Blood pressure, heart rate, plasma norepinephrine, forearm blood flow, plasma volume, plasma albumin, blood glucose, and plasma epinephrine were measured in six diabetic patients without neuropathy in the supine position and during feet-down tilting for seven minutes. The experiments were repeated after intravenous (i.v.) injection of 6 to 8 U. of insulin. The mean blood glucose concentration averaged 205 ± 14 (S. E. M.) mg./100 ml. in the control experiment and had decreased by 97 ± 17 mg./100 ml. 45 minutes after the injection of insulin. None of the patients had hypoglycemia, and plasma epinephrine did not increase. There was no change in arterial blood pressure after insulin was given either in the supine position or after tilting. The heart rate averaged 64 ± 5 beats per minute in the control experiment and had increased by 7 ± 2 beats per minute 40 minutes after the injection of insulin (2p = 0.035). The rise in heart rate In response to tilting was statistically significantly greater after administration of insulin (2p = 0.0064). Plasma norepinephrine averaged 0.17 ± 0.03 ng./ml. in the control experiment and had increased by 70 ± 24 per cent 45 minutes after the i.v. injection of insulin (2p = 0.045). The rise in plasma norepinephrine in response to tilting was statistically significantly greater after the injection of insulin (2p = 0.017). Forearm blood flow decreased from 2.13 ± 0.29 ml./l00 ml. per minute in the control experiment to 1.63 ± 0.32 ml./100 ml. per minute 40 minutes after the injection of insulin (2p = 0.011). Plasma volume averaged 3,061 ± 67 ml. before injection of insulin and had decreased by 265 ± 59 ml. 45 minutes after insulin was given (2p = 0.011). The intravascular mass of albumin averaged 118 ± 3 gm. and 109 ± 3 gm. before and 45 minutes after the administration of insulin, respectively (2p = 0.017). There was a dose correlation between the relative increase in plasma norepinephrine in the supine position and the relative decrease in plasma volume after the injection of insulin (r = −0.95, 2p = 0.013). It is concluded that i.v. injection of insulin results in an increased adrenergic nervous activity that is due to a decrease in plasma volume. The effect of insulin is accompanied by a significant reduction in the intravascular pool of albumin. These observations may explain the fact that patients with abnormal cardiovascular reflexes are unable to maintain arterial blood pressure, especially in the upright position, after the i. v. injection of insulin. The observed decrease in plasma volume after the administration of insulin was much larger than could be expected from the decrease in blood glucose concentration and the ensuing decrease in plasma osmolality. It is suggested that insulin either directly or secondarily to its metabolic effects may alter the function or the volume of the endothelial cells and thereby increase the transfer of fluid and albumin out of the vascular system.


Epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) process has been shown as highly relevant to cancer prognosis. However, although different biological network-based biomarker identification methods have been proposed to predict cancer prognosis, EMT network has not been directly used for this purpose. In this study, we constructed an EMT regulatory network consisting of 87 molecules and tried to select features that are useful for prognosis prediction in Lung Adenocarcinoma (LUAD). To incorporate multiple molecular profiles, we obtained four types of molecular data including mRNA-Seq, copy number alteration (CNA), DNA methylation, and miRNA-Seq data from The Cancer Genome Atlas. The data were mapped to the EMT network in three alternative ways: mRNA-Seq and miRNA-Seq, DNA methylation, and CNA and miRNA-Seq. Each mapping was employed to extract five different sets of features using discretization and network-based biomarker identification methods. Each feature set was then used to predict prognosis with SVM and logistic regression classifiers. We measured the prediction accuracy with AUC and AUPR values using 10 times 10-fold cross validation. For a more comprehensive evaluation, we also measured the prediction accuracies of clinical features, EMT plus clinical features, randomly picked 87 molecules from each data mapping, and using all molecules from each data type. Counter-intuitively, EMT features do not always outperform randomly selected features and the prediction accuracies of the five feature sets are mostly not significantly different. Clinical features are shown to give the highest prediction accuracies. In addition, the prediction accuracies of both EMT features and random features are comparable as using all features (more than 17,000) from each data type.


Copper-based chalcogenides that comprise abundant, low-cost, and environmental friendly elements are excellent materials for a number of energy conversion applications, including photovoltaics, photocatalysis, and thermoelectrics (TE). In such applications, the use of solution-processed nanocrystals (NCs) to produce thin films or bulk nanomaterials has associated several potential advantages, such as high material yield and throughput, and composition control with unmatched spatial resolution and cost. Here we report on the production of Cu3SbSe4 (CASe) NCs with tuned amounts of Sn and Bi dopants. After proper ligand removal, as monitored by nuclear magnetic resonance and infrared spectroscopy, these NCs were used to produce dense CASe bulk nanomaterials for solid state TE energy conversion. By adjusting the amount of extrinsic dopants, dimensionless TE figures of merit (ZT) up to 1.26 at 673 K were reached. Such high ZT values are related to an optimized carrier concentration by Sn doping, a minimized lattice thermal conductivity due to efficient phonon scattering at point defects and grain boundaries, and to an increase of the Seebeck coefficient obtained by a modification of the electronic band structure with Bi doping. Nanomaterials were further employed to fabricate ring-shaped TE generators to be coupled to hot pipes, which provided 20 mV and 1 mW per TE element when exposed to a 160 °C temperature gradient. The simple design and good thermal contact associated with the ring geometry and the potential low cost of the material solution processing may allow the fabrication of TE generators with short payback times.


The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the conditions under which resurgence of appropriate communicative responses (mands) would occur with children with developmental disabilities. The experimental preparation consisted of a sequence of conditions that included (a) the reinforcement of one mand (i.e., microswitch activation or card exchange) on a FR 1 schedule, (b) an extinction condition in which the mand was no longer reinforced, (c) the reinforcement of a second mand (i.e., microswitch activation or card exchange) on a FR 1 schedule, and (d) a test for resurgence of the first mand which consisted of placing the second mand on extinction. The results demonstrated resurgence of mands during 2 out of 3 tests for resurgence for one participant. Resurgence of mands was demonstrated during all three tests for resurgence with the second participant.


To understand the dynamics of the verbalization of surprise, I will start with the philosophical theoretical place that is, in my opinion, the most remarkable in terms of the descriptive phenomenology of surprise, namely, its approach by Paul Ricœur in Freedom and Nature in terms of what he calls "emotion-surprise." This theoretical position will lead me to retrace, in a second step, the archeology of what Ricoeur calls the "circular phenomenon" or the "circular process" of surprise, which includes body language in a burst of "shaking" and the language of cognitive as well as aesthetic "shock". There is an a priori antinomy here that is based on a post-Cartesian duality of the body and the mind, but it is circularized by Ricoeur. On the basis of this dual model of surprise, I will retrace its genealogy in a number of authors (Darwin, James, Izard, and Ekman on the one hand, and Peirce, Husserl, Dennett, Davidson, on the other hand) and will analyze some first-person descriptions that come from "microphenomenological interviews" [entretiens d'explicitation].


The linking of living rooms across state borders by al-Jazeera and other pan-Arab satellite television channels has prompted claims that a 'new Arabism' that undermines state nationalism is emerging. Until now, analysts have mostly focused on the 'hot' Arabism in the news coverage of politicised events such as the Israel–Palestine conflict. This article offers a new dimension by suggesting that as important to satellite television's construction and reproduction of Arab identity is the everyday discourse found in less overtly political programmes such as sport. To demonstrate this, it offers an analysis of al-Jazeera's coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics showing how the broadcasts address viewers as a common Arab audience who are simultaneously encouraged to be nationalistic towards their separate nation-states within a given 'Arab arena' of states with whom they should primarily compete. This suggests that new Arabism should in fact be considered a 'supranationalism', not a revived Arab nationalism as it simultaneously promotes Arab and state identities in tandem. Finally, it aims to expand our understanding of 'everyday nationalism' by adapting Michael Billig's theory and methodology of 'banal nationalism' in British newspapers to facilitate the study of sport on supranational Arab identity on satellite television.


With the recent success and popularity of pre-trained language models (LMs) in natural language processing, there has been a rise in efforts to understand their inner workings. In line with such interest, we propose a novel method that assists us in investigating the extent to which pre-trained LMs capture the syntactic notion of constituency. Our method provides an effective way of extracting constituency trees from the pre-trained LMs without training. In addition, we report intriguing findings in the induced trees, including the fact that pre-trained LMs outperform other approaches in correctly demarcating adverb phrases in sentences.


Objective: By 24 mo of age, most typically developing infants with normal hearing successfully transition to the production of words that can be understood about 50% of the time. This study compares early phonological development in children with and without hearing loss to gain a clearer understanding of the effects of hearing loss in early-identified children. A secondary goal was to identify measures of early phonetic development that are predictors of later speech production outcomes. Design: The vocalizations and early words of 21 infants with normal hearing and 12 early-identified infants with hearing loss were followed longitudinally over a period of 14 mo (from 10 to 24 mo of age). Thirty-minute mother-child interaction samples were video recorded at 6- to 8-wk intervals in a laboratory playroom setting. Vocalizations produced at 16 and 24 mo were categorized according to communicative intent and recognizable words versus other types. Groups were compared on the structural complexity of words produced at 24 mo of age. Parent report measures of vocabulary development were collected from 10 to 30 mo of age, and Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation scores at 36 mo were used in regression analyses. Results: Both groups increased the purposeful use of voice between 16 and 24 mo of age. However, at 24 mo of age, the toddlers with hearing loss produced significantly fewer words that could be recognized by their mothers. Their samples were dominated by unintelligible communicative attempts at this age. In contrast, the samples from normal hearing children were dominated by words and phrases. At 24 mo of age, toddlers with normal hearing were more advanced than those with hearing loss on seven measures of the structural complexity of words. The children with normal hearing attempted more complex words and productions were more accurate than those of children with hearing loss. At 10 to 16 mo of age, the groups did not differ significantly on parent-report measures of receptive vocabulary. However, the hearing loss group was much slower to develop expressive vocabulary and demonstrated larger individual differences than the normal hearing group. Six children identified as atypical differed from all other children in vowel accuracy and complexity of word attempts. However, both atypical infants and typical infants with hearing loss were significantly less accurate than normal hearing infants in consonant and word production. Early measures of syllable production predicted unique variance in later speech production and vocabulary outcomes. Conclusions: The transition from babble to words in infants with hearing loss appears to be delayed but parallel to that of infants with normal hearing. These delays appear to exert significant influences on expressive vocabulary development. Parents may appreciate knowing that some children with hearing loss may develop early vocabulary at a slower rate than children with normal hearing. Clinicians should monitor landmarks from babble onset through transitions to words. Indicators of atypical development were delayed and/or limited use of syllables with consonants, vowel errors and limited production of recognizable words.


Lignocellulosic matter often can be counted as a renewable resource, since it is produced by photosynthesis. But there are limits to how much biomass our society can use in a sustainable manner. People can debate whether or not it makes sense to use a substantial portion of lignocellulosic materials as a source of liquid fuel. This essay gives a qualified affirmative answer to the question in its title. However, combustion of lignocellulosic resources can be considered as wasteful and uneconomical, in the long run, if it is inefficient, if it fails to displace the combustion of fossil fuels, or if it displaces a higher-end use, for which there are available customers. In particular, it seems unlikely that combustion of fuels derived from lignocellulosic biomass can, by itself, solve problems that stem from society's excessive thirst for motor fuels.


White‐collar trade unionism has aroused considerable interest among students of industrial relations, but relatively little attention has been paid to staff associations, which Crompton noted perform similar functions to trade unions and to which white‐collar workers are partial. At present, white‐collar and partly white‐collar unions account for roughly half of the unions in Britain and some 35 per cent of the membership. The density of white‐collar membership has increased to 40 per cent (over 50 per cent if staff and professional associations are included), compared with 53 per cent for manual workers. White‐collar workers are traditionally thought to be less disposed to join trade unions and, as Bain et al note, "when white collar workers do unionize, they are believed to carry with them certain aspects of the status ideology which affects the behaviour of their unions". Blackburn and Prandy offer a theoretical framework which may be used to compare the "unionateness" of white‐collar and manual forms of employee representation. Most white‐collar unions satisfy the criteria of unionateness, but a large proportion of staff associations fail on the question of independence from employers for the purposes of negotiation. In the first four years of his appointment, the Certification Officer refused certificates of independence to fifty‐one organisations, all of them staff associations.


With a sharp decline in camera cost and size along with superior computing power available at increasingly low prices, computer vision applications are becoming ever present in our daily lives. Research shows that Convolutional Neural Networks (ConvNet) can outperform all other methods for computer vision tasks (such as object detection) in terms of accuracy and versatility [31]. One of the problems with these Neural Networks, which mimic the brain, is that they can be very demanding on the processor, requiring millions of computational nodes to function. Hence, it is challenging for Neural Network algorithms to achieve real-time performance on general purpose embedded platforms. Parallelization and vectorization are very effective ways to ease this problem and make it possible to implement such ConvNets on energy efficient embedded platforms. This thesis presents the evaluation of a novel ConvNet for road speed sign detection [38], on a breakthrough 57-core Intel Xeon Phi processor with 512-bit vector support. This mapping demonstrates that the parallelism inherent in the ConvNet algorithm can be effectively exploited by the 512-bit vector ISA and by utilizing the many core paradigm. Detailed evaluation shows that the best mappings require data-reuse strategies that exploit reuse at the cache and register level. These implementations are boosted by the use of low-level vector intrinsics (which are C style functions that map directly onto many Intel assembly instructions). Ultimately we demonstrate an approach which can be used to accelerate Neural Networks on highly-parallel many core processors, with execution speedups of more than 12x on single core performance alone.


Interactions between humans and black bears (Ursus americanus) in Virginia, USA, increase as bear populations recover from historically low levels and expand their range to seek food in human-modified environments. In 2002, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) changed its management of human–bear conflicts from translocating bears involved in conflicts to emphasizing human behavior changes. Herein we provide an overview of human–bear conflict management at Massanutten Village (Village), a popular four-season resort with 3 ownerships. Before 2009, VDGIF received an average of 60–70 human–bear interaction complaints from the Village annually. In 2009, 2 Village ownerships replaced 175 dumpsters readily accessible to bears with bear-resistant models, and the number of human– bear conflict complaints VDGIF received from the Village decreased to an average of 10–15 calls per year (>75% reduction). The VDGIF continues to request behavior changes from the third ownership, which has not yet altered its garbage practices and cites bear translocation as a more appropriate response to its complaints. Additional legal consequences and education for human–bear conflict resolution may improve collaboration between VDGIF and the Village to achieve complete attractant management.


The output of a femtosecond fiber laser will form a frequency comb that can be phase-locked through feedback to the cavity length and pump power. A perturbative theory is developed to describe this frequency comb output, in particular for a solitonic fiber laser. The effects of resonant dispersion, saturation of the self-amplitude modulation, cavity loss, thirdorder dispersion, Raman scattering, self-phase modulation, and self-steepening on the spacing and offset of the fiber-laser frequency comb are given. The mechanisms by which the pump power, cavity length and cavity loss control the frequency comb spacing and offset are identified. Transfer functions are derived for the comb response to change in cavity length, pump power or cavity loss. This theory can potentially be applied to other frequency comb sources as well.


This research was carried out among the listed companies in the Nairobi Stock Exchange to
determine their levels of financial distress, using Altman's Z-score. The researcher further
established that a relationship exists between those levels of financial distress and the stock
returns. Since stock returns are easy to find, this relationship will be useful to various
stakeholder in the economy.
The author has divided the proposal into chapters as follows:
Chapter one: - This consists of the introduction where the author explains background
information of the study as well as the statement of the problem, objectives, research
hypothesis and significance of the study. Limitations of the study are also included.
In chapter two, the author discusses various aspects on financial distress and the
development of Altman's Z-score. Also inclusive in this chapter is the theoretical framework
of the model showing the independent and dependent variables. Previous relevant
researches are also discussed in this chapter.
Chapter three consists of the methodology, where the author explains how the data was
collected and finally analysed. Basically secondary data was used and analysis was done
using SPSS.
Chapter four and Five discusses the findings, analysis recommendations and areas of
further research. The author establishes that Altman's model works in Kenya in measuring
levels of distress among firms, and also that their exists a strong positive relationship between
stock returns and levels of financial distress. Hence stakeholders can judge from given stock
returns, a firm's level of financial distress.


ABSTRACT This paper combines theories of identification and image repair to explain why an organization in crisis should avoid designing messages that engage in "spin." An experiment is reported (N = 262 nationwide U.S. Qualtrics Panel) in which a company spokesperson replies to questions from a journalist in a news interview. Results indicate that people (a) identify more with the spokesperson, and (b) have more favorable attitudes toward the business, when the spokesperson directly answers rather than spins. Serial multiple mediator modeling reveals the theoretical process of consumer behavioral intentions bolstered by an organization "coming clean" instead of spinning in a scandal.


Let b ≥ 2 be an integer. We prove that the b-ary expansion of every irrational algebraic number cannot have low complexity. Furthermore, we establish that irrational morphic numbers are transcendental, for a wide class of morphisms. In particular, irrational automatic numbers are transcendental. Our main tool is a new, combinatorial transcendence criterion.


Nurses and other public health practitioners have a crucial role to play in helping to improve the collective well being of society and so developing skills in public health - preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health – is key to this process. Public Health Skills: A practical guide for nurses and public health practitioners covers the complete spectrum of public health practice: the effective assessment and management of need, understanding policy and how to affect its implementation; before moving on to explore practical issues and themes surrounding the facilitation of public health. Within the four sections of the book, the text is organised around the ten core public health skills outlined in the National Occupational Standards for the practice of public health, covering skills including surveillance and assessment, collaborative working, working with communities, strategy development, risk management, leadership and ethics.


Background: Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disease that can affect every system of the body particularly if it is not controlled for long period of time. Complications of diabetes can be halted or prevented by good metabolic control. Measures that are considered in the treatment of diabetes mellitus include; healthy diet, physical activity, blood sugar monitoring, compliance with drugs, and hygienic habits. Aim of the study: The aim of present study is to shed light on the outcome of treatment and control of type2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) among patients in Misan governorate. Patients and methods: In this study, records of 336 patients with T2DM, followed up for one year, were reviewed. HbA1c levels at the first visit and every three months later on for one year were used to reflect glycemic control. Other parameters taken into consideration were; age, gender sex, duration of diabetes, and the type of treatment. Results: It was found that only (24.1%) of patients, had reasonably good glycemic control, as reflected by HbA1c levels less than 7% with significantly more men than women. Better glycemic control was recognized among patients with disease duration from 6-10 years as compared to those with disease duration below 5 years or above 10 years. Conclusion: Control of T2DM in our study is not so different from that in some other studies in other regions; also gender seems to have an impact on glycemic control, it was found that glycemic control was significantly better among men than women (P-value > 0.05).


This paper develops a message-based approach to discrete-event simulation. Although message-based simulators have the same expressive power as traditional discrete-event simulation lanuages, they provide a more natural environment for simulating distributed systems. In message-based simulations, a physical system is modeled by a set of message-communicating processes. The events in the system are modeled by message-communications. The paper proposes the entity construct to represent a message-communicating process operating in simulated time. A general wait until construct is used for process scheduling and message-communication. Based on these two notions, the paper proposes a language fragment comprising a small set of primitives. The language fragment can be implemented in any general-purpose, sequential programming language to construct a message-based simulator. We give an example of a message-based simulation language, called MAY, developed by implementing the language fragment in Fortran. MAY is in the public domain and is available on request.


Abstract Black bears (Ursus americanus) forage selectively in natural environments. To determine if bears also forage selectively for anthropogenic resources we analyzed data on vehicles broken into by bears from Yosemite National Park, California. We classified vehicles into 9 categories based on their make and model and collected data on use (2001–2007) and availability (2004–2005). From 2001 to 2007 bears broke into 908 vehicles at the following rates: minivan (26.0%), sport–utility vehicle (22.5%), small car (17.1%), sedan (13.7%), truck (11.9%), van (4.2%), sports car (1.7%), coupe (1.7%), and station wagon (1.4%). Only use of minivans (29%) during 2004–2005 was significantly higher than expected (7%). We discuss several competing hypotheses about why bears selected minivans.


Log-periodic antenna is a special antenna type utilized with great success in many broadband applications due to its ability to achieve nearly constant gain over a wide frequency range. Such antennas are extensively used in electromagnetic compatibility measurements, spectrum monitoring and TV reception. In this study, a log-periodic dipole array is measured, simulated, and then optimized in the 470–860 MHz frequency band. Two simulations of the antenna are initially performed in time and frequency domain respectively. The comparison between these simulations is presented to ensure accurate modelling of the antenna. The practically measured net gain is in good agreement with the simulated net gain. The antenna is then optimized to concurrently improve voltage standing wave ration, net gain and front-to-back ratio. The optimization process has been implemented by using various algorithms included in CST Microwave Studio, such as Trusted Region Framework, Nelder Mead Simplex algorithm, Classic Powell and Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolutionary Strategy (CMA-ES). The Trusted Region Framework seems to have the best performance in sufficiently optimizing all predefined goals specified for the antenna.


In this study, we used data from the Young Lives study, which investigates teenage childbearing, marriage, and cohabitation by tracking a cohort of individuals from the ages of 8 to 19 years. While the present analysis does not intend to establish causality, the longitudinal nature of the data allows us to identify the combination of early circumstances and life changes that induce a higher likelihood of these events. The analysis addresses bias due both to reverse causality and to community characteristics that are usually unobserved and fixed over time, a strategy that is quite unique in studies of developing countries. About 1 out of 5 females (and 1 out of 20 males) in our sample had at least one child by the age of 19, and 80 percent of them were married or cohabiting. Early marriage/cohabitation is indeed intrinsically related to early pregnancy and largely predicted by the same factors. For females specifically, girls from poor households with an absent parent for a prolonged period have a higher risk of early childbearing. Similarly, girls whose self-efficacy and educational aspirations decrease over time are more at risk of becoming a mother during adolescence. Conversely, school attendance and better school performance predict a lower risk of early pregnancy; our analysis suggests that this is largely because it postpones the first sexual relationship.


Nowadays almost all the principles of diagnosis and treatment are determined by the statistical analysis of the observations made by practitioners. The analysis of medical data is therefore one of the most important elements that affect the level of modern medical care. The research described in this paper aims to determine the characteristics of cardiac parameters in healthy children and in children with a diagnosis in arterial hypertension. Studies include children in the Lodz region. The purpose of the analysis is to determine risk factors of arterial hypertension and thus early diagnosis of children and as quickly as possible the inclusion of an appropriate treatment or observation. The analysis applies a number of methods, including descriptive analysis, grouping and statistical inference. The choice of methods is consistent with the requirements of the USMLE (The United States Medical Licensing Examination) and depends on the evaluated parameters. The research is carried out using professional statistical packages and the computer system designed and developed for this study. The use this system allows for the continuous process of research staging of new cases, which is a definite advantage when conducting epidemiological studies.


The unequal-area, shape constrained facility layout problem is a NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem concerned with minimizing material handling costs. An integrated methodology that incorporates a genetic algorithm and a constructive heuristic is developed to simultaneously solve the traditional block layout problem of locating and shaping departments and the detailed design problem of locating the input/output stations of departments. These problems have received much attention over the past half-century with the majority of research focused on solving them individually or sequentially. This thesis aims to show that an integrated methodology which combines the problems and solves them in parallel is preferable to sequential approaches.The complexity of the integrated layout problem is reduced through a Flexbay formulation and through pre-assigned intra-departmental flow types. A genetic algorithm with a two-tiered solution structure generates and maintains a population of block layout solutions throughout an evolutionary process. Genetic operators reproduce and alter solutions in order to generate better solutions, find new search directions, and prevent premature convergence of the algorithm. An adaptive penalty mechanism guides the search process and reduces the computational overhead of the algorithm. Through the placement of input/output stations, the optimization of a block layout's material flow network is implemented as a subroutine to the genetic algorithm. A contour distance metric is used to evaluate the costs associated with material movement between the input/output stations of departments and aids in constructing practical aisle structures. A constructive placement heuristic places the input/output stations and perturbs them until no further improvement to a layout can be realized. The integrated approach is applied to several well known problems over a comprehensive test plan. The results from the integrated approach indicate moderate variability in the solutions and considerable computational expense. To compare the integrated methodology to prior methodologies, some of the best results from the unequal-area facility layout problem are selected from prior research and the I/O optimization heuristic is applied to them. The results of the integrated approach uniformly and significantly outperform the results obtained through sequential optimization. The integrated methodology demonstrates the value of a simultaneous approach to the unequal-area facility layout problem.


A fundamental prerequisite for the micromechanical simulation of fatigue is the appropriate modelling of the effective cyclic properties of the considered material. Therefore, kinematic hardening formulations on the slip system level are of crucial importance due to their fundamental relevance in cyclic material modelling. The focus of this study is the comparison of three different kinematic hardening models (Armstrong Frederick, Chaboche, and Ohno–Wang). In this work, investigations are performed on the modelling and prediction of the cyclic stress-strain behavior of the martensitic high-strength steel SAE 4150 for two different total strain ratios (R ε = −1 and R ε = 0). In the first step, a three-dimensional martensitic microstructure model is developed by using multiscale Voronoi tessellations. Based on this martensitic representative volume element, micromechanical simulations are performed by a crystal plasticity finite element model. For the constitutive model calibration, a new multi-objective calibration procedure incorporating a sensitivity analysis as well as an evolutionary algorithm is presented. The numerical results of different kinematic hardening models are compared to experimental data with respect to the appropriate modelling of the Bauschinger effect and the mean stress relaxation behavior at R ε = 0. It is concluded that the Ohno–Wang model is superior to the Armstrong Frederick and Chaboche kinematic hardening model at R ε = −1 as well as at R ε = 0.


Teaching Culture Using E-Portfolios in a 4-Semester University Spanish Classroom Ricardo Gustavo Cetz Department of Spanish and Portuguese, BYU Masters of Arts The World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages (ACTFL, 2014) encourage teachers to help their students use the target language to "investigate, explain, and reflect" on the relationships between cultural products, practices, and perspectives. However, while most language instructors agree that language and culture should be connected, many fail to teach culture explicitly because they are so focused on the language components of their courses. Of those who do teach culture explicitly, many either teach only about the cultural products and not the perspectives, or they teach the culture in English because of its complexity. This project explores the use of e-portfolios for explicitly teaching culture in the target language across all three communicative modes. The project was implemented in a 4 semester university Spanish course in the fall of 2013. Students were required to view and interpret culturally authentic materials such as newspapers, proverbs, documentaries, news reports, and videos about pop culture. In addition, students interacted with native speakers both within and outside the United States using technology. Students were also asked to produce business plans, commentaries, community projects, ethnographic interviews, stories, and videos in the target language. The project evaluation revealed that when culture is explicitly taught in the target language, the following changes may occur: a positive attitudinal shift towards the target culture, a desire for learning the language beyond the classroom, an increase in autonomous learning, and an improvement in linguistic skills. Pedagogical implications and principles that might be applicable in foreign language instruction include the fact that technology appears to be one promising way to provide increased access to culture. In addition, scaffolding is found to be important to both students' experiences with culture and their interaction with technology. Also students may find the exploration of current social issues and problems very motivating and engaging. This has the potential to give students increased opportunities to think critically.


Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most frequently new diagnosed cancer and the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men in Germany. Studies on possible agents for PCa therapy are indispensable since treatment options for PCa are often associated with severe side effects. In the present study, the histone deacetylase inhibitor valproic acid (VPA) was investigated as a putative candidate for the treatment of prostate cancer. The expression of previously identified candidate genes, which are associated with PCa and exhibit a deregulated expression pattern in the murine PCa cells 2E upon VPA treatment, was analyzed by quantitative real-time PCR in prostate tumor tissue and prostate tissue of VPA-treated TRAMP mice. The molecular effects observed by in vitro VPA treatment of 2E cells could be partially confirmed in prostate tumor tissue and to a greater extend in prostate tissue of in vivo VPA-treated TRAMP mice. Furthermore, the influence of in vitro and in vivo VPA treatment on tumor- and tumor cell angiogenesis as well as on lymphangiogenesis was investigated by expression analyses of angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis markers, including Vegfa, Vegfc, Ang1, Flt-1/Vegfr1, Kdr/Vegfr2, Tie-1, the soluble Vegfr2 receptor (sVegfr2) and Pecam-1. In murine PCa 2E cells, the expression Vegfa, Vegfc, Ang1, Tie-1 and Pecam-1 was decreased in a concentration- and partially time-dependent manner upon VPA treatment. In vivo VPA treatment also reduced the expression of several angiogenesis markers, as observed by statistically significant reduced Flt-1/Vegfr1 expression in prostate tissue and Ang1, Vegfa, Tie-1 and Kdr/Vegfr2 expression in prostate tumor tissue. These results indicate, that VPA treatment has a greater effect on the downregulation of angiogenesis markers in more advanced PCa than in very early tumor stages. The candidate gene cyclin D2 was studied in more detail since it was proposed to have a special function in PCa, possibly acting as a tumor suppressor. To elucidate the role of cyclin D2 in PCa cells, functional experiments of human PCa cells overexpressing cyclin D2 and of murine fibroblast cells with reduced cyclin D2 expression were conducted. Contrary to the expectation, functional analysis of human PCa cells with a transient, stable or inducible cyclin D2 overexpression revealed that these cells exhibited a similar or slightly increased proliferation rate as compared to controls. PC-3 and LNCaP cells with stable cyclin D2 overexpression had an increased migration rate as compared to controls. These data rather indicate that cyclin D2 is not a tumor suppressor in PCa. Functional studies of NIH/3T3 cells transfected with cyclin D2-specific siRNAs showed that these cells had an increased migration rate as compared to luciferase control transfected cells, indicating that cyclin D2 might have anti-tumorigenic capacities, nonetheless. Thus far, the hypothesis that cyclin D2 could act as a tumor suppressor in PCa remains unsolved.


Metal matrix composites consists of a metallic matrix combined with dispersed particulate phase as reinforcement. Aluminum alloys have been the primary material of choice for structural components of aircraft since about 1930. Well known performance characteristics, known fabrication costs, design experience, and established manufacturing methods and facilities, are just a few of the reasons for the continued confidence in 7XXX Al alloys that will ensure their use in significant quantities for the time to come. Particulate MMCs are of special interest owing to the low cost of their raw materials (primarily natural river sand here) and their ease of fabrication, making them suitable for applications requiring relatively high volume production. 7XXX Al alloys are precipitation hardenable and therefore amenable for thermomechanical treatment. Al–Zn alloys reinforced with particulate materials are used in aerospace industries in spite of the drawbacks of susceptibility to stress corrosion, poor wettability, poor weldability and poor fatigue resistance. The resistance offered by these particulates for the moving dislocations impart secondary hardening in turn contributes strain hardening. Cold deformation increases lattice defects, which in turn improves the properties of solution treated alloy. In view of this, six different Al–Zn–Mg alloy composites reinforced with silica (3 wt. % and 5 wt. %) are prepared by conventional semisolid synthesizing process. The cast alloys are solution treated and aged. The solution treated alloys are further severely cold rolled to enhance the properties. The hardness and strength values are analyzed and compared with silica free Al – ZnMg alloys. Precipitation hardening phenomena is accelerated due to the increased number of potential sites for precipitation. Higher peak hardness and lesser aging time are the characteristics of thermo mechanically treated samples. For obtaining maximum hardness, optimum number and volume of precipitate particles are required. The Al-5Zn-1Mg with 5% SiO2 alloy composite shows better result. Keywords—Dislocation, hardness, matrix, thermomechanical, precipitation hardening, reinforcement.


Successful and convincing examples where local peoples' development needs have been effectively reconciled with biodiversity conservation remain difficult to find. One important reason for this is that little progress has been made in researching critical new areas such as developing indices to monitor qualitative concepts such as local partIcIpation. In this study, current approaches to the problems with measuring participation in Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs) are reviewed. A theoretical framework combining the works of several practitioners is used to monitor the Nsonga Valley Forum (NVF), in the Hlatikulu Valley, Kwazulu-Natal as an example of an emerging ICDP. The NVF was formed in 1997 after a visit by the provincial parliamentary committee on Conservation and Environment. The Forum aims to act as a mouthpiece for the local Nsonga community and as a capacity building structure, while maintaining the ecological integrity of the Hlatikulu Vlei and adjacent Afromontane Hlatikulu Forest. Two sets of indicators are used in this framework. The prevalence indicators trace the nature of participation in the various stages of the development of the NVF's operation i.e. in decision making and implementation, in benefit sharing and evaluation. The opportunity indicators refer to the level of opportunity or access available to the local people through the implementation of the Forum by analyzing its organisation and access to resources. According to this framework, the NVF would currently be classified as falling into the 'participation by consultation' category of an assumed legitimate typology of participation. Ultimately, empowerment properly defined, would be the goal of community development in the Hlatikulu Valley but would require a much greater participation of the community than is evident as present. In order to prevent biodiversity conservation and sustainable economic development from becoming no more than an attractive slogan, participatory development research needs to be replicable, cost-effective and realistic. Recommendations are accordingly made for the future assessment, monitoring and evaluation of the progress of the NVF and other similar ICDP projects.


We focus on Unsupervised Domain Adaptation (UDA) for the task of semantic segmentation. Recently, adversarial alignment has been widely adopted to match the marginal distribution of feature representations across two domains globally. However, this strategy fails in adapting the representations of the tail classes or small objects for semantic segmentation since the alignment objective is dominated by head categories or large objects. In contrast to adversarial alignment, we propose to explicitly train a domain-invariant classifier by generating and defensing against pointwise feature space adversarial perturbations. Specifically, we firstly perturb the intermediate feature maps with several attack objectives (i.e., discriminator and classifier) on each individual position for both domains, and then the classifier is trained to be invariant to the perturbations. By perturbing each position individually, our model treats each location evenly regardless of the category or object size and thus circumvents the aforementioned issue. Moreover, the domain gap in feature space is reduced by extrapolating source and target perturbed features towards each other with attack on the domain discriminator. Our approach achieves the state-of-the-art performance on two challenging domain adaptation tasks for semantic segmentation: GTA5 → Cityscapes and SYNTHIA → Cityscapes.


Mining activities over several millennia have resulted in a legacy of environmental contamination that must be mitigated to minimize ecosystem damage and human health impacts. Designing effective remediation strategies for mining and processing wastes requires knowledge of nano- and molecular-scale speciation of contaminants. Here, we discuss how modern nano- and molecular-level concepts and methods can be used to improve risk assessment and future management of contaminants that result from mining activities, and we illustrate this approach using relevant case studies.


Abstract A detailed mineralogical examination of representative material from the P2-West 'kimberlite' located in the Wajrakarur Kimberlite Field (India) demonstrates that significant differences exist between these rocks and archetypal hypabyssal kimberlite. The intrusion consists of an olivine-phyric facies which has been transected by, and includes clasts of, a consanguineous phlogopite-rich pegmatitic facies. The olivine-rich parts of P2-West are relatively fresh and consist of euhedral-to-subhedral microphenocrystal olivine set in a groundmass of fine-grained anhedral monticellite, amoeboid apatite, and subhedral-to-euhedral perovskite within a partially chloritized-to-fresh phlogopite-rich mesostasis. The rock lacks the abundant olivine macrocrysts characteristic of kimberlite. Monticellite crystals are commonly partially or completely replaced by pectolite and hydrogarnet. Similar material occurs as irregular aggregates randomly scattered throughout the groundmass. The groundmass, in contrast to that of hypabyssal kimberlites, is relatively poor in spinels. Atoll spinels are absent, with the majority of spinels occurring principally as mantles upon microphenocrystal olivine. Disaggregated cumulatelike assemblages of intergrown anhedral perovskite and spinel are common. Spinel compositions are unlike those of kimberlites and their evolutionary trend is similar to that of lamproite and lamprophyre spinels. The pegmatitic facies of the intrusion are highly and pervasively altered, and characterized by the presence of large clasts, veins, and irregular aggregates consisting of large (1-5 mm) crystals of pinkish-bronze Al-poor phlogopite intergrown with and/or including: apatite; pectolite-hydrogarnet pseudomorphs after an unidentified euhedral phase; chlorite laths; barytolamprophyllite; perovskite; tausonite; diverse Sr-Ba-carbonates; and baryte. The presence of barytolamprophyllite and tausonite are typical of potassic undersaturated alkaline rocks and have never been reported from kimberlite; however, neither feldspar nor feldspathoids are present in P2-West. Micas in fresh and altered rocks are Al2O3- and BaO-poor, and exhibit compositional evolutionary trends towards tetraferriphlogopite rather than kinoshitalite. On the basis of these mineralogical data it is suggested that P2-West represents an unusual lamproite-like intrusion which has undergone extensive hydrothermal deuteric alteration and should not be considered a bona fide kimberlite.


The literature highlights how different individual levels of political interest and knowledge matter for political attitudes and behavior. A logical-quantitative voting model is thus proposed for a two-party system, based on voters' left—right ideological positions and their degree of political involvement. The model hypothesizes that although more involved voters generally behave in accordance with their ideological orientation, those who are less involved do not. Moreover, the latter tend to be more undecided and therefore likely to be more strongly influenced by campaign activities. This model is then applied to survey data regarding the 2001 Italian general elections. Results confirm the hypotheses and show that the most competitive area is ideologically a narrow centrist area for very involved citizens, becoming wider as the level of involvement decreases. Separate analyses are carried out for different geopolitical areas of the country, with results fitting the political history of these areas.


Medicinal plants are the mirror image of wealthy India. Medicinal plants are the great source of various natural compounds that have important medicinal values and can be used for the well being of human welfare and for the safety of environment. Amorphophallus species related to the Arid Zone of India. Arid zone plants have specific antifungal, antibacterial and Anti- inflammatory activity because of the some specific bioactive compounds, that makes these plants adaptable to be growing in the desert environment. The present study was performed to screen the antimicrobial ability of Amorphophallus species against selected test microbes using its methanolic and petroleum ether extract. Petroleum ether extract and methanolic extract both shows appreciable antimicrobial activity against test microbes. Petroleum ether shows maximum activity against S. sonnei (10mg/disc, IZ=15, AI= 0.46) and K. pneumonia (10mg/disc, IZ= 14, AI= 0.35) and minimum activity against T. rubrum and negative against C. albicans. The result of methanolic extract activity was excellent. The activity was maximum against P. aeruginosa (5mg/disc, IZ= 20, AI= 1.42) and low against Klebsiella pneumonia.


The prevalence of malware in Android marketplaces is a growing and significant problem. Most existing studies focus on detecting Android malware or designing new security exten-sions to defend against specific types of attacks. In this paper, we perform an empirical study on analyzing the market-level and network-level behaviors of the Android malware ecosystem. We focus on studying whether there are interesting characteristics of those market accounts that distribute malware and specific networks that are mainly utilized by Android malware authors. We further investigate community patterns among Android mal-ware from the perspective of their market account infrastructure and remote server infrastructure. Spurred by these analysis, we design a novel community inference algorithm to find more malicious apps by exploiting their community relationships. By using a small seed set (50) of known malicious apps, we can effectively find another extra 20 times of malicious apps, while maintaining considerable accuracy higher than 94%


Research on media architecture to date has predominately focused on the integration of digital technologies, such as low-resolution media façades, into urban environments within a public context. In this paper, we present an analysis of two case studies, which investigated the use of low-resolution display technologies within a residential context for visualizing data streams generated by Internet-of-Things devices. Each study involved the deployment of a display prototype and both studies focused on visualizing electricity data. The first study used the front yard as a deployment location to encourage friendly neighborhood competition on electricity consumption and the second study focused on visualizing the performance of residential solar panels in the home. The paper discusses how we used media architecture principles as a framework to inform the design of both prototypes. Based on an analysis of the two cases, we present seven design insights for residential low-res displays as well as a series of design recommendations for residential media architecture.


The thesis examines Indonesia's state responses to terrorism and provides a critical analysis of the major legislative instruments for prosecuting and eradicating the crime of terrorism – most notably, Law No. 15 of 2003 the 'ATL' – enacted in the aftermath of coordinated bomb attacks which killed hundreds of civilians, both local residents and foreign tourists, on the island of Bali in October, 2002. In providing context to the enactment of the law, the thesis takes account of the complex socio-political factors existing during the early part of Indonesia's transition from authoritarian regime to democracy – a period known as reformasi – which contributed indirectly to a major resurgence of jihadist terrorism. The thesis also gives attention to tracing the historical trajectory of Islamist groups which have perpetrated religiously inspired violence in Indonesia for almost two centuries – and which have continued to operate in various forms since 2002 – adapting their strategies to evade infiltration by police. While pre-reformasi governmental responses, both colonial and post independence, were primarily military in nature, the thesis shows that two major events, the fall of Soeharto and the Bali bombing of 2002, provided a catalyst for a complete transformation of Indonesian state responses to terrorism. This transformation included the enactment of specific antiterrorism legislation and the subsequent creation of dedicated counter-terrorism bodies such as Densus 88 and the National Counter-terrorism Agency. It also opened Indonesia's foreign policy and allowed unprecedented levels of cooperation and funding from international allies in counter-terrorism. This transformation led to a criminal law-based approach to terrorism, as distinct from a military insurgency approach, which has led to the prosecution, arrest and execution of hundreds of terrorist suspects and has garnered much international praise for Indonesian authorities due to their ostensible successes in counter-terrorism. However, closer examination of the provisions of Indonesia's legislation and its application by police, prosecutors and the courts indicates a number of serious flaws. The 'definition' of terrorism contained in Indonesia's ATL is out of step with international norms and its politically-influenced application has led to illogical and inconsistent prosecutorial and sentencing outcomes. Calls to revise terrorism laws to close loopholes and address new developments such as the rise of ISIS have gone unheeded, leaving enforcement authorities in a compromised position. The thesis accounts for the latest phase of terrorist activity in Indonesia, the growth of support for ISIS from 2014, and the legal position relating to Foreign Terrorist Fighters and Indonesia's commitments under international law and concludes with a number of recommendations to enhance Indonesia's counter-terrorism regime.


This paper proposes a realtime duplication based algorithm (RT-DBA) for scheduling precedence-related periodic tasks with hard deadlines on networks of workstations (NOWs). We have utilized selective subtask duplication that enables some tasks to have earlier start times, which enables additional tasks (and, hence, task sets) to finish before their deadlines, thereby increasing the schedulability of a real-time application. We strongly believe that duplication can be used as a tool for obtaining a better quality of service (QoS) from the real-time heterogeneous system, and this is our major contribution. We have taken both the computation and the communication heterogeneities into account while modeling such a system. Both data and control dependencies between the tasks have also been considered. Our algorithm exhibits scalability, fully exploits the underlying parallelism, and is capable of scheduling an application, even if the available number of processors is less than the required number of processors. Based on extensive simulation studies, we observe that RT-DBA offers an enhanced success ratio as compared to other scheduling schemes when communication is a dominant factor.


In 2016, the Information Sciences and Technology department received the OSCAR Curriculum Scholarship Development Grant to incorporate research activities in five undergraduate courses. The team consisted of full-time professors, graduate and undergraduate students. The proposed poster provides an opportunity for the students to share their experiences, presented both the research they developed but also how they benefited by doing such research. As an example, a short summary on what students have learned while working on this project is provided below: "For me, the process of developing teaching modules on how to perform research was awesome. Not only it provided a great theoretical introduction, but it I also allowed me to directly apply and acquire research skills. Moreover, I felt as being part of something useful as my work was immediately integrated in various courses providing the students an introduction to the research methodology (or refreshing their research skills). During my time with this project I have gained a more thoughtful understanding of the types of research skills that are asked from a student. When most students have to start a research assignment they usually have no idea where to begin because the skills they were taught were either incomplete or simply not advanced enough, and the instructors are more focus on their subject matter rather on the general research methodology. I believe that our work will fill the gap, making the students more comfortable to perform research projects or write research papers in any branch of study." (Priya Pelluru, 2018).


The UK Government's ten year strategic vision for public libraries in England was defined in Framework for the Future, which set out current strengths and key areas for development for public libraries in supporting lifelong learning, and the benefits to be gained from public libraries working in partnership with other organisations. It describes the role of public libraries in providing a flexible and supportive environment for adult learners and the importance of allowing users to learn 'at their own pace, without having to study for a qualification'. A study for the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) undertaken by a team at Liverpool John Moores University reported on the first phase of a project on public library provision for adult learners. Library services sampled in the study have all established good relationships and reciprocal arrangements with a wide range of partners to provide adult learning services. A wide range of courses and services is provided, some of which will have a broad appeal to all learner groups, and others, which are targeted to a particular community. Some courses entice new learners and others continue to engage people in the learning process. This works towards social inclusion and bridging the digital divide. All library services sampled expressed the desire to provide an appropriate environment for learners. Public libraries use a variety of methods to promote adult learning services, but acknowledge that promotion needs to be more sophisticated and informed by market research undertaken within particular communities.


The framework of Quaternary faults in Alaska remains poorly constrained. Recent studies in the Alaska Range north of the Denali fault add significantly to the recognition of Quaternary deformation in this active orogen. Faults and folds active during the Quaternary occur over a length of ∼500 km along the northern flank of the Alaska Range, extending from Mount McKinley (Denali) eastward to the Tok River valley. These faults exist as a continuous system of active structures, but we divide the system into four regions based on east-west changes in structural style. At the western end, the Kantishna Hills have only two known faults but the highest rate of shallow crustal seismicity. The western northern foothills fold-thrust belt consists of a 50-km-wide zone of subparallel thrust and reverse faults. This broad zone of deformation narrows to the east in a transition zone where the range-bounding fault of the western northern foothills fold-thrust belt terminates and displacement occurs on thrust and/or reverse faults closer to the Denali fault. The eastern northern foothills fold-thrust belt is characterized by ∼40-km-long thrust fault segments separated across left-steps by NNE-trending left-lateral faults. Altogether, these faults accommodate much of the topographic growth of the northern flank of the Alaska Range. Recognition of this thrust fault system represents a significant concern in addition to the Denali fault for infrastructure adjacent to and transecting the Alaska Range. Although additional work is required to characterize these faults sufficiently for seismic hazard analysis, the regional extent and structural character should require the consideration of the northern Alaska Range thrust system in regional tectonic models.


Squeeze outs are both visible and palpable manifestations of a controlling shareholder's raw power within the corporate machinery – the ability to openly force minority shareholders to exit the company by accepting a certain price for their shares. Yet, squeeze outs can be value enhancing at times due to the benefits of enabling the controller to acquire the entire company. Perhaps due to this rather conflicted and dramatic background, squeeze out regulation takes on varying hues across multiple jurisdictions. In this article, we analyze the regulation of squeeze outs from a comparative perspective, with India as the primary frame of reference.In India, the controllers can choose among several available transaction structures to implement a squeeze out. These include the compulsory acquisition mechanism, scheme of arrangement and reduction of capital. Unsurprisingly, the structure most commonly used by controllers is the reduction of capital, which provides the least protection to minority shareholders.After analyzing the level of minority protection in a squeeze out in India, we explore potential reforms by examining how other jurisdictions such as the United States, European Union, the United Kingdom and Singapore regulate these transactions. The goal is to examine which approach (or combination of approaches) may present attractive options for India.Drawing from these other jurisdictions, we suggest reforms for regulation of squeeze outs in India. Given the institutional landscape and ground realities in India, we conclude that it is perhaps more effective to reduce reliance on court decisions to protect minorities and rely on regulatory enforcement around greater decision‐making powers to independent boards and to the minorities themselves.


A case study was undertaken to determine the economic impact of a change in management class as detailed in the A, B, C and D management class framework. This document focuses on the implications of changing from D to C, C to B and B to A class management in the Burdekin Delta region and if the change is worthwhile from an economic perspective. This report provides a guide to the economic impact that may be expected when undertaking a particular change in farming practices and will ultimately lead to more informed decisions being made by key industry stakeholders. It is recognised that these management classes have certain limitations and in many cases the grouping of practices may not be reflective of the real situation.

The economic case study is based on the A, B, C and D management class framework for water quality improvement developed in 2007/2008 for the Burdekin natural resource management region. The framework for the Burdekin is currently being updated to clarify some issues and incorporate new knowledge since the earlier version of the framework. However, this updated version is not yet complete and so the Paddock to Reef project has used the most current available version of the framework for the modelling and economics. As part of the project specification, sugarcane crop production data for the Burdekin Delta region was provided by the APSIM model. The information obtained from the APSIM crop modelling programme included sugarcane yields and legume grain yield (legume grain yield only applies to A class management practice).

Because of the complexity involved in the economic calculations, a combination of the FEAT, PiRisk and a custom made spreadsheet was used for the economic analysis. Figures calculated in the FEAT program were transferred to the custom made spreadsheet to develop a discounted cash flow analysis. The marginal cash flow differences for each farming system were simulated over a 5-year and 10-year planning horizon to determine the Net Present Value of changing across different management practices. PiRisk was used to test uncertain parameters in the economic analysis and the potential risk associated with a change in value.


One simple, cost-effective action to improve children's safety in cars is to restrain them in the rear seat whenever this is possible, as this has been shown to be about 35% safer than sitting in the front in the event of a crash. Moreover, seating position and restraint use have an interactive effect on safety: wearing a restraint and sitting in the rear provides the best protection of all. Despite this fact it appears that a high proportion of children are still travelling in the front seats of cars in Australia. Changing this behaviour presents a challenge as we have little information about the factors that influence parental decisions regarding seating position for children. Focus group discussions were held with parentdrivers (n = 33) of children (12 years and younger) in urban areas of Brisbane to explore these factors. Findings were that parents usually had firm rules that children should always sit in the back. However, there were occasions when parents relaxed these rules for what they saw as legitimate reasons. Amongst these were: perceptions of the trip as short, giving children a "treat", and management of behaviours such as sibling fights and tantrums.


Background: Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) is a disease of increasing importance and it is frequent in stroke patients. SDB is being recognized as an independent risk factor for several clinical consequences, including cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. Methods: The present review summarizes the current evidence for an independent association between SDB and stroke, defining SDB subgroups, mechanisms, confounding factors and other epidemiological aspects. We analyze stroke outcome and prognosis in SDB patients. A search for recent data on this issue was made in several population-based studies and reference lists of articles. Results: Many recent studies have shown an association between SDB and stroke. Moreover, there is a high prevalence of sleep apnea in patients with stroke. The pathogenesis of stroke in obstructive sleep apnea syndrome is not completely understood and likely to be multifactorial. Several mechanisms like hemodynamic disturbances and inflammatory or endothelial dysfunction could be involved. The presence of SDB in stroke patients may lead to a poor outcome and recurrence. Noninvasive treatments such as continuous positive airway pressure may decrease the risk of stroke in terms of secondary, and possibly, primary prevention. Conclusions: SDB is associated with cerebrovascular morbidity and an unfavorable clinical course. The presence of SDB should be systematically screened in patients with acute stroke. Further studies are needed to determine whether continuous positive airway pressure treatment ameliorates stroke outcome and prognosis.


When Alice tumbles down a rabbit hole one summer afternoon in pursuit of a White Rabbit, she finds herself in Wonderland. And here begin the adventures that have made Alice the stuff of legend and ensured that Lewis Carroll's book is the best loved and most widely read in children's literature. Illustrated by Sir John Tenniel, with an Afterword by Anna South.


In this paper we analyze for the first time the post-quantum security of AES. AES is the most popular and widely used block cipher, established as the encryption standard by the NIST in 2001. We consider the secret key setting and, in particular, AES-256, the recommended primitive and one of the few existing ones that aims at providing a post-quantum security of 128 bits. In order to determine the new security margin, i.e., the lowest number of non-attacked rounds in time less than 2128 encryptions, we first provide generalized and quantized versions of the best known cryptanalysis on reduced-round AES, as well as a discussion on attacks that don't seem to benefit from a significant quantum speed-up. We propose a new framework for structured search that encompasses both the classical and quantum attacks we present, and allows to efficiently compute their complexity. We believe this framework will be useful for future analysis.Our best attack is a quantum Demirci-Selçuk meet-in-the-middle attack. Unexpectedly, using the ideas underlying its design principle also enables us to obtain new, counter-intuitive classical TMD trade-offs. In particular, we can reduce the memory in some attacks against AES-256 and AES-128.One of the building blocks of our attacks is solving efficiently the AES S-Box differential equation, with respect to the quantum cost of a reversible S-Box. We believe that this generic quantum tool will be useful for future quantum differential attacks. Judging by the results obtained so far, AES seems a resistant primitive in the post-quantum world as well as in the classical one, with a bigger security margin with respect to quantum generic attacks.


Background and Purpose— We evaluate associations between the severity of magnetic resonance perfusion-weighted imaging abnormalities, as assessed by the hypoperfusion intensity ratio (HIR), on infarct progression and functional outcome in the Diffusion and Perfusion Imaging Evaluation for Understanding Stroke Evolution Study 2 (DEFUSE 2). Methods— Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and perfusion-weighted imaging lesion volumes were determined with the RAPID software program. HIR was defined as the proportion of TMax >6 s lesion volume with a Tmax >10 s delay and was dichotomized based on its median value (0.4) into low versus high subgroups as well as quartiles. Final infarct volumes were assessed at day 5. Initial infarct growth velocity was calculated as the baseline diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) lesion volume divided by the delay from symptom onset to baseline magnetic resonance imaging. Total Infarct growth was determined by the difference between final infarct and baseline DWI volumes. Collateral flow was assessed on conventional angiography and dichotomized into good and poor flow. Good functional outcome was defined as modified Rankin Scale ⩽2 at 90 days. Results— Ninety-nine patients were included; baseline DWI, perfusion-weighted imaging, and final infarct volumes increased with HIR quartiles (P<0.01). A high HIR predicted poor collaterals with an area under the curve of 0.73. Initial infarct growth velocity and total infarct growth were greater among patients with a high HIR (P<0.001). After adjustment for age, DWI volume, and reperfusion, a low HIR was associated with good functional outcome: odds ratio=4.4 (95% CI, 1.3–14.3); P=0.014. Conclusions— HIR can be easily assessed on automatically processed perfusion maps and predicts the rate of collateral flow, infarct growth, and clinical outcome.


Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a complex group of genetic blood disorders that currently affects 90 000-100 000 Americans primarily of African descent. SCD leads to physiological and psychosocial distress. In relation to school youth with SCD are at high risk of poor academic outcomes including: low scores on tests of academic achievement and increased risk of poor grades special education and grade retention. There is a paucity of literature on family functioning's effect on academic functioning in youth with SCD. Poor family functioning in youth with SCD has been related to many other psychosocial outcomes such as behavior problems poor mental health and quality of life. The current study examined whether family functioning is directly related to the academic outcomes of youth with SCD and investigated whether family functioning moderates the relationships between disease severity SES age and academic outcomes using simultaneous multiple regression models. The current study utilized data collected at the beginning of phase three of the Cooperative Study of Sickle Cell Disease (CSSCD) consisting of 198 youth aged 6 to 16 years. Family functioning was evaluated using the Family Environment Scale academic achievement by broad reading and math scores from the Woodcock-Johnson Revised Tests of Academic Achievement and school competence by the School Competence Scale of the CBCL. Results indicate that family functioning variables were neither directly related to academic outcomes nor did they moderate the relationship between academic outcomes and other factors. Results also indicated that IQ as measured by the FSIQ of the WISC-III was the most powerful predictor of academic functioning. Limitations and clinical implications are discussed.


John Ravenscroft (1664/5–1697) is today best known for the fact that in 1695 he published a set of church sonatas that closely imitate Corelli in their style. The discourse around Ravenscroft has ever since focused on these twelve sonatas and the significance of their relationship to their illustrious model, to the exclusion of a later set of sonatas of different kind but equal merit. Ravenscroft's fascinating and unusual biography has likewise been totally ignored. The article examines the background of his distinguished, Catholic-leaning family in England during a long, turbulent period when Catholics were severely disadvantaged and his short but productive period spent in Rome, aided by newly discovered archival documents and a rich variety of other sources, both old and more recent, most of which have previously been overlooked by music historians.


Notable problems in Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) are caused by biases and drifts in both exteroceptive and proprioceptive sensors. The impacts of sensor biases include inconsistent map estimates and inaccurate localization. Unlike Map Aided Localisation with Joint Sensor Bias Estimation (MAL-JSBE), SLAM with Joint Sensor Bias Estimation (SLAM-JSBE) is more complex as it encompasses a state space, which increases with the discovery of new landmarks and the inherent map to vehicle correlations. The properties such as observability, error bounds and convergence rates of SLAM-JSBE using an augmented estimation theoretic, state space approach, are investigated here. SLAM-JSBE experiments, which adhere to the derived constraints, are demonstrated using a low cost inertial navigation sensor suite.


From 1850 to 1914, Brazil enjoyed a long period of political and financial stability that was interrupted just once. During this rupture, 1889-1894, the country suffered two successful coups-d'etat, military government, civil war, and a disastrous decline in the value of the national currency. The five years of disorder and crisis came in the wake of the nation's abolition of slavery and related financial repercussions. This book examines Brazil's crisis years, for the first time setting post-slavery financial decisions within their international and local historical contexts. Arguing against the "European dependency" interpretation of Brazil's history, John Schulz explains how planters' demands for easy credit after abolition were met with shortsighted economic policies. The failure of the expansionary monetary policy of the 1890s not only illuminates Brazil's history, it also suggests lessons relevant to financial and political decisions being made today.


In the aftermath of flooding disasters, a temptation is to pursue recovery while also dismissing the event as unlikely to recur. Is it possible that underlying streamflow trends, which often avoid detection, help explain individual flooding episodes and should influence future expectations? How do impoundments (dams) affect these trends? Our study provides a comparative analysis to answer these key questions that help determine whether flood planning will be successful. Examining the 25 largest Texas metropolitan areas, we assessed peak flow trends for stream gages having at least 25 years of data. Of 181 total gages, 34 (18.8%) exhibited significant upward trends. Over 85% of those with upward trends are located in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington (17.6%) and Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land (67.6%) areas. Approximately 62% of gages with upward trends are in Harris County. Among 84 sites impacted by impoundment, 11 (13.1%) still exhibited upward trends. These findings show that increasing peak flows underlie recent flooding in some areas, spotlighting streams in greatest need of examination. Increasing peak flows in some locations even after impoundment suggest dams might not be a complete solution. Finally, maintaining a robust monitoring network is critical to flood planning, and analysis is hampered when data are lacking.
Citation: Berg MD. 2018. Peak flow trends highlight emerging urban flooding hotspots in Texas. Texas Water Journal. 9(1):18-29. Available from: https://doi.org/10.21423/twj.v9i1.7068.


The distribution of adult aquatic insects in the mixed evergreen forest adjacent to Big Sulphur Creek, Sonoma Co., Calif., was examined using sticky traps (0.26 m2 each) that were placed in trees at three distances (5, 40, 150 m) from the stream and at three heights (2, 5, 8 m) above the ground. Species richness, number of individuals, and biomass of aquatic insects, and number of individuals for seven of 12 common aquatic insect taxa decreased (P ≤ 5 0.05) as distance from the stream increased. Species richness, number of individuals, and biomass of aquatic insects showed no relationship with height above the ground, but of the 12 common taxa, three were most abundant near tree tops and one was most abundant near tree bases (P ≤ 0.05). Adult aquatic insects represented 36.9 and 15.4% of total arthropod numbers and 25.3 and 10.7% of total arthropod biomass at the 5-m and 150-m sites, respectively. The abundance of adult aquatic insects in the forest bordering this stream suggests that adult aquatic insects provide an important conduit for energy and nutrients from the aquatic system to the terrestrial food web.


Basic College Mathematics, 3rd Edition 1 Whole Numbers 1.1 Introduction to Whole Numbers 1.2 Addition of Whole Numbers and Perimeter 1.3 Subtraction of Whole Numbers 1.4 Rounding and Estimating 1.5 Multiplication of Whole Numbers and Area 1.6 Division of Whole Numbers PRE: Operations on Whole Numbers 1.7 Exponents, Square Roots, and the Order of Operations 1.8 Problem Solving Strategies Group Activity: Becoming a Successful Student 2 Fractions and Mixed Numbers: Multiplication and Division 2.1 Introduction to Fractions and Mixed Numbers 2.2 Prime Numbers and Factorisations 2.3 Simplifying Fractions to Lowest Terms 2.4 Multiplication of Fractions and Applications 2.5 Division of Fractions and Applications PRE: Multiplication and Division of Fractions 2.6 Multiplication and Division of Mixed Numbers Group Activity: Cooking for Company 3 Fractions and Mixed Numbers: Addition and Subtraction 3.1 Addition and Subtraction of Like Fractions 3.2 Least Common Multiple 3.3 Addition and Subtraction of Unlike Fractions 3.4 Addition and Subtractions of Mixed Numbers PRE: Operations on Fractions and Mixed Numbers 3.5 Order of Operations and Applications of Fractions and Mixed Numbers Group Activity: Card Games with Fractions 4 Decimals 4.1 Decimal Notation and Rounding 4.2 Addition and Subtraction of Decimals 4.3 Multiplication of Decimals 4.4 Division of Decimals PRE: Operations on Decimals 4.5 Fractions as Decimals 4.6 Order of Operations and Applications of Decimals Group Activity: Purchasing from a Catalog 5 Ratio and Proportion 5.1 Ratios 5.2 Rates and Unit Cost 5.3 Proportions PRE: Operations on Fractions versus Solving Proportions 5.4 Applications of Proportions and Similar Figures Group Activity: Investigating Probability 6 Percents 6.1 Percents and Their Fraction and Decimal Forms 6.2 Fractions and Decimals and Their Percent Forms 6.3 Percent Proportions and Applications 6.4 Percent Equations and Applications PRE: Percents 6.5 Applications Involving Sales Tax, Commission, Discount, and Markup 6.6 Percent Increase and Decrease 6.7 Simple and Compound Interest Group Activity: Credit Card Investment 7 Measurement 7.1 Converting US Customary Units of Length 7.2 Converting US Customary Units of Time, Weight, and Capacity 7.3 Metric Units of Length 7.4 Metric Units of Mass and Capactiy and Medical Applications PRE: US Customary and Metric Conversions 7.5 Converting Between US Customary and Metric Units Group Activity: Remodeling the Classroom 8 Geometry 8.1 Lines and Angles 8.2 Triangles and the Pythagorean Theorem 8.3 Quadrilaterals, Perimeter, and Area 8.4 Circles, Circumference, and Area PRE: Area, Perimeter, and Circumference 8.5 Volume Group Activity: Constructing a Golden Rectangle 9 Introduction to Statistics 9.1 Tables, Bar Graphs, Pictographs, and Lines Graphs 9.2 Frequency Distributions and Histograms 9.3 Circle Graphs 9.4 Mean, Median, and Mode 9.5 Introduction to Probability Group Activity: Creating a Statistical Report 10 Real Numbers 10.1 Real Numbers and the Real Number Line 10.2 Addition of Real Numbers 10.3 Subtraction of Real Numbers PRE: Addition and Subtraction of Real Numbers 10.4 Multiplication and Division of Real Numbers PRE: Operations on Real Numbers 10.5 Order of Operations Group Activity: Checking Weather Predictions 11 Solving Equations 11.1 Properties of Real Numbers 11.2 Simplifying Expressions 11.3 Addition and Subtraction Properties of Equality 11.4 Multiplication and Division Properties of Equality 11.5 Solving Equations with Multiple Steps PRE: Equations versus Expressions 11.6 Applications and Problem Solving Group Activity: Deciphering a Coded Message Additional Topics Appendix A.1 Energy and Power A.2 Scientific Notation A.3 Rectangular Coordinate System


This record contains 2 photographs. (from left to right) Margaret Samdahl (Lee Chapel Museum Shop Lead), Donald H. Samdahl Jr. (Head Librarian at VMI Preston Library), Dr. Donald A. Hopkins (seated), Lucy Wilkins (Manager of Lee Chapel), and Tom Camden (Head of W&L Special Collections and Archives) look over material during the Friends of the Library's first ever joint event. It was a collaboration between Friends of the Library, Friends of Lee Chapel, and Preston Library of Virginia Military Institute. Dr. Donald A. Hopkins gave a speech titled Robert E. Lee in War and Peace on his new book Robert E. Lee: The Photographic History of a Confederate and American Icon.


Getting other people to do what we want is a useful skill for anyone. Whether you're seeking a job, negotiating a deal, or angling for that big promotion, you're engaged in strategic thought and action. In such moments, you imagine what might be going on in another person's head and how they'll react to what you do or say. At the same time, you also try to pick the best way to realize your goals, both with and without the other person's cooperation. Getting Your Way teaches us how to win that game by offering a fuller understanding of how strategy works in the real world. As we all know, rules of strategy are regularly discovered and discussed in popular books for business executives, military leaders, and politicians. Those works with their trendy lists of pithy maxims and highly effective habits can help people avoid mistakes or even think anew about how to tackle their problems. But they are merely suggestive, as each situation we encounter in the real world is always more complex than anticipated, more challenging than we had hoped. James M. Jasper here shows us how to anticipate those problems before they actually occur—by recognizing the dilemmas all strategic players must negotiate, with each option accompanied by a long list of costs and risks. Considering everyday dilemmas in a broad range of familiar settings, from business and politics to love and war, Jasper explains how to envision your goals, how to make the first move, how to deal with threats, and how to employ strategies with greater confidence. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Rosa Parks, Hugo Chavez, and David Koresh all come into play in this smart and engaging book, one that helps us recognize and prepare for the many dilemmas inherent in any strategic action.


In the midlands of KwaZulu-Natal there runs the beautiful and scenic Umgeni River which is joined by the Lions River before flowing into Midmar Dam. Along Umgeni River lies a property which is the subject of a tug of war between the Haffejee Trust and eThekwini Municipality over the expropriation of the property by the Municipality under the Expropriation Act, 1975. Haffejee v eThekwini Municipality (110/10) [2011] ZACC 28 (25 August 2011) considered whether compensation should be paid before expropriation of property.


The active components of largely consumed dietary onions (Allium species) in Turkey were extracted with water and ethanol, separately heated in a drying oven (at 50°C, for 1–4 h) and in a microwave oven (at 90 W, for 1–4 min), and their total antioxidant capacity was determined with different electron transfer-based assays. Five different onion species/aerial parts, namely yellow, red, white, fresh green leaf, and fresh green root, were measured for total antioxidant capacity with different methods, the hierarchic order in aqueous extracts being: CERAC: yellow-skinned > red-skinned > spring-root > spring-leaf > white-skinned onion; CUPRAC: spring-leaf > red-skinned > spring-root > yellow-skinned > white-skinned onion; Folin-Ciocalteau method: spring-leaf > spring-root > red-skinned > yellow-skinned > white-skinned onion. Using all three methods, white onion, showed the lowest total antioxidant capacity, while with respect to two methods (i.e., CUPRAC and Folin-Ciocalteau), spring onion-leaf showed the highest value. In ethanolic extracts, white onion exhibited the lowest total antioxidant capacity using two methods (CUPRAC and Folin-Ciocalteau). Of the heat-processed onions, the highest CERAC and Folin-Ciocalteau total antioxidant capacity values were obtained for red-skinned onions, while the highest CUPRAC value was for spring onion leaves. All three assays marked white-skinned onion as the lowest total antioxidant capacity content of heat-processed products. The change in total antioxidant capacity caused by both heating processes was not drastic; spring onion leaves essentially maintained its total antioxidant capacity level after 4 min microwave or 4 h drying oven heating. Onion processing by heat treatment did not cause a drastic loss in antioxidant values, favourable for traditional cooking practices.


Attribute-based Encryption (ABE) is regarded as a promising cryptographic conducting tool to guarantee data owners' direct control over their data in public cloud storage. The earlier ABE schemes involve only one authority to maintain the whole attribute set, which can bring a single-point bottleneck on both security and performance. Subsequently, some multi-authority schemes are proposed, in which multiple authorities separately maintain disjoint attribute subsets. However, the single-point bottleneck problem remains unsolved. In this paper, from another perspective, we conduct a threshold multi-authority CP-ABE access control scheme for public cloud storage, named TMACS, in which multiple authorities jointly manage a uniform attribute set. In TMACS, taking advantage of (t; n) threshold secret sharing, the master key can be shared among multiple authorities, and a legal user can generate his/her secret key by interacting with any t authorities. Security and performance analysis results show that TMACS is not only verifiable secure when less than t authorities are compromised, but also robust when no less than t authorities are alive in the system. Furthermore, by efficiently combining the traditional multi-authority scheme with TMACS, we construct a hybrid one, which satisfies the scenario of attributes coming from different authorities as well as achieving security and system-level robustness.


Some variations in luting technique from those recommended by manufacturers may hold clinical advantages, but it is also necessary to evaluate other parameters of the performance of the restored unit. Among these is fracture resistance. Accordingly, indirect composite resin restorations were placed in standardized preparations under standardized conditions. Restorations were placed in three groups of 10 teeth, each group with a different luting procedure: luting with a composite resin restorative material, conventional luting but without enamel etching, and luting with a 4-META material. In another group the restorations were luted in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations, while two groups of sound teeth acted as control. Following compressive loading on a universal testing machine, the force required to cause fracture was recorded. The results indicated that optimal fracture resistance of teeth restored with indirect composite resin restorations was obtained when the 4-META-based luting material was used.


This study investigates how science and performing arts classes motivate high school students, particularly students of color, to pursue higher education. The changes in funding and perceived importance of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) vs. Visual Performing Arts (VPA) classes and programs, as well as the underrepresentation of students of color in these areas, make this topic important. Existing literature independently examines the positive effects of science and arts classes on student success but fails to compare the benefits of these programs and to include the student voice. Through the use of participant observation, questionnaires, and interviews, this study aims to compare if and how a physiology and an acting class at Charlotte High School motivate students to pursue college. Findings suggest that science and arts courses influence students' motivation differently. Questionnaire findings show that acting students were more likely to agree that their class is fun, helpful, and motivating than their peers in the physiology class. Interview findings matched these results. For example, questionnaire data reveals that students enrolled in the acting class are more motivated to pursue a college degree than those in the physiology class. This may be due to more engaging pedagogy and activities that build confidence in the class. Study implications highlight the need for continued funding of arts education to nurture unmotivated high school students' college aspirations. Author/Artist Bio Alejandra Acosta is an undergraduate student at UCLA studying Sociology, Spanish, and Chicana/o Studies. Her experience as a performing arts student in high school inspired this topic as her first research project. Alejandra aspires to enter the education field and be an advocate for equity, bilingual education, and performing arts education.


The chemical structure and biological properties of the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from Vibrio cholerae 395 (Ogawa), isolated by the phenol-water procedure, were studied. Upon acid hydrolysis, the LPS was split into its polysaccharide and lipid A moieties. The polysaccharide contained both neutral (glucose, heptose, fructose) and amino (glucosamine, quinovosamine) sugars. The LPS contained the acid-labile amino sugar, 4-amino-arabinose, which was absent in the Inaba serotype of V. cholerae. The LPS differed from the LPSs of Enterobacteriaceae by the absence of 2-keto-3-deoxyoctonate and the presence of fructose. Analysis of the methylated polysaccharide by gas-liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry showed that it had a branched structure with glucose and heptose residues primarily appearing at the nonreducing-end groups. Interactions with lectins, concanavalin A. and wheat germ agglutinin suggested that terminal glucose residues were alpha linked, whereas terminal glucosamine residues were connected by alpha-1,3 linkages. The major fatty acids of the LPS were C14:0, C16:0, C12h:0, and C14h:0 compounds, of which only the C14h:0 were amide linked, the remainder being ester linked to the backbone. Biological studies showed that the LPS possessed endotoxic properties such as lethality, pyrogenicity, limulus lysate gelation, and ability to induce non-specific resistance to infection. Thus, the LPS from V. cholerae 395 (Ogawa) possessed both common and distinct features as compared with the LPSs from the Enterobacteriaceae.


Book synopsis: Essentialism--roughly, the view that natural kinds have discrete essences, generating truths that are necessary but knowable only a posteriori--is an increasingly popular view in the metaphysics of science. At the same time, philosophers of language have been subjecting Kripke's views about the existence and scope of the necessary a posteriori to rigorous analysis and criticism. Essentialists typically appeal to Kripkean semantics to motivate their radical extension of the realm of the necessary a posteriori; but they rarely attempt to provide any semantic arguments for this extension, or engage with the critical work being done by philosophers of language. This collection brings authors on both sides together in one volume, thus helping the reader to see the connections between views in philosophy of language on the one hand and the metaphysics of science on the other. The result is a book that will have a significant impact on the debate about essentialism, encouraging essentialists to engage with debates about the semantic presuppositions that underpin their position, and, encouraging philosophers of language to engage with the metaphysical presuppositions enshrined in Kripkean semantics.


A multistage distillation column in which mass transfer and a reversible chemical reaction occurred simultaneously, has been investigated to formulate a technique by which this process can be analysed or predicted. A transesterification reaction between ethyl alcohol and butyl acetate, catalysed by concentrated sulphuric acid, was selected for the investigation and all the components were analysed on a gas liquid chromatograph. The transesterification reaction kinetics have been studied in a batch reactor for catalyst concentrations of 0.1 - 1.0 weight percent and temperatures between 21.4 and 85.0 °C. The reaction was found to be second order and dependent on the catalyst concentration at a given temperature. The vapour liquid equilibrium data for six binary, four ternary and one quaternary systems are measured at atmospheric pressure using a modified Cathala dynamic equilibrium still. The systems with the exception of ethyl alcohol - butyl alcohol mixtures, were found to be non-ideal. Multicomponent vapour liquid equilibrium compositions were predicted by a computer programme which utilised the Van Laar constants obtained from the binary data sets. Good agreement was obtained between the predicted and experimental quaternary equilibrium vapour compositions. Continuous transesterification experiments were carried out in a six stage sieve plate distillation column. The column was 3" in internal diameter and of unit construction in glass. The plates were 8" apart and had a free area of 7.7%. Both the liquid and vapour streams were analysed. The component conversion was dependent on the boilup rate and the reflux ratio. Because of the presence of the reaction, the concentration of one of the lighter components increased below the feed plate. In the same region a highly developed foam was formed due to the presence of the catalyst. The experimental results were analysed by the solution of a series of simultaneous enthalpy and mass equations. Good agreement was obtained between the experimental and calculated results.


The number of freshmen interested in entrepreneurship has grown dramatically in the last few years. In response, many universities have created entrepreneurship programs, including ones focused on engineering entrepreneurship. In this paper, we report on NEWPATH, an innovative NSF-supported program at Ohio State, designed to nurture students to become IT entrepreneurs. While the program builds on the experiences of other schools, it includes a number of novel components that are integrated together in an unusual manner to interlock and complement each other. The result is an ecosystem that is exceptionally effective in achieving its key goal of helping students succeed as IT entrepreneurs. Indeed, between the 25 or so students who are active in NEWPATH, three or four enterprises have been launched and have acquired or are close to acquiring VC/angel funding; a couple of others were launched with seed-funding before the involved students decided their business model was not as viable as they thought and suspended work. The students involved range from sophomores through seniors/recent graduates.