In this work, we present a novel optical imaging device that can be directly integrated into a microfluidic network, and can therefore enable on-chip imaging in a microfluidic system. This micro imaging device, termed optofluidic microscope (OFM) is free of bulk optics and is based on a nanohole array defined in a non-transmissive metallic layer that is patterned onto the floor of the microfluidic channel. The operation of the optofluidic microscope is explained in details and its performance is examined with Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) of various genotypes. Images from a large population of worms have been efficiently acquired within a short time frame. The quality of the OFM images of C elegans and the morphological characteristics revealed by the images are evaluated. The experimental results support our claim that the methodology described therein promises to create a powerful tool for fulfilling high- resolution, high-throughput imaging task of the microscopic biological samples.


Cavitation scale effects can be grouped into two major categories: susceptibility of the water to cavitation, i.e., the amount, size, and type of microbubbles
or microparticulates in the water acting as inception nuclei, and flow field effects due to such factors as velocity and pressure distributions, body size and
shape, viscous effects, and turbulent phenomena. Experimental investigations into these two aspects of scale effects were performed in the present study.

Field investigations of marine nuclei populations were made using underwater holography to observe microbubbles and particulates, including microplankton in oceanic waters of Los Angeles Harbor, San Pedro Channel and near Santa
Catalina Island. Holographic detection was shown to be a reliable method of measuring the nuclei number concentration density distributions. Overall, very
high concentrations of the various types of potential cavitation nuclei were observed at all of the test sites and depths examined, although the statistical significance of these results is strong only in the smaller size ranges (less than 50 μm), where a significant number of counts were made. Relatively high bubble concentrations during calm sea conditions, and their population inversion below
the thermocline where organism activity was high, indicate a possible biological source of bubble production rather than the usual surface mechanisms of breaking
waves and whitecaps. The measured population of particulates is somewhat higher than comparable data in the ocean or in cavitation test facilities, and
the number density distribution of particulates decreases approximately as the fourth power of the particle size, as often reported in the literature. An increase
in particle concentration near the bottom of the thermocline in clear coastal waters is observed. The total concentration of particles and bubbles in a liquid
provides an upper bound on the number of potentially active cavitation nuclei. The measured bubble sizes can be used to indicate that the average tensile strength of the ocean waters examined in this study should be on the order of via
few thousand Pascals, with a minimum expected value of about one hundred Pascals. The present results support the recommendation of Billet (1985), that a concentration of at least 3 bubbles per cm^3 in the 5 to 20 μm radius range is
needed in test facility water in order to model marine conditions.

Experimental studies were also made on the inception processes in a large turbulent free shear layer generated by a sharp edged plate in a water tunnel at Reynolds numbers up to 2 X 10^6. Two distinct types of vortex motion were evident in the shear layer, the primary span wise and the secondary longitudinal vortices. Cavitation inception occurs consistently in the secondary shear layer
vortices and more fully developed cavitation is visible in both structures, with the streamwise cavities primarily confined to the braid regions between adjacent
spanwise vortices. A Rankine vortex model indicates that the secondary vortex strength is always less than 10% of that of the primary structure. Measurements
of fluctuating pressures in the turbulent shear layer are made by holographically monitoring the size of air bubbles injected into the non-cavitating flow, showing
that pressure fluctuations were much stronger than previously reported, with positive and negative pressure peaks as high as 3 times the freestream dynamic
pressure, sufficient to explain the occurrence of cavitation inception at high values of the inception index. Cavitation inception indices display a strong
dependence on the dissolved air content and thus on the availability of freestream bubble cavitation nuclei. The present inception data do not display a clear
dependence on freestream velocity (or Reynolds number) but do fall into the overall range of data of previous bluff body investigations. The occurrence of inception in the secondary vortices of the shear layer, and previous reports
of velocity dependence of these cores (Bernal 1981) may provide the key to explaining the commonly observed Reynolds number scaling of the inception index in shear flows.


The {\L}ojasiewicz inequality shows that H\"olderian error bounds on the minimum of convex optimization problems hold almost generically. Here, we clarify results of \citet{Nemi85} who show that H\"olderian error bounds directly controls the performance of restart schemes. The constants quantifying error bounds are of course unobservable, but we show that optimal restart strategies are robust, and searching for the best scheme only increases the complexity by a logarithmic factor compared to the optimal bound. Overall then, restart schemes generically accelerate accelerated methods.


Cardiovascular disease affects 1.6 million Canadians, of whom one-third have heart failure (HF). HF is diagnosed by imaging investigations and detection of circulating biomarkers. Most of the current imaging strategies study morphologic and gross functional changes, but fall short of imaging molecular abnormalities associated with HF. Biomarkers offer molecular targets; however, clinical biomarkers circulate systemically and are not cardiac-specific. Thus, there is critical need for a biomarker that is endogenous to myocardial tissues. The growth hormone secretagogue receptor 1a (GHSR1a), which binds the hormone ghrelin, is expressed by cardiomyocytes and is elevated in HF patients. This study characterized the specificity of the novel tracer [1-Nal, Lys(4-[F]-FB)]G-7039 to target GHSR1a using Positron Emission Tomography (PET). In vitro analysis of probe specificity by cellular uptake determined that binding was independent of receptor expression, which was confirmed by in vivo PET imaging in GHSR1a-wildtype (wt) and -knockout (ghsr) mice. Ex vivo biodistribution comparing specificity and effects of nutritional state showed that [1-Nal, Lys(4-[F]-FB)]G-7039 did not distribute to the heart and uptake was independent of circulating ghrelin levels. Although [1-Nal, Lys(4-[F]-FB)]G-7039 demonstrated in vitro stability, negligible cardiac uptake and high uptake in the liver, intestines and kidneys within 1 h post-injection indicated rapid probe elimination through hepatobiliary and renal mechanisms, possibly explained by a highly lipophilic tracer. Analysis of cardiac GHSR1a expression and metabolic markers by fluorescence microscopy in fasted, fed, wt and ghsr mice suggests that there may be a ghrelin/GHSR1a system in the heart that is regulated independently of systemic ghrelin/GHSR1a, and that GHSR1a does not play a significant role in cardiac metabolism in healthy mice. In vitro stability and cellular uptake, ex vivo biodistribution and in vivo imaging conducted in this study present a step towards characterizing a suitable GHSR1a PET tracer that may be used to detect HF.


This study investigated the concordance between clinician and patient assessments of patient's physical and mental functioning, made using 4-category ordinal scales, for a consecutive sample of 166 outpatients with rheumatoid arthritis. Weighted kappa isn't a normed statistic, but the respective weighted kappa statistic obtained for the assessments, 0.39 and 0.30, are believed to reflect fair concordance. Data were also analyzed via confirmatory UniODA models which hypothesized that physician and patient ratings agreed. Findings indicated relatively strong concordance for the physical health ratings (ESS=55.5), and moderate concordance for mental health ratings (ESS=43.3).


At adult ages x, the force of mortality increases more or less exponentially with age, and the parameter associated with age, β, can be used to gauge the rate of senescence (ageing) of a generation. The hypothesis has recently been advanced that the rate of senescence at the individual level may be a biological constant, not far from 0.1. This article contributes to this discussion in two ways: first, it proposes a simple method based on standard longitudinal panel data analysis to compare the rate of senescence β between different cohorts and groups when frailty and period effects operate, and, secondly, it offers a few empirical estimates of β, by gender, for various cohorts, in different countries. The proposed methodology is applied to data taken from the Human Mortality Database for selected birth cohorts (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland), born between 1878 and 1912, observed at ages 65 to 98, in the calendar years 1943 to 2010. The rate of senescence β appears indeed to be close to 0.1: most of the differences that emerge from the analysis (by country, gender, birth cohort or age), although statistically significant, are very small in absolute terms, especially for women.


We investigated the diet of the squirrel glider (Petaurus norfolcensis) from within a highly fragmented landscape in the northern (tropical) part of its geographic range where information was absent. We analysed 86 faecal samples of 53 gliders from 11 locations and obtained 97 observations of 10 gliders feeding at two locations. Pollen of Eucalyptus/Corymbia was present in 70% and Melaleuca in 20% of faecal samples. Indicators of sap feeding were present in 44% of samples and seeds were present in 14% of samples. Invertebrates, mostly moth larvae, were present in 54% of samples. Observations of gliders feeding revealed that the main food types were invertebrates (36% of observations), nectar and pollen (27% of observations) and sap (26% of observations) of five tree species. Differences in the use of the major food types revealed by the two methods of diet analysis partly reflect site-based differences. Qualitatively, the diet was similar to that described in southern Australia, with confirmation that sap may be important at some locations. Our results reveal the contribution that different tree species make to the diet, which should be used to guide habitat restoration for the squirrel glider in this fragmented landscape.


Human-mediated biological exchange has had global social and ecological impacts. In sub-Saharan Africa, several domestic and commensal animals were introduced from Asia in the pre-modern period; however, the timing and nature of these introductions remain contentious. One model supports introduction to the eastern African coast after the mid-first millennium CE, while another posits introduction dating back to 3000 BCE. These distinct scenarios have implications for understanding the emergence of long-distance maritime connectivity, and the ecological and economic impacts of introduced species. Resolution of this longstanding debate requires new efforts, given the lack of well-dated fauna from high-precision excavations, and ambiguous osteomorphological identifications. We analysed faunal remains from 22 eastern African sites spanning a wide geographic and chronological range, and applied biomolecular techniques to confirm identifications of two Asian taxa: domestic chicken (Gallus gallus) and black rat (Rattus rattus). Our approach included ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis aided by BLAST-based bioinformatics, Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) collagen fingerprinting, and direct AMS (accelerator mass spectrometry) radiocarbon dating. Our results support a late, mid-first millennium CE introduction of these species. We discuss the implications of our findings for models of biological exchange, and emphasize the applicability of our approach to tropical areas with poor bone preservation.


ABSTRACT Ampicillin-sulbactam is commonly used as an empirical therapy for invasive infections where Escherichia coli is a potential pathogen. We evaluated the clinical and microbiologic characteristics of bloodstream infection due to E. coli, with focus on cases that were nonsusceptible to ampicillin-sulbactam and not producing extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL). Of a total of 357 unique bacteremic cases identified between 2005 and 2008, 111 (31.1%) were intermediate or resistant to ampicillin-sulbactam by disk testing. In multivariate analysis, a history of liver disease, organ transplant, peptic ulcer disease, and prior use of ampicillin-sulbactam were independent risk factors for bloodstream infection with ampicillin-sulbactam-nonsusceptible E. coli. Among cases that received ampicillin-sulbactam as an empirical therapy, an early clinical response was observed in 65% (22/34) of susceptible cases but in only 20% (1/5) of nonsusceptible cases. Among 50 ampicillin-sulbactam-resistant isolates examined, there was no clonal relatedness and no evidence of production of inhibitor-resistant TEM (IRT). Instead, the resistance was attributed to hyperproduction of TEM-1 β-lactamase in the majority of isolates. However, promoter sequences of bla TEM-1 did not predict resistance to ampicillin-sulbactam. While the plasmid copy number did not differ between representative resistant and susceptible isolates, the relative expression of bla TEM-1 was significantly higher in two of three resistant isolates than in three susceptible isolates. These results suggest high-level bla TEM-1 expression as the predominant cause of ampicillin-sulbactam resistance and also the presence of yet-unidentified factors promoting overexpression of bla TEM-1 in these isolates.


The opisthobranchiate gastropod Moridella brockii Bergh 1888, has been aescribed%y its author based on a single specimen collected by Dr. J. Brock in 1884-85 from
flie Sunda Sea. Ever since that time many later authors(Thiele, 1931 ; Macnae,1954 ; Marcus, 1958 ; Risso-Dominguez, 1962 ; Edmunds, 1964 ; Risso-Dominguez,
1964) have referred to this species in their taxonomic work, but no material hasactually been collected by any. During the course of an intensive collection for the
littoral nudibranchs in the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Bay near Mandafam, theauthor came across a large number of specimens of this species in a good size range
from the Gulf of Mannar. Since this species has now been collected after seventy six years of its first description and also as it is little known to science, a detailed
study of this monotypic genus was felt desirable. In the present communication besides a redescription of Sie species, some detailed observations made by the author
on its anatomy, early development and ecology, which are the first of its kind are
presented.


A new U–Pb date of 615.2 ± 1.3 (2σ) Ma for the Twt Hill Granite, North Wales, contrasts with an Rb–Sr isochron age of 491 ± 12 (2σ) Ma from the same body. The latter age is thought to result from isotope resetting during regional low-grade metamorphism or fault reactivation. The Rb–Sr age also coincides with the onset of latest Cambrian to Early Tremadoc regression and is taken to reflect tectonic uplift prior to the Arenig overstep at around 478 Ma. It is proposed that this in turn reflects plate-scale processes along the contemporary peri-Gondwanan continental margin.


In this, the second installment in a series of articles planned to examine each of the twenty eight pairs of "dueling canons" having opposite effect left to us in 1950 by Karl N. Llewellyn (Karl N. Llewellyn, "Remarks on the Theory of Appellate Decision and the Rules or Canons About How Statutes Are to Be Construed", 3 VANDERBILT L.REV. 395 (1950)), I examine pairs 8 through 12. I start with Pair 12, Llewellyn's formulation of the Plain Meaning Rule; it is not so much a canon of construction as a condition on construction: unless one or both of its conditions applies, no interpretive questions arise. It should have been first on Llewellyn's list. Pairs 8 through 11 form a natural group. They are about interpretive controls or aids that are enacted or promulgated with the statute in question. Pair 8 is about statements of purpose; Pair 9 is about interpretation clauses, including both definitions and interpretive instructions; and Pair 10 is about interpretive instructions. Pair 11 treats titles, preambles and section captions together. As in the first installment, Pairs 1 through 7, Llewellyn's "fiendish deconstruction" of these ten canons proves thoroughly innocuous. The reasons underlying the canons in the first set of pairs and the appropriate context for their use completely dissolved the superficial contrariety. In this second episode the problems evident in the first installment recur. Some duelists can hardly be called canons, having little regularity of occurrence or generality of reason. Pairs 9 and 10 are thoroughly mixed up and duplicative. Pair 11, in contrast, includes three separate and distinct topics, and, if there is anything canonical to be found in them, should have been correspondingly split in three. Through pair 12, then, Llewellyn's list of dueling canons does not live up to its reputation.


High reliability organization (HRO) theory suggests that early detection of and swift responses to potentially hazardous and situation changing events in organizational environments is central to the sustainability of reliable operations. Limited research on HRO's (e.g. military groups and firefighters) considers how normative demands on feeling and emotion help to explain why some events are recognized and responded to while others not. In this article, we propose a model of enactment of anomalous events (i.e., situation changing events) that considers the manner in which emotions are regulated in high reliability contexts and how this influences the extent to which early indicators of anomalous events are heeded or dismissed. In this article, we seek to provide a theoretical framework for explaining both the enabling mechanisms by which emotions may function as a signaling resource in the detection of anomalous events and the constraining mechanisms through when emotion regulation processes may inhibit reliability. We discuss implications of the model for researchers and practitioners in high reliability organizations.


The Bucks. Constabulary Widows' and Orphans' Fund Friendly Society was set up primarily to provide for the relief of the widows and orphans of deceased members of the Bucks. Constabulary. It was financed by voluntary contributions from the members. There was nothing in the rules about the destination of the society's property on its dissolution. In April 1968 the Thames Valley Constabulary came into being, an amalgamation of the Bucks. Constabulary and other forces. An effective instrument of dissolution of the society was signed on 14 October 1969; and Walton J. found himself facing in Re Bucks. Constabulary (No. 2) the question of "the destination of the assets of the friendly society …" Walton J. took the view that most past decisions "in relation to the destination of the funds of unincorporated associations" had "lost sight of" the "quite elementary … question of the property of unincorporated associations in the round." He therefore proceeded to outline the general law on the holding of property by unincorporated associations as a necessary prelude to his decision on the destination of the funds. This was unquestionably the correct course to follow. It is suggested, however, that Walton J.'s view "in the round" on the holding of property by unincorporated associations is too simple, and that circumstances will arise in which a more complex problem on the destination of funds might arise, and which will surely call for a more complex answer. It must also be noted that Walton J. did not have to deal with the question of funds accruing to a society from outside sources, i.e., other than from the members themselves.


Background Caring for patients with multimorbidity is common for generalists, although such patients are often excluded from clinical trials, and thus such trials lack of generalizability. Data on the association between multimorbidity and preventive care are limited. We aimed to assess whether comorbidity number, severity and type were associated with preventive care among patients receiving care in Swiss University primary care settings. Methods We examined a retrospective cohort composed of a random sample of 1,002 patients aged 50–80 years attending four Swiss university primary care settings. Multimorbidity was defined according to the literature and the Charlson index. We assessed the quality of preventive care and cardiovascular preventive care with RAND's Quality Assessment Tool indicators. Aggregate scores of quality of provided care were calculated by taking into account the number of eligible patients for each indicator. Results Participants (mean age 63.5 years, 44% women) had a mean of 2.6 (SD 1.9) comorbidities and 67.5% had 2 or more comorbidities. The mean Charlson index was 1.8 (SD 1.9). Overall, participants received 69% of recommended preventive care and 84% of cardiovascular preventive care. Quality of care was not associated with higher numbers of comorbidities, both for preventive care and for cardiovascular preventive care. Results were similar in analyses using the Charlson index and after adjusting for age, gender, occupation, center and number of visits. Some patients may receive less preventive care including those with dementia (47%) and those with schizophrenia (35%). Conclusions In Swiss university primary care settings, two thirds of patients had 2 or more comorbidities. The receipt of preventive and cardiovascular preventive care was not affected by comorbidity count or severity, although patients with certain comorbidities may receive lower levels of preventive care.


In wireless sensor networks, various applications involve learning one or multiple functions of the measurements observed by sensors, rather than the measurements themselves. This paper focuses on the computation of type-threshold functions which include the maximum, minimum, and indicator functions as special cases. Previous work studied this problem under the collocated collision network model and showed that under many probabilistic models for the measurements, the achievable computation rates tend to zero as the number of sensors increases. In this paper, wireless sensor networks are modeled as fully connected Gaussian networks with equal channel gains, which are termed collocated Gaussian networks. A general multi-round coding scheme exploiting not only the broadcast property but also the superposition property of Gaussian networks is developed. Through careful scheduling of concurrent transmissions to reduce redundancy, it is shown that given any independent measurement distribution, all type-threshold functions can be computed reliably with a non-vanishing rate even if the number of sensors tends to infinity.


Fabric-reinforced cement-based composites are a new class of sustainable construction materials with superior tensile strength and ductility. They demonstrate a significant improvement in the energy absorption capacity as compared to plain concrete materials and fiber-reinforced composites. Due to the inherent brittleness and low tensile strength of most cement-based elements, dynamic loading can cause severe damage and cracking. In order to accurately analyze and design structures that are subjected to dynamic loading, it is necessary to utilize the mechanical properties associated with the strain rates to which the structural components are subjected. In this work, we studied the dynamic behavior of cement composites reinforced with 2D Alkali Resistant (AR) glass and polyethylene fabrics under high-speed tensile loading and composites reinforced with 3D AR glass fabric and short AR glass fiber under impact loading in 3-point bending. The dynamic material properties, including Young's modulus, tensile strength, toughness, and maximum strain are obtained. Typical stress–strain curves representing the tensile behavior of individual composites were compared. The differences in tensile behavior of the composites were correlated with the different structure and mechanical properties of the fabrics. A multiple cracking behavior was observed for 2D fabric–cement composites, indicating good stress transfer within composites. The impact response of 3D fabric–cement composite was studied and compared to that of short AR glass fiber composite with same cement matrix. We found that the 3D fabric can significantly improve the toughness of cement-based composites as much as 200 times higher than the short fiber. These results can provide tools to design composites that might be subjected to extreme loading conditions during their service life.


The purpose of this thesis is to provide a detailed description of recent methods and scientific basis for characterizing earthquake sources within a certain region with distinct tectonic environments. The focus will be on those characteristics that are most significant to the ground-shaking hazard and on how we can incorporate our current knowledge into hazard analyses for engineering design purposes. I treat two particular geographical areas where I think current hazard analysis methods are in need of significant improvement, and suggest some approaches that have proven to be effective in past applications elsewhere. A combined hazard procedure is used to estimate seismicity in northern Central America, where there appear to be four tectonic environments for modeling the seismogenic sources and in Iran, where the large earthquakes usually occur on known faults. A preferred seismic hazard model for northern Central America and the western Caribbean plate based on earthquake catalogs, geodetic measurements, and geological information is presented. I used the widely practiced method of relating seismicity data to geological data to assess the various seismic hazard parameters and test parameter sensitivities.The sensitivity and overall uncertainty in peak ground acceleration (PGA) estimates are calculated for northwestern Iran by using a specific randomized blocks design. A Monte Carlo approach is utilized to evaluate the ground motion hazard and its uncertainties in northern Central America. A set of new seismic hazard maps, exhibiting probabilistic values of peak ground acceleration (PGA) with 50%, 10%, and 5% probabilities of exceedance (PE) in 50 years, is presented for the area of relevance. Disaggregation of seismic hazard is carried out for cities of San Salvador and Guatemala by using a spatial distribution of epicenters around these sites to select design ground motion for seismic risk decisions.In conclusion, consideration of the effect of parameters such as seismic moment, fault rupture, rupture directivity and stress drop are strongly recommended in estimating the near field ground motions. The rupture process of the 2002 Changureh earthquake (Mw = 6.5), Iran, was analyzed by using the empirical Green's function (EGF) method. This method simulates strong ground motions for future large earthquakes at particular sites where no empirical data are available.


Bedahan Village is one of the villages in the Sawangan sub-district of Depok where the religious atmosphere (Islam) is very thick. This shows that the undisturbed villages are predominantly Muslim. Bedahan Village has eight mosques. Based on information from the BKPM (Mosque Youth Communication Agency), mosque financial management has not been carried out properly, where the mosque does not yet have reception and expenditure accounts. All receipts are put together as well as their use to finance all mosque activities put together into an expense account. BKPM which is a mosque-based youth organization intends to conduct training with the theme: "Mosque Financial Management with Mosque-Based Financial Management". For this reason, BKPM has collaborated with several lecturers at Indraprasta University PGRI. Partnership cooperation between BKPM and the Indraprasta University team will be carried out with the following agreements: BKPM will provide training facilities and training participants and bear the costs of activities, while the abdimas team becomes a resource and provides training material. For the abdimas team of Indraprasta University PGRI this activity has an output target that must be achieved, namely improving mosque financial management with mosque-based financial management. This activity is carried out at night considering the participants are mosque administrators and BKPM members who become mosque administrators for 2 days.


Consumers have made abundant use of social media to share their experiences with and evaluations of products, services, and policies—and with the organizations that produce them. Consumer voices, or electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), can be heard on social network sites, online review sites, the comments section of news sites, and, in general, in all online spaces that enable an active role for users. Whereas in the early days of the Internet, organizations typically chose not to respond to online consumer reviews or answer online consumer questions, since around 2010 it has become increasingly common for organizations to have an active presence in social media and to directly engage in interactions with consumers. This article defines webcare as the online interactions between organizations and consumers about consumer questions, complaints, and experiences with regard to the organization's products or services. Webcare interactions are typically (although not exclusively) public, which distinguishes webcare from customer service that takes place in nonpublic one-to-one interactions that organizations have with consumers, such as in call centers. The public character of webcare adds a new dimension to customer service: not only is the consumer in question engaged in interacting with the organization at hand, but bystanders are as well. This involves consumers who witness (and at times engage in) the webcare interaction and whose attitudes toward the organization may be affected by the nature of the interaction. As a result, public interactions between organizations and consumers make webcare an important part of an organization's online presence. Another distinguishing feature of webcare is that the interactions between organizations and consumers frequently move beyond typical customer service questions (e.g., a failed product, a faulty service delivery). Although customer service still makes up the bulk of webcare interactions of most organizations, webcare teams frequently receive compliments by consumers, questions regarding the organizations' ethics, or inquiries about the organization's stand on societal issues. When an organization gets involved in a public crisis, webcare teams need to deal with large groups of citizens and/or consumers expressing their opinions, often accompanied or inspired by pressure groups.


Community engagement (CE) has been highlighted as a key process in the prevention and transmission control of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, the nature of the virus and national response strategies such as social distancing have challenged traditional methods of community engagement. In this paper, we discuss the role of community engagement in research during COVID-19. We first set out the case for community engagement that emerges from international guidance for research during public health emergencies. We then describe the challenges that are emerging with community engagement in health research generally, and on COVID-19 related research specifically in Africa in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We further describe the strengths and weaknesses of the current engagement and communication platforms, and suggest ways to overcome some of these challenges. We provide an ethical argument for researchers and research institutions to respond directly to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic by responding to emergency health care needs of the community; and provide some challenges and critiques of such an approach. Finally, we support the call for concerted efforts in responding to the global pandemic, requiring flexibility in funding.


Severe burn causes a pronounced hypermetabolic response characterized by catabolism and extensive protein wasting. We recently found that this hypermetabolic state is driven by a severe inflammatory response. We characterized in detail the kinetics of serum levels of a panel of cytokines in a rat model, which may serve as reference for the development of therapeutic interventions applicable to humans. Male Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 8) received a full-thickness burn of 60% total body surface area. Serum was harvested 1, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, and 168 h after burn. Eight serum cytokines commonly used to assess the inflammatory response in humans, such as IL-1&bgr;, IL-6, IL-10, TNF, vascular endothelial growth factor, and monocyte chemotactic protein 1, and the rat-specific cytokines cytokine-induced neutrophil chemoattractant (CINC) 1, CINC-2, and CINC-3 were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay technique and were compared with controls (n = 4). Statistical analysis was conducted using the t test, with P < 0.05 considered as significantly different. Thermal injury resulted in significantly increased serum levels of IL-1&bgr;, IL-6, IL-10, monocyte chemotactic protein 1, CINC-1, CINC-2, and CINC-3 when compared with the concentrations detected in nonburned rats (P < 0.05). Serum levels of TNF-&agr; and vascular endothelial growth factor in burned rats were not found to be significantly different to controls. Burn causes a profound inflammatory response in rats. Specific cytokines known to increase in humans postburn such as IL-1 &bgr;, IL-6, IL-10, MCP-1, and IL-8 (CINC-1, CINC-2, and CINC-3 in the rat) were also observed in our rat burn model, which now allows us to study new anti-inflammatory treatment options.


IDS are becoming the logical next step for many organizations after deploying firewall technology at the network perimeter. IDS can offer protection from external users and internal attackers, where traffic doesn't go past the firewall at all. However, the following points are very important to keep in mind. 1. Strong identification and authentication: An IDS uses very good signature analysis mechanisms but strong user identification and authentication mechanisms are still needed. 2. IDS are not a solution to all secur...


The quantity of man-hours available as a factor input is one of the principal determinants of an economy's potential output. Although such a measure of labor supply may be strongly influenced by population developments, there are several aspects of economic behavior that intervene between growth of population and growth of man-hours. These include the willingness of individuals to join the labor force, the aggregate employment rate of those in the labor force, and hours worked per employee. In the United States, for example, the working-age population was 53 percent larger in 1977 than in 1947, yet aggregate man-hours worked increased by only 40 percent, and private man-hours rose by only 27 percent.

This paper presents an integrated empirical analysis of the links between population and labor supply. Determinants of labor force participation by age and sex, annual hours per worker, and the unemployment rate are examined for the post-World War II period. The relations estimated for these variables are designed for use in a new version of the Hickman-Coen annual growth model of the United States, but we take advantage here of the fact that they form a subsystem which jointly determines the supply of man-hours, the high-employment unemployment rate, and the natural rate of unemployment. We show how the subsystem can be so used and give conditional estimates of these variables for the historical period 1951-77 and the future through the year 2000.


SUMMARY Various preparations of culture media were used to study their suitability for the production of ascospores and the maintenance of two sexually compatible local isolates of putative Ascosphaera apis (causative agent of chalkbrood) obtained from white honey bee mummies. Morphometric analysis and characterization of the isolates showed that the local isolates were A. apis. Malt yeast with 20% dextrose agar (MY20) was the most suitable medium for ascospore production. Based on mycelium aging, integral rice kernel (IRK) medium was the best for the maintenance of A. apis isolates. Spore-cyst size was the main morphometric feature affected by culture medium. IRK medium induced the development of larger spore cysts.


In 1973, the world moved from fixed exchange rates, pegged to the gold standard or an agreed-upon currency, to the floating system of flexible exchange rates, constrained only by the occasional intervention of the central banks of various nations. The eighteen essays in this book explore what the shift has meant for world economic interdependence and seek to clarify what has become an extremely complex system. All but two are published here for the first time.Following Rudiger Dornbusch's Foreword, Jacob A. Frenkel reviews the history of flexible exchange rates. Remaining sections of the book take up exchange rate determination, the transmission of disturbances as exemplified by the oil crises of the 1970s, the policy implications of economic interdependence, and a selection of simulation studies based on models of various size and design.Contributors include Alan V. Deardorff, J. David Richardson, Jeffrey Sachs, Robert M. Stern, Pentti J. K. Kouri, William H. Branson, Willem H. Buiter; and Michael R. Darby, among other distinguished economists.Jagdeep Bhandari is affiliated with George Mason University, Bluford Putnam with the Economics Group of Chase Manhattan Bank, and Jay Levin with Wayne State University.


Purpose

This study aims to demonstrate how critical realism (CR) can be used in spirituality at work (SAW) research and to provide a practical example of CR in SAW research.

Design/methodology/approach

CR is a philosophical meta-theory that allows the stratification of spirituality into different levels of reality, advocates for research methods matching the ontology of the level investigated and provides complementary methods of exploring this phenomenon's causal power in social contexts. The authors present a study where CR was used to explain how and why SAW influences ethics in organisational contexts.

Findings

The results demonstrate that CR provides a useful approach to bridging the positivist-interpretivist difference in SAW research. Moreover, a CR approach helped explain the underlying conditions and causal mechanisms that power SAW to influence ethical decision-making and behaviour in the workplace.

Originality/value

While CR has been applied in the management literature, negligible SAW research has used this approach. That which exists is either conceptual or does not discuss methods of data analysis, or describe how critical realist concepts resulted in their findings. This paper addresses that lacuna. CR also provides value, as an alternative approach to SAW research, in that it allows the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods as complementary, not confrontational methods while providing a more integrated and deeper view of SAW and its effects.


To the Editor: I refer to the scientific letter entitled 'Emergency centres lack defibrillator knowledge'. I am a recently retired UK accident and emergency consultant who is now attempting to plough back knowledge gained in the discipline of emergency medicine (EM) and trauma to peripheral hospitals in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) under the umbrella of Outreach. This includes ward rounds, clinics, shop-floor teaching, checking and demonstrating equipment (defibrillators, ventilators, monitors) pertinent to emergency departments (EDs), and most importantly demonstrating correct drug usage to doctors and nurses. In KZN many doctors are foreign qualified and poorly taught in emergency medicine.


This paper discusses the interface(s) between IP and Competition Law from a Sub-Saharan Africa perspective. It analyzes the essential facility doctrine raised in the Glaxo Smith Kline case which was settled by the South African Competition Commission against the backdrop of the EU line of case law. This contribution "reopens" the settled case and provides some insights on the legal challenges (and economic implications) that the case would have raised if it had followed the Magill approach with the new product rule for which there is a consumer demand.The EU line of case law seems to emphasize more the need to promote innovation as evidenced by the "innovation surplus" requirement. However, for countries that are importers of technology where local innovation is limited or nonexistent, the "innovation surplus requirement" would be difficult to meet. Access to existing technology or to patented products would therefore be limited.From a consumer-interest perspective of a developing or technology-importing country, access to technology, in some cases, is more relevant than innovation in the first place.In addition to the discussion pertaining to "innovation" and "access", the paper takes a transversal approach and shed light on the treatment of IP related issues in selected Sub-Saharan African countries competition laws. Suggestions as to how to foster competition law enforcement in IP related restrictions of competition are put forward in the concluding remarks.


The study aims to examine the financing profitability optimization as recorded by Sharia Business Unit of Regional Development Banks (RDBs) in Indonesia. The profitability measured by Net Operating Margin (NOM) and predicted variables were tested with the ratio of Operational Cost to Operational Income (BOPO), Non-Performing Financing (NPF) and Profit Sharing Financing (PSF). On the basis of the literature review conducted, the study proposed five path coefficients to impact NOM, of which the constructed direct path to NOM was three and two for indirect paths. Time series data used were obtained from annual reports and publication reports. Using Pearson Correlation and Path Analysis, the study has found that BOPO, PSF, and NPF contributed to impact to NOM directly, and PSF impacted NOM indirectly through BOPO. Interestingly, PSF recorded a negative impact on NOM, suggesting inefficiency matters faced by SBU of RDBs not contributed from PSF. Another interesting finding, NPF was found insignificant to BOPO, indicating loan default is not a major matter for inefficiency issue, but could be a tight financing policy.


The pattern and characteristics of diving of 55 daily foraging trips performed by 16 female southern rockhopper penguins Eudyptes chrysocome filholi were studied in coastal waters of Kerguelen Archipelago during the guard stage. Diving patterns and dive profiles indicated that birds used 2 foraging behaviours. First, they performed typical pelagic dives, as previously decribed for other penguin species. Second, they also performed series of consecutive square-wave dives reach- ing similar maximum depths, with no deeper dives within the series, all criteria which characterized benthic dives. Two groups of benthic and pelagic dives were subsequently selected to compare their parameters. In agreement with optimization concepts in foraging theory, rockhopper penguins max- imize bottom time (= feeding time) of benthic dives through an increase in both descent and ascent rates, thus minimizing transit time between the sea surface and the bottom. Regardless of dive depth, bottom time was longer and diving efficiency higher in benthic dives than in pelagic ones. Penguins were also more active during benthic dives, as indicated by higher numbers of depth and light wig- gles at the bottom of these dives. Bathymetry and dive depth indicate that penguins were able to reach about 80% of the sea floor surrounding the colony. Abrupt changes in dive depth within series of benthic dives were identical in height to the thickness of lava flows, the main geological features of the landscape, strongly suggesting that birds followed the bottom topography at a fine scale. Dietary analysis showed that rockhopper penguins fed upon benthic prey (a few fish and the mysid Mysidetes morbihanensis) and pelagic organisms, including the major item Euphausia vallentini. There was a positive linear relationship between the mass of food brought ashore and an index of the proportion of benthic dives during the daily trips, thus emphasizing the importance for rockhopper penguins living in a coastal marine environment of feeding on pelagic migrators trapped at or near the sea floor during the day.


OBJECTIVE To compare the lipid-lowering efficacies of simvastatin and gemfibrozil in NIDDM patients with combined (mixed) hyperlipidemia (CHL) or isolated hypercholesterolemia (IHC). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Patients with primary dyslipidemia and NIDDM were recruited for this double-blind, double-dummy comparison study from 10 Finnish centers. After a 4-week placebo run-in period, they were randomly assigned to simvastatin or gemfibrozil. The simvastatin group (n = 47) received 10 mg once nightly for 8 weeks, 20 mg for the next 8 weeks, and 40 mg for the third 8-week period. The gemfibrozil group (n = 49) received 600 mg twice daily throughout the 24 weeks. The lipid-lowering efficacies of both drugs were compared in all patients as well as separately in patients with CHL and IHC. RESULTS In all patients, simvastatin reduced LDL and total cholesterol and the LDL-to-HDL cholesterol ratio more effectively, whereas gemfibrozil was more effective in elevating HDL cholesterol and decreasing triglyceride levels. The drug effects differed according to lipid phenotype at baseline. Simvastatin decreased LDL cholesterol levels by 30–40% in both phenotypes. Gemfibrozil caused a 15% reduction in LDL cholesterol in IHC but no change in CHL patients. Simvastatin produced 15–30% reductions in triglyceride levels in CHL but no change in IHC patients. Gemfibrozil caused reductions in triglycerides in CHL (50% and more) and in IHC (40%) patients, with 12–18% increases in HDL cholesterol in these groups. CONCLUSIONS Simvastatin is useful in both CHL and IHC patients, whereas gemfibrozil can be used in patients with high triglyceride and low or normal LDL cholesterol levels.


It is April 1793 and the final power struggle of the French Revolution is taking hold: the aristocrats are dead and the poor are fighting for bread in the streets. In a Paris swept by fear and hunger lives Gamelin, a revolutionary young artist appointed magistrate, and given the power of life and death over the citizens of France. But his intense idealism and unbridled single-mindedness drive him inexorably towards catastrophe. Published in 1912, The Gods Will Have Blood is a breathtaking story of the dangers of fanaticism, while its depiction of the violence and devastation of the Reign of Terror is strangely prophetic of the sweeping political changes in Russia and across Europe.


Impact investments are emerging as a new asset class of social finance. These investments intend to create positive societal impact beyond a financial return through the development of social enterprises. Scholars have highlighted the conflicting institutional logics that these later hybrid organizations must face when combining social welfare and profitability. Yet we lack in-depth, systemic insight into how impact investing funds are responding to similar pressures and specifically to the pressure to conform to societal performance management. This paper builds on a three year action-research program conducted with Schneider Electric, a multinational enterprise specialized in energy management. The company initiated and sponsored an impact investing fund targeting energy access ventures in Sub-Saharan Africa, alongside four Development Finance Institutions. The article is grounded in neo-institutional and resource dependence theories to analyze the perceptions of the fund's managers' regarding emerging societal performance management procedures they were urged to adopt. The findings suggest a pattern of responses from the fund's managers starting with passive conformity to external pressures and eventually turning to more resistive compromise with their own investors through interorganizational arrangements. The paper further asserts the establishment of impact investing as an institution in the making with potentially conflicting but not incompatible logics.


Bisalloy is a series of high-strength, quenched and tempered steels with mass savings of up to 30% over conventional steels. The number in the name indicates the minimum yield strength in ksi. This datasheet provides information on composition, physical properties, hardness, and shear strength. It also includes information on forming and machining. Filing Code: SA-846. Producer or source: Bisalloy Steels Group Limited.


The present investigation deals with the study of, fat, cholesterol and major fatty acid content in river and farm cultivated Labeo rohita (Rohu). Triplicate samples of Rohu were obtained from the river flowing at Doiwala region of Dehradun (U.K) and from the cultivated farm. Fatty acids were determined by conventional biochemical methods, TLC and GC-MS. Fat content of farm cultivated Rohu ranged from 2.5-5 times that of river water samples. Monounsaturated fatty acids predominated in cultivated farm Rohu in comparison to Rohu in river water. Differences in fatty acid profile between river water and farm cultivated Rohu were greatest among polyunsaturated fatty acids; linoleic acid was substantially higher in all cultivated samples than in river water fish. Omega-3 fatty acid levels were also found to be highest in cultivated farm water fish in comparison to river water fish. The study thus indicates that, as per basis of nutritional screening in terms of omega-3 fatty acids, cultivated farm water Rohu are more appropriate for diet.


Venous interruption through surgical clip ligation is the gold standard treatment for ethmoidal dural arteriovenous fistula (e-dAVF). Their malignant natural history is attributable to the higher predilection for retrograde cortical venous drainage. This video illustrates an e-dAVF in a 70-year-old man with progressive tinnitus and headache. Angiogram revealed bilateral e-dAVFs (Borden III-Cognard III) with one fistula draining into cavernous sinus and another to the sagittal sinus. A bifrontal craniotomy was utilized for venous interruption of both e-dAVFs. Postoperative angiography confirmed curative obliteration with no postoperative anosmia. Bilateral e-dAVFs are rare but can be safely treated simultaneously through a single craniotomy.The video can be found here: https://youtu.be/666edwKHGKc.


This article reviews the role phonology plays in phonetic changes. After first establishing what kinds of changes qualify as phonetic changes for the purposes of discussion, and laying out the theoretical outlook that is adopted here, I review the most obvious cases in which phonology plays a role in phonetic change. These include (a) the way phonological contrast can lead to phonetic dispersion, (b) the way phonological natural classes can define a set of segments to undergo a parallel phonetic shift, and (c) how phonological biases may lead to instances of underphonologization. Throughout, I discuss alternative approaches to these phenomena.


The number of injecting opiate users in Afghanistan has recently risen dramatically. Through this cross-sectional pilot study, the authors have aimed to assess psychiatric comorbidity and drug use patterns among Afghan opiate users, which might have implications for harm reduction and treatment interventions. The authors conducted semi-structured psychiatric interviews, with a convenience sample of 30 clients of the Médecins du Monde drop-in centre in Kabul. Symptoms were classified according to the WHO International Classification of Diseases, Revision 10. Results show that psychiatric comorbidity is very common, particularly depressive and posttraumatic stress disorders. Ideally, this could be addressed by harm reduction and treatment measures.


Polarization mode dispersion (PMD) and polarization dependent loss (PDL) for a pulse in optical fibers are calculated with a model of two concatenated fibers. Each of the two fibers has both elliptical birefringence and PDL. The results show that the PMD and PDL for a short pulse can be very different from those for a narrow-band pulse in optical fibers. Two anomalous results are reported: (1) the effective PDL for a pulse can be smaller than the PDL difference of the two fibers and (2) the effective PMD for a pulse can be either larger than the sum of the differential group delays (DGDs) of the two fibers or less than the DGD difference of the two fibers, depending on the input pulsewidth. The pulse distortions when the pulses are launched into the two principal states of polarization (PSPs) are discussed.


Here is an idea that just might save the world. It is that science, properly understood, provides us with the methodological key to the salvation of humanity. A version of this idea can be found in the works of Karl Popper. Famously, Popper argued that science cannot verify theories but can only refute them, and this is how science makes progress. Scientists are forced to think up something better, and it is this, according to Popper, that drives science forward.

But Nicholas Maxwell finds a flaw in this line of argument. Physicists only ever accept theories that are unified – theories that depict the same laws applying to the range of phenomena to which the theory applies – even though many other empirically more successful disunified theories are always available. This means that science makes a questionable assumption about the universe, namely that all disunified theories are false. Without some such presupposition as this, the whole empirical method of science breaks down.

By proposing a new conception of scientific methodology, which can be applied to all worthwhile human endeavours with problematic aims, Maxwell argues for a revolution in academic inquiry to help humanity make progress towards a better, more civilized and enlightened world.


In this updated and expanded edition of his classic text, Arend Lijphart offers a broader and deeper analysis of worldwide democratic institutions than ever before. Examining thirty-six democracies during the period from 1945 to 2010, Lijphart arrives at important-and unexpected-conclusions about what type of democracy works best. Praise for the previous edition: "Magnificent. . . . The best-researched book on democracy in the world today."-Malcolm Mackerras, American Review of Politics "I can't think of another scholar as well qualified as Lijphart to write a book of this kind. He has an amazing grasp of the relevant literature, and he's compiled an unmatched collection of data."-Robert A. Dahl, Yale University "This sound comparative research . . . will continue to be a standard in graduate and undergraduate courses in comparative politics."-Choice


Abstract The staggered renewal of parliamentary mandates is widespread in upper chambers, yet little understood. Comparative work has found that all members of a chamber are affected by upcoming elections, not merely those whose terms are up for renewal. In this study, we explore for which activities, and under which conditions, staggered membership renewal is associated with class-specific parliamentary activity, defined as systematically differing behaviour across two or more classes of members. We examine these questions with data on the French Senate. Drawing on insights from the study of political business cycles, legislative cycles, and previous scholarship on staggering, the article shows that behaviour varies over the course of senators' mandates, and that class-specific behaviour exists. However, staggering produces a different pattern of parliamentary activity than might be expected: proximity to elections reduces parliamentary activity of the class of senators facing re-election; by contrast, senators 'not up next' become more active. This effect, we argue, reflects the electoral system under which senators are elected.


While masculinity studies enjoy considerable growth in the West, there is very little analysis of African masculinities. This volume explores what it means for an African to be masculine and how male identity is shaped by cultural forces. The editors believe that to tackle the important questions in Africa - the many forms of violence (wars, genocides, familial violence and crime) and the AIDS pandemic - it is necessary to understand how a combination of a colonial past, patriarchal cultural structures and a variety of religious and knowledge systems creates masculine identities and sexualities. The work done in the book particularly bears in mind how vulnerability and marginalization produce complex forms of male identity. The book is interdisciplinary and is the first in-depth and comprehensive study of African men as a gendered category.


The paper examines the under-five mortality in Nigeria with regards to the perception and attitudes of the Ikwerres about the existence of 'Ogba-nje' (children from the spirit world) and the mode of treatment given to such children. The study elicited information from 1695 women of reproductive age in Port Harcourt and Obio-Akpor LGAs of Rivers State South-South, Nigeria. The study shows that (i) more than half of the respondents believe in the existence of Ogba-nje children; (ii) that Ogba-nje children can be identified from the evidence of past death, frequent indisposition, non-responsiveness of their illness to moderate medical care as well as repeated death and verification from traditional healers; that causes of illness differ between Ogba-nje and non Ogba-nje children; (iv) close to 71 percent of the respondents have faith in traditional methods of treatment for Ogba-nje children. The study, therefore, reiterate the need to integrate the people;s beliefs, attitudes and behavioural practices into health promotion progammes. Keywords: Under-five mortality, Perception, Attitudes and "Ogba-nje".


Vascular endothelium actively participates in inflammatory reactions in the majority of chronic respiratory diseases. Smoking is a major risk factor for bronchopulmonary diseases, and it plays an important role in endothelial dysfunction development. Some experiments prove that aggressive pollutants of tobacco smoke (benzopyrene, peroxynitrite, acrolein, cyanides, peroxides, etc.) can cause direct damage to endothelial cells due to expression of adhesion molecules on their surface and intensification of lipid peroxidation. In turn, oxidized lipoproteins in the tunica intima of the vessel work as attractants for chemotaxis of leukocytes and monocytes that start to produce pro-inflammatory cytokines in big amounts. These processes trigger systemic inflammatory response that leads to irreversible thickening of the vessel walls and deterioration of their mechanical properties. Chronic exposure to tobacco smoke and the products of combustion of tobacco leads to chronic system inflammatory reaction, oxidative stress, endothelial dysfunction andmorpho-functional damage of target organs. Nowadays, the connection between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and some cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases has been well established. Studying the mechanisms of endothelial dysfunction in brain blood vessels of patients with smoking habits and COPD can be very important for preventing acute vascular events.


The tissue distribution of cocaine methyl esterase and ethanol-dependent ethyl transferase activities was determined in the rat and compared to the tissue distribution of three distinct non-specific hydrolases. Rates of formation of benzoylecgonine from cocaine and cocaethylene from ethanol and cocaine were measured in serum and tissue homogenate-supernatants of the brain, heart, kidney, liver, lung and spleen. The tissue distribution of three nonspecific esterases, A, B and C, was defined by nondenaturing gel electrophoresis and measuring the hydrolysis of 4-methylumbelliferyl acetate in the gels. Immunoreactive protein was localized by using Western blot analysis with polyclonal rabbit antihuman liver cocaine methyl esterase antibody after denaturing and nondenaturing gel electrophoresis. The rat liver, lung, kidney and heart exhibited cocaine methyl esterase and ethyl transferase activities and immunoreactive protein. The brain had cocaine methyl esterase activity but no ethyl transferase activity; neither activity was found in serum or spleen. The dominant immunoreactive bands in the liver, lung, kidney and heart comigrated with the 59 kD band of purified human liver cocaine methyl esterase. The rat liver, lung and kidney exhibited a band of nonspecific esterase activity that migrated with purified human liver cocaine methyl esterase and rat hydrolase A. These observations suggest that rat hydrolase A is similar to human cocaine methyl esterase. The lack of straight forward correlation between cocaine methyl esterase activity and immunoreactive protein and nonspecific esterase activity suggests that more than one enzyme catalyzes the hydrolysis of cocaine to benzoylecgonine in the rat.


Aims: To identify agreed best practice for health economic evaluation in palliative and end of life (P&EoLC) research. Methods: We used the MORECare Transparent Expert Consultation approach to conduct consultation workshops with experts in health economics in P&EoLC research. Prior to workshops participants were sent overviews of pertinent issues in health economics in P&EoLC. Following workshop presentations and discussion, nominal group techniques were used to produce candidate recommendations. These were subsequently rated online by participating experts. Descriptive statistics were used to permit analysis of consensus and rated importance. Narrative comments were collated. Results: The workshop comprised 28 participants making 27 recommendations. The top three recommendations were: 1. The need to develop robust methods for assessing outcomes which take into account preferences and the way these change over time. 2. Researchers should give consideration to the implications of decisions on the equitable distribution of care. 3. Costing should be from the societal perspective and as well as statutory services include costs of other formal care (e.g. hospices and third sector) and informal care unless a clear rationale for using a different perspective is provided. The main area which failed to reach consensus were on the use of Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) and whether individual opportunity costs should be used to measure the costs of informal care. Conclusions: When designing studies in P&EoLC it is recommended that outcome measures are responsive over time and costings should come from a societal perspective taking into account the equitable distribution of care. More research is needed given the lack of consensus in this area so that future recommendations can be made.


The representative concentration pathway (RCP) simulations included in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) quantify the response of the climate system to different natural and anthropogenic forcing scenarios. These simulations differ because of 1) forcing, 2) the representation of the climatesystemin atmosphere‐ocean generalcirculation models (AOGCMs), and 3)the presence of unforced (internal) variability. Global and local sea level rise projections derived from these simulations, and the emergence of distinct responses to the four RCPs depend on the relative magnitude of these sources of uncertainty at different lead times. Here, the uncertainty in CMIP5 projections of sea level is partitioned at globalandlocal scales,using a164-member ensembleof twenty-first-centurysimulations. Local projectionsat New York City (NYSL) are highlighted. The partition between model uncertainty, scenario uncertainty, and internal variability in global mean sea level (GMSL) is qualitatively consistent with that of surface air temperature, with model uncertainty dominant for most of the twenty-first century. Locally, model uncertainty is dominant through 2100, with maxima in the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean. The model spread is driven largely by 4 of the 16 AOGCMs in the ensemble; these models exhibit outlying behavior in all RCPs and in both GMSL and NYSL. The magnitude of internal variability varies widely by location and across models, leading to differences of several decades in the local emergence of RCPs. The AOGCM spread, and its sensitivity to model exclusion and/or weighting, has important implications for sea level assessments, especially if a local risk management approach is utilized.


Assist bar Optical Proximity Correction (OPC) has been demonstrated to increase across pitch performance and depth-of-focus of semi-dense to isolated lines. As the sub-resolution assist feature (SRAF) or assist bar's size increases, so does its desired lithographic effect, as well as its undesired printability. In other words, when large assist features are required at isolated pitches, the assist features may print. A frequency-preserving assist bar solution is the most preferred one, but difficult to realize for opaque assist features due to printability. The concept of frequency-preserving Gray Assist Bar OPC has been introduced as a method to extend imaging performance for small features across a wide rage of duty ratios. In this paper, we will present the experimental validation of this concept. The Gray Assist Bar mask was manufactured using a two-level lithography process, and the optical properties have been characterized using a Woollam VUV VASE system. Additional metrology was performed using an AFM (SNP9000) and CD SEM (KLA8250XR). Exposures on a 0.75NA 193nm scanner clearly show the expected effects. The use of the Gray Assist Bar features reduces the through pitch critical dimension (CD) variations significantly and can hence be regarded as an "Optical Proximity Correction". The isofocal inflection point of aerial images is shifted in cases with Gray Assist Bars, resulting in flatter bossung curves and a larger depth of focus (DOF) for the various features through pitch at their target size. This results in larger overlapping process windows. The Gray Assist Bars has also shown a very low printability, even with aggressive off-axis illumination (OAI) settings.


This paper is about constructing confidence bands around ROC curves. We first introduce to the machine learning community three band-generating methods from the medical field, and evaluate how well they perform. Such confidence bands represent the region where the "true" ROC curve is expected to reside, with the designated confidence level. To assess the containment of the bands we begin with a synthetic world where we know the true ROC curve---specifically, where the class-conditional model scores are normally distributed. The only method that attains reasonable containment out-of-the-box produces non-parametric, "fixed-width" bands (FWBs). Next we move to a context more appropriate for machine learning evaluations: bands that with a certain confidence level will bound the performance of the model on future data. We introduce a correction to account for the larger uncertainty, and the widened FWBs continue to have reasonable containment. Finally, we assess the bands on 10 relatively large benchmark data sets. We conclude by recommending these FWBs, noting that being non-parametric they are especially attractive for machine learning studies, where the score distributions (1) clearly are not normal, and (2) even for the same data set vary substantially from learning method to learning method.


This is the second paper in a series of bibliometric studies of research data. In this paper, we present an analysis of figshare, one of the largest multidisciplinary repositories for research materials to date. We analysed the structure of items archived in figshare, their usage, and their reception in two altmetrics sources (PlumX and ImpactStory). We found that figshare acts (1) as a personal repository for yet unpublished materials, (2) as a platform for newly published research materials, and (3) as an archive for PLOS. Depending on the function, we found different bibliometric characteristics. Items archived from PLOS tend to be coming from the natural sciences and are often unviewed and non-downloaded. Self-archived items, however, come from a variety of disciplines and exhibit some patterns of higher usage. In the altmetrics analysis, we found that Twitter was the social media service where research data gained most attention; generally, research data published in 2014 were most popular across social media services. PlumX detects considerably more items in social media and also finds higher altmetric scores than ImpactStory.


This paper provides an assessment of synoptic measurements of sea surface salinity (SSS) from the European Space Agency Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite. Due to the complex nature of the response of L-band signals to SSS, SMOS provides three values of SSS at each grid point from three different forward models. To meet oceanographic requirements for SSS retrieval accuracy, SMOS Level 2 SSS products are averaged over time and space. This paper reports on validation studies in the Atlantic based on monthly Level 3 products on a 1°×1° grid for September 2010. Outside coastal regions, large-scale SSS patterns from SMOS are in general agreement with climatology, Argo, and ocean model output. During September 2010, SSS from descending passes provides reasonable quantitative estimates, while SSS from ascending passes overestimates SSS by over 1 practical salinity unit (psu). The daily mean difference in SSS between ascending and descending passes varies during August-December 2010, reaching a maximum in September. Differences in SMOS SSS from the three models are an order of magnitude smaller than differences between ascending and descending passes. Gridded SMOS SSS data are compared against output from the U.K. Met Office Forecasting Ocean Assimilation Model (FOAM)-Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO). Basic checks confirm that SSS from FOAM-NEMO is unbiased against Argo and that FOAM-NEMO SSS is a useful independent data source to validate and rapidly identify departures in SMOS SSS. Over the whole Atlantic, SMOS SSS variability against FOAM-NEMO is around 0.9 psu, decreasing to 0.5 psu over the subtropical North Atlantic.


This paper presents an automated system for human face recognition in a real time background for ATM transaction. Now a days taking money from the ATM has became a major threat. When we are inserting our debit card the system is asking for the pin number. After typing the pin number the money that we need is been transacted. With the orginal debit card any one can take the money from the ATM. Now a days unknown strange people are creating a duplicate debit card and they use it in the ATM and loot our money. To eradicate this problem we are going for secured ATM transaction using face recognition. Now a days face recognition technique is playing a vital role in the field of secured process. By following this technique we can avoid the strangers looting our money and thus our money will be safer and secured. This process is carried out by matching the present captured face image to already stored database image. When both the images gets matched up ATM transaction is been allowed. If the images doesn't match up the transaction is been denied. But this task is very difficult as the real time background subtraction in an image is still a challenge. To detect real time human face, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used to recognize the faces detected with a high accuracy rate. Once recognition is done with the matched face, then the input image will be marked and updated in the database. This project gives much more solutions with accurate results in user interactive manner rather than existing normal transaction management systems. The ease of deployment is due to wireless mode of communication. A prototype of the controller is implemented, and shows how the controller can easily and flexibly control the appliances.


In this article we consider whether perceptual magnitudes are represents on unified underlying scales. We exploit the ubiquitous sequential effects seen m judgments concerning the attributes of simple perceptual stimuli. Participants made judgments about the intensity of sinusoidal tones and white noise hisses. On each trial in Experiment 1, participants heard a tone and a hiss and judged which was the louder. The loudness of a stimulus was assimilated much more towards a stimulus of the same type on the previous trial, compared to a stimulus of the other type. In Experiment 2, the effect of the stimulus on the previous trial in an absolute identification of loudness task was larger when previous and current stimuli were of the same type. The attenuation of sequential effects by a switch of stimulus types suggests that the loudness of tones is not represented in the same way as the loudness of hisses. We argue that these sequential effects are indicative of the relativity of perceptual judgment.


Background: Continuity of Care (CoC) is a philosophical foundation of midwifery education that can promote the understanding of midwifery students to care for women holistically. In implementing the curriculum of Diploma-IV Midwifery study program, the application of CoC by students is carried out integrated in the implementation of the Comprehensive Community Midwifery Practices. This study aims to describe the implementation model and the results of the evaluation of the application of CoC. Methods: It's descriptive research study, with subjects 89 people (clients and students) in 7th semester of Diploma-IV Midwifery Study Program of Poltekkes Surakarta. The instruments were in the form of observation guidelines, observation sheets on the results of CoC, satisfaction of care, and achievement of student competencies. Data is presented in verbal and numeric form. Results: The ongoing midwifery care model that is applied refers to the management of the client by a care-provider team (midwives, students and supervisors). The implementation cycle consists of: planning, implementation and evaluation. Outcomes of CoC: there were no complications in labor (91.01%) and newborns (95.51%), client's condition in the postpartum period and breastfeeding was normal (100%). The majority of clients expressed very satisfied with care (73.03%). Evaluation from students, CoC can support the achievement of competencies (93.26%). Conclusion: CoC is carried out by a care provider team in three stages. The application of care has an impact on good delivery outcomes, and for students to support the achievement of competencies.


Eucalyptus grandis (W. Hill) × E. nitens (Maiden) (G × N) clonal hybrids are bred to produce trees more cold-tolerant than E. grandis alone due to the cold-resistant E. nitens parent. Some of these selected hybrid clones have superior wood and pulp properties but are considered "difficult-to-root"; thus, any technique that improves their rooting percentage is valuable to the industry. As the radiation spectrum can affect growth and development of plants, manipulation of the spectrum received by mini-hedge stock plants through cultivating them under certain shade nets and plastics could alter the rooting potential of the subsequent minicuttings. Therefore, the effects of the covering factor at eight levels (shade nets: black 30 %, green 40 %, Apple blue 20 %, Photo red 30 % and silver Aluminet® 40 % and plastics: Clarix E Blue® as well as Patilite®, plus the control (no covering)) on morphology and subsequent rooting potential on the G x N clone factor at two levels (GN018B: difficult-toroot or PP2107: easy-to-root) were evaluated. A further factor, fertilizer, at two levels (inorganic or organic) was also evaluated. Statistical analysis was carried out using GenStat®. Data were analysed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) where data were orthogonally distributed. Where data were not orthogonally distributed the algorithm restricted maximum likelihood (REML) was used to estimate variance parameters in the multivariate linear mixed model. To pinpoint the effect of the covering employed, firstly, the alteration of environmental parameters (temperature, relative humidity (RH) and radiation spectrum) were analysed as well as the seasonal effect on stock plants and rooting of mini-cuttings and root system quality of mini-cuttings were analysed. One greenhouse was used for stock plants and one for mini-cuttings. In the stock plant tunnel the shade nets and plastic were draped over wire trellising over bricked beds where the top and two sides were covered but the ends left open to allow sufficient ventilation. Thermometers and HOBOs® were hung above the plants and a spectroradiometer placed centrally under a specific covering to measure environmental parameters. It was found that Aluminet® and black nets and Patilite® plastic act as neutral covers with regard to radiation transmission, while the blue, red and green shade nets as well as Clarix E Blue® plastic covers altered the transmission spectrum; thus, they can be considered photoselective. Similarly, the red to near infrared ratios (R:NIR) were altered significantly by the coverings, however, this did not significantly affect the shoot internode length or leaf area (LA) of stock plants. Leaf area was determined with a leaf area meter


A shift in the depositional systems and tectonic regime along the western margin of Laurentia marked the end of the Paleozoic Era. The record of this transition and the inception and tectonic development of the Permo-Triassic Cordilleran magmatic arc is preserved in plutonic rocks in southwestern North America, in successions in the distal back-arc region on the Colorado Plateau, and in the more proximal back-arc region in the rocks of the Buckskin Formation of southeastern California and west-central Arizona (southwestern North America).
 The Buckskin Formation is correlated to the Lower–Middle Triassic Moenkopi and Upper Triassic Chinle Formations of the Colorado Plateau based on stratigraphic facies and position and new detrital zircon data. Calcareous, fine- to medium-grained and locally gypsiferous quartzites (quartz siltstone) of the lower and quartzite members of the Buckskin Formation were deposited in a marginal-marine environment between ca. 250 and 245 Ma, based on detrital zircon U-Pb data analysis, matching a detrital-zircon maximum depositional age of 250 Ma from the Holbrook Member of the Moenkopi Formation. An unconformity that separates the quartzite and phyllite members is inferred to be the Tr-3 unconformity that is documented across the Colorado Plateau, and marks a transition in depositional environments. Rocks of the phyllite and upper members were deposited in wholly continental depositional environments beginning at ca. 220 Ma. Lenticular bodies of pebble to cobble (meta) conglomerate and medium- to coarse-grained phyllite (subfeldspathic or quartz wacke) in the phyllite member indicate deposition in fluvial systems, whereas the fine- to medium-grained beds of quartzite (quartz arenite) in the upper member indicate deposition in fluvial and shallow-lacustrine environments.
 The lower and phyllite members show very strong age and Th/U overlap with grains derived from Cordilleran arc plutons. A normalized-distribution plot of Triassic ages across southwestern North America shows peak magmatism at ca. 260–250 Ma and 230–210 Ma, with relatively less activity at ca. 240 Ma, when a land bridge between the arc and the continent was established.
 Ages and facies of the Buckskin Formation provide insight into the tectono-magmatic evolution of early Mesozoic southwestern North America. During deposition of the lower and quartzite members, the Cordilleran arc was offshore and likely dominantly marine. Sedimentation patterns were most strongly influenced by the Sonoma orogeny in northern Nevada and Utah (USA). The Tr-3 unconformity corresponds to both a lull in magmatism and the "shoaling" of the arc. The phyllite and upper members were deposited in a sedimentary system that was still influenced by a strong contribution of detritus from headwaters far to the southeast, but more locally by a developing arc that had a far stronger effect on sedimentation than the initial phases of magmatism during deposition of the basal members.


This article proposes that scientific inquiry regarding questions of fact should have an autonomous zone that is protected from politics. Although many scholars promote the idea that science is politicized, little empirical data exists to support this conclusion. This article contains an empirical study that demonstrates that the public received inaccurate information in the debate over a highly politicized and controversial area of scientific inquiry, embryonic stem cell research. This article utilizes the data from the empirical study and public choice theory to explain that there are process defects; this economic model can help explain, but cannot be used to resolve the process defects. Instead, this article articulates reasons why scientific inquiry should have an autonomous zone and that political actors should play a limited role in oversight. This article proposes solutions to balance the roles of elected officials with the expertise of scientists.


Carrion use by terrestrial vertebrates is much more prevalent than conventional theory implies, and, rather than a curiosity of animal behavior, is a key ecological process that must be accounted for. Human aversion to rotted substances and difficulties associated with identifying scavenged material in studies of food habits have contributed to the relative lack of information concerning scavenging behavior in vertebrates. Several lines of evidence, however, suggest that carrion resources are more extensively used by vertebrates than has been widely assumed: 1) a substantial number of animals die from causes other than predation and become available to scavengers, 2) a wide variety of vertebrate scavengers, rather than microbes or arthropods, consume most available carcasses, and 3) intense competition exists between vertebrate scavengers and decomposers, especially in warm climates. Although vultures are best adapted to use carrion, nearly all vertebrate predators are also scavengers to some extent. The costs and benefits associated with carrion use influences the evolution of scavenging behavior in vertebrates, resulting in a continuum of facultative scavengers that use carrion to varying degrees. The realized usage of carrion by a vertebrate species is influenced by the speed and efficiency with which it forages, its visual and olfactory abilities, and its capacity for detoxifying products of decomposition. A deeper understanding of carrion use by facultative scavengers will improve our knowledge of community and ecosystem processes, especially the flow of energy through food webs.


With UN peace operations involved in increasingly volatile and dangerous situations, there appears to be growing acceptance among member states that UN missions need greater capacity to generate intelligence, both to protect themselves and to fulfill their mandates more effectively.
This policy paper strives to unpack the concept of intelligence in UN peace operations by explaining its needs and requirements, existing structures, and limitations and to clearly define the concept of intelligence within the limits of the UN's fundamental principles and its multilateral and transparent nature. It aims to clarify and demystify the debate on intelligence in UN peace operations and to propose a specific UN approach. In order to reform and strengthen its analytical capacities and capabilities in peace operations, this paper proposes that the UN:
- Develops a definition of intelligence different from the traditional military definition, which focuses on serving the national interest and operating against a clearly defined adversary — the primary aim of intelligence for a UN peace operation should be to contribute to a political solution in the long run; - Implements an organizational framework that clearly defines the ethical and legal limitations of intelligence in UN peace operations — the UN cannot engage in covert or clandestine operations; - Creates guidelines to frame a more structured process of information collection, analysis, and sharing, as well as effective and collective decision making; - Establishes a comprehensive information-management system rather than new intelligence infrastructure, which most member states are likely to oppose for reasons of funding and politics; - Applies a people-centered approach to intelligence by emphasizing human intelligence as a key capability that is at present underdeveloped; - Creates a secure system for information sharing at all levels with clear and distinguishable levels of classification of different levels of access; - Initiates and implements a culture of intelligence in the organization, to ensure that information and analysis is shared across silos with the objective of supporting decision makers; and - Trains senior mission leadership on what intelligence assets are at its disposal and how to set intelligence priorities, request information, and provide feedback.


Abstract Informal care is the largest source of long-term care for elderly, surpassing home health care and nursing home care. By definition, informal care is unpaid. It remains a puzzle why so many adult children give freely of their time. Transfers of time to the older generation may be balanced by financial transfers going to the younger generation. This leads to the question of whether informal care and inter-vivos transfers are causally related. We analyze data from the 1999 and 2003 waves of National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women. We examine whether the elderly parents give more inter-vivos monetary transfers to adult children who provide informal care, by examining both the extensive and intensive margins of financial transfers and of informal care. We find statistically significant results that a child who provides informal care is more likely to receive inter-vivos transfers than a sibling who does not. If a child does provide care, there is no statistically significant effect on the amount of the transfer.


This Article establishes that overcriminalization serves to marginalize unwanted groups of society, and particularly regarding the sex offender registry, it results in social death. The author relies upon the notion of crime as a social construct to establish that the concept of "sex offense" changes over time as society and culture evolve. From there, the author incorporates the work of Michele Foucault involving the relationship of power, knowledge, and sexuality to show how the trend toward more repressive social controls over sex-related activity is related to a shift in this relationship. The Author identifies three characteristics and the associated traits which arise when overcriminalization exists, and further shows how these characteristics and traits are present with respect to the sex offender registry. This Article offers critical insight into the relationship between overcriminalization and repressive control systems and concludes that overcriminalization exists when repressive governmental controls seize power and render non-existent informal social controls. It follows that the sex offender registry is a repressive governmental control that has concentrated power in the government and criminal laws while shifting power away from informal social controls to result in the social death of those unwanted, those labeled sex offender.


Approaches for automatic crash reproduction aim to generate test cases that reproduce crashes starting from the crash stack traces. These tests help developers during their debugging practices. One of the most promising techniques in this research field leverages search-based software testing techniques for generating crash reproducing test cases. In this paper, we introduce Botsing, an open-source search-based crash reproduction framework for Java. Botsing implements state-of-the-art and novel approaches for crash reproduction. The well-documented architecture of Botsing makes it an easy-to-extend framework, and can hence be used for implementing new approaches to improve crash reproduction. We have applied Botsing to a wide range of crashes collected from open source systems. Furthermore, we conducted a qualitative assessment of the crash-reproducing test cases with our industrial partners. In both cases, Botsing could reproduce a notable amount of the given stack traces.Demo. video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6XaQjHqe48 Botsing website: https://stamp-project.github.io/botsing/


This paper treats the question of adaptive control of a projectile fin using a piezoelectric actuator. The hollow projectile fin is rigid, within which a flexible cantilever beam with a piezoelectric active layer is mounted. The model of the fin-beam system includes the aerodynamic moment which is a function of angle of attack of the projectile. The rotation angle of the fin is controlled by deforming the flexible beam which is hinged at the tip of the rigid fin. It is assumed that the system parameters are completely unknown and that only the fin angle and its derivative are measured for synthesis. A linear combination of the fin angle and fin's angular rate is chosen as the controlled output variable and an adaptive servoregulator is designed for the control of the fin angle and the rejection of the disturbance input (aerodynamic moment). In the closed-loop system, the fin angle asymptotically converges to the desired value and the elastic modes converges to their equilibrium values. Computer simulation is performed which shows that in the closed-loop system, the fin angle is precisely controlled in spite of uncertainties in the fin-beam parameters and the aerodynamic moment coefficients. Furthermore, a laboratory model of the projectile fin is developed and the adaptive controller is implemented for real-time control. Experimental results are presented which show that adaptive servoregulator accomplishes fin angle control.Copyright © 2005 by ASME


Anoxic zones, regions of the water column completely devoid of dissolved oxygen, occur in open oceans and coastal zones worldwide. The Baltic Sea is characterized by strong salinity-driven stratification, maintained by occasional water inflows from the Danish Straights and freshwater input from rivers. Between inflow events, the stratification interface between surface and deep waters hinders mixing and ventilation of deep water; consequently, the bottom waters of large regions of the Baltic are anoxic. The onset of the anoxic zone is closely coincident with the depth of the halocline and, as a result, the interface between oxic and anoxic waters corresponds to a strong impedance contrast. Here, we track acoustic scattering from the impedance contrast utilizing a broadband split-beam echosounder in the Western Gotland Basin and link it to a dissolved oxygen level of 2 ml/l using ground truth stations. The broadband acoustic dataset provides the means to remotely observe the spatiotemporal variations in the oxic–anoxic interface, map out the extent of the anoxic zone with high resolution, and identify several mechanisms influencing the vertical distribution of oxygen in the water column. The method described here can be used to study other systems with applications in ongoing oceanographic monitoring programs.


Geophysical motions can occur over a broad temporal spectrum, from high frequency seismic movements to very long period tectonic deformation. The Aegean region is tectonically one of the most active areas on Earth. There have, over the past 15 years, been a range of campaign style GPS studies which have looked to increase our knowledge of the area and better define the geodynamic processes involved. In 2002 the Center for the Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes and Tectonics (COMET) established a network of continuously operating GPS receivers (CGPS) throughout the region in order to add to the knowledge gained from previous studies.
This thesis focuses on which tectonic motions can be observed using the COMET continuous GPS network. Approaches for the precise analytical estimation of subtle tectonic motion are presented. Daily coordinate estimates of COMET sites and a number of ITRF (International Terrestrial Reference Frame) sites around Europe were calculated using a precise point positioning strategy and ambiguity resolution using NASA's GIPSY – OASIS II processing software and IGS (International GPS Service) precise products. Time series produced showed post fit standard deviations of 2-3 mm in the horizontal and 6-8 mm in the vertical. Significant annual periodic variation is observed in the time series.
The coordinate time series studies were further refined using a selection of filters. Firstly, gross and sigma filters were applied to remove outliers, the data then had a range of regional filters applied looking to best define and remove the common mode error in the area. These filters produced mixed results with time series improvement occurring on a site by site basis. In some cases noise was reduced by a factor of 2 whilst in other cases there was little or no improvement. This combined with a lack of knowledge of the individual site movements led to the use of a filtered baseline method, whereby common mode error was removed purely on a site by site basis. This method revealed expansion across the Hellenic arc of the order of a few millimetres per year and sub millimetre north-south compaction behind the arc. It also revealed first evidence of transient motion at a number of sites parallel to the Hellenic arc. The transient signals occurred every 12 months ±1.5 and lasting for 40 – 100 days. These signals were not so much a reversal of tectonic motion akin to the silent earthquakes observed in Cascadia, Japan and Mexico, instead they appeared more as a pause in the otherwise consistent movement of the Aegean microplate overriding the subducting African lithosphere. In addition to the observed tectonic signals, the effects and implications of the two post processing strategies are analysed and discussed.
Higher temporal frequency positioning is carried out on seismic events (Mw 6.7 earthquake Kithera, Mw 8.1 and Mw 6.7 earthquakes, Macquarie island) using instantaneous positioning followed by "sidereal filtering" whereby integer-cycle phase ambiguities are resolved using only single epochs of dual frequency phase and pseudorange data. These positions are then siderealy stacked to reduce the effects of geometry related error. The technique reduces geometry related noise by a factor ≈2 using epoch by epoch 30 second data. The feasibility of the technique for observing pre, co and post seismic signals is demonstrated.
A visualisation tool was developed to allow the simultaneous observation of the tectonic motion of a CGPS network data over any spatial and temporal regimes.


This article examines Israeli-Jewish attitudes toward the Oslo process, as it has been unfolding in the years 1994-2001. We found that despite the turbulence and frequent crises associated with it, the aggregated attitudes toward the Oslo process have been remarkably stable during most of this period. We explain this stability by the persistent division of Israeli society into two entrenched publics - pro-Oslo and anti-Oslo - each of which displays distinct sociopolitical and demographic attributes. However, we have also found that, along with its bifurcated structure, Israeli-Jewish public opinion consists of yet another, unifying layer. The latter was manifested in the largely consensual reactions to critical internal and external events related to the Oslo process, as well as in common views about the existential threat posed by the Palestinians to Israel's security and its continuation as a Jewish state. We discuss these results in the context of recent debate about the relevance of public opinion to foreign policymaking in general, and consider their bearing on Israeli policies regarding the Oslo process in particular.


In order to understand people's life courses in history, it is important not only to get an idea about the way transitional events
were shaped by cultural life scripts, but also about the views people had about
the way their life course could be shaped by themselves. Shaping your life, this
is what human agency is about: the capacity for human beings to make choices
and to impose those choices onto the world. But fairly uncertain is the degree
to which people in the past perceived the potentialities of human agency. It is
therefore important to find out not only the tools and possibilities they had to
make decisions and enact them on the world, thus shaping their life course by
themselves, but also the perceptions they had on putting human agency into
action. Some people may have perceived human agency to be restrained because of structural impediments, while others may have perceived human
agency to be restrained by cultural life scripts. Some will have perceived these
constraints to be tight, while others may have considered them to be loose. As
a consequence, perceptions on human agency will be very different, not only
between people, but also between time periods. In this paper, the dimensions
are explored of perceptions on human agency between people who lived in the
Netherlands in 1970.