In this paper, we propose a synchronization scheme to achieve a high level of consistency in peer-to-peer-based shared virtual environments (SVEs), as well as to display natural and realistic motions of virtual objects, in collaborative haptic tasks. The synchronization scheme utilizes an advanced feedback controller to compensate for the state error between geographically separated sites with a significant amount of time delay. It is designed using the mathematical model of a two-user SVE manipulating a freely moving object represented as a mass with damping resistance, with a haptic interface. Thanks to feedback control theory of time delay systems, the controller is shown to result in closed-loop stability and is be robust to perturbations in the time delay. Together with the synchronization control, a recovery filter is also designed and integrated so as to preserve the natural behavior of the synchronized object, which is, otherwise, affected by the feedback control action. In addition to verifying the theoretical results, two experiments using real Internet and local area network communications are carried out. These tests clearly support the validity of the analyses and demonstrate the applicability of the synchronization scheme.


This paper proposes an analysis of 100 narrative texts concerned with English and Italian as L1s and L2s. We will compare the way both native speakers and learners build textual cohesion when faced with a narrative task involving several referential restrictions: contrasts of entity and polarity, maintenance of the same predication, temporal shifts etc. The stimulus used to collect the data is the film retelling The Finite Story by Dimroth (2006). Our results will add to the debate about the learners' tendency to establish anaphoric linkage according to the specific grammaticised (readily encodable) concepts of their mother tongue. In particular, we will show that even at very advanced and almost native levels learners tend to exploit formal and conceptual means resembling those of their mother tongue, demonstrating by that that they have not completely abandoned the L1 specific "perspective taking".


Snow governs interaction between atmospheric and land surface processes in high mountains, and is also source of fresh water. It is thus important to both climate scientists and local communities. However, our understanding of snow cover dynamics in terms of space and time is limited across the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region, which is known to be a climatically sensitive region. We used MODIS snow cover area (SCA) data (2003–2012), APHRODITE temperature data (2000–2007), and monthly long term in‐situ river discharge data of the Gandaki (1968–2010), Koshi (1977–2010) and Manas (1987–2004) basins to analyse variations among four basins. We gained insights into short term SCA and temperature, long term discharge trends, and regional variability thereby. Strong correlations were observed among SCA, temperature and discharge thereby highlighting the strong nexus between them. Temporal and spatial snow cover variability across the basins is strongly coupled with the variability of two weather systems: Western Disturbances (WD) and Indian Monsoon System (IMS), and strongly influenced by topography. Manifestation of these variability in terms if downstream discharge can have repercussion to water based sectors: hydropower and agriculture, as low flow seasons is seen affected. This study adds to our knowledge of snow fall and melt dynamics in the HKH region, and intra‐annual snow melt contributions to downstream discharges. The study is limited by short span of data and it is desirable to perform a similar study using data representing a much longer time span.


Academic research has been one of the first areas to be exposed to the digital revolution. The reform that has marked the passage of academic governance from the Humboldtian university system to the neoliberal university in managerial and busoness terms, made use of a series of mechanisms aimed at monitoring and evaluating individual performance on an ongoing basis, tracing every interaction taking place in the academic environment and in the outside world. Drawing inspiration from the work of Deborah Lupton, Inger Mewburn and Pat Thomson, The Digital Academic: Critical Perspectives on Digital Technologies in Higher Education (2017), this paper looks at the digital self of contemporary academics. Using digital platforms such as Academia.edu, Linkedin, Googlescholar, University e-repositories, SlideShare, Content aggregator tools, digital academics can increase their daily interactions and the impact of their research. More than being interaction tools, these tools transform the academics into digital individuals whose performance is constantly monitored until they find themselves prisoner of a growing "dataveillance" (Lupton, Mewburn and Thomson, 2017). In this context, the question concerns not only the impact of digital technologies on the quality of contemporary research, but also the impact of digital surveillance on the living and working conditions of contemporary academics, at a time where the tensions, conflicts and malaise that inhabit the neoliberal university have become ever more manifest


For-profit charter schools represent a controversial new market-based education reform (Garcia, Barber, & Molnar, 2009; Conn, 2002). This essay explores how schools operated by for-profit corporations differ from those operated by non-profit organizations. Specifically, do for-profit charter schools locate in demographically distinct areas and serve different student populations than similar schools operated by non-profit providers? Research suggests that charter school operators in some districts appear to strategically locate their schools in an effort to exclude certain student populations (Lubienski, Gulosino, & Weitzel, 2009). If charter schools seek to exclude certain students, as these schools proliferate in a district or region there may be an intensifying stratification effect detrimental to the most disadvantaged students (Bifulco, Ladd, & Ross, 2009). This essay undertakes a broad comparative analysis of the neighborhood demographic and student population characteristics of charter schools operated by for-profit corporations and nonprofit organizations, using multilevel modeling and geographic information systems, to compare the two school types across dissimilar state contexts. In so doing, the study seeks to isolate the impact of a school being operated by a for-profit corporation and illuminate what impact the proliferation of for-profit schools might have on the distribution of student populations across regions.


According to Kratzer (2003), the thematic relation Theme, construed very generally, is not a natural relation. She says that the natural relations are cumulative and argues that Theme is not cumulative, in contrast to Agent. It is therefore best, she concludes, to remove Theme from the palette of semantic analysis. Here I oppose the premises of Kratzer's argument and then introduce a new challenge to her conclusion, based on the resultative construction in Mandarin. The facts show that Theme and Agent are on equal footing, insofar as neither has the property that Kratzer's conjecture requires of a natural relation.


Document clustering is a popular research topic, which aims to partition documents into groups of similar objects (i.e., clusters), and has been widely used in many applications such as automatic topic extraction, document organization and filtering. As a recently proposed concept, Universum is a collection of "non-examples" that do not belong to any concept/cluster of interest. This paper proposes a novel document clustering technique -- Document Clustering with Universum, which utilizes the Universum examples to improve the clustering performance. The intuition is that the Universum examples can serve as supervised information and help improve the performance of clustering, since they are known not belonging to any meaningful concepts/clusters in the target domain. In particular, a maximum margin clustering method is proposed to model both target examples and Universum examples for clustering. An extensive set of experiments is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.


As world populations increasingly are clustered in urban areas, so there is a tangible need for accurate mapping of these regions by national mapping agencies. A consequential impact of growing cities is that greater numbers of people across the globe are vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters or anthropogenic catastrophes. Tools such as remote sensing have been widely used by researchers to monitor urban areas for applications such as land use and land cover changes and population distribution to name a few. Air- and space-borne sensors with fine spatio-temporal resolutions have facilitated these analyses, offering an effective and efficient data source for multi-temporal analysis of urban areas. Alongside the increased data availability from remote sensors is a demand for efficient algorithms for interpretation of these images. This thesis describes the development of a conceptual framework for the iterative processing of fine spatial resolution optical images. It consists of two central components, object detection and object comparison. In the object detection phase, buildings are identified in the image and extracted as objects stored in a scene model. Object attributes describing the location, geometric, spectral and textural characteristics of each object are stored in a database, allowing the on-demand display as vector or raster entities. The thesis implements the model through exemplars for the detection of circular and cylindrical features on several remote sensing and simulated datasets. The object comparison phase allows automated change information to be generated describing per-object and intra-object brightness variability over time, hence, allowing change to be quantified for each detected feature. These descriptors facilitate the manual use of qualitative scales for damage assessment. A detailed discussion is presented on the merit of the conceptual model, its limitations and describes how future expansion of the model to full implementation could be achieved.


We discuss the problem of catastrophic fusion in multimodal recognition systems. This problem arises in systems that need to fuse different channels in non-stationary environments. Practice shows that when recognition modules within each modality are tested in contexts inconsistent with their assumptions, their influence on the fused product tends to increase, with catastrophic results. We explore a principled solution to this problem based upon Bayesian ideas of competitive models and inference robustification: each sensory channel is provided with simple white-noise context models, and the perceptual hypothesis and context are jointly estimated. Consequently, context deviations are interpreted as changes in white noise contamination strength, automatically adjusting the influence of the module. The approach is tested on a fixed lexicon automatic audiovisual speech recognition problem with very good results.


OBJECTIVE
To review 4 years of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) injury surveillance data for women's ice hockey and to identify potential areas for injury prevention initiatives.

BACKGROUND
The NCAA ISS prospectively collects data on injuries sustained during collegiate participation. Women's NCAA ice hockey began participation in the ISS during the 2000-2001 season. On average, over the 4 years, 15.6% of the eligible schools elected to send their injury data.

MAIN RESULTS
Over the 4 years of study, the rate of injury in games was more than 5 times higher than the injury rate in practices (12.6 versus 2.5 injuries per 1000 athlete-exposures, rate ratio = 5.0, 95% confidence interval = 4.2, 6.1, P < .01). Preseason practice injury rates were almost twice as high as in-season practice rates (4.2 versus 2.3 injuries per 1000 athlete-exposures, rate ratio = 1.8, 95% confidence interval = 1.7, 2.0, P < .01). Concussions were the most common injury in both games (21.6%) and practices (13.2%). The rate of concussions in games appeared to be trending upward over the study period. The greatest number of game injuries (approximately 50%) resulted from player contact, whereas practice injuries were from either contact with another object or noncontact mechanisms.

RECOMMENDATIONS
Women's ice hockey is an evolving NCAA sport. Only 4 years of ISS data are available and, therefore, data should be interpreted with caution. Women's ice hockey does not allow for formal body checking; however, approximately 50% of all game injuries were reported to result from contact with another player. Future researchers need to evaluate the effectiveness of the no-checking rule. Additional years of data collection will be required to allow the data to become more stable, and to increase attention to mechanism-of-injury issues. We anticipate that the hypothesized inconsistencies in skill level across and within the various women's teams also will be reduced as more consistently skilled players develop, allowing for more stability in the injury scenario.


Ours is an age of growing doubt about constitutional theory and of outright hostility to any theory that defends judicial review. Why should a tiny number of unelected judges be able to validate or invalidate laws on such politically controversial issues as abortion, religion, gender, and sex - or even determine how the president is elected? In this provocative book, a leading constitutional theorist offers an entirely original defence of judicial review. Louis Michael Seidman argues that judicial review is defensible if we set aside common but erroneous assumptions, namely that constitutional law should be independent from our political commitments and that the role of constitutional law is to settle political disagreement. Seidman develops a theory of "unsettlement". A constitution that unsettles, that destabilises outcomes produced by the political process, creates no permanent losers nursing deep-seated grievances, he says. An "unsettling" constitution helps to build a community founded on consent by enticing losers into a continuing conversation. The author applies this theory to an array of well-known cases heard by the Supreme Court over the past several decades, including the Autumn 2000 election decision.


Although it has been more than 100 years since the first attempt to produce a
cholera vaccine was made, an effective cholera vaccine has yet to be developed. In this
study, the level of protection produced by a potential DNA vaccine (PVax/ctxB) was
tested against the ctxB toxin of Vibrio cholerae on Balb/c mice. First, the intramuscular
vaccination method was validated using pCMV plasmid that encodes HbsAg, which was
detected 5 days after the injection into the tibial muscle. Next, 4 groups of mice were
intramuscularly injected with either the pVax/ctxB vaccine construct or pVaxl as the
negative control. The first and second groups received 2 injections spaced 3 weeks apart,
while the other two groups were given 3 injections spaced 3 weeks apart. This was then
followed by challenging the mice with 105 or 107 cfu/ml/mouse from clinical isolates of
V. cholerae after 3 weeks of the last injection. Antibody levels for both IgG and serum
IgA were monitored using ELISA, and showed high production of IgG after the first
booster injection with no significant change of IgA levels.


We consider a multicell frequency-selective fading uplink channel (network MIMO) from K single-antenna user terminals (UTs) to B cooperative base stations (BSs) with M antennas each. The BSs, assumed to be oblivious of the applied codebooks, forward compressed versions of their observations to a central station (CS) via capacity limited backhaul links. The CS jointly decodes the messages from all UTs. Since the BSs and the CS are assumed to have no prior channel state information (CSI), the channel needs to be estimated during its coherence time. Based on a lower bound of the ergodic mutual information, we determine the optimal fraction of the coherence time used for channel training, taking different path losses between the UTs and the BSs into account. We then study how the optimal training length is impacted by the backhaul capacity. Although our analytical results are based on a large system limit, we show by simulations that they provide very accurate approximations for even small system dimensions.


The 'Silent' Privatisation of Urban Public Space in Cape Town, 1975 2004 South African cities were subjected to artificial, unnatural growth patterns brought about by apartheid planning that legitimated exclusionary practices in the city and which created and maintained racial, social and class differences between people. Post-apartheid South Africa has witnessed processes of urban fortification, barricading and the gating of urban space that are manifested in contemporary urban South Africa. This research shows that the privatisation of urban public space is not solely a postapartheid phenomenon. Closure legislation has been, and still is, used by citizens to remove urban space from the public realm through its privatisation. Closures are largely citizen-driven, either individually or as a collective, and it is small public spaces that are privatised, hence the micro-privatisation of public space that could influence the immediate surroundings and erf-sized living space of individuals. The concerns voiced by closure applicants through their application for closure, reflect personal living space concerns. It is ordinary people, not major real estate companies or corporations that are able to influence the land management processes of the city. A dataset of all closures in the central substructure region of Cape Town between 1975 and 2004 was compiled from Provincial Government Gazettes and supplemented with map and file data from the City of Cape Town's Land Information Management Department. This allowed for the quantitative analysis and investigation of successful closures using Microsoft Access in order to identify closure trends. A geographic information systems database was created to visually display spatial and temporal closure trends. A qualitative study of written correspondence received from successful closure applicants in two suburbs, Camps Bay and Mitchell's Plain, was completed in order to establish a profile of applicants, the reasons forwarded for closures and the techniques used by applicants to secure a successful closure. The resultant analysis showed that closures tended to mirror the socio-spatial realities of the apartheid city with a tendency for closures to be concentrated in better-off, previously white suburbs. A dramatic rise in closure numbers from the mid-1980s is testament to the


Background Myocardial ischemia and reperfusion injury involves the generation of oxygen free radicals and elicits apoptosis along with an inflammatory response. The objective of this study was to determine whether direct thrombin inhibition prevents ischemia and reperfusion injury by decreasing myocardial oxidative stress, apoptosis, and inflammation. Methods/Results We evaluated the protective role of lepirudin in an in vivo rat model of ischemia and reperfusion. Lepirudin (5 mg/kg i.p.) or vehicle (control) was administered 15 min prior to LCA occlusion (30 min) and tissue analysis was performed after 120 min reperfusion. Control infarct size was 59±1% area at risk and Lepirudin reduced this infarct size to 25±2% area at risk. We assess oxidative stress by measuring the oxidative formation of [3Fe4S] + using electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy. The oxidation of [3Fe4S] + increased throughout reperfusion in control hearts and this increase was normalized by lepirudin. Nitric oxide (NO) inhibits xanthine oxidase activity. Xanthine oxidase is a major contributor to the post-ischemic production of free radicals. Therefore, we measured NOx levels and xanthine oxidase activity from the ischemic zone of the myocardium. Lepirudin augmented the increase in NOx levels (lepirudin 18±0.8 vs. control 12±0.5; sham 9±0.5 mmole/g tissue) and reduced xanthine oxidase activity (lepirudin 34 ±4 vs. control 137±13; sham 38±2 mU/g protein). No difference in xanthine oxidase activity or NOx levels was observed in non-ischemic tissue. Caspase-3 activity, a maker of apoptosis and myeloperoxidase activity, a marker of inflammation was also measured in the ischemic zone. Lepirudin reduced caspase-3 activity (lepirudin 120±10 vs. control 174±16; sham 91±8 U/mg protein) and myeloperoxidase activity (lepirudin 9±2 vs. control 21±3; sham 3±1mU/mg protein). (n=6/group, data is mean±SEM, p Conclusion Lepirudin-mediated protection against ischemia and reperfusion injury was associated with decreased oxidative stress by increasing NO production and decreasing xanthine oxidase activity and thereby limiting apoptosis and inflammation.


of a Capstone Project Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Nursing Practice


OBJECTIVE
Chronic wounds typically require several concurrent therapies, such as debridement, pressure offloading, and systemic and/or topical antibiotics. The aim of this study was to examine the efficacy of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) towards reducing or eliminating bacterial biofilms in vitro and in vivo.

METHOD
Efficacy was determined using in vitro grown biofilms subjected directly to HBOT for 30, 60 and 90 minutes, followed by cell viability determination using propidium monoazide-polymerase chain reaction (PMA-PCR). The efficacy of HBOT in vivo was studied by searching our chronic patient wound database and comparing time-to-healing between patients who did and did not receive HBOT as part of their treatment.

RESULTS
In vitro data showed small but significant decreases in cell viability at the 30- and 90-minute time points in the HBOT group. The in vivo data showed reductions in bacterial load for patients who underwent HBOT, and ~1 week shorter treatment durations. Additionally, in patients' chronic wounds there was a considerable emergence of anaerobic bacteria and fungi between intermittent HBOT treatments.

CONCLUSION
The data demonstrate that HBOT does possess a certain degree of biofilm killing capability. Moreover, as an adjuvant to standard treatment, more favourable patient outcomes are achieved through a quicker time-to-healing which reduces the chance of complications. Furthermore, the data provided insights into biofilm adaptations to challenges presented by this treatment strategy which should be kept in mind when treating chronic wounds. Further studies will be necessary to evaluate the benefits and mechanisms of HBOT, not only for patients with chronic wounds but other chronic infections caused by bacterial biofilms.


The anatomy of disadvantage in Chile and in Santiago is a product of a long history and is broad and deep, with great income inequality and widely dispersed populations. These conditions are also not unusual in other middle-income countries and fast growing economies, many of which are also investing heavily in urban transport systems at this time.
In the mid-2000s, in an effort to confront some of these problems, there was a large expansion of Santiago's (Chile) subway network (Chapter 2). This thesis investigates the socioeconomic impacts of the much-improved urban transport accessibility.
This expansion occurred within a short period of time (2004 through 2006). Because of a conjunction of efforts by the Chilean government to evaluate the effectiveness of the country's social policies, there is much data available characterising the socioeconomic conditions both before and after the expansion. For example, in this thesis I use a panel survey with circa 5000 interviewees with labour market outcomes, administrative panel data with standardised test scores of 100,000 students in eighth grade, and police crime records with all reported crimes to the police in Santiago.
To control for workers (Chapter 4), students (Chapter 5) and small crime areas (Chapter 6) individual and unobserved characteristics that do not change in time, I use a fixed-effects method. Depending on the outcome, the unit of observation was an individual or a spatial unit. In addition, to allow for differential pre-existing trends in the outcome variable, in the first-differenced form I control for relevant baseline characteristics.
There are three socioeconomic conditions examined in detail in this thesis. These are impacts on the labour market (in Chapter 4), student achievement (in Chapter 5), and property crime (in Chapter 6).
In Chapter 4, my general findings are that greater proximity to the subway network increases labour market participation, employment hours, and labour earnings. However, the main policy implication of this part of the study is that accessibility of transportation is a crucial factor affecting the female employment rate. This is extremely important in cities with a low female employment rate and a low or non-existent coverage of rapid transit systems such as subways.
In Chapter 5, I find that increased proximity to the subway network is associated with substantially lower test scores. Policy implications to consider are that schools that will soon be more accessible to rapid transit systems should consider the possibility of undesired increases in class sizes due to more demand because of the increased availability of nearby rapid transit stations.
In Chapter 6, I find that greater proximity to subway stations increased both robbery and larceny in the public space within one year after the opening of the subway stations. One policy implication is that the police should redistribute its personnel whenever the flows of pedestrians and commuters may be affected because of changes in the transport network.
In light of the well-established fact that citizens appreciate improvements in the subway network that increase their accessibility to employment and to services in general, this thesis provides evidence that a relevant advantage of better urban transport is an improvement in labour market conditions.


Hydraulic performance of granular filter media and its evolution over time is a key design parameter for stormwater filtration and infiltration systems that are now increasingly used in management of polluted urban runoff. Clogging of filter media is recognised as a limiting factor of these stormwater treatment systems. However, very limited studies have been undertaken to understand clogging processes in the context of stormwater treatment systems. Of particular interest are non-vegetated high-flow rate filtration systems, which have the potential of maintaining high rate treatment at the same time as providing consistent and high pollutant removal. This thesis therefore focuses on the clogging of stormwater filters with high infiltration rates. The impacts of both design and operational variables on clogging have been studied in controlled laboratory environments using a compressed timescale approach. Laboratory investigations have also been made to assess the importance of biological clogging for these stormwater filters. Finally, observations from a field and modelling study of a filtration system located in Melbourne were compared with the findings from the laboratory studies. It was found that while angularity and smoothness of filter media may not be important for design, the flow rate through the stormwater treatment system is a key design aspect that needs to be considered. The infiltration rate of a system should be guided by the objectives of the system - whether to treat more volume of stormwater or to achieve better treatment performance, longevity and maintenance. The size of the filter media particles significantly impacted the clogging process, as well as the overall sediment removal performance of the filters. Deeper systems were found to have longer lifespan compared to shallower ones, even though the deeper systems removed more sediment over their life span. Having two layers of distinct sized media in the filter bed improved performance over the single-layered systems. Results suggest that sediment concentration in stormwater and size of sediments stormwater are important parameters that affect the performance and eventually longevity of these treatment systems. While hydraulic loading rate was found to be a significant parameter affecting the performance of these systems, any variation in the stormwater composition and loading regime had a limited effect. This study therefore developed an understanding of the effect of catchment characteristics on design of filters and hence their longevity and maintenance needs. It was also found that filters with enhanced biological conditions clogged faster as compared to filters with suppressed biological activity. Although the evidence was not overpowering, the variations observed in this study suggest that more attention should be given to biological clogging in stormwater filters, which is mostly ignored at present. Data from a field system using granular filters was collected and observations were compared with findings from laboratory studies. Similarities in evolution of infiltration performance in field based systems were observed. An exponential relationship between decline of infiltration rate and cumulative volume of treated stormwater to predict the system's hydraulic performance was developed. This research has provided both theoretical and practical insights which will be useful in the application of stormwater infiltration systems that use filters with high infiltration rates for both stormwater harvesting and protection of receiving waters from stormwater pollution.


New York City infrastructure is one of the oldest transportation infrastructures in the United States. Local street construction and short-term work zones are almost continuously planned events that affect the movement of traffic on city streets by requiring the closing of one or more lanes at intersections throughout NYC, and it is important to understand the effect on capacity due to such work. This paper looks at the effect of short-term work zones on the capacity of signalized intersections in New York City. Data was collected at five locations in New York City, both during the work zone and then again after the work zone was removed. Over 25 hours of video data was collected and reduced. It was found that at all locations, the saturation headway was smaller during the work zone compared to after the work zone was removed, that is, the saturation flow rate per lane increased during the work zone. This was an unexpected result. A possible reason for this is the increased traffic pressure that drivers feel when a lane is closed. Thus, although overall approach capacity does decrease because a lane is closed, it did not decrease as much as expected. The field values are then compared with those from two other models: the Highway Capacity Manual model and a model developed by Schroeder et al. It was found that both models underestimate the capacity of the approach.


The existing legal system prohibits the arbitrary arrest and detention ofindividuals but at times, police defy these provisions. Depending on the significance ofthe role played by the arrested individual, his/her dependents have to adjust their livesafter such an incarceration. This research was conducted to examine the emotional, psychological,developmental, familial and financial consequences of remand incarceration on thefamilies of inmates. Finally, the study looked into how society reacted towards thesefamilies. The sample consisted of 150 remand prisoners awaiting trial for a long period inWalikanda and New Magazine prisons Sri Lanka. Another sample of 50 families wasselected randomly from the prisoners in Colombo District who have been detained incustody for more than one year. The data for the research was gathered using a structured questionnaire andinterviews. Both remand prisoners and their family members were interviewed. Results of the study show that when the remanded prisoner is the breadwinner ofthe family, rest of the family is subjected to adverse financial difficulties. When fatherof the family is imprisoned, mother and children of the family are often subjected to themiseries of hunger. The incarceration of a parent, in most cases, results in severe disruptions inchildren"s education unless someone else -may be a relative- provides a helping hand.It was revealed that if the families of detainees lived in a community with socio statureequal to that of theirs, the negative social impact will be lesser than if they lived in acommunity with a social stature superior to that of theirs. The study concluded that incarceration of a family member has a negativebearing on the family but the level of impact differs from one case to another dependingon the nature of contribution detainee used to make to the family. Key words: Imprisonment, Remand, Family problems


Decision models under uncertainty rely their analysis on scenarios of the economic factors. A key economic factor is the term structure of interest rates (yields). Simulation models of the yield curve usually assume that the conjugate distribution of the interest rates is lognormal. Dynamic models, like vector auto-regression, implicitly postulate that the logarithm of the interest rates is normally distributed. Statistical analyses have, however, shown that stationary transformations (yield changes) of the interest rates are substantially leptokurtic, thus posing serious doubts on the reliability of the available models. We propose in this paper a VARTA model (Biller and Nelson, 2003) to simulate term structures of the interest rates with arbitrary marginals. We will show that such an approach is able to simulate paths of the entire yield curve with distributional properties very close to those found in the empirical data.


SEQRA, the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act, creates a process whereby public actions are reviewed with the intent to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts of those actions. Recently decided New York case law has created flexibility in the SEQRA process by allowing developers, among others, to revamp proposed projects early in the application process in order to expedite SEQRA and save substantial amounts of money. A New York court held that using public meetings to garner information and negotiate different aspects of a proposed project, and a determination of a negative declaration (the proposed project will have no significant adverse environmental impact) was a proper decision under SEQRA. Professional facilitators have become an important tool to help guide the SEQRA process into being more efficient and cost effective.


As the collection of large datasets becomes increasingly automated, the occurrence of outliers will increase -- "big data" implies "big outliers". While principal component analysis (PCA) is often used to reduce the size of data, and scalable solutions exist, it is well-known that outliers can arbitrarily corrupt the results. Unfortunately, state-of-the-art approaches for robust PCA do not scale beyond small-to-medium sized datasets. To address this, we introduce the Grassmann Average (GA), which expresses dimensionality reduction as an average of the subspaces spanned by the data. Because averages can be efficiently computed, we immediately gain scalability. GA is inherently more robust than PCA, but we show that they coincide for Gaussian data. We exploit that averages can be made robust to formulate the Robust Grassmann Average (RGA) as a form of robust PCA. Robustness can be with respect to vectors (subspaces) or elements of vectors, we focus on the latter and use a trimmed average. The resulting Trimmed Grassmann Average (TGA) is particularly appropriate for computer vision because it is robust to pixel outliers. The algorithm has low computational complexity and minimal memory requirements, making it scalable to "big noisy data." We demonstrate TGA for background modeling, video restoration, and shadow removal. We show scalability by performing robust PCA on the entire Star Wars IV movie.


Collaborative filtering (CF) is an important and popular technology for recommender systems. However, current CF methods suffer from such problems as data sparsity, recommendation inaccuracy, and big-error in predictions. In this paper, we borrow ideas of object typicality from cognitive psychology and propose a novel typicality-based collaborative filtering recommendation method named TyCo. A distinct feature of typicality-based CF is that it finds ―neighbors‖ of users based on user typicality degrees in user groups (instead of the corated items of users, or common users of items, as in traditional CF). To the best of our knowledge, there has been no prior work on investigating CF recommendation by combining object typicality. TyCo outperforms many CF recommendation methods on recommendation accuracy (in terms of MAE) with an improvement of at least 6.35 percent in Movielens data set, especially with sparse training data (9.89 percent improvement on MAE) and has lower time cost than other CF methods. Further, it can obtain more accurate predictions with less number of big-error predictions.


Available methods for room-related sound presentation are introduced and evaluated. A focus
is put on the synthesis side rather than on complete transmission systems. Different methods are
compared using common, though quite general criteria. The methods selected for comparison are:
INTENSITY STEREOPHONY after Blumlein, vector-base amplitude panning (VBAP), 5.1-SURROUND
and its discrete-channel derivatives, synthesis with spherical harmonics (AMBISONICS, HOA), synthesis
based on the boundary method, namely, wave-field synthesis (WFS), and binaural-cue selection methods
(e.g., DIRAC). While VBAP, 5.1-SURROUND and other discrete-channel-based methods show a number
of practical advantages, they do, in the end, not aim at authentic sound-field reproduction. The so-called
holophonic methods that do so, particularly, HOA and WFS, have specific advantages and disadvantages
which will be discussed. Yet, both methods are under continuous development, and a decision in favor
of one of them should be taken from a strictly application-oriented point of view by considering relevant
application-specific advantages and disadvantages in detail.


The large complex of Hospital de la Santa Creu i de Sant Pau in Barcelona, built between 1901 and 1930 and designed (in their largest part) by architect Lluis Domenech i Montaner, constitute one of the major examples of the Catalan Modernism which flourished in Barcelona in the early 20th century. The historical part of the complex was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. In addition to their interesting architectural and aesthetic value, the buildings draw attention because of their genuine structural features. The structures combine a significant amount of steel members with masonry ones. In most of the pavilions of the complex, masonry is utilised for walls and single- and double-curvature Catalan vaults forming the floor slabs and ceilings, while steel members provide the main vertical structure sustaining the vaults as well as the ties necessary to retain their horizontal thrust. The combination of steel and thin tile vaults permits diaphanous and functional spaces, both wide and tall, with large windows allowing satisfactory levels of natural light. A large part of the complex is at present being subjected to detailed studies and restoration works for the rehabilitation and adaptation to new uses. The buildings have required a deep repair due to the corrosion of steel members. The paper comprises two parts. Firstly, the structure of one of the pavilions, Nra. Sra de la Merce pavilion, is described with focus on the vault morphology and the combined use of steel and masonry members. Secondly, a tentative structural analysis is presented on two different selected vaults of the same pavilion. The analysis carried out, aimed to provide an estimation of the loading capacity, takes into account the combination of masonry and steel members that compose the vaulting system.


We investigate some ways in which massively parallel computing devices can be exploited in local search algorithms. We show that the substantial speed-ups that can be gained from parallel neighbourhood evaluation enables an efficient best improvement local search, and that this in turn enables further speed-ups through selection and parallel application of a set of independent, improving moves. Our experiments demonstrate a total speed-up of up to several hundred times compared to a classical, sequential best improvement search. We also demonstrate how an exchange of good partial solutions between the incumbent and best found solutions improves the efficiency of the Iterated Local Search


The American Heart Association (AHA) and the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) recommend restricting egg consumption based on the hypothesis that egg intake will result in an increase in blood cholesterol levels, which, in turn, is associated with increased cardiovascular disease (CVD) risks. However, several studies have shown that dietary cholesterol from eggs has little, if any, effect on plasma cholesterol or the risk for heart diseases after adjustment for other potential risk factors. Further, eggs are known to be a good source of high quality protein, B vitamins and folate, fat‐soluble vitamins such as A, D, and E, and essential minerals (iodine, zinc, calcium, and iron). Eggs also contain lutein and zeaxanthin, which might be involved in the prevention of cataracts and age‐related macular degeneration, and rich in choline, which may have a role in normal development of memory. Hence, wide‐sweeping recommendations to restrict egg consumption to avoid CVD risk may be misguided when nutritional contributions from eggs are not considered. A relative risk study was conducted to evaluate and quantify the relative risks of CVD associated with dietary cholesterol and eggs compared to other factors including BMI, dietary, lifestyle, or drugs, etc. on cardiovascular disease and the health benefits of egg consumption. Estimates of egg contribution to dietary cholesterol and nutrition are developed based on consumption data from nationwide food consumption survey. A report card to communicate the relative risks of egg cholesterol and the nutritional benefits is explored in this paper.


The space docking process must be simulated on the ground to guarantee the success of the space docking task. By synthesizing a physical simulation and a numerical simulation, a hybrid simulator can simulate the complicated contact process of space docking. A hybrid simulator consists of a robot (i.e., lower platform), upper platform, docking mechanisms, contact force and torque measurement system, and numerical simulation system. To ensure the simulation accuracy, the robot is expected to have a high structure stiffness, high structure natural frequency, and high bandwidth frequency response. However, these performances are always limited in implementation. In this paper, how the structural dynamics of the robot affect the hybrid simulation accuracy is studied. Due to the structural dynamics of the robot, the divergence and convergence of the hybrid simulation are both possible. The stability conditions are given. A distortion compensation method for the structure dynamics of the robot is proposed. The stability analysis after the compensation is given. The software emulations and experiments are used to verify the analysis and the distortion compensation method. Experiments on real docking mechanisms are given to show the applications.


This new work presents the mathematical theory and techniques for analyzing and modeling high-performance global communication networks, with a focus on software employed at the end nodes and intermediate switches. Topics include, but are not limited to Markov chains and queuing analysis, traffic modeling, interconnection networks, and switch architectures and buffering strategies. Several appendices are provided as a handy reference for material and formulas discussed in the book. The author provides a discussion of the use of MATLAB in engineering applications. Over 500 homework problems are included in the text. A separate protected solutions manual will be available to instructors adopting this book as the primary text in courses. Analysis of Computer and Communication Networks is intended for senior and graduate students, university researchers and practicing engineers in communications, network design and analysis.


Does a more or less sympathetic protagonist influence transportation of the reader? Two new replication studies Three previous studies into presenting a protagonist in a story as more or less sympathetic have not provided a clear picture of the effects that the portrayal of the protagonist may have on transportation, and via transportation on story-consistent beliefs. Results from a first study (N = 83) by De Graaf and Hustinx (2015) suggest that the way the protagonist is portrayed ‐ as sympathetic, unsympathetic or neutral ‐ influences the extent to which readers are transported into a story. No significant effects on beliefs of the readers were found, however. In a direct replication study (N = 79) and in a conceptual replication study (N = 81), Jansen, Nederhoff, and Ooms (2017) found results that supported the hypotheses from the original study to a limited extent. In view of the relatively small numbers of participants in these three studies and the resulting limited power of the statistical tests two new, larger-scaled replication studies were conducted. A direct replication study was performed (N = 238) with the same versions of the story as used in the original study, and also a conceptual replication study (N = 248) with three versions of a new story. Again, the hypotheses from the original study were supported to a limited extent. A meta-analysis of all five studies revealed a large indirect positive effect of story version on transportation via empathy, when comparing the versions with a sympathetic protagonist with the versions with an unsympathetic protagonist. When comparing the neutral story versions with the versions with an unsympathetic protagonist, the meta-analytic indirect effect was medium sized. Other than what the Affective Disposition Theory (Raney, 2004; Zillmann, 1994; 2006) claims, the story versions with a neutral protagonist did not lead to an absence of emotional responses. Furthermore, the outcomes add to the Transportation-Imagery Model (Green & Brock, 2002; Van Laer, De Ruyter, Visconti, & Wetzels, 2014). While this model does not include concrete suggestions of story characteristics that lead to transportation, our studies show that a protagonist who is portrayed as sympathetic may contribute to the level of transportation that readers experience, be it indirectly through empathy.


The semi-arid drylands of central Tanzania have been characterised by low and erratic rainfall coupled with high evapotranspiration. Up until now, farmers of these local dryland farming systems have been able to cope with these climate conditions. However, climate change has led to new weather patterns that overwhelm traditional dryland farming practices and re-shape farmers' commercialisation pathways. This paper explored the pathways in which smallholder farmers in Singida region in Tanzania engage with markets and commercialise in the face of climate change. The paper also examined how farm-level decisions on commercial crops and the commercialisation pathways they are part of, affect current and future resilience to climate change. Climate resilient commercialisation of smallholder dryland agriculture remains the centrepiece of inclusive sustainable development.


The Alboran Sea is a hydrographically complex and variable area in which wind-driven coastal upwelling occurs. Its most abundant small pelagic resource is the sardine ( Sardina pilchardus ), which is subject to major interannual oscillations. Postflexion stages of sardine larvae were sampled in their main nursery grounds in the north Alboran Sea, and sardine juveniles were sampled periodically throughout the recruitment season. Daily growth analysis was used to identify periods favourable for larval survival and to assess the evolution of daily increment widths during the first months of life. The results showed that juveniles born later in the spawning season grew relatively faster than those born earlier. Two main growth phases were observed in juveniles: an initial one in which daily increment widths increased progressively, and a second one in which widths fluctuated, showing a decreasing trend. The beginning of the second phase was almost synchronous among different sub-cohorts, suggesting that it was triggered by environmental factors. The estimated mean daily growth rates during the larval phase were higher in surviving juveniles than in postflexion larvae born in the same month, supporting the "bigger is better" hypothesis in relation to larval survival. The influence of the environmental regime on growth was explored, and the evolution of a growth-related index, derived from otolith increment width variability, was compared with a single environmental descriptor, a "wind index" based on wind stress and direction. This analysis suggested that larval survival and larval and juvenile growth rates showed a positive correlation with NW component winds, associated with upwelling events on the continental shelf and calm sea weather conditions in the inshore nursery grounds. Conversely, Levantine and southern wind periods, which interrupt the upwelling and create rough seas in the inshore bays, lead to a decrease in growth rates in juveniles and low larval survival.


We engage different working environments on a daily basis, including private and public environments. When we move from one to another constantly, the data also need to be transferred, and while the private environment is convenient, working with public devices creates the irritation of authentication. This dissertation proposes Universal Cloud Controller (UCC), a multi-components system that improves user's experience when exchange data from personal to public device. The main functions of the system are to provide a selection mechanism to eliminate the authentication, and an instantly, smoothly, and conveniently data transferring and manipulation solution between user's personal devices and public devices. We described UCC in both user's perspective and technical specification, addressing the challenges of designing and developing the system and also proposing the solution. Technologies and related studies were also investigated to learn from their advantages and limitations. Consequently, a working prototype was constructed based on the design and used for a study to evaluate the usability of UCC. The results proved that the designed system is potential and promising for public release, but also contained flaws and limitations. Finally, the paper concluded the topic and suggested future works.


The objective of the work is to understand the decomposition of alphacypermethrin which is one of the most common pyrethroid pesticides, and to examine the formation of pollutants formed during decomposition. This article reports the experimental results of the thermal decomposition of alphacypermethrin under non-oxidative conditions. The experiments were conducted in a tubular reactor at atmospheric pressure. The reaction variables considered were temperature (300-600 °C) and flow rate (27.8-18.2 cm3/min) which was adjusted to maintain a residence time of 5 s. The pesticide was slowly vaporised at an evaporation rate of 70 µg/min at a temperature of 185°C. The decomposition of alphacypermethrin started around 375 °C and involved an unusual vinylcyclopropane rearrangement-cum-aromatisation reaction. At higher temperatures, alphacypermethrin was aromatised into 3-phenoxyphenyl nitrile acetic acid 3-mcthyl phenyl ester with the concomitant loss of hydrogen chloride molecules. The presence of hydrogen chloride gas was confirmed by FTJR spectroscopy. Other products detected and quantified by GC/MS were o-toluic acid, 3-phenoxybenzaldehyde, diphenyl ether, phenoxyphenyl acetonitrile, methyl benzonitrile, phenoxybenzonitrile and phenol. Previous studies carried out on permethrin in our laboratory 'showed that the process of aromatisation was around 20 kcal/mol lower in energy than the direct rupture of the O-CH2 linkage for temperatures between 400-1000 °C. The effect of the CN group in alphacypermethrin compared to permethrin was also investigated by density functional theory (OFT) calculations.


Wireless Sensor Networks are often considered as low-rate asynchronous systems for distributed monitoring. However, there are several real-time and high data-rate applications where the traditional behavior of WSNs could give raise to channel sharing problems, thus limiting the usefulness of this technology for these emerging fields. This article proposes and discusses PRISM (Protocol for Real-tIme Synchronous Monitoring), a novel protocol for real-time synchronous acquisitions in single-hop and multi-hop wireless sensor networks. The PRISM protocol allows to define the maximum number of nodes, the requirements on the network synchronization and the data-rate in a flexible manner in order to accommodate for different types of acquisitions. Its performance has been studied theoretically through numerical simulations. Moreover, the protocol has been tested in a fully-working wireless monitoring system based on the IEEE 802.15.4 physical standard. Results show the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed protocol.


This thesis investigates the relationship between attention to time and modality at the levels of behavior and pre-stimulus brain oscillations, measured with EEG. Participants were presented with target stimuli from one of two possible modalities, which could appear at one of two different time points. The factors time and modality were interlaced with each other by the fact that each of the modalities was more likely to appear at a different point in time and additionally one of the modalities being more likely overall. We observed that attention to each modality followed its respective temporal likelihood, independently which combination of modalities was used, suggesting a general mechanism for cross-modal temporal decoupling in time. This result is in contrast with cross-modal attention in space, which occurs in a coupled way. At the physiological level, the decoupling effect in time also seems to modulate ongoing neural oscillations in different frequency bands. Based on the results obtained in the time-frequency analysis, we put forward the following tentative hypotheses: alpha oscillations appear to encode switches in modality expectation over sensory cortices, while the beta band might encode the expected modality of the next upcoming stimulus and for the effect of temporal attention itself.


In this paper, I examine how financialization affects the term structure of risk premia by using an equilibrium model for commodity futures markets. I define financialization as the entry of cross-asset investors, who are exposed to a commodity risk, into a commodity market. Qualitatively, the model shows that the financialization decreases the segmentation between commodity markets and the stock market. It also shows that speculators and investors both provide and consume liquidity and that the investment pressure from investors creates new risk premia. Further the model shows that financialization affects the entire term structure of risk premia. Quantitatively, these effects depend on the physical characteristics of the commodity market under study.


W. Somerset Maugham is generally recognized as one of the fathers of modern spy fiction.(1) His novel Ashenden: or the British Agent (1928), is acknowledged as the work that broke spy fiction out of the mould established by romantic works of the pre-1914 era.(2) It has been praised for its realism and its "antiheroic vision" of both the spy and of his work.(3) It has generally been assumed that the realism of Ashenden is due to the time that Maugham spent, mostly in Switzerland and Russia, as a member of the British secret service during the First World War.(4) What is not known or appreciated is the fact that Ashenden is also a seminal novel in another sense. It was not surprising that Maugham utilized Russia as the setting for many of the Ashenden stories. Spy fiction had its roots in nineteenth century adventure fiction and Russia was a central feature in the novels created just before the First World War by men like John Buchan. The new-style spy story that combined the nineteenth century adventure novel and the "war prophecy" novel into slick thrillers that captured the public's imagination, often featured the Tsarist empire.(5) As a threat to Britain's imperial holdings, as part of a European coalition intent on the invasion of Britain, as home to political reaction or as the source of anarchism, Russia thus represented a number of things in the minds of Englishmen prior to 1914. In Ashenden, Maugham challenged these images of Russia. In doing so, wished both to create a more realistic school of adventure fiction and to contest many of the established literary beliefs concerning the significance of Russian literature. By recasting the conventional images of Russia, Maugham forced his readers to re-think their accepted beliefs: of Russia, of Russian literature, and of the nature of the spy novel. But to appreciate Maugham's efforts properly, it is important to be aware of the context; of the popular sterotypes about Russia promulgated in the contemporary spy and adventure fiction that Ashenden was designed to supplant. Only by so doing can the reader appreciate Maugham's intent and the humorous way in which he achieved it. British popular views of Russia were not created only after 1890.(6) Indeed, the Russian theme in English literature goes back to at least the sixteenth century. In the last portion of the nineteenth century, however, increased literacy and the rise of a popular press meant that the images of Russia used in popular fiction and newspapers reached a larger segment of the population than ever before. Given that the era before 1914 was one of heightened nationalism, often imbued with the threat of war, it is not surprising that one of the first concerns about Russia expressed in popular fiction dealt with her military prowess. The study of pre-1914 literature dealing with imaginary wars is not new.(7) However, the focus of such work has been largely on what sort of war was anticipated, how it would be fought and what its results would be. Not much attention has been paid to which countries would be involved in these wars and to what each country was like.(8) One reason for this is obvious: with the benefit of hindsight it was evident that Germany was to be Britain's enemy and so most work was focussed on the German menace. But a look at some of the novels dealing with imaginary wars provides some interesting views of Britain's other possible opponents. From at least 1894 and the signing of the Franco-Russian alliance until the warming of relations between Britain and these two states early in the twentieth century, Britain's most likely opponents were seen as France and Russia. As a result, novels written in the generation before 1914 dealing with war and rumours of war are populated as much by Russians and Frenchmen as they are by Germans. The Russia that emerges from these novels is a true, latter-day evil empire. In William Le Queux's The Great War in England in 1897 published in 1894, Britain is savaged by a Franco-Russian invasion. …


PURPOSE
The trial was undertaken to determine (1) the relative efficacy/toxicity of two commonly used combination chemotherapy regimens in patients with extensive small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) and (2) whether the rapid alternation of these two regimens could provide superior therapeutic results compared with either regimen alone.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
In this phase III trial, 437 eligible patients were stratified by performance status (PS) and sex and were randomly assigned to receive either 12 weeks of cisplatin and etoposide (EP); 18 weeks of cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, and vincristine (CAV); or 18 weeks of alternation of these two regimens (CAV/EP).

RESULTS
There were no significant differences in treatment outcome for EP, CAV, or CAV/EP in terms of response rate (61%, 51%, 59%, respectively), complete response rate (10%, 7%, 7%, respectively), or median survival (8.6 months, 8.3 months, 8.1 months, respectively), with a non-statistically significant trend toward a longer median time to progression with alternating therapy (4.3 months, 4.0 months, 5.2 months, respectively). Crossover second-line chemotherapy given at progression produced low response rates and short survival, regardless of the regimen used. Myelosuppression was the dose-limiting toxicity for all patients, although the pattern and severity differed among the treatment arms.

CONCLUSIONS
The combination regimens EP and CAV can be considered equivalently effective induction therapies in extensive SCLC, and these two regimens are, to some degree, crossresistant. Alternating therapy provides no therapeutic advantage compared with the use of either of these regimens alone and should not be considered as standard treatment in this clinical setting.


We provide a general theoretical characterization of how firms' technology choice on a technology frontier determines the long-run elasticity of substitution between capital and labour. We show that the shape of the frontier determines factor shares and the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour. If there are adjustment costs to technology choice, the short- and long-run elasticities differ, with the long-run always higher. If the technology frontier is log-linear, the production function becomes Cobb–Douglas in the long run but, consistent with empirical evidence, short-run dynamics are characterized by gross complementarity. The approach is easily implementable and yields a powerful way to introduce CES-type production functions in macroeconomic models. We provide an illustration within an estimated dynamic general equilibrium model and show that the use of our production technology provides a good match for the short- and medium-run behaviour of the U.S. labour share.


STUDY OBJECTIVE
To compare the efficacy and safety of ipratropium bromide reformulated with the chlorofluorocarbon (CFC)-free propellant hydrofluoroalkane (HFA)-134a (ipratropium bromide HFA) to that of the marketed ipratropium bromide inhalation aerosol (containing CFC) in patients with COPD.

DESIGN
This was a randomized, double-blind, parallel-group, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial. The primary efficacy parameter was acute bronchodilator response. The primary end points were peak change in FEV(1) from baseline and area under the response-time curve.

SETTING
Thirty-one clinical centers in the United States participated in this project.

PATIENTS
A total of 507 patients with moderate-to-severe COPD were randomized, and 444 patients completed the trial.

INTERVENTIONS
Twelve weeks of treatment four times daily with one of the following: ipratropium bromide HFA, 42 microg; ipratropium bromide HFA, 84 microg; HFA placebo; ipratropium bromide inhalation aerosol, 42 microg; or CFC placebo.

MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS
Patients in all active treatment groups had significant bronchodilator responses as shown by increases in mean FEV(1) from baseline of at least 15%. Bronchodilator response in all active treatment groups was also significantly more than their respective placebo treatments based on FEV(1), area under the time-response curve from 0 to 6 h, and peak response. FVC results were similar to those seen with FEV(1). There were no significant differences in adverse events, laboratory findings, or ECG findings among the treatment groups.

CONCLUSIONS
Ipratropium bromide HFA, 42 and mgr;g, provided bronchodilation comparable to the marketed ipratropium bromide CFC, 42 and mgr;g, over 12 weeks of regular use.


The role, the limits and the effects of public debt have long been at the core of the fiscal policy debate. Public debt affects the allocation and distribution of resources and the stabilisation function of government. It reflects decisions taken by previous generations and it constrains those of future generations. History has seen numerous episodes of debt accumulation driven by different economic and political factors. Debt decumulation via consolidation, inflation or default has frequently proved economically problematic and has produced significant political consequences.The debate on public debt has involved economist, philosophers and policy makers, and has highlighted many, sometimes radically different, views. Ricardo refers to the debt as "… one of the most terrible scourges which was ever invented to afflict a nation", as "… a system which tends to make us less thrifty, to blind us to our real situation". He feared that the citizen initially "deludes himself with the belief, that he is as rich as before" and then, faced with the taxes levied to pay for the debt, is tempted "… to remove himself and his capital to another country, where he will be exempted from such burthens". Smith argued that government borrowing would deprive society of resources which could be invested more productively. He also noted that beyond a certain threshold debt inevitably leads to national bankruptcy.However, classical economists were also well aware of the necessity of allowing borrowing in certain circumstances and of its usefulness in others. Building on such awareness, gradually the idea gained consensus that the public debt need not be repaid as it can be refunded and that "the problem of the debt burden is a problem of an expanding national income. How can a rapidly rising income be achieved?" (Domar, 1944, p. 166).This paper aims at providing a concise overview of the main issues surfacing the debate over public debt. In Section 1 we review the main economic factors explaining the existence of debt from three perspectives: public finance, monetary policy and political economy. Section 2 takes a positive point of view and is dedicated to the definition of debt sustainability and to the analytical tools available to undertake its assessment. Section 3 discusses the implications of high debt levels for the macroeconomic performance of the economy. Section 4 turns normative and considers market and rule-based mechanisms to control debt growth. Section 5 and 6 are devoted to more technical aspects concerning both analysis and policy: the former examines the issues arising when measuring public liabilities, the latter considers how fiscal rules and indicators can affect government debt management.


On June 27, 1844, a mob stormed the jail in the dusty frontier town of Carthage, Illinois. Clamorous and angry, they were hunting down a man they saw as a grave threat to their otherwise quiet lives: the founding prophet of Mormonism, Joseph Smith. They wanted blood. At thirty-nine years old, Smith had already lived an outsized life. In addition to starting his own religion and creating his own "Golden Bible"--the Book of Mormon--he had worked as a water-dowser and treasure hunter. He'd led his people to Ohio, then Missouri, then Illinois, where he founded a city larger than fledgling Chicago. He was running for president. And, secretly, he had married more than thirty women. In American Crucifixion, Alex Beam tells how Smith went from charismatic leader to public enemy: How his most seismic revelation--the doctrine of polygamy--created a rift among his people; how that schism turned to violence; and how, ultimately, Smith could not escape the consequences of his ambition and pride. Mormonism is America's largest and most enduring native religion, and the "martyrdom" of Joseph Smith is one of its transformational events. Smith's brutal assassination propelled the Mormons to colonize the American West and claim their place in the mainstream of American history. American Crucifixion is a gripping story of scandal and violence, with deep roots in our national identity.


Electronic devices we use on a daily basis collect sensitive information without preserving user's privacy. In this paper, we propose the lord of the sense (LotS), a privacy preserving reputation system for participatory sensing applications. Our system maintains the privacy and anonymity of information with the use of cryptographic techniques and combines voting approaches to support users' reputation. Furthermore, LotS maintains accountability by tracing back a misbehaving user while maintaining k-anonymity. A detailed security analysis is presented with the current advantages and disadvantages of our system.


Purpose/Objectives: During cancer and chronic infections, T cells can become exhausted and gradually lose their effector functions. Although clinical studies targeting immune checkpoint molecules (e.g. PD-1) lead to promising results, not all patients can benefit from that kind of treatment, indicating the mechanism of T cell exhaustion is much more complex and has to be understood in more detail in order to develop better therapies. Regulation of T cell exhaustion is not only mediated by immunosuppressive receptors, but also by cell intrinsic metabolic changes. The cytoplasmatic enzyme Glutamic-oxaloacetic transaminase 1 (Got1) plays an important role during amino acid metabolism and energy production in the cell. Since Got1 has been found to be upregulated during T cell exhaustion, our research aims to investigate a possible role of Got1 in this process.
Materials/Methods: To study the T cell-intrinsic role of Got1, we use transgenic mouse lines with Cre-loxP recombination. We are using CD4-Cre*Got1flox/flox mice to study Got1 deficiency in CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. Additionally, we use P14*CD4-Cre*Got1flox/flox mice, which bear a transgenic TCR and allow us to perform adoptive transfer experiments to investigate the CD8+ T cell-intrinsic function of Got1. The mice are challenged with Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus strains Armstrong or cl-13 to induce acute or chronic viral infections, respectively.
Results: Got1-deficient T cells develop and proliferate normal in naive mice. First preliminary results indicate that, after chronic viral infection, Got1-deficiency resulted in a reduction of EOMES/TCF7 high "stem cell-like" T cells. This population has previously been demonstrated to be needed for a sustained long-term chronic immune response [1, 2]
Conclusion: Our preliminary studies of Got1 during T cell exhaustion indicate an importance for this enzyme during the long term chronic immune response. By maintaining the pool of "stem cell-like" T cells that give rise to effector T cells, maintaining the long term chronic immune response, Got1 might positively influence T cell function during chronic stimulus. It will be interesting to see in the future, whether the deficiency of Got1 will also impair T cell function during cancer development.
References[1] Im, S.J., et al., Defining CD8+ T cells that provide the proliferative burst after PD-1 therapy. Nature, 2016. 537(7620): p. 417-421.[2] Utzschneider, D.T., et al., T Cell Factor 1-Expressing Memory-like CD8(+) T Cells Sustain the Immune Response to Chronic Viral Infections. Immunity, 2016. 45(2): p. 415-27.


Sensors are often indicative of events of interest, or events which a system should be aware of and should react to. In particular, such indications may reflect unsteadiness or instability with respect to the current contextual situation. This paper discusses the concepts of stability and instability in context-aware systems, and suggests a model, methodology and an algorithm for real-time analysis of sensor readings in order to estimate future changes in context as well as in assisting to maintain the proper functioning of context-aware pervasive systems. We provide a conceptual analysis of our approach, implementation details and experimental evaluation of simulated scenarios that are part of a motivating use case.


JULIUS STONE A Tribute to Julius Stone on his Retirement from the Challis Chair of Jurisprudence and International Law at Sydney University Introduction The Pragmatic Realism of Julius Stone Julius Stone and the Adventure of the Idea of Justice Legal Sociology and Historical Materialism Revolution-A Spiritual Phenomenon: A Study in the History of Ideas The State as a Secular Phenomenon The Meaning and Role of Prescriptive and Descriptive Statements: Particularly in the Legal Universe of Discourse Two Arguments for an Empirical Foundation of NaturalLaw Norms: An Explanation of Johannes Messner's and Victor Kraft's Approaches On the Objective Foundation of Natural-Law Norms The Counter-Formula Method and its Applications in International Judicial Reasoning


While prudent development of offshore energy resources may provide benefit to the nation overall, it invokes several issues for local and regional planning. In particular, petroleum development often requires onshore support facilities and infrastructure for processing, storing, and transporting petroleum and other products. These facilities, which are generally industrial and often hazardous by nature, bring local and regional planners face-to-face with issues of industrial siting and permitting, protecting public health and safety, and of properly balancing offshore development with local economies, local infrastructure, and local resource and environmental constraints. Advanced planning is required to better comprehend the extent to which aggregate offshore development can substantially alter the character of the land onshore. The experience in Santa Barbara County demonstrates that local planning can do much to reduce the impacts of offshore oil and gas development, particularly when it precedes that development. Essential programs for zoning and siting onshore facilities, consolidating their development and phasing their use, as well as for mitigating sizeable and diffuse impacts have similarly been developed. All too often, however, both federal regulators and the petroleum industry have been reluctant to acknowledge the critical role of local planning in offshore energy development.


Author(s): Gratton, Caterina | Advisor(s): D'Esposito, Mark | Abstract: An abundance of research has demonstrated that the brain is both organized into discrete, highly specialized, regions and that distributed regions work together in the form of large-scale networks. It remains unclear, however, how to reconcile these two views of brain function. In this thesis, I present several projects that investigated the specialized properties of individual regions, how these change depending on cognitive demands and external disruption, and how these changes interact with modulations across large-scale networks. Across these projects, I use a combination of methods including psychophysics, univariate and multivariate modeling of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), and the study of patients with focal lesions. The first section of this thesis focuses on visual attention to high-level face stimuli. Here, I demonstrate that highly specialized representations exist for individual faces, but that engaging in sustained top-down attention can cause selective modulations in these representations. This suggests that large-scale networks can interact with, and modify, the properties of local regions in an extremely selective manner. The second section of the thesis examines how disrupting local regions, through focal brain lesions or TMS, impacts the structure of large-scale networks. The first two chapters in this section examine how acute and chronic disruptions modulate the magnitude of interactions throughout cognitive control networks. An additional project explores methodological considerations involving the variability in TMS effects and how these might be measured most effectively. The final project in this section examines how focal brain lesions also affect the organization of distributed networks. This section illustrates how the properties of local regions can modulate both the magnitude and organization of distributed networks.In sum, these projects demonstrate that large-scale networks can both drive and be driven by the highly specialized properties of local regions. This research will hopefully provide some insight into how brain regions may concurrently demonstrate highly specialized brain activity and participate in distributed brain networks, and flexibly modify these interactions, in order to carry out complex behavioral functions.


Much uncertainty remains as to the temporal relationship between the Ediacaran and Cambrian biotas, yet this is critical to our understanding of the rise of metazoans. Here we present new high-resolution carbon isotope chemostratigraphy and biostratigraphy for a terminal Ediacaran to Cambrian succession on the eastern Siberian Platform, Russia, which shows the presence of a succession of diverse fossil assemblages before the start of the basal Cambrian negative carbon isotope excursion (BACE). Soft-bodied Ediacaran biota ( Beltanelliformis ) occur before the start of the late Ediacaran positive carbon isotope plateau (EPIP), a mixed Ediacaran and Cambrian skeletal biota ( Cloudina , Anabarites , Cambrotubulus ) appears within the EPIP, and diverse Cambrian-type small shelly fossils including Protohertzina and other protocondonts, halkieriids, chancelloriids, hyoliths, hyolithelminthes, and the burrowing trace fossil Diplocraterion appear at the beginning of the BACE. These integrated data show that taxa attributed to so-called Ediacaran and earliest Cambrian skeletal biotas in fact overlap without notable biotic turnover, and thus refute the presence of a large isotope excursion coincident with mass extinction of all Ediacaran biota. We propose a new biozone, the Cloudina - Namacalathus - Sinotubulites Assemblage Zone, to precede the known small shelly fossil (SSF) zones. These observations raise doubts as to whether there is any true separation between the Ediacaran and Cambrian skeletal biotas, and suggest that there is a deep root for the Cambrian explosion of metazoans.


The workshop will share the findings and key methodological lessons from a participatory project that used photographic and narrative methods to explore youth perspectives on the causes of childhood injuries in Tanzania. Over the course of several weeks, students from Green Acres Secondary School explored and documented risk factors to child injury in Mbezi Beach, Dar es Salaam. The project used photovoice and consensus-based methods to stimulate reflection on injury. Photovoice is an innovative community engagement technique that uses cameras as documentary tools and employs photographs as catalysts for empowerment and social change. The process involved five stages: (1) the students were taught basic photo techniques and ethical principles and given cameras to explore causes of injuries for children and youth in their community; (2) they selected the images that they felt most accurately reflected their individual and collective perspectives on injury risk; (3) they shared stories in small group discussions about the pictures they had chosen; (4) they identified common themes that cut across the multiple stories and images; and finally (5) they reflected on the root causes and possible community solutions to these problems. Throughout the process, they were asked to explore a series of critical questions such as: What do we see here? What is really happening? How does this relate to our lives? Why does this problem or strength exist? What can we do about it? The project demonstrated the potential of using photovoice and story-telling techniques for injury prevention and community development.


Conventional wisdom tells us that labor unions and people of color are adversaries. Commentators, academics, politicians, and employers across a broad range of ideologies view the two groups' interests as fundamentally opposed and their relationship as rightfully fraught with tension. For example, commentators assert that unions capture a wage premium that mostly benefits white workers while making it harder for workers of color to find work; that unions deprive workers of color of an effective voice in the workplace; and that unions are interested in workers of color only to the extent that they can showcase them to manufacture the appearance of racial diversity. Like much conventional wisdom, the narrative that unions and people of color are rivals is flawed. In reality, labor unions and civil rights groups work together to advance a wide array of mutual interests; this work ranges from lobbying all levels of government to protesting working conditions across the country. Moreover, unions improve the lives of both members and non-members of color, from bargaining for better wages and working conditions to providing services like job training and continuing education to under-resourced communities. Accordingly, we aim to replace the conventional wisdom with a narrative that more accurately describes the occasionally complicated but ultimately hopeful relationship between labor and race. In developing this narrative, we anchor our conclusions in an interdisciplinary literature that includes insights from legal, economic, psychological and sociological scholarly research. This extensive body of scholarship indicates that union membership has significant benefits for workers of color in the form of higher wages and improved benefits, more racially congenial workplaces, and deeper cross-racial understanding. We complement this robust scholarly literature with real-world examples of union success at improving the well-being of workers and communities of color. In contrast to many other commentators, then, our account is largely optimistic, though we emphasize that there is still work for the labor movement to do.


Gintis and Helbing suggest that certain elements from classical sociological theory can be usefully incorporated into a general equilibrium model, thereby providing a superior explanation of social behavior. Although the paper seemingly is addressed to sociologists, I argue that their message is likely to fall on deaf ears. Instead, their paper should properly be addressed to economists. Whether economists are prepared to listen, however, is an open question.


This report describes a case of diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH) leading to dysphagia and dysphonia. DISH causes fibrosis in the ligaments, tendons, and joint capsules, and eventually, secondary osteophytes. DISH is more common in men than women, and is typically seen in those over the age of 50. A 75-year-old female patient who had been diagnosed with DISH presented at the ear, nose, and throat polyclinic for dysphagia and dysphonia, as well as back and neck pain. Endoscopic examination of the larynx revealed a protrusion at the posterior wall of the hypopharynx. Computed tomography (CT) scanning of the larynx and cervical region and a barium swallow were performed. The CT scan showed large osteophytes originating in the anterior part of the second and third cervical vertebrae that were suppressing the laryngeal structures and the epiglottis. The swallow graphy also indicated suppression and partial blockage of the esophageal passage. The protruding osteophytes had damaged the recurrent laryngeal nerve and caused recurrent laryngeal neuropathy and esophageal inflammation, and fibrosis led to dysphagia and dysphonia. Treatment with oral anti-inflammatory drugs and physiotherapy was initiated and surgical excision of the osteophytes was suggested. In the differential diagnosis of dysphagia and dysphonia, an endoscopic examination of the larynx and the posterior wall of the hypopharynx should be performed, and it is important to consider DISH. Furthermore, a multidisciplinary approach including physiotherapy, neurology, and other related clinics, is essential.


Background. The detrimental effects of excess personal solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation exposure include sunburn, immunosuppression and skin cancer. In South Africa, individuals with minimum natural protection from melanin, including fair-skinned individuals and African albinos, and people spending extended unprotected periods outdoors are at risk of sunburn, a risk factor for skin cancer. Sunburn becomes increasingly likely during the high solar UV radiation hours around midday, and previous studies have shown that children are exposed to potentially high, sunburn-causing solar UV radiation levels while at school. Method. To estimate national potential child sunburn risk patterns, monitored ambient solar UV radiation levels at six sites in South Africa were converted into possible schoolchild solar UV radiation exposures by calculating the theoretical child exposure to 5% of the total daily ambient solar UV radiation as derived from personal child exposure studies. Results. Schoolgoing children with skin types I, II and III were identified as being at greatest risk of sunburn. There were 44 and 99 days in a year when schoolchildren with skin type III (moderately sensitive) living in Durban and De Aar, respectively, would be likely to experience sunburn. Schoolchildren with skin type I (extremely sensitive) were at risk of experiencing sunburn on 166 days in De Aar, and those with skin types I and II were at risk on at least 1 day per year at all six locations. Conclusion. Seasonal patterns show that schoolchildren with sensitive skin types may experience sunburn in spring, summer and autumn months. Differences in child sunburn risk were evident, mainly due to latitude and atmospheric aerosols. Additional factors affecting sunburn risk include schoolchildren's use of sun protection, sun-exposed activity, and timing and duration of exposure. Understanding risk patterns and obtaining locally relevant information will assist South African skin cancer prevention and sun protection awareness


We describe a novel external light control element that is capable of stabilizing both the amplitude and the frequency of an optical input field. A demanding application of this electro-optical parametric oscillator, conversion of incoherent inputs into coherent, phase-trackable outputs with small residual intensity modulation, is reported. Estimations show that commercially available light-emitting diodes have the potential to act as pump sources, although the incoherent optical input field used in these initial experiments was prepared by filtering of the coherent emission of a laser diode.


The blockchain is a decentralized solution for handling transactions where we are concerned (among other aspects) with the accuracy and verification of transactions. One of its main promises is to eliminate the need for centralized entities or intermediaries and legal enforcement. Rather than trusting self-interested human intermediaries, the blockchain provides an alternative that relies on transparent computational protocols (Werbach 2018).

In this paper, we delve into this broker-less claim and analyze whether the blockchain needs an intermediary to allow for widespread access to its functionality and whether the blockchain itself is an intermediary. The latter would turn the blockchain into a new type of middleperson that constitutes a shift in trust from humans or traditional agents to computer code. In other words, the next step in the evolution chain of intermediaries from humans to machines.

The overall goal of this paper is to get the discussion started on the relationship between the blockchain and intermediaries so that we can think of plausible policy, governance, and regulatory measures to address the shortcomings and increase the opportunities for the widespread adoption of the blockchain technology in its different areas of impact. We begin by providing an overview of the workings of the blockchain before shifting our focus to an economic analysis of blockchain, where we argue that the economics literature has yet to explicitly consider blockchain as a transformative intermediary. We then explore situations in which the blockchain acts as a middleperson, as well as those where it requires an intermediary. We conclude by reflecting on the different issues that the blockchain-intermediary link entails in the policy domain.


Background Current hemophilia treatment involves frequent intravenous infusions of clotting factors, which is associated with variable hemostatic protection, a high treatment burden, and a risk of the development of inhibitory alloantibodies. Fitusiran, an investigational RNA interference (RNAi) therapy that targets antithrombin (encoded by SERPINC1), is in development to address these and other limitations. Methods In this phase 1 dose‐escalation study, we enrolled 4 healthy volunteers and 25 participants with moderate or severe hemophilia A or B who did not have inhibitory alloantibodies. Healthy volunteers received a single subcutaneous injection of fitusiran (at a dose of 0.03 mg per kilogram of body weight) or placebo. The participants with hemophilia received three injections of fitusiran administered either once weekly (at a dose of 0.015, 0.045, or 0.075 mg per kilogram) or once monthly (at a dose of 0.225, 0.45, 0.9, or 1.8 mg per kilogram or a fixed dose of 80 mg). The study objectives were to assess the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic characteristics and safety of fitusiran. Results No thromboembolic events were observed during the study. The most common adverse events were mild injection‐site reactions. Plasma levels of fitusiran increased in a dose‐dependent manner and showed no accumulation with repeated administration. The monthly regimen induced a dose‐dependent mean maximum antithrombin reduction of 70 to 89% from baseline. A reduction in the antithrombin level of more than 75% from baseline resulted in median peak thrombin values at the lower end of the range observed in healthy participants. Conclusions Once‐monthly subcutaneous administration of fitusiran resulted in dose‐dependent lowering of the antithrombin level and increased thrombin generation in participants with hemophilia A or B who did not have inhibitory alloantibodies. (Funded by Alnylam Pharmaceuticals; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02035605.)


Africa's recent growth performance has raised expectations of a bright economic future for the continent after decades of decline. Yet there is a genuine question about whether Africa's growth can be sustained, and if so, at what level. The balance of the evidence suggests caution on the prospects for high growth. While the region's fundamentals have improved, the payoffs to macroeconomic stability and improved governance are mainly to foster resilience and lay the groundwork for growth, rather than to generate productivity growth on their own. The traditional engines behind rapid growth, structural change and industrialization, seem to be operating at less than full power. If African countries do achieve growth rates substantially higher, they will have to do so pursuing a growth model that is different from earlier miracles based on industrialization. This might be agriculture-led or services-led growth, but it will look quite different than what we have seen before.


Prokaryotes constitute the majority of sedimentary biomass, where they cycle organic carbon and regulate organic matter transformation. The microbes inhabiting sediment are diverse and the factors controlling microbial community composition are not fully understood. Here, we characterized the prokaryotic community using 16S rRNA gene sequencing in 24 stratigraphic layers within a 89 cm (dated to ~1900 years old) sediment core from an anchialine sinkhole in the Bahamas with a stratified water column and anoxic bottom water. The microbial community was dominated by members of the Alphaproteobacteria, Dehalococcoidia, Gammaproteobacteria, Bathyarchaeota, and Campylobacter classes. Most interestingly, subsurface microbial community structure could be correlated to previous evidence for timewise changes in the main source of organic matter that was supplied to the sediment accumulating during the last 2000 years, which itself was caused by regional terrestrial vegetation changes. The C:N ratio was correlated to the relative abundance of the microbial classes, and the microbial communities followed three previously determined time periods based on the source of organic matter, which suggests that the carbon source at time of deposition influences the resultant subsurface microbial community composition. These results show that carbon source is a driver of the microbial community composition inhabiting anoxic sediment, which could have implications for improving understanding of carbon cycling in coastal sedimentary basins.


Community assembly theory attempts to explain factors influencing the composition of communities, which can be governed by deterministic and/or stochastic processes. We used a sequential restoration approach to gain insights into how interannual variation in climate influences community assembly in an agriculture field restored to tallgrass prairie. Species composition and aboveground net primary production (ANPP) were followed for three years in each of three sequentially restored communities, which were established in different years, and sown with the same suite of species using the same live seeding rate for each species. There was a sequence-by-age interaction for sown, volunteer, and total species composition (P = 0.001), cover (P < 0.009), diversity (P < 0.024), and richness (P < 0.025). Annual net primary production had a sequence-by-age interaction for total, sown, and volunteer species (P < 0.05). In general, species diversity and richness increased over time. We attributed different starting compositions and trajectories in the developing composition of communities and ANPP among sequences to variation in precipitation. Sequences II and III were sown under drought conditions and became dominated by a drought-resistant agricultural weed that corresponded with delayed establishment and lower ANPP of sown species in those sequences. This study suggests that the effects of drought on community composition vary depending on restoration year, with younger restorations exhibiting greater sensitivity to drought than those that are more established.


This guide provides suggestions for free learning and entertainment made available just for the Covid-19 Shelter in Place period, spring 2020.


Abstract Reconstructing the swimming capabilities of extinct marine tetrapods is critical for unravelling broader questions about their palaeobiology, palaeoecology and palaeobiogeography. Ichthyosaurs have long been the subject of such investigations because, alongside cetaceans, they are one of the few tetrapod lineages to achieve a highly specialized fish-like body plan. The dominant locomotory mode for the majority of derived, post-Triassic ichthyosaurs is hypothesized to have been caudal fin-driven propulsion. Limb-based swimming has however been suggested for some highly autapomorphic forms, such as the Cretaceous genus Platypterygius, which has a remarkably robust humeral morphology and exceptionally broad paddle-like limbs. To evaluate this atypical lifestyle model, we conducted a comprehensive comparative osteological assessment of Platypterygius in relation to extant marine mammals, whose analogous skeletal frameworks provide a structurally compatible selection of alternate propulsive strategies. Based on a proxy exemplar of the most completely known species, P. australis from the Early Cretaceous of Australia, the propodial shape, absence of functional elbow/knee joints, tightly interlocking carpals, hyperphalangy and extreme reduction of the pelvic girdle are most similar to cetaceans as opposed to pinnipeds or dugongs. There is no obvious structural consistency with aquatic mammals that use sustained forelimb-driven swimming. The exceptionally broad fore-paddle (a product of hyperdactyly) and extensive humeral muscle insertions might therefore have had a cetacean-like role in enhancing manoeuvrability and acceleration performance. We conclude that, despite its atypical features, P. australis was most likely similar to other ichthyosaurs in using lateral sweeps of the tailfin to generate primary propulsive thrust.


Private activity in infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa showed mixed results in 2008, according to just-released data from the private participation in infrastructure project database. While investment commitments to infrastructure projects with private participation reached a new peak, the number of projects reaching closure continued to decline. Existing telecommunications operators accounted for most regional investment as well as the growth in investment. The region accounted for almost 9 percent of the year's total investment commitments in developing countries. In 2008, 15 infrastructure projects with private participation reached financial or contractual closure in 10 low- or middle-income countries in the region. These involve investment commitments of US$2.7 billion. Infrastructure projects implemented in previous years had additional commitments of US$10.8 billion, bringing total investment in 2008 to US$13.5 billion. That total represented an increase of 10 percent from the level reported in 2007 and a new peak for the region. Investment in existing projects accounted for the increase, growing by 22 percent from the level in 2007. By contrast, investment in new projects fell by 22 percent.