds sensor to achieve a desired position. The results show the expected instability of the bang-bang controller, and confirm the superiority of the non-linear proportional method in achieving rapid and smooth movement of the joint from one target position to the next. NON-LINEAR DIGITAL CONTROL OF A MCKIBBEN MUSCLE SYSTEM


We study the problem of evaluating xpath queries over xml data that is stored in an rdbms via schema-based shredding. The interaction between recursion in xpath queries and recursion in dtds makes it challenging to answer xpath queries using rdbms. We present a new approach to translating xpath queries into sql queries based on a notion of regular xpath expressions and a simple least fixpoint (lfp) operator. Regular xpath expressions are a mild extension of xpath, and the lfp operator takes a single input relation and is already supported by most commercial rdbms. We show that regular xpath expressions are capable of capturing both dtd recursion and xpath queries in a uniform framework. Furthermore, they can be translated into an equivalent sequence of sql queries with the lfp operator. We present algorithms for rewriting xpath queries into regular xpath expressions and for translating regular xpath expressions to sql queries. We also provide optimization techniques for minimizing the use of the lfp operator. The novelty of our approach consists in its capability to answer a large class of xpath queries by means of only low-end rdbms features already available in most rdbms, as well as its flexibility to accommodate existing relational query optimization techniques. Our experimental results verify the effectiveness of our techniques.


We consider a network design and expansion problem, where we need to make a capacity investment now, such that uncertain future demand can be satisfied as closely as possible. To use a robust optimization approach, we need to construct an uncertainty set that contains all scenarios that we believe to be possible. In this paper we discuss how to actually construct two common models of uncertainty set, discrete and polyhedral uncertainty, using data-driven techniques on real-world data. We employ clustering to generate a discrete uncertainty set, and supervised learning to generate a polyhedral uncertainty set. We then compare the performance of the resulting robust solutions for these two types of models on real-world data. Our results indicate that polyhedral models, while being popular in the recent literature, are less effective than discrete models both in terms of computational burden and solution quality regardless of the performance measure considered (worst-case, conditional value-at-risk, average).


OBJECTIVE
(i) to describe the general practitioner utilisation of health assessments, management plans, coordination of team care arrangements and medication review item numbers within 6 months of an aged care eligibility assessment for home care packages (HCP) and (ii) investigate the impact of health assessments on the risk of mortality and entry into permanent residential aged care (PRAC) of individuals accessing HCP.

DESIGN AND SETTING
retrospective cohort study utilising data from the Registry of Senior Australians (ROSA) was conducted.

SUBJECTS
75,172 individuals aged ≥75 years who received HCP between 2011 and 2015.

OUTCOME MEASURE
for objective 1: the use of comprehensive assessments (Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) items 705 or 707), management plans (MBS 721), coordination of team care arrangements (MBS 723), and medication reviews (MBS 900). For objective 2: time to death and entry into PRAC.

RESULTS
of the 75,172 individuals, 28.2% (95% confidence interval (CI): 27.8-8.5%) had comprehensive assessments, 36.7% (95% CI: 36.3-37.0%) had management plans, 33.0% (95% CI: 32.7-33.3%) received coordination of team care arrangements and 5.4% (95% CI: 5.2-5.5%) had medication reviews. Individuals with a comprehensive assessment had a 5% lower risk of mortality (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR), 95% CI = 0.95, 0.92-0.98) but 5% higher risk of transition to PRAC (adjusted subdistribution HRs, 95% CI = 1.05, 1.02-1.08) compared to those who did not have these services.

CONCLUSION
the utilisation of health assessments was associated with a lower risk of mortality. There is an opportunity for increased use of item numbers in frailer individuals.


This article outlines our point of view regarding the applicability, state-of-the-art, and potential of quantum computing for problems in finance. We provide an introduction to quantum computing as well as a survey on problem classes in finance that are computationally challenging classically and for which quantum computing algorithms are promising. In the main part, we describe in detail quantum algorithms for specific applications arising in financial services, such as those involving simulation, optimization, and machine learning problems. In addition, we include demonstrations of quantum algorithms on IBM Quantum back-ends and discuss the potential benefits of quantum algorithms for problems in financial services. We conclude with a summary of technical challenges and future prospects.


The growth of the internet has been spectacular. There are now more 1.5 billion internet users across the globe, about one quarter of the worlds population. This is certainly a new phenomenon that is of enormous significance for the economic, political and social life of contemporary societies. However, much popular and academic writing about the internet takes a technologically deterministic view, assuming that the internets potential will be realised in essentially transformative ways. This was especially true in the euphoric moment of the mid-1990s, when many commentators wrote about the internet with awe and wonderment. While this moment may be over, its underlying technocentrism the belief that technology determines outcomes lingers on, and with it, a failure to understand the internet in its social, economic and political context. Misunderstanding the Internet is a short introduction, encompassing the history, sociology, politics and economics of the internet and its impact on society. The book has a simple three part structure: Part 1 looks at the history of the internet, and offers an overview of the internets place in society Part 2 focuses on the control and economics of the internet Part 3 examines the internets political and cultural influence Misunderstanding the Internet is a polemical, sociologically and historically informed textbook that aims to challenge both popular myths and existing academic orthodoxies around the internet.


Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) protein is proposed to act at the mitochondrial membrane to control metabolism. Ramanathan and Schreiber present a mechanism of action for mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin), a protein kinase that acts in protein complexes to regulate metabolism. A transcriptionally mediated mechanism for control of mitochondrial function has been proposed, but Ramanathan and Schreiber find evidence for a rapid direct effect of mTOR at the membrane of the mitochondria. In human Jurkat cells (a leukemic T cell line), a global screen of intracellular metabolites showed that treatment of cells with rapamycin (to inhibit mTOR function) caused changes indicative of decreased mitochondrial respiration and increased aerobic glycolysis. The metabolic profile of such rapamycin-treated cells was similar to that of cells treated with a pharmacological inhibitor of VDAC2, a mitochondrial membrane protein that mediates substrate transport into mitochondria. Immunoprecipitation experiments showed that mTOR was associated with VDAC1 and with Bcl-xl, a regulatory protein that functions in control of apoptosis and of substrate permeability in the mitochondria. Bcl-xl was phosphorylated in vitro by mTOR, indicating that it might be regulated by mTOR. Treatment of cells with rapamycin caused decreased association of Bcl-xl with mTOR, and a pharmacological inhibitor of the interaction of Bcl-xl (and that of other Bcl proteins) with other proteins also inhibited mitochondrial respiration, whereas overexpression of Bcl-xl made cells less sensitive to mitochondrial effects of rapamycin. The authors, therefore, propose that the mTOR complex may function as a switch at the mitochondrial membrane that regulates the balance between glycolytic and respiratory metabolism. They also note that rapamycin is an effective treatment for certain cancers and better understanding of its effects may help identify susceptible cancers and allow combined therapies that exploit the increased dependence of rapamycin-treated cells on aerobic glycolysis. A. Ramanathan, S. L. Schreiber, Direct control of mitochondrial function by mTOR. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 106, 22229–22232 (2009). [Abstract] [Full Text]


When range cameras are used for analyzing irregular material on a conveyor belt there will be complications like missing segments caused by occlusion. Also, a number of range discontinuities will be present. In a frame work towards stochastic geometry, conditions are found for the cases when range discontinuities take place. The test objects in this paper are pellets for the steel industry. An illuminating laser plane will give range discontinuities at the edges of each individual object. These discontinuities are used to detect and measure the chord created by the intersection of the laser plane and the object. From the measured chords we derive the average diameter and its variance. An improved method is to use a pair of parallel illuminating light planes to extract two chords. The estimation error for this method is not larger than the natural shape fluctuations (the difference in diameter) for the pellets. The laser- camera optronics is sensitive enough both for material on a conveyor belt and free falling material leaving the conveyor.


In this paper we are focusing on analysis of spectral power distribution (SPD) LED's lamp impact on botanical light pollution, described in relation to full moon light. We introduced new index RMPI which is called Photosynthesis Index in Relation to Moon. We found that in the case when lighting are realized by using LED luminaires instead of high pressure sodium (HPS) or metal halide (MH) lamps, light influence on plant vegetation process amplifies. Additionally our research shows that lamp's CCT is not a sufficient indicator of botanical light pollution and only SPD should be used for this purpose. Full Text: PDF ReferencesP. Tabaka, I. Fryc, Landscape Lighting as a Source of Light Pollution - the Effect of the Seasons on this Phenomenon, Lighting Conference of the Visegrad Countries, Lumen V4, 10.1109/LUMENV.2016.7745541 (IEEE 2016) CrossRef I. Fryc, F. Bisegna, P. Tabaka, Lighting on Recreation Grounds as a Source of Sky Glow - the Influence of Luminaire Type on this Phenomenon, Environment and Electrical Engineering and 2017 IEEE Industrial and Commercial Power Systems Europe (EEEIC / I&CPS Europe) 2017 IEEE International Conference, doi: 10.1109/EEEIC.2017.7977724, (IEEE 2017) CrossRef I. Fryc, P. Tabaka, Zanieczyszczenie Nocnego Nieboskłonu Światłem Emitowanym Przez Oprawy Oświetlenia Zewnętrznego, Przeglad Elektrotechniczny R. 93, No 6, doi: 10.15199/48.2017.06.1, (2017) CrossRef H.E. Schwarz, et al, Light Pollution: The Global View, ISBN 978-94-017-0125-9, (2003) DirectLink M. Aube, J. Roby, M. Kocifaj, Evaluating Potential Spectral Impacts of Various Artificial Lights on Melatonin Suppression, Photosynthesis, and Star Visibility, PLoS One CrossRef M. S. Sankhla, K. Sharma, R. Kumar, Impacts on Human & Environment of Night Time Galore International Journal of Applied Sciences and Humanities, Issue: 2; Vol. 3 (2019) CrossRef M. Tanaka, T. Horiuchi, S. Tominaga, Color Control of a Lighting System Using RGBW LEDs, Color Imaging XVI: Displaying, Processing, Hardcopy, and Applications, 78660W) CrossRef M. Mottus et al, Photosynthetically Active Radiation: Measurement and Modeling, Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology (2011) CrossRef J. Li, G. Li, H. Wang, X. W. Deng, "Phytochrome Signaling Mechanisms" The Arabidopsis Book Vol. 9, e0148 (2011) CrossRef J.B. Clark, G.R. Lister, Photosynthetic Action Spectra of Trees: I. Comparative Photosynthetic Action Spectra of One Deciduous and Four Coniferous Tree Species as Related to Photorespiration and Pigment Compements, Plant Physiol., NCBI 401-6 (1975) CrossRef DIN 5031-10, Optical radiation physics and illuminating engineering - Part 10: Photobiologically effective radiation, quantities, symbols and action spectra (2018) DirectLink C. ChiLing et al, Effect of Night Illumination on Growth and Yield of Soybean, Journal of Taiwan Agricultural Research, Vol.58 No.2, (2009) DirectLink J. Bennie et al, Ecological Effects of Artificial Light as Night on Wild Plants, Journal of Ecology, https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.12551 (2016) CrossRef W.R. Chaney, Does Night Lighting Harm Trees? Circular FNR-FAQ-17 ( 2002) DirectLink


Geochronology and thermochronology on detrital material provides unique constraints on sedimentary provenance, depositional ages, and orogenic evolu- tion of source terrains. In this paper we describe a method and case-studies of measurement of both U/Pb and (U-Th)/He ages on single crystals of zircon that improves the robustness of constraints in each of these areas by establishing both formation and cooling ages of single detrital grains. Typically these ages correspond to crystallization and exhumation or eruption ages, and their combination can be used to more confidently resolve candidate source terrains, establish maximum depositional ages, and constrain the thermal histories of orogenic source regions. U/Pb dating is accomplished by laser-ablation ICP-MS in a small pit on the exterior of the crystal, and He dates are then determined on the bulk grain by conventional laser-heating and dissolution techniques. We present examples from Mesozoic aeolian sandstones, both modern and Paleogene fluvial sediments, and active margin turbidite assemblages from the Cascadia and Kamchatka margins. Important results include the fact that detritus from ancient orogens may dominate sediments thousands of kilometers away, crustal melting and exhumation appear to be spatially-temporally decoupled in at least two orogens, and first-cycle volcanic zircons older than depositional age are surpris- ingly rare in most settings except in the continental interior. In the case of the Kamchatkan, and possibly Olympic, turbidites, zircon He ages are partially reset. We present a method for estimating the extent of resetting of each grain and the thermal history of the sample, based on coupled (U-Th)/(He-Pb) age patterns among all the grains.


[Extract] If any one question plagues those who seek to evaluate or comment on Landcare - not to mention those attempting to initiate Landcare groups or programs - it is the seemingly innocuous question of just what Landcare is. Even the most cursory perusal of documentation on Landcare will reveal at least two things; firstly, that the term 'Landcare' means many things to many people; and secondly, that the idea of Landcare is closely related to many other concepts and projects. If we look solely at this edition of Rural Society, for instance, we find that Landcare is examined as a government program by Curtis and De Lacy; a form of extension and information system by Carr; a means of enacting governance by Martin; and as the network of community Landcare groups, and supporting institutions, by Campbell. Further, the paper by Ritchie shows that the concept of Landcare has travelled across the Tasman, but has changed even further along the way. The question we might ask is whether the dilemmas this diversity poses for professional evaluators - who work best with clear goals and criteria - are of any consequence for anybody else.

Contemplating the meaning of Landcare no doubt seems as esoteric for many people as the meaning of life; an interesting question to puzzle over late at night with a good bottle of wine, but somehow remote from the day-to-day projects and issues which confront their lives. Indeed, six years into the Decade of Landcare we may well conclude that the time for pondering meanings is well and truly over if Landcare is to make an indelible mark on our landscape by the turn of the century. It could, on the other hand, be argued that we need some sort of common understanding about what Landcare is so that we might all 'pull in the same direction', aligning our individual and communal goals to satisfy an agreed upon notion of the common good. Listening to some, we may even conclude, somewhat paradoxically, that we need to suspend our discussion of what Landcare is in case the ensuing debate threatens any consensus we may already have, even if this extends little beyond the banal observation that Landcare is, without doubt, 'a good thing'.

All of the above positions obscure real, and legitimate, differences in the interests of participants in Landcare, and consequently the importance of their position taking practices in associated discourses. Some of the 'battles' over meaning associated with Landcare are fairly obvious and have been discussed by numerous other authors. Others are a little less clear, and require us to think more about the relationships between Landcare, and social and cultural change more generally. This paper will begin with a brief outline of the theoretical perspective which informs this analysis. The fieldwork on which most of the ensuing discussion is based was conducted through 1993 and 1994, and involved a range of methods aimed towards ethnographic understanding of the research problem, namely, both open-ended and structured interviews, and participant observation. These methods were deployed in the context of a case study conducted in one Local Government Area in the mixed cropping/grazing zone of south west NSW, and through involvement with the wider 'Landcare community'. They were undertaken as part of PhD research which will be completed shortly.


This article reviews part of the stage history of Shakespeare's Othello in Chile and, in particular, it focuses on two performances of the play: the first, in 1818, and the last one in 2012-2020. By comparing both productions, I aim to establish the exact date and theatrical context of the first Chilean staging of the Shakespearean tragedy using historical sources and English travellers' records, as well as to explore how the representation of a Moor and of blackness onstage evolved both in its visual dimension — the choice of costumes and the use of blackface—, and in its racial connotations alongside deep social changes. During the nineteenth century Othello became one of the most popular plays in Chile, being performed eleven times in the period of 31 years, a success that also occurred in Spain between 1802 and 1833. The early development of Chilean theatre was very much influenced not only by the ideas of the Spaniards who arrived in the country, but also by the available Spanish translations of Shakespeare; therefore, I argue that the first performances of Othello as Other — different in origin and in skin colour — were characterised by an imitative style, since actors repeated onstage the biased image of Moors that Spaniards had brought to Chile. While the assessment of Othello and race is not new, this article contrasts in its scope, as I do not discuss the protagonist's actual origin, but how the changes in Chilean social and cultural contexts can reshape and reconfigure the performance of blackness and turn it into a meaningful translation of the Shakespearean Moor that activates audiences' awareness of racism and fears of miscegenation.


In cities with tall buildings, emergency responders need an accurate floor level location to find 911 callers quickly. We introduce a system to estimate a victim's floor level via their mobile device's sensor data in a two-step process. First, we train a neural network to determine when a smartphone enters or exits a building via GPS signal changes. Second, we use a barometer equipped smartphone to measure the change in barometric pressure from the entrance of the building to the victim's indoor location. Unlike impractical previous approaches, our system is the first that does not require the use of beacons, prior knowledge of the building infrastructure, or knowledge of user behavior. We demonstrate real-world feasibility through 63 experiments across five different tall buildings throughout New York City where our system predicted the correct floor level with 100% accuracy.


Bimodal expression of genes is activated in response to osmotic stress. The ability to measure responses of cellular signaling systems in single cells allows investigators to characterize the ways each cell optimizes responses to external cues. In studies on mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling in yeast cells, Pelet et al. discovered that there was a linear relation between an osmotic stimulus and the amount of activated MAPK (in this case, Hog1) translocated to the nucleus and its retention time in the nucleus. Hog1 causes transcription of stress-response genes, but unlike the expected response of the kinase, gene activation was bimodal and varied even within the same cell. Further experiments and mathematical modeling showed that this variation corresponded to chromatin remodeling. S. Pelet, F. Rudolf, M. Nadal-Ribelles, E. de Nadal, F. Posas, M. Peter, Transient activation of the HOG MAPK pathway regulates bimodal gene expression. Science 332, 732–735 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text]


This was a qualitative study carried out with one Grade 9 MMLMS class. The purpose of the study was to explore the experiences of the learners with respect to the CTA that they completed for their summative assessment. The methods of data collection were classroom observation, document analysis and interviews. Data was gathered from 4 classroom observations, a document analysis of the 2005 CTA instrument, the detailed responses of 3 learners to the CTA as well as a focus group interview with the 3 learners. The document analysis was done against a framework of moderating criteria identified by the moderating board of the eTA. The 4 lessons were video taped while the researcher was a participant observer in the classroom. The transcription of the tapes, the field notes and observation schedules were analysed with the intention of providing answers to the main research question. Similarly the interviews were video taped, transcribed and then analysed to provide further insight into the research question. Finally the learners' responses to certain items were scrutinized for further details. The findings revealed that the task design, which relied on grounding each task within one context, was problematic for the learners. The learners struggled with the language used in the tasks and often could not pick out crucial information from all the details associated with the contextualization. The language of the tasks was set at a high level of readability, higher than the average Grade 9 level. Furthermore, the teacher's interventions often seemed to hinder rather than facilitate their understanding of the mathematics. The results of the study have implications for teachers (to be careful of how they mediate the tasks), curriculum developers (to take note of the criticisms levelled at assessment tasks set in real life contexts) and mathematics educators (to voice their concerns about national assessment instruments which may themselves not be valid indicators of what learners can and cannot do).


Cramer et al. (Reports, 23 March 2012, p. 1503; published online 9 February 2012) reported that bexarotene rapidly reduces β-amyloid (Aβ) levels and plaque burden in two mouse models of Aβ deposition in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We now report that, although bexarotene reduces soluble Aβ40 levels in one of the mouse models, the drug has no impact on plaque burden in three strains that exhibit Aβ amyloidosis.


Many microscopy applications are limited by the total amount of usable light and are consequently challenged by the resulting levels of noise in the acquired images. This problem is often addressed via (supervised) deep learning based denoising. Recently, by making assumptions about the noise statistics, self-supervised methods have emerged. Such methods are trained directly on the images that are to be denoised and do not require additional paired training data. While achieving remarkable results, self-supervised methods can produce high-frequency artifacts and achieve inferior results compared to supervised approaches. Here we present a novel way to improve the quality of self-supervised denoising. Considering that light microscopy images are usually diffractionlimited, we propose to include this knowledge in the denoising process. We assume the clean image to be the result of a convolution with a point spread function (PSF) and explicitly include this operation at the end of our neural network. As a consequence, we are able to eliminate highfrequency artifacts and achieve self-supervised results that are very close to the ones achieved with traditional supervised methods.


The Essential Hirschman brings together some of the finest essays in the social sciences, written by one of the twentieth century's most influential and provocative thinkers. Albert O. Hirschman was a master essayist, one who possessed the rare ability to blend the precision of economics with the elegance of literary imagination. In an age in which our academic disciplines require ever-greater specialization and narrowness, it is rare to encounter an intellectual who can transform how we think about inequality by writing about traffic, or who can slip in a quote from Flaubert to reveal something surprising about taxes. The essays gathered here span an astonishing range of topics and perspectives, including industrialization in Latin America, imagining reform as more than repair, the relationship between imagination and leadership, routine thinking and the marketplace, and the ways our arguments affect democratic life. Throughout, we find humor, unforgettable metaphors, brilliant analysis, and elegance of style that give Hirschman such a singular voice.Featuring an introduction by Jeremy Adelman that places each of these essays in context as well as an insightful afterword by Emma Rothschild and Amartya Sen, The Essential Hirschman is the ideal introduction to Hirschman for a new generation of readers and a must-have collection for anyone seeking his most important writings in one book.Classification-JEL:


Testing oral proficiency is an important but challenging part of foreign language assessment: currently accepted methods are time-consuming and expensive. Our recent efforts have led to the implementation of new assessment methods for English (Graham et al. 2008), Japanese, and Spanish. We demonstrate that this work is also relevant for French oral proficiency testing. We begin by describing and historically situating an oral proficiency testing methodology called elicited imitation (EI). Then, we document the development, implementation and evaluation of a French EI test. We also detail the incorporation of the use of automatic speech recognition to score French EI items. Last, we substantiate with correlation analyses that carefully engineered, automatically scored French EI items correlate to a high degree with human scoring.


Robert Powell argues persuasively and elegantly for the usefulness of formal models in studying international conflict and for the necessity of greater dialogue between modeling and empirical analysis. Powell makes it clear that many widely made arguments about the way states act under threat do not hold when subjected to the rigors of modeling. In doing so, he provides a more secure foundation for the future of international relations theory. Powell argues that, in the Hobbesian environment in which states exist, a state can respond to a threat in at least three ways: (1) it can reallocate resources already under its control; (2) it can try to defuse the threat through bargaining and compromise; (3) it can try to draw on the resources of other states by allying with them. Powell carefully outlines these three responses and uses a series of game theoretic models to examine each of them, showing that the models make the analysis of these responses more precise than would otherwise be possible. The advantages of the modeling-oriented approach, Powell contends, have been evident in the number of new insights they have made possible in international relations theory. Some argue that these advances could have originated in ordinary-language models, but as Powell notes, they did not in practice do so. The book focuses on the insights and intuitions that emerge during modeling, rather than on technical analysis, making it accessible to readers with only a general background in international relations theory.


Recommender systems are among today's most successful application areas of artificial intelligence. However, in the recommender systems research community, we have fallen prey to a McNamara fallacy to a worrying extent: In the majority of our research efforts, we rely almost exclusively on computational measures such as prediction accuracy, which are easier to make than applying other evaluation methods. However, it remains unclear whether small improvements in terms of such computational measures matter greatly and whether they lead us to better systems in practice. A paradigm shift in terms of our research culture and goals is therefore needed. We can no longer focus exclusively on abstract computational measures but must direct our attention to research questions that are more relevant and have more impact in the real world. In this work, we review the various ways of how recommender systems may create value; how they, positively or negatively, impact consumers, businesses, and the society; and how we can measure the resulting effects. Through our analyses, we identify a number of research gaps and propose ways of broadening and improving our methodology in a way that leads us to more impactful research in our field.


Respiration-induced organ motion is one of the major uncertainties in lung cancer radiotherapy and is crucial to be able to accurately model the lung motion. Most work so far has focused on the study of the motion of a single point (usually the tumor center of mass), and much less work has been done to model the motion of the entire lung. Inspired by the work of Zhang et al (2007 Med. Phys. 34 4772–81), we believe that the spatiotemporal relationship of the entire lung motion can be accurately modeled based on principle component analysis (PCA) and then a sparse subset of the entire lung, such as an implanted marker, can be used to drive the motion of the entire lung (including the tumor). The goal of this work is twofold. First, we aim to understand the underlying reason why PCA is effective for modeling lung motion and find the optimal number of PCA coefficients for accurate lung motion modeling. We attempt to address the above important problems both in a theoretical framework and in the context of real clinical data. Second, we propose a new method to derive the entire lung motion using a single internal marker based on the PCA model. The main results of this work are as follows. We derived an important property which reveals the implicit regularization imposed by the PCA model. We then studied the model using two mathematical respiratory phantoms and 11 clinical 4DCT scans for eight lung cancer patients. For the mathematical phantoms with cosine and an even power (2n) of cosine motion, we proved that 2 and 2n PCA coefficients and eigenvectors will completely represent the lung motion, respectively. Moreover, for the cosine phantom, we derived the equivalence conditions for the PCA motion model and the physiological 5D lung motion model (Low et al 2005 Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 63 921–9). For the clinical 4DCT data, we demonstrated the modeling power and generalization performance of the PCA model. The average 3D modeling error using PCA was within 1 mm (0.7 ± 0.1 mm). When a single artificial internal marker was used to derive the lung motion, the average 3D error was found to be within 2 mm (1.8 ± 0.3 mm) through comprehensive statistical analysis. The optimal number of PCA coefficients needs to be determined on a patient-by-patient basis and two PCA coefficients seem to be sufficient for accurate modeling of the lung motion for most patients. In conclusion, we have presented thorough theoretical analysis and clinical validation of the PCA lung motion model. The feasibility of deriving the entire lung motion using a single marker has also been demonstrated on clinical data using a simulation approach.


After German reunification, interregional subsidies accounted for approximately 4% of gross fixed capital investment in the new federal states (i.e. those which were formerly part of the German Democratic Republic). We show that, between 1992 and 2005, infrastructure and corporate investment subsidies had a negative net impact on regional economic growth and convergence. This result is robust to both the specification of spatially weighted control variables and the use of instrumental variable techniques to control for the endogeneity of subsidies. Our results suggest that regional redistribution was ineffective, potentially due to a lack of spatial concentration to create growth poles.


Great apes occur in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia. Efforts to link great ape conservation and poverty alleviation on the two continents share considerable similarities. The common issues allow the development of widely applicable guidelines and policy practice. However, the different sociopolitical, economic and ecological contexts of Africa and Asia need to be considered in developing any such guidance and practice. All six species of great ape are distributed in countries with high levels of rural poverty. The main threats to great apes in both Africa and Asia are large-scale land-use changes due to commercial enterprises such as oil palm plantations and logging, rather than local poverty. Nevertheless local poverty is a threat in fragmented forest habitats and in countries where the pressure on land is intense. The conservation of great apes has multiple links to poverty alleviation. Poverty can be a driver of local species loss. Conservation can either contribute to poverty alleviation or further exacerbate poverty, depending on how it is implemented and the benefits it generates. Many opportunities exist to link great ape conservation and poverty alleviation; however, inherent trade-offs must be considered. One of the most important is that all great apes are at serious risk of extinction, so conservation is the most critical priority. To that end national and international laws and conventions that protect great apes should be implemented and adhered to. The international interest in carbon conservation, and associated REDD+ schemes, has the potential to provide significant co-benefits to great ape conservation and poverty alleviation by preserving forests of biodiversity value. However, REDD+ also presents risks to both local livelihoods and great apes due to a sole focus on carbon conservation. Potential risks include the exclusion of local people from forest resources and 'leakage' of forest degradation and deforestation activities from high-carbon forests to high-biodiversity forests, including those with great ape populations. Equitably managed great ape tourism can, in the right circumstances and in a limited number of sites, generate significant revenues and contribute to both great ape conservation and the livelihoods of local people. Conflict between humans and great apes can damage the livelihoods of poor people, for example by ape consumption of subsistence crops. Human-wildlife conflict can also undermine conservation efforts, such as through killing of great apes or loss of local support for conservation initiatives. Great ape tourism runs the risk of exacerbating such conflict because it is based on habituating great apes to humans.


In most modem languages, there is a construct that allows the programmer to directly represent a multiway branch based on the value of an expression. In Pascal, it is the case statement; in C:, it is the switch and in Fortran-90 the SELECT. However, it is quite common that the efficiency of these constructs is far worse than one might reasonably expeat. This paper discusses the construction and use of customized hash functions to consistently improve execution speedl and reduce memory usage for such consuucts. Performance results are given, including some that lead to the suggestion that adding a population count instruction to the instruction set of a processor will greatly improve its hashing performance.


The medieval, indigenous narratives of Iceland and Norway, the sagas, are generally recognised for their objective style. However, in 13th century West Nordic texts, explicit subjectivity as a literary strategy appears, e.g. through the use of an active narrator in the story. The translation of courtly literature seems to have played an important role in the introduction of the subjective features, and the new strategies challenged the objectivity of the indigenous texts. In this paper, it is argued that different ways of handling subjectivity by translators in Norway and Iceland might be explained by the differences between the two societies, if we use the polysystem theory of Even-Zohar (1990) as a theoretical framework.


The purpose of this study was to understand U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service public land managers' perceptions of fire management and recreational use in urban national forests of the United States. An online survey was used to understand managers' perceptions of (a) the degree to which the presence of recreational activities and experiences are a constraint to fire management, (b) the degree to which fire management and suppression activities influence the quality of a visit to a recreation site, and (c) the relationships between fire management and recreation constraints. In all, 62 district rangers within urban national forests were asked to complete an online survey, and 33 responded (53 percent). The following items were thought to moderately to severely impact the managers' ability to manage fire: increased urban development, budget constraints, accumulation of burnable fuels, effect of smoke on visitors, increased visitation, and the lack of trained personnel. In addition, most managers believed that recreational use of day-use areas, trails, campgrounds, and access roads conflicted moderately or slightly with fire management decisions. Over 70 percent of respondents indicated that mountain bikes on unauthorized trails, vandalism, litter, encroachment from surrounding farmland, unauthorized grazing, and, unauthorized logging did not have an impact on fire management decisions. Generally respondents did not perceive management factors as limiting visitors' pursuit of recreation activities. In addition, most managers identified the occurrence of various management activities (e.g., campground closures from smoke, trail closures owing to wildland fires, fire suppression, etc.) as slightly to not limiting at all.


We consider the problem of teaching via demonstrations in sequential decision-making settings. In particular, we study how to design a personalized curriculum over demonstrations to speed up the learner's convergence. We provide a unified curriculum strategy for two popular learner models: Maximum Causal Entropy Inverse Reinforcement Learning (MaxEnt-IRL) and Cross-Entropy Behavioral Cloning (CrossEnt-BC). Our unified strategy induces a ranking over demonstrations based on a notion of difficulty scores computed w.r.t. the teacher's optimal policy and the learner's current policy. Compared to the state of the art, our strategy doesn't require access to the learner's internal dynamics and still enjoys similar convergence guarantees under mild technical conditions. Furthermore, we adapt our curriculum strategy to the setting where no teacher agent is present using task-specific difficulty scores. Experiments on a synthetic car driving environment and navigation-based environments demonstrate the effectiveness of our curriculum strategy.


Auroral spirals are the largest vortex structures that appear in auroral arcs. Their diameters vary from tens to hundreds of kilometers. We have collected an all-sky camera data set of 216 events including 189 northern and 27 southern hemispheric spirals. For the first time in the literature, this study shows spiral structures from both hemispheres with similar occurrence distributions for their scale sizes and a sense of rotation that is always counterclockwise when viewed along the geomagnetic field. In a few cases the time resolution was adequate to follow the winding process and the relative brightness of the spirals. These events show that the winding motion of the auroral structure is opposite to the anticipated plasma flow in the same region, and that the winding process is controlled by the intensity of the auroral precipitation. We show that these findings are consistent with the model of Hallinan [1976]. He suggested that spirals are related to periodic undulations developing in an upward field-aligned current (FAC) sheet. In this model, the winding of the auroral structure manifests the magnetic field line twisting in a direction different from the ionospheric plasma flow. We discuss Hallinan's theory in more detail: First, we derive the complete solutions of the magnetic field perturbation. Second, we compute the structure of the FAC sheet and show that it reproduces the shape and sense of rotation of auroral spirals. Third, we consider the factors that affect the amount of spiral winding. In particular, we show that the spiral winding is controlled by the strength of the FAC perturbation in the arc and thereby is related to auroral precipitation and arc brightness observed. We also find the relationship between the finite field-aligned distance required for spirals to fully evolve and the amplitude of the FAC perturbation and discuss how this relationship could be used to identify the source region for the FAC perturbation. However, the assumption of a constant background field in the model hampers detailed comparisons with observed FACs and spatial scale sizes. Further development of the model is needed before we can conclude, for example, if at the altitude of the acceleration region, the conditions would be favorable for the spiral winding mechanism.


Considerable interest has recently been shown in the field of marine traffic engineering. Real life data sources made available for maritime studies are often expensive and inconvenient to collect. The marine radar simulator presents the researcher with a relatively inexpensive and readily available source of navlgatlonal data. With the improvement of remote vessel traffic monitoring systems the potential for inexpensive real life data analysis Is enhanced.

The work of this study has been to allow the analysis of data archived from the Channel Navigation Information Service Automatic Data Processing system (CNIS AOP) installed at St. Margarets Bay Dover using contemporary digital computer graphical facilities, and to compare mariners' behaviour In a real life and simulator collision avoidance situation. For this comparison certain navigational situations known as encounters have been automatically detected using an extension of the Range to Domain Over Range Rate (RDRR) method (Colley et al 1983), referred to as the RDRR+ technique. A statistical comparison has been completed using non parametric techniques.


Since the inception of the ABC in South Africa in 1947 a great deal of change has taken place not only in the communication industry but indeed within the ABC itself. Each of the 14 Boards under their respective Chairman / President have brought fresh yet evolutionary adaptations to this industry body. The current Board has without question faced the most challenging and simultaneously exciting period in memory.


Two dogs were presented for referral with nonpainful exophthalmia due to a retrobulbar mass. Incisional biopsies confirmed a histological diagnosis of infiltrative lipoma in both cases. Infiltrative lipomas are rare tumours of soft tissues and are invasive to adjacent tissue. Wide surgical resection is required to prevent local recurrence of the disease. Computed tomography of the head was performed in both cases to evaluate the extent of the masses and to plan surgical resection. Both dogs underwent a partial orbitectomy and were disease free 24 and 21 months later. The cosmetic appearance was good and both dogs maintained vision in the affected eyes.


In a variety of behavioral tasks, subjects exhibit an automatic and apparently suboptimal sequential effect: they respond more rapidly and accurately to a stimulus if it reinforces a local pattern in stimulus history, such as a string of repetitions or alternations, compared to when it violates such a pattern. This is often the case even if the local trends arise by chance in the context of a randomized design, such that stimulus history has no real predictive power. In this work, we use a normative Bayesian framework to examine the hypothesis that such idiosyncrasies may reflect the inadvertent engagement of mechanisms critical for adapting to a changing environment. We show that prior belief in non-stationarity can induce experimentally observed sequential effects in an otherwise Bayes-optimal algorithm. The Bayesian algorithm is shown to be well approximated by linear-exponential filtering of past observations, a feature also apparent in the behavioral data. We derive an explicit relationship between the parameters and computations of the exact Bayesian algorithm and those of the approximate linear-exponential filter. Since the latter is equivalent to a leaky-integration process, a commonly used model of neuronal dynamics underlying perceptual decision-making and trial-to-trial dependencies, our model provides a principled account of why such dynamics are useful. We also show that parameter-tuning of the leaky-integration process is possible, using stochastic gradient descent based only on the noisy binary inputs. This is a proof of concept that not only can neurons implement near-optimal prediction based on standard neuronal dynamics, but that they can also learn to tune the processing parameters without explicitly representing probabilities.


SMEs play very important roles in national economies, because of their numbers and because of the large share of the workforce involved. However, despite the recognition of important roles of SMEs in the economy, some crucial barriers to innovation prevent SMEs from developing and contributing sufficiently. This paper identifies some important innovation barriers perceived and experienced by entrepreneurs in Turkish SMEs. A logit regression model was used to explain the innovation barriers of SME entrepreneurs based on a survey questionnaire of 197 respondents. An analysis of 197 Turkish SME entrepreneurs reveals the fact that "lack of government"s RD "Informal economy"s negative impact on investment" from informal barriers; "high cost of innovation" and "lack of appropriate source of finance" from environmental barriers and "lack of qualified personnel" from skill barriers, are the most important variables, and they have a significant effect on the entrepreneurs" innovation decisions in Turkey. There are around two million SMEs in Turkey and it is not possible to survey all of them for this research. Because of the constraints on resources only a small sample of randomly selected SMEs from a large population was analysed. Therefore our findings represent this small sample only rather than all manufacturing SMEs in Turkey. Understanding basic innovation barriers for entrepreneurs in SMEs will be a critical condition for Turkey"s future growth and prosperity. This study provides an important theoretical insight into the innovation barriers encountered by SME entrepreneurs, and presents empirical evidence to the entrepreneurship and innovation literature with a case study from Turkish SMEs. As the findings of this research highlight some obstacles for Turkish SME entrepreneurs, it also contributes to the developing country literature.


Four supramolecular cations (m-XAni+)(DB[18]crown-6) (X = F, Cl, Br or I; Ani+ = anilinium ion; DB[18]crown-6 = dibenzo[18]crown-6) were introduced into crystals of a Keggin [SMo12O402−] polyanion to form [(m-XAni+)(DB[18]crown-6)]2[SMo12O402−]·4CH3CN (1, 2, 3 or 4 for X = F, Cl, Br or I) through a hydrogen-bonding interaction. Crystals 1, 2, 3 and 4, which were isomorphous to each other, crystallized in the monoclinic space group P21/n. Supramolecular cations (m-XAni+)(DB[18]crown-6) were constructed by a N–H+⋯O hydrogen-bonding interaction. [SMo12O402−] polyoxoanions were infinitely extended in three dimensions through a weak C–H⋯O hydrogen-bonding interaction with DB[18]crown-6. Disorder of the halogen atoms at the meta-position was observed in crystals 1, 2 and 3. The rotational freedom of the (m-XAni+) cations was suppressed because of weak interactions with surrounding molecules.


In a 20-year period, AR has gone from being viewed as a heavyweight technology to a new medium for a variety of applications. As a result there has been an increasing need for tools to support AR design and development that fully address the needs of non-technologists. From my AR research, I learned that three critical components for these authoring tools are support for an established content pipeline, rapid prototyping, and user experience testing. The history of media teaches us that AR also shares underlying technologies with a variety of more mature media such as film, VR, and the web with existing workflows and tools. Therefore, we created an AR authoring tool that supported these three critical components, and whose design was informed by established approaches in these related domains, allowing developers with a range of technical expertise to explore the AR medium.
In this dissertation I present four main contributions. The first was an exploration of the AR design space focused on close collaboration with designers. This work resulted in guidelines for AR authoring tools, and informed the development of the Designer's Augmented Reality Toolkit (DART). These guidelines were validated via internal and external projects. A qualitative study of long term DART use that provided insight into the successes and failures of DART as well as additional understanding of AR authoring needs. Lastly, I trace two main threads to highlight the impact of this work, the development of the AR Second Life system and the creation of the Argon AR web browser.


Margaret Cohen's careful editorial revision modernizes and renews Flaubert's stylistic masterpiece. In addition, Cohen has added to the Second Edition a new introduction, substantially new annotations, and twenty-one striking images, including photographs and engravings, that inform students' understanding of middle-class life in nineteenth-century provincial France. In Madame Bovary, Flaubert created a cogent counter discourse that exposed and resisted the dominant intellectual and social ideologies of his age. The novel's subversion of conventional moral norms inevitably created controversy and eventually led to Flaubert's prosecution by the French government on charges of offending "public and religious morality." This Norton edition is the only one available that includes the complete manuscript from Flaubert's 1857 trial. "Criticism" includes sixteen studies regarding the novel's central themes, twelve of them new to the Second Edition, including essays by Charles Baudelaire, Henry James, Roland Barthes, Jonathan Culler, and Naomi Schor. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.


Recent research on visual mental imagery plays an important role for the study of visual hallucinations. Not only are mental images involved in various cognitive processes, but they also share many processes with visual perception. However, we rarely confuse mental images with percepts, and recent neuroimaging studies shed light on the mechanisms that are differently activated in imagery and perception.


"As long as nationalists think that they can achieve self-determination on the basis of the ethnic population of a territory, they will strive to create an ethnically pure population in the region or regions they covet." The drive to increase population has led to conquests, receptive immigration laws and pro-natalist population policies. But population size has taken on a new meaning in the post-Cold War world, in which nationalism is on the rise and ethnic self-awareness seems to permeate once-placid populations. Currently the size of a total population is less relevant than the absolute and relative size of a particular ethnic, religious, racial or linguistic group. (1) Indeed, an inter-ethnic war of numbers is taking place in numerous locations. The goal of this war of numbers is to increase the economic and political power of an ethnic group relative to other groups, and the method by which this is achieved entails the increase in size of one population relative to others. Most ethnic groups in multinational states across the globe are engaged in this activity in varying degrees, thus clearly manipulating population numbers in their struggle for power. They have similar goals and differ only in the form and intensity of the struggle. This inter-ethnic struggle exists because there is a positive link between political power and relative size, as well as between economic power and population size. (2) This link is observed across levels of development, degrees of ethnic heterogeneity and systems of political organization. (3) With respect to political power, population size implies enhanced representation in political bodies, which translates into decision-making that tends to reflect the interests of that group. (4) Size also implies political legitimacy to partake in the political arena and to express ethnic demands in an organized fashion. Size affects participation in the political system, insofar as it gives the group in question equal or preferential access to legal protection and the legal system, to civil service positions and to the military and police service. Finally, size influences the right to make demands on the political system, as some groups are of insufficient size to even be recognized as groups in the political spectrum. The assertion of these rights in the spheres of economics, politics and ethno-cultural issues can be classified into three types of demands: (5) The mildest demand of a people entails policy changes whose effects will favor the group in question. These are usually of a cultural nature, such as the right to schooling in a non-titular language (such a right was granted by the Yugoslav Constitution of 1974 to minorities such as the Hungarians and the Albanians). Another type of demand is for full integration into the decision-making process. This usually entails minority groups that strive for rights equal to those enjoyed by the titular majority, including the right to own property and to defend property rights in courts, the right to vote or partake in political life and the right to enjoy the social welfare of the country (an example of this right is embodied in the Austrian Constitution of 1876). (6) The strongest demand is for autonomy. While this demand may be satisfied by the extension of increased political rights to the region where the group resides, the demand may also include the right to secession based on self-determination. The economic rewards that population size convey include the following: (7) First, ethnic population size is usually positively related to access to scarce resources. The larger the size, the greater its power to appropriate those resources through various forms of political manipulation. Distribution of scarce resources is often the primary source of conflict among ethnic groups. If there is no scarcity, there is no economic source of conflict. (8) Second, ethnic size is usually positively related to group input in policy-making. …


A data-driven artificial neural network (ANN) model and a data-driven evolutionary polynomial regression (EPR) model are here used to set up two real-time crisp discharge forecasting models whose crisp parameters are estimated through the least-square criterion. In order to represent the total uncertainty of each model in performing the forecast, their parameters are then considered as grey numbers. Comparison of the results obtained through the application of the two models to a real case study shows that the crisp models based on ANN and EPR provide similar accuracy for short forecasting lead times; for long forecasting lead times, the performance of the EPR model deteriorates with respect to that of the ANN model. As regards the uncertainty bands produced by the grey formulation of the two data-driven models, it is shown that, in the ANN case, these bands are on average narrower than those obtained by using a standard technique such as the Box–Cox transformation of the errors; in the EPR case, these bands are on average larger. These results therefore suggest that the performance of a grey data-driven model depends on its inner structure and that, for the specific models here considered, the ANN is to be preferred.