In mobile networks, about the Location Information is an important parameter. An increasing number of ad hoc networking protocols and location-aware services require that mobile nodes learn the position of their neighbors. However, such a process can be easily disrupted by adversarial nodes. In absence of a priori trusted nodes, the discovery and verification of neighbor positions presents challenges that have been scarcely investigated in the literature. In this paper, we address this open issue by proposing a fully distributed cooperative solution that is robust against independent and colluding adversaries, and can be impaired only by an overwhelming presence of adversaries. Results show that our protocol can thwart more than 99 percent of the attacks under the best possible conditions for the adversaries, with minimal false positive rates.


When the Light Goose Conservation Order (LGCO) was initiated there was considerable concern about potential for hunting to negatively impact non-target waterfowl species in the Rainwater Basin (RWB) of Nebraska. We evaluated the effects of hunting in regards to special regulations (hunting allowed four days a week, 16 wetlands closed to hunting) for non-target waterfowl by observing paired wetlands open and closed to hunting (hunting category) at which we quantified waterfowl abundance and behavior in 2011 and 2012. In spring 2012 we conducted a mail survey to evaluate factors influencing hunter participation and satisfaction with LGCO regulations. We detected greater densities of dabbling ducks (Anas spp.) on wetlands closed to the LGCO. Additionally, we counted very few white-fronted geese (Anser albifrons) and hunting category was not a predictor for their presence. We documented reduced foraging time for dabbling ducks as the results hunting disturbance during one year of our study. Behaviors of white-fronted geese were not affected by hunting disturbance. We found no effects of hunt day in our analyses of dabbling duck densities or behaviors and all measured variables were similar regardless if the day was open or closed to hunting. The majority of hunters in our mail survey indicated they would prefer a hunting season which was open seven days a week, but with more public wetlands closed to hunting. Given we found no effects of hunt day in our study, we suggest a season open seven days a week will have minimal additional impacts to non-target species, satisfy more hunters, and aid in the reduction of light goose populations.


Sharp reductions in tariffs and quotas have propelled dramatic growth in global trade over the past several decades. Often overlooked, however, are the costs associated with trade logistics. In many countries logistics costs are greater deterrents to trade than remaining tariffs. Studies show that trade facilitation—i.e., the reduction of logistics costs—could increase annual global manufactured exports by as much as $400 billion. Hufbauer and Wong focus on two barriers that specifically hamper low-value shipments: (1) an unduly restrictive de minimis exemption from customs duty for low-value imports and (2) an unduly low "informal entry" threshold, the dividing line that determines whether the shipment requires just a little paperwork or a lot of paperwork to clear the entry process. The authors' estimates for the United States reveal that the payoff associated with raising thresholds and reducing "exceptions" could be significant. An increase in the de minimis threshold to $800 would generate net gains of around $17 million annually, taking into account the cost savings at each stage of the delivery chain and the revenue not collected by the customs authority. The saving of paperwork costs alone on de minimis entries might be $33 million a year. Raising the informal entry threshold to $2,500, and slashing the number of "exceptions," could generate net gains of $81 million per year. For emerging-market economies, potential gains from higher de minimis and informal entry thresholds are very likely more substantial relative to the size of their economies. Improving logistics and raising thresholds for low-value shipments are powerful and relatively inexpensive means of enhancing the trading system.


In this paper, we describe our research into transforming an agent platform into a manageable service that can be managed by a modern application server. This is a key part of industrializing agent technology, that is, integrating agent technology with other mainstream web server, application server, DB, communication and security technologies, to produce a scalable, robust platform for intelligent applications of various kinds.


HCA, the largest for-profit hospital chain in the United States with 163 facilities, had uncovered evidence as far back as 2002 and as recently as late 2010 showing that some cardiologists at several of its hospitals in Florida were unable to justify many of the procedures they were performing. Those hospitals included the Cedars Medical Center in Miami, which the company no longer owns, and the Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point. In some cases, the doctors made misleading statements in medical records that made it appear the procedures were necessary, according to internal reports.


Islet transplantation holds vast potential as a treatment for type 1 diabetes mellitus and provides recipients with short term insulin independence. A major limitation of this treatment is the lack of donor beta (β) cells available for transplantation. Significant progress has been made with stem cell differentiation protocols; current methods have generated cell populations which possess a functioning β cell phenotype. However, these cells are not suitable for clinical transplantation. Two dimensional cell culture systems do not accurately mimic the complexity of the in vivo pancreatic environment, reducing the effectiveness of current β-cell differentiation protocols. The paradigm shift into three dimensional tissue culture provides an attractive area of investigation, and the use of three dimensional culture methods has improved growth in a variety of cell types ex vivo. The mass culture of β cell analogues on a 3D biomimetic environment is now necessary, and may offer a new platform on which an alternative source of transplantable cell populations can be differentiated and cultured successfully.

This thesis aims to develop and condition BioVyon™, a high density polyethylene (HDPE) based biomaterial, for use as a mass β cell cultivation system.


Bodygraphe is an interactive, visual music application that unifies gestural computing with live performance art. Dancers become instruments and conductors that wholly generate graphics and sounds that correspond with their movements in real time. This video is the result of a process in computational aesthetics that explores the relationship between the body and form. Most specifically, we were inspired by visual art avant-gardes that prioritized expressive geometry, such as the Neo-concrete movement of the 1950s. Trough this project, we seek to make an aesthetic statement while also offering new implications for research regarding the interconnectivity between body and technology.


For all their bad press, waste-to-energy plants actually provide a one-two environmental punch—they reduce garbage volume and provide alternative energy. But increasingly, state and local governments overlook these pluses when developing long-term solid-waste management plans: Recycle, reduce or reuse first, then incinerate or landfill. Many states have taken it one step further: Legislate. Thirty two states have recycling programs on the books, with most of them enacted in the last two years. Eighteen programs require communities to meet goals of 25-50% by the end of the decade. Coexisting with the recycling industry is a top priority for the resource recovery industry. The industry likes to point out that many recyclable materials, including glass bottles and aluminum cans don't burn well. Nor does resource recovery necessarily compete for compostable yard wastes (almost 10% of the waste stream), because they're too moist to burn efficiently. Plastics on the other hand are a problem. Plastics can generate as much energy as oil, but can also bring income to recycling programs. Commercial recycling centers pay up to $300 per ton for separated postconsumer plastics, according to a recent issue of Fortune magazine. Newspapers are also a priority of recycling programs but one with a less reliable market. Both burn well and are especially efficient when converted to refuse-derived fuel.


This paper provides an extensive analysis of the predictive ability of financial volatility measures for economic activity. We construct monthly measures of aggregated and industry-level stock volatility, and bond market volatility from daily returns. We model log financial volatility as composed of a long-run component that is common across all series, and a short-run component. If volatility has components, volatility proxies are characterized by large measurement error, which veils analysis of their fundamental information and relationship with the economy. We find that there are substantial gains from using the long term component of the volatility measures for linearly projecting future economic activity, as well as for forecasting business cycle turning points. When we allow for asymmetry in the long-run volatility component, we find that it provides early signals of upcoming recessions. In a real-time out-of-sample analysis of the last recession, we find that these signals are concomitant with the first signs of distress in the financial markets due to problems in the housing sector around mid-2007 and the implied chronology is consistent with the crisis timeline.


Omnidirectional image and video have gained popularity thanks to availability of capture and display devices for this type of content. Recent studies have assessed performance of objective metrics in predicting visual quality of omnidirectional content. These metrics, however, have not been rigorously validated by comparing their prediction results with ground-truth subjective scores. In this paper, we present a set of 360-degree images along with their subjective quality ratings. The set is composed of four contents represented in two geometric projections and compressed with three different codecs at four different bitrates. A range of objective quality metrics for each stimulus is then computed and compared to subjective scores. Statistical analysis is performed in order to assess performance of each objective quality metric in predicting subjective visual quality as perceived by human observers. Results show the estimated performance of the state-of-the-art objective metrics for omnidirectional visual content. Objective metrics specifically designed for 360-degree content do not outperform conventional methods designed for 2D images.


As the number and size of wind power plants continue to grow, utility system operators and transmission network operators around the globe have begun to take note of the possible impact of the plants on power system performance during both normal and abnormal system conditions. Until recently, the number and size of wind power plants was such that it was not uncommon for interconnection practices to require that the plant be disconnected from the grid during a system disturbance, and reconnected when the system had returned to a normal state. This is no longer commonly accepted practice, as the size of recent wind power plants is as large as a typical fossil unit, and their behavior is an important component of overall system behavior both during normal and abnormal conditions.


Negotiations on climate change are entering a new phase now that the discussions on new commitments after the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol have started. With this book, Niklas Hohne gives a comprehensive survey of present issues and proposals (up until December 2005) as well as an overview of the future options, in a quantitative and qualitative manner. These options are then followed by an assessment, plus fresh proposals for a future international climate regime after 2012. What is Next after the Kyoto Protocol? provides an ideal reference to understand the current status of the climate negotiations. The book is timely and leaves the reader well-informed. It prepares and updates the reader to take part in and assess the climate change discussions, based on academic findings and analysis. The book can be read both in-depth as well as with a bird's eye view, since it is well-structured and includes a summary and introduction. Suitable for policy makers, government negotiators and other stakeholders. Suitable for students and beginning researchers in environmental and policy studies.


We present the architecture of ARGUS, a stream processing system implemented atop commercial DBMSs to support large-scale complex continuous queries over data streams. ARGUS supports incremental operator evaluation and incremental multi-query plan optimization as new queries arrive. The latter is done to a degree well beyond the previous state-of-the-art via a suite of techniques such as query-algebra canonicalization, indexing, and searching, and topological query network optimization with join order optimization, conditional materialization, minimal column projection, and transitivity inference. Building on top of a DBMS, the system provides a value-adding package to the existing database applications where the needs of stream processing become increasingly demanding. Compared to directly running the continuous queries on the DBMS, ARGUS achieves well over a 100-fold improvement in performance


SUMMARY
Dedicated research vessels that are capable to operate during all seasons of
the year and under unfavourable weather conditions in the central Arctic Ocean
and in the Southern Ocean are required to fulfil the new needs of polar ocean
research for all marine disciplines. Today, no available research vessel has
these required capabilities. Thus, the initiative was taken to develop a novel and
dedicated research icebreaker with technical capabilities hitherto unrealised,
which will enable the vessel to autonomously operate in the Arctic Ocean even
during the severest ice conditions in the deep winter serving all marine disciplines
of polar research including deep-sea drilling: The AURORA BOREALIS.
The technical conceptual design of this research icebreaker with scientific deepsea
drilling capability AURORA BOREALIS is summarised in this report.
AURORA BOREALIS is planned to be a "European scientific flagship facility"
open to non-European partners, a multidisciplinary platform for studies ranging
from the sub-seafloor into the atmosphere. The ability of AURORA BOREALIS
to penetrate into the harshest conditions on Earth and to carry out research in
the polar winter can set new standards in the fields of polar research and naval
architecture, including environmental safety and sustainability of the highest
standards. Currently, no polar research vessel has the capability to autonomously
operate in pack ice outside the optimal ice conditions of the late summer
season. AURORA BOREALIS, in contrast, is planned as a multi-purpose icebreaking
research vessel for Arctic and Antarctic operations with the capability
to autonomously navigate in sea-ice with a thickness of more than 2.5 metres.
This will for the first time facilitate year-round research, e.g. on the nature of
global environmental change.
The ship shall have the unique capability to perform scientific deep-sea drilling
operations in water depths between 100 and 5000 metres with a penetration of
more than 1000 metres into the seafloor, even while being located amid drifting
pack-ice fields. To perform these drilling operations AURORA BOREALIS has to
be kept exactly on position. A dynamic positioning system capable for manoeuvring
and staying on position in drifting sea-ice is mandatory for this task –
an absolute novelty in the shipping industry. Another unique characteristic of
AURORA BOREALIS are the two moon pools (7 x 7 meters each) in the midst
of the hull that reach into the water below the vessel and enable scientists to
deploy equipment into the ocean without being subject to wind, waves and ice.
The aft moon pool is mainly dedicated to drilling operations, while the forward
moon pool is reserved for most other scientific equipment. This allows as a first
the deployment of very sensitive and expensive equipment, e.g. remotely operated
(ROV's) or autonomous (AUV's) underwater vehicles within completely
closed sea ice cover. Scientific laboratories are located on several decks
around the moon pool, which is designed in an atrium-like shape with circular
walkways and preparation areas. In order to optimally equip the ship even for
mission specific expeditions, containerized laboratories can be also loaded here
and become fully integrated into the scientific workflow on board.


Many important chemical and biochemical phenomena proceed on sub-second time scales before entering equilibrium. In this mini-review, we explore the history and recent advancements of time-resolved mass spectrometry (TRMS) for the characterization of millisecond time-scale chemical reactions and biochemical processes. TRMS allows for the simultaneous tracking of multiple reactants, intermediates and products with no chromophoric species required, high sensitivity and temporal resolution. The method has most recently been used for the characterization of several short-lived reaction intermediates in rapid chemical reactions. Most of the reactions that occur in living organisms are accelerated by enzymes, with pre-steady state kinetics only attainable using time-resolved methods. TRMS has been increasingly used to monitor the conversion of substrates to products and the resulting changes to the enzyme during catalytic turnover. Early events in protein folding systems have also been elucidated, along with the characterization of dynamics and transient secondary structures in intrinsically disordered proteins. In this review, we will highlight representative examples where TRMS has been applied to study these phenomena.


Economic development is a priority of all levels of government; irrespective of country, constitution or system of governance. This is particularly the case in Australia, where federal, state and local tiers of government are undertaking activities intended to support economic growth. However, roles and responsibilities are not always clear, which reflects inter-organisational, intergovernmental and intra-organisational conflict, contradictions, duplications and fissures. Traditionally the role of local government in the subnational economic development policy space has been rather limited, although their remit and engagement in this sphere has increased steadily since the 1980s. Even so, the role of councils in subnational economic development – and metropolitan and regional economic development in particular – remains ambiguous and contested. Derived from findings from a project funded by the Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government investigating the role of local government in the organisation and promotion of economic development, this paper intends to make two contributions to the literature. First, it shows how the conceptual messiness of the notion of (metropolitan and regional) economic development can both enable and constrain local government practice. Secondly, a state-level policy vacuum is apparent, which is a source of frustration amongst local practitioners. A key policy implication is the need to open-up more space for dialogue between different tiers of government to help engender a shared understanding of economic development, including the roles of different actors.


Title of Dissertation: REGULATORY FUNCTIONS OF THE ACTIN CYTOSKELETON IN B CELL RECEPTOR SIGNALING Chaohong Liu, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Dissertation Directed by: Wenxia Song, Associate Professor, Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics The binding of antigen (Ag) to the B cell receptor (BCR) induces the activation of intracellular signaling and the reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton. However, the function of actin reorganization and the mechanisms by which BCR signaling and actin reorganization is coupled have not been well studied. This thesis has investigated how BCR signaling regulates actin reorganization and how actin remodeling in turn influences BCR signalig. My studies show that the key stimulatory signaling molecule of the BCR, Bruton's tyrosine kinase (Btk), is critical for actin polymerization at the activation surface and BCR clustering and B cell spreading, events that are essential for signaling initiation and amplification. The key inhibitory signaling molecule, SH2-containing phosphatidylinositol-5 phasphatase (SHIP-1), is important for removal of F-actin from the activation surface, and actin-mediated B cell contraction and the formation of BCR central clusters. SHIP-1 suppresses actin polymerization by inhibiting Btk-dependent activation of Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome protein (WASP). These results suggest that BCR signaling can regulate B cell morphology and surface BCR clustering via modulationg actin dynamics. To understand the roles of actin reorganization in BCR signaling, I investigated the effects of gene knockout of the two actin regulators, WASP and its homolog, neuronal (N)-WASP. My results show that both WASP and N-WASP are required for optimal BCR clustering, B cell spreading, and BCR signaling, but they play distinct roles. WASP promotes actin polymerization, B cell spreading, BCR clustering, and signaling amplification, and N-WASP inhibits actin polymerization at the activation surface and promotes B cell contraction, BCR central cluster formation, and signaling attenuation. Importantly, B cell-specific N-WASP knockout causes increases in the levels of autoantibody. In addition, WASP and N-WASP negatively regulate each other, compete for Arp2/3, and are inversely regulated by Btk and SHIP-1. Taken together, these results demonstrate that the balance of stimulatory and inhibitory BCR signaling controls actin dynamics and organization through regulating the activities of WASP and N-WASP. Actin remodeling in turn amplifies BCR signaling activation or down regulation by modulating B cell morphlogy and the organization of surface BCRs.This research reveals a bidrectional feedback loop between BCR signaling and the actin cytoskeleton. REGULATORY FUNCTIONS OF THE ACTIN CYTOSKELETON IN B CELL RECEPTOR SIGNALING


List of Contributors. Preface. Part I: Introductions: American Destiny? 1. Locating the American Century: A World-systems Analysis (Peter J. Taylor) 2. Locating the American Century: Themes for a Post-colonial Perspective (David Slater) Part II: Economic Capacities: American Know-how? 3. Global Shift - the Role of United States Transnational Corporations (Peter Dicken) 4. The Dynamics of US Managerialism and American Corporations (Michael Taylor) 5. Overseas Investment by US Service Enterprises (P.W. Daniels) 6. The Rise and Decline of US International Monetary Hegemony (Mark Holmes and Eric Pentecost) 7. The 'New' Developmentalism: Political Liberalism and the Washington Consensus (Kate Manzo) Part III: Political Capacities: The Arsenal of Democracy? 8. Inaugurating the American Century: 'New World' Perspectives on the 'Old' in the Early Twentieth Century (Michael Heffernan) 9.European Integration and American Power: Reflex, Resistance and Reconfiguration (Michael Smith) 10. The United States, the 'Triumph of Democracy' and the 'End of History' (R.J. Johnston) 11. Taking the Cold War to the Third World (Klaus Dodds) 12. US Influence in the Making of the Contemporary Amazon Heartland (Berta K. Becker and Roberto S. Bartholo, Jr) 13. American Power and the Portuguese Empire (James Sidaway) 14. The Reality of American Idealism (Gillian Youngs) 15. Contradictions of a Lone Superpower (David Campbell) Part IV: Cultural Capacities: The American Dream? 16. Occult Hollywood: Unfolding the Americanization of World Cinema (Marcus A. Doel) 17. Global Disney (Alan Bryman) 18. 'The Kind Of Beat Which is Currently Popular': American Popular Music in Britain (Tim Cresswell and Brian Hoskin) 19. American Philanthropy as Cultural Power (Morag Bell) 20. Between North and South: Travelling Feminisms and Homeless Women (Claudia de Lima Costa) 21. Americanization of the World (Pablo Gonzalez Casanova) Part V: Conclusion: American Centuries? 22. Multiple Themes, One America One Theme, Multiple Americas (David Slater and Peter J. Taylor Index.


Cosmopolitans like Gillian Brock, Charles Beitz, and Thomas Pogge argue that the principles of justice selected and arranged in lexical priority in Rawls' first original position would—and should for the same reasons as in the first—also be selected in the second original position. After all, the argument goes, what reasons other than morally arbitrary ones do we have for selecting a second set of principles? A different, though undoubtedly related, point of contention is the cosmopolitan charge (most famously, made by Pogge) that Rawls fails to consider the unfavorable conditions that owe themselves to global factors. Perhaps there was a time when interconnectedness and interdependency between states was not a factor; but in the current global order, this certainly is not the case. While this paper will address other related cosmopolitan concerns mentioned in Brock's work, it is these two points that are perhaps the two biggest threats to the Rawlsian project and, as such, it is these two points that will be the primary focus of this paper.


Multiple job holding rates differ substantially across U.S. regions, states, and metropolitan areas. Rates decrease markedly with respect to labor market size. These patterns have been largely overlooked, despite being relatively fixed over (at least) the 1998-2014 period. This paper explores explanations for these persistent differences. We account for over half of the mean absolute deviation in multiple job holding across local labor markets (MSAs). Most important in explaining variation in multiple job holding are worker characteristics, commute times, MSA ancestry shares, and, to a lesser extent, labor market churn. City size accounts for little of the variation once we condition on commute times.


The demand of policy makers and managers to find environmentally sound and sustainable economic development is obvious. At the same time, various branches of sciences dealing with environmental issues have become more and more specialized. The solution to problems -- often of a global character -- requires the interdisciplinary analysis of versatile systems consisting of natural, economic and social elements of the environment.

Within the long series of water related topics of IIASA's Environment Program, a new project "Decision Support Systems for Managing Large International Rivers" (LIR) was recently launched. The formulation of environmentally sound management policy for land-use and water resources development requires the reliable prediction of the impacts of different human interventions in order to eliminate conflicts between different interest groups, and to preserve the quality of life in both the biosphere and society. Several models for the assessment of various environmental impacts already exist, but the large scale of river basins and the amount of data -- the availability of which is even limited in some cases -- require the development of aggregated systems of models that can provide decision makers with easily understandable information at various hierarchical levels. Considering this requirement, the objective of the project is to construct a computer-based interactive data and information system to facilitate the effective participation of policy making authorities in determining current conditions and expected changes in hydrological systems.

The outline of LIR emphasizes the importance of the preparation of case studies. Their role is not only to check the applicability on the system for solving actually occurring problems, but the analysis of the basins as cases will assist in selecting the crucial questions that should be answered by the Decision Support System. The Danube basin was chosen as the first case study to be investigated in the framework of LIR. The reason for this choice is partly that IIASA is located in the basin, and, thus all information easily accessible. The international character of the river (there are 8 riparian countries and 3 others sharing a small part of the catchment), the rapidly developing problems of the utilization of water (canalization, increasing transboundary pollution, seasonal water shortage), and the efforts of the riparian countries to improve the conditions of water resources development within the basin (which is clearly indicated by the fact that a joint declaration was signed) are also reasons supporting the selection of the Danube as the first case study.

Naturally, the hydrological conditions of the river system and the water management problems occurring within the catchment are well known for the experts in water sciences working in the riparian countries. For experts participating in the project and coming from other countries, or, representing other scientific disciplines, it is necessary, however, to summarize the most important information describing the water regime of the river system and the obstacles hindering the development of water resources in the basin. This working paper and the detailed list of references provide more information on water management in the Danube basin.


Goal: The development of a control system for an electromyographic shoulder disarticulation (EMG-SD) prosthesis to rapidly achieve a task with a reduction in the operational failure of the user. Methods: The motion planning of an EMG-SD prosthesis was automated using measured visual information through a mixed reality device. The detection of an object to be grasped and motion execution depended on the EMG of the user, which gives voluntary controllability and makes the system semi-automated. Two evaluation experiments with reaching and reach-to-grasp movements were conducted to compare the performance of the conventional system when operated using only visual feedback control of the user. Results: The proposed system can more rapidly and accurately achieve reaching movements (32% faster) and more accurate (69%) reach-to-grasp movements than a conventional system. Conclusions: The proposed control system achieves a high task performance with a reduction in the operational failure of an EMG-SD prosthesis user.


The most general lesson of the crime prevention literature is taken to be that repeat victimization and repeat offending are concentrated in time and space; early intervention to prevent wider inflammation of such hot spots is more effective than reactive general deterrence (as in economic models of crime). That prescription is applied to how the 2008 financial crisis might have been prevented and how the crimes of Enron and Arthur Andersen might have been tackled to ameliorate the 2001 crisis. Negative licensing based on walking the beat and kicking the tyres at financial hot spots, with reduced reliance on economic models of risk, is one remedy advocated. Then the threat of negative licensing might be used to motivate restorative justice that transforms the ethical culture, particularly the bonus culture, of banks.


We investigate the question of tightness of linear programming (LP) relaxation for finding a maximum weight independent set (MWIS) in sparse random weighted graphs. We show that an edge-based LP relaxation is asymptotically tight for Erdos-Renyi graph $G(n,c/n)$ for $c \leq 2e$ and random regular graph $G(n,r)$ for $r\leq 4$ when node weights are i.i.d. with exponential distribution of mean 1. We establish these results, through a precise relation between the tightness of LP relaxation and convergence of the max-product belief propagation algorithm. We believe that this novel method of understanding structural properties of combinatorial problems through properties of iterative procedure such as the max-product should be of interest in its own right.


My Father's House–The Idle Years is an autobiographical novel by Orhan Kemal, one of the giants of Turkish literature. The novel's explicit focus is on a boy who grows up pursuing self-realization in a working-class atmosphere. The story takes place during a period of abrupt transformation when the Republic of Turkey, newly born out of the ashes of the collapsed Ottoman Empire, is adapting to oppressive conditions introduced by a burgeoning capitalism. Scholarship on Orhan Kemal has extensively uncovered and charted his socialist realism and unorthodox look at the history of Turkey, but it has not concerned itself enough with the issue of masculinity, which is an indisputable part of Kemal's view of labour and political power. This paper is an initial attempt to approach Kemal's autobiographical novels with theories of masculinity. I argue that My Father's House–The Idle Years explores rites of passages into manhood in what can be referred to as a crisis of imperial loss: the boy grows in an attempt to restore his father's victimized manhood, in a symbolic parallel to the transformation of the disintegrated Ottoman Empire into self-governed nation-states. Kemal handles the loss metaphorically, using the instability generated by the gender anxieties of a young boy who fails to be like his father to represent the instability generated by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. I examine My Father's House–The Idle Years as the Oedipalized story of post-Ottoman Turkey.


SUMMARY We present an azimuthally anisotropic 3-D shear-wave speed model of the Australian upper mantle obtained from the dispersion of fundamental and higher modes of Rayleigh waves. We compare two tomographic techniques to map path-average earth models into a 3-D model for heterogeneity and azimuthal anisotropy. Method I uses a rectangular surface cell parametrization and depth basis functions that represent independently constrained estimates of radial earth structure. It performs an iterative inversion with norm damping and gradient regularization. Method II uses a direct inversion of individual depth layers constrained by Bayesian assumptions about the model covariance. We recall that Bayesian inversions and discrete regularization approaches are theoretically equivalent, and with a synthetic example we show that they can give similar results. The model we present here uses the discrete regularized inversion of independent path constraints of Method I, on an equal-area grid. With the exception of westernmost Australia, we can retrieve structure on length scales of about 250 km laterally and 50 km in the radial direction, to within 0.8 per cent for the velocity, 20 per cent for the anisotropic magnitude and 20 ◦ for its direction. On length scales of 1000 km and longer, down to about 200 km, there is a good correlation between velocity heterogeneity and geologic age. At shorter length scales and at depths below 200 km, however, this relationship breaks down. The observed magnitude and direction of maximum anisotropy do not, in general, appear to be correlated to surface geology. The pattern of anisotropy appears to be rather complex in the upper 150 km, whereas a smoother pattern of fast axes is obtained at larger depth. If some of the deeper directions of anisotropy are aligned with the approximately N‐S direction of absolute plate motion, this correspondence is not everywhere obvious, despite the fast (7 cm yr −1 ) northward motion of the Australian plate. More research is needed to interpret our observations in terms of continental deformation. Predictions of SKS splitting times and directions, an integrated measure of anisotropy, are poorly matched by observations of shear-wave birefringence.


Using localized 1H-MR spectroscopy (1H-MRS) an inborn error of metabolism within human brain could be demonstrated, while 1H-MR imaging did not show any pathologic findings like demyelination. In two children suffering from nonketotic hyperglycinemia, the proton spectrum exhibited a large glycine signal at 3.55 ppm. In patient 1 (49-day-old girl), the pathologic signal of the inhibitory neurotransmitter glycine was of similar size in the parietooccipital white matter and in the basal ganglia region. In patient 2 (a 10-day-old girl), follow-up studies within the first 4 months of life revealed a time course of cerebral glycine content that differed from the course in plasma and cerebrospinal fluid. The continuing reduction of glycine in brain tissue corresponded more reliably with clinical findings than the stable values in plasma and cerebrospinal fluid. 1H-MRS allows the noninvasive demonstration of glycine in patients with nonketotic hyperglycinemia. This new technique may be useful to control the effect of a sodium benzoate therapy by monitoring the cerebral glycine concentration directly.


Against the background of the race debate and the principal elements of the current understanding of human intraspecific variation, we present the status of the race concept in Polish anthropology. Using questionnaires, we twice surveyed physical anthropologists about their agreement with the statement "There are biological races within the species Homo sapiens." In the 1999 study, 62% of respondents disagreed with race (defined as subspecies) and 31% accepted it. In the 2001 study, this proportion was reversed: only 25% rejected race (by any definition) with the remaining respondents (75%) differing widely as to its accepted meaning. Each time, age was significant factor in differentiating the replies – in general, acceptance of race increased with age while rejection declined. It appears that Polish anthropologists regard race as a term without taxonomic value and often in a populational sense. Here we point out, however, the risks associated with the "metaphorical" use of the term "race", as it relativizes the essential error of perceiving the existence of subspecific taxa within our species.


We live in a world in which the word "care" too quickly becomes debased, narrowly focused on physical illness and the technical cures. In this beautifully written book, Kathleen Galvin and Les Todres emphasize how, as a result, important human dimensions of care are easily forgotten "by a service culture that has increasingly given primacy to targets, narrow and specialized outcomes, technology, efficiency drives and audit pathways" (p. 1). Many of the dominant discourses of contemporary medicine and allied health professions systematically hide major aspects of the human dimension of the experience, not only of patients but also of professionals and others in "caring" roles. To address this, Galvin and Todres offer something far more than advocacy for a more humane and humanizing approach. They offer an alternative paradigm. This comes with its own language and set of concepts that open up the spaces left hidden by conventional health care discourses. It is, and is designed to be, "sensitizing" (p. 77), particularly for practitioners, with respect to what it means to be concerned for the well-being of patients and to act meaningfully on those concerns.


This paper provides a novel, simple, and computationally tractable method for determining an identified set that can account for a broad set of economic models when the economic variables are discrete. Using this method, we show using a simple example how imperfect instruments affect the size of the identified set when the assumption of strict exogeneity is relaxed. This knowledge can be of great value, as it is interesting to know the extent to which the exogeneity assumption drives results, given it is often a matter of some controversy. Moreover, the flexibility obtained from our newly proposed method suggests that the determination of the identified set need no longer be application specific, with the analysis presenting a unifying framework that algorithmically approaches the question of identification.


As children grow up, they expand their territorial range (Andrews, 1973). This increasing autonomy allows them for reaching new places of activities, thereby attaining further developmental tasks. However, less is known about what children and adolescents do that makes them familiar with an increasing area. Various means such as walking, riding a bicycle, taking a bus or getting a lift by car differ in the mobility and the knowledge about the environment they provide (Rissotto & Tonucci, 2002) and in the motor, perceptual, and cognitive skills required to use them. Thus, these means of transportation may not only be tools for autonomy development, but becoming able to use them might be a part of autonomy development (Bullens et al., 2010). Thus, the frequencies of walking, riding a bicycle or a bus, and of being given a lift by the parents, will be explored in two domains: transportation to school and to spare-time activities. The former focuses on the use of means of transportation to a mandatory destination whereas the latter explores the twofold autonomy to make use of a means of transportation and to access targets which might change with age.A total of 715 children (54.4% girls) attending grades 4, 6, and 9 (ages 10, 12, and 15) and 497 parents of children (51.5% girls) attending grades 2, 4, and 6 (ages 8, 10, and 12) filled out questionnaires. Both parents and children indicated on how many days of the week the child walked, cycled, took the bus, and was driven to school and to free-time activities, respectively. Multilevel analyses were used because participants were nested in 16 schools which were nested in 6 municipalities in adjacent regions of Denmark and Southern Sweden. Predictor variables were grade, gender (dummy-coded), and distance to school (four categories, recoded to approximate kilometers). In the next step, country was added into equations, in order to explain part of the variance between municipalities. Finally, theoretically meaningful interactions between grade, gender, and distance from school were added. The final model for each dependent variable was the one with the best fit (AIC, BIC). Variables had been transformed to approach normal distribution.Walking and riding the bicycle (especially in girls) were mainly used for shorter distances. In contrast, bus and the family car were used for more distant destinations. Danish children used more active, individual ways of transportation whereas Swedish children used public transport. Girls tended to use more passive means such as being driven by car or riding the bus whereas boys, at least at certain ages, walked more or rode their bicycles. Although age effects were similar on a global level, such as that children depended less of their parents' help to get somewhere, details differed. The youngest children did not any longer need the car ride to school, but it were the oldest ones who did not any longer get lifts to spare-time activities nearby. Thus, age trends in how to get to school did not explain age trends in accessing spare-time activities. On the contrary, when controlling for getting lifts to school, the absence of net age effects in parent-reported car rides turned out to be the sum of the opposite trends towards independence from parents and towards having more destinations to reach.The results show that children choose varying means of transportation according to their development of needs and skills. The differences between the age trends for the two types of destinations suggest a larger flexibility than known previously. Still, gender and cultural differences affect this facet of autonomy development.


Desertification of sandy areas driven by wind erosion in the Arabian Gulf region often results in the dominance of few shrubs and grasses, while most of the land are devoid of vegetation. The impact of surviving and dead shrubs and grasses on floral diversity and plant community structure was assessed on stabilized sand dunes in Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve. Shrubs have greater role in facilitating plant recruitment and survivorship and hence enhancing floral diversity, compared to grasses. Both dead shrubs and grasses attained significantly greater species richness, abundance and diversity indices compared to comparable surviving shrubs and grasses, so the effect of dead grasses was more pronounced than that of dead shrubs. Grasses have a greater role in enhancing floral diversity after their death. For restoring the productivity and species diversity of degraded sandy desert habitats, the study recommends the maintenance and growing shrubby plants as an early successional stage that facilitate the environment of other annuals and perennial plant. This would help in stability of the fragile desert ecosystems. Key wards: competition, deserts, facilitation, floral diversity, shrubs, grasses


We show, both theoretically and empirically, that liquidity creation induces negative exposure to volatility risk. Intuitively, liquidity creation involves taking positions that can be exploited by privately informed investors. These investors' ability to predict future price changes makes their payoff resemble a straddle (a combination of a call and a put). By taking the other side, liquidity providers are implicitly short a straddle, suffering losses when volatility spikes. Empirically, we show that short-term reversal strategies, which mimic liquidity creation by buying stocks that go down and selling stocks that go up, have a large negative exposure to volatility shocks. This exposure, together with the large premium investors demand for bearing volatility risk, explains why liquidity creation earns a premium, why this premium is strongly increasing in volatility, and why times of high volatility like the 2008 financial crisis trigger a contraction in liquidity. Taken together, these results provide a new, assetpricing view of the risks and rewards to financial intermediation. JEL Codes:


Screening of cognitive functions Evaluation of methods and their applicability in neurological rehabilitation Caisa Hofgren, Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology/Rehabilitation Medicine, The Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Goteborg, SWEDEN Abstract Assessment of cognitive functions is of great importance in neurological clinical settings as well as in rehabilitation. A cognitive screening test is short and comprehensive and can be used in various situations. The Barrow Neurological Institute Screen for Higher Cerebral Functions (BNIS) is a screening method developed for identifying cognitive dysfunction. The aims of the thesis were (1) to evaluate the psychometric properties of the BNIS and (2) to explore similarities and differences between the BNIS and the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and (3) to use the BNIS in a clinical context and examine patients with different diagnoses commonly seen in neurorehabilitation. Material and Methods: The BNIS was used in patient populations and also in a control population of healthy adults. Parallel assessments with the BNIS and the MMSE were used and a linking of the BNIS and the MMSE to the WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) was performed. In two follow-up studies the results from the cognitive screening (BNIS) were related to evaluations of neurological status, ADL ability, housing and return to work. Results: BNIS showed good construct validity as a significant difference (total score and all subscales) between healthy controls and patients was found. A concordance between BNIS and MMSE was shown (Goodman-Kruskal gamma: 0.724, p?0.0005), but also evidence that BNIS better discriminated patients who had high (?27 p) scores on MMSE. BNIS was linked to 34 and MMSE to 26 categories of the ICF. Patients with stroke showed a recovery of cognition and ADL function, but 83% still had cognitive dysfunction and 20% were dependent in personal ADL after one year. At three years after discharge 20% had returned to work. Among patients surviving a cardiac arrest 95% had evidence of cognitive dysfunction two years after onset. Sixty-four percent were living in their own home. Conclusion: The BNIS significantly discriminated between neurological patients and controls. Patients who scored above cut-off on MMSE were better differentiated on BNIS. Cognitive function, assessed with BNIS, was related to ADL function when stroke patients and patients with anoxic brain injury were assessed. Mostly an association between cognition and return to work also was found.


The objective of this research was to evaluate the effect of fungicides difenoconazole and carboxin + thiram applied in seed wheat cultivars 'CD 104' and 'OR Mirante', inoculated with Cochliobolus sativus. The experimental design was completely randomized in a 2x3 factorial design (2 cultivars and 2 fungicides + untreated control) in seven replications. The fungi was isolated and reproduced in PDA culture medium (potato-dextrose-agar) and subsequently multiplied in seeds of wheat pre-cooked and is the source of inoculum. The evaluations were the number of lesions in the basal leaf of five plants per pot at 22, 25, 29, 31, 35 and 38 days after sowing (DAS), and at 41DAS were evaluated the length (cm), fresh weight (g) and dry weight (g) of shoot and root. From the evaluations of the number of lesions was also calculated the area under the disease progress curve (AUDPC). The datas were subjected to analysis of variance and means were compared by Tukey test at 5% probability. The 'CD 104' cultivar was more susceptible to the pathogen than 'OR Mirante'; difenoconazole was efficient to control the disease as carboxin + thiram equaled the witness; both fungicides interfered negatively on plant development, since the average length, fresh weight and dry shoot and root obtained from treated seed is lower than the untreated seeds.


Problem: The subject organization (SO) is a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) with an internally developed incident reporting system. The SO wanted to improve patient and employee safety using data from incident reports, but the incident reporting system did not give enough information to recognize patterns and develop countermeasures. Context: Supervisors welcomed the opportunity to learn more about incident report follow-up and conducting root cause analysis (RCA). Members of the Safety Committee were eager for data to use to develop countermeasures to improve patient and employee safety. Decreases in employee injuries can save the SO from increases in the cost of worker's compensation coverage, so the SO leadership supported the project. The organization is covered by the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) for malpractice insurance, but there is always a cost to preparing a defense against claims, so the Chief Financial Officer was supportive of a project that could reduce the chance of claims. Interventions: The project was conducted in three stages. The first stage was to design a data collection tool for supervisors to use to guide incident report follow-up and document RCA. The second stage was to conduct training sessions for supervisors to teach them about organizational fairness, using a human-factors approach to evaluate incidents, how to conduct an investigation, and how to perform RCA. The third step was to send the data collection tool to supervisors to collect additional information about incidents. The data were extracted from the completed tools and presented to the Safety Committee. Measures: The project measured effectiveness of the class in increasing confidence with doing RCA and conducting IR follow-up. The project also measured the effectiveness of the class in training supervisors to use the data collection tool correctly. A third measure was whether the RCA TO IMPROVE INCIDENT REPORTING 6 training and use of the tool improved the rate of RCA documentation in IRs when it was assigned to supervisors. Results: The emphasis of the class training shifted due to the need to do remedial incident report training with the supervisors, therefore completion of the data collection tool was deemphasized. Of the returned responses, most (95.7% for general incident and 98.4% for employee incident) respondents completed the section requesting an analysis of accident causes. Just over half of the respondents (54.3% and 51.6%) completed the analysis of workflow variance, and few (17.4% and 20.3%) provided a root cause. The comfort level with collecting additional information after an incident increased 24.9% and the agreement with understanding how to conduct RCA increased 46.5%. The completion rate of RCA documented in the IRs themselves increased slightly from 61.5% in the 24-week period before the intervention to 67.9% in 24-week intervention period. Conclusions: While the project has not yet provided a direct benefit to the SO by producing countermeasures for incidents, the work done by the project lead and the Senior Vice President and General Counsel (SVPGC) will enable the SO to improve the incident reporting system. The project implies that more training is needed for supervisors to conduct follow-up investigations and to do RCA after an incident. The findings also imply that the organization needs to spread a culture of safety to all departments and to all levels. In addition to improving patient care by decreasing errors, establishing a culture of organizational fairness and safety may support other quality improvement efforts and help with employee retention.


In his "Lives of the Artists of the Italian Renaissance", Vasari demonstrated a literary talent that outshone even his outstanding abilities as a painter and architect. Through character sketches and anecdotes he depicts Piero di Cosimo shut away in his derelict house, living only to paint; Giulio Romano's startling painting of Jove striking down the giants; and his friend Francesco Salviati, whose biography also tells us much about Vasari's own early career. Vasari's original and soaring vision plus his acute aesthetic judgments have made him one of the most influential art historians of all time.


BACKGROUND: The World Health Organization's End TB (tuberculosis) Strategy advocates social and economic support for TB-affected households but evidence from low-income settings is scarce. We will evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a locally-appropriate socioeconomic support intervention for TB-affected households in Nepal. METHODS: We will conduct a pilot randomised-controlled trial with mixed-methods process evaluation in four TB-endemic, impoverished districts of Nepal: Pyuthan, Chitwan, Mahottari, and Morang. We will recruit 128 people with TB notified to the Nepal National TB Program (NTP) and 40 multisectoral stakeholders including NTP staff, civil-society members, policy-makers, and ASCOT (Addressing the Social Determinants and Consequences of Tuberculosis) team members. People with TB will be randomised 1:1:1:1 to four study arms (n=32 each): control; social support; economic support; and combined social and economic (socioeconomic) support. Social support will be TB education and peer-led mutual-support TB Clubs providing TB education and stigma-reduction counselling. Economic support will be monthly unconditional cash transfers during TB treatment with expectations (not conditions) of meeting NTP goals. At 0, 2, and 6 months following TB treatment initiation, participants will be asked to complete a survey detailing the social determinants and consequences of TB and their feedback on ASCOT. Complementary process evaluation will use focus group discussions (FGD), key informant interviews (KII), and a workshop with multi-sectoral stakeholders to consider the challenges to ASCOT's implementation and scale-up. A sample of ~100 people with TB is recommended to estimate TB-related costs. Information power is estimated to be reached with approximately 25 FGD and 15 KII participants. CONCLUSIONS: The ASCOT pilot trial will both generate robust evidence on a locally-appropriate, socioeconomic support intervention for TB-affected households in Nepal and inform a large-scale future ASCOT trial, which will evaluate the intervention's impact on catastrophic costs mitigation and TB outcomes. The trial is registered with the ISRCTN ( ISRCTN17025974).


We present the successful operation of the first dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) driven tunable millimeter-wave phase shifter. The development of dynamically reconfigurable microwave/millimeter-wave (MW/MMW) antenna devices is becoming a prime need in the field of telecommunications and sensing. The real time updating of antenna characteristics such as coverage or operation frequency is particularly desired. However, in many circumstances currently available technologies suffer from high EM losses, increased complexity and cost. Conversely, reconfigurable devices based on DEAs offer low complexity, low electromagnetic (EM) losses and analogue operation. Our tunable phase shifter consists of metallic strips suspended a fixed distance above a coplanar waveguide (CPW) by planar DEAs. The planar actuators displace the metallic strips (10 mm in length) in-plane by 500 μm, modifying the EM field distribution, resulting in the desired phase shift. The demanding spacing (50 ±5 μm between CPW and metallic strips) and parallel alignment criteria required for optimal device operation are successfully met in our device design and validated using bespoke methods. Our current device, approximately 60 mm x 60 mm in planar dimensions, meets the displacement requirements and we observe a considerable phase shift (~95° at 25 GHz) closely matching numerical simulations. Moreover, our device achieves state of the art performance in terms of phase shift per EM loss ~235°/dB (35 GHz), significantly out performing other phase shifter technologies, such as MMIC phase shifters.


By the Sea Side The Atlantic coastal plain of North America has been thought of as a passive margin, responding mostly to the weight of deposited sediments. As a result, the fine-scale stratigraphy of the sediments has been used to infer changes in global sea level through the Cenozoic. However, recent work has shown that the coastal plain has deformed in response to flow in Earth's mantle. Rowley et al. (p. 1560, published online 16 May) used a model of flow in the mantle to show that the topography of the mid-Atlantic and Southern United States coast varied by 60 meters or more during the past 5 million years. Mantle flow has deformed the presumed passive eastern margin of North America by up to 60 meters during the past 5 million years. Sedimentary rocks from Virginia through Florida record marine flooding during the mid-Pliocene. Several wave-cut scarps that at the time of deposition would have been horizontal are now draped over a warped surface with a maximum variation of 60 meters. We modeled dynamic topography by using mantle convection simulations that predict the amplitude and broad spatial distribution of this distortion. The results imply that dynamic topography and, to a lesser extent, glacial isostatic adjustment account for the current architecture of the coastal plain and proximal shelf. This confounds attempts to use regional stratigraphic relations as references for longer-term sea-level determinations. Inferences of Pliocene global sea-level heights or stability of Antarctic ice sheets therefore cannot be deciphered in the absence of an appropriate mantle dynamic reference frame.


Nuclear reaction rates for astrophysics applications are traditionally determined on the basis of Hauser- Feshbach reaction codes, like MOST. These codes use simplified schemes to calculate the capture reaction cross section on a given target nucleus, not only in its ground state but also on the different thermally populated states of the stellar plasma at a given temperature. Such schemes include a number of approximations that have never been tested, such as an approximate width fluctuation correction, the neglect of delayed particle emission during the electromagnetic decay cascade or the absence of the pre-equilibrium contribution at increasing incident energies. New developments have been brought to the reaction code TALYS to estimate the Maxwellian-averaged reaction rates of astrophysics relevance. These new developments give us the possibility to calculate with an improved accuracy the reaction cross sections and the corresponding astrophysics rates. The TALYS predictions for the thermonuclear rates of astrophysics relevance are presented and compared with those obtained with the MOST code on the basis of the same nuclear ingredients for nuclear structure properties, optical model potential, nuclear level densities and γ-ray strength. It is shown that, in particular, the pre-equilibrium process significanly influences the astrophysics rates of exotic neutron-rich nuclei. The reciprocity theorem traditionally used in astrophysics to determine photorates is also shown no to be valid for exotic nuclei. The predictions obtained with different nuclear inputs are also analyzed to provide an estimate of the theoretical uncertainties still affecting the reaction rate prediction far away from the experimentally known regions.


After the UK government announced cuts to higher education and an increase in the tuition fee cap, thousands of students across the country used new media tools to organise peaceful protests at over 35 universities. Although extensive theoretical frameworks about online mobilisation and political action are available, we know very little about how these new informational tools are used in practice. This article provides an overview of the increasingly influential role of the internet in youth politics. Using the case study of the student occupations, it assesses the role of a variety of online tools and methods that were used to coordinate and mobilise young people. The study reveals the extensive use of old and new online platforms and hardware, and the constant blending of offline and online repertoires of participation, which have facilitated a novel way of organising political action. It argues that the student protests were important in demonstrating the potential of new media for political mobilisation, stresses the need to better understand the role of digital tools in political activism and suggests avenues for further research.


Raising children's learning and performance and implementing effective strategies to improve standards represent continuous challenges for government policy makers, schools and teachers. Whilst school effectiveness and school improvement policies and strategies have endeavoured to do this through various strategies, the key to sustainable effective improvements in different contexts remains elusive. This study is complementary to school policy studies and provides a different way of raising children's learning and performance. The study also addresses a gap in the literature. The approach adopted was to focus on children through targeting various holistic interventions in the form of sound and movement programmes in order to remediate the underlying causes of under performance by children. The study also adopted a novel approach of combining the two interventions, referred to in this study as an integrated approach.

To date, most studies have focused on external conditions or on the enablers to providing effective learning experiences. In recent years, there have been new and innovative interventions used in private institutions using more holistic ways of improving children's learning and performance. This research builds on this approach and attempts to extend the ideas generated in the private institutions by investigating these approaches in a school context with the hope of furthering the knowledge in this field. In addition, the aim is to propose a holistic model for raising children's learning and performance which capitalises on the work of school effectiveness and school improvement research, to date, in their bid to raise children learning. To achieve this objective a quasi-experimental, exploratory study which adopted quantitative methods of data collection was used in a school, with four parallel classes (in total 119 children) aged nine/ten years, using the following standardised tests: Suffolk Group Reading Test, the NFER Non- verbal (NFER Nelson) and TAPS-R (Gardner 1985) Digit Span Test to measure and gain an overall picture of any impact made by the interventions. The experimental study took place over a period of eight months. Two classes completed the individual interventions, whilst one completed both as an integrated approach and one class had no intervention.

Results showed that the movement interventions and the integrated intervention raised overall performance. However, the sound intervention raised only reading performance. The integrated intervention did not show increased results over and above the two individual interventions, leading to the conclusion that it did not generate a significant and marked impact. Based on the empirical findings and on the literature, a model of the Child Centric Learning Effectiveness Cycle (CCLEC) was proposed to help raise children's learning and performance in schools.


In the light of genotoxicity of cobalt(II) compounds and their presumed carcinogenicity after inhalatory exposure, the use of cobalt compounds as additives in animal nutrition has been assessed, considering (i) the necessity of its use for all animal species, (ii) its implications for consumer safety and (iii) on the safety of persons handling cobalt compounds. Since the only known role of cobalt in animals is that of the central atom of vitamin B12, only animals with the capacity of synthesizing vitamin B12 in the intestinal tract like ruminants, horses and coprophagous rabbits can utilise cobalt. Consequently, there is no necessity for cobalt supplementation of feed for other animals. No data are available in the open literature on the potential carcinogenicity of cobalt following the exposure via the oral route either in humans or in experimental animals. The exposure of consumers to total dietary cobalt has been considered. There was no indication that the thresholds for non-carcinogenic events (i.e. cardio-myopathy, polycythaemia, goiter, developmental) would be exceeded at present. Users are exposed to cobalt compounds. In the re-evaluation of cobalt compounds their dusting potential deserves therefore particular attention. As a first step, the FEEDAP Panel recommends minimizing exposure of users. The FEEDAP Panel recommends modifying the authorisation of cobalt compounds in feedstuffs by (i) restricting the use of cobalt compounds as additives to feed for ruminants (except milk replacer), horses and rabbits, (ii) limiting cobalt supplementation in feed for ruminants (except milk replacer), horses and rabbits to a maximum of 0.3 mg Co/kg complete feed, and (iii) reducing the authorised maximum cobalt content from all sources from 2 to 1 mg/kg complete feed for all species except fish. Any negative consequences of these measures on animal health and the efficiency of animal production are not expected.


Using spirituality to resolve mental problems is prevalent in many countries, yet has not been properly studied and developed in Vietnam. Thus, the aim of this study is to examine influence of spirituality on mental distress recovery among Vietnamese people. A qualitative approach was selected to address this research objective. Specifically, 20 in-depth interviews were undertaken with Hanoian people having experienced mental distress. The findings indicate that spirituality has positive effect on Vietnamese people. Besides, people having encountered personal traumas or endured high rate of stress have the tendency to rely more on spiritual experiences. Additionally, it is found that most Vietnamese people subconsciously count on spirituality for mental relief, rather than using it as a mental therapy.


A standard model predictive controller (MPC) can be written as a parametric optimization problem whose solution is a piecewise affine (PWA) map from the measured state to the optimal control input. The primary limitation of this optimal `explicit solution¿ is that the complexity can grow quickly with problem size, and so in this paper we seek to compute approximate explicit control laws that can trade-off complexity for approximation error. This computation is accomplished in a two-phase process: First, inner and outer polyhedral approximations of the the convex cost function of the parametric problem are computed with an algorithm based on an extension to the classic double-description method; a convex hull approach. The proposed method has two main advantages from a control point of view: it is an incremental approach, meaning that an approximation of any specified complexity can be produced and it operates on implicitly-defined convex sets, meaning that the optimal solution of the parametric problem is not required. In the second phase of the algorithm, a feasible approximate control law is computed that has the cost function derived in the first phase. For this purpose, a new interpolation method is introduced based on recent work on barycentric interpolation. The resulting control law is continuous, although non-linear and defined over a non-simplical polytopic partition of the state space. The non-simplical nature of the partition generates significantly simpler approximate control laws than current competing methods, as demonstrated on computational examples.


Background: Hyperglycemia is associated with increased mortality in critically ill patients. Randomized trials of intensive insulin therapy have reported inconsistent effects on mortality and increased rates of severe hypoglycemia. We conducted a meta-analysis to update the totality of evidence regarding the influence of intensive insulin therapy compared with conventional insulin therapy on mortality and severe hypoglycemia in the intensive care unit (ICU). Methods: We conducted searches of electronic databases, abstracts from scientific conferences and bibliographies of relevant articles. We included published randomized controlled trials conducted in the ICU that directly compared intensive insulin therapy with conventional glucose management and that documented mortality. We included in our meta-analysis the data from the recent NICE-SUGAR (Normoglycemia in Intensive Care Evaluation — Survival Using Glucose Algorithm Regulation) study. Results: We included 26 trials involving a total of 13 567 patients in our meta-analysis. Among the 26 trials that reported mortality, the pooled relative risk (RR) of death with intensive insulin therapy compared with conventional therapy was 0.93 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.83–1.04). Among the 14 trials that reported hypoglycemia, the pooled RR with intensive insulin therapy was 6.0 (95% CI 4.5–8.0). The ICU setting was a contributing factor, with patients in surgical ICUs appearing to benefit from intensive insulin therapy (RR 0.63, 95% CI 0.44–0.91); patients in the other ICU settings did not (medical ICU: RR 1.0, 95% CI 0.78–1.28; mixed ICU: RR 0.99, 95% CI 0.86–1.12). The different targets of intensive insulin therapy (glucose level ≤ 6.1 mmol/L v. ≤ 8.3 mmol/L) did not influence either mortality or risk of hypoglycemia. Interpretation: Intensive insulin therapy significantly increased the risk of hypoglycemia and conferred no overall mortality benefit among critically ill patients. However, this therapy may be beneficial to patients admitted to a surgical ICU.


Telecom network equipment markets continue to play a significant role in shaping the global information and communications system. At one level, network equipment influences network performance attributes and has direct bearings on the dynamics of innovation at higher layers of the Internet ecosystem. More strategically, participating in network equipment markets is of vital importance for nations in the present era when the openness of the Internet is challenged by actions of many stakeholders. During the past decade, momentum in global equipment markets has shifted from established players such as Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco to emerging firms such as Huawei. Consolidation and takeovers have strongly affected the number of North American network equipment suppliers and raised the question of whether and how public policy could contribute to preventing further decline.Determining how policy choices affect firm-level competitive advantage in the oligopolistic telecom equipment markets is a complex task. Three major challenges need to be overcome that no single method of analysis can handle well. First, the telecom equipment sector is inherently dynamic with ever-changing technology and market dynamics. Second, data documenting the industry and its main players are heterogeneous, of non-uniform quality, and need to be dealt with at different levels of aggregation (firms, nations) simultaneously. Third, due to endogenous and independent decisions at multiple levels (firms, nations), the determination of future scenarios is enormously difficult. Thus, there is a lack of understanding and of strong inference about whether and how public policies, – including measures affecting research and development (RD 2G, 3G, LTE; and optical networks. Data for these analyses were collected from several sources, including Infonetics, Ovum, and public sector databases. We used several econometric techniques including machine-learning approaches to overcome the challenges of heterogeneous data. We then took the findings of these models to build dynamic simulation models of competition that allow us to relax the constraints of the empirical analysis based on historical data, and study the effects of various policy decisions on outcomes such as market shares and revenues. Our analysis illuminates four sets of lessons: First, we demonstrate the limitations of the available data and its implications for what we can and cannot learn about telecom market even after comprehensive modeling efforts. Second, we discuss how competition has changed in the telecom equipment markets over time and how, despite it being an oligopolistic and overall a fairly stable market, certain firms have exploited competitive advantage by sustained commitment to RD Europe, Middle East, and Africa; Central and Latin America, and Asia Pacific.


A technique for bandwidth enhancement of a given amplifier is presented. Adding several interstage passive matching networks enables the control of transfer function and frequency response behavior. Parasitic capacitances of cascaded gain stages are isolated from each other and absorbed into passive networks. A simplified design procedure, using well-known low-pass filter component values, is introduced. To demonstrate the feasibility of the method, a CMOS transimpedance amplifier (TIA) is implemented in a 0.18-/spl mu/m BiCMOS technology. It achieves 3 dB bandwidth of 9.2 GHz in the presence of a 0.5-pF photodiode capacitance. This corresponds to a bandwidth enhancement ratio of 2.4 over the amplifier without the additional passive networks. The transresistance gain is 54 dB/spl Omega/, while drawing 55 mA from a 2.5-V supply. The input sensitivity of the TIA is -18 dBm for a bit error rate of 10/sup -12/.


Synopsis Detrital zircon populations within the Llandovery to Wenlock sandstones of the southern Midland Valley of Scotland indicate that the recycled orogenic provenance for these sedimentary rocks was essentially bimodal, comprising a younger Lower Palaeozoic component and an older predominantly Mesoproterozoic component. The Lower Palaeozoic contribution is dominated by Arenig/Llanvirn (c. 475 Ma) zircons interpreted as having been derived from a volcanic-plutonic source located within the Midland Valley terrane. The dominant Mesoproterozoic component within the sandstones is c. 1000 Ma and is thought to represent detritus shed from a Grenvillian (c. 1000–1800Ma) basement to the Midland Valley terrane. The scarcity of Archaean zircons precludes the Grampian metamorphic terrane Dalradian Supergroup as a supplier of sediment to the Ordovician–Silurian basins located along the southern margin of the Midland Valley. The age profiles of detrital zircon populations do not fit with a simple model of unroofing of a volcanic-arc complex. Rather they point to the periodic uplift of fault-bound, dismembered blocks of volcanic and plutonic rocks during a prolonged (Llandovery through to at least early Devonian) period of sinistral strike-slip deformation, and it was this which controlled basin development, sedimentary facies distribution and deformation along the southern side of the Midland Valley terrane. Appendices 1 & 2 can be found at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18370


We describe an embarrassingly parallel, anytime Monte Carlo method for likelihood-free models. The algorithm starts with the view that the stochasticity of the pseudo-samples generated by the simulator can be controlled externally by a vector of random numbers u, in such a way that the outcome, knowing u, is deterministic. For each instantiation of u we run an optimization procedure to minimize the distance between summary statistics of the simulator and the data. After reweighing these samples using the prior and the Jacobian (accounting for the change of volume in transforming from the space of summary statistics to the space of parameters) we show that this weighted ensemble represents a Monte Carlo estimate of the posterior distribution. The procedure can be run embarrassingly parallel (each node handling one sample) and anytime (by allocating resources to the worst performing sample). The procedure is validated on six experiments.


Acquiring 3D models of intricate objects (like tree branches, bicycles and insects) is a hard problem due to severe self-occlusions, repeated thin structures and surface discontinuities. In theory, a shape-from-silhouettes (SFS) approach can overcome these difficulties and use many views to reconstruct visual hulls that are close to the actual shapes. In practice, however, SFS is highly sensitive to errors in silhouette contours and the calibration of the imaging system, and therefore not suitable for obtaining reliable shapes with a large number of views. We present a practical approach to SFS using a novel technique called coplanar shadowgram imaging, that allows us to use dozens to even hundreds of views for visual hull reconstruction. Here, a point light source is moved around an object and the shadows (silhouettes) cast onto a single background plane are observed. We characterize this imaging system in terms of image projection, reconstruction ambiguity, epipolar geometry, and shape and source recovery. The coplanarity of the shadowgrams yields novel geometric properties that are not possible in traditional multi-view camera- based imaging systems. These properties allow us to derive a robust and automatic algorithm to recover the visual hull of an object and the 3D positions of light source simultaneously, regardless of the complexity of the object. We demonstrate the acquisition of several intricate shapes with severe occlusions and thin structures, using 50 to 120 views.


There are societies in which individual and social mentalities are deeply imbued with religion, which dominates as a philosophy of life, and which guides its followers from the most insignificant to the most important thoughts and acts. There, secular life is the faithful reflection of religious ideology, and unfolds in the shadow of its ancestral and collective narratives. There, present and future celebrate a mystical past, which they replicate through a circular effort and in their own circumstances. There are societies in which social life interferes little, if at all, with the religious one; where religion is merely tolerated, instead of being assimilated or consuming. There, religion is not an ideological guide, an all-leading factor and force, but only a reminiscent paradigm; there, present and future shape themselves as stages of an evolutive spiral. A society to which religion imposes itself as a force that tends to perpetually conserve the status quo, opposing paradigm shifts in order to keep society on the uniform path of the imposed ideal; and a society which considers that, since the fundamental reality is matter acting according to its internal laws, ideology appears, exists and becomes through and in the image of the material being subject to evolution, beyond its developments and avatars.


To the Editor: Since the initiation of multidrug therapy for leprosy (Hansen disease) in the 1980s by using rifampin, dapsone, and clofazimine, resistance to rifampin and dapsone has been observed worldwide and is still prevalent (1,2). Because few alternative effective antileprosy drugs exist, resistance to these first-line drugs could seriously affect leprosy control programs. We report a documented case of primary multidrug-resistant (MDR) leprosy in the United States.

A man from American Samoa migrated to Hawaii at age 25 years and, at age 41 years, first sought care for generalized erythematous papules and plaques. A skin biopsy showed borderline lepromatous (BL) leprosy (Figure, panel A). He had no prior history of leprosy and no prior treatment. He was treated for 44 months with a daily regimen of dapsone (100 mg), clofazimine (100 mg), and rifampin (600 mg). He appeared to comply with this regimen, and the lesions slowly resolved. He remained free of any new lesions until 4 years after completing treatment, when multiple brown hyperpigmented patches appeared on his lower legs. A skin biopsy showed only hemosiderin deposition but no organisms.

Figure

Acid-fast organisms from biopsy specimens of a man with leprosy, United States. Fite-stained sections show numerous acid-fast bacilli in the initial skin biopsy specimen (A) and in the biopsy specimen taken at relapse, 6 years after completion of treatment ...

At 51 years of age, 6 years after completing treatment, the man again sought care for a 2-week history of multiple generalized erythematous papules and plaques on his face, trunk, and extremities. Some lesions were pruritic but nontender. A skin biopsy showed chronic inflammatory infiltrates with numerous acid-fast bacilli (Figure, panel B). Clinically considered to have relapsed BL leprosy, he was again treated daily with dapsone (100 mg), clofazimine (50 mg), and rifampin (600 mg). After 1 month of this regimen, no clinical improvement was observed.

Real-time PCR using the Mycobacterium leprae–specific repetitive element assay (3) confirmed the presence of M. leprae in biopsy specimens taken at the initial diagnosis and at relapse. Molecular genotyping of these samples with a panel of single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) markers (4) showed that both biopsy specimens harbored M. leprae with the identical SNP subtype 3I and VNTR profile. PCR/DNA sequencing of the drug resistance–determining regions of M. leprae from these samples showed mutations within codon 53 of the folP1 gene (ACC→GCC) and in codon 425 of the rpoB gene (TCG→TTG). These mutations have been characterized to induce high-level resistance to dapsone and rifampin, respectively (5,6). Careful evaluation of electropherograms of these drug resistance–determining regions showed only the resistant alleles in both strains.

These data indicated that this patient had been infected with MDR M. leprae before his initial treatment for leprosy. Therefore, when he was initially treated with leprosy multidrug therapy, he was essentially given clofazimine monotherapy. This treatment appears to have resulted in a slow, temporary clinical improvement. After relapse, he was placed on a daily regimen of clofazimine (100 mg), clarithromycin XL (500 mg), and minocycline (100 mg). The lesions clinically improved within 2 weeks, and the patient no longer noted any pruritus or tenderness in the lesions.

This report documents a case of primary MDR leprosy in the United States. In evaluating several previous biopsy samples from other patients in Hawaii, we have not seen any rifampin-resistant or MDR isolates. Health officials in American Samoa, the patient's country of origin, indicated that they were not aware of drug-resistant M. leprae among their patients (D. Scollard, pers. comm.). The patient reported no family history of leprosy, and no other contact could be identified. The origin of the MDR M. leprae in this case cannot be definitively determined.

Drug-resistant leprosy, including dapsone- and rifampin-resistant and MDR leprosy, has been reported in other parts of the world, usually in association with relapse after insufficient therapy (1,2). Relapses in leprosy are not usually seen until many years after completion of treatment (7,8). In the United States, among patients treated for 2 years with a multidrug protocol involving daily rifampin, no relapses were observed after 10–15 years' follow-up (9). Most new or worsening skin lesions clinically suspected to be relapses are actually leprosy reactions (10), which affect 30%–50% of patients. In the patient reported here, leprosy relapsed with MDR M. leprae 6 years after completion of treatment.

The emergence of drug resistance poses a serious threat to leprosy control programs that rely on a secondary intervention, such as chemotherapy, because a leprosy vaccine is not available. Clinicians should be aware that persons who have acquired leprosy in other countries could have infection resulting from drug-resistant M. leprae. When resistance is suspected, biopsy samples should be analyzed by using molecular assays that enable rapid identification of mutations associated with drug resistance directly from paraffin-embedded biopsy specimens. For patients in the United States, this analysis is available through the National Hansen's Disease (Leprosy) Program (www.hrsa.gov/hansensdisease/diagnosis/index.html), and for US patients, the program provides the 3-drug regimen for leprosy free of charge. When needed, minocycline, clarithromycin, and ofloxacin are provided as alternatives to treat leprosy.


In classrooms, questioning is one of the most regularly employed teaching strategies. Questioning is considered by many to be the most important tool that teachers have for helping students build understanding and to encourage students to think about and act upon the material that have structured. Questions are asked to individual pupils, to the whole class, to small groups to arouse curiosity, focus attention, develop an active approach, stimulate pupils, structure the task, diagnose difficulties, communicate expectation, help children reflect, develop thinking skills, help group reflection, provoke discussion and show interest in pupils' ideas. Perhaps few studies have been carried out regarding the levels of classroom questions in Pakistan on this vital aspect of teaching learning process. The main objective of the study was to explore the levels of questions teachers asked during teaching at secondary level using bloom's taxonomy. It was focused to observe the ratio of lower and higher- order questions. It was an observational study of the descriptive method. The target population comprised all the teachers of Working Folks Grammar School & College Peshawar. Twenty teachers of different subjects teaching at secondary level were randomly selected as sample of the study. Teachers were observed using an observational guide and audio recording were conducted. The researcher focused only the asked questions of the teachers. This study is significant because its findings and conclusions may stimulate teachers to improve their questioning behavior in order to develop and promote higher order thinking abilities. The result of the study showed that so much time was spent with teachers questioning the students. Most of the questions were low- level cognitive questions. Higher- order questions were also observed however, the ratio of these questions was very low. Total percentage of questions during 445 minutes was 60 percent. The whole number of questions was good but in most of the classes the number of questions was low. Among 267 questions 67 percent were knowledge based, 23 percent were comprehension based, 7 percent were application based, 2 percent were analysis based and 1 percent was synthesis based. However the ratio of evaluation based questions was zero.


This article identifies and analyses the dominant stories that academics tell about the development of Western second wave feminist theory. Through an examination of recent production of interdisciplinary feminist and cultural theory journals, I suggest that despite a rhetorical insistence on multiple feminisms, Western feminist trajectories emerge as startlingly singular. In particular, I am critical of an insistent narrative that sees the development of feminist thought as a relentless march of progress or loss. This dominant approach oversimplifies the complex history of Western feminisms, fixes writers and perspectives within a particular decade, and repeatedly (and erroneously) positions poststructuralist feminists as 'the first' to challenge the category 'woman' as the subject and object of feminist knowledge. Rather than provide a corrective history of Western feminist theory, the article interrogates the techniques through which this dominant story is secured, despite the fact that we (feminist theorists) know better. My focus, therefore, is on citation patterns, discursive framings and some of their textual, theoretical and political effects. As an alternative, I suggest a realignment of key theorists purported to provide a critical break in feminist theory with their feminist citational traces, to force a concomitant re-imagining of our historical legacy and our place within it. keywords loss, postmodernism, progress, the seventies, Western feminism


This essay takes up the problem of agency in Piers Plowman by considering the failure of the ploughing of the half acre in passus 6 in terms of the political ecology of agrarian husbandry and estate management. The failure of the community formed on the half acre allegorizes the limitations of human agency to approach Truth, figured through the ecological and communal constraints within which individuals live in an agrarian society. As medieval husbandry manuals reveal, growing food required the coordination of an array of social and natural factors, which were often unpredictable and difficult to manage. The dangers of interdependence are enacted in the crisis precipitated by Wastour, in which the collective ways humans meet their bodily needs block their ability to discover Truth.


The viral Tax oncoprotein plays a key role in both Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1)-replication and HTLV-1-associated pathologies, notably adult T-cell leukemia. Tax governs the transcription from the viral 5'LTR, enhancing thereby its own expression, via the recruitment of dimers of phosphorylated CREB to cAMP-response elements located within the U3 region (vCRE). In addition to phosphorylation, CREB is also the target of O-GlcNAcylation, another reversible post-translational modification involved in a wide range of diseases, including cancers. O-GlcNAcylation consists in the addition of O-linked-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) on Serine or Threonine residues, a process controlled by two enzymes: O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT), which transfers O-GlcNAc on proteins, and O-GlcNAcase (OGA), which removes it. In this study, we investigated the status of O-GlcNAcylation enzymes in HTLV-1-transformed T cells. We found that OGA mRNA and protein expression levels are increased in HTLV-1-transformed T cells as compared to control T cell lines while OGT expression is unchanged. However, higher OGA production coincides with a reduction in OGA specific activity, showing that HTLV-1-transformed T cells produce high level of a less active form of OGA. Introducing Tax into HEK-293T cells or Tax-negative HTLV-1-transformed TL-om1 T cells is sufficient to inhibit OGA activity and increase total O-GlcNAcylation, without any change in OGT activity. Furthermore, Tax interacts with the OGT/OGA complex and inhibits the activity of OGT-bound OGA. Pharmacological inhibition of OGA increases CREB O-GlcNAcylation as well as HTLV-1-LTR transactivation by Tax and CREB recruitment to the LTR. Moreover, overexpression of wild-type CREB but not a CREB protein mutated on a previously described O-GlcNAcylation site enhances Tax-mediated LTR transactivation. Finally, both OGT and OGA are recruited to the LTR. These findings reveal the interplay between Tax and the O-GlcNAcylation pathway and identify new key molecular actors involved in the assembly of the Tax-dependent transactivation complex.


The ecology of overwintering young-of-the-year bluefish Pomatomus saltatrix off North Carolina, USA, was examined for the 2001 and 2002 year-classes, to test the hypothesis that over- winter mortality affects the recruitment of summer-spawned bluefish. A trawling survey was con- ducted in Onslow Bay, North Carolina, from October 2001 to May 2002 and from September 2002 to June 2003 to determine bluefish abundance, cohort structure, energy density of white muscle and liver, and gut fullness. Up to 4 transects ranging from 0.4 to 16.1 km from shore were sampled monthly. Abundance of bluefish in Onslow Bay was high during the fall and declined with decreas- ing temperature in both years. Winter abundance was related to winter severity, with higher catches during the more mild winter of 2001 to 2002. At least 3 young-of-the-year cohorts were observed in both years. Gut fullness values generally followed temperature patterns, with reduced feeding during the winter. Energy reserves in white muscle and liver tissues peaked in November with larger fish having disproportionately more energy. However, by mid-winter there was little difference in energy reserves between the cohorts. These data suggest that larger fish deplete a greater portion of their energy stores as the season progresses while smaller fish deplete energy more slowly. Catch data show that summer-spawned bluefish survive the winter, but the magnitude of overwinter mortality remains uncertain.


Pediatric Nursing is a clinically based journal focusing on the needs of professional nurses in pediatric practice, research, administration, and education. It provides information related to health care for normal, sick, or disabled children and their families; pediatric clients in the hospital, clinic or office, school, community, or home. A variety of feature and department articles highlight current topics and issues in pediatric practice and health policy, serving a wide range of pediatric professionals from those who practice nursing in acute care or specialty units to those who promote health in nonhospital environments. Published six times a year.


Over the years, farmed birds have been selected on various performance traits mainly through genetic selection. However, many studies have shown that genetics may not be the sole contributor to phenotypic plasticity. Gene expression programs can be influenced by environmentally induced epigenetic changes that may alter the phenotypes of the developing animals. Recently, high-throughput sequencing techniques became sufficiently affordable thanks to technological advances to study whole epigenetic landscapes in model plants and animals. In birds, a growing number of studies recently took advantage of these techniques to gain insights into the epigenetic mechanisms of gene regulation in processes such as immunity or environmental adaptation. Here, we review the current gain of knowledge on the chicken epigenome made possible by recent advances in high-throughput sequencing techniques by focusing on the two most studied epigenetic modifications, DNA methylation and histone post-translational modifications. We discuss and provide insights about designing and performing analyses to further explore avian epigenomes. A better understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the epigenetic regulation of gene expression in relation to bird phenotypes may provide new knowledge and markers that should undoubtedly contribute to a sustainable poultry production.


Ever since the discovery of neural networks, there has been a controversy between two modes of information processing. On the one hand, symbolic systems have proven indispensable for our understanding of higher intelligence, especially when cognitive domains like language and reasoning are examined. On the other hand, it is a matter of fact that intelligence resides in the brain, where computation appears to be organized by numerical and statistical principles and where a parallel distributed architecture is appropriate. The present claim is in line with researchers like Paul Smolensky and Peter Gardenfors and suggests that this controversy can be resolved by a unified theory of cognition - one that integrates both aspects of cognition and assigns the proper roles to symbolic computation and numerical neural computation. The overall goal in this contribution is to discuss formal systems that are suitable for grounding the formal basis for such a unified theory. It is suggested that the instruments of modern logic and model theoretic semantics are appropriate for analyzing certain aspects of dynamical systems like inferring and learning in neural networks. Hence, I suggest that an active dialogue between the traditional symbolic approaches to logic, information and language and the connectionist paradigm is possible and fruitful. An essential component of this dialogue refers to Optimality Theory (OT) - taken as a theory that likewise aims to overcome the gap between symbolic and neuronal systems. In the light of the proposed logical analysis notions like recoverability and bidirection are explained, and likewise the problem of founding a strict constraint hierarchy is discussed. Moreover, a claim is made for developing an "embodied" OT closing the gap between symbolic representation and embodied cognition.