The heterogeneously catalyzed reduction of NO with hydrogen over Ir(110), as well as the chemisorption of the individual reactants and some of the products, has been studied at low pressures ( Chapter 2 describes the chemisorption of hydrogen on Ir(110). The Ir(110)-(1x2) reconstructed surface is stable in hydrogen at pressures from 10-9 to 10-5 torr and surface temperatures from 130 to 1000 K, the conditions investigated. Absolute coverage measurements indicate the saturation density at 130 K on Ir(110) is (2.2±0.2)x1015 atoms cm-2. Thermal desorption measurements indicate hydrogen obeys second order desorption kinetics and exhibits two features, β1 and β2 states, with intensities 2:1, respectively, which exchange isotopically with one another. However, β2 hydrogen obeys first order adsorption kinetics with an initial probability of adsorption So equal to unity, while β1 hydrogen has an So equal to 7x10-3 and obeys second order kinetics. Rate parameters for hydrogen desorption from Ir(110) show a sympathetic increase up to at least half of saturation for the β2 state where Ed and νd assume values of 23 kcal-mole-1 and 1.5x10-2cm2-s-1, respectively. For the β1 state, Ed = 17-100 kcal-mole-1 from 0 equal to 0.4-0.7 and νd maintains an average value of 10-7 cm2-s-1. The CPD and UPS measurements are used to infer probable binding sites for the β1 and β2 states of hydrogen which are consistent with the absolute coverage determined from TDS. Chapter 3 discusses the interaction of hydrogen and CO on Ir(110). The co-adsorption of hydrogen and CO was undertaken to understand the effects of a model poison, CO, for hydrogen chemisorption. The adsorption of hydrogen on adsorbed CO, or vice versa, causes less hydrogen to occupy the β2 state and shifts the occupancy to the β1 state preferentially. An apparent increase in the probability of adsorption of hydrogen in the β1 state occurs for small CO coverages. At high CO coverages, the Ir(110) surface is poisoned to hydrogen adsorption. Exposing CO to preadsorbed hydrogen causes the binding energy of hydrogen to decrease with increasing CO exposure. Eventually, hydrogen is displaced from the surface for sufficient CO exposures. The induced dipole of hydrogen is unaffected by CO compared to the clean surface, as measured by the CPD. The results indicate CO poisons β2 sites for hydrogen by a simple site blocking mechanism and may exclude β1 sites at high CO coverages by a hydrogen-CO repulsive interaction. Chapter 4 presents the results for the molecular chemisorption of N2 and the coadsorption of N2 with hydrogen on Ir(110) at low temperatures. Photoelectron spectroscopy shows molecular levels of N2 at 8.0 (5σ + 1π) and 11.8 (4σ) eV in the valence band and at 399.2 eV with a satellite at 404.2 eV in the N(1s) region. The kinetics of adsorption and desorption of N2 show that both precursor kinetics and interadsorbate interactions are important for this chemisorption system. Adsorption occurs with So equal to unity up to saturation coverage (4.8X1014 cm-2) and thermal desorption gives rise to two peaks. The activation energy for desorption varies between 8.5 and 6.0 kcal-mole-1 at low and high coverages, respectively. Results of the co-adsorption of N2 and hydrogen indicate that adsorbed N2 resides in the missing row troughs on Ir(110) - (1x2). Furthermore, N2 is displaced by hydrogen, and the β2 state of hydrogen blocks virtually all N2 adsorption. Chapter 5 considers the chemisorption of NO on Ir(110). Adsorption of NO on Ir(110) proceeds by presursor kinetics with So equal to unity independent of surface temperature. Saturation of Ir(110) is achieved in molecular form at 9.6x1014 cm-2 below 300 K. Approximately 35% of a saturated overlayer desorbs as NO in two peaks with equal intensities. The balance desorbs as N2 and O2 where N2 begins to desorb after the first peak of NO is nearly completed. Estimates were made of the activation energies for the various surface reactions that occur as the surface is heated. At low coverages of NO, N2 desorbs with E equal to 36 kcal-mole-1. The activation energy for the dissociation of NO is near 25 kcal-mole-1 for a saturated overlayer, but varies for smaller coverages of NO. Desorption of NO at saturation is associated with energies of 23 and 33 kcal-mole-1 for the two peaks. The first peak represents desorption of NO from an oxygen-free surface and the second peak represents, at least in part, the recombination of nitrogen and oxygen adatoms on a partially oxidized surface. Oxygen tends to stabilize NO to dissociation and desorption as N2, as reflected in TDS. Moreover, UPS and CPD results indicate NO is stabilized on oxygen overlayers compared to the clean Ir(110) surface. Chapter 6 discusses the reaction of NO and deuterium to form N2, ND3 and D2O over Ir(110). In addition, the competitive co-adsorption of NO and deuterium and the thermal desorption of the resulting overlayer were performed to gain further insight into the observed steady state rates of reaction, via TDS and CPD measurements. Small precoverages of deuterium do not affect the adsorption kinetics of NO on Ir(110) but do cause more N2 to desorb relative to NO at saturation on the clean surface. Deuterium will adsorb on a saturated overlayer of NO. However, deuterium is strongly blocked from adsorbing on an Ir(110) surface that has both NO and oxygen adsorbed, which is a condition that occurs for some steady state reaction conditions. Under steady state conditions, the reduction of NO shows a marked hysteresis as the surface temperature is cycled for a large enough value of R(PD2/PNO). A plateau in the reduction rate appears at some T that persists as T decreases until at lower values of T the rate falls irreversibly. For larger values of R, ND3 is produced between 470 - 630 K and competes strongly with N2 production. Otherwise, N2 and D2O are the only products of the reduction reaction. Tentative explanations of the empirical rate models derived from the steady state rate data are discussed in light of XPS, UPS and LEED results that are presented as well.


Pancreatic tumors with combined exocrine and endocrine features are rare. Most reported cases are classified as mixed exocrine and endocrine carcinoma of the pancreas. We report the first case of solitary concomitant endocrine tumor and ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas. A 58-year-old patient was admitted for uncontrolled diabetes mellitus and body weight loss. The tumor was fortuitously discovered in the pancreatic tail after a tumor survey panel. Grossly, the solitary tumor had a central fibrous band that clearly divided it into two parts. On microscopic examination, the tumor contained both endocrine and exocrine components distinctly separated by the central fibrous band. The exocrine part showed a poorly-differentiated adenocarcinoma. The endocrine part was strongly immunoreactive to chromogranin, synaptophysin and glucagon. We reviewed the literature on pancreatic tumors with combined exocrine and endocrine features. A simple classification for this group of neoplasms is suggested, including five types: amphicrine, mixed, collision, solitary concomitant and multiple concomitant.


The protein Themis1 enables thymocyte selection by promoting T cell receptor signaling. Tipping the signaling scales The strength of the signal produced by the T cell receptor (TCR) in response to self-antigen determines whether an immature thymocyte undergoes positive selection and matures into a T cell or negative selection and is eliminated to avoid autoreactivity. Both selection processes require the protein Themis1. By examining the effects of either loss or overexpression of Themis1 in thymocytes in mice, Zvezdova et al. determined that Themis1 enhances the activity of the guanine nucleotide exchange factor Vav1 and the stability of the TCR-associated adaptor protein Grb2, thus enabling TCR signaling. These data suggest that, although Themis1 also recruits a phosphatase to the TCR complex, the primary role for Themis1 is to enhance rather than inhibit TCR signaling to promote thymocyte development. The T cell signaling protein Themis1 is essential for the positive and negative selection of thymocytes in the thymus. Although the developmental defect that results from the loss of Themis1 suggests that it enhances T cell receptor (TCR) signaling, Themis1 also recruits Src homology 2 domain–containing phosphatase-1 (SHP-1) to the vicinity of TCR signaling complexes, suggesting that it has an inhibitory role in TCR signaling. We used TCR signaling reporter mice and quantitative proteomics to explore the role of Themis1 in developing T cells. We found that Themis1 acted mostly as a positive regulator of TCR signaling in vivo when receptors were activated by positively selecting ligands. Proteomic analysis of the Themis1 interactome identified SHP-1, the TCR-associated adaptor protein Grb2, and the guanine nucleotide exchange factor Vav1 as the principal interacting partners of Themis1 in isolated mouse thymocytes. Analysis of TCR signaling in Themis1-deficient and Themis1-overexpressing mouse thymocytes demonstrated that Themis1 promoted Vav1 activity both in vitro and in vivo. The reduced activity of Vav1 and the impaired T cell development in Themis1−/− mice were due in part to increased degradation of Grb2, which suggests that Themis1 is required to maintain the steady-state abundance of Grb2 in thymocytes. Together, these data suggest that Themis1 acts as a positive regulator of TCR signaling in developing T cells, and identify a mechanism by which Themis1 regulates thymic selection.


Background: Cardiac arrhythmias are any abnormality or disruption of the normal activation sequence of the myocardium in the heart. Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common type of cardiac arrhythmia and is associated with increased mortality and morbidity. Patients with cardiac arrhythmias have a decreased quality of life (QoL) and an increased psychosocial burden. Yoga has demonstrated to be an effective tool in reducing blood pressure in patients with hypertension, reducing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and increasing QoL. Yoga as a treatment for patients with cardiac arrhythmias has yet to be investigated fully. Will yoga decrease the amount of cardiac arrhythmias in arrhythmia-prone individuals? Methods: An exhaustive search of available medical literature was performed using Medline-OVID, CINAHL, PubMed, and Web of Science using the keywords: "yoga", "arrhythmias, cardiac." A search of the National Institute of Health (NIH) clinical trials website showed one related clinical trial currently recruiting. Results: Two studies met inclusion criteria and were included in the systematic review. The first study is an observational pre-post cohort study that examined the impact of a structured 3-month yoga program on AF. Fifty two patients were enrolled and results showed dramatic decreases in the frequency of AF while in the yoga program compared to the control period. The second study is a retrospective observational cohort study to determine the effects of Pranayama, a type of yoga breathing exercise, on the QT dispersion (QTd) in patients with arrhythmias. Fifteen patients were enrolled in the analysis and results demonstrate a statistically significant decrease in the QTd as captured on electrocardiogram (ECG) over the course of the 12-week yogabreathing program. Conclusion: Yoga is a successful complementary and alternative treatment for cardiac arrhythmias. It can help lower blood pressure, stress, anxiety and depression that may trigger episodes of AF or other cardiac arrhythmias. The cost of yoga is much less than medications and has little to no adverse effects. Although clinical trials are needed to give more support to the evidence presented in these studies, Yoga should be implemented in therapy strategies for patients with cardiac arrhythmias. Degree Type Capstone Project Degree Name Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies First Advisor A.J. Sommers Second Advisor Saje Davis-Risen This capstone project is available at CommonKnowledge: http://commons.pacificu.edu/pa/473


Prophets of the Posthuman provides a fresh and original reading of fictional narratives that raise the question of what it means to be human in the face of rapidly developing bioenhancement technologies. Christina Bieber Lake argues that works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, George Saunders, Marilynne Robinson, Raymond Carver, James Tiptree, Jr., and Margaret Atwood must be reevaluated in light of their contributions to larger ethical questions. Drawing on a wide range of sources in philosophical and theological ethics, Lake argues that these writers share a commitment to maintaining a category of personhood more meaningful than that allowed by utilitarian ethics. Prophets of the Posthuman insists that because technology can never ask whether we should do something that we have the power to do, literature must step into that role. Each of the chapters of this interdisciplinary study sets up a typical ethical scenario regarding human enhancement technology and then illustrates how a work of fiction uniquely speaks to that scenario, exposing a realm of human motivations that might otherwise be overlooked or simplified. Through the vision of the writers she discusses, Lake uncovers a deep critique of the ascendancy of personal autonomy as America's most cherished value. This ascendancy, coupled with technology's glamorous promises of happiness, helps to shape a utilitarian view of persons that makes responsible ethical behavior toward one another almost impossible. Prophets of the Posthuman charts the essential role that literature must play in the continuing conversation of what it means to be human in a posthuman world.


Deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are powerful tools for a wide range of vision tasks, but the enormous amount of memory and compute resources required by CNNs poses a challenge in deploying them on constrained devices. Existing compression techniques, while excelling at reducing model sizes, struggle to be computationally friendly. In this paper, we attend to the statistical properties of sparse CNNs and present focused quantization, a novel quantization strategy based on power-of-two values, which exploits the weight distributions after fine-grained pruning. The proposed method dynamically discovers the most effective numerical representation for weights in layers with varying sparsities, significantly reducing model sizes. Multiplications in quantized CNNs are replaced with much cheaper bit-shift operations for efficient inference. Coupled with lossless encoding, we build a compression pipeline that provides CNNs with high compression ratios (CR), low computation cost and minimal loss in accuracies. In ResNet-50, we achieved a 18.08x CR with only 0.24% loss in top-5 accuracy, outperforming existing compression methods. We fully compress a ResNet-18 and found that it is not only higher in CR and top-5 accuracy, but also more hardware efficient as it requires fewer logic gates to implement when compared to other state-of-the-art quantization methods assuming the same throughput.


Increased automation and intelligence in computer systems have revealed limitations of Cloud-based computing such as unpredicted latency in safety-critical and performance-sensitive applications. The amount of data generated from ubiquitous sensors has reached a degree where it becomes impractical to always store and process in the Cloud. Edge computing brings computation and storage to the Edge of the network near to where the data originates yielding reduced network load and better performance of services. In parallel, new wireless communication technologies have appeared to facilitate the expansion of Internet of Things (IoT). Instead of seeking higher data rates, low-power wide-area network aims at battery-powered sensor nodes and devices which require reliable communication for a prolonged period of time. Recently, Long Range (LoRa) has become a popular choice for IoT-based solutions. In this paper, we explore and analyze different application fields and related works which use LoRa and investigate potential improvement opportunities and considerations. Furthermore, we propose a generic architecture to integrate Edge computation capability in IoT-based applications for enhanced performance.


Insurance has been widely used as a risk mitigation tool in our personal lives as well as in business world. It is not deniable that insurance has become part of parcel of our daily lives and it provides the benefits and protection to us when we are unfortunate. However, the concepts of riba (interest), gharar (uncertainty) and mysir (gambling) inherited in insurance principles and practices are prohibited from the Islamic perspective. The Muslim scholars introduced takful to replace the conventional insurance. Tremendously, takaful is at high growing rate and penetrating into both Muslim and Non-Muslim countries. However, to the extent of our knowledge, there are no takaful operators in India even though it has the second highest population and at the same time, third highest Muslim population in the world belongs to India. Thus, the aims of this study are to examine the acceptability and possibility of offering takaful in India and to propose the most suitable takaful model that should be engaged by the takaful operators and policy holders. The findings from 216 Muslim and 117 non-Muslim respondents show that acceptability of takaful by Indians regardless of Muslims or non-Muslims is very high and there is possibility that takaful products can be marketed in India. It seems regardless of the religion, takaful seems to be accepted by Indians. Moreover, 10 Shari'ah scholars 7 takaful operators and 5 consultants opine that hybrid model, i.e. the combined concept of wakalah and mudarabah, will be the most suitable model for India. Hence, future research should examine the perception of regulators to introduce takaful and economic viability of the proposed model.


Tax risk-management (TRM) is a little-studied area of corporate governance, despite the proliferation of ever more complex tax legislation that can have a material impact on the sustainability of organisations. In this light, the aim of this research is to explore policies and procedures relied on by tax authorities in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and South Africa to encourage a culture of compliance with tax laws. For this purpose, the research differentiates between specific and generic tax risks. These include transaction, operational, compliance, financial accounting, portfolio, management and reputation risk. The study highlights how each TRM-related policy or programme addresses these tax risks and compares the TRM systems in the three jurisdictions.


Rabies virus, a bullet-shaped enveloped negative sense single stranded RNA virus, often carries death sentence once clinical manifestations commenced in humans and animals. Preand postexposure vaccinations against the virus have long been in existence to protect humans, especially occupationally exposed such as workers in rabies laboratories, veterinary hospitals and clinics, wildlife rehabilitation centers and animal shelters. The need to receive this vaccination especially rabies pre-exposure vaccination becomes more important in endemic countries in accordance with Advisory Committee on Immunization Practise (ACIP). This study surveyed rabies vaccination status of occupationally exposed humans in Nigeria. The reasons adduced for unvaccination were also reported. Structured questionnaire were administered to veterinarians during the annual conference of Nigeria Veterinary Medical Association (NVMA) and the Continuous Education programme of Veterinary Council of Nigeria (VCN) in 2016 while others were administered at some wildlife facilities and animal shelters in Nigeria. Data were entered into SPSS version 23 for statistical analysis. Vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals were compared using univariate and logistic regression analyses to identify factors associated with vaccination status at α 0.05 level of significance. Out of 250 questionnaires administered to veterinarians, wildlife managers and dog breeders (Group A) and 120 questionnaires administered to workers in veterinary practice, animal shelter & zoo garden/wildlife parks (Group B), only 155 and 83 questionnaires respectively were eligible and complete for analysis. The result obtained showed that 61.3% (95/155) and 85.5% (71/ 83%) of Group A and Group B respectively had not received pre-exposure rabies vaccination. Results of univariate analyses showed that health insurance were significantly associated with vaccination status in Group A and B while age was significantly associated with vaccination status for Group A only. This study showed that large number of occupational exposed humans did not receive rabies preexposure vaccination despite their frequent exposure to rabies sources (both domesticated and wild animals). Various impeding factors such as unavailability of rabies vaccines in the hospital, cost of vaccination, inadequate knowledge about rabies and its vaccination among other factors were presented and these should be taken seriously by both government and non-governmental organizations to ensure safety of this group of people.


Through 200 years cross-border relations and border issues between Norway and Russia in the High North were solved by means of a specific set of diplomatic mechanisms related to the administration of the "common district", fellesdistriktet, between the two states. Since the Middle Ages such districts had existed between the Nordic states and between Russia and her Nordic neighbours, due to the absence of clearly defined state borders. After the escalation of power struggle and even outbreak of war on territorial hegemony on the North Calotte at the end of the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth centuries, several of the districts were either dissolved or reorganised. The district that survived for the longest period of time was that between Russia and Norway. At the same time both Russian and Norwegian state authorities claimed taxation rights and even supremacy in parts of the common district, pretension claims that were continuously mutually presented until the end of the history of the Russian-Norwegian common district.    The main aim of the article is to offer an answer to the question why the relations between Russia and Norway were uniquely stable and peaceful through the whole period of two hundred years, in spite of reoccurring episodes of conflict and tensions, and why the common district survived for such a long time. Soft power and soft diplomacy theories are applied to clarify research positions, hypotheses and methods of approach. The empirical evidence for testing the hypotheses is contemporary accounts on a peculiar institute established early in the seventeenth century and operating until the final phases of the common district era to handle the common district challenges, namely a yearly meeting in the town of Kola (Malmis) between local representatives respectively of the Danish-Norwegian king and the Russian tsar, from the second half of the eighteenth century every third year. The institute got the name of "the Malmis meeting" or "the Malmis travel." The outstanding account by the Finnmark bailiff Niels Knag after the Malmis meeting in the winter of 1690–91 is the main source material. A central aspect of the meeting is diplomatic talks, "in confidence and friendship", combined with extensive social life not least including food feasting, a phenomenon often presented as a characteristic feature of soft diplomacy.


In a randomized design study, lambs were individually fed with ad libitum access to 70.9% concentrate diets for 56-d in individual pens. The positive control diet (CNTL) contained cotton seed meal (CSM), sorghum grain, and cotton seed hulls, but no DDGS. Four treatment diets were similar to CNTL but did not contain CSM. Corn DDGS replaced 0% (0DDGS), 33% (33DDGS), 66% (66DDGS) or 100% (100DDGS) of the sorghum grain in the treatment diets. At 48-h postmortem, the longissimus muscle (LM) was removed from the carcass, cut into chops, frozen, thawed, cooked, and evaluated by a trained sensory panel. Lambs fed CNTL were compared to 0DDGS using contrasts and linear and quadratic effects were evaluated among the four DDGS diets. Lambs fed CNTL had greater (P ≤ 0.03) hot carcass weight (HCW) and LM area than lambs fed 0DDGS. As DDGS incrementally replaced sorghum grain, marbling linearly decreased (P = 0.03), LM area tended to linearly increase (P = 0.06), and skeletal maturity tended to linearly decrease (P = 0.06). As DDGS incrementally replaced sorghum grain, flavor attributes quadratically increased to 33DDGS then decreased (brown, roasted, umami; P ≤ 0.03), quadratically decreased to 33DDGS then increased (metallic; P = 0.004), or linearly decreased (lamb flavor identity; P = 0.03). Volatile aroma compounds 2-(hexyloxy)-ethanol decreased and 2,3-octanedione and methyl pyrazine increased quadratically with an increase in DDGS (P < 0.05). Additionally, 2-heptenal, heptanal, and 2-pentyl furan increased linearly, while 2-butanone decreased linearly as DDGS increased in the diet (P < 0.05). Results indicate that carcass and sensory characteristics and volatile aroma compounds are not negatively affected, in fact brown, roasted, and umami flavors are enhanced, when 33% DDGS replaces CSM and sorghum grain in Dorper lamb feedlot diets.


In the past 50 years, Indian Space has seen many successful milestones – demonstrating excelling Indian technology and widespread utilization of space services in different areas of national economy. Present capabilities and capacities of Indian Space are mainly in the unitary capabilities of the national space agency – this has enabled the nation to significantly achieve about 10-12 high-quality missions every year. Meeting future domestic needs AND benefitting by access to large global market of space will require a quantum jump in capabilities and capacities to be served.
Another important development is the aspirational growth of Indian economy and the people. With a GDP growth hover around 7-8% and a few trillion dollar economy, the nation has launched important developmental initiatives - Digital India, Make in India, Smart City, Swach Bharat, National Education Mission and National Skill Mission programmes. Thus, demands for diverse applications of space technology are inevitable – integrating across geographical, sectoral and temporal domains of the country.
In an earlier suo-moto study, we have outlined the future 10-20 years of policy perspectives for Indian Space development and also outlined the perspectives of how a National Space Eco-system would emerge – evolving from the present national space agency into a "public-private-academia triad".
Looking ahead of such a national eco-system, we now visualize critical developments that will bring impacting and paradigm shifts to holistic Indian Space through the "triad" – Game Changers. With about 100-150 possible missions in coming 10-20 years – encompassing EO, satellite communications, positioning, space science, planetary missions, operational and advanced launch access missions and the initiation of a human space flight programme, the "critical shifts" would be not just technological advancements but organizational re-structuring from emerging newer organizational arrangements, industrialization and emergence of private space industry, deeper penetration of space services in Indian society, increasing global presence of Indian players and a vibrant cooperative and collaboration at international level.
What will drive these game-changers? Cost efficiency will be one key driver - amply demonstrated in many sectors for global markets, this will impact global space markets and bring a "levelling effect" across global markets. Indian skills and human resources will be another driver – with Indian scientists, engineers and managers playing a major role in national and global space. Third will be "Indian innovation" – ability to improvise and innovate with simple, low-cost BUT effective solutions. These 3 drivers will bring a new economic model that balances systems, costs and performance.
The paper provides a perspective of future Indian Space and outlines "game changers" impacts that will emerge for space activities in India. The paper also discusses how, in an integrated manner, Indian Space can and should reach greater heights by key policy, strategy and actions for the coming few decades.


The seasonal dynamics of uptake, partitioning and redistribution of dry matter, N, P, K, S, Ca, Mg, Na, Cl, Fe, Zn, Mn and Cu by the cormaceous plant Ixia flexuosa were studied in pot culture at Perth, WA. Dry matter and P, N, K, Zn and Cu were redistributed from the mother corm with about 90 per cent net efficiency: there was no net redistribution of Ca, Na, Fe or Mn. The efficiency of redistribution from the leafy shoot to fruits and the new season's corm was 80 per cent for N and P, 24-49 per cent for K, Cu and Zn, and 0-15 per cent for Na, Fe, Ca, Mn, Cl, Mg, S and dry matter. Redistribution from the mother corm and vegetative organs could have supplied the replacement corm, cormlets and fruits with 32-53 per cent of their S, K, P, N, Cu and Zn, and 11-25 per cent of their Ca, Cl, Mn, Mg and dry matter. The mature replacement corm had over 60 per cent of the plant's N and P, 25-50 per cent of its dry matter, Zn, Cu, Mg, K and Cl, but less than 20 per cent of its Ca, Na, Fe and Mn. Each plant produced an average of 12 cormlets; these had 35 per cent of the dry matter and 23-47 per cent of the amount of a particular nutrient in the new season's corms. Fruits had less than 16 per cent of the dry matter and each mineral in the mature plant. Rates of mineral intake by Ixia were much lower than reported for crop plants, and may be related to the long growing season of the species.


BACKGROUND
World Health Organization treatment guidelines recommend that adults with severe malaria be admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU). However, ICU facilities are limited in the resource-poor settings where most malaria occurs. Identification of patients at greater risk of complications may facilitate their triage and resource allocation.

METHODS
With use of data from a trial conducted in Southeast Asia (n=868), a logistic regression model was built to identify independent predictors of mortality among adults with severe malaria. A scoring system based on this model was tested in the original dataset and then validated in 2 series from Bangladesh (n=188) and Vietnam (n=292).

RESULTS
Acidosis (base deficit) and cerebral malaria (measured as Glasgow Coma Score) were the main independent predictors of outcome. The 5-point Coma Acidosis Malaria (CAM) score was simply derived from these 2 variables. Mortality increased steadily with increasing score. A CAM score <2 predicted survival with a positive predictive value (PPV) of 95.8% (95% confidence interval [CI], 93%- 97.7%). Of the 14 of 331 patients who died with a CAM score <2, 11 (79%) had renal failure and death occurred late after hospital admission (median, 108 h; range, 40-360 h). Substitution of plasma bicarbonate as the measure of acidosis only slightly reduced the prognostic value of the model. Use of respiratory rate was inferior, but a score <2 still predicted survival with a PPV of 92.2% (95% CI, 89.1%-94.7%).

CONCLUSIONS
Patients with a CAM score <2 at hospital admission may be safely treated in a general ward, provided that renal function can be monitored.


Abstract. New burned area datasets and top-down constraints from atmospheric concentration measurements of pyrogenic gases have decreased the large uncertainty in fire emissions estimates. However, significant gaps remain in our understanding of the contribution of deforestation, savanna, forest, agricultural waste, and peat fires to total global fire emissions. Here we used a revised version of the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford-Approach (CASA) biogeochemical model and improved satellite-derived estimates of area burned, fire activity, and plant productivity to calculate fire emissions for the 1997–2009 period on a 0.5° spatial resolution with a monthly time step. For November 2000 onwards, estimates were based on burned area, active fire detections, and plant productivity from the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor. For the partitioning we focused on the MODIS era. We used maps of burned area derived from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) and Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) active fire data prior to MODIS (1997–2000) and estimates of plant productivity derived from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) observations during the same period. Average global fire carbon emissions according to this version 3 of the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED3) were 2.0 Pg C year−1 with significant interannual variability during 1997–2001 (2.8 Pg C year−1 in 1998 and 1.6 Pg C year−1 in 2001). Globally, emissions during 2002–2007 were relatively constant (around 2.1 Pg C year−1) before declining in 2008 (1.7 Pg C year−1) and 2009 (1.5 Pg C year−1) partly due to lower deforestation fire emissions in South America and tropical Asia. On a regional basis, emissions were highly variable during 2002–2007 (e.g., boreal Asia, South America, and Indonesia), but these regional differences canceled out at a global level. During the MODIS era (2001–2009), most carbon emissions were from fires in grasslands and savannas (44%) with smaller contributions from tropical deforestation and degradation fires (20%), woodland fires (mostly confined to the tropics, 16%), forest fires (mostly in the extratropics, 15%), agricultural waste burning (3%), and tropical peat fires (3%). The contribution from agricultural waste fires was likely a lower bound because our approach for measuring burned area could not detect all of these relatively small fires. Total carbon emissions were on average 13% lower than in our previous (GFED2) work. For reduced trace gases such as CO and CH4, deforestation, degradation, and peat fires were more important contributors because of higher emissions of reduced trace gases per unit carbon combusted compared to savanna fires. Carbon emissions from tropical deforestation, degradation, and peatland fires were on average 0.5 Pg C year−1. The carbon emissions from these fires may not be balanced by regrowth following fire. Our results provide the first global assessment of the contribution of different sources to total global fire emissions for the past decade, and supply the community with an improved 13-year fire emissions time series.


Abstract: The two main problems of native language acquisition are: the problem of learning (explaining ourgrasp of the meaning of words); and the problem of productivity (explaining our ability to understand and produce novel, correct sentences, when the linguistic data we encounter is flawed and limited). Fodor's and Chomsky's solution to these problems is to posit a mental linguistic structure (universal grammar or language of thought) as the framework that obviates the need for learning and makes an explanation of productivity possible. Ironically, Wittgenstein's solution is not as far removed from Fodor's and Chomsky's as might be supposed. For, he too posits a framework at the basis of our language-games – indeed a partly grammatical framework which includes a universal grammar. But the commonality stops here, for Wittgenstein's universal grammar is neither innate nor inner; it is rooted in our primitive reactions and transmitted socio-culturally. Wittgenstein's account of how we come to language can be counted as a social theory of language acquisition: it is in social practices, not in the mind, that we come to language.


Abstract Biochar from pine forest waste (PFW) was used in greenhouse pot experiments to evaluate plant growth using two levels (2% and 4% wt/wt) of biochar amendments applied to an alkaline, loamy sand soil. Biochar soil additions induced a large decrease in the soil bulk density (from 1.59 to 1.26 g cm−3) and large to moderate increases in gravimetric and volumetric soil-water contents, respectively, under pot and field moisture capacity conditions. The growth of romaine lettuce was initially adversely affected in the 4% biochar-amended soil. However, bermudagrass benefited from the biochar addition with increased biomass production and enhanced drought resistance. Both plant species showed statistically significant increases (compared with controls) in biomass yields at the 2% but not at the 4% biochar application rate. An incubation study indicated that soil microbial activity, as measured by evolved CO2, was significantly suppressed (−31% compared with the control) in the presence of biochar over a period of 4 months. The data indicated that addition of PFW biochar induced a species-dependent plant response and produced an overall decrease in microbial mineralization of organic materials. Vegetables such as lettuce may benefit from a period of excess irrigation, to leach any potentially toxic biochar-introduced salts or organic compounds, before seeding. Conversely, warm season grasses may adapt quickly to a soil amended with PFW biochar with increased biomass production and drought resistance.


Micro-cogeneration in residential applications is one of the efficient ways of improving the energy conversion efficiency in buildings. Cogeneration systems will cover electrical and thermal needs while reducing both energy bills and CO2 emissions. Thanks to its high efficiencies, SOFC (Solid Oxide Fuel Cell) seems to be one of the major emerging technologies in this field. The optimal design and operation of such a system will contribute to its profitability, a system analysis is therefore necessary. In a residential fuel cell installation project, the three following steps will be essential : Measurement or evaluation of thermal and electrical requirements profiles; Optimal system design and equipment rating; Optimal operation and control strategy of the heat/electricity management


Hubbard Model Approach to X-ray Spectroscopy Towfiq Ahmed Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor John J. Rehr Department of Physics We have implemented a Hubbard model based first-principles approach for real-space calculations of x-ray spectroscopy, which allows one to study excited state electronic structure of correlated systems. Theoretical understanding of many electronic features in d and f electron systems remains beyond the scope of conventional density functional theory (DFT). In this work our main effort is to go beyond the local density approximation (LDA) by incorporating the Hubbard model within the real-space multiple-scattering Green's function (RSGF) formalism. Historically, the first theoretical description of correlated systems was published by Sir Neville Mott and others in 1937. They realized that the insulating gap and antiferromagnetism in the transition metal oxides are mainly caused by the strong on-site Coulomb interaction of the localized unfilled 3d orbitals. Even with the recent progress of first principles methods (e.g. DFT) and model Hamiltonian approaches (e.g., Hubbard-Anderson model), the electronic description of many of these systems remains a non-trivial combination of both. X-ray absorption near edge spectra (XANES) and x-ray emission spectra (XES) are very powerful spectroscopic probes for many electronic features near Fermi energy (EF ), which are caused by the on-site Coulomb interaction of localized electrons. In this work we focus on three different cases of many-body effects due to the interaction of localized d electrons. Here, for the first time, we have applied the Hubbard model in the real-space multiple scattering (RSGF) formalism for the calculation of x-ray spectra of Mott insulators (e.g., NiO and MnO). Secondly, we have implemented in our RSGF approach a doping dependent self-energy that was constructed from a single-band Hubbard model for the over doped high-Tc cuprate La2−xSrxCuO4. Finally our RSGF calculation of XANES is calculated with the spectral function from Lee and Hedin's charge transfer satellite model. For all these cases our calculated x-ray spectra yield reasonable agreement with experiment. The above work has been implemented as an extension into the FEFF9 code, and we have also included notes for the new and modified key features of this development. Aside from the x-ray spectroscopy of correlated systems, we also present our calculation of the ground state local electronic structure of DNA nucleotides on graphene, and the transmission currents through graphene nanopores. Our calculation and analysis provide theoretical guidelines for developing DNA sequencing techniques using scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) and nanopore experiment. Evolved as a secondary focus of this thesis, we have added an additional chapter discussing our calculation of DNA-graphene hybrids.


Abstract Recent high plasma parameters were reached in experiments on plasma heating in the multi-mirror open trap GOL-3. In these experiments deuterium plasma with density 1014–1016 cm-3 in the 12-m trap with corrugated magnetic field of 4.8T/3.2T was heated by a relativistic electron beam of eU £ 0.8 MeV, I £ 20 kA, j ~ 1–2 kA/cm2, pulse duration ~ 9 ¼s and angular spread £ 0.2 rad. The electron temperature Te ~ 1-4 keV and ion one to Ti ~ 1-2 keV were reached. After the beam pulse the electron temperature of the plasma quickly (~20 ¼s) decreased to ~100 eV. In turn, this leads to an increase in the rate of cooling of ions through the ion-electron collisions, which, together with particle losses determines the energy confinement time of plasma as 0.5-1 ms. To increase the plasma parameters a prolonged heating of the plasma by the electron beam is proposed. The paper considers basic physical phenomena in the beam-plasma interaction and required parameters of the long pulse beam. A choice of long pulse beam parameters is based on the obtained experimental results and scalings. Then estimates of the expected plasma parameters under the influence of the new beam have been done.


On May 12, 2003, in the town of Tyler, Texas, Deanna Lajune Laney called the police to inform them that she had just stoned her three children to death. Laney's husband slept through the children's murder, emerging from the house in his nightclothes at 12:52 p.m. to find the police in his yard. In their reports, the police stated that when they arrived they found Joshua and Luke dead in the front yard, and Aaron lying critically wounded in his crib. A fervent Christian with no known history of criminal activity or mental illness, Laney explained to the police that she "had to do it" because God told her to kill her children. When she was interviewed in her prison cell later that day she was described by Sheriff J. B. Smith as "incoherent . . . sometimes [she] lays in a fetal position, sometimes walks around her cell singing gospel music. Sometimes she seems to realize what she's done and says Oh, no!'" (Cohen, 2003). Laney's crime, sensational in its own right, gained further notoriety by its uncanny similarity to that of Andrea Yates, another devout Christian from the suburbs of Houston, Texas, who in June oi 2001 drowned her five children in the family bathtub. Both Laney and Yates were left alone without supplemental help to care for and home-school their children, and both invoked divine injunction to explain their crimes. Because Yates's life and trial received such extraordinary publicity, a local judge immediately issued a gag order on those involved in the Laney case (2003, Accused Mom). In their initial speculation about the trial, however, lawyers and other commentators predicted that the prosecution, like that in the Yates case, would seek the death penalty (Cohen, 2003). cases of maternal infanticide are gripping because they seem to violate an inherent natural law, calling into question the essentialist notion that women are endowed with a nurturing maternal instinct. Incidents of maternal infanticide garner more press than paternal infanticide and evoke greater outrage from the public. Manuel Gamiz, Jr. (2002) of the Los Angeles Times, for example, compared the press coverage devoted to the Yates case to that surrounding the case of Adair Garcia, a Pico Rivera man who intentionally killed five of his children by lighting a barbecue in his house and poisoning them with carbon monoxide. Though in the first four weeks of the Yates trial "more than 1,150 articles" were published about her case, only 77 articles were written about Garcia (p. 3). Gamiz argued that the radical disparity in coverage was evidence of a gender bias in the reporting of infanticide-there was something more shocking and forbidden about maternal violence than paternal infanticide. In the case of Yates, men and women uniformly called for her death on radio talk shows and public Internet forums despite the evidence that she was suffering from mental illness. Others, particularly feminists, called for leniency, seeing Yates's life as emblematic of the contradictions between maternal ideology and the daily practice of motherhood, and her crime a consequence of postpartum psychosis (Cohen, 2002; Williams, 2001). In this essay I consider the public reception of Yates's acts to examine why maternal infanticide generates such heated debates among the public, particularly those who are feminists or religious conservatives. I demonstrate that infanticide is thought by some to be comprehensible only when viewed in relation to popular conceptions of maternal responsibility, whereas others see the act as purely a crime, a form of murder. In doing so, I explore the ways in which the law, because it is predicated on a universal subject, is unable to account for someone like Yates, a woman suffering from a gender-specific mental disorder. The particular form in which Yates' disorder made itself manifest, moreover, indicates the extent to which a clinical entity cannot be extracted from the larger culture within which it is embedded. Yates' belief that she was possessed and an evil mother stemmed from the disjunction between her life and the cultural construction of idealized maternity, a schema of interpretation that finds little room ill a court of law. …


For the first time a comprehensive overview of geo-conservation in Europe has been presented in a book. Geoheritage in Europe and its Conservation includes specific contributions from 37 countries focussing on legislation and geoconservation practices. The only record of the history of our planet lies in the rocks beneath our feet: rocks and the landscape are the memory of the Earth. Here, and only here, is it possible to trace the processes, changes and upheavals which have formed our planet over thousands of millions of years: the more recent part of this record, of course, includes the evolution of life, including Man. The record preserved in the rocks and landscape is unique, and much of it is surprisingly fragile. Today it is threatened more than ever. What is lost can never be recovered, and therefore there is an urgent need to understand and protect what remains of this our common heritage.


This volume expands the intellectual exchange between researchers working on the Holocaust and post-Holocaust life and North American sociologists working on collective memory, diaspora, transnationalism, and immigration. The collection is comprised of two types of essays: primary research examining the Shoah and its aftermath using the analytic tools prominent in recent sociological scholarship, and commentaries on how that research contributes to ongoing inquiries in sociology and related fields.

Contributors explore diasporic Jewish identities in the post-Holocaust years; the use of sociohistorical analysis in studying the genocide; immigration and transnationalism; and collective action, collective guilt, and collective memory. In so doing, they illuminate various facets of the Holocaust, and especially post-Holocaust, experience. They investigate topics including heritage tours that take young American Jews to Israel and Eastern Europe, the politics of memory in Steven Spielberg's collection of Shoah testimonies, and the ways that Jews who immigrated to the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union understood nationality, religion, and identity. Contributors examine the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 in light of collective action research and investigate the various ways that the Holocaust has been imagined and recalled in Germany, Israel, and the United States. Included in the commentaries about sociology and Holocaust studies is an essay reflecting on how to study the Holocaust (and other atrocities) ethically, without exploiting violence and suffering.

Contributors . Richard Alba, Caryn Aviv, Ethel Brooks, Rachel L. Einwohner, Yen Le Espiritu, Leela Fernandes, Kathie Friedman, Judith M. Gerson, Steven J. Gold , Debra R. Kaufman, Rhonda F. Levine , Daniel Levy, Jeffrey K. Olick, Martin Oppenheimer, David Shneer, Irina Carlota Silber, Arlene Stein, Natan Sznaider, Suzanne Vromen, Chaim Waxman, Richard Williams, Diane L. Wolf


While the long run relation between money and inflation is well established, empirical evidence on the adjustment to the long run equilibrium is very heterogeneous. In the present paper we use a multivariate state space framework, that substantially expands the traditional vector error correction approach, to analyze the short run impact of money on prices. We contribute to the literature in three ways: First, we distinguish changes in velocity of money that are due to institutional developments and thus do not induce inflationary pressure, and changes that reflect transitory movements in money demand. This is achieved with a newly developed multivariate unobserved components decomposition. Second, we analyze whether the high volatility of the transmission from monetary pressure to inflation follows some structure, i.e., if the parameter regime can assumed to be constant. Finally, we use our model to illustrate the consequences of the monetary policy of the Fed that has been employed to mitigate the impact of the financial crisis, simulating different exit strategy scenarios.


Mesa-structuring of InGaAs/InAlAs photoconductive layers is performed employing a chemical assisted ion beam etching (CAIBE) process. Terahertz photoconductive antennas for 1.5 microm operation are fabricated and evaluated in a time domain spectrometer. Order-of-magnitude improvements versus planar antennas are demonstrated in terms of emitter power, dark current and receiver sensitivity.


In this paper, we present DesynchLRU, a new page replacement algorithm. DesynchLRU is a modified version of the celebrated LRU (Least Recently Used) page replacement algorithm. The basic distinction between LRU and DesynchLRU is that, in the former, the pages in cache and RAM always remain synchronized, whereas, in the latter, they can be desynchronized. Here, we show that the page fault rate in DesynchLRU is always smaller than that of LRU. We further analyze the average cost for a page request and establish conditions for which DesynchLRU would always perform better than LRU.


In this paper the problem of detecting high-level features from video shots is studied. In particular, we explore the possibility of taking advantage of temporal and interconcept co-occurrence patterns that the high-level features of a video sequence exhibit. Here we present two straightforward techniques for the task: N-gram models and clustering of temporal neighbourhoods. We demonstrate the usefulness of these techniques on data sets of the TRECVID high-level feature detection tasks of the years 2005-2007.


[Extract] Throughout most of industrialised history, forests have been worth more felled than standing. Countries in the developed world, including Australia, New Zealand, United States, Canada and Europe have clear-felled around half of the world's primary forests to plant agricultural crops, create urban centres, extract wood for construction or burn timber as fuel. In response to the international demand for timber and timber products, most deforestation in the twentieth century has occurred in developing countries, which collectively harbour around half of the world's remaining natural forest. In the twenty-first century, predictions of global warming have led to a new way of seeing forests as repositories of carbon. In the climate change 'crisis', the maintenance of existing forests as well as increasing forest coverage is touted to make an important contribution to the mitigation of global warming, but this potential is yet to be realised (Nabuurs et al. 2007; Capoor and Ambrosi 2008). From a governance perspective, the international climate regime is playing a dominant role in influencing environmental and developmental policy internationally (Maguire 2010: 5) and is opening up spaces for critical change in 'sustainable forest management' (SFM).


This study is a preliminary step toward a more systematic analysis of the standard dynastic histories and other sources, with a focus on the region called Cochinchina and its connections with nearby territories. I note that Champa remained a viable political entity after 1471 and the Mạc Dynasty controlled extensive parts of the southern territories, even after their defeat in Đong Kinh c. 1596. Thus, control of the south by Nguyễn rulers was a gradual and complex affair, not to be reduced to family rivalries and not decisively inaugurated in 1558. Political and economic concern with the coast was no more important than control over production centers in the highland interior. These findings help refute the "Southern Push" model of Vietnamese expansion, indicating that it was not a thousand-year long process, did not involve the steady displacement of indigenous peoples, and did not focus exclusively on agrarian resources. There was not a purely north-south trajectory for political integration, and control of east-west rivers connecting the coast and the middle Mekong was no less important than control of the coast itself. Although historians have long focused on key dates and events in the dynastic chronicles, many of these are less obvious watersheds than they recognize.


Information technology can increase the quality of medical care and is a target for many of the pioneers in the development of clinical or medical information. Electronic medical record (EMR), one of such technologies, is a well -known and valuable system to access patient information in hospitals. Electronic medical records which are used for the purpose of providing basic health care are available through a network of computers. All units of the hospital such as examination room, conference room, emergency, patient care units, nursing stations, operating rooms, recovery units, laboratory, radiology, pharmacy and medical records should have access to it. Among its advantages are improved quality of care provided to patients, better organized information, improvement in the timeliness of the process, accuracy and completeness of documentation, patient access to electronic copies of records, prevention of medication errors and allergies, reduced medical errors, immediate access to information in different places, decision support technology and improvement in the process of doing. Surely the use of electronic medical records has created a new dimension to patient care and clinical practice and will provide a comprehensive system to support people in the community and enhance the quality of services provided to them.


This chapter focuses primarily on commercial susceptibility testing systems currently available in the United States. Semiautomated disk diffusion and manual and semiautomated broth microdilution systems are utilized for small volumes of susceptibility testing, while larger laboratories often choose an automated broth microdilution system. The broth microdilution antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) systems are manufactured by four companies: bioMerieux (Durham, NC), Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics (Deerfield, IL), Becton Dickinson Diagnostics (Sparks, MD), and Thermo Scientific (Cleveland, OH; formerly TREK Diagnostic Systems). The BIOMIC V3 system (Giles Scientific, Santa Barbara, CA) has FDA clearance to read disk diffusion zone sizes and broth microdilution panel wells. AST systems include data management software that may be interfaced with a laboratory information system and offer various levels of expert system and epidemiological analyses. Expert analysis may improve work flow as well as the quality of reported results. Advantages of automated AST systems include labor savings, reproducibility, data management with expert system analysis, and the opportunity to generate results more rapidly. Disadvantages of automated systems include higher cost for equipment and consumables than with manual methods, predetermined antimicrobial panels, an inability to test all clinically relevant bacteria and antimicrobial agents, and problems with detection of heteroresistant isolates and some resistance phenotypes. The chapter summarizes published literature on the abilities of automated systems to detect antimicrobial resistance in Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens (e.g., oxacillin resistance in staphylococci, extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing Enterobacteriaceae). The provision of more-rapid AST results with a short-incubation system may improve patient care and lower health care costs.


I provide a justification of intellectual property rights as a source of static efficiency gains in manufacturing, rather than dynamic benefits from greater innovation. I develop a property-rights model of a supply relationship with two dimensions of non-contractible investment. In equilibrium, the first best is attained if and only if ownership of tangible and intangible assets is equally protected. If IP rights are weaker, the organization of the firm is distorted and efficiency declines: the final producer must either integrate her suppliers, which prompts a decline in their investment; or else risk their defection, which entails a waste of her expertise. My model predicts a greater prevalence of vertically integrated manufacturers where IP rights are weaker, and a switch from integration to outsourcing over the product cycle. Empirical evidence on the international supply chains of multinational companies bears out both predictions. As a normative implication, I find that IP rights should be strong but narrowly defined, to protect a business without holding up non-competing derivative innovations.


Soil information, particularly water storage capacity, is of utmost importance for assessing and managing land resources for sustainable land management. We used digital soil mapping (DSM) and digital soil functional mapping (DSFM) procedures to predict available water capacity (AWC) of soils in Nigeria based on three published Pedotransfer functions (PTFs). We followed the specifications of the GlobalSoilMap.net project to produce predictions at a grid resolution of 100 m using regression tree models applied to a compiled soil point database together with auxiliary environmental predictors. Mean AWC (cm cm−1) estimates for Nigeria using methods published by Hodnett and Tomasella (PTF‐HT), Zacharias and Wessolek (PTF‐ZW), and Minasny and Hartemink (PTF‐MH) PTFs were 0.08, 0.21, and 0.12 cm cm−1 for the 0‐ to 5‐cm depth interval and 0.16, 0.08, and 0.08 for the cumulative depth (0–200 cm). The AWC estimates from the PTFs and from the literature for a number of discrete points and locations generally compared well. Comparison of AWC estimated from predicted soil properties (AWPp) against those estimated directly from profile observations (AWPd) for a number of discrete point locations showed a significant relationship only for PTF‐HT (R2 = 0.24, p < 0.05, for the 0–5 cm depth interval) and PTF‐ZW (R2 = 0.25, p < 0.05, for the cumulative depth). Soil properties predictions using remote sensing environmental covariates alone yielded similar results compared to predictions using a more extensive environmental covariate datasets. Overall, the process adopted for estimating AWC in this study shows promising results, but field measurements are still needed for validation and fine tuning of the process.


The paper looks at the ways in which power and politics shape the realisation of women's rights and gender equity in Ugandan state policy adoption and implementation. The key question explored is around the nature of political power and its influence on gender policy incentives in terms of adoption and implementation. The argument is structured around the politics of recognition – recognition referring to what has been made possible in the form of gender-sensitive policy outcomes, the incentives for the different courses of action, and what influences the ability of the political system to channel women's interests and representation into effective policy formulation and implementation. This question is explored by investigating the progress of two policy agendas, namely the Domestic Violence Act of 2010 and the promotion of girls' education within the Universal Primary Education (UPE) policy instituted in 1997.


One potential benefit of neural adaptation is the sharpening of neural representations to optimize performance in changing environments. This has been previously observed for low-level features such as color and orientation. Here we test whether adaptation sharpens complex object representations by characterizing the effect of adaptation on behavioral shape discrimination thresholds. We constructed a parametric 3D shape space whose axes correspond to different frequencies and orientations of sinusoidal modulations of a sphere. Two distinct reference shapes (A and B) were selected from this space, along with two "clouds" of fifty stimuli sampled near each reference by jittering the amplitude and orientation components of the references. Test stimuli were derived from a morph continuum between shapes A and B. In separate blocks, observers were first adapted to either cloud A or B with an initial 1-minute RSVP stream of adaptors, and then performed approximately 100 interleaved match-to-sample trials for the two references. Each trial began with a 5-second top-up adaptation, followed by a test stimulus from the morph continuum flashed for 200 ms at fixation, followed by either reference A or B and the same test item displayed on both sides of fixation until response. Observers indicated which item in the second interval matched in shape to the item in the first interval. Differences between the test and reference stimuli were controlled separately for the two references by interleaved staircases that converged on the 79% discrimination threshold. Results (N=3) indicate significant adaptation for both shape clouds: thresholds for reference A were lower after adaptation to cloud A compared to cloud B (median improvement 27%, range 14%-180%), and vice versa for reference B (median improvement 28%, range 20%-34%). These results offer novel evidence for the sharpening hypothesis in the perception of object shape. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


The quality of the teaching and learning of chemistry in Nigeria is of great concern to parents, teachers, and students and has been tied to various factors such as a lack of teaching resources, learning materials and well qualified teachers, large class sizes and poor funding. This resulted in poor student performance and lack of interest in chemistry. Also, learning chemistry concepts tends to be by rote and memorising of content, and as such, students do not perceive learning chemistry as relevant to their lives. These issues motivated the Researcher to explore how teaching and learning of chemistry could be reformed in low resource Nigerian secondary schools. This study focussed on enhancing teachers' pedagogical knowledge and beliefs about using multiple representations in chemistry education through a professional learning program. Participating teachers attended a series of professional learning workshops on how to construct, interpret and use multiple representations to teach chemistry concepts in ways that more actively engage students in learning. The study employed a mixed method approach that included descriptive and interpretive methods. Forty senior secondary chemistry teachers completed a questionnaire to gather background data about difficulties of teaching chemistry effectively and their existing teaching practice and beliefs. Fifteen of these teachers then participated in three days of professional learning workshops and three of the participating teachers at the workshop were the subjects of a case study to evaluate the impact of the professional learning on their practice and beliefs. Students also completed a questionnaire about their experiences of learning chemistry and some students in case study classes participated in focus group discussions The research involved both qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative data were sourced from teacher interviews, student focus group discussions and direct classroom observation. Quantitative data, on the other hand, were collected through questionnaires administered to both participating teachers and students. The mixed data sources were triangulated to ensure confirmability of findings The study enhanced the teaching of the rate of reactions and collision theory, and water pollution and solubility concepts by using various student constructed representations such as concept maps, particulate representations, graphs, role-plays, flowcharts, and 3D physical models. The professional development intervention impacted on the teachers' beliefs about the nature of effective teaching and learning of chemistry. The study also enriched teachers' pedagogical content knowledge for actively engaging students in constructing their own representations. As an outcome from the project, a professional learning module has been developed that can be used to enhance the teaching and learning of chemistry in low resource Nigerian schools. In addition, new knowledge has been produced in relation to the to the use of multiple representations for effective chemistry teaching and learning in schools with limited resources.


Oxidative stress gained the attention recently in behavioral medicine and been contributes to various psychological disturbances and mental stress in Medical and Dental students. This study is to evaluate the level of oxidative stress markers in undergraduate students caused by examination stress. This cross sectional study was conducted at Priyadharshini Dental College. Fifty healthy final year dental students were participated and the level of oxidative stress (Lipid peroxidation and Antioxidant status) were assessed on the day of examination "stress condition" and compared with the same parameters obtained from the same students after the exam "non-stress condition". The results shows that oxidative damage and sensitivity to lipid oxidation were significantly increased in "stress condition" (P<0.05) when compared with the same parameters in "nonstress" conditions. A significant decrease in plasma antioxidant level was observed (P<0.05) under stress. There is significant higher in oxidative stress its adversely affects the student performance and mental health during the examination.


This collection is concerned with understanding the nature of China's spatial development during the transition to a socialist market economy. It does so primarily by questioning the applicability of the 'desakota' model and extended metropolitan region (EMR) concept to the contemporary Chinese space economy. Yu Zhu's contribution extends the 'desakota' model by applying it to rural areas without the attraction of large cities. Wing-Shing Tang and Him Chung's contribution discusses illegal land use and construction to highlight the rural-urban transition's negative and disintegrative aspects glossed over by the 'desakota' model, which stem from the extension of urban administration to former rural areas and the redistributive effects of land use reform. Andrew Marton sees the original 'desakota' model being rejuvenated by introducing the notion of rural agglomeration, a clearer recognition of local administrative structures and an appreciation that development issues now take place within a global-local framework. George Lin explores the lingering effects of rural origins on Chinese identity and how this affects subsequent social and commercial groups within the Chinese diaspora. Peter Rimmer and Claude Comtois show how changes in China's transport and telecommunications industry underlie, to a significant degree, the restructuring of China's space economy and the country's links to the rest of the world. Overall the contributions highlight that a new consensus will be required for any revised model of the Chinese space economy if this is to provide guidance for planners engaged in restructuring Chinese space in the new millennium.


ABSTRACT Globalization is a highly complex process of enormous significance for business organizations across the world. However, compared to the research attention received by globalization in several other social scientific disciplines, the topic seems to have remained somewhat under-studied within business scholarship itself. This article, accordingly, seeks to make a contribution to business research by way of offering a comprehensive conceptual discussion of different aspects of economic globalization, and what these might imply for business. Toward that end the article discusses the major processes that constitute the phenomenon of economic globalization, their potential effects and consequences, and the implications of globalization for businesses and management. The article suggests that the dynamics of globalization may be seen as leading the way to a radical transformation of the entire economic landscape of the world. Thriving in such a brave new economic world will require an extraordinary degree of creativity and ingenuity, and a willingness to give up established patterns of thought and old mindsets on the part of individual firms. INTRODUCTION Globalization is widely viewed as a highly complex process of enormous significance for business organizations across the world. However, researchers have also noted that compared to the attention globalization seems to have received in some of the other social scientific disciplines (e.g., economics, political science, sociology, or anthropology) the topic remains surprisingly understudied within business scholarship itself (Jones, 2003 ; Parker, 2003). Accordingly, this paper seeks to make a contribution to business research by way of offering a comprehensive conceptual discussion of different aspects of economic globalization, and what these might imply for business. Toward that end the paper discusses: (1) the major processes that constitute the phenomenon of economic globalization, (2) their potential effects and consequences, and (3) the implications of economic globalization for businesses and management. Globalization is a much discussed topic with an extensive popular as well as scholarly literature, the latter in turn stretching across a range of different disciplines. Not surprisingly, perhaps, there is considerable disagreement among analysts about the overall nature and significance of the phenomenon. Even the definition of globalization is a matter of some debate, with Parker (2003) pointing out that there already exist some 35 different definitions of the term. In general, however, scholars tend to agree that globalization needs to be viewed as a multi-dimensional phenomenon involving not only economic aspects but also cultural, political, technological, ideological and similar other features (Appadurai, 1996; Held & McGrew, 2003; Singh, 2005; Stiglitz, 2002; Pieterse, 2004). The specific focus of this paper extends only to the economic aspects of globalization. Economic globalization may be conceptualized as the "growing economic interdependence among countries as reflected in increasing cross-border flows of... goods and services, capital, and know-how" (Govindaraj an & Gupta, 2000). Much has been written on the long history of economic globalization, with scholars pointing to the various phases or waves of globalization occurring over the past several centuries (Arrighi, 1999; Held, McGrew, Goldblatt & Perraton, 1999; Robertson, 1992). The focus of this paper is on the contemporary phase of economic globalization, a process seen as beginning during the post-World War II period and gathering substantial momentum since the decades of the 1970s and the 1980s. The accelerating pace of the current phase of economic globalization is attributed to a number of factors, including technological advances in the areas of transportation, telecommunication and information processing, as well as political and ideological developments (Friedman, 2005; Govindarajan & Gupta, 2000; Jones, 2003; Prestowitz, 2005). …


Laboratory experiments have been performed on samples of Westerly granite in which the differential stress was repeatedly cycled to 85% of the intact sample strength. The experiments have shown that under uniaxial conditions the onset of dilatancy is reduced to fairly low stress; however, under triaxial conditions dilatancy can be an apparently stable process, and the onset of dilatancy is not affected by the repeated cycling. Thus the implication for midcrustal earthquakes is that the onset of dilatancy repeatedly occurs at relatively high stress levels. For example, our results indicate that at typical focal depths of 2.5 and 10 km (corresponding to effective hydrostatic pressures of about 500 and 2000 bars) the onset of dilatancy repeatedly occurs at 1.8 and 3.0 kbar of differential compressive stress, respectively.


Some remarks from the perspective of a German labour law attorney The Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 (the LRA) was implemented on 11 November 1996. As a milestone in South Africa's post-apartheid legislation the Act introduced a new model of employment relations. By international standards it is exceptional for the labour relations of a country to be regulated comprehensively by only a few pieces of legislation, namely the LRA and the Employment Standards Act which is presently being discussed (see 'Green Paper' GG/23-2-1996). In Germany, for instance, this has not been accomplished. German labour law consists of various statutes which now vastly outnumber the few relevant clauses in the German Civil Code of 1896 (the BGB) originally regulating this mailer. In addition, unlike any other area of German law - with the exception of unfair competition - legal advisers have to find their way through an ever-growing number of precedents.


The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that possession of child pornography is not a victimless crime. It will illustrate the problem and explain the harm suffered by its victims. It will then trace factors that may have contributed to the perception that possession of child pornography is a victimless offense. The first factor is the dual nature of the child pornography laws that addresses both actual and future harm. When this duality is applied to possessors, their link to actual harm appears attenuated because the possessor is not involved in the acts of sexual abuse inherent in producing the images. The second factor is that a number of scholars have criticized generally possession offenses as a tool for preemptive prosecutions, but they have not exempted child pornography from their condemnation. Finally, technology itself is a cause. The growth of the Internet and the ability to find images from the comfort of one's home further weakens the connection between the victim and the viewer; this distance is exacerbated by a general sense that nothing is real in cyberspace.


Research about 1:1 laptop school initiatives highlight benefits for learning, however, there is little research about the impact of such initiatives in the primary school context. This case study reports how a 1:1 laptop program facilitated Higher Order Thinking (HOT) in an upper primary classroom in Australia. The class was observed during one unit of work and Bloom's taxonomy of HOT was used as the analysis framework. Results showed that Higher Order Thinking was evident when laptop tasks encouraged students to take an active role in their learning. HOT was facilitated by students being able to make decisions on applications to use to complete tasks and class discussion facilitated by the teacher. Technical problems experienced using laptops also promoted HOT from students. This study suggests that a 1:1 computer initiative can promote HOT but is dependent on the pedagogical practices of the teacher. This small-scale study highlights that the teacher is key when implementing laptops in the classroom and further research is warranted to inform future 1:1 computer initiatives in primary schools.


ABSTRACT In many remote-sensing projects, one is usually interested in a small number of land-cover classes present in a study area and not in all the land-cover classes that make-up the landscape. Previous studies in supervised classification of satellite images have tackled specific class mapping problem by isolating the classes of interest and combining all other classes into one large class, usually called others, and by developing a binary classifier to discriminate the class of interest from the others. Here, this approach is called focused approach. The strength of the focused approach is to decompose the original multi-class supervised classification problem into a binary classification problem, focusing the process on the discrimination of the class of interest. Previous studies have shown that this method is able to discriminate more accurately the classes of interest when compared with the standard multi-class supervised approach. However, it may be susceptible to data imbalance problems present in the training data set, since the classes of interest are often a small part of the training set. A result the classification may be biased towards the largest classes and, thus, be sub-optimal for the discrimination of the classes of interest. This study presents a way to minimize the effects of data imbalance problems in specific class mapping using cost-sensitive learning. In this approach errors committed in the minority class are treated as being costlier than errors committed in the majority class. Cost-sensitive approaches are typically implemented by weighting training data points accordingly to their importance to the analysis. By changing the weight of individual data points, it is possible to shift the weight from the larger classes to the smaller ones, balancing the data set. To illustrate the use of the cost-sensitive approach to map specific classes of interest, a series of experiments with weighted support vector machines classifier and Landsat Thematic Mapper data were conducted to discriminate two types of mangrove forest (high-mangrove and low-mangrove) in Saloum estuary, Senegal, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage site. Results suggest an increase in overall classification accuracy with the use of cost-sensitive method (97.3%) over the standard multi-class (94.3%) and the focused approach (91.0%). In particular, cost-sensitive method yielded higher sensitivity and specificity values on the discrimination of the classes of interest when compared with the standard multi-class and focused approaches.


Southern Seminary's e-book — published as the first in a new "CONVERSANT" series from SBTS Press — is available for free as a PDF download on the seminary's website. CONVERSANT titles are "designed to engage the current evangelical conversation with the full wealth of Christian conviction."


General The International Medical Informatics Association is an independent organization established under Swiss law in 1989. IMIA was originally established in 1967 as Technical Committee 4 of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP — www.ifip.org). In 1979, it evolved from a Special Interest Group of IFIP to its current status as a fully independent organization. IMIA continues to maintain its relationship with IFIP as an affiliate organization. IMIA also has close ties with the World Health Organization (WHO — www.who.int) as a NGO (Non Government Organization), and with the International Federation of Health Information Management (IFHIMA). IMIA is also a Liaison A category organisation in cooperation with ISO (ISO liaison).


LETTERS ''Dropped head syndrome'' in syringomyelia: report of two cases ''Dropped head syndrome'' is characterised by weakness of the extensor muscles of the neck, with or without involvement of the neck flexors, and is commonly caused by a variety of neuromuscular disorders, including myasthenia gravis, polymyositis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, facio–scapulo–humeral dys-trophy, nemaline myopathy, carnitine deficiency , spinal muscular atrophy, and isolated neck extensor myopathy. 1 2 There are isolated reports of dropped head syndrome occurring in cervical spondylitis and ankylosing spon-dylitis. 3 In this report, we describe the clinical and imaging findings of two patients who had dropped head syndrome as a rare neurological sign secondary to syringomyelia. A 46 year old right handed man presented during May 2002 with insidious onset, gradually progressive weakness and wasting of the small muscles of the left hand since August 1998. This deficit stabilised after a period of one year. At the onset of illness, he had also developed mild difficulty in using his right hand for performing fine work but this symptom remained stable. He noticed occasional fasciculations over the arms for one year. After two years and nine months he developed rapidly progressive head drop and required assistance of the hand to maintain the head in an erect posture, and he also had mild difficulty in lifting his head off the bed while rising from the supine position. There was no history of impaired sensation to touch, pain, or temperature, or inadvertent burns over the hands or shoulders. There were no features to suggest Horner's syndrome or symptoms referring to the cranial nerves, lower limbs, cerebellar system, or sphincters. There was no nuchal pain, restricted neck movements, or symptoms of raised intracranial pressure. Examination revealed mild cerebellar dys-arthria and fasciculations over the tongue. There were no features of Horner's syndrome and the eye movements, facial sensations, palatal reflexes, and pharyngeal reflexes were normal. Occasional fasciculations were present over the arms. There was Medical Research Council grade 2 weakness of the neck extensor muscles with head drop and grade 4 weakness of the neck flexors. There was mild wasting of the erector spinae muscles in the neck and asymmetric wasting of the small muscles of the hand, including the thenar, hypothenar, and interossei muscles bilaterally, with the left side being affected more severely. Power in the lower limbs was normal. Deep tendon reflexes were sluggish in the upper limbs and exaggerated in …


Abstract This paper presents findings from a qualitative study which sought to identify antecedents of dependency upon relationship partners. The study was set within the context of legal service provision and compares the impact that the antecedent factors might have on the development of client dependency within commercial and private client relationships. The findings provide insight into differences between the way in which lawyers currently manage commercial and private client relationships which may directly influence the development of differential levels of client dependency the study concludes that, as a consequence of environmental and lawyer-based antecedents, commercial clients are more likely to be dependent upon lawyers than private clients are. Potential strategies to increase dependency among commercial clients as well as private clients are mooted and propositions to guide a future empirical study are provided


This research was designed to observe the stages of graft union in relation to different growth rate between the rootstock Ottawa 3 and three apple varieties, Smoothee, Summerred and Braeburn. Three to five graft samples of each rootstock/scion combinations were taken at 30 days interval until 12 months passed after from grafting. Samples were fixed in ethanol (70%). Transverse sections in 20-30 µm thickness were cut with a rotary microtome. Five base stages of graft formation were examined on samples: (1) development and positions of necrotic layers, (2) proliferation of callus cells, (3) formation of callus bridge at the graft interface, (4) cambial continuity and (5) formation of vascular tissues. In the sections prepared from subsequent samples of graft combinations were seen as a good union. Necrotic layers were eliminated in the callus, except for the outer cortex. In outer cortex region, necrotic layers were transformed to bark. Callus filled the gaps between interface of the stock and the scion. Cambial continuity occurred successfully and vascular tissues were connected. Thus, no evidences for tissue incompatibility were found in this study. Histological observations showed a compatible graft union between the graft partners which have different growing characteristics in relation to tissue formation.


A procedure is presented for designing distortion-invariant correlation filters. Optical correlation filters designed using this technique retain full position invariance. The filter design begins by finding the distortion-invariant modes (eigenfunctions) for a particular image. The input image, filter, and correlation response are all spectrally expanded in terms of these orthogonal eigenfunctions. An iterative technique between the spatial domain and the spectral domain is used to rephase the invariant modes so that a filter composed of a linear combination of modes has the proper overall invariance. The iterative technique also controls the information content of the filter by maintaining specified amplitudes for each invariant mode in the filter. Targets are detected by spanning the filter to determine points of constant amplitude.


Introduction: It is widely known that the production of knee prostheses is based on the morphometric parameters of the distal femur and proximal tibia. Although there have been studies on this subject in different populations in the literature, such a study has not been found in the Turkish population. It is aimed to establish an index and also compare it with previous results of different populations, in this study. Material and Methods: This study was conducted on 200 patients (78 females, 122 males) aged between 18 and 65 years who had magnetic resonance imaging retrospectively. People with previous fractures, dislocations or ruptures, tears, or tensions in the anterior cruciate ligament, history of knee surgery, and trauma were excluded from the study. Various measurements were conducted on images of the distal femur and proximal tibia morphometry. Results: Mean values of the measurements made on the distal femur and proximal tibia were calculated, it was determined that all parameters were higher in males than females. A statistically significant difference was found between the sexes in all the parameters evaluated except for the intercondylar notch height parameter (P < 0.05). According to the results of our study, the mean intercondylar notch width index (NWI) and intercondylar notch shape index (NSI) in the total population were calculated as 0.88 ± 0.18. There was no statistically significant difference between male and female values for NWI and NSI (P > 0.05). Discussion and Conclusion: In this study, finally, intercondylar notch classification was done. According to this, in 46.5% of cases, notch type, which defined as type A and 53.5% of the notches were identified as U type. None of the cases was classified as W type. Studies in which normal morphometric data are presented due to differences in races between skeletal structures have crucial importance. Therefore, the data obtained from our study are thought to be useful to produce specific knee prostheses.


If the sound bites of the reinventing government movement are ever to attain the status of sound scripture, they must first be operationalized in terms of specific services. These slogans call for a market-oriented, customer-driven government, owned by empowered communities and featuring decentralized services focused on preventing rather than on curing. These new initiatives are delivered by public organizations employing participative, team-oriented management systems and results-oriented evaluative criteria (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). Although community policing builds on previous innovations in policing, such as problem-oriented policing (Goldstein, 1990; 1979) and team policing (Schwartz and Clarren, 1977; Sherman et al., 1973) that predate the formal reinventing government movement, community policing has become recognized as the law enforcement manifestation of that movement (Turner and Wiatrowski, 1995). Like outcome-oriented, mission driven government, community policing has become a global phenomenon (Bayley, 1994a; Weatheritt, 1991) that reflects reinvention's market values and outcome-oriented management precepts. In his capacity as chairman of the Task Force on Government Accomplishment and Accountability of the American Society for Public Administration, Raymond T. Olsen reviewed nearly 40 case studies of outcome management strategies in the public sector, and he concluded that the core management systems of the organizations pursuing these strategies were generally not being realigned to accommodate them (Olsen, 1997); that is, these management systems continue to reinforce a process of control rather than supporting a results-driven orientation. This article examines the implementation of the community policing model by local law enforcement agencies in Florida. It focuses on the extent to which adoption has affected existing policies, procedures, and organizational structures. Local law enforcement service delivery systems have typically been housed in hierarchical bureaucracies featuring command-and-control management systems. Such systems would appear to be antithetical to the spirit and substance of community policing. Community policing has suffered from conceptual confusion in both research and practice (Roberg and Kuykendall, 1993; Wycoff, 1991; Greene and Taylor, 1991). Community policing has been implemented in a wide variety of ways, manifesting differences in personnel, organizational structures, deployment schemes, patrol modes, operational functions, geographical scopes, and degree of involvement of citizens and coordination with external agencies (Bayley, 1994a; 1994b; Sadd and Grinc, 1994). However, despite this confusion, community policing is widely accepted by politicians and police professionals as an innovative way to deliver police services (Eck and Rosenbaum, 1994). As early as 1984, 143 police agencies surveyed nationally reported utilizing community policing (Trojanowicz and Harden, 1985). Forty-two percent of all police departments serving populations of over 50,000 recently reported that they had adopted some form of community policing (Trojanowicz, 1994). For Bayley (1994a) the basic elements of community policing are: consultation with community groups regarding their security needs; command devolution so that those closest to the community can determine how to best respond to those needs; mobilization of agencies other than the police to assist in addressing those needs; and remedying the conditions that generate crime and insecurity through focused problem solving. He and others (Moore, 1994; Eck and Rosenbaum, 1994) are comfortable with the ambiguity that surrounds the concept, but Wycoff (1991) suggests that it may now be a barrier to effective communication about police practices. Walker (1992) notes that community policing may be victimized by its popularity and rapid expansion inasmuch as proper planning and implementation appear to be lacking. …


In this project, we consider a variety of ac-driven, inhomogeneous sine-Gordon equations describing an infinitely long Josephson junctions with phase shifts, driven by a microwave field. First, the case of a small driving amplitude and a driving frequency close to the natural (defect) frequency is considered. We construct a perturbative expansion for the breathing mode to obtain equations for the slow time evolution of the oscillation amplitude. We show that, in the absence of an ac-drive, a breathing mode oscillation decays with a rate of at least \mathcal{O}(t^{-1/4}) and \mathcal{O}(t^{-1/2}) for 0-\pi-0 and 0-\kappa junctions, respectively. Multiple scale expansions are used to determine whether, e.g., an external drive can excite the defect mode of a junction (a breathing mode), to switch the junction into a resistive state. Next, we extend the study to the case of large oscillation amplitude with a high frequency drive. Considering the external driving force to be rapidly oscillating, we apply an asymptotic procedure to derive an averaged nonlinear equation, which describes the slowly varying dynamics of the sine-Gordon field. We discuss the threshold distance of 0-\pi-0 junctions and the critical bias current in $0-\kappa$ junctions in the presence of ac drives. Then, we consider a spatially inhomogeneous sine-Gordon equation with two regions in which there is a \pi-phase shift, and a time periodic drive, modelling 0-\pi-0-\pi-0 long Josephson junctions. We discuss the interactions of symmetric and antisymmetric defect modes in long Josephson junctions. We show that the amplitude of the modes decay in time. In particular, exciting the two modes at the same time will increase the decay rate. The decay is due to the energy transfer from the discrete to the continuous spectrum. For a small drive amplitude, there is an energy balance between the energy input given by the external drive and the energy output due to radiative damping experience by the coupled mode. Finally, we consider spatially inhomogeneous coupled sine-Gordon equations with a time periodic drive, modelling stacked long Josephson junctions with a phase shift. We derive coupled amplitude equations considering weak coupling and strong coupling in the absence of ac-drive. Next, by considering the strong coupling with time periodic drive, we expect that the amplitude of oscillation tends to constant for long times.


Cast With Style: Nineteenth-Century Cast-Iron Stoves During the nineteenth century Albany and Troy, New York manufacturers were considered to be among the largest producers of cast-iron stoves in the world. Stoves made in these two upstate New York cities were renowned for their fine-quality castings and innovations in technology and design. The strategic location of Albany and Troy, located nine miles apart on opposite banks of the Hudson River, afforded easy and inexpensive transportation of raw materials to the foundries, and finished stoves to worldwide markets. Cast-iron stove making reached its highest artistic achievement and technological advancements between 1840 and 1870. Flask casting and the advent of the cupola furnace permitted more elaborate designs and finer-quality castings. Stove designers borrowed freely from architectural and cabinet-makers design books, a process that resulted in the use of Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Rococo revival motifs; patriotic symbols, and lavish floral designs, all reflecting current taste and sentiment Stove types produced included Franklin, box, dumb, base-burner, parlor, cook stoves and ranges and parlor cook stoves. However, the stoves that attracted the most attention and helped to secure the reputation of Albany and Troy, as innovators in technological and decorative designs were the column parlor stoves produced during the 1830s and 1840s. These stoves were a focal point for a Victorian parlor because the overall designs incorporated current tastes in architecture, furniture and other decorative arts. The decline of the stove industry in Albany and Troy began slowly after the Civil War, when companies went back into full production and glutted the market. Also, new deposits of iron ore were discovered in the Great Lakes region, and entrepreneurs were quick to see the potential of large western markets and began building foundries in Chicago and Detroit. As the century closed, the demands for iron were shifting toward steel.


The ventilated disc brake rotor with vane passages formed between braking surfaces; acts as a centrifugal fan and facilitates the required air flow for cooling. To improve the performance of a ventilated disc brake rotor, selection of proper geometrical configuration is more important. Disc brake rotor with different geometrical configurations were analyzed for flow analysis. Numerical modelling can predict flow characteristics & can serve as an efficient design tool. Hence it has been used for making modifications in the existing rotor geometry vane passages and which will consequently contribute for better flow development. A CFD code has been employed for theoretical analysis which will determine the distribution of pressure and velocity vectors in the flow field. Numerical results for mass flow rate have been validated experimentally. The selection of disc brake rotor configuration for breaking application has been discussed based on the obtained results.


ABSTRACT This study explores the experiences of refugee Muslim women as they accessed and navigated the healthcare system in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). A case-oriented approach was used, where semi-structured interviews were carried out with nine Muslim women who arrived in NZ as refugees. Interviews were carried out in 2020, in Hamilton, NZ. Analysis involved a 'text in context' approach which employed an iterative and interpretive process, by engaging with participant accounts and field notes to unpack the various meanings behind the experiences of the participants in relation to the literature as well as the broader socio-cultural contexts in which these experiences occurred. The findings of this research identified various structural barriers to accessing healthcare such as cost and issues with interpreters, as well as instances of othering in the healthcare settings experienced by refugee Muslim women. In order to tackle inequity in the health system, structural and institutional barriers need to be addressed first, to prompt other levels of othering and discrimination to reduce over time.