Concerned about the relative absence of activities (including the writings) by members of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians within the Democratic Republic of the Congo Circle, Francophone context in general and her Mongolese context in particular, the author uses the marginalised character of Vashti in the Hebrew Bible to see which light the character might shed within the preceding contexts. Can Vashti's identity in terms of boldness, courage and independence serve as a model for Congolese women in their efforts to make a positive impact on their contexts which remain glaringly patriarchal even today after many years of political independence? In this article, it is argued that the character of Vashti, especially her sense of independence and courage, can serve as a motivation for Congolese female theologians in their search for new identities. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: In this article, the disciplines of African studies, political science, gender studies and biblical studies are made to interact with each other in the author's quest to see how a biblical character such as Vashti can contribute positively to the theory and praxis of theology among emerging Francophone female scholars. Keywords: Circle; Francophone; Vashti; Hebrew Bible; patriarchy


In this essay we take up the question of the non-legal foundations of any legal system, and in particular H.L.A. Hart's notion of the ultimate rule of recognition, the master rule that pedigrees the other rules governing what officials and citizens are legally obligated to do. Initially, we shall raise but not necessarily resolve several questions about Hart's own account of the rule of recognition. But even though we leave those questions largely unresolved, we shall come away from this discussion with a sufficiently firm grasp of the idea of a rule of recognition to proceed to the second part of the essay. In that part we look at the United States Constitution - and the practices that have developed regarding its interpretation and enforcement - through the lens of the idea of an ultimate rule of recognition. And when we do so, we shall encounter some foundational questions about constitutional law and interpretation: Does the rule of recognition in the American legal system change over time, and if so, how does this occur? Has the Constitution itself changed other than by organic processes - processes prescribed by the Constitution itself - and, if so, how? If interpreters employ different interpretive methodologies in interpreting the Constitution, is there one constitution, or are there several (overlapping) constitutions? And if the latter, how is stability achieved? If the Supreme Court (or some other governmental body with final interpretive authority) misinterprets the Constitution, what is the legal status of such a misinterpretation, and why? And finally, given that one function of a constitution is to entrench the "rules of the game," and given that any entrenched rule will suffer from over- and under-inclusiveness with respect to its background purposes, how is it possible for officials and citizens to accept as binding the ultimate rule of recognition and the constitutional and subconstitutional rules it pedigrees? Our enterprise in this paper is primarily conceptual and descriptive rather than normative. We shall be attempting to identify the rule of recognition in the United States. Or rather, we shall be attempting to identify the multiple rules of recognition in the United States, for we believe that actual American recognitional practices are multifaceted. There is also, however, a normative element in our paper, for we maintain that settlement for settlement's sake is an important legal, social, and moral value, and yet our existing recognitional practices inevitably put settlement at risk.


Extracted from text ... SA Fam Pract 2006;48(1) 34
Genetics in Family Practice
Health implications and counselling
for paternity testing
MJ Kotze1, CL Scholtz1 and P Opperman2
Genecare Molecular Genetics (Pty) Ltd., 1 Cape Town and2 Pretoria
Correspondence to: Dr Maritha Kotze, PO Box 15743, Vlaeberg, 8018
Tel: 021 424 6504, Fax: 021 422 5539, E-mail: email@example.com
(SA Fam Pract 2006;48(1): 34)
Introduction
Identification and parentage testing using
DNA technology has become an important
tool in both the legal and medical fields. It
is used by the legal fraternity to resolve will
and maintenance disputes, criminal
investigations and immigration decisions.
Identity testing in ..


The continued development of and affordable access to potentially life saving pharmaceuticals, gene therapies and diagnostics is unquestionably a socially important issue. However, crafting government policy to encourage the development of and allowing affordable access to those services and products is difficult. On one hand, the development of those services and products requires a large investment of funds because of the complexity, collaborative nature, and uncertainty of the development of those products and services. Accordingly, investors require the safety of strong and stable patent rights to ensure a return on their investment in the development of a commercial end-product or a research tool. On the other hand, patents may foreclose competition for a particular product or service and enable a company to exact a supra competitive price for that product or service, thus denying access to people unable to afford that product or service. In arriving at that supra competitive price, the company selling the commercial end product may have to include in that price a number of additional costs imposed by holders of patented research tools needed in the development of the commercial end-product. This Article examines whether the development of pharmaceuticals, gene therapies or diagnostics is being stifled by the inability of companies to access proprietary research tools needed for the development of those important products and services. This Article also evaluates proposals for alleviating problems in accessing proprietary research tools, and proposes recommendations to aid in the efficient transfer of that technology. First, this Article recommends that Congress enact a law similar to the proposed Genomic Science and Technology Innovation of Act of 2002, which requires the government to conduct a study of the effect of government policy on biotechnology innovation. Second, this Article recommends that the government encourage public and private parties to enter patent pools to efficiently transfer rights in biotechnology inventions. The government, in conjunction with private and public institutions, should create a publicly available database of proprietary research tools and licenses concerning those tools. The government should also modify the provision of the Bayh-Dole Act concerning reservation of a non-exclusive right to practice any patented invention created with federal funding. The modification would allow the government to transfer a non-exclusive license to a patented research tool developed with government funding to a patent pool created by industry participants if it is demonstrated that the owner of the patented research tool is unreasonably withholding the license of that tool from the pool. Any royalties resulting from the licensing of the research tool in the patent pool will be distributed to the owner of the patented research tool. Part I of this Article provides definitions for research tools and commercial applications. Part II discusses the costs, benefits, and purposes of patent law. Part III reviews university and private research and development, including the influence of the Bayh-Dole Act. Part IV examines the development of commercial applications of biotechnology research, including the role of venture capital and the use of licensing provisions requiring reach through royalties and exclusivity. Part V evaluates problems that may occur in attempting to develop commercial applications and licensing patents. Part VI reviews the Tragedy of the Anticommons theory. Part VII discusses research and analysis concerning the existence of the anticommons.


In this work, we apply statistical learning algorithms to Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar (LTAG) parsing, as an effort toward statistical analysis over deep structures. LTAG parsing is a well known hard problem. Statistical methods successfully applied to LTAG parsing could also be used in many other structure prediction problems in NLP.
For the purpose of achieving accurate and efficient LTAG parsing, we will investigate two aspects of the problem, the data structure and the algorithm.
1. We introduce LTAG-spinal, a variant of LTAG with very desirable linguistic, computational and statistical properties. It can be shown that LTAG-spinal with adjunction constraints is weakly equivalent to the traditional LTAG. For the purpose of statistical processing, we extract an LTAG-spinal treebank from the Penn Treebank with Propbank annotation.
2. We not only explore various parsing strategies, but also investigate the reranking approach. (a) We first propose a left-to-right incremental parser for LTAG-spinal, as an attempt to dynamically incorporate supertagging and dependency analysis. A perceptron like discriminative learning algorithm is used for training. We further investigate a bidirectional dependency parser for LTAG-spinal, in order to overcome the limitation of left-to-right processing. We propose a novel algorithm for graph-based incremental construction, and apply this algorithm to LTAG style dependency parsing. (b) We also explore learning algorithms for parse reranking, as well as other NLP problems, e.g. Machine Translation. We propose a novel reranking strategy, Ordinal Regression with Uneven Margins (ORUM), which achieves state-of-the-art performance on parse reranking for CFG parsing and MT reranking.
To sum up, we have accomplished the following achievements. (i) A new formalism, LTAG-spinal, which is weakly equivalent to LTAG. (ii) An LTAG-spinal Treebank extracted from the PTB with the Propbank annotation. (iii) A left-to-right incremental parser for LTAG-spinal. (iv) A bidirectional LTAG-spinal dependency parser. (v) A novel graph-based incremental construction algorithm, which could be applied to many structure prediction problem in NLP, e.g. semantic role labeling. (vi) A novel discriminative reranking algorithm, ORUM, which has been successfully applied to parse reranking as well as other tasks, e.g. MT reranking.


An improved method of dot-blot hybridization to detect hepatitis A virus (HAV) was developed with single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) probes. Radioactive and nonradioactive ssRNA probes were generated by in vitro transcription of HAV templates inserted into the plasmid pGEM-1. 32P-labeled ssRNA probes were at least eightfold more sensitive than the 32P-labeled double-stranded cDNA counterparts, whereas biotin-labeled ssRNA probes showed a sensitivity comparable with that of the 32P-labeled double-stranded cDNA counterparts. Hybridization of HAV with the ssRNA probes at high stringency revealed specific reactions with a high signal-to-noise ratio. The differential hybridization reactions seen with probes of positive and negative sense (compared with HAV genomic RNA) were used to detect HAV in clinical and field samples. A positive/negative ratio was introduced as an indicator that permitted a semiquantitative expression of a positive HAV reaction. Good agreement of this indicator was observed with normal stool samples and with HAV-seeded samples. By using this system, HAV was detected in estuarine and freshwater samples collected from a sewage-polluted bayou in Houston and a saltwater tributary of Galveston Bay.


A family of oxygen sensors prevents T cells in the lungs from reacting to innocuous foreign antigens and infiltrating cancer cells. The lung is continually exposed to the external environment, making it necessary to tightly regulate the activity of effector T cells in the lung to prevent inappropriate responses to innocuous foreign antigens. Suppression of effector T cells occurs through regulatory T (Treg) cells that are derived from the thymus (tTreg cells) or that are induced in the periphery (iTreg cells). Under normal oxygen conditions, and particularly in the highly oxygenated environment of the lung, the prolyl hydroxylase (PHD) family of oxygen sensors prevents transcriptional responses to hypoxia by keeping the abundance of the α subunits of hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) low. HIFs trigger the production of the proinflammatory cytokine interferon-γ (IFN-γ) in Treg cells, leading Clever et al. to investigate the role of the PHDs in T cells in the lung. Compared with their wild-type counterparts, mice with T cell–specific deficiency in all three PHD isoforms (PHD-tKO) developed diffuse alveolar hemorrhage, had more CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in the lung, and had fewer iTreg cells in the lung. Production of IFN-γ from pulmonary CD4+ and CD8+ T cells was increased. The lungs of wild-type mice that had been sensitized and challenged with house dust mite extract had more Treg cells and T helper 2 (TH2) cells, which promote B cell proliferation and are implicated in the development of asthma. In contrast, the lungs of similarly sensitized PHD-tKO mice had more IFN-γ–positive TH1 cells, which promote the proliferation of cytotoxic T cells, fewer iTreg cells, and showed signs of inflammation and associated pathology, such as alveolar hemorrhage. When exposed to transforming growth factor–β, a cytokine that promotes Treg cell differentiation, naïve CD4+ T cells from wild-type mice differentiated into Treg cells, whereas those from PHD-tKO mice differentiated into TH1 cells and produced more IFN-γ. When exposed to high oxygen concentrations (20%), wild-type mouse and human CD4+ T cells tended to differentiate into Treg cells, an effect that was blocked by the PHD inhibitor dimethyloxalylglycine (DMOG). Under normal oxygen conditions, DMOG promoted the differentiation of mouse CD4+ T cells into TH1 cells, an effect that did not occur in cells deficient in HIF-1α and HIF-2α. The authors speculated that infiltrating tumor cells may evade immune surveillance in the lung because the antigens on these cells might resemble innocuous foreign antigens and do not relieve the suppression of Teff cell function by Treg cells. Whereas the growth of tumors formed from subcutaneously injected B16 mouse melanoma cells was similar in wild-type mice and PHD-tKO mice, B16 cells injected in the tail vein more readily colonized the lungs of wild-type mice compared with the lungs of the PHD-tKO mice. The reduction in the tumor burden in the lungs of PHD-tKO mice was abrogated when an IFN-γ–neutralizing antibody was coinjected with the B16 cells. DMOG treatment of CD4+ T cells before adoptive transfer into mice with lung tumors formed from B16 cells improved the clearance of these tumors. Thus, the PHD family of oxygen sensors limits reactivity to innocuous foreign antigens but also antitumor immunity, and inhibiting PHDs may improve the success of adoptive cell transfer cancer immunotherapy. D. Clever, R. Roychoudhuri, M. G. Constantinides, M. H. Askenase, M. Sukumar, C. A. Klebanoff, R. L. Eil, H. D. Hickman, Z. Yu, J. H. Pan, D. C. Palmer, A. T. Phan, J. Goulding, L. Gattinoni, A. W. Goldrath, Y. Belkaid, N. P. Restifo, Oxygen sensing by T cells establishes an immunologically tolerant metastatic niche. Cell 166, 1117–1131 (2016). [PubMed]


Silk and lyocell are natural protein and cellulose polymeric materials. They are important in the fields of textile, apparel and garment. Polyester (PET) is one of the synthetic textiles with very good resistance towards chemical and microbial attacks. In this study it is decided to mix silk with polyester and lyocell. The fabric is then dyed with both natural dyes (kum, indigo, bar berry) and synthetic dyes (reactive dye (H), reactive dye (M) and Sulphur dye). This mixed fabric is compared with 100% silk for the k/s value, fastness properties, drapeability, thermal resistance, anti-odor and uv-protection behaviors. The silk mixed fabric gives very good results compared with the 100% silk fabric.


The second field campaign of the SAharan Mineral dUst experiMent (SAMUM-2) was performed between 15 January and 14 February 2008 at the airport of Praia, Cape Verde, and provided valuable information to study the westward transport of Saharan dust and the mixing with biomass-burning smoke and sea-salt aerosol. Here lidar, meteorological, and particle measurements at Praia, together with operational analyses, trajectories, and satellite and synoptic station data are used to give an overview of the meteorological conditions and to place other SAMUM-2 measurements into a large-scale context. It is demonstrated that wintertime dust conditions at Cape Verde are closely related to the movement and intensification of mid-latitude high-pressure systems and the associated pressure gradients at their southern flanks. These cause dust emission over Mauritania, Mali, and Niger, and subsequent westward transport to Cape Verde within about 1–5 d. Dust emissions often peak around midday, suggesting a relation to daytime mixing of momentum from nocturnal low-level jets to the surface. The dust layer over Cape Verde is usually restricted to the lowest 1.5 km of the atmosphere. During periods with near-surface wind speeds about 5.5 ms−1, a maritime aerosol layer develops which often mixes with dust from above. On most days, the middle levels up to about 5 km additionally contain smoke that can be traced back to sources in southernWest Africa. Above this layer, clean air masses are transported to Cape Verde with the westerly flow at the southern side of the subtropical jet. The penetration of extra-tropical disturbances to low latitudes can bring troposphere-deep westerly flow and unusually clean conditions to the region.


A successful marketing-oriented firm that is service-minded will have its entire staff involved in selling at different levels. This includes how phones are answered as well as how proposals and reports are delivered. Regardless of what function your staff are performing, it is important to have all members of your organization involved in the marketing culture and aware of the professional image you want projected by your people, although the bulk of your personal selling will probably be done by a limited number of people. Selling your professional service most effectively requires a professional who knows the company's infrastructure well and has project experience which provides a technical background. The most likely candidates are people who enjoy talking about their work, exhibit a strong sense of business decorum, and are socially extroverted. These individuals have a natural talent for making people feel comfortable around them and find it easy to build rapport quickly.


Original title: Werk en mantelzorg

Many working people in the Netherlands also provide help to a sick household member, a relative or a friend, also called informal care. This report describes how people combine paid work with providing informal care, and for whom they do that. In many cases the combination works well, partly because people carry out work and care tasks on different days. Sometimes, combining work and informal care is associated with a lower quality of life. This is the case, for example, for workers who are providing intensive help or who feel obliged to help because no one else is available. Discussing their informal care tasks with their supervisor and arranging flexible working hours can improve the quality of life of these working informal carers.


Abstract Bioremediation has been proposed as a means of dealing with oil spills on the continent. However, the introduction of non-native organisms, including microbes, even for this purpose would appear to breach the terms of the Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty. This study therefore aimed to optimize the growth conditions and diesel degradation activity of the Antarctic native bacteria Arthrobacter spp. strains AQ5-05 and AQ5-06 through the application of a one-factor-at-a-time (OFAT) approach. Both strains were psychrotolerant, with the optimum temperature supporting diesel degradation being 10–15°C. Both strains were also screened for biosurfactant production and biofilm formation. Their diesel degradation potential was assessed using Bushnell–Haas medium supplemented with 0.5% (v/v) diesel as the sole carbon source and determined using both gravimetric and gas chromatography and mass spectrophotometry analysis. Strain AQ5-06 achieved 37.5% diesel degradation, while strain AQ5-05 achieved 34.5% diesel degradation. Both strains produced biosurfactants and showed high biofilm adherence. Strains AQ5-05 and AQ5-06 showed high cellular hydrophobicity rates of 73.0% and 81.5%, respectively, in hexadecane, with somewhat lower values of 60.5% and 70.5%, respectively, in tetrahexadecane. Optimized conditions identified via OFAT increased diesel degradation to 41.0% and 47.5% for strains AQ5-05 and AQ5-06, respectively. Both strains also demonstrated the ability to degrade diesel in the presence of heavy metal co-pollutants. This study therefore confirms the potential use of these cold-tolerant bacterial strains in the biodegradation of diesel-polluted Antarctic soils at low environmental temperatures.


[1] The concentration Nd of cloud droplets in marine low clouds is a primary determinant of their ability to reflect sunlight and modulates their ability to precipitate. Previous studies have focused upon aerosol source variability as the key driver of variability in Nd. Here, we use a highly simplified aerosol budget model to examine the impact of precipitation on Nd. This model considers: precipitation (coalescence) scavenging, constrained using new satellite measurements of light precipitation; entrainment of aerosol from above cloud combined with constant aerosol concentration based on recent field observations of aerosol particles in the free troposphere; and sea-surface aerosol production estimated using a wind speed dependent source function. Despite the highly simplified nature of this model, it skillfully predicts the geographical variability ofNd in regions of extensive marine low clouds. Inclusion of precipitation results in reduction in Nd by factors of 2–3 over the remote oceans. Within 500 km of coastlines the reduction in Nd due to precipitation is weak but in these regions the model is not able to accurately predict Ndbecause of strong pollution sources. In general, neither free-tropospheric nor surface CCN sources alone are sufficient to maintainNd against precipitation losses. The results demonstrate that even the light precipitation rates typical of marine stratocumulus profoundly impact the radiative properties of marine low clouds.


Customer satisfaction and retention are key issues for organizations in today's competitive market place. As such, much research and revenue has been invested in developing accurate ways of assessing consumer satisfaction at both the macro (national) and micro (organizational) level, facilitating comparisons in performance both within and between industries. Since the instigation of the national customer satisfaction indices (CSI), partial least squares (PLS) has been used to estimate the CSI models in preference to structural equation models (SEM) because they do not rely on strict assumptions about the data. However, this choice was based upon some misconceptions about the use of SEM's and does not take into consideration more recent advances in SEM, including estimation methods that are robust to non-normality and missing data. In this paper, both SEM and PLS approaches were compared by evaluating perceptions of the Isle of Man Post Office Products and Customer service using a CSI format. The new robust SEM procedures were found to be advantageous over PLS. Product quality was found to be the only driver of customer satisfaction, while image and satisfaction were the only predictors of loyalty, thus arguing for the specificity of postal services.


We present a strategy to prioritize handoff calls in wireless networks which employ dynamic channel allocation and cell-based distributed control for fast call accommodation. The strategy essentially embodies local-packing and guard channels, requiring each base station to determine the channel assignment and reservations from a table of channel usage patterns maintained locally. In particular, the base station is prohibited from assigning any reserved channel for new calls but allowed to share reserved channels for handoff calls if necessary. With the strategy in distributed environments, one raised issue of critical importance is the stability of updating tables and another is the efficiency of sharing reservations. It is found that the stability is guaranteed if the base station is constrained to reserve channels only when calls arrive or depart. Furthermore, by a proposed scheme restricting the conditions to update tables the required traffic load for table updates decreases substantially, which further makes the strategy feasible. The effectiveness of extending reservation-sharing for handoff calls in the proposed strategy is validated through simulations.


Sustainable Urban Water Management (SUWM) approaches highlighted in this special issue have the potential to contribute to the transformation of urban water systems. The aim of the transformation is to accommodate population and economic growth and at the same time enable a system which is environmentally sustainable and resilient to future challenges such as climate change. These approaches have increasingly entered mainstream dialogue over the last ten years as knowledge on the approaches has developed, and there is an acceptance that there needs to be a change to how urban water systems are designed and operated. However, there are still a range of aspects of these approaches that are maturing and require further research to realize the objectives of SUWM. The issue explored supply-side interventions, such as rainwater harvesting and stormwater harvesting, demand-side interventions, and water storage solutions that have the potential to enable a range of recycling technologies. The issue also highlighted a novel method for better managing the integrity of a conventional sewer system. Furthermore, there are articles that explore methods for integrated assessments, integrated decision making and an exploration of what factors may promote community adoption of technology.


The dynamical evolution of protoplanetary disks is of key interest for building a comprehensive theory of planet formation and to explain the observational properties of these objects. Using the magnetohydrodynamics code Athena++, with an isothermal shearing box setup, we study the boundary between the active and dead zone, where the accretion rate changes and mass can accumulate. We quantify how the turbulence level is affected by the presence of a non-uniform Ohmic resistivity in the radial x direction that leads to a region of inhibited turbulence (or dead zone). Comparing the turbulent activity to that of ideal simulations, the turbulence-inhibited area shows density fluctuations and magnetic activity at its boundaries, driven by energy injection from the active (ideal) zone boundaries. We find magnetic dissipation to be significantly stronger in the ideal regions, and the turbulence penetration through the boundary of the dead zone is determined by the value of the resistivity itself, through the Ohmic dissipation process, though the thickness of the transition does not play a significant role in changing the dissipation. We investigate the 1D spectra along the shearing direction: magnetic spectra appear flat at large scales both in ideal as well as resistive simulations, though a Kolmogorov scaling over more than one decade persists in the dead zone, suggesting the turbulent cascade is determined by the hydrodynamics of the system: magnetorotational instability dynamo action is inhibited where sufficiently high resistivity is present.


Background : In developing countries, it often occurs that little attention is given to air pollution emissions due to a lack of proper town planning, household combustion processes, energy production and the continuous growth in the transport sector (Norman et al., 2007:783). There is an increase in urban air pollution in most of the major cities of developing countries which is amplified by population growth and industrialization (World Resource Institute, 1998, 1999:1). Air pollution studies are not complete, and may fail if the quality of life and the perceptions of the studied community are not taken into consideration. This paper investigates the air quality perceptions of a high income residency surrounded by industrial activities and Mossel Bay was rated as to have potentially poor air quality by the South African Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism.
Methods : A cross-sectional survey was carried out in Bayview, Mossel Bay. The perceptions of the respondents were collected by a structured questionnaire. Components of perceptions that were tested included general opinion regarding air quality, visual perceptions of air quality, type of pollutants such as smoke and dust, perceptions regarding the source of air pollution, perceptions regarding the municipal health institution controlling air quality in Bayview, etc. These perceptions were investigated by age, gender, socio-economic status etc.
Conclusion : The findings of the study indicated that various factors, such as visual impacts, type of pollutants, role of the municipal health institution governing air quality, influence the air perceptions of the Bayview residents.


With the continuing development of the wireless technologies (Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, WiMax and Bluethooth), the study of wireless multimedia transmissions has gained lately more attention. For example, the expectations of the company leaders on the growth of Wi-Fi video traffic has updated the lines of research on the standard IEEE 802.11e introduced to provide QoS (Quality of Service) to WLAN (Wireless LAN ) networks. In this paper we updated with greater accuracy, using other resources and the experience gained since the emergence of the standard, the work carried out previously on the quantitative impact of each EDCA (Enhanced Distributed Channel Access) parameter on the overall performance of the mechanisms MAC. A quantitative analysis of the optimizations that can be achieved has been performed by simulation. We use a node model EDCA 802.11e with the tool Mobius of the University of Illinois, which supports an extension of SPN (Stochastic Petri Networks), known as HSAN (Hierarchical Stochastic Activity Networks), what favors the contrast with other tools or mathematical resources. We use a realistic scenario formed by Wi-Fi stations with the capacity to transmit voice, video and best effort traffic. The results show that the default setting of EDCA parameters is not optimal, and that with an appropriate selection, very significant improvements can be obtained.


In this paper, we propose a new novel polling-based medium access control protocol, named UPCF (Unified Point Coordination Function), to provide power conservation and quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees for multimedia applications over wireless local area networks. Specifically, UPCF has the following attractive features. First, it supports multiple priority levels and guarantees that high-priority stations always join the polling list earlier than low-priority stations. Second, it provides fast reservation scheme such that associated stations with real-time traffic can get on the polling list in bounded time. Third, it employs dynamic channel time allocation scheme to support CBR/VBR transportation and provide per-flow probabilistic bandwidth assurance. Fourth, it employs the power management techniques to let mobile stations save as much energy as possible. Fifth, it adopts the mobile-assisted admission control technique such that the point coordinator can admit as many newly flows as possible while not violating QoS guarantees made to already-admitted flows. The performance of UPCF is evaluated through both analysis and simulations. Simulation results do confirm that, as compared with the PCF in IEEE 802.11, UPCF not only provides higher goodput and energy throughput, but also achieves lower power consumption and frame loss due to delay expiry. Last but not least, we expect that UPCF can pass the current Wi-Fi certification and may coexist with the upcoming IEEE 802.11e standard


Although ecological restoration generally succeeds in increasing physical heterogeneity, many projects fail to enhance biota. Researchers have suggested several possible explanations, including insufficient restoration intensity, or time-lags in ecological responses that prevent detection of significant changes in short-term monitoring programs. This study aims to evaluate whether benthic macroinvertebrate communities responded to an expanded set of stream restoration measures within a study period of one to five years after completion of the restoration project. We studied 10 forest streams in northern Sweden that were channelized in the past for timber floating. Managers subjected six of these streams to habitat restoration, on each of these we selected two reaches, located in close proximity but differing in restoration intensity. In "basic" restored reaches, the restoration managers broke up the channelized banks and returned cobbles and small boulders to the main channel. In "enhanced" restoration reaches, they added additional large wood and boulders to reaches previously subjected to basic restoration, and rehabilitated gravel beds. The remaining four streams were not restored, and thus represent the baseline impacted (channelized) condition. We surveyed stream benthic assemblages before the enhanced restoration (year 2010) and three times afterward between 2011 and 2015. Five years after restoration, macroinvertebrate assemblages at the enhanced restored reaches were more differentiated from channelized conditions than those at basic-restored reaches. This reflected increased relative abundances of the insect orders Ephemeroptera and Trichoptera and the bivalve molluscs Sphaeriidae and decreased relative abundances of Chironomidae (Diptera). Analysis of functional traits provided further insights on the mechanistic explanations driving the recovery, e.g., indicating that the augmented channel retention capacity at enhanced restored reaches favored taxa adapted to slow flow conditions and more effectively retained passive aquatic dispersers. The increased restoration intensity in enhanced restored reaches has resulted in shifts in the composition of benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages, including increases in more sensitive taxa. These shifts became fully apparent five years after the enhanced restoration. Our results emphasize the value of longer-term monitoring to assess ecological responses following restoration, and of undertaking additional restoration as a valuable management option for previously restored sites that failed to achieve biotic recovery.


Things I Don't Want to Know is Deborah Levy's sparkling response to Orwell's Why I Write. 'Things I Don't Want to Know' is a unique response to George Orwell from one of our most vital contemporary writers. Taking Orwell's famous list of motives for writing as the jumping-off point for a sequence of thrilling reflections on the writing life, this is a perfect companion not just to Orwell's essay, but also to Levy's own, essential oeuvre. "In her powerful rejoinder to Orwell, Deborah Levy responds to his proposed motives for writing - 'sheer egoism', 'aesthetic enthusiasm', 'historical impulse' and 'political purpose' - with illuminating moments of autobiography. A vivid, striking account of a writer's life, which feminises and personalises Orwell's blunt assertions". (Spectator). "An up-to-date version of 'A Room of One's Own'...I suspect it will be quoted for many years to come". (Irish Examiner). "Levy's strength is her originality of thought and expression". (Jeanette Winterson). Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she is the author of numerous highly praised books including The Unloved, Swallowing Geography and Beautiful Mutants, all of which are now published by Penguin. Her novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards and 2013 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize.


ABSTRACT Problem: Early onset, prevalence, and predictors of substance use – tobacco, alcohol-drinking, alcohol-drunkenness, and drugs – were studied in 13 and 14-year-old boys and girls in Sweden. Methods: Self-reported data in four communities were used (n = 1,716). A large set of psychological and social factors were tried as predictors of early onset use (n = 1,459). Results: There were few gender differences and low prevalence. Primary predictor for early onset in tobacco use was availability; perceived parental approval for alcohol use, and delinquent behaviors for alcohol-drunkenness and drug use. Conclusions: Individual behavioral factors and parental norms seem to be most important in this age.


Philosophical analyses of causation take many forms but one major difficulty they all aim to address is that of the spatiotemporal continuity between causes and their effects. Bertrand Russell in 1913 brought the problem to its most transparent form and made it a case against the notion of causation in physics. The issue highlighted in Russell's argument is that of temporal contiguity between cause and effect. This tension arises from the imposition of a spectrum of discrete events occupying spacetime points upon a background of spacetime continuum. An immediate and natural solution is to superpose instead spatiotemporally continuous entities, or processes, on the spacetime continuum. This is indeed the process view of physical causation advocated by Wesley Salmon and Phil Dowe. This view takes the continuous trajectories of physical objects (worldlines) as the causal connection whereby causal influences in the form of conserved quantities are transported amongst events. Because of their reliance on spatiotemporal continuity, these theories have difficulty when confronted with the discontinuous processes in the quantum domain. This thesis is concerned with process theories. It has two parts. The first part introduces and criticizes these theories, which leads to my proposal of the History Conserved Quantity Theory with Transmission. The second part considers the extension of the idea of causal processes to quantum physics. I show how a probability distribution generated by the Schrodinger wavefunction can be regarded as a conserved quantity that makes the spacetime evolution of the wavefunction a quantum causal process. However, there are conceptual problems in the interpretation of the wavefunction, chiefly to do, as I shall argue, with the difference in the behaviours of probabilistic potentials between quantum and classical physics. I propose in the final chapter, the Feynman Path Integral formulation of quantum mechanics (with the Feynman histories) as an alternative approach to incorporating the probabilistic potentials in quantum physics. This account of how to introduce causal processes in quantum mechanics fares better, I claim, than the previous one in dealing with the situational aspect of quantum phenomena that requires the consideration of events at more than one time.


Between February 13 and March 19 1939 the "E.W. Scripps", research vessel of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, occupied 53 oceanographic stations in the Gulf of California. The observations of temperature, salinity and oxygen content, which at every station were taken at a series of depths, suggested the existence of internal waves with amplitudes as large as one tenth the depth of the Gulf. Waves generally can be classified into short and long waves and both groups comprise surface and internal waves, with frequencies corresponding to free or forced oscillations, and of the standing or progressive wave types. Those under consideration are of the "long, internal, free, standing wave" type, perhaps the least known of the sixteen possible combinations. It is the object of this paper to present a discussion of these waves from both an observational and theoretical point of view and to compare the results. The bottom topography of the Gulf is quite complicated but the average depth remains nearly constant to a considerable distance from the entrance and decreases then regularly. We know qualitatively that velocity of propagation decreases with decreasing depth. With
this in mind we first find that all observations can
be combined to a consistent picture from which we obtain
the period of oscillation and the wavelengths. A theoretical treatment of the outer portion of the Gulf, applying FJELDSTAD's theory for internal waves at constant depth (1) yields results in good agreement with those indicated by observation. For the inner portion of the Gulf a general theory for internal waves in a basin of non-constant depth is developed and applied. FJELDSTAD's theory is also expanded to include the case of a horizontal density gradient. The results of the theory, applied to the Gulf of California, compare favorably to those obtained by the observational approach.


To maximize long term profits, companies and their managers must focus more on win/win collaboration with business partners rather than using coercion and adversarial tactics to force compliance. Stallkamp pioneered new strategies for collaboration as President of Chrysler Corporation. His breakthrough strategy (SCORE--Supplier Cost Reduction Effort)turned Chrysler around andi¾ into the world's most profitable automaker. Organizations ranging from Dell Computer to the U.S. Air Force are now profiting from the lessons they learned from Chrysler. Stallkamp offers a complete blueprint for deploying strategic collaboration with suppliers, customers, and employees. Learn how Stallkamp overcame the pitfalls and cultural obstacles.i¾ Stallkamp reveals detailed metrics that demonstrate the remarkable cost and quality improvements strategic collaboration makes possible. Stallkamp's proven techniques address strategy, communication, leadership, measurement, information sharing, responsibility sharing, and more. Simply put, this is everythingi¾ needed to establish collaborative relationships that drive unprecedented business value.


The influence of the probe size and geometry on the quality offast-response measurements in turbomachines has been experimentally investigated. For investigations in the static domain (time-independent flows) probes were calibrated in two continuously operating wind tunnels in the range 0.2 < M < 1.2. For dynamic calibrations in time-variant flows model experiments in water (0.025 < k < 0.4, reduced frequency) were performed. Aerodynamic characteristics were determined for a great number of probe geometries, such as circular cylinders and wedge-type probes with varied apex angles, locations of the sensing holes, and leading edge shapes. The experiments comprised investigations in tolerance ranges for prismatic total pressure probes, yaw angle sensitivity, yaw angle, and Mach number effects on calibration and influence of dynamic yaw angle fluctuation on probe characteristics. As a result of the experiments errors due to static and dynamic aerodynamic effects could be quantified. The majority of the errors arising during measurements in turbomachines can be directly related to the probe size. An important number of these errors are systematic and can be analytically modeled and hence their influence corrected. In fluctuating flows the most severe measurement errors, which often may exceed the quantity of interest, are due to dynamic stall effects. This phenomenon, which is of transient nature and cannot be corrected, is typical for sharp wedge probes, but is not present with circular cylinders, and the effects are much smaller with very blunt wedges.


"Cultures of Democracy," a special issue of "Public Culture," proposes that democratic strategies and practices pursued by different countries, and the relative successes of those strategies and practices, are deeply affected by the countries' cultures, histories, and reception of, or resistance to, modernity. The collection suggests that a commitment to normative models of democracy prevents recognition of democratic practices in societies not usually seen as democratic or proto-democratic from a Western vantage point. Offering accounts of practices of democracy in Egypt, Yemen, Argentina, and India, these cultural theorists--drawing on work in anthropology, political theory, and postcolonial studies--revise notions of what might be regarded as a democratic practice. The essays look at examples of democracy in a variety of spheres. One examines how the chewing of khat leaves in public gatherings in Yemen acts as a democratic practice by creating spontaneous forums for political discussion. Another considers the events of the 2003 municipal elections in Buenos Aires, when the center Right secured a record number of votes from an electorate jaded by political corruption by forming strategic alliances with local football clubs, ultimately leading to the election of the president of one popular club. And another essay explores the Indian government's reaction when the political methods used to achieve the nation's independence--defiance of the law, hunger strikes, demonstrations, and the destruction of public property--were used to challenge the government in the postcolonial period. Taken as a whole, the essays argue that democracy might be productively viewed as a cultural system inclusive of many cultures of democracy. "Contributors." Arjun Appadurai, Craig Calhoun, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Jean Comaroff, Carlos Forment, Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, Claudio Lomnitz, Manar Shorbagy, Charles Taylor, Lisa Wedeen


Jacques Ranciere writes in the Le spectateur emancipe, 'the relation between art and poltics is not a passage from fiction to reality, but a relation between two ways of making fiction'. [1]

In this first project by Fictional Museum the artists create an installation of suitcases in the CAB atrium in response to reading Bourriaud's 'Precarious Constructions'.(2) The installation responds to issues of meaning, movement, transition and instability. Bourriaud claims the conceptual and material precariousness of art should be associated with a new ethical and aesthetic value. The 'real' of contemporary art is situated in its ability to speak of difference; Bourriaud states the lack of a homogenized reality represents a fundamental instability in the world that also reflects a general state of aesthetics.
Fictional Museum is a 'fluid artist collective', composed of postgraduate students, academics and AA2A. Fictional Museum meet regularly to discuss art and research, please contact the School Research Office for more details.

CAB Atrium

Private View Friday 2nd July 5.30pm

Monday 5th July to Thursday 8th July 10am to 5.00pm

Tuesday 6th July 'Breakfast Viewing' 9.15am (coffee + croissant)


We present a specification and implementation of an ISDN-related specification in the formal description technique LOTOS. The purpose of this work has been twofold. Firstly, we confirm the applicability of using LOTOS to specify telephony applications beyond Plain Old Telephony Systems (POTS). Secondly we have semi- automatically generated executable code from our LOTOS specification. This code has been used to run a small telephone exchange, thus demonstrating the potential use of LOTOS as a rapid prototyping language.


"Obesity in Europe is rising. This paper investigates the economic rationales for public intervention to control obesity. We present new empirical evidence showing that family background is related to obesity among young European adults. This evidence provides a strong basis for intervention on equity grounds, particularly targeted towards children. The case for intervention on efficiency grounds is less clear-cut and in most cases the evidence is relatively weak. We find insufficient evidence that information deficiencies are important, as the majority of Europeans appear to be aware of the bad consequences of obesity on health. We also find that the potential health insurance externality -- non-obese effectively subsidizing obese individuals -- is small. In support of policy intervention, we show that there are product and labour market imperfections. Obese employees earn less than the non-obese. We also find that there is a remarkably high proportion of individuals with self-control problems, who fail to stick to their self-declared weight-related plans. Regulations that affect fast food advertisements and the location and access to fast food vending machines and establishments may help these individuals in controlling their weight." Copyright (c) CEPR, CES, MSH, 2009.


Emergency services in Australia are struggling to hold onto their volunteer staff. In New South Wales, for example, only half of the 1,700 volunteers who join the State Emergency Service are still active members a year later. In Western Australia, the overall yearly turnover is 12-18% and rising. This represents a serious drain on the sector. Precise volunteer numbers are not always collated, but we estimate that more than 240,000 emergency service volunteers across Australia help to protect regional, rural and remote communities where the sprawling areas make it impractical to rely solely on career emergency workers. Disciplines Business Publication Details Forner, V., Jones, M. L. & Berry, Y. J. (2017). How do we stop volunteer emergency service workers quitting?. The Conversation, April 4 1-4. This journal article is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/buspapers/1140


Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. . . . Cotton's family tree tells the story of several generations of black men who were born in the United States but who were denied the most basic freedom that democracy promises—the freedom to vote for those who will make the rules and laws that govern one's life. Cotton's greatgreat-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Ku Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation. His father was barred from voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Jarvious Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.1


A supply network is complex as buyer-supplier organizations are embedded in multiple relationships and exchanges. The complexity complicates the management of the supply network. Social network scholars have argued that understanding a network also concern the deliberation of the embeddedness aspects of organizations in the network. Structural embeddedness theorists have argued that the structural position resulting from the embeddedness in a complex network may actually present opportunities and constraints to the managers. Thus, what created the complexity may offers economic returns. Management of supply chain then requires a social network lens to improve understandings o supply network structural embeddedness. Hence, in this paper, using the social network research approach we investigate to what extent does the degree of involvement of buyersupplier organizations in the supply network are influence by the type of buyer-supplier relationships. The finding is hoped to illuminate the management strategy of the supply network and relationships.


In this workshop talks on discrete spectra, including Lieb-Thirring estimates and properties of resonances were presented. The connection between continuous and discrete spectra was discussed. Various characteristics of continuous spectra in the context of random or magnetic operators were investigated. The Liouville Theorem, the problem of absolute continuity, and the classical problem of homogenization for perodic operators were treated. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 35xx, 46xx, 47xx, 81xx . Introduction by the Organisers The goal of the workshop was to bring together specialists working in various branches of spectral theory with applications to solid state physics, superconductivity, quantum mechanics etc. The meeting was attended by more than 45 participants from Europe, Japan, Russia, South America and US. During the five days 26 talks were delivered. A special care was taken that apart from the recognized experts in the field, young participants also had an opportunity to speak about their results. The Wednesday morning session, preceding the traditional afternoon hike, consisted of talks of survey nature, which was appreciated by all. There were several major themes in the workshop. One was the study of discrete spectra, including Lieb-Thirring estimates, properties of resonances. A substantial number of talks was concerned with the connection between the continuous and discrete spectra. These include, in particular, the study of the so-called trace formulas. The investigation of various characteristics of the continuous spectra (e.g. density of states, spectral shift function) was featured in a number of talks in the 2840 Oberwolfach Report 53/2004 context of random or magnetic operators. A variety of new results were also reported on the theory of periodic operators. They concerned the Liouville Theorem, the problem of absolute continuity, and the classical problem of homogenization. A relatively low number of talks gave the participants an opportunity for discussions in small groups outside the scheduled lecture time. It is hoped that these contacts will result in further collaboration. It is our pleasure to thank the administration and staff of the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach for creating comfortable and genuinely inspiring atmosphere, which facilitated the work of the organisers and contributed to the success of the workshop.


Aim/Purpose To investigate anxiety in online courses and its relationship with overall online courses satisfaction as it may vary with online courses experience. Background Delivering online courses in higher education institutions continue to increase. Anxieties seem to be persistent. Although there are many technology and internet related anxieties studies, online courses anxieties are relatively scarce. The cause for this anxiety has not been resolved or addressed sufficiently. This study takes part in this quest. Methodology A fully online course with not face to face interaction was used for the study. A survey methodology approach was used for the anxiety scale measurements. Over 1400 students participated in the survey. Contribution Students taking online courses continue to be challenged with anxieties. Their experiences (number of courses taken) with online courses may influence their anxieties and satisfaction levels, but that has not been studies. We contribute to this body of literature. Findings One third of students reported to continue to experience anxiety while taking their online courses. The effect of their anxieties on their satisfaction does not seem to be influenced by their online course experience. Recommendations for Practitioners Focus on the various elements that may influence anxieties and satisfaction of students while taking courses. For IT designers, interface and point of interactions may be the aspect to pay attention to, while professors would need to consider course pedagogy and its interaction within the IT learning environment. The Persistence of Anxiety Experienced by New Generation in Online Learning 80 Recommendation for Researchers Anxiety in online learning should take front stage as it represents an underlying stream of influence on all research in the field. Further study of the effect of online course experience on satisfaction and anxiety is necessary. Impact on Society Anxiety in learning has many detrimental effects that last a student's career and personality over their entire life. The impact of reducing anxieties while online learning is significant and tangible especially that online learning is at its initial stages of an exponential growth and will change the world sooner than later. Future Research Pedagogy for efficient and effective online courses to reduce anxieties and increase satisfaction.


In this decade, there are many students have low motivation in learning mathematic, especially in studying prism. It influenced the students' participation and makes the students difficult to understand the material. So, it becomes the factor to get a good achievement. This also appears because the students feel that studying mathematic is the heavy burden and there is no interested thing in studying activities. Moreover, it is supported by the teacher who does not have an interesting teaching method. Because of these cases, the writer wants to do a treatment to give a solution for it. It is done by communicating mathematic well by changing the learning method and knowing the students' learning strategies. In this study, the writer use PAKEM method (active, creative, effective and interesting learning) through investigation method. Here, the studying topics were found by the learners then they must present in front of class.
In active, creative, effective and interesting learning (PAKEM) is done to create a learning environment which is giving the learners skill, knowledge, and attitude for their future. It means that through PAKEM method the students can be active in using and demonstrating their ideas. So, they can find the solution in their learning problems and motivate them in learning activities.
The problems of this study were how does PAKEM done through investigation model, how the students' responds toward PAKEM through investigation model, how the students' achievement in learning Bangun Ruang by implementing PAKEM method through investigation model in class IX SMP I Bluto Sumenep.
This study used qualitative descriptive approach. The data were collected by knowing the result PAKEM method through investigation model, questionnaire, and students' achievement which was known by the students' final score. The population of this study was the students of class IX
D SMPN I Bluto Sumenep which consist of 37 students.
The result of this study were PAKEM method through investigation model could be done well in SMPN I Bluto Sumenep, the students' responds toward PAKEM method through investigation model was good and can be concluded that PAKEM method through investigation model was effective. The students' achievements (37 students) were 7 students had low achievement and 30 students had good result. It means that the learning process was done well about 81.8% or is
based on already designed criteria 75%.


In a previous oddball task study, it was shown that the inclusion of electrophysiology (EEG), that is, single-trial P3 ERP parameters, in the analysis of fMRI responses can detect activation that is not apparent with conventional fMRI data modeling strategies [Warbrick, T., Mobascher, A., Brinkmeyer, J., Musso, F., Richter, N., Stoecker, T., et al. Single-trial P3 amplitude and latency informed event-related fMRI models yield different BOLD response patterns to a target detection task. Neuroimage, 47, 1532–1544, 2009]. Given that P3 is modulated by nicotine, including P3 parameters in the fMRI analysis might provide additional information about nicotine effects on brain function. A 1-mg nasal nicotine spray (0.5 mg each nostril) or placebo (pepper) spray was administered in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject, randomized, cross-over design. Simultaneous EEG-fMRI and behavioral data were recorded from 19 current smokers in response to an oddball-type visual choice RT task. Conventional general linear model analysis and single-trial P3 amplitude informed general linear model analysis of the fMRI data were performed. Comparing the nicotine with the placebo condition, reduced RTs in the nicotine condition were related to decreased BOLD responses in the conventional analysis encompassing the superior parietal lobule, the precuneus, and the lateral occipital cortex. On the other hand, reduced RTs were related to increased BOLD responses in the precentral and postcentral gyri, and ACC in the EEG-informed fMRI analysis. Our results show how integrated analyses of simultaneous EEG-fMRI data can be used to detect nicotine effects that would not have been revealed through conventional analysis of either measure in isolation. This emphasizes the significance of applying multimodal imaging methods to pharmacoimaging.


The US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held a highly publicized hearing on May 21, 2013 to discuss Apple, Inc.'s international tax planning. As the first expert witness, I had a ring-side seat to the hearing and Apple's international tax planning. One purpose of this article is to clearly identify the two key tax policy issues that need to be addressed by policymakers both in the US and internationally. Because the discussion at the hearing was very U.S. centric, these two issues may have been lost in the rhetoric.• Should the US and the rest of the world allow Apple to record approximately two-thirds of its global income in an Irish entity that has few or no employees and little or no real activity?• Assuming the answer is "no", where should the income be recorded? Should it be the US, other countries, or some combination?Another purpose is to discuss arguments made at the hearing by Apple and Sen. Johnson to support Apple's allocation of only 30% of its global income to the US. These arguments were not fully explored during the hearing and warrant additional discussion. In short, Apple should not be able to argue one thing to support its US income allocation and then argue something different for allocating income to foreign countries.Finally, the article briefly discusses several items, including: Apple's effective tax rate, and whether they used tax gimmicks.


The superimposition of Barrovian-type metamorphism on low-pressure contact aureoles in magmatic arcs is subject to the kinetic constraints of temperature and influx of H 2 O and may be cryptically developed or not at all. The spatial distribution of detectable overprint will reflect these kinetic factors rather than the geometry of the imposed load. Many of the features believed indicative of magma loading, including apparent steep baric gradients, may be produced in this way. On the basis of adding areas of cryptic metamorphism to the area of obvious Barrovian overprint on the northeast side of the Mount Stuart batholith, we conclude that loading 2–3 m.y. after emplacement was probably much more extensive (sheetlike) than believed previously.


Drawing on ethnographic observations in Lao markets and bazaars, this article proposes a new and experimental framework for the analysis of multi-ethnic trading. It explores bazaars and trade as sites of the (re-)production of ethnicity through the perspective of gift exchange theory. On markets, transcultural differences can be identified and stabilized through the exchange of goods and money. This draws attention to the role of trade items as foci – and perhaps even as non-human agents – in the emergence of ethnicity and other forms of local identity. The value of items' specific origins is thus linked to social structure. This helps us to see how the shaping of group identity can be better understood by considering how the goods they bring to market carry with them some features of the gift.


We introduce a weakening of standard game-theoretic dominance conditions, called δ-dominance, which enables more aggressive pruning of candidate strategies at the cost of solution accuracy. Equilibria of a game obtained by eliminating a δ-dominated strategy are guaranteed to be approximate equilibria of the original game, with degree of approximation bounded by the dominance parameter, δ. We can apply elimination of δ-dominated strategies iteratively, but the δ for which a strategy may be eliminated depends on prior eliminations. We discuss implications of this order independence, and propose greedy heuristics for determining a sequence of eliminations to reduce the game as far as possible while keeping down costs. A case study analysis of an empirical 2-player game serves to illustrate the technique, and demonstrate the utility of weaker-than-weak dominance pruning.


Good coupling of lower hybrid (LH) waves has been demonstrated in different H-mode scenarios in JET, at high triangularity (δ ∼ 0.4) and at large distance between the last closed flux surface and the LH launcher (up to 15 cm). Local gas injection of D2 in the region magnetically connected to the LH launcher is used for increasing the local density in the scrape-off layer (SOL). Reciprocating Langmuir probe measurements magnetically connected to the LH launcher indicate that the electron density profile flattens in the far SOL during gas injection and LH power application. Some degradation in normalized H-mode confinement, as given by the H98(y,2)-factor, could be observed at high gas injection rates in these scenarios, but this was rather due to total gas injection and not specifically to the local gas puffing used for LH coupling. Furthermore, experiments carried out in L-mode plasmas in order to evaluate the effect on the LH current drive efficiency, when using local gas injection to improve the coupling, indicate only a small degradation (ΔILH/ILH ∼ 15%). This effect is largely compensated by the improvement in coupling and thus increase in coupled power when using gas puffing.


Abstract. Tungsten carbide-cobalt (WC-Co) composite is a difficult-to-machine material owing to its excellent strength and hardness at elevated temperature. Wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) is a best alternative for machining of WC-Co composite into intricate and complex shapes. Efficient machining of WC-Co composite on WEDM is a challenging task since it involves large numbers of parameters. Therefore, in present work, experimental investigation has been carried out to determine the influence of important WEDM parameters on machining performance of WC-Co composite. Response surface methodology, which is a collection of mathematical and experimental techniques, was utilised to obtain the experimental data. Using face-centered central composite design, experiments were conducted to investigate and correlate the four input parameters: pulse-on time, pulse-off time, servo voltage and wire feed for three output performance characteristics – cutting speed (CS), surface roughness (SR) and radial overcut (RoC). Using analysis of variance on experimental data, quadratic vs. two-factor interaction (2FI) models have been suggested for CS and RoC while two-factor interaction (2FI) has been proposed for SR. Using these mathematical models, optimal parameters can be determined easily for desired performance characteristics, and hence a trade-off can be made among different performance characteristics.


Objectives: To evaluate the neural correlates of attention and working memory deficits in patients with HIV-1. Method: fMRI was used to evaluate brain activity in 11 patients with HIV and 11 age-, sex-, education-, and handedness-matched seronegative subjects, while performing a battery of tasks that required different levels of attention for working memory. Results: Patients with HIV showed greater brain activation (blood oxygenation level dependent signal changes) in some regions compared with control subjects while performing the same tasks. For the simpler tasks, patients with HIV showed greater activation in the parietal regions. However, with more difficult tasks, patients with HIV showed greater activation additionally in the frontal lobes. Reaction times during these tasks were slower but accuracy was similar in the patients with HIV compared with control subjects. Conclusion: Injury to the neural substrate caused by HIV infection may necessitate greater attentional modulation of the neural circuits, hence a greater use of the brain reserve; additional activation of the frontal lobes is required to perform the more complex tasks. The task-dependent increased frontal activation in patients with HIV suggests that the neural correlate of attentional deficits may be excessive attentional modulation as a result of frontostriatal brain injury.


Polyimide-PEO copolymers ("PEO" signifies polyethylene oxide) that have branched rod-coil molecular structures and that can be cured into film form at room temperature have been invented for use as gel electrolytes for lithium-ion electric-power cells. These copolymers offer an alternative to previously patented branched rod-coil polyimides that have been considered for use as polymer electrolytes and that must be cured at a temperature of 200 °C. In order to obtain sufficient conductivity for lithium ions in practical applications at and below room temperature, it is necessary to imbibe such a polymer with a suitable carbonate solvent or ionic liquid, but the high-temperature cure makes it impossible to incorporate and retain such a liquid within the polymer molecular framework. By eliminating the high-temperature cure, the present invention makes it possible to incorporate the required liquid. The curing of a polyimide-PEO copolymer according to the invention results in formation of a gel network that is capable of conducting lithium ions. The PEO molecular segments provide the lithium-ion conductivity, while the imide segments and branching provide dimensional stability. The network can hold as much as four times its own weight of liquid while maintaining a high degree of dimensional stability. The liquid can aid significantly in the conduction of lithium ions, and in some circumstances, can increase cell cycle life. Electrolytes have been prepared that contain no volatile components, have a potential stability window of >4.5 V, and have exhibited stable Galvanic cycling between lithium metal electrodes in a coin cell for over 1,000 hours at 60 °C and 0.25 mA/cm2 current density. The copolymer is synthesized in the following process (see figure): 1. A PEO oligomer that is terminated with primary aliphatic amines on both ends is reacted with a dianhydride to make a polyamide-acid prepolymer. The reaction takes place in a solvent, and the stoichiometry of the oligomer and the dianhydride is adjusted so that the resulting prepolymer is a linear polymer capped with amines on both ends. The solvent must be carefully chosen to solubilize the prepolymer, have a boiling temperature preferably between 150 and 200 °C, and to be inert to lithium metal and other cell ingredients. 2. The polyamide-acid prepolymer is imidized in solution. The water generated in the imidization reaction is removed by azeotropic distillation. 3. The appropriate additives (e.g., a lithium salt and a carbonate solvent) are dissolved in the polymer solution. A trifunctional molecule that reacts with the amine end caps at ambient temperatures to form a gel is then added to the solution. The gelation time and the properties of the resulting film can be adjusted by changing the length of the polymer chains. The properties of the film can also be adRoom-Temperature-Cured Copolymers for Lithium Battery Gel Electrolytes Room-temperature curing offers an important advantage in room-temperature functionality. John H. Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio


The climate history of the Sahara desert during recent millennia is obscured by the near absence of natural climate archives, hampering insight in the relative importance of southerly (tropical) and northerly (midlatitude) weather systems at submillennial time scales. A new lake sediment record from Ounianga Serir oasis in northern Chad, spanning the Late Holocene without interruption, confirms that immediately before ca 4200 years ago, the Sahara experienced an episode of hyperaridity even more extreme than today's desert climate. The hypersaline terminal lake which formed afterwards never desiccated during the late Holocene due to continuous inflow of fossil groundwater, yet its water balance was sensitive to temporal variation in local rainfall and lake surface evaporation. Our in-lake geochemical proxies show that, during the last 3000 years, century-scale hydroclimate variation in the central Sahara primarily tracked the intensity of the tropical West African monsoon, modulated at shorter time scales by weather patterns linked to shifts in midlatitude Atlantic Ocean circulation.


This research was inspired by two stereotypes: first, that older adults don't do computers – and certainly not the Internet and, secondly, that older adults don't do sex – they are asexual. The results clearly show these stereotypes to be flawed. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted via synchronous computer-mediated-communication (private chat). The sample consisted of older adults (61 – 85 years) who had all used the Internet to meet potential romantic partners, either through their involvement in online discussion groups or via online dating sites. For the most part, the relationships described were meaningful, intimate and long-lasting. The majority were involved in ongoing sexual activity with their partners, and for some, cyber-sex was or had been an integral part of their relationships. Additionally, a proportion enjoyed flirting online with others and some were also involved in extra-dyadic relationships; indicating that sex and intimacy outside of primary, committed relationships was just as compelling an activity for these older adults as for younger Internet users.


The current study attempts to analyse the learners' right to freedom in education in order to determine the nature and content of their education. This analysis will be in relation to the philosophy of education in Egypt to improve the efficiency of the educational system. In this sense the aims of the study can be determined as follows: first to propose a theoretical framework of freedom in education in relation to its meaning, conditions, restrictions and
value, secondly, to develop this theoretical framework of education based on freedom so that it suits Egyptian society, can improve the efficiency of the educational system through the idea of freedom, and thirdly, to identify the difficulties and challenges that might
confront the claim to freedom in education in Egypt.

To achieve these aims the study contains seven chapters, an introduction, a conclusion and appendix that are necessary to achieve its aims and answer its questions. The introduction discusses the general outline of the study and the major issues, questions, aims, methodology and plan of the study. The main aim of chapter one is to analyse the concept of freedom in western and Islamic thought to build a theoretical framework of the meaning of freedom, its conditions and value, which is necessary and important to construct a theoretical framework of the meaning, conditions and value of freedom in education for
learners at school level. Chapter two aims to construct a theoretical framework of freedom in education that will depend on the analysis of the concept of freedom made in chapter one. This analysis will deal with the implications of freedom in education with respect to its conditions, restrictions and value in education. Through this analysis, chapter two aims also to analyse and examine the learners' rights to be free regarding their education. To have a
complete theoretical framework of freedom in education, chapter three discusses other implications with respect to restrictions which might limit learners' freedom by being
subject to state authority.

Chapter four investigates and analyses freedom in educational theory and practice in the history of Egypt from 1805 to 1991, whereas chapter five focuses on the period from 1992 to 2000. Following the analysis of the concept of freedom and its implications in education that will be made in the first five chapters, it would be sensible to construct a framework of educational theory based on freedom that, on one hand, should suite the Egyptian context in chapter six, on the other hand, that guarantees a range of freedom that allows learners and
society derive benefit from its value in education. Having proposed a framework of a theory of education based on freedom that suits the Egyptian context to improve the
efficiency of its educational system chapter seven will discover and examine the conditions and difficulties which need to be considered for the successful implementation of freedom in education. Also, the study will attempt to give some suggestions that might help to reduce the gap between the educational situation, its circumstances and the conditions that must be satisfied for the successful implementation of freedom in education.


BACKGROUND
Video-recorded consultations are widely used for research in general practice. Recently, video recordings have begun to be used for the purposes of general practitioner (GP) registrar assessment. It is unknown, however, whether consultations in which patients withhold consent for recording differ from those that are recorded.

AIM
To compare clinical problems and demographic characteristics of adult patients who consent to the video recording of consultations with those who withhold consent.

METHOD
This was prospective study of 538 adult patients consulting 42 GPs, based in practices throughout Leicestershire. Each patient attended a surgery session with one of the 42 GPs between April 1995 and March 1996. Clinical presentations and demographic characteristics of patients consenting and withholding consent to the video recording of their consultations were compared. GPs' perceptions of whether patients in these two groups were distressed/upset or embarrassed were also compared.

RESULTS
A total of 85.9% (462/538) of adults consented to video recording, and 14.1% (76/538) withheld consent. Multiple logistic regression revealed that patients who presented with a mental health problem were more likely to withhold consent to recording (odds ratio 2.5, 95% confidence interval 1.4-4.6). Younger patients were also more likely to withhold consent to video recording. Additionally, where patients' consent was withheld, GPs perceived patients to be more distressed or embarrassed.

CONCLUSION
Younger patients and those suffering from mental health problems are more likely than others to withhold consent to being video recorded for research purposes in general practice. The implications of this study for the assessment of registrar GPs using video-recorded consultations are discussed.


Globalized competition and customer needs forced construction companies to measure their performance beyond the financial measures such as profitability, turnover, etc. As qualitative determinants were added to measurement systems, their investigation and evaluation became a major area of research. In this study, the impact of "resources and capabilities," "strategic decisions," "project management competencies," and "strength of relationships with other parties" on "company performance" was investigated. A question- naire survey was administered to 73 Turkish contractors and the results of the survey were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that, as expected, resources and capabilities and strategic decisions have an important and direct impact on company performance, whereas project management competencies and strength of relationships with other parties impact company performance only indirectly, through their impact on companies' resources and capabilities and strategic decisions. DOI: 10.1061/ASCE0742-597X201026:19 CE Database subject headings: Construction management; Measurement; Resource management; Productivity. Author keywords: Company performance measurement; Resources and capabilities; Project management competencies; Strategic decisions.


In recent years, hyperspectral cameras have been appearing in many applications that need more information than what conventional color cameras can provide. A hyperspectral camera is able to capture data ranging in wavelengths from the visible spectrum all the way into the infrared. In this way, it is able to 'see' hundreds of colors, much more than the human eye or any standard camera that typically uses only 3 spectral values (corresponding to the standard red, green, and blue colors). Due to the large amount of data that these cameras can generate at increasingly faster frame rates, conventional computers are not able to perform all the necessary processing in real-time. Because of this limitation, a new system is needed to perform the image processing. This master's thesis is meant to contribute to the development of a smart camera targeted for hyperspectral image processing using a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and object sorting with a prototype waterfall system. Through the use of a Hardware Description Language (HDL), a currently used image processing algorithm has been implemented to classify pixels. Additionally, design and test of an architecture for full object classification has been developed for the FPGA. High-speed transceivers are used to move data between multiple FPGA development boards. When paired with a hyperspectral camera and a monochrome line scan camera, this prototype system is capable of scanning objects in freefall and deciding within milliseconds whether or not to keep the object. This decision will dictate the action of air jets to displace unwanted objects. This full system is potentially of interest to small businesses or farms as it will enable farmers to perform their own premium bulk sorting in a cost effective manner.


It has been accepted worldwide that environmental decay, like pollution, the greenhouse effect, or even traffic congestion, has been a result of the work produced to improve the quality of life, thus producing waste measured by entropy in the thermodynamic sense. The author proposes the use of optimal control theory to optimize the effects of human intervention in societal, ecological, economic, environmental and other current problems of our modern society by minimizing the maximum global entropy that represents their decay. An analytic method is presented to demonstrate the reduction of the human participation.


A principal aim of systems biology is to develop in silico models of whole cells or cellular processes that explain and predict observable cellular phenotypes. Here, we use a model of a genome-scale reconstruction of the integrated metabolic and transcriptional regulatory networks for Escherichia coli, composed of 1,010 gene products, to assess the properties of all functional states computed in 15,580 different growth environments. The set of all functional states of the integrated network exhibits a discernable structure that can be visualized in 3-dimensional space, showing that the transcriptional regulatory network governing metabolism in E. coli responds primarily to the available electron acceptor and the presence of glucose as the carbon source. This result is consistent with recently published experimental data. The observation that a complex network composed of 1,010 genes is organized to achieve few dominant modes demonstrates the utility of the systems approach for consolidating large amounts of genome-scale molecular information about a genome and its regulation to elucidate an organism's preferred environments and functional capabilities.


This study examines the prospective economic effects of a reduction below the current baseline in defense outlays of $100 billion per year over 10 years. Several recent studies have attempted to estimate the supposedly adverse economic and employment effects of reductions in government spending generally, and defense outlays in particular. Such studies have tended to exaggerate the harmful effects of spending cuts and have ignored or understated the beneficial effects associated with redirecting resources to more productive uses. A reduction in defense consumption and investment shifts resources among economic sectors and thus has economic effects analogous to those caused by changes in demand and supply in any industry. The unemployment (or underemployment) of labor and other resources during the adjustment process can be politically significant but has only temporary economic effects; however painful for some, this process of resource reallocation is economically beneficial in the aggregate over time. Moreover, the data suggest strongly that the adverse effects of spending cuts would be small in the aggregate because defense spending is a small component of GDP (less than 5 percent), and because estimates of the multiplier effects of defense expenditures reported in the scholarly literature are relatively low. The reduction in defense spending—and thus in federal spending in total—would reduce as well the economic costs of the excess burden that the tax system imposes upon the economy, in the form of distortions that reduce aggregate output. A conservative estimate of that effect is 35 percent of the reduction in defense spending. Accordingly, a reduction in defense outlays of $100 billion per year can be predicted, conservatively, to reduce economic costs by a total of $135 billion per year. These potential savings in real resources are sufficiently large to justify a detailed analysis of U.S. national security needs and the outlays required to defend them. Economic Effects of Reductions in Defense Outlays


Climate-related risks to African agriculture are highly contextual. Climatic conditions are changing in diverse agro-ecological environments throughout Africa, and populations are being affected by, and responding to, these changes. The paper describes how climate change risks in African agriculture are mediated by multiple factors, ranging from the availability of physical resources through policy contexts to the role of culture. Consequently, support to adaptation needs to be complemented with research that can generate contextual information to inform adaptation policies, strategies, and measures. Interventions need to go beyond just technical fixes such as the development of new crop varieties, and must be based on an understanding of how different factors interact in a complex manner to drive risks and results in specific contexts to diverse outcomes.


The predict-then-optimize framework is fundamental in many practical settings: predict the unknown parameters of an optimization problem, and then solve the problem using the predicted values of the parameters. A natural loss function in this environment is to consider the cost of the decisions induced by the predicted parameters, in contrast to the prediction error of the parameters. This loss function was recently introduced in Elmachtoub and Grigas (2017), which called it the Smart Predict-then-Optimize (SPO) loss. Since the SPO loss is nonconvex and noncontinuous, standard results for deriving generalization bounds do not apply. In this work, we provide an assortment of generalization bounds for the SPO loss function. In particular, we derive bounds based on the Natarajan dimension that, in the case of a polyhedral feasible region, scale at most logarithmically in the number of extreme points, but, in the case of a general convex set, have poor dependence on the dimension. By exploiting the structure of the SPO loss function and an additional strong convexity assumption on the feasible region, we can dramatically improve the dependence on the dimension via an analysis and corresponding bounds that are akin to the margin guarantees in classification problems.


The analysis and interpretation of perturbative modulated electron cyclotron heating (MECH) discharges for power deposition localization using different diagnostics, such as electron cyclotron emission (ECE) and soft x-ray (SXR) measurements, are presented. In particular, the experimental determination of the MECH power deposition is investigated, which is a fundamental requirement, for example, for heat transport studies. The most important problem is related to the coupling between the MECH and the sawtooth activity of the plasma, which disturbs both ECE and SXR measurements. Several techniques have been adopted to circumvent this difficulty. In particular, the singular value decomposition (SVD) and the generalized singular value decomposition (GSVD) have been tested. However, both methods are incapable of treating the problem correctly, which leads to potential misinterpretation of the results. A new method based on system identification using the SVD (SI-SVD) is developed and applied. This method, within reasonable limits induced by the assumption of linearity, is capable of simultaneously separating the MECH from the sawtooth contributions to both ECE electron temperature measurements and SXR emission measurements. Such a method is in particular applied to a neutral beam injection (NBI) heated ASDEX Upgrade discharge in which MECH is added in order to analyse electron heat transport in a mostly ion-heated plasma. Since the NBI heating is also partly modulated with short pulses which coincide with the sawtooth crashes to improve their stability, both the MECH and the NBI deposition profiles are determined. Moreover, treating the signals with the SI-SVD procedure enables a study of the plasma dynamic response also at higher MECH harmonic numbers.


The problem reduction of an evolution modelling of the open Universe for conformally flat spacetime metric in Fock's form to an equivalent problem of a particle movement with an unit mass in a force field is demonstrated. The exact cosmological models filled with a substance and radiation in an approximation of the perfect fluid are found since the Friedman solution by means an introduction of set "mechanical" potentials. In the article the possibility of deriving from the Einstein equations exact cosmological solutions for the open Universe by reduction to the equivalent problem of a mass particle motion in the force field is considered. The cosmological model is filled by substance in an approximation of the perfect fluid with nonzero pressure, generally speaking. The metric of 4D space-time is taken in the Fock form as the metric conformal to the Minkowski metric. This metric has the dependence on one variable. A square of the variable is product of advanced and retarded times. The using of mechanical interpretation of the gravitation equations leads to a possibility of consideration of various mechanics force fields with the subsequent physical interpretation of the found exact cosmological solutions. First of all a movement of a free particle with an unit mass (a mechanical force equals to zero) is considered, i.e. the particle moves on inertia. The fourth degree of discovered law of movement is a conformal factor of the cosmological metric which is conformally flat. This case corresponds to the exact cosmological solution without pressure, coinciding with known the Friedman solution for the open Universe. After that the force field leading to uniformly decelerated motion of a particle is considered. The force potential is taken in the form of linear function. The tangent of a slope angle of the function curve coincides with particle acceleration. Such research leads to the exact cosmological solution asymptotically describing both an incoherent dust, and the ultrarelativistic substance which may be interpreted as an equilibrium radiation. Further a square-law function without a linear term and a constant value is taken as a force potential. Such potential can be interpreted as potential of the free oscillator. The solution of corresponding equation of motion is written down in the form of a cosine function with some initial phase related to the ratio between parameters which define dust-like and ultrarelativistic substance. This conclusion becomes obvious after concidering asymptotic behaviour of pressure and energy density. Besides, the series expansion of a root of the fourth degree from a conformal factor asymptoticly coincides with the law of uniformly decelerated motion in previous case that indicates its particular character.


Prohibitins comprise an evolutionarily conserved and ubiquitously expressed family of membrane proteins with poorly described functions. Large assemblies of PHB1 and PHB2 subunits are localized in the inner membrane of mitochondria, but various roles in other cellular compartments have also been proposed for both proteins. Here, we used conditional gene targeting of murine Phb2 to define cellular activities of prohibitins. Our experiments restrict the function of prohibitins to mitochondria and identify the processing of the dynamin-like GTPase OPA1, an essential component of the mitochondrial fusion machinery, as the central cellular process controlled by prohibitins. Deletion of Phb2 leads to the selective loss of long isoforms of OPA1. This results in an aberrant cristae morphogenesis and an impaired cellular proliferation and resistance toward apoptosis. Expression of a long OPA1 isoform in PHB2-deficient cells suppresses these defects, identifying impaired OPA1 processing as the primary cellular defect in the absence of prohibitins. Our results therefore assign an essential function for the formation of mitochondrial cristae to prohibitins and suggest a coupling of cell proliferation to mitochondrial morphogenesis.


The octagonal shrinkage and clustering algorithm for regression (OSCAR), equipped with the $\ell_1$-norm and a pair-wise $\ell_{\infty}$-norm regularizer, is a useful tool for feature selection and grouping in high-dimensional data analysis. The computational challenge posed by OSCAR, for high dimensional and/or large sample size data, has not yet been well resolved due to the non-smoothness and inseparability of the regularizer involved. In this paper, we successfully resolve this numerical challenge by proposing a sparse semismooth Newton-based augmented Lagrangian method to solve the more general SLOPE (the sorted L-one penalized estimation) model. By appropriately exploiting the inherent sparse and low-rank property of the generalized Jacobian of the semismooth Newton system in the augmented Lagrangian subproblem, we show how the computational complexity can be substantially reduced. Our algorithm presents a notable advantage in the high-dimensional statistical regression settings. Numerical experiments are conducted on real data sets, and the results demonstrate that our algorithm is far superior, in both speed and robustness, than the existing state-of-the-art algorithms based on first-order iterative schemes, including the widely used accelerated proximal gradient (APG) method and the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM).


While conventional wisdom holds that partisan bias in U.S. legislative elections results from intentional partisan and racial gerrymandering, we demonstrate that substantial bias can also emerge from patterns of human geography. We show that in many states, Democrats are inefficiently concentrated in large cities and smaller industrial agglomerations such that they can expect to win fewer than 50% of the seats when they win 50% of the votes. To measure this "unintentional gerrymandering," we use automated districting simulations based on precinct-level 2000 presidential election results in several states. Our results illustrate a strong relationship between the geographic concentration of Democratic voters and electoral bias favoring Republicans.


Even though the ebooks market has developed more slowly in France than in other countries, especially in northern America and northern Europe, the number of titles proposed is now increasing. The ebook production and distribution chain has been clarified, while major standard ebooks formats (EPUB, PDF) and metadata schemes (ONIX) have emerged. A growing number of French citizens are currently using ebooks to access knowledge, culture and entertainment. Being able to collect this new kind of resource in order to preserve it in the long term has thus become a major challenge for the national library of France.

In order to tackle this issue and to set up a complete ebook deposit workflow, the Bibliotheque nationale de France (National Library of France or BnF) benefits from its experience in managing digital documents (for its digital library, Gallica) and from its tradition of legal deposit. It also seeks to capitalise on the long-standing relationships it has built with the publishers and the ebooks distributor. However, the Library needs to deal with the dual nature of ebooks, which are on one hand digital documents, collected in the name of the internet legal deposit, and on the other hand a new form of a kind of document that has been acquired by the library for centuries.

This paper aims to present the questions that the BnF needed to answer when faced with the need of collecting ebooks, and the solution it is currently adopting. Technical implementation has just begun and the outcomes – a complete entry, cataloguing, access and preservation workflow – are expected at the end of 2014 or the beginning of 2015.