Critics unanimously regard Said's Orientalism as the cornerstone of postcolonial canon. It was this celebrated work that generated other related books and materials. Orientalism is a Western style for Orientalizing the Orient, i.e. how from knowledge of the Orient particularly from nineteenth century the Orient is defined by a set of recurring images and clichés and how afterwards this knowledge of the Orient is put into practice by colonialism and imperialism. Orientalism is affiliated with the representation of the Self or Occident and the Other or Orient in which the Self is privileged and has upper hand to define, reconstruct the passive, silent and weak Other. For Said, this geographical line made between the Occident and the Orient is arbitrary and numerous Western scholars, orientalists such as Burton, Lane, Lyall, Massignon, among others and literary figures like Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Austin, Flaubert, Kipling, Conrad, etc. contributed to the shaping of this discourse about the Orient and/or misrepresenting the Orient. Orwell as a Western writer was born in India and served five years in Indian Imperial Police in Burma and one of his major concerns during his life was the issue of imperialism and colonialism which is reflected in many works such as Burmese Days, Shooting an Elephant, Marrakech and Hanging. One characteristic which is shared among these western works and similar ones is the author's conflicting feelings within them about the Orient and Orientals through Western's lens. In this study, the relationship of the representer or Westerners and the represented or Easterners is fully expounded in Burmese Days in the light of Said's Orientalism.


We explore the effects of asymmetries in capacity constraints on collusion where market demand is uncertain and where firms must monitor the agreement through their privately observed sales and prices. In this private monitoring setting, we show that all firms can infer when at least one firm's sales are below some firm-specific "trigger level". This public information ensures that firms can detect deviations perfectly if fluctuations in market demand are sufficiently small. Otherwise, there can be collusion under imperfect public monitoring where punishment phases occur on the equilibrium path. We find that symmetry faciliates collusion. Yet, we also show that if the fluctuations in market demand are sufficiently large, then the collusive prices of symmetric capacity distributions are actually lower than the competitive prices of asymmetric capacity distributions. We draw conclusions for merger policy.


Content-based information retrieval (CBIR) has attracted significant interest in the past few years. When given a search query, the search engine will compare the query with all the stored information in the database through nearest neighbor search. Finally, the system will return the most similar items. We contribute to the CBIR research the following: firstly, Distance Metric Learning (DML) is studied to improve retrieval accuracy of nearest neighbor search. Additionally, Hash Function Learning (HFL) is considered to accelerate the retrieval process. On one hand, a new local metric learning framework is proposed Reduced-Rank Local Metric Learning (R2LML). By considering a conical combination of Mahalanobis metrics, the proposed method is able to better capture information like data's similarity and location. A regularization to suppress the noise and avoid over-fitting is also incorporated into the formulation. Based on the different methods to infer the weights for the local metric, we considered two frameworks: Transductive Reduced-Rank Local Metric Learning (T-R2LML), which utilizes transductive learning, while Efficient Reduced-Rank Local Metric Learning (E-R2LML) employs a simpler and faster approximated method. Besides, we study the convergence property of the proposed block coordinate descent algorithms for both our frameworks. The extensive experiments show the superiority of our approaches. On the other hand, *Supervised Hash Learning (*SHL), which could be used in supervised, semisupervised and unsupervised learning scenarios, was proposed in the dissertation. By considering several codewords which could be learned from the data, the proposed method naturally derives to several Support Vector Machine (SVM) problems. After providing an efficient training algorithm, we also study the theoretical generalization bound of the new hashing framework. In the final experiments, *SHL outperforms many other popular hash function learning methods. Additionally,


ESG is both extremely important and nothing special. It's extremely important because it's critical to long-term value, and so any practitioner or academic should take it seriously, not just those with "ESG" in their job title or list of research interests. Thus, ESG doesn't need a specialized term, as that implies it's niche. Considering long-term factors when valuing a company isn't ESG investing; it's investing. It's nothing special since it's no better or worse than other intangible assets that drive long-term value and create positive externalities for wider society, such as management quality, corporate culture, and innovative capability. The following implications follow: 1. Companies shouldn't be praised more for improving their ESG performance than these other intangibles; investor engagement on ESG factors shouldn't be put on a pedestal compared to engagement on other value drivers. We want great companies, not just companies that are great at ESG. 2. Investors who greenwash are correctly being held to account. But so should other investors who fail to walk the talk, such as actively-managed funds that closet index or systematically underperform. Clients of non-ESG funds deserve the same protection as clients of ESG funds. 3. Practitioners shouldn't rush to do something special for ESG factors that they wouldn't for other drivers of value, such as demand that every company tie executive pay to them, force a firm to report them even if not relevant for its particular business, or reduce complex intangibles to simple quantitative metrics. 4. Many of the controversies surrounding ESG become moot when we view it as a set of long-term value factors. It's no surprise that ESG ratings aren't perfectly correlated, because it's legitimate to have different views on the quality of a company's intangibles. We don't need to get into angry fights between ESG believers and deniers, nor politicize the issues, because reasonable people can disagree on how relevant a characteristic is for a company's long-term success.


Objectives To determine wasting prevalence among infants aged under 6 months and describe the effects of new case definitions based on WHO growth standards. Design Secondary data analysis of demographic and health survey datasets. Setting 21 developing countries. Population 15 534 infants under 6 months and 147 694 children aged 6 to under 60 months (median 5072 individuals/country, range 1710–45 398). Wasting was defined as weight-for-height z-score <−2, moderate wasting as −3 to <−2 z-scores, severe wasting as z-score <−3. Results Using National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) growth references, the nationwide prevalence of wasting in infant under-6-month ranges from 1.1% to 15% (median 3.7%, IQR 1.8–6.5%; ∼3 million wasted infants <6 months worldwide). Prevalence is more than doubled using WHO standards: 2.0–34% (median 15%, IQR 6.2–17%; ∼8.5 million wasted infants <6 months worldwide). Prevalence differences using WHO standards are more marked for infants under 6 months than children, with the greatest increase being for severe wasting (indicated by a regression line slope of 3.5 for infants <6 months vs 1.7 for children). Moderate infant-6-month wasting is also greater using WHO, whereas moderate child wasting is 0.9 times the NCHS prevalence. Conclusions Whether defined by NCHS references or WHO standards, wasting among infants under 6 months is prevalent in many of the developing countries examined in this study. Use of WHO standards to define wasting results in a greater disease burden, particularly for severe wasting. Policy makers, programme managers and clinicians in child health and nutrition programmes should consider resource and risk/benefit implications of changing case definitions.


A systematic study of the degradation of physiological concentrations of 125I-labelled insulin was performed in intact fat-pads, isolated adipocytes and subcellular fractions of isolated adipocytes. The findings indicate that insulin is rapidly degraded to low-molecular-weight peptides and/or amino acids by the intact tissue and isolated cells. Of the total insulin-degradation products present after incubation with an intact fat-pad, 94% is recovered in the medium, indicating that these products are not retained by the cells or tissue. The plasma membranes do not degrade insulin significantly in the absence of reduced glutathione, and over 99% of the cellular degradative capacity is found in the postmicrosomal supernatant (cytosol). The cytosol degrades insulin to several labelled fragments that are intermediate in size between insulin and insulin A chain, as well as to the low-molecular-weight tissue degradation products. Inclusion of plasma membranes with cytosol accelerates the cleavage of the intermediate fragments to the size of the small products seen with the intact tissue. However, plasma membranes do not increase the initial step in the degradation of insulin when incubated with cytosol, suggesting that the insulin receptor is not involved with the direct cleavage of insulin. This study supports the hypothesis that the bulk of insulin degradation occurs in the adipocyte cytosol, where intermediate-sized fragments are generated and rapidly cleaved to smaller products by the plasma membrane and quickly released into the surrounding medium.


Routine liver function test monitoring is not required for all patients on isoniazid therapy for latent tuberculosis (TB) infection (strength of recommendation: B, based on case series). No clinical trials have studied the potential risks and benefits of routinely monitoring liver function tests for all patients taking isoniazid for latent TB infection. Data from 2 case series suggest that routine liver function test monitoring leads to withdrawal of isoniazid prophylaxis from about 6% of patients because of abnormal lab results. This is 10 to 60 times the hepatitis rate found in case series using a symptom-based monitoring strategy. Data are insufficient, however, to conclude that routine liver function test monitoring leads to a lower rate of fatal isoniazid hepatitis compared with a strategy of symptom-based screening. Given that complete recovery from nonfatal hepatitis is the rule, and that patients withdrawn from isoniazid prophylaxis remain at risk for developing active tuberculosis, current evidence does not support routine liver function test monitoring for all patients.


A subsonic wind tunnel facility was designed and built to test and optimize various diffusercollector box geometries at the one-twelfth scale. The facility was designed to run continuously at an inlet Mach number of 0.42 and an inlet hydraulic diameter Reynolds number of 340,000. Different combinations of diffusers, hubs, and exhaust collector boxes were designed and evaluated for overall optimum performance. Both 3-hole and 5-hole probes were traversed into the flow to generate multiple diffuser inlet and collector exit performance profile plots. Surface oil flow visualization was performed to gain an understanding of the complex 3D flow structures inside the diffuser-collector subsystem. The cutback radial hardware was found to increase the subsystem pressure recovery by over 10% from baseline resulting in an approximate 1% increase in gas turbine power output.


Four [4-substituted(aryl)-piperazin-1-yl](thieno[2,3-c]pyridin-5-yl)methanones, namely, 4-(methoxyphenyl)- piperazin-1-yl](thieno[2,3-c]pyridin-5-yl)methanone (1), 4-(fluorophenyl)-piperazin-1-yl](thieno[2,3-c]pyridin-5- yl)methanone (2), 4-(methylphenyl)-piperazin-1-yl](thieno[2,3-c]pyridin-5-yl)methanone (3) and 4-(3,4- dimethylphenyl)-piperazin-1-yl](thieno[2,3-c]pyridin-5-yl)methanone (4) were synthesized and characterized by FTIR, 1H NMR and LC-MS spectroscopic techniques. The single crystals of all the compounds were grown, and their molecular & crystal structures were determined by single crystal X-Ray diffraction. The molecular structure of all the compounds features an intramolecular hydrogen bond of the type C-H…N which closes into a S(6) motif. The crystal structures of these compounds display several secondary interactions of the type C-H…O, C-H…F, C-H…π and π…π, and the combination of these interactions results in adopting different supramolecular architectures. Three different structure directing C-H…O interactions in 1 builds a three dimensional architecture, while in 2, two C-H…F and one C-H…O interactions generate a three dimensional structure. Several C-H…π interactions give additional stability to the crystal structures of 1 and 2and have no structure directing features. Unlike 1 and 2, the supramolecular structures of 3 and 4are two dimensional networks formed by a combination of C-H…O and CH… π interactions. The C-H…π interactions in 3 and 4 are structure directing in nature and extends the one dimensional architecture formed by C-H…O interactions into two dimensional.


Let $m$ and $n$ be positive integers, and let $R=(r_1,\ldots, r_m)$ and $ S=(s_1,\ldots, s_n)$ be non-negative integral vectors. Let ${\cal A} (R,S)$ be the set of all $m \times n$ $(0,1)$-matrices with row sum vector $R$ and column vector $S$, and let $\bar A$ be the $m \times n$ $(0,1)$-matrix where for each $i$, $1\le i \le m$, row $i$ consists of $r_i$ $1$'s followed by $n-r_i$ $0$'s. If $S$ is monotone, the discrepancy $d(A)$ of $A$ is the number of positions in which $\bar A$ has a $1$ and $A$ has a $0$. It equals the number of $1$'s in $\bar A$ which have to be shifted in rows to obtain $A$. In this paper, we study the minimum and maximum $d(A)$ among all matrices $A \in {\cal A} (R,S)$. We completely solve the minimum discrepancy problem by giving an explicit formula in terms of $R$ and $S$ for it. On the other hand, the problem of finding an explicit formula for the maximum discrepancy turns out to be very difficult. Instead, we find an algorithm to compute the maximum discrepancy.


Commonly, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) being developed in cPCI embedded systems include the bus interface in the FPGA. This complicates the development because the interface is complicated and requires a lot of development time and FPGA resources. In addition, flight qualification requires a substantial amount of time be devoted to just this interface. Another complication of putting the cPCI interface into the FPGA being developed is that configuration information loaded into the device by the cPCI microprocessor is lost when a new bit file is loaded, requiring cumbersome operations to return the system to an operational state. Finally, SRAM-based FPGAs are typically programmed via specialized cables and software, with programming files being loaded either directly into the FPGA, or into PROM devices. This can be cumbersome when doing FPGA development in an embedded environment, and does not have an easy path to flight. Currently, FPGAs used in space applications are usually programmed via multiple space-qualified PROM devices that are physically large and require extra circuitry (typically including a separate one-time programmable FPGA) to enable them to be used for this application. This technology adds a cPCI interface device with a simple, flexible, high-performance backend interface supporting multiple backend FPGAs. It includes a mechanism for programming the FPGAs directly via the microprocessor in the embedded system, eliminating specialized hardware, software, and PROM devices and their associated circuitry. It has a direct path to flight, and no extra hardware and minimal software are required to support reprogramming in flight. The device added is currently a small FPGA, but an advantage of this technology is that the design of the device does not change, regardless of the application in which it is being used. This means that it needs to be qualified for flight only once, and is suitable for one-time programmable devices or an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC). An application programming interface (API) further reduces the development time needed to use the interface device in a system.


Well developed financial markets are a necessary condition for a currency to play a role as a reserve currency. The introduction of the euro greatly improved the functioning of euro financial markets. This paper investigates whether euro financial markets have developed sufficiently to facilitate the emergence of the euro as a reserve currency on par with the US dollar. We find that the liquidity and breadth of euro financial markets are fast approaching those of dollar markets, and as a result the euro is eroding some of the advantages that have historically supported the pre-eminence of the US dollar as a reserve currency. This strengthens the incentive for monetary authorities to reconsider the currency composition of their reserves. Nevertheless, the introduction of the euro has not yet resulted in a significant change in the currency composition of official reserve holdings. The US dollar has maintained its place as the dominant reserve currency, supported perhaps by the edge that dollar financial markets still have over euro markets in terms of size, credit quality and liquidity, as well as inertia in the use of international currencies.


We consider forward-backward greedy algorithms for solving sparse feature selection problems with general convex smooth functions. A state-of-the-art greedy method, the Forward-Backward greedy algorithm (FoBa-obj) requires to solve a large number of optimization problems, thus it is not scalable for large-size problems. The FoBa-gdt algorithm, which uses the gradient information for feature selection at each forward iteration, significantly improves the efficiency of FoBa-obj. In this paper, we systematically analyze the theoretical properties of both algorithms. Our main contributions are: 1) We derive better theoretical bounds than existing analyses regarding FoBa-obj for general smooth convex functions; 2) We show that FoBagdt achieves the same theoretical performance as FoBa-obj under the same condition: restricted strong convexity condition. Our new bounds are consistent with the bounds of a special case (least squares) and fills a previously existing theoretical gap for general convex smooth functions; 3) We show that the restricted strong convexity condition is satisfied if the number of independent samples is more than k log d where k is the sparsity number and d is the dimension of the variable; 4)We apply FoBa-gdt (with the conditional random field objective) to the sensor selection problem for human indoor activity recognition and our results show that FoBa-gdt outperforms other methods based on forward greedy selection and L1-regularization.


It is now well recognized that pre-loading a ferritic steel structure at a temperature above its ductile-brittle transition range may result in an effective increase in toughness on loading at a lower temperature where fracture occurs by cleavage. Of particular significance is the fact that cleavage failure has never been reported in a cracked structure at a low temperature, following pre-loading at a higher temperature, for cases where the applied crack driving force was constant or decreasing with time. This is the basis of the so-called "conservative" warm pre-stressing (WPS) principle. Although this principle is of considerable practical importance, much work is still needed to further understand all aspects of WPS phenomena in order that analysts be better able to assess their effects quantitatively in safety cases. In the present work, WPS experiments have been carried out using 20-mm-thick, plain-sided compact specimens sectioned from 150-mm-thick A533 Grade B Class 1 pressure vessel steel. The effects of load-unload-cool-fracture (LUCF) and load-cool-fracture (LCF) pre-loading cycles (K W P S 100 to 350 MPa m; T W P S = 25 or 290°C) on cleavage fracture resistance have been investigated over a range of temperatures spanning the ductile-brittle transition range. A particular objective of the work was to investigate the combined effects of WPS and strain ageing on transition toughness behavior; therefore, in addition to WPS experiments, tests were carried out on "virgin" specimens to obtain base-line data and on specimens sectioned from material which had been uniformly pre-strained by 2% at ambient temperature and then aged for 1.25 h at 290°C to obtain control data. The main results were as follows. The validity of the conservative WPS principle was confirmed: In every test performed, an increase in loading was required to cause cleavage fracture at low temperature following a severe pre-load at a higher temperature. Moreover, in the case of pre-loading carried out at 25°C, conferred WPS margins were observed even for those tests where pre-loading had resulted in ductile tearing (0 ≤ Δa ≤ 1.0 mm) under conditions of ligament yielding; and the Case 1 and Case 2 solutions of Chell's Q 1 -integral theory of WPS yielded reasonably accurate predictions of final fracture. A deleterious effect of pre-loading at 290°C on effective transition toughness below a level of 200 MPa m was demonstrated by a combination of control and LUCF and LCF WPS data, and found to be consistent with the expected embrittling effect of strain ageing. However, all toughness data generated by the study were bounded by the ASME K I c versus temperature curve indexed to the value of RT N D T (= -30°C) appropriate to the material in the non-strain-aged condition.


The need to extend business process languages with the capability to model complex data objects along with the control flow perspective has lead to significant practical and theoretical advances in the field of Business Process Modeling (BPM).On the practical side, there are several suites for control flow and data modeling; nonetheless, when it comes to formal verification, the data perspective is abstracted away due to the intrinsic difficulty of handling unbounded data. On the theoretical side, there is significant literature providing decidability results for expressive data-aware processes. However, they struggle to produce a concrete impact as being far from real BPM architectures and, most of all, not providing actual verification tools. In this paper we aim at bridging such a gap: we provide a concrete framework which, on the one hand, being based on Petri Nets and relational models, is close to the widely used BPM suites, and on the other is grounded on solid formal basis which allow to perform formal verification tasks. Moreover, we show how to encode our framework in an action language so as to perform reachability analysis using virtually any state-of-the-art planner.


As demanded by applications such as GIS, CAD, ecology analysis, and space research, efficient spatial data access methods have attracted much research. Especially, moving object management and continuous spatial queries are becoming highlighted in the spatial database area. However, most of the existing spatial query processing approaches were designed for single-user environments, which may not ensure correctness and data consistency in multiple-user environments. This research focuses on designing efficient concurrent operations on spatial datasets. Current multidimensional data access methods can be categorized into two types: 1) pure multidimensional indexing structures such as the R-tree family and grid file; 2) linear spatial access methods, represented by the Space-Filling Curve (SFC) combined with B-trees. Concurrency control protocols have been designed for some pure multidimensional indexing structures, but none of them is suitable for variants of R-trees with object clipping, which are efficient in searching. On the other hand, there is no concurrency control protocol designed for linear spatial indexing structures, where the one-dimensional concurrency control protocols cannot be directly applied. Furthermore, the recently designed query processing approaches for moving objects have not been protected by any efficient concurrency control protocols. In this research, solutions for efficient concurrent access frameworks on both types of spatial indexing structures are provided, as well as for continuous query processing on moving objects, for multiple-user environments. These concurrent access frameworks can satisfy the concurrency control requirements, while providing outstanding performance for concurrent queries. Major contributions of this research include: (1) a new efficient spatial indexing approach with object clipping technique, ZR+-tree, that outperforms R-tree and R+-tree on searching; (2) a concurrency control protocol, GLIP, to provide high throughput and phantom update protection on spatial indexing with object clipping; (3) efficient concurrent operations for indices based on linear spatial access methods, which form up the CLAM protocol; (4) efficient concurrent continuous query processing on moving objects for both R-tree-based and linear spatial indexing frameworks; (5) a generic access framework, Disposable Index, for optimal location update and parallel search.


Image-based modeling techniques are an important tool for producing 3D models in a practical and cost effective manner. Accurate image-based models can be created as long as one can retrieve precise image calibration and orientation information which is nowadays performed automatically in computer vision and photogrammetry. The first step for orientation is to have sufficient correspondences across the captured images. Keypoint descriptors like SIFT or SURF are a successful approach for finding these correspondences. The extraction of precise image correspondences is crucial for the subsequent image orientation and image matching steps. Indeed there are still many challenges especially with wide-baseline image configuration. After the extraction of a sufficient and reliable set of image correspondences, a bundle adjustment is used to retrieve the image orientation parameters. In this paper, a brief description of our previous work on automatic camera network design is initially reported. This semi-automatic procedure results in wide-baseline high resolution images covering an object of interest, and including approximations of image orientations, a rough 3D object geometry and a matching matrix indicating for each image its matching mates. The main part of this paper will describe the subsequent image matching where the pre-knowledge on the image orientations and the pre-created rough 3D model of the study object is exploited. Ultimately the matching information retrieved during that step will be used for a precise bundle block adjustment. Since we defined the initial image orientation in the design of the network, we can compute the matching matrix prior to image matching of high resolution images. For each image involved in several pairs that is defined in the matching matrix, we detect the corners or keypoints and then transform them into the matching images by using the designed orientation and initial 3D model. Moreover, a window is defined for each corner and its initial correspondence in the matching images. A SIFT or SURF matching is implemented between every matching window to find the homologous points. This is followed by Least Square Matching LSM to refine the correspondences for a sub-pixel localization and to avoid inaccurate matches. Image matching is followed by a bundle adjustment to orient the images automatically to finally have a sparse 3D model. We used the commercial software Photomodeler Scanner 2010 for implementing the bundle adjustment since it reports a number of accuracy indices which are necessary for the evaluation purposes. The experimental test of comparing the automated image matching of four pre-designed streopairs shows that our approach can provide a high accuracy and effective orientation when compared to the results of commercial and open source software which does not exploit the pre-knowledge about the scene.


This study examines the geomorphic effects of large (>10 6 m 3 ) rock-slope failures on long profiles of rivers in the Swiss Alps and the New Zealand Southern Alps. Regression of channel slope versus drainage basin area objectively highlights knickpoints separating incised from aggraded reaches that often correspond to locations of large rock-slope failures. For a fixed concavity index, the highest values of the steepness index and erosion index along a given profile spatially coincide with breach channels cut into formerly river-damming rockslide debris as old as 10 k.y. Assuming that the knickpoints do not predate slope failure, data show that high profile steepness and inferred specific stream power are not always the cause, but often a result, of large river-blocking rock-slope failure in mountain basins. Omission of rockslide data from slope-area plots lowers the steepness index and increases the concavity index on average, yet only in few cases more than one standard deviation.


Few figures loom as large over the history of Russia as Peter I. From the moment he accepted the throne as sole ruler in 1696, he embarked on an ambitious campaign of modernization, disrupting the culture of a country mired in traditions he considered hopelessly out of date. The young emperor's transformations of Russia's military forces, administrative structure, religious culture, and social and political practices have been well documented. His reign also produced a dramatic shift in the country's architectural culture towards more Western idioms. Existing scholarship has too often permitted the architectural and urban aspects of Peter's reforms to be divorced from social and political changes in Russian society. This study proposes that these architectural and urban transformations might be better understood as integral parts of his comprehensive program of reform. Following a method drawn from Spiro Kostof, this study asserts that reforms in Russia's architecture and urbanism in Moscow and Saint Petersburg influenced other aspects of society in turn, and thus formed a reciprocal relationship with reforms in those areas.


Although sovereign equality - the norm that all sovereign states are entitled to the same bundle of rights on the international plane - has long been a central norm of international law, its retention in the realm of preemptive war is fairly to be questioned when one sovereign state possesses overwhelming military power. In this Article, Professor Lee examines the historical and normative foundations of sovereign equality, finds them wanting under the condition of a militarily supreme republican state, but defends the norm on the pragmatic ground of what is best for the supreme state to defend itself against covert, non-state actors with potential access to weapons of mass destruction. Sovereign equality is very useful because the domestic institutions in a democratic state constrain effective monitoring and response to this category of threat. Treating other states, from which the supreme state might obtain intelligence or cooperation (by coercion if necessary) in combating the principal threat axis, as equals, is an efficacious substitute for the failure of domestic institutions to contain the covert, non-state threat.


On three occasions since mid-2011, the United States has come perilously close to exhausting its borrowing authority under a statutory limit commonly called the "debt ceiling." In prior work, the current authors argued that, in the event that the debt ceiling is reached, the President will face a "trilemma" in which any realistic action he takes — defaulting on government obligations, raising taxes, or issuing debt in excess of the statutory ceiling — would unconstitutionally usurp legislative power. We argued that in such circumstances, violating the debt ceiling would be the "least unconstitutional option." Nonetheless, most pundits and politicians, including the President, appear to assume that if the debt ceiling is reached, default would be necessary. Here, we observe a previously unnoticed deficiency in this assumption: Default would not only usurp congressional power to set spending levels; it would not even satisfy the debt ceiling, because failure to pay money due government obligees is a kind of borrowing, both for statutory and constitutional purposes. A "loan" taken from the lender involuntarily is hardly better than consensual borrowing. The government could avoid this result only by expressly repudiating its obligations, but to do that would violate even the very narrow construction of Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment advanced by those who treat default as the necessary consequence of congressional failure to raise the debt ceiling.


We report the current status of our project to construct a new nuclear equation of state (EOS) with the variational method for core-collapse supernova (SN) simulations. Starting from the realistic nuclear Hamiltonian, the EOS for uniform nuclear matter is constructed with the cluster variational method: For non-uniform nuclear matter, the EOS is calculated with the Thomas-Fermi method. The obtained thermodynamic quantities of uniform matter are in good agreement with those with more sophisticated Fermi Hyper- netted Chain variational calculations, and phase diagrams constructed so far are close to those of the Shen-EOS. The structure of neutron stars calculated with this EOS at zero temperature is consistent with recent observational data, and the maximum mass of the neutron star is slightly larger than that with the Shen-EOS. Using the present EOS of uni- form nuclear matter, we also perform the 1D simulation of the core-collapse supernovae by a simplified prescription of adiabatic hydrodynamics. The stellar core with the present EOS is more compact than that with the Shen-EOS, and correspondingly, the explosion energy in this simulation with the present EOS is larger than that with the Shen-EOS.


Chapter 4 analyses the organisational meetings held daily in CISV villages and summer camps in order to plan educational activities. The chapter explores the ways in which adults discuss and decide on the kinds of activities and their organisation, underlining the ways in which active participation is either promoted or reduced in interactions. It explores if and in which ways empowering dialogue is enhanced during these meetings and which obstacles can prevent its achievement, focusing on (1) the linguistic and cultural differences between projection of empowering dialogue and projection of normative expectations, (2) the linguistic and cultural differences between processes of coordination and mediation in decision-making and forms of assessment.


Christopher Polge achieved distinction at a remarkably early stage of his career in biological research. He made key discoveries when he was in his twenties, and his work was internationally acclaimed when only just into his thirties. His name will always be associated with the deep–freeze preservation of mammalian spermatozoa and the massive boost that this gave to a fledgling artificial insemination industry,especially for the breeding of dairy cattle. Even so, his research contributions were wide–ranging, and their long–term influence onagriculture, medicine and biotechnology cannot be overestimated. Recognition came from many directions, perhaps most significantly as the recipient of the Japan Prize for Science and Technology for Biological Production in 1992.


In this paper, a new fuzzy logic-based lossy predictive coding system for gray-scale still image compression is developed. The proposed coder employs a recently introduced adaptive fuzzy prediction methodology in the predictor design. In addition, it adopts a novel fuzzy gradient-adaptive quantization scheme. The proposed coding technique possesses superior performance over its non-fuzzy counterparts especially at low bit quantization. This is due to the inherent adaptivity in the fuzzy prediction methodology as well as the gradient-adaptive quantization scheme. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the efficient performance of the proposed fuzzy predictive coding system.


Person re-identification (re-ID) is mostly viewed as an image retrieval problem. This task aims to search a query person in a large image pool. In practice, person re-ID usually adopts automatic detectors to obtain cropped pedestrian images. However, this process suffers from two types of detector errors: excessive background and part missing. Both errors deteriorate the quality of pedestrian alignment and may compromise pedestrian matching due to the position and scale variances. To address the misalignment problem, we propose that alignment be learned from an identification procedure. We introduce the pedestrian alignment network (PAN) which allows discriminative embedding learning pedestrian alignment without extra annotations. We observe that when the convolutional neural network learns to discriminate between different identities, the learned feature maps usually exhibit strong activations on the human body rather than the background. The proposed network thus takes advantage of this attention mechanism to adaptively locate and align pedestrians within a bounding box. Visual examples show that pedestrians are better aligned with PAN. Experiments on three large-scale re-ID datasets confirm that PAN improves the discriminative ability of the feature embeddings and yields competitive accuracy with the state-of-the-art methods.


In this paper, an exact closed-form expression for the Spatial Correlation Function (SCF) is derived for the standardized three-dimensional (3D) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel. This novel SCF is developed for a uniform linear array of antennas with non-isotropic antenna patterns. The proposed method resorts to the spherical harmonic expansion (SHE) of plane waves and the trigonometric expansion of Legendre and associated Legendre polynomials to obtain a closed-form expression for the SCF for arbitrary angular distributions and antenna patterns. The resulting expression depends on the underlying angular distributions and antenna patterns through the Fourier Series (FS) coefficients of power azimuth and elevation spectrums. The novelty of the proposed method lies in the SCF being valid for any 3D propagation environment. Numerical results validate the proposed analytical expression and study the impact of angular spreads on the correlation. The derived SCF will help evaluate the performance of correlated 3D MIMO channels in the future.


To determine the effect of gene order on globin gene developmental regulation, we produced transgenic mice containing two tandemly arranged gamma- or beta-globin or gamma beta- and beta gamma-globin genes linked to a 2.5-kb cassette containing sequences of the locus control region (LCR). Analysis of constructs containing two identical gamma or beta genes assessed the effect of gene order on globin gene expression, while analysis of constructs containing tandemly arranged gamma and beta genes assessed any additional effects of the trans-acting environment. When two gamma genes were tandemly linked to the LCR, expression from the proximal gamma gene was three- to fourfold higher than expression from the distal gamma gene, and the ratio of proximal to distal gene expression remained unchanged throughout development. Similarly, when two beta genes were tandemly linked to the LCR, the proximal beta gene was predominantly expressed throughout development. These results indicate that proximity to LCR increases gene expression, perhaps by influencing the frequency of interaction between the LCR and globin gene promoters. An arrangement where the gamma gene was proximal and the beta gene distal to the LCR resulted in predominant gamma-gene expression in the embryo. When the order was reversed and the gamma gene was placed distally to the LCR, gamma-gene expression in the embryo was still up to threefold higher than expression of the LCR-proximal beta gene. These findings suggest that the embryonic trans-acting environment interacts preferentially with the gamma genes irrespective of their order or proximity to the LCR. We conclude that promoter competition rather than gene order plays the major role in globin gene switching.


The simplest and most widely applied method for guaranteeing differential privacy is to add instance-independent noise to a statistic of interest that is scaled to its global sensitivity. However, global sensitivity is a worst-case notion that is often too conservative for realized dataset instances. We provide methods for scaling noise in an instance-dependent way and demonstrate that they provide greater accuracy under average-case distributional assumptions.
Specifically, we consider the basic problem of privately estimating the mean of a real distribution from i.i.d.~samples. The standard empirical mean estimator can have arbitrarily-high global sensitivity. We propose the trimmed mean estimator, which interpolates between the mean and the median, as a way of attaining much lower sensitivity on average while losing very little in terms of statistical accuracy.
To privately estimate the trimmed mean, we revisit the smooth sensitivity framework of Nissim, Raskhodnikova, and Smith (STOC 2007), which provides a framework for using instance-dependent sensitivity. We propose three new additive noise distributions which provide concentrated differential privacy when scaled to smooth sensitivity. We provide theoretical and experimental evidence showing that our noise distributions compare favorably to others in the literature, in particular, when applied to the mean estimation problem.


Mucopolysaccharidoses (MPS) types I, II and VI are associated with deficiencies in alpha-L-iduronidase, iduronate-2-sulfatase and N-acetylgalactosamine-4-sulfatase, respectively, and generally involve progressive and multi-systemic clinical manifestations. Enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) appears to be reasonably well tolerated. The aim of this study was to examine clinical and diagnostic findings of a series of pediatric and adult MPS patients, and assess the safety and efficacy of ERT in children and adults with MPS type I, II and VI. Pediatric and adult patients were treated weekly with 1 mg/kg recombinant human N-acetylgalactosamine-4-sulphatase (rhASB), 0.45 mg/kg alpha-L-iduronidase, or 0.5 mg/kg iduronate-2-sulfatase. Clinical and biochemical parameters with ERT were evaluated for a mean duration of 5 years. Mantel-Haenszel risk ratios and associated 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated for rates of death among different types of enzyme replacement therapies (ERTs). Twenty-seven patients (mean ages ‒ pediatric: 6.8 years; adult: 29 years) were included. ERT was found to be consistently well tolerated and effective in attenuating symptoms, but did not prevent the progression of the disease or reduce mortality rates. Our findings demonstrated that early diagnosis and initiation of ERT are critical for improvements in patient-important outcomes and quality of life, although disease progression and mortality rates remain high.


Agent technology offers a large number of unique features which makes it a potential choice for implementing real world applications. Owing to their tremendous capabilities, it is regarded as a promising paradigm for future distributed computing. In this paper, we have proposed smart delivery: a cooperative multi-agent framework for optimised delivery service to transfer packets from source to destinations in randomly varying environment in the most efficient way with the help of mobile agents. We are considering packet moving problem in 2D environment consisting of packets and destinations. The task of each mobile agent is to move the packet from the source to the destination. Simulated environment is dynamically generated with varying graph size (i.e., number of nodes in graph), packet ratio and number of destinations. Packets and destinations are randomly placed in the graph and the graph is divided into societies to encourage an efficient and manageable environment for the agents to work in parallel and share expertise within and outside the society. The proposed framework uses decentralised approach and based on layered agent architecture and once initialised manages all the activities autonomously with the help of mobile agents.


I. INTRODUCTION Every year, millions of individuals in the United States become victims of crime. (1) Crime imposes indirect burdens that impact communities and society at large. (2) Crime victims have countless needs, which may include medical treatment and counseling. The needs of domestic violence crime victims are even more acute because, in addition to medical treatment and counseling, they may also need shelter, relocation assistance, and in some circumstances, food and clothing. (3) Over twenty-five years ago, Congress enacted the Victims of Crime Act of 1984 ("VOCA"), which addressed some of the needs of victims of violent crime, including domestic violence victims. (4) VOCA provides federal funding to eligible state Crime Victim Compensation ("CVC") programs. (5) CVC programs directly reimburse victims for crime-related expenses and are sponsored by the federal and state governments. (6) CVC programs incorporate principles of distributive and restorative justice by addressing the harm and economic burden of victimization. (7) Distributive justice involves the "fair distribution of common burdens and benefits," (8) while restorative justice focuses in part on community involvement to address the harm experienced by victims. (9) Justice for crime victims "requires that society take responsibility for making the victim whole again. Emergency financial assistance, medical care, legal services, and justice are the rights of every victim and the moral obligation of society." (10) Crime can have a lasting impact on a victim physically, emotionally, and economically. Domestic violence is no different than other crimes in this regard; however, domestic violence is particularly complex because the victim is in an intimate relationship with the offender. Despite the unique financial assistance CVC funds can offer domestic violence victims, (11) the standards for distribution may have a depressive effect on the number of domestic violence related claims that are filed. (12) When victim compensation programs were first enacted, there was an inherent bias against domestic violence victims because programs feared that providing compensation to a domestic violence victim would only result in enriching the batterer. (13) To overcome this bias, VOCA expressly prohibits the denial of "compensation to any victim because of that victim's familial relationship to the offender or because of the sharing of a residence by the victim and the offender." (14) Nonetheless, despite the prevalence of domestic violence and VOCA's inclusive language, domestic violence victims remain one of the most underrepresented groups receiving CVC funds. (15) The underutilization of CVC funds by domestic violence victims, and the barriers to compensation, may lead one to ponder the true purpose of CVC funds and to ask whether the funds are merely a charitable gift or a humanitarian obligation to crime victims. A gift can be withheld or distributed as the government sees fit, but an entitlement must be distributed fairly. This article contends that the goal of CVC funds should be victim assistance due to society's moral obligation to assist crime victims, including domestic violence victims. While such an argument should perhaps not be controversial, the eligibility requirements suggest that CVC funds have a competing goal of promoting law enforcement efforts. Helping victims and law enforcement efforts are not naturally competing goals, but in the case of domestic violence, they can be. An old proverb cautions against looking a gift horse in the mouth, suggesting that it is improper to criticize or examine a gift to assess its value. (16) Instead, the recipient is encouraged to be grateful for the gift without questioning it. CVC funds are an important resource for all crime victims, but they are also similar to a gift horse (17) that requires further examination in the context of domestic violence. This article seeks to identify and explore the underlying theories behind CVC funds and the barriers preventing domestic violence victims from utilizing them. …


Emerging nonvolatile memory (NVM) technologies, such as resistive random access memories (RRAM) and phase-change memories (PCM), are an attractive option for future memory architectures due to their nonvolatility, high density, and low-power operation. Notwithstanding these advantages, they are prone to high defect densities due to the nondeterministic nature of the nanoscale fabrication. We examine the fault models and propose an efficient testing technique to test crossbar-based NVMs. The typical approach to testing memories entails testing one memory element at a time. This is time consuming and does not scale for the dense, RRAM or PCM-based memories. We propose a testing scheme based on "sneak-path sensing" to efficiently detect faults in the memory. The testing scheme uses sneak paths inherent in crossbar memories, to test multiple memory elements at the same time, thereby reducing testing time. We designed the design-for-test support necessary to control the number of sneak paths that are concurrently enabled; this helps control the power consumed during test. The proposed scheme enables and leverages sneak paths during test mode, while still maintaining a sneak path free crossbar during normal operation.


In Bangladesh—one of the poorest countries in Asia, where rice accounts for almost 70 percent of consumers' caloric intake—the share of the less expensive, low-quality coarse rice is shown to be rapidly decreasing in rice markets and the quality premium for the best-quality rice has been consistently on the rise in the last decades. It thus seems that the role of rice as only a cheap staple food is being redefined. The off-farm share in the final consumer price increases from 27 percent to 35 percent to 48 percent for low-, medium-, and high-quality rice, respectively, and the increasing demand for higher quality is thus seemingly associated with a more important off-farm food sector—in particular, milling, retailing, and branding—as well as a transformed milling industry. We further find that the labor rewards for and the technical efficiency of growing different rice qualities are not significantly different, and farmers do not benefit directly from consumers' increased willingness to pay for higher rice quality.


The existence of lawsonite blueschists in the Mona Complex of Anglesey, northern Wales has been confirmed using optical and microprobe data. The blueschists occur locally along the eastern margin of one of three belts of fine-grained mylonitic schists known as the Penmynydd Zone of Metamorphism. The Penmynydd Zone is interpreted as representing remnants of deep-seated ductile shear zones produced by the movement of sialic basement up into low-grade melange. The lawsonite schists display complex textures resulting from the overprint of blueschist conditions on greenschist facies rocks followed by a subgreenschist dynamic metamorphism. The blueschist minerals are interpreted as a late product of shear zone metamorphism under conditions of decreasing temperature and high fluid pressure. The schists are no younger than Cambrian (probably Middle Cambrian). Lawsonite of this age is exceptionally rare; older examples are reported only from Russia. Rather than invoking a change in crustal isotherms through time, the paucity of pre-Mesozoic blueschists may simply be a result of the rapid exhumation needed to expose such rocks. The appearance of a blueschist at Earth's surface will be transient unless the uplift responsible for its exposure either slows or ceases.


Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a burgeoning health problem worldwide. NAFLD is an umbrella term for a range of liver conditions affecting people who drink little to no alcohol Different methods are employed in the diagnosis of NAFLD. Certain drugs, genetics, lifestyle factors have been implicated in the development of NAFLD. NAFLD symptoms are asymptomatic but indicated when there is unexplained persistent elevation of liver enzyme levels. Nutrition and lifestyle modifications are widely prescribed as helpful in the prevention and treatment of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver disease (NAFLD). Dietary and lifestyle modifications are apparent measures considering the disease association with obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease which many reviews have linked to the condition. Reduction in body weight, involvement in both aerobic and anaerobic exercises, conscious intake in the types of fat and carbohydrates are helpful in the management of NAFLD. This chapter highlights the various theories and principles underlying nutrition and lifestyle modifications in the prevention and treatment of NAFLDs.


The increased fatigue loads and decreased power output of a wind turbine placed in the wake of another turbine is a well-known problem when building new wind-power farms and a subject of intensive research. These problems are caused by the velocity gradients and high turbulence levels present in the wake of a turbine. In order to better estimate the total power output and life time of a wind-power farm, knowledge about the development and stability of wind-turbine wakes is crucial.In the present thesis, the flow field around small-scale model wind turbines has been investigated experimentally in two wind tunnels. The flow velocity was measured with both hot-wire anemometry and particle image velocimetry. To monitor the turbine performance, the rotational frequency, the power output and the total drag force on the turbine were also measured. The power and thrust coefficients for different tip-speed ratios were calculated and compared to the blade element momentum method, with a reasonable agreement. The same method was also used to design and manufacture new turbine blades, which gave an estimate of the distribution of the lift and drag forces along the blades.The influence of the inlet conditions on the turbine and the wake properties was studied by subjecting the turbine to both uniform in flow and different types of boundary layer in flows. In order to study the stability and development of the tip vortices shed from the turbine blades, a new experimental setup for phase-locked measurements was constructed. The setup made it possible to introduce perturbations of different frequencies and amplitudes, located in the rear part of the nacelle. With a newly developed method, it was possible to characterize the vortices and follow their development downstream, using only the streamwise velocity component.Measurements were also performed on porous discs placed in different configurations. The results highlighted the importance of turbine spacings. Both the measurements on the turbine and the discs were also used to compare with large eddy simulations using the actuator disc method. The simulations managed to predict the mean velocity fairly well in both cases, while larger discrepancies were seen in the turbulence intensity.


Innovation is widely recognised as an appropriate 'tool' to gain competitiveness and it is often defined as an idea, process, service, product, etc., that is characterised as being new and commercially accepted. The description of the innovation process as a sequence of tasks is not new; but there is still no easy way to materialise these processes in the industry. Various authors have defined modelling as the most appropriate way to achieve this purpose. This paper compiles and summarises all of the most relevant models published during the last three decades. It also identifies their key factors, which are included in a questionnaire that will be used amongst relevant industrial firms in the Basque country in order to characterise a new innovation model. The originality of this work will be the joint development and validation of a new innovation model, suited to actual needs, flexible and customised to industrial companies.


The porosity of electroless nickel, (TiAl)N, TiN and CrN PVD coatings on mild steel having different surface roughnesses was investigated using porosity/corrosion tests. The tests used were the neutral salt spray test, ferroxyl test, sulphur dioxide test and the copper cementation test. Additionally the effect of radii on the corrosion resistance and porosity of electroless nickel coatings was examined. Electron optics, GDOES and ICP were used to evaluate the limits of their applicability to extend porosity/corrosion tests used on coated specimen. A marking technique was developed which enabled individual features on coated surfaces to be examined by SEM before and after porosity/corrosion tests.The neutral salt spray test was used to rank electroless nickel coated mild steel specimens according to their corrosion resistance. However the test did not provide any detailed information on the porosity of the coatings. The ferroxyl test was found to be applicable to all the coatings on mild steel investigated but only macrodefects could be observed. With the help of the SO[2] test the origin of defects in electroless nickel coatings was examined using SEM techniques. Furthermore the test was used to observe the formation of corrosion products at defect sites as a function of exposure time. A ranking according to the corrosion resistance depending upon defects present was made. The SO[2] test was not applicable to (TiAl)N, TiN and CrN PVD coatings since the defect density in these coatings was too high and any corrosion products formed during the test spread over their surface thus hiding smaller defects as a result of the test's high sensitivity. In copper cementation tests on PVD coatings, copper did not preferentially precipitate at large defect sites but precipitated randomly on the coated surface. The amount of copper precipitated, its distribution and size was used to provide information concerning the defect density in PVD coatings. A mechanism has been suggested which explains how copper is deposited on the top of coatings rather than in the bottom of defects during cementation tests. The relationship between porosity, substrate roughness and coating thickness has been established, and it is suggested how the relationship might be used in industry as a quality control tool.


Abstract The Permo-Triassic Beaufort Group comprises in excess of 3000 m of sandstone and mudstone-rich fluvial deposits that vary both laterally and vertically in abundance, architecture, and clustering styles. The lower 1370 m has been studied in detail. Detailed stratigraphic logging and photographic interpretation have been carried out on river cliffs and hillside sections, and sedimentary structures have been mapped by close inspection of clean outcrops. Seven fluvial architectural styles have been identified, encompassing sand body and sand body cluster scales: 1) flat-topped sheets dominated by lateral accretion, 2) concave-up topped sheets dominated by lateral accretion, 3) heterolithic ribbons dominated by lateral accretion, 4) flat-topped ribbons with attached splays dominated by downstream accretion, 5) unconfined moderately amalgamated concave-up topped complexes, 6) unconfined strongly amalgamated sheet complexes, and 7) valley-confined strongly amalgamated ribbon complexes. The internal architecture of each indicates mixed lateral and downstream accretion modes on several scales with local variability. Lateral-accretion deposits differ from typically published facies models in that trough cross-bedding is rare, possibly the result of an inability to generate dunes due to the dominant very fine sandstone grain size. The observed architecture and sedimentary structures are the product of: 1) a semiarid climate, producing fluvial and debris flows, and cementation of sediment packages at the surface (which exerts a strong control on the magnitude of channel scour, the nature of channel fill, and compaction history); 2) local variability in subsidence rate causing variation in the vertical spacing of channel belts, channel slope, and plan form, and variation in preservation of topographically higher features (e.g., levees); 3) relative position in a fluvial megafan influencing suspended load to bedload partitioning from proximal to distal locations, and formation of channel belt complexes; and 4) relative sea-level changes causing incised-valley formation and fill only in the most distal parts of the system.


ABSTRACT Apart from a few exceptions, extant odontocetes (toothed cetaceans) exhibit a roughly homodont dentition. The transition from basilosaurid-like double-rooted cheek teeth with accessory denticles to single-rooted conical teeth occurred during the late Oligocene-early Miocene. At that time, several clades of now extinct, homodont and predominantly long-snouted odontocetes appeared in the fossil record. Among them, members of the genera Argyrocetus Lydekker, 1893 and Macrodelphinus Wilson, 1935, from the early Miocene of the Northeast Pacific and Argentina, were tentatively attributed to the family Eurhinodelphinidae. However, due to the fragmentary state of the specimens, unambiguous apomorphies of the family could not be detected. Based on two well-preserved skulls with associated mandibular elements, discovered in early Miocene layers of the Chilcatay Formation (Pisco Basin, Peru), we report on a new genus and species of long-snouted homodont odontocete, Chilcacetus cavirhinus n. gen., n. sp. Characterized by, among others, the presence of alveoli on the anterior premaxillary portion of the rostrum, the lack of a lateral groove on the rostrum, anterodorsally elevated nasals, a possibly autapomorphic cavity between nasals and mesethmoid in the posterior wall of the bony nares, a high temporal fossa, and the absence of ankylosis along the mandibular symphysis, C. cavirhinus n. gen., n. sp. does not fit in any of the known odontocete families, but shares several morphological features with Argyrocetus spp. and Macrodelphinus. Our phylogenetic analysis, based on 77 characters for 35 odontocete taxa, suggests the existence of an early Miocene Eastern Pacific long-snouted homodont odontocete clade (with an hypothetical South Atlantic member, the poorly known Argyrocetus patagonicus Lydekker, 1893), distinct from the only superficially similar eoplatanistids and eurhinodelphinids. Furthermore, our consensus tree indicates an early branching of this new clade compared to other homodont odontocete lineages. Unfortunately, the results of the cladistic analysis presented here are not well supported; a reappraisal of Argyrocetus and Macrodelphinus is needed to more clearly define the new clade and bolster its phylogentic position.


Estimates of labor statistics are susceptible to being heavily influenced by certain businesses responding to surveys of employment, hours worked, and earnings. Winsorization can be used to identify and treat influential microdata, and is a method that the Current Employment Statistics State and Area program uses to improve efficiency in employment estimates. However, for the average weekly hours and hourly earnings estimates, there is not currently a robust method to identify outliers. This is mainly due to differences in estimation techniques. While employment estimates target a population total, average weekly hours and hourly earnings estimates use ratios of two totals. Subsequently, measuring the influence of a report on the latter estimates is not as straightforward as it is for employment because of the differing complexity in estimation techniques. This paper presents four different influence functions that were developed for catching outliers in the hours and earnings data. Each one is evaluated via simulations to determine the most efficient estimator. While some influence functions performed better than others, all proved better than having no robust method at all.


First we present two attacks for the mix-net proposed by Golle et al.,
and also propose modifications that counter our attacks. The first
attack breaks the privacy of the protocol completely.

Our attacks are adaptations of the "relation attack", discussed by
Jakobsson, Pfitzmann, and Wikstrom, but we introduce a novel way of
exploiting intermediate values of different mix-sessions.

Then we propose two optimizations of the protocol that reduce the
number of exponentiations computed by each mix-server from 4(k+1)N to
4N, where k is the number of mix-servers, and N is the (large) number
of senders (we improve the analysis of the original protocol from
(5+10k)N to 4(k+1)N).

Thus the modified protocol outperforms the original by a factor k+1,
with complexity essentially independent of k.


Finally, the evidence has all been heard, the lawyers have given closing arguments to the jurors, and now it is up to the trial judge; it is her turn. Of course, she will instruct the jury on the law, no question about that. But this was a very lengthy multiple defendant trial. That experienced, savvy trial judge is no doubt tempted to go beyond stating to the jurors the mere legal rules (the usual jury instructions). She might also prefer to talk with them about the evidence: comment on particular items, summarize the overall evidence and the arguments put forth by the lawyers on both sides. After all, we all want to be certain that these lay people understand just what this case was all about. And who better to tell them about the evidence than the judge? If this judge sits in the United States, she had better resist that temptation. Otherwise, she is very likely to be reversed on appeal, perhaps even disciplined. But, elsewhere in the common law world, that judge would not be at all concerned about going beyond the giving of jury instructions. In fact, if she does not, she is likely to be reversed on appeal, perhaps even disciplined. Why the difference between U.S. judges and judges from other common law based nations, with similar roots in the English criminal justice system? Are Americans really that different from their English-speaking cousins on this point? What explains that difference? And which nation gets it right? Those are the questions I attempt to answer in this article. To do so, I take an unconventional approach. I discuss the well-established legal principles one finds in cases, statutes, and rules in the five focal nations of Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand, and the United States. In my research, however, I sought to go beyond this, to find out the way in which the practice really occurs. In short, I was trying to determine whether the trial judges truly acted so very differently in the various nations. I was in touch with more than eighty individuals in these five nations. Most I knew; all were experienced in the world of criminal justice, as trial or appeals judges (state or federal), prosecution or defense lawyers, or academics who either left the practice or studied it carefully. I met with them, or spoke with them on the phone, or corresponded with them, or exchanged email messages. This article lays out the surprising answers to the questions I asked these individuals on the practice of instructing jurors.


The bioactive mechanism, by which living tissues attach to and integrate with an artificial implant through stable chemical bonds, is at the core of many current medical applications of biomaterials, as well as of novel promising applications in tissue engineering. Having been employed in these applications for almost 40 years, soda-lime phosphosilicate glasses such as 45S5 represent today the paradigm of bioactive materials. Despite their strategical importance in the field, the relationship between the structure and the activity of a glass composition in a biological environment has not been studied in detail. This fundamental gap negatively affects further progress, for instance, to improve the chemical durability and tailor the biodegradability of these materials for specific applications. This paper reviews recent advances in computer modelling of bioactive glasses based on molecular dynamics simulations, which are starting to unveil key structural features of these materials, thus contributing to improve our fundamental understanding of how bioactive materials work.


In recent years, nanotechnology has developed to a stage that makes it possible to produce, characterize and specifically tailor the structural and functional properties of nanoparticles for clinical applications. Cartilage damage is typically associated with work and athletic injuries, and commonly occurs in conjunction with ACL tears and other ligament problems. Cartilage does not grow back, so treatments to regenerate the tissue are critical. The new biomedical therapy involving nanotechnology promotes the growth of new, stronger cartilage to aid in the treatment of joint injuries. This review article analyses the various technologies available for the diagnostic and therapeutic potentials of nanotechnology towards chronic arthritis.


When developing an ejection mitigation system for passenger vehicles, it is necessary to quantify the loads exerted by unconstrained occupants on glazing (window). Quantifying loads on vehicle interior components, such as the door and glazing are important to developing occupant protection systems. Loads exerted by unconstrained occupants on glazing can result in failure leading to fatal ejection.

The determination of loads exerted by unconstrained occupants when conducted in dolly rollover (FMVSS 208) or physical highway-speed rollover tests using ATDs (Anthropomorphic Test Dummies) is costly, time consuming, and non repeatable. These limitations make the laboratory dynamic spit test a good candidate to quantify the loads on the glazing and door.

However, the spit tester constrains the vehicle, leading to an overestimation of the load on the glazing and door. The results of this current investigation detail the inherent overestimation by the laboratory spit tester and provide a correction factor for a particular vehicle/occupant combination. By using a computational model, the correlation between the spit test result and the actual unconstrained phase of the rollover is provided.


BACKGROUND
There is an increasing interest in the medical use of cannabis, particularly in the treatment of chronic pain.

OBJECTIVES
The aim is to evaluate the effects of cannabis use and the associated benefits reported by patients with various chronic pain diagnoses.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
A total of 338 patients with different chro- nic pain conditions were treated with a Cannabis Flos 19% decoction for 12 months, in addition to their pharmacological therapy. Baseline levels for pain medications, pain intensity, pain disability, anxiety and depression were recorded at 1, 3, 6 and 12 months.

RESULTS
Pain intensity records a statistically significant reduction from Baseline to 12 months follow up (X² 61.375; P<0,001); the im- provements from Baseline to 12 months follow up are also recorded in pain disability (X² 39.423; P<0,001) and in anxiety and depression symptoms (X²30.362; P<0,001; X²27.786; P<0,001).

CONCLUSIONS
Our study suggest that Cannabis therapy, as an adjun- ct a traditional analgesic therapy, can be an efficacious tool to make more effective the management of chronic pain and its consequences on functional and psychological dimension. Further randomized, controlled trials are needed to confirm our conclusions.


Multigrid methods are efficient and fast solvers for problems typically modeled by partial differential equations of elliptic type. For problems with complex geometries and local singularities stencil-type discrete operators on equidistant Cartesian grids need to be replaced by more flexible concepts for unstructured meshes in order to properly resolve all problem-inherent specifics and for maintaining a moderate number of unknowns. However, flexibility in the meshes goes along with severe drawbacks with respect to parallel execution - especially with respect to the definition of adequate smoothers. This point becomes in particular pronounced in the framework of fine-grained parallelism on GPUs with hundreds of execution units. We use the approach of matrix-based multigrid that has high flexibility and adapts well to the exigences of modern computing platforms. In this work we investigate multi-colored Gauss-Seidel type smoothers, the power(q)-pattern enhanced multi-colored ILU(p) smoothers with fill-ins, and factorized sparse approximate inverse (FSAI) smoothers. These approaches provide efficient smoothers with a high degree of parallelism. In combination with matrix-based multigrid methods on unstructured meshes our smoothers provide powerful solvers that are applicable across a wide range of parallel computing platforms and almost arbitrary geometries. We describe the configuration of our smoothers in the context of the portable lmpLAtoolbox and the HiFlow3 parallel finite element package. In our approach, a single source code can be used across diverse platforms including multicore CPUs and GPUs. Highly optimized implementations are hidden behind a unified user interface. Efficiency and scalability of our multigrid solvers are demonstrated by means of a comprehensive performance analysis on multicore CPUs and GPUs.


AIM
This study was conducted to examine the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on the mental well-being and mental health of individuals.

DESIGN AND METHOD
This cross-sectional questionnaire study was conducted with 614 individuals over the age of 18.

FINDINGS
Regarding the coronavirus outbreak, it was found that 84.9% of the participants are afraid/anxious. The psychiatric problems of the individuals who fear/worry about coronavirus becoming a pandemic, who stated that staying at home because of the outbreak negatively affect their mental health and that domestic violence cases have increased due to the outbreak were found to be higher (p < 0.05).

PRACTICE IMPLICATION
The coronavirus outbreak causes fear and anxiety in society. This triggers so many psychological symptoms.


The methodology adopted for the preparation of perovskites plays a critical role in achieving high efficiency. Toward this direction, various strategies have been adopted to achieve a rational control over the growth of the perovskite layer for the fabrication of highly efficient devices. In the beginning, a single step was generally employed for the deposition of the perovskite layer. Apart from the technique for the preparation of perovskites, the modification of the photoanode has also garnered significant attention, with reports on how the replacement of the mesoporous photoanode with a planar architecture leads to devices that do not compromise much on performance. Although the performance in dye sensitized solar cells (DSC) is strongly dictated by the porosity and surface properties of mesoporous photoanode, the aim of the approach presented here is specifically to reduce the thickness of a relatively less porous layer of photoanode by exploiting the planar nature of nanoplatelets.


ABSTRACT This paper discusses how the general and abstract concept of legitimacy applies to international institutions, using the United Nations Security Council as an example. We argue that the evaluation of the Security Council's legitimacy requires considering three significant and interrelated aspects: its purpose, competences, and procedural standards. We consider two possible interpretations of the Security Council's purpose: on the one hand, maintaining peace and security, and, on the other, ensuring broader respect for human rights. Both of these purposes are minimally morally acceptable for legitimacy. Second, we distinguish between three different competences of the UNSC: 1) the decision-making competence, 2) the quasi-legislative competence, and 3) the referral competence. On this basis, we argue that different procedural standards are required to legitimise these competences, which leads to a more differentiated understanding of the Security Council's legitimacy. While maintaining that the membership structure of the Council is a severe problem for its legitimacy, we suggest other procedural standards that can help to improve its overall legitimacy, which include broad transparency, deliberation, and the revisability of the very terms of accountability themselves.


The Internet and related information technologies are transforming the distribution of product sales across products, and the effects are likely to grow in coming years. Both the Long Tail and the Superstar effect are manifestations of these changes, yet researchers lack consistent metrics or models for integrating and extending their insights and predictions. In this paper, we begin with a taxonomy of the technological and non-technological drivers of both the Long Tails and Superstars and then define and contrast the key metrics for analyzing these phenomena. While significant research has already been done, the core the paper describes a large and promising set of questions forming a research agenda. Important opportunities exist for understanding future changes in product distribution; its impact on supply chains (including crosschannel competition, competition within the Internet channel, implications for the growth of firms, and the balance of power within the supply chain); implications for pricing, promotion and product design; and ultimately potential effects on society more generally. Our approach provides an introduction to some of the relevant research findings and allows us to identify opportunities for cross-pollination of methods and insights from related research topics.


Background Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are known for their beneficial effects on plants. However, there is increasing evidence that some ruderal plants, including several agricultural weeds, respond negatively to AMF colonization. Here, we investigated the effect of AMF on the growth of individual weed species and on weed-crop interactions. Methodology/Principal Findings First, under controlled glasshouse conditions, we screened growth responses of nine weed species and three crops to a widespread AMF, Glomus intraradices. None of the weeds screened showed a significant positive mycorrhizal growth response and four weed species were significantly reduced by the AMF (growth responses between −22 and −35%). In a subsequent experiment, we selected three of the negatively responding weed species – Echinochloa crus-galli, Setaria viridis and Solanum nigrum – and analyzed their responses to a combination of three AMF (Glomus intraradices, Glomus mosseae and Glomus claroideum). Finally, we tested whether the presence of a crop (maize) enhanced the suppressive effect of AMF on weeds. We found that the growth of the three selected weed species was also reduced by a combination of AMF and that the presence of maize amplified the negative effect of AMF on the growth of E. crus-galli. Conclusions/Significance Our results show that AMF can negatively influence the growth of some weed species indicating that AMF have the potential to act as determinants of weed community structure. Furthermore, mycorrhizal weed growth reductions can be amplified in the presence of a crop. Previous studies have shown that AMF provide a number of beneficial ecosystem services. Taken together with our current results, the maintenance and promotion of AMF activity may thereby contribute to sustainable management of agroecosystems. However, in order to further the practical and ecological relevance of our findings, additional experiments should be performed under field conditions.


This article focuses on how temperament, pubertal maturation, and perception of parenting behaviors affect the propensity to date in early adolescence (mean age = 13.55). Hypotheses are tested with a representative sample of 2,230 Dutch adolescents, the TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS). The results suggest that adolescents are more likely to have experience with dating when they score higher on the need for high-intensity pleasure, pubertal maturation, and perceived parental rejection. Shyness, on the other hand, has the opposite effect. In addition, a moderation effect is observed such that the more rejecting the parents are perceived to be, the less effect the temperament characteristic of high-intensity pleasure has on dating. Future research should investigate in further detail whether dating could be seen as a way for early adolescents to establish their grown-up status or as a way to compensate for heightened parental rejection.


This paper sets out an organizing framework for the field of social ontology, the study of the nature of the social world. The subject matter of social ontology is clarified, in particular the difference between it and the study of causal relations and the explanation of social phenomena. Two different inquiries are defined and explained: the study of the grounding of social facts, and the study of how social categories are "anchored" or set up. The distinction between these inquiries is used to clarify prominent programs in social theory, particularly theories of practice and varieties of individualism.


Cardiovascular adaptations to the circulatory and volume changes of pregnancy have been studied in late normal and hypertensive pregnancy and postpartum. There has been evidence of a marked plasma volume expansion in normal pregnancy, blunted in preeclampsia; an increased capillary permeability during normal pregnancy; augmented left ventricular mass, which is increased in mild preeclampsia; and similar increases in peripheral venous distensibility during normal and preeclamptic pregnancy. In mild preeclampsia the enlarged ventricle has been shown to be capable of maintaining a normal cardiac output despite elevated afterload. The forearm vascular bed appears to play little part in these adjustments, because forearm venous distensibility has been shown to be higher during normal pregnancy than during postpartum; in hypertensive individuals there was no difference during pregnancy and postpartum. It is evident from this brief review that it is too early to draw clear-cut conclusions regarding the vascular, volume, and cardiac response to normal and hypertensive pregnancy. Research in this field, including two-dimensional echocardiography and plethysmography in larger homogeneous groups, will probably lead to a better understanding of the pathophysiological mechanism of pregnancy hypertension.


Contact tracing apps and immunity passports are being used for the first time in human history. This Article assesses their risk tradeoffs from a private and regulatory law perspective, with special attention to privacy and inequality. The Article begins by developing a surveillance-based taxonomy of contact tracing apps and immunity passports. Next, it demonstrates how these apps magnify the problems and limits of consent and anonymization, two important privacy guarantees. It then explores how the interplay of trust and error can pose threats to health and business efficacy, how they raise issues of liability, and how to address them. It then discusses the prospect that these apps cause discrimination and magnify existing inequalities. Underpinning the aforementioned considerations is a balancing assessment that aims to guide policy-makers, judges, employers, and individuals in making difficult containment decisions.


Based on a set of experiment picture collection, a 3-point bending specimen model under dynamic load is analyzed in two ways: one is derived by using vibration analysis method with consideration of equivalent system stiffness and damping. The other is using finite element method for ABAQUS software. With the picture taken by a high velocity camera, a measure method for CMOD (Crack Mouse Opening Displacement) is introduced. Dynamic stress intensity factor K1 is compared in two methods and CMOD comparison is carried out between experiment picture collection and ABAQUS result. Example is given in the last part to demonstrate the application of the result in this thesis to the impactor analysis.


We investigate theoretically the effect of two-dimensional photonic crystal (PC) defect waveguide parameters embedded into vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) on static operation of PC-VCSEL, including spatial hole burning (SHB) and temperature in the active regions. In structures with larger pitch of PC holes, SHB occurs dramatically and temperature increases in the active region. In large-hole diameter to pitch ratio, SHB has little effect and temperature is decreased in the active regions. We also show that with higher input current, temperature rises and SHB occurs.


Fuel wood provides the main source of energy for cooking and space heating for over 80 percent of households living in Kenya. The heavy reliance on the biomass energy has exerted an imbalance in demand and supply consequently resulting in adverse environmental effects in Kenya. As part of innovation efforts, several energy-conserving technologies have been developed. A unique cook stove named Maendeleo was developed and promoted in Kenya and more so, West Pokot County, northern of Kenya, with the goal of reducing the quantity of wood households use for energy, and ultimately reduce pressure on local forests. However, despite the demonstrated technological multiple benefits and the institutional promotional efforts of the Maendeleo stove technology; the adoption level of this innovation has remained low. An important question investigated in this study was what makes potential users not utilize such valuable innovations? Socio-cultural, economic, political and institutional barriers are considered to contribute to low uptake of such innovations. This study therefore, sought to assess socio- economic factors influencing the adoption of the Maendeleo stove in the rural setting of Kapenguria Division. A survey research methodology with ex-post facto design was employed. The results showed that the age of the respondents had the highest influence on the non-adoption of the Maendeleo stove. Given the relatively low adoption level of Maendeleo stove in the county, and the projected increase in the number of people relying on biomass, this study recommends that the government and development partners put in place a programme for the promotion and dissemination of Maendeleo stove. There should be further investigation into the adoption behaviour of the respondents on the reasons for non-adoption and discontinuance of use of the Maendeleo stove.


Copy number variations represent large scale genomic alterations varying from 1kb to 3Mb and are proposed as a driving force for genome evolution and variation. One such locus exhibiting copy number variation and genome evolution is salivary amylase, which is responsible for the digestion of starch in the human parotid glands. It was reported that since human salivary amylase gene (AMY1) copy numbers are correlated positively with protein levels, and also due to the correlation of high gene copy numbers with a starch rich diet, AMY1 had undergone adaptive evolution. Moreover there was recent evidence for gain of copy number in the human lineage concordant with the dietary shift which occurred during Neolithic times. The main focus of this study was the development of multiplex Paralogue Ratio Test (PRT) systems for measuring human amylase copy number. Despite having considerable identity between salivary amylase and pancreatic amylase copies, PRT was designed due to the exclusive association of a retroviral element with the salivary amylase gene copies, such that only salivary amylase copies were quantified. As retroviral elements are scattered throughout the genome therefore eliciting amplification from just test and reference without any contribution from alternative loci was a technical challenge in this project. However, creation of enough mismatches within the primer binding sites ensured that only the test and reference sequences were amplified. Discrimination by means of increasing annealing temperature also aided in exclusive amplification of test and reference sequences. Consequently, two PRTs and 1 microsatellite assay were successfully designed to measure copy number of AMY1 in Japanese and UK DNA samples. 14 copies was the highest copy number seen in the samples from both PRT systems. Reference samples specifying individual classes of copy number exhibited strong relationship with the copy numbers as determined by previous work. Repeat testing and clustering of copy number data points by both the individual systems of measurement ascertained the accuracy and reproducibility of the developed assays.


The detection of chromosomal aberrations constitutes an important stage in the comprehension of the pathogenesis of several diseases, as cancer. In this case, the amplification or deletion (suppression) of some chromosomal regions, was identified as being an essential mechanism of tumour development. Several methods were proposed for the detection of regions, which copy number is altered, from aCGH data. However, it has been reported that 40-60 % of genes show changes in RNA abundance, when amplified [27, 38]. For this reason, the detection of chromosomal aberration from RNA abundance seems solvable. To achieve that, we propose, initially, a simple method, based on cumulated sums (CUMSUM), then more elaborated method, based on the hidden Markov models "HMM" [43]. Within the framework of the HMM, we propose a model HMM with two states (HMM2s) for the detection of only one type of aberration (amplification or deletion), a model HMM with three states (HMM3s) for the simultaneous detection of the amplifications and deletions. We also propose a model HMM with 2 states and double observations by state (HMM2s2o) for the simultaneous analysis of the expression and aCGH data. We tested the various models on simulated and real data, and finally we compared the detected regions of aberration from expression data to those detected from aCGH data of the Glioblastoma.


We propose a nonparametric statistical test for goodness-of-fit: given a set of samples, the test determines how likely it is that these were generated from a target density function. The measure of goodness-of-fit is a divergence constructed via Stein's method using functions from a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space. Our test statistic is based on an empirical estimate of this divergence, taking the form of a V-statistic in terms of the log gradients of the target density and the kernel. We derive a statistical test, both for i.i.d. and non-i.i.d. samples, where we estimate the null distribution quantiles using a wild bootstrap procedure. We apply our test to quantifying convergence of approximate Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, statistical model criticism, and evaluating quality of fit vs model complexity in nonparametric density estimation.


This installation is generated from excerpts taken from the artist's extensive archive of ordinary life and everyday observations . The piece is a multi-media installation consisting of 18 sound tracks, 175 films, and 986 images originating from the Balkans, Germany, Turkey, Thailand, Burma and Ireland.The artist understands each geographical location as conditioned by history; material qualities; movements; activities and narratives. What happens on a daily basis in a particular place is the key observation for her archive of everyday life. Wherever traveling she observes life in that specific locus of activity. 99.9% of our lifetime seems to be filled with trivial memories, we forget them. They are often banal, ugly, or boring. We prefer to emphasize the exciting details. We speak about the special dinner, the fortunate incident, or bad luck we had.Since 2003, the artist has been observing migratory cultures. What happens between leaving and arriving? The normality of an individual life – a life lived in a new space.


A standard way to obtain convergence guarantees in stochastic convex optimization is to run an online learning algorithm and then output the average of its iterates: the actual iterates of the online learning algorithm do not come with individual guarantees. We close this gap by introducing a black-box modification to any online learning algorithm whose iterates converge to the optimum in stochastic scenarios. We then consider the case of smooth losses, and show that combining our approach with optimistic online learning algorithms immediately yields a fast convergence rate of $O(L/T^{3/2}+\sigma/\sqrt{T})$ on $L$-smooth problems with $\sigma^2$ variance in the gradients. Finally, we provide a reduction that converts any adaptive online algorithm into one that obtains the optimal accelerated rate of $\tilde O(L/T^2 + \sigma/\sqrt{T})$, while still maintaining $\tilde O(1/\sqrt{T})$ convergence in the non-smooth setting. Importantly, our algorithms adapt to $L$ and $\sigma$ automatically: they do not need to know either to obtain these rates.


In the US, 25% of adolescents reported physical or sexual abuse from an intimate partner (i.e., interpersonal violence [IPV]) and are at increased risk for having unhealthy weight control behaviors (UWCBs). For example, 2.7% of adolescents have been diagnosed with an eating disorder but 35-50% of female and 30% of male adolescents endorse UWCB and 3% engage in steroid abuse. This study examined adolescents with a history of physical, sexual, both, or no IPV within dating relationships as a multi-category predictor variable association with body image, disordered eating behaviors, and steroid use. 13,583 adolescents were evaluated within sex using the CDC's Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance Survey (YRBS), to determine the risk for UWCBs such as perceived under/overweight, disordered eating behaviors, and steroid use between adolescents who reported IPV compared to those who did not. An association was found in both male and female adolescents such that those who reported IPV also reported higher UWCBs. Generally, adolescents in the United States who report IPV in dating relationships are at higher risk for UWCBs.


Serial section electron microscopy (ssEM) is a widely used technique for obtaining volumetric information of biological tissues at nanometer scale. However, accurate 3D reconstructions of identified cellular structures and volumetric quantifications require precise estimates of section thickness and anisotropy (or stretching) along the XY imaging plane. In fact, many image processing algorithms simply assume isotropy within the imaging plane. To ameliorate this problem, we present a method for estimating thickness and stretching of electron microscopy sections using non-parametric Bayesian regression of image statistics. We verify our thickness and stretching estimates using direct measurements obtained by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and show that our method has a lower estimation error compared to a recent indirect thickness estimation method as well as a relative Z coordinate estimation method. Furthermore, we have made the first dataset of ssSEM images with directly measured section thickness values publicly available for the evaluation of indirect thickness estimation methods.


The Chimera Methodology is a new software engineering paradigm which addresses the problem of developing dynamically reconfigurable and reusable real-time software. The foundation of the Chimera Methodology is the port-based object model of a reusable software component. The model is obtained by applying the port-automaton formal computational model to object-based design. Global state variable table real-time communication is used to integrate port-based objects, which eliminates the need for writing and debugging glue code. The Chimera real-time operating system provides tools to support the software models defined by the Chimera Methodology, so that real-time software can be executed predictably using common real-time scheduling algorithms. A hypermedia user interface has been designed to allow users to easily assemble the real-time software components that are designed based on the Chimera Methodology. Use of the methodology can result in a significant decrease the development time and cost of real-time applications.


Current development trends in automotive software feature increasing standardization of the embedded software structure. However, it remains the critical issue of the overall engineering information management to control the system definition and manage its complexity. System modeling based on an Architecture Description Language (ADL) is a way to keep these assets within one information structure. The original EAST-ADL was developed in the EAST-EEA project (www.east-eea.org) and basic concepts were reused in the AUTOSAR standardization initiative. The original EAST-ADL is currently refined in the ATESST project (www.atesst.org) to EAST-ADL2. This paper presents the results of the language extension provided by the EAST-ADL2 domain model and focuses on its possible extension of the AUTOSAR standard to support decomposition of E/E automotive systems.


Apoptosis, or programmed cell death, is a fundamental means by which the immune system regulates itself. Autoimmunity develops when components of the cell death machinery, such as the cell surface receptor Fas and its ligand, are mutated or absent. Generally, this change is considered to be due to direct defects in lymphocytes, leading to their aberrant activation and proliferation. However, Chen et al. challenge this assumption by revealing that correctly regulated cell death of another central immune cell--the dendritic cell (DC)--is also required to maintain immune control. To prevent apoptosis, a transgene encoding a caspase inhibitor was targeted to DCs in mice, resulting in the accumulation of these cells both in their resting state and in situations of antigen-priming. As a consequence, T cells in these animals became chronically activated and dysregulated, leading to telltale signs of autoimmunity. M. Chen, Y.-H. Wang, Y. Wang, L. Huang, H. Sandoval, Y.-J. Liu, J. Wang, Dendritic cell apoptosis in the maintenance of immune tolerance. Science 311, 1160-1164 (2006). [Abstract] [Full Text]