The limnology of Lakes Malawi, Tanganyika; and Victoria is discussed with the objective of examining how the physical, chemical, and biological properties of the lakes will determine the response of these ancient great lake eco- systems to human activities. Of the physical properties dis- cussed, large dilution capacities and long flushing times can make the detection and removal of chemical pollutants in these lakes difficult. The outflows of all three lakes are small because of high evaporation losses, and as a result lake levels are responsive to climate changes that would alter evapora- tion:precipitation ratios. Increased nutrient input to these lakes will likely result in a decrease in the volume of oxy- genated water and available fish habitat. Plankton commu- nity composition will also change, probably toward domi- nance by cyanobacteria While the effects of eutrophication on fish production are difficult to predict, changes in plank- ton composition would almost certainly be accompanied by changes in fish community structure. Recent studies of water chemistry and plankton productivity in Lake Victoria pro- vide evidence of possible eutrophication. Because land use has a diffuse but potentially large impact on these lakes, conservation strategies must take into account human ac- tivities within entire drainage basins. This requires cooper- ation between riparian countries and technological and fi- nancial input from the international community. An immediate need is the establishment of monitoring pro- grams to determine the impact, real or potential, of human activities around the lakes.


In response to mechanical stimulation of a single cell, intercellular Ca2+ waves propagate through airway epithelial and glial cell cultures, providing a mechanism for intercellular communication. Experiments indicate that intercellular propagation of the Ca2+ wave is mediated by the movement of inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3) through gap junctions. To explore the validity of this hypothesis, we have constructed and solved a system of partial differential equations that models the Ca2+ changes induced by the movement of IP3 between cells. The model is in good qualitative agreement with experimental data, including the behavior of the wave in the absence of extracellular Ca2+, the shape of the subsequent asynchronous Ca2+ oscillations, and the passage of a wave through a cell exhibiting Ca2+ oscillations. However, the concentration of IP3 that is required in each cell to propagate the wave may not be achieved by passive diffusion of IP3 through gap junctions from the stimulated cell. We therefore suggest that Ca(2+)-independent regenerative production of IP3 might be necessary for the propagation of intercellular Ca2+ waves.


The viral video documenting the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin inspired nationwide protests that brought national attention to widespread racial injustice and biased policing practices towards black communities in the United States. The use of social media by the Black Lives Matter movement was a primary route for activists to promote the cause and organize over 1,400 protests across the country. Recent research argues that moral discussions on social media are a catalyst for social change. This study sought to shed light on the moral dynamics shaping Black Lives Matter Twitter discussions by analyzing over 40,000 Tweets geo-located to Los Angeles. The goal of this study is to (1) develop computational techniques for mapping the structure of moral discourse on Twitter and (2) understand the connections between social media activism and protest.


In
  this
  technical
  report,
  we
  present
  a
  powerful
  new
  machine
  learning-‐based audio
  processing
  system
  that
  enables
  synchronization
  of
  audio-‐rich
  video
  and
  discovery
  of specific
  sounds
  at
  the
  frame
  level
  within
  a
  video.
  This
  tool
  is
  particularly
  useful
  when analyzing
  large
  volumes
  of
  video
  obtained
  from
  social
  media
  and
  other
  open
  source Internet
  platforms
  that
  strip
  technical
  metadata
  during
  the
  uploading
  process.
  The
  tool creates
  a
  unique
  sound
  signature
  at
  the
  frame
  level
  for
  each
  video
  in
  a
  collection,
  and synchronizes
  videos
  that
  are
  recorded
  at
  the
  same
  time
  and
  location.
  The
  use
  of
  this
  tool for
  synchronization
  ultimately
  provides
  a
  multi-‐perspectival
  view
  of
  a
  specific
  event, enabling
  efficient
  event
  reconstruction
  and
  analysis
  by
  investigators.
  The
  tool
  can
  also
  be used
  to
  search
  for
  specific
  sounds
  within
  a
  video
  collection
  (such
  as
  gunshots).
  Both
  of these
  tasks
  are
  labor
  intensive
  when
  carried
  out
  manually
  by
  human
  investigators.
  We demonstrate
  the
  utility
  of
  this
  system
  by
  analyzing
  video
  from
  Ukraine
  and
  Nigeria,
  two countries
  currently
  relevant
  to
  the
  work
  of
  Center
  for
  Human
  Rights
  Science
  collaborators. Keywords:
  Audio
  Signal
  Processing,
  Machine
  Learning,
  Multi-‐Camera
  Video Synchronization,
  Conflict
  Monitoring,
  Human
  Rights
  Documentation Acknowledgements:
  The
  authors
  would
  like
  to
  thank
  the
  MacArthur
  Foundation,
  Oak Foundation,
  and
  Humanity
  United
  for
  their
  generous
  support
  of
  this
  project.


The "Social Identity Theory", which has been developed by Henri Tajfel & John Turner, is defined as "the part of personality perception of individual, which is created with an individual's membership a group, knowledge with this membership, paid attention and emotional commitment on this membership". Social identity theory, beyond private and personal identities, touches upon the identity of a specific group membership. According to the researches about this issue, individuals reflect their social identities in the society with the products that they consumed and with the brands that they used. In this study, social identity and social identity theory is evaluated by defining the concept of identity firstly. After that, the definition of brand and the brand identity with the definition of luxury and luxury brand is made; in the end, the effect of use of luxury brand during the social identity projection of individuals is touched upon.


Corn and soyabeans may not be available in many countries particularly those which do not have sufficient foreign currency or the capacity to grow them. This paper outlines strategies that may be important under these circumstances. Alternative feedstuffs and various feeding systems may be used to support poultry production. Alternative ingredients such as rice bran, pearl millet, cottonseed meal and grain legumes are discussed. Evidence is presented showing that amino acid requirements of layers and broilers may be too generous particularly in countries where climate, management and disease can impose production constraints. The ability of finishing broilers to perform well on very low-energy diets allows the inclusion of alternative feeds and by-products into formulations. Very low protein diets based on cereals and free amino acids can be used for layers without loss of performance. Self-selection of feedstuffs may be an important strategy in reducing feed costs of broilers and layers. The concept of matching production with available feed resources may compromise broiler growth and egg production, but in many countries this may be the most economical choice. Countries in the humid tropics usually have reduced poultry performance. The effects of high temperature and humidity are difficult to overcome. The vexed questions of the escalation in the price of fossil fuel and the outbreak of avian influenza, both seemingly without a solution, are clouds hanging over an otherwise buoyant industry.


This paper analyses the interrelationship between the process of suburbanization and a changing political and ethnic landscape in the Vilnius urban region. The region surrounding Vilnius city is dominated by Polish identity residents while those who suburbanise into the region are mainly ethnic Lithuanians. This may lead to potential tension and conflicts in the region which may find its expression in the voting behaviour of residents of the region. Using data from the 1997 and 2011 municipal elections we found that the share of votes for the Polish party in the region decreases over time, while the absolute number of votes for this party increases. At the same time we find increasing voting activity in the suburban ring. The changing electoral behaviour can be regarded as an indicator of a growing ethnic identity. The voting results also identify the zones of the most intense changes in the electoral behavior and thus indicate areas of potential social tensions between two ethnic groups.


Reproducibility and repeatability dramatically increase the value of scientific experiments, but remain two challenging goals for the experimenters. Similar to the LAMP stack that considerably eased the web developers life, in this paper, we advocate the need of an analogous software stack to help the experimenters making reproducible research. We propose the EnosStack, an open source software stack especially designed for reproducible scientific experiments. EnosStack enables to easily describe experimental workflows meant to be re-used, while abstracting the underlying infrastructure running them. Being able to switch experiments from a local to a real testbed deployment greatly lower code development and validation time. We describe the abstractions that have driven its design, before presenting a real experiment we deployed on Grid'5000 to illustrate its usefulness. We also provide all the experiment code, data and results to the community.


Preface During the decade from 1989 to 1999, workplace research at PARC was based in the Work Practice and Technology research area. In anticipation of the group's disbanding in 2000, its members organized a symposium under the heading "Work Practice and Technology: The next twenty years of research." Over one hundred participants attended from North America, Western Europe, Scandinavia, Japan, and Australia. The symposium consisted of one day of panels at Xerox PARC, followed by two days of working groups and celebrations at Half Moon Bay, California. The text that follows is my opening address for the symposium, aimed at providing context for the gathering as well as a brief, retrospective summary of some of the work practice research accomplished during the preceding twenty years at PARC. While references to publications that provide further detail on the studies mentioned have been added, the text has otherwise been left unedited to give a sense for the spirit of the occasion. One inspiration for us in organizing this gathering was the prospect of bringing our various, partially overlapping networks of friends and colleagues interested in work and technology together in one place. So in discussing how best to welcome you all we decided that we had better begin by introducing you to each other. Rather than have you turn to your neighbor and shake hands, or go around the room and have each of you tell your story (though that would be a fascinating event in its own right!), we decided that I should adopt the Danish practice at a large celebratory gathering, wherein the host explains to their guests who don't all know each other how they all came to be there.


We propose and investigate a novel technique to realize non-return-to-zero (NRZ) to return-to-zero (RZ) format conversion of a multichannel 4-ary amplitude shift keying (4-ASK) signal. The proposed format converter composed of two modulators and a dispersion compensating fiber (DCF) is theoretically investigated using numerical simulation as basis. Research shows that a 4-channel 20-Gb/s NRZ-4-ASK signal can be converted to a RZ-4-ASK signal simultaneously without wavelength shifting and signal quality degradation, with the converted signal multiplexed to 40 Gb/s.


This paper introduces the Knowledge Engineering Web Interface (KEWI) which primarily aims to be used for
modelling automated planning tasks in a semi-formal framework. The conceptual model used to represent the
declarative and procedural knowledge in KEWI is described formally. The model consists of three layers: a
rich ontology, a model of basic actions, and more complex methods. It is this structured conceptual model
based on the rich ontology that facilitates knowledge engineering. The focus of this paper is to show how
the central knowledge model used in KEWI differs from a model directly encoded in PDDL, the language
accepted by most existing planning engines. Specifically, the rich ontology enables a more concise and natural
style of representation. For operational use, KEWI automatically generates PDDL. Initial experiments show
that the generated PDDL can be processed by a planner without incurring significant drawbacks.


The methodology to assess the quality of doctoral degree studies was prepared in order to present recommendations on the ways to improve doctoral degree studies and their organization at Mykolas Romeris University. It has been prepared by adjusting best practice of foreign countries and other Lithuanian universities. A doctoral degree study organization analysis has been undertaken by adjusting "6 Sigma" methodology and by creating three special questionnaires. It has been examined how university graduates, their moderators and administrators evaluate doctoral degree studies and their quality. According to the results of this research, proposals how to improve doctoral degree study process quality were presented and instruments for quality process systematic measurement, evaluation and quality improvement have been suggested. It was suggested to compare the current good international and national doctoral study organization practice by adjusting SWOT analysis and comparable analysis. It was also suggested to perform periodic (3-5 year) doctoral degree study process quality evaluations, according to the established quality improvement goals and expected indicators, which we suggested in this research. We sugest performing them by adjusting three questionnaires of doctoral degree studies stakeholders by using our proposed instrument. Special questionnaires were created in accordance with the established stages of the process of doctoral degree studies so that the quality of every stage could be assessed. In order to evaluate the doctoral degree study programs we have offered a "peer review" method. During the project we have established a primary data base quality improvement process of the doctoral degree studies. We suggest using 6 Sigma methodology for further investigations in order to monitor the whole process.


The monthly tally of civilian casualties in Afghanistan traces the war9s grim trajectory. Thousands of Afghan bystanders are killed and maimed each year in clashes between insurgents and the coalition military forces. The ebb and flow of casualties reveal a worrying trend: As the coalition troops withdraw from Afghanistan, the population is suffering ever greater losses. These data, released by the U.K. Ministry of Defence for a study conducted by Neil Shortland of the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, are now publicly available at http://scim.ag/Afghandata.


Global adoption of transgenic crops reached 67.7 million hectares in 2003 from 2.8 million in 1996. Delivery has occurred almost entirely through the private sector and adoption has been rapid in areas where the crops addressed serious production constraints and where farmers had access to the new technologies. Three countries (USA, Argentina and Canada), three crops (soybean, cotton and maize) and two traits (insect resistance and herbicide tolerance) account for the vast majority of global transgenic area. While some farmers in some developing countries are benefiting, most do not have access to transgenic crops and traits that address their needs. This paper surveys the level and distribution of the economic impacts of transgenic cotton and soybeans to date and reviews the impacts of these crops on chemical pesticide and herbicide use. It concludes with some considerations of ways to address the development and delivery of technological innovations to small farmers in developing countries.


The aim of the study was to display the selected policy tools stimulating the use of biofuels on agricultural commodity prices. The analytical and graphical approach was applied. The study indicates that observed increase in the levels of world agricultural commodity prices and their volatility in large amount are conditioned by the biofuels policy.


this study investigates the relationship between acoustic patterns in contemporary electroacoustic compositions, and listeners9 real-time perceptions of their structure and affective content. Thirty-two participants varying in musical expertise (nonmusicians, classical musicians, expert computer musicians) continuously rated the affect (arousal and valence) and structure (change in sound) they perceived in four compositions of approximately three minutes duration. Time series analyses tested the hypotheses that sound intensity influences listener perceptions of structure and arousal, and spectral flatness influences perceptions of structure and valence. Results suggest that intensity strongly influences perceived change in sound, and to a lesser extent listener perceptions of arousal. Spectral flatness measures were only weakly related to listener perceptions, and valence was not strongly shaped by either acoustic measure. Differences in response by composition and musical expertise suggest that, particularly with respect to the perception of valence, individual experience (familiarity and liking), and meaningful sound associations mediate perception.


The specification of Primordial Germ Cells (PGCs) in early mammalian development is a fundamental process of development, critical for, maintaining the germ line. There are two methods by which PGCs are specified in the animal kingdom. Firstly, through the predetermined method involving maternally inherited germplasm, and secondly through the induction of pluripotent precursors in a process termed epigenesis. Embryoid Bodies (EBs) can be used to recapitulate early developmental processes of mammalian development, allowing the dissection and better understanding of critical processes. This project will aim to try and better understand the role of the homeobox transcription factor Nanog in specifying PGCs through the process of epigenesis. Mouse Nanog over-expression in EBs has been shown to increase PGC specification, assayed through RT-PCR analysis. The functional activity of ancestral Nanog is hypothesised to be conserved through the major trunk of evolution in organisms that specify PGCs through the induced method of epigenesis. To test this hypothesis, ancient Nanog orthologs were isolated from different positions of the Deuterostome superfamily and over-expressed in EBs. Their effects on enhancing PGC specification were then quantified through quantitative RT-PCR and western blot analysis. The results from this project show that the over-expression of ancient Nanog orthologs in mES cells can enhance the process of PGC specification, by increasing the PGC associated markers Dazl and Vasa. This suggests a possible conservation of functional Nanog activity in organisms that specify PGCs through epigenesis, and also that pluripotency is an ancient trait.


An intriguing, informed look at salvation and the kingdom of God What is the kingdom of God? Where is it? How should the church celebrate the coming of the kingdom? In this popularly written study Ben Witherington addresses these and various other questions about the ever-elusive kingdom of God. Clearly defining the kingdom in terms of God s dominion, Witherington discusses both its present ( already ) and its future ( not yet ) dimensions, and he brings out at length the implications of kingdom thinking for theology, ethics, and worship. End-of-chapter questions for reflection and discussion make the book ideal for church classes and study groups."


Among 27 essential oils tested, 11 oils exhibited strong antioxidant activity (95 - 100%) with dose response, which was comparable to that of α-tocopherol. The essential oils showing such activity were ylang-ylang, rose, parsley seed, jasmine, celery seed, basil, anise star, clove leaf, bergamot, thyme, and cinnamon leaf. Among antioxidant components found in these essential oils, eugenol, benzaldehyde, and thymol exhibited comparable activity to that of known natural antioxidant α-tocopherol. Benzyl alcohol, maltol, γ-butyrolactone, and terpinene-4-ol had moderate antioxidant activity. Low-molecular weight heterocyclic compounds, which are the chemicals responsible for cooked flavor, comprise one fourth of the over 400 volatile compounds identified in cooked foods. Among heterocyclic compounds found in the Maillard reaction products (MRP), furans and pyrroles exhibited relatively potent antioxidative activities. Moreover, these heterocyclic compounds showed significant synergic effects. Although the activity of each low-molecular weight compound is not as strong as the known antioxidant, α-tocopherol or BHT, the total activity of numerous compounds might be comparable to those of known antioxidants because tremendous numbers of these chemicals are present either in essential oils or in MRP. Therefore, constant and consistent consumption of foods and beverages containing these low molecular weight antioxidants may prevent diseases caused by oxidative damage.


Verdicts other than guilty and not guilty are exceptional in American criminal law, yet some legal systems routinely use more than two verdicts. In Scotland, judges and juries in criminal trials choose from three verdicts: guilty, not proven, and not guilty. Not proven and not guilty are both acquittals, indistinguishable in legal consequence but different in connotation. Not guilty is for a defendant the jury thinks is innocent; not proven, for a case with insufficient evidence of guilt. One verdict announces "legally innocent" and thus exonerates. The other says "inconclusive evidence" and fails to exonerate or even stigmatizes. The American verdict of not guilty covers both of these grounds for acquittal. The jury that thinks a defendant is truly innocent has no means of conveying that message. For the jury that considers the charge unproved but does not want to assert factual guilt or innocence, no verdict speaks only to proof. The two-verdict system, or any other verdict system for that matter, limits the jury's speech. Reasons could be given for obscuring the verdict: one might say a two-verdict system maintains the presumption of innocence and prevents social stigma for unproven charges. As shown in this Comment, a two-verdict system secures neither of these advantages. With a high standard of proof, such as beyond a reasonable doubt, the public will know that some defendants are being acquitted because of insufficient evidence, not because of actual innocence. With that knowledge, the public will see the acquittal in a two-verdict system as stigmatizing and tarnishing, and no well-intentioned decree can change that fact. Once this stubborn reality of tarnishing acquittals is recognized, the arguments for a two-verdict system lose their force. This Comment proposes introducing a verdict patterned after Scotland's not proven. Part I surveys legal systems that have more than one kind of acquittal available to most defendants. Part II proposes a not proven verdict for the United States. Part III analyzes consequences of introducing this verdict, such as more information, more acquittals, and more stigma.


Results of the SPRINT study have been disputed, based on the assumption that unattended BP measurements do not correlate with usual BP measurements. In this study, the authors investigated the correlation of unattended SPRINT‐like measurements with other conventional measurements. All BP measurements were taken with the patient seated in a comfortable chair with the legs uncrossed and not speaking during the procedure. For the purpose of this study, sixty‐five patients, mostly male (93%), were recruited from our hypertension clinic and all were on antihypertensive medication (av 3.0 ± 1.1). Patients were at high cardiovascular risk with high rates of comorbidities, av age 68 ± 12 years, 49% with diabetes, 34% with mild CKD (CKD 1‐3, average eGFR 55.0 ± 13 mL/min/1.73 m2), and 20% with history of stable coronary artery disease. All BP measurements were similar with no statistically significant difference (one‐way ANOVA, P = 0.621). Compared to unattended SPRINT BP values (139.77 ± 19.22/75.42 ± 11.72 mm Hg), the clinic BP measurements were numerically slightly higher but with a NS P value (P = 0.163). Similarly, unattended BP measurements were similar to values taken by the clinic physician. In a smaller cohort of 11 patients, the authors compared unobserved vs observed SPRINT‐like BP measurements, and in 13 patients, the authors compared unobserved SPRINT‐like BP measurements to average home BP measurements (Table 3). There were no significant differences between any of the subgroups (one‐way ANOVA, P = 0.816 for systolic and P = 0.803 for diastolic). The authors conclude that unattended BP measurements taken (the SPRINT way) are similar to other conventional office blood pressure measurements.


The formation of the wage laboring class in the Iranian oil industry during the first decades of the 20th century is studied as a tangled global-local social history. The analysis seeks to situate the oil complex in Iran within the interlinked contexts of the global transformations of World War One, the social and political-economic tumults of the interwar period, the changing geopolitics of the Persian Gulf and Anglo Iranian relations, the consequences of the 1921 coup d'etat in Iran, the local transformations of the oil rich province of Khuzestan, and the urban histories of the oil mining town of Masjed Soleyman and especially the refinery and port city of Abadan. As petroleum was becoming the primary raw material of Fordism and the second industrial revolution the accumulation of capital in oil required the dismantling of existing social structures and the reassembly of resources, technical expertise, and populations in modern built environments designed for oil capitalism. The urban social history of these oil cities shed light on the contentious processes that led to the making of an industrial oil working class, as well as the formation of modern state institutions in Iran, and the Anglo Persian Oil Company


Abstract The main goal of the present work is to analyse the numerical simulation of a centrifugal pump by solving Navier-Stokes equations, coupled with the 'standard k-∊' turbulence model. The pump consists of an impeller having five curved blades with nine diffuser vanes. The shaft rotates at 890r/min. Flow characteristics are assumed to be stalled in the appropriate region of flowrate levels of 1.31-2.861/s. Numerical analysis techniques are performed on a commercial FLUENT package program assuming steady, incompressible flow conditions with decreasing flowrate. Under stall conditions the flow in the diffuser passage alternates between outward jetting when the low-pass-filtered pressure is high to a reverse flow when the filtered pressure is low. Being below design conditions, there is a consistent high-speed leakage flow in the gap between the impeller and the diffuser from the exit side of the diffuser to the beginning of the volute. Separation of this leakage flow from the diffuser vane causes the onset of stall. As the flowrate decreases both the magnitude of the leakage within the vaneless part of the pump and reverse flow within a stalled diffuser passage increase. As this occurs, the stall-cell size extends from one to two diffuser passages. Comparisons are made with experimental data and show good agreement.


J.Moody and C. Darken, "Fast learning in Networks of locallytuned Processing units, Neural Computation , 1:281-294, 1989. N.B.Karayiannis and G.W. Mi, "Growing radial basis Neural Networks: merging supervised and unsupervised learning with network growth techniques " IEEE Trans. On Neural Networks. D.Dasgupta and S. Forest, "Artificial Immune System in Industrial Applications" Proc. Of the IPMM'99, 1999. P.Hajela and J.S.Yoo, "Immune Network Modeling in design Optimization ".In new Ideas in Optimization,(Eds) D Corne, M.Dorigo & F. Glover, McGraw Hill, London, pp. 203-215, 1999.


We have investigated the linear viscoelastic behavior of guar gum solutions as a function of frequency, temperature, polymer concentration, and molecular weight. This was done to sort out the importance of different relaxation mechanisms like reptation or the breakup of physical bonds. In the kilohertz regime, Rouse behavior is observed. At lower frequencies, two storage modulus plateau zones were found, indicating two additional relaxations. One is operative between 1 and 100 Hz and gives rise to a very broad relaxation spectrum, even for monodisperse guar. Describing the dependencies of the relaxation time and low-shear viscosity on concentration and molecular weight with power laws resulted in unusually high coefficients. The second relaxation becomes manifest below 0.01 Hz and has not been earlier reported. Here the temperature dependence is very strong whereas all other dependencies are weak. Analyzing the experiments with existing models for transient polymer networks revealed that at best a partial decription of the experimental dependencies can be obtained. It was concluded that at least two different relaxation mechanisms must play a role, classical reptation not being one of these. Best overall predictions were obtained with a model assuming two types of associations. However, also the picture of star polymer-like structures held together via bonds with a long lifetime could give comparable predictions. For a further distinction between these mechanisms, more information about the mesoscopic structure is needed.


In this paper, we employ the agent-based macroeconomic Eurace@Unibi model to study the economic implications of different degrees of de-centralization in the wage setting. We think of de-centralization as wages being a weighted average of an economy-wide 'union wage' and a firm-specific component depending on the firm's productivity and the experienced tightness of the labor market. Starting from a baseline scenario, corresponding to a high degree of unionization, in which wages are fully centralized and indexed on economy-wide productivity gains and inflation, we investigate how an increasing level of de-centralization affects the dynamics of output, employment, inequality, and market concentration. Our findings suggest that stronger centralization of the wage-setting process induces lower wage inequality and stronger concentration on the consumption goods market. Furthermore, due to more physical investments, an economy with more centralized wage setting is characterized by higher productivity and faster economic growth.


The purpose of this research is to assess the performance of quality management systems in the Kuwaiti work organizations as per ISO 9001:2008 from the customers' perspectives (end users) based on the auditing practices and quality implementations. The research has taken a long path of research methodology starting with the development and customizations of two different survey questionnaires and ending up with a data analysis using several statistical software packages such as SPSS and Minitab. Most of the data analysis has used the method of non-parametric statistical techniques except for the modeling part where advanced statistical techniques have been used. One survey was directed to all business types and the other was only directed to manufacturing organizations. The target respondents for both surveys were provided in the form of listed names of ISO 9001 certified work organizations by a government agency for the state of Kuwait, public authority for industry (PAFI). Reliability and validity of both surveys were statistically justifiable enough to make the author to proceed with: (1) comparison against Swedish certified work organizations, and (2) building up a statistical model from each survey. The comparison between the Kuwaiti and Swedish work organizations has shown many significant differences in the auditing practices and quality implementations. Moreover, the resulted differences between the two culturally work environments (Kuwaiti and Swedish), shed the lights about the existing gaps of ISO implementations and auditing practices in the two countries and help the author analyze these gaps for suggesting any prospect of quality improvements. Aside from descriptive and inferential analysis on the surveyed data, a model building was the final objective of this research. The main model was built up based on 10 interrelated factors, extracted from the survey questionnaire using LISREL software as a
structural equation modeling technique. Furthermore, the model has shown the capability of predicting the total and direct effects from one factor to another. From modeling, it was statistically shown that the ISO certified manufacturing organizations outperformed the ISO certified services organizations in Kuwait.


In the present work a 4D (three dimensions combined with the time) fourth generation CT system was developed with several detectors (as much as required) made with CsI (Tl) size of 5 mm × 20 mm width × length) coupled to PIN photodiodes size of 5×5 mm2. It was also developed a pulse sensitive preamplifier in a small electronic circuit board with size of 9.5×100 mm2 (width × length). This system was able to identify 80 keV photopeak at room temperature and was obtained a photo peak counting efficiency around 33% for 137Cs. The proposed CT was assembled on a wooden platform, where the cylindrical detectors (photodiode + preamplifier + CsI (Tl) crystal) are arranged in pentagonal parallel or fan sectors. Five sources of 137Cs or jointly with 133Ba or 192Ir are assembled at the vertices. Each detector was supplied with three power supplies: +12V,−12V and adjustable high voltage HV (capable to range from 0 to 2000V). The pre-amplifier signal was connected to a data acquisition unit containing amplifier, counter unit and transfer data via USB-2 cable to a computer type PC-Windows. The system was easily adaptable to the environment of the industries and able to produce multi-phase analysis in real time.


Australia has seen a deep division in opinion in search of a carbon pricing mechanism. While concepts of carbon taxation and emission trading have comparable public support, climate scepticism is infuencing the debates in political and public spheres in downplaying the need for carbon pricing. Public deliberation is a possible engagement option to address the conflict inherent in climate policy preferences. This research explores the way that a deliberative forum involving twenty-four Australians promoted effective communication between participants through which conflict between policy preferences became more tangible. While the forum did not eliminate disagreement in preferences in the choice of carbon pricing mechanisms, participants reached consensus on fundamental principles such as the need for trusted sources of information, trusted governance procedures, and transparent accountability by appropriate institutions. Shared political expectations encouraged dialogue and cooperation in discussions by enhancing reciprocal understanding. Two sceptical participants who originally had strong opinions different from the rest of the group managed to find common ground. Public deliberative forums that are conducive to reciprocal communication are able to provide a mechanism for joint problem-solving processes that are less adversarial and more responsive to the range of people's preferences.


Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks (cGAN) generate realistic images by incorporating class information into GAN. While one of the most popular cGANs is an auxiliary classifier GAN with softmax cross-entropy loss (ACGAN), it is widely known that training ACGAN is challenging as the number of classes in the dataset increases. ACGAN also tends to generate easily classifiable samples with a lack of diversity. In this paper, we introduce two cures for ACGAN. First, we identify that gradient exploding in the classifier can cause an undesirable collapse in early training, and projecting input vectors onto a unit hypersphere can resolve the problem. Second, we propose the Data-to-Data Cross-Entropy loss (D2D-CE) to exploit relational information in the class-labeled dataset. On this foundation, we propose the Rebooted Auxiliary Classifier Generative Adversarial Network (ReACGAN). The experimental results show that ReACGAN achieves state-of-the-art generation results on CIFAR10, Tiny-ImageNet, CUB200, and ImageNet datasets. We also verify that ReACGAN benefits from differentiable augmentations and that D2D-CE harmonizes with StyleGAN2 architecture. Model weights and a software package that provides implementations of representative cGANs and all experiments in our paper are available at https://github.com/POSTECH-CVLab/PyTorch-StudioGAN.


The Navan Zn-Pb deposit in Ireland is hosted by a lower Carboniferous, carbonate-dominated sedimentary sequence. In excess of 97 percent of the ore is hosted by a Courceyan, shallow-water succession termed the Pale Beds. The ore occurs as complex strata-bound, tabular lenses often dislocated by faulting and truncated by a submarine erosional slide structure. Above this surface (unconformity) lies the economically minor, but genetically important Conglomerate Group ore hosted by a complex debris flow termed the Boulder Conglomerate. Timing constraints on the mineralization can be defined by the relationship to the erosion surface and style of mineralization, suggesting a late Chadian or early Arundian age ( approximately 345 Ma). The bulk of the ore formed below the erosion surface in the semilithified to lithified Pale Beds ore.The mineralogy of the economic ores is relatively simple, being dominated by sphalerite and galena in a 5/1 ratio. Pyrite and marcasite are present in subordinate amounts in the majority of the Pale Beds ore but dominate the Conglomerate Group ore and the Pale Beds ore immediately below the erosion surface, particularly lens 2-1. Gangue minerals are dominated by calcite, dolomite, and barite.The morphology of the mineralization reflects subsea-floor emplacement. The orebody occurs as numerous strata-bound horizons, ranging from intense, high-grade massive sulfides to lower grade sulfide layers separated by barren limestone. In all cases, there is strong evidence for tectonic disruption during ore deposition. Sulfides were dominantly deposited as open-space growth and replacement of host rock. Open-space textures include dendritic-skeletal, stalactitic, internal sediment, geopetal, and coarse-bladed forms. The general absence of coarse, euhedral, cavity lining textures or substantial collapse brecciation suggests that large cavities were not present prior to mineralization. Replacement textures range from delicate pseudomorphs of biodasts to more destructive granular styles.Sulfide sulfur isotope analyses exhibit two dominant groupings of delta 34 S from around -23 to -5 and 0 to 15 per mil, respectively, and a third minor grouping around -32 to -28 per mil. At least two sources of sulfur are invoked. Values around -23 to -15 per mil are considered to be the result of bacteriogenic reduction of lower Carboniferous seawater sulfate ( approximately 20ppm), with a characteristic fractionation around 35 to 45 per mil away from sulfate; this is the most common range of delta 34 S in the deposit. Values around 8 to 15 per mil are interpreted to be hydrothermal sulfide transported with the metal-bearing fluid. Mixing of these two components is inferred from the isotopic data and trends in the mineral paragenesis. Barite has a mean of delta 34 S = 21 + or - 2 per mil, which falls within the range generally recognized for lower Carboniferous seawater sulfate. We consider that contemporaneous seawater sulfate was the dominant source of sulfur in the barite at Navan, implying that seawater accessed the Pale Beds at the time of mineralization.


The aim of Molecular and Nano Electronics: Analysis, Design and Simulation is to draw together contributions from some of the most active researchers in this new field in order to illustrate a theory guided-approach to the design of molecular and nano-electronics. The field of molecular and nano-electronics has driven solutions for a post microelectronics era, where microelectronics dominate through the use of silicon as the preferred material and photo-lithography as the fabrication technique to build binary devices (transistors). The construction of such devices yields gates that are able to perform Boolean operations and can be combined with computational systems, capable of storing, processing, and transmitting digital signals encoded as electron currents and charges. Since the invention of the integrated circuits, microelectronics has reached increasing performances by decreasing strategically the size of its devices and systems, an approach known as scaling-down, which simultaneously allow the devices to operate at higher speeds.


The effects of cavity‐creating mutations on the structural flexibility, local and global stability, and dynamics of the folded state of staphylococcal nuclease (SNase) were examined with NMR spectroscopy, MD simulations, H/D exchange, and pressure perturbation. Effects on global thermodynamic stability correlated well with the number of heavy atoms in the vicinity of the mutated residue. Variants with substitutions in the C‐terminal domain and the interface between α and β subdomains showed large amide chemical shift variations relative to the parent protein, moderate, widespread, and compensatory perturbations of the H/D protection factors and increased local dynamics on a nanosecond time scale. The pressure sensitivity of the folded states of these variants was similar to that of the parent protein. Such observations point to the capacity of the folded proteins to adjust to packing defects in these regions. In contrast, cavity creation in the β‐barrel subdomain led to minimal perturbation of the structure of the folded state, However, significant pressure dependence of the native state amide resonances, along with strong effects on native state H/D exchange are consistent with increased probability of population of excited state(s) for these variants. Such contrasted responses to the creation of cavities could not be anticipated from global thermodynamic stability or crystal structures; they depend on the local structural and energetic context of the substitutions. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Food manufacturing industry is an important industry in the Iranian economy and has been identified as a thrust area for development. The country has enormous potential in the production and export of various food items due to the abundance of resources and available markets in the world, particularly in the Middle East. In recent years, the government has encouraged the expansion of this industry in an effort to reduce its dependency on oil exports. However, there are various kinds of challenges which need to be addressed immediately to achieve this objective. These challenges have emerged due to the opening up of the economy leading to an influx of imported processed foods from other countries. In addition, much of the raw material is not fully utilized due to low processing level and there has been an ever increasing demand for food in the country every year. This study therefore attempts to evaluate the productivity and competitiveness of food manufacturing industry in the country so that necessary actions can be taken to improve its performance. There are two empirical analyses carried out namely total factor productivity (TFP) and Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA). The TFP analysis of this study is based on the non-parametric approach of DEA and Malmquist index which allows for the decomposition of TFP into three constituent elements for different sources of productivity growth: technological progress (TECHCH), scale efficiency change (SECH), and pure efficiency change (PECH). Data were collected from the Statistical Centre of Iran and they were annual data of 22 four-digit industrial groups (ISIC Rev. 3) which made up food manufacturing industry in the country from 1997 to 2002. The RCA analysis, on the other hand, seeks to identify which industries in the country have a comparative advantage status in producing food commodities in the world market. The analysis was based on annual data from 1999 to 2003, published by the UN COMTRADE.
The results of this study reveal several important findings. First of all, there was an improvement in the food manufacturing industry's TFP growth. The highest and lowest TFPCH were 10.7 and 5.6 per cents, respectively, with the former being for the medium-sized firms in the private sector and the latter being for the medium-sized firms in the public sector. Secondly, most of the productivity growth measured for the food manufacturing industry as a whole was due to TECHCH whereas EFFCH was not found to exert a positive effect on productivity growth. On average, technical efficiency scores were estimated to be 0.94 and 0.92 for the large and medium enterprises, respectively. This implies that technical inefficiency could be reduced by 6 and 8 per cents through improvement in scale efficiency and elimination of pure technical inefficiencies, respectively. Thirdly, food manufacturing firms in the country had been scale inefficient due to slacks in production labour, fixed capital and energy use. To overcome this problem, there is a need to work on the optimal levels of input mix and to rationalize the process of acquiring and usage of inputs.
Meanwhile, it was found that the growth in the number of food sub-sectors with an RCA index above 100 had been stagnant over the study period. In addition, food manufacturing industry as a whole had a comparative advantage in less than 20 per cent of all of its exported products in 2000 through 2003. Despite the advantages of abundant raw materials and cheap labour in the country, many food firms had not been able to expand and increase their market shares. This calls for the adoption of high-tech machine and technologies and the development of infrastructure to improve their competitiveness. Certain individual groups of commodities however, featured a very high comparative advantage status. These groups of commodities were Caviar and caviar substitutes, Frozen shrimps and prawns, Cucumbers, Apple juice and juice of other single fruit, Sunflower seed and safflower oil, Prepared cereals in grain form, Black tea, Sweet biscuits, Waffles, and wafers, Vegetable fats, and Inactive yeasts. As a conclusion, policy makers of the country should design a proper policy framework in addressing the identified problems of the industry. On the other hand, food manufacturers should find ways to improve the capacity utilization of factor inputs especially for raw material, capital and energy to avoid unnecessary wastage. They should also adopt proper methods of sourcing quality raw material for food production to shorten the supply chain which can reduce their production costs. Finally, Iran will be able to sustain or enhance its share in world`s manufacturing trade, however, this will depend on the capacity of its food manufacturing sector to adjust itself to the changing of world composition trade and to compete on the basis of both price as well as non-price factors.


Objectives: To investigate the accuracy in position-matching in the upper limb in two groups of subjects who were physically fit and movement aware. Design: A mixed-group design was used. Objective measurement of the accuracy in position-matching at the shoulder and elbow in both dominant and nondominant arms consisted of photographic record of the position-matching test, with goniometric measurement. Settings: Physiotherapy department at the Birmingham Royal Ballet and School of Health Science, University of Birmingham. Subjects: Two subject groups: physiotherapy students (n = 10), professional ballet dancers (n = 10). Results: A mixed design analysis of variance found significant differences between the accuracy in position-matching at both the shoulder and elbow joints in the two groups (p < 0.05), with the ballet dancers having greater accuracy then the physiotherapy students. A significant difference in the joint positions tested were demonstrated (p < 0.05) with the positions of abduction at the shoulder and extension of the elbow showing greatest accuracy in matching. There was no significant difference found between the dominant and nondominant upper limb in position-matching. Conclusion: Professional ballet dancers demonstrated greater accuracy in position-matching the upper limb, implying that mass and continuing practice can improve a motor sensory skill.


The success of eco-labelling is due to the combination of two main factors: on the one hand, the interactions between the private or public nature of environmental attributes (i.e. the type of individual or collective benefits they provide) and on the other hand the number of consumers with selfish or altruistic social behaviour. This second factor, particularly, helps understand why some eco-labels applied to the same type of products and with a fixed level of private and public attributes work differently according to the country. We show that if some consumers' altruism level is high, their purchasing behaviour may prevent more "selfish" consumers from having access to the eco-labelled good, and therefore, reduce the desired global environmental benefit. Moreover, it seems important to avoid a uniform policy by setting up marketing strategies adapted to different segments of consumers.


The importance of project management has hastily increased and its rapid development and tendency towards innovation has made it one of the key components of organizations' performance. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper was to conduct a systematic study of the current situation and practices in the field of project management in the Czech Republic. Four areas of project management are closely studied: stakeholders´ main demands and requests, main characteristics of project management, level of use of project management methods and identification of the characteristics of the respondents. The research has an explanatory character and works with primary and secondary data. Primary data was obtained through an on-line cross-sectional survey comprising of four parts (identical to the areas studied) conducted in the Czech Republic in 2016. The questionnaire consisted of twenty questions in total and it had elements of both quantitative and qualitative research. It yielded 118 usable responses. The sample examined was random but expert - it covered organizations operating in the Czech Republic and respondents were asked to identify their professionalism and experience in the area of project management. Furthermore, the results of the authors' survey were compared with the results of similar surveys from the last five years providing secondary data. This comparison brought forth additional insights and better understanding of the theoretical grounding. The results showed a prominent relationship and, to some extent, a correlation between understanding (defining) a successful project and identifying success factors, stakeholder demands and problematic areas, displaying a complexity of working in the field of project management. Furthermore, a vaguely-defined scope was identified as the most problematic area and issue influencing project success. Overall, the study indicates the necessity for innovation, such as the development of a basic framework for project governance approaches as well as an increase in the use of available project management methods. These directions will not only improve project management, but will also boost entrepreneurship spirit and help modern, highly potential start-ups to be competitive in the market.


The modulation spectrum is an efficient representation for describing dynamic information in signals. In this work we investigate how to exploit different elements of the modulation spectrum for extraction of information in automatic recognition of speech (ASR). Parallel and hierarchical (sequential) approaches are investigated. Parallel processing combines outputs of independent classifiers applied to different modulation frequency channels. Hierarchical processing uses different modulation frequency channels sequentially. Experiments are run on a LVCSR task for meetings transcription and results are reported on the RT05 evaluation data. Processing modulation frequencies channels with different classifiers provides a consistent reduction in WER (2% absolute w.r.t. PLP baseline). Hierarchical processing outperforms parallel processing. The largest WER reduction is obtained through sequential processing moving from high to low modulation frequencies. This model is consistent with several perceptual and physiological studies on auditory processing.


Femtosecond time-resolved Faraday rotation spectroscopy reveals the instantaneous transfer of spin coherence through conjugated molecular bridges spanning quantum dots of different size over a broad range of temperature. The room-temperature spin-transfer efficiency is ∼20%, showing that conjugated molecules can be used not only as interconnections for the hierarchical assembly of functional networks but also as efficient spin channels. The results suggest that this class of structures may be useful as two-spin quantum devices operating at ambient temperatures and may offer promising opportunities for future versatile molecule-based spintronic technologies.


Modern microscopic techniques such as high resolution transmission electron microscopy have been developed by experimentalists in order to track the anomalous diffusion of tracer particles. By using the site percolation model, this paper investigated the effects of spatial disorder on a graphene lattice and how parameters such as the percolation threshold contributes to a significant deviation from the linear diffusion equation. In order to obtain the numerical percolation threshold, a cluster-identifying algorithm was developed. This value was found to be 0.7139 which has a theoretical deviation of 2.542%. After establishing this, simulations of the particle diffusing on the percolating system with p=0.7139 were done and its mean squared displacement (MSD) at each time step t was extracted. After analysis of the log-log plot of the MSD vs. number of steps taken, it was found that the particle exhibited subdiffusive behavior for the different cases tested because it violated Einstein's third condition for linear diffusion.


We report the effects of the root hemiparasite Striga hermonthica (Del.) Benth. on the growth and photosynthesis of two cultivars of sorghum: CSH-1, a susceptible variety, and Ochuti, which shows some tolerance to S. hermonthica in the field. Within 4 d of parasite attachment to the host roots, infected plants of both cultivars were significantly shorter than uninfected controls. At 55 d, infected plants of both cultivars had significantly less shoot and root biomass, and significantly smaller leaf areas than uninfected controls. The dry weight of S. hermonthica attached to host roots was insufficient at this stage to explain the decreased growth in terms of a competing sink for carbon and nitrogen. Leaf chlorophyll and nitrogen per unit area were greater in infected plants of both cultivars compared with control plants. However, whereas photosynthesis and transpiration in young leaves of infected CSH-1 plants declined with time when compared with controls, the rates in infected Ochuti plants were similar to those in uninfected controls throughout the time course of observation. In both cultivars, a strong correlation was observed between the rate of photosynthesis and stomatal conductance during photosynthetic induction, but infection resulted in a much slower induction than in controls. In CSH-1 plants, both steady-state photosynthesis and stomatal conductance were lower than in controls, whereas in leaves of Ochuti steady-state photosynthesis and stomatal conductance eventually reached the same values as in the control leaves. Results from A/C i analysis and also from determination of 13 C isotope discrimination were consistent with a stomatal limitation to photosynthesis in the leaves of Striga-infected plants. The concentration of the plant growth regulator abscisic acid (ABA) was measured in the xylem sap of infected CSH-1 plants only, and was found to be twice that of uninfected plants. A possible role of ABA in determining host response to infection by S. hermonthica is discussed.


OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence and determinants of cigarette smoking among intermediate (junior secondary) schoolboys in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. PARTICIPANTS: A sample of 1382 students (ages 12-19 years) in 45 classes randomly selected from 15 schools, using a two-stage stratified cluster sampling scheme. DESIGN: Students in the selected classes were requested to complete an anonymous questionnaire, under the supervision of trained interviewers. Univariate and multivariate statistical analyses of potential risk factors were performed. SETTING: Intermediate schools in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Association between current smoking and socio-demographic variables, history of smoking, age of smoking initiation, smoking behaviour among family members, knowledge of the harmful effects of smoking, and whether smoking is allowed in the presence of relatives and acquaintances. RESULTS: The prevalence of current smokers was 13.2% overall, ranging from 3.2% in those 12-13 years old to 31.1% in those aged 18-19. Some of the variables (nationality, father's education, and smoking allowed in the presence of parents or teachers) found to be associated with current smoking in a univariate analysis were no longer significantly associated with smoking in the multivariate analysis. By multivariate analysis, knowledge of the harmful effects of smoking, age, smoking allowed in the presence of friends or brothers, and previous smoking were statistically significant determinants of current smoking. CONCLUSIONS: Current health education activities against smoking should be continued and extended to the young population to further reduce the prevalence of smoking and its health consequences. Religious antipathy toward smoking should be emphasised in any local anti-smoking campaigns.


The chapter views OE reflexive patterns with plain pronouns through the prism of the current cognitive linguistic research on Modern English reflexives in Kemmer (1993) and Talmy (2000). Under both approaches reflexivity is a conceptual relation, yet while Kemmer focuses on canonical reflexive situation types and the semantic roles of event participants, Talmy speaks of the actional content of a situation and personation, which, by and large, translate into the focus on the nature of the verb in the reflexive event. The analysis points out how the prototypical and less prototypical situation types in OE differ from their modern counterparts and lists Modern English cognates or equivalents of verbs that pattern with reflexives in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.


We present an approach for automatic threshold segmentation of greyscale images. The procedure is inspired by a reinterpretation of the strategy observed in human operators when adjusting thresholds manually and interactively by means of 'slider' controls. The approach translates into two methods. The first one is suitable for single or multiple global thresholds to be applied globally to images and consists of searching for a threshold value that generates a phase whose boundary coincides with the largest gradients in the original image. The second method is a variation, implemented to operate on the discrete connected components of the thresholded phase (i.e. the binary regions) independently. Consequently, this becomes an adaptive local threshold procedure, which operates relative to regions, rather than to local image subsets as is the case in most local thresholding methods previously published. Adding constraints for specifying certain classes of expected objects in the images can improve the output of the method over the traditional 'segmenting first, then classify' approach.


The discretized Schrödinger equation is one of the most commonly employed methods for solving one-dimensional quantum mechanics problems on the computer, yet many of its characteristics remain poorly understood. The differences with the continuous Schrödinger equation are generally viewed as shortcomings of the discrete model and are typically described in purely mathematical terms. This is unfortunate since the discretized equation is more productively viewed from the perspective of solid-state physics, which naturally links the discrete model to realistic semiconductor quantum wells and nanoelectronic devices. While the relationship between the discrete model and a one-dimensional tight-binding model has been known for some time, the fact that the discrete Schrödinger equation admits analytic solutions for quantum wells has gone unnoted. Here we present a solution to this new analytically solvable problem. We show that the differences between the discrete and continuous models are due to their fundamentally different bandstructures, and present evidence for our belief that the discrete model is the more physically reasonable one.


The current status of the agricultural sector in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is described, in the context of reforms undertaken during the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market-based one. Sectoral performance is analyzed, focussing especially on general trends in production, and emerging trading patterns. Five critical basic elements of reform are described, and a table is presented rating each country in the study on progress in completing each type of reform. Overall conclusions are presented, indicating that in each basic element of reform, the CEE countries have achieved considerably more success than those of the CIS. The paper concludes with a discussion of prospects for development in the region. ©2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.


ABSTRACT Recently, the authors discovered interstitial kaolinite within pyrite framboids in the Meigs Creek coal of Ohio. Previously, only iron sulfides and organic matter have been found to occupy these interstices in pyrite framboids. Framboidal pyrite was investigated under the scanning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with an energy-dispersive X-ray analyzer. Sample preparation included polished sections of coal, freshly fractured chips of coal, low-temperature coal ash, and a heavy fraction separated from the whole coal by bromoform. SEM observation revealed that a foreign material occurs between the crystallites of many pyrite framboids and forms a three-dimensional network extending throughout the framboid. Energy dispersive X-ray analysis revealed the "interstitial networks" to be co posed of Al and Si. X-ray powder diffraction patterns determined the aluminosilicate to be kaolinite. The interstitial network morphology is not limited to the interstices of framboids, but may occur wherever euhedral pyrite crystals are intimately associated with kaolinite. The peculiar association of framboidal pyrite and kaolinite probably results from the formation of pyrite crystals within a kaolinitic gel or solution. The uniform thickness of the interstitial networks and the manner in which kaolinite completely surrounds individual crystals argue against the infilling of already existing framboids by kaolinite. The imprint of pyrite crystallites on interstitial kaolinite in the framboids indicates that this morphology is created by the displacive growth of the pyrite. Therefore, even if the organic matter incorporated in the framboid is the remains of a microorganism, the original morphology of the organism is probably not retained.


CGIAR is a global research partnership of 15 geographically and scientifically diverse Centers dedicated to reducing poverty, enhancing food and nutrition security, and improving natural resource management. The Centers are charged with accelerating innovation to tackle challenges at a variety of scales from the local to the global. This requires data and other research outputs to be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable – that is, open via FAIR principles, and inter-linked where relevant. CGIAR Centers have made strong progress in implementing publication and data repositories; however, many of these still represent silos whose contents are not generally easily discoverable or inter-linked (e.g., agronomic trial data with socioeconomic or adoption data in the same geographies). In the absence of such interoperability-mediated discovery, "open" is of limited utility. The overall goal is for CGIAR's trove of research data and associated information to be indexed and interlinked through a demand-driven cyberinfrastructure for agriculture, ensuring that research outputs are discoverable by humans and machines, and reusable via appropriate licensing to enhance innovation, uptake and impact.

There are challenges to achieving this goal, not only across CGIAR, but for the agricultural domain in general. Among the foremost hurdles is that "open" tends to remain an unfunded mandate, making it difficult to operationalize effectively. Further, there is still significant concern on the part of scientists about making data open – largely centered around issues of trust, time, and quality – resulting in repositories frequently exposing metadata rather than the data sets themselves. While the ability to find metadata about resources qualifies as improvement, it continues to impose barriers to data access, discoverability, integration, and analysis, without which complex challenges to global agriculture development cannot be effectively addressed. CGIAR is addressing the urgent need to create a data sharing culture and enabling environment for Open Access and Open Data (OA/OD) that includes projects planning for OA/OD and allocating funds to support it, in parallel with the technical infrastructure mentioned above.

While the technology necessary to enable FAIR outputs exists, achieving success implies data provider and consumer trust and buy-in, agreement and adherence to interoperability standards and/or mapping across varied approaches, and compliance with guidelines (including those on citation and licensing governing content reuse). Agricultural institutions, including CGIAR, are only now beginning to address these issues systematically, to agree on and adopt standards-based systems and processes, and to build cross-walks across differing schemas. Through its Open Access and Open Data initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and via plans for an ambitious Big Data and ICT Platform , CGIAR is developing technical and cultural approaches that will enable research content to be consistently and seamlessly discovered, interlinked, and analyzed across its Centers. This paper describes the strategy used to identify the specific contexts and challenges faced by Centers in building an infrastructure and culture for OA/OD across CGIAR, with the ultimate goal of achieving greater impact in agricultural research for development.


We introduce a new form of computational unit for feedforward learning networks of the backpropagation type. Instead of calculating a weighted sum this unit calculates a weighted product, where each input is raised to a power determined by a variable weight. Such a unit can learn an arbitrary polynomial term, which would then feed into higher level standard summing units. We show how learning operates with product units, provide examples to show their efficiency for various types of problems, and argue that they naturally extend the family of theoretical feedforward net structures. There is a plausible neurobiological interpretation for one interesting configuration of product and summing units.


Good health is fundamental to proper, effective and efficient learning and, consequently, to the socio-economic development of any nation. A poorly nourished nation is lethargic, and economically unproductive. In recognition of the part played by health in national development, the Ministry of Education and Culture in Zimbabwe is promoting Food and Nutrition (FN) as one of the subjects of the curriculum in secondary schools.
The teaching of FN like any other technical subject demands, apart from..equipment, well trained-and dedicated teachers who are alert to the rapid changes in the world today and are prepared to keep abreast of new developments by updating their own knowledge and skills. This study was undertaken to identify home economics (HE) teacher quality attributes in Zimbabwean secondary schools. Special emphasis was placed on personnel requirements for effective teaching of FN.


BACKGROUND
Two-thirds of patients with stroke experience only mild impairments in the acute phase, and the proportion of patients < 70 years is increasing. Knowledge about balance and gait and predictive factors are scarce for this group.

OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to explore balance and gait in the acute phase and after 3 and 12 months in patients ≤70 years with minor ischemic stroke (National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score ≤3). This study also explored factors predicting impaired balance after 12 months.

DESIGN
This study was designed as an explorative longitudinal cohort study.

METHODS
Patients were recruited consecutively from two stroke units. Balance and gait were assessed with the Mini-BESTest, Timed Up and Go (TUG), and preferred gait speed. Predictors for impaired balance were explored using logistic regression.

RESULTS
This study included 101 patients. Mean (SD) age was 55.5 (11.4) years, 20% were female and mean (SD) NIHSS score was 0.6 (0.9) points. The Mini-BESTest, gait speed, and TUG improved significantly from the acute phase to 3 months, gait speed also improved from 3 to 12 months. At 12 months, 26% had balance impairments and 33% walked slower than 1.0 m/s. Poor balance in the acute phase (odds ratio =0.92, 95% CI = 0.85 - 0.95) was the only predictor of balance impairments (Mini-BESTest score ≤ 22) at 12 months post-stroke.

LIMITATIONS
Limitations include lack of information about pre-stroke balance and gait impairment, and post-stroke exercise. Few women limits the generalizability.

CONCLUSIONS
This study observed improvements in both balance and gait during the follow-up, still about one third had balance or gait impairments at 12 months post-stroke. Balance in the acute phase predicted impaired balance at 12 months.


Many conditions that shift cells from states of nutrient utilization and growth to states of cell maintenance extend lifespan. We have carried out a systematic lifespan analysis of conditions that inhibit protein synthesis. We find that reducing the levels of ribosomal proteins, ribosomal‐protein S6 kinase or translation‐initiation factors increases the lifespan of Caenorhabditis elegans. These perturbations, as well as inhibition of the nutrient sensor target of rapamycin (TOR), which is known to increase lifespan, all increase thermal‐stress resistance. Thus inhibiting translation may extend lifespan by shifting cells to physiological states that favor maintenance and repair. Interestingly, different types of translation inhibition lead to one of two mutually exclusive outputs, one that increases lifespan and stress resistance through the transcription factor DAF‐16/FOXO, and one that increases lifespan and stress resistance independently of DAF‐16. Our findings link TOR, but not sir‐2.1, to the longevity response induced by dietary restriction (DR) in C. elegans, and they suggest that neither TOR inhibition nor DR extends lifespan simply by reducing protein synthesis.


ABSTRACT The micro-level enactment of educational policy has received little attention in the physical education [PE] literature, particularly as it relates to setting policy. This study employs enactment theory to provide original insights into the ways in which setting policy was enacted by PE teachers in three mixed-gender secondary schools in England. The work of Stephen Ball and colleagues is used to examine the distinct and combined influence of the situated, material, professional and external dimensions of context on setting policy and practices in PE in these three schools. Data were generated through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 15 PE teachers who were responsible for delivering the Year 9 PE curriculum. Our findings highlight notable variation in the ways in which setting policy was translated and enacted in PE in these three schools and the multiple factors shaping decisions about groupings and, in turn, teaching and learning for students in different sets. This study also provides novel findings regarding the dynamic interplay between the external dimensions of context (i.e. neoliberal policy making and pressures and supports from the local education authority [LEA] and the school inspectorate) and the internal dimensions of context (i.e. school-based traditions, school demographics, and support and resourcing for PE) in policy enactment. Attention is drawn to equity issues inherent in, and arising from, the varied enactment of setting policy in PE. The paper concludes by arguing for greater scholarly engagement with policy enactment, grouping strategies and constructions of ability in PE.


Statistical Tools for Finance and Insurance presents ready-to-use solutions, theoretical developments and method construction for many practical problems in quantitative finance and insurance. Written by practitioners and leading academics in the field, this book offers a unique combination of topics from which every market analyst and risk manager will benefit. Features of the significantly enlarged and revised second edition: Offers insight into new methods and the applicability of the stochastic technology; Provides the tools, instruments and (online) algorithms for recent techniques in quantitative finance and modern treatments in insurance calculations; Covers topics such as expected shortfall for heavy tailed and mixture distributions, pricing of variance swaps, volatility smile calibration in FX markets pricing of catastrophe bonds and temperature derivatives, building loss models and ruin probability approximation, insurance pricing with GLM, equity linked retirement plans; Presents extensive examples in Matlab and/or R.


Abstract The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a controversial subject, but at the same time it is perceived to be the most comprehensive international agreement on free trade and investment protection. Among the topics that evoke criticism on the part of different social groups is the investor‑state dispute‑settlement (ISDS), as well as its legal consequences for the EU Member states. A less discussed issue is the potential implications of the agreement on the state of economic co‑operation between the European Union and the USA in the field of investment flows, with special reference to foreign direct investment (FDI). The aim of this paper is to present the discussion related to the ISDS and examine some of the economic, political and legal implications of TTIP provisions for FDI flows between the EU and the USA. The proposals of the European Commission to change the investment protection system might be treated as an attempt to make the system of arbitrage more transparent and convincing to societies, and safer for states. The effects of the TTIP agreement for FDI between both partners might be dependent on the scale of trade creation and diversion effects, and the mirror effects of investment creation and diversion under a free trade area.


For maintaining good general health, good oral hygiene is very important. Nature gave some instinct to all animals for that. Man, since his existence, has been 'aware' of maintaining oral hygiene. Avoiding dental infections was most important for ancient man to avoid malnutrition and eventual death. Initially, man managed it through his instinctual dietary habits. Later the nature of diet and dietary habits changed and it was needed to practice some extra measures. A protocol for good oral hygiene changed from just dietary measures to chewing various materials and use of early dentifrices to modern toothbrushes, modern dentifrices, and other measures including professional interven-tion. Oral hygiene is more important during some specific situations in life, for example, pregnancy and certain sickness.


BACKGROUND: The etiology of autism is unknown, although perinatal and neonatal exposures have been the focus of epidemiologic research for over 40 years. OBJECTIVE: To provide the first review and meta-analysis of the association between perinatal and neonatal factors and autism risk. METHODS: PubMed, Embase, and PsycInfo databases were searched for studies that examined the association between perinatal and neonatal factors and autism through March 2007. Forty studies were eligible for the meta-analysis. For each exposure, a summary effect estimate was calculated using a random-effects model. Heterogeneity in effect estimates across studies was examined, and, if found, a meta-regression was conducted to identify measured methodological factors that could explain between-study variability. RESULTS: Over 60 perinatal and neonatal factors were examined. Factors associated with autism risk in the meta-analysis were abnormal presentation, umbilical-cord complications, fetal distress, birth injury or trauma, multiple birth, maternal hemorrhage, summer birth, low birth weight, small for gestational age, congenital malformation, low 5-minute Apgar score, feeding difficulties, meconium aspiration, neonatal anemia, ABO or Rh incompatibility, and hyperbilirubinemia. Factors not associated with autism risk included anesthesia, assisted vaginal delivery, postterm birth, high birth weight, and head circumference. CONCLUSIONS: There is insufficient evidence to implicate any 1 perinatal or neonatal factor in autism etiology, although there is some evidence to suggest that exposure to a broad class of conditions reflecting general compromises to perinatal and neonatal health may increase the risk. Methodological variations were likely sources of heterogeneity of risk factor effects across studies.


BACKGROUND
Discharge summaries are a standard communication tool delivering important clinical information from inpatient to ambulatory care. To ensure a high quality, correctness and completeness, the generation process is time consuming. It requires also contributions of multiple persons. This is problematic since the primary care provider needs the information from the discharge summary for continuing the intended treatment. To address this challenge, we developed a concept for exchanging a modular electronic discharge summary.

METHODS
Through a literature review and interviews with multiple stakeholders, we analysed existing processes and derived requirements for an improved communication of the discharge summary.

RESULTS
In this paper, we suggest a concept of a modular electronic discharge summary that is exchanged through the electronic patient dossier in CDA CH level 2 documents. Until 2020, all Swiss hospitals are obliged to connect to the electronic patient dossier. Our concept allows to access already completed modules of the discharge summary from the primary care side, before the entire report is entirely finalised. The data is automatically merged with the local patient record on the physician side and prepared for data integration into the practice information system.

CONCLUSION
Our concept offers the opportunity not only to improve the information exchange between hospital and primary care, but it also provides a potential use case and demonstrates a benefit of the electronic patient dossier for primary care providers who are so far not obliged to connect to the patient dossier in Switzerland.


In this paper, we propose a control architecture for meandering locomotion of snake-like robots based on neural oscillator network (NON). The proposed architecture is composed of a network of central pattern generators (CPGs) to realize propagation of purposive oscillation with specific phase shift. By implementing this architecture to a simulator with consideration of mechanical dynamics of a real snake-like robot, we present realization of meandering motion and preliminary policies about parameter settings of the NON. Moreover, we present that real robot can successfully exhibit meandering movement by using controller output of the proposed architecture.


Background: Optimal management in expert centers for Parkinson's disease (PD) usually involves pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions, delivered by a multidisciplinary approach. However, there is no guideline specifying how this model should be organized. Consequently, the nature of multidisciplinary care varies widely. Objective: To optimize care delivery, we aimed to provide recommendations for the organization of multidisciplinary care in PD. Methods: Twenty expert centers in the field of multidisciplinary PD care participated. Their leading neurologists completed a survey covering eight themes: elements for optimal multidisciplinary care; team members; role of patients and care partners; team coordination; team meetings; inpatient versus outpatient care; telehealth; and challenges towards multidisciplinary care. During a consensus meeting, outcomes were incorporated into concept recommendations that were reviewed by each center's multidisciplinary team. Three patient organizations rated the recommendations according to patient priorities. Based on this feedback, a final set of recommendations (essential elements for delivery of multidisciplinary care) and considerations (desirable elements) was developed. Results: We developed 30 recommendations and 10 considerations. The patient organizations rated the following recommendations as most important: care is organized in a patient-centered way; every newly diagnosed patient has access to a core multidisciplinary team; and each team has a coordinator. A checklist was created to further facilitate its implementation. Conclusion: We provide a practical tool to improve multidisciplinary care for persons with PD at the organizational level. Future studies should focus on implementing these recommendations in clinical practice, evaluating their potential applicability and effectiveness, and comparing alternative models of PD care.


Histamine release inhibitors in watercress (Nasturtium officinale) were isolated using a monitoring system with antigen-stimulated RBL-2H3 cells. Of the 15 compounds isolated, flavonols and megastigmanes significantly inhibited histamine release. Two flavonols, 3-O-sophorosides of rhamnetin and rhamnazin, were new compounds. To investigate the inhibitory mechanism, the effects of rhamnetin, rhamnetin 3-O-sophoroside and an isolated megastigmane glucoside on the increase in the intracellular free calcium concentration were examined at a concentration providing 60% inhibition of histamine release. The results suggest that these compounds did not affect the calcium influx at that concentration. The structure-activity relationships of the megastigmanes on histamine release were also investigated.


At the beginning of January this year, Dr Jon Sudbo, a cancer researcher and chief medical officer at The Norwegian Radium Hospital, was found to have published an article in The Lancet in October 2005 describing work that had not been done (1, 2). The paper claims to be the report of an analysis of several Norwegian health surveys and registries showing that the use of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs can reduce the incidence of oral cancer. The material was fabricated. The article was accepted for publication in The Lancet through a fast-track editorial process because the results were particularly striking.

It was not until the end of the year, when the Director of the Division of Epidemiology at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Camilla Stoltenberg, questioned the stated use of data from CONOR, a Norwegian cohort managed by her institute. This query initiated an investigation, as a result of which Jon Sudbo has now admitted that he fabricated the data in the paper. A special committee is investigating whether other articles by Jon Sudbo, including a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine , were also based on fraudulent or fabricated data. One feature that should have alerted at least those involved in the analysis of the data is the fact that 250 of the sample of 908 people in the study were reported to have the same birthday!

Earlier last year, Dr Eric T Poelhman, in the state of Vermont in the United States (US), admitted to scientific misconduct in falsifying and fabricating research data published in numerous articles between 1992 and 2002 in the international scientific literature (3). During this period, Dr Poelhman had also submitted 17 research grant applications to federal agencies in the United States—for millions of dollars—again based on false and fabricated research data. The published results included those of a study showing beneficial effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on various health parameters of postmenopausal women. How many physicians around the globe prescribed HRT to women on the basis of these fabricated results, not to mention the financial burden on the many women who used these drugs for up to decades in the belief that they were beneficial? Given what we know today about the association between the use of HRT and cardiovascular disease and cancer (4–6), publication of this fraudulent study is particularly disturbing.

The researcher Hwang Woo-suk of the Republic of Korea resigned from his university in December 2005 after it was found that he had fabricated the results from stem-cell research, which had raised hopes of new cures for hard-to-treat diseases. According to a panel of researchers at the Seoul National University, Hwang published faked results for at least 11 stem-cell lines that he claimed to have created in a paper published in Science (7).

In many societies, people have grown accustomed to believing that science is to be trusted, that, if something is published in a prestigious high-impact scientific journal like Science, The New England Journal of Medicine , or The Lancet , then it must be true, especially if the list of authors includes leading scientists in the field. The paper by Jon Sudbo et al was signed by 13 co-authors, some from stellar research institutions such as the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the Cornell University in New York, and Biomedicum Helsinki at the University of Helsinki. In the article in The Lancet , which requires that the contribution of each author be stated, four of the authors (including Jon Sudbo) were listed as having contributed equally to the paper. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, of which The Lancet is a member, has published the following criteria for authorship: "Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for the important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3." Thus each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content.

With its 13 competent knowledgeable co-authors submitting a paper to a high-impact journal and its able editors, one might wonder how the fabricated study got through the peer review process, which is supposed to prevent the publication of bad science.

The articles by Jon Sudbo, Eric T Poehlman, and Hwang Woo-suk are not the first fraudulent papers to be published, and probably not the last. It is unrealistic to expect a journal to be able to detect fraud consistently, but at least in this case, The Lancet does not appear to have put up as many barriers as they might have. One epidemiologist, Dr Michael Thun at the American Cancer Society, did raise a warning sign. He was asked to write an editorial on the Sudbo study for The Lancet but withdrew it when he was not given time to resolve questions over whether the analysis was correct and properly presented. Finally, however, the Editor in Chief decided that the paper, which appeared to have exceptional findings, should be published rapidly for quick publicity. Did the increasing competition among journals and a desire to raise the impact factor of the journal play a role in this decision?

Any journal can be the victim of fraud. In a bid to reduce the probability of such events, Drummond Rennie, Deputy Editor of JAMA , proposed several years ago that 1 in every 1000 papers submitted undergo a simple editorial audit in which checks would be made on whether the records exist, whether the laboratory tests were done, and what the role of each author was? This sounds like a good idea and could be a step forward. The objection that additional monitoring will discourage scientists from starting research is clearly overridden by the increasing need for policing the profession.

The other aspect that the Sudbo affair brings to light is gift authorship—the practice of conferring authorship as a reward or as a spurious stamp of credibility, rather than as a certificate of responsibility. Many people accept or confer gift authorship, detection is unlikely, and the rewards are obvious: tenure, promotion, research grants, and fame. In the Sudbo case, the contribution of each author was described in the paper, but how was co-authorship attributed if the work was never done? How many of the authors fulfilled the three criteria outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors? How many fulfilled only the last: approval of the final version for publication? Nevertheless, there were explanations in The Lancet paper as to why their names were included. Of all the abuses of scientific research, gift authorship is the most common and the most lightly regarded.

The Sudbo affair raises questions concerning research management. Finally, as also stated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, "it is not ordinarily the task of editors to conduct a full investigation or to make a determination; that the responsibility lies with the institution where the work was done or with the funding agency". We must first accept that fraud exists, even in Nordic countries, although its prevalence is unknown. The universal lesson is that institutions are not good at policing themselves, and several countries have set up bodies specifically for this purpose, such as the Office of Research Integrity within the US Department of Health and Human Services. The recent case of scientific misconduct from Norway should be taken seriously by research organizations and institutions, which should implement the necessary precautions. The time has come also for the Nordic countries to abandon the lax approach to scientific fraud.


Summary

This paper explores gaps and limitations in the conceptualisation, methodology and policy implications of debates about informal health care providers by examining a cross section of empirical studies. Drawing on a tradition of critical medical anthropology, we argue that existing debates hinge on a particular understanding of what constitutes appropriate knowledge and on particular expectations of how economic actors in the medical marketplace will behave.


Problem Statement: Student teaching is an integral part of teacher education. While it provides pre-service teachers with real classroom experience, though, it is limited in that it does not provide shared experience. Used as instructional tools, videos provide a shared common experience in a controlled environment to pre-service teachers in teacher education. Video use as a part of teacher education requires that student teachers be skilled in observation and ability to notice. However, in many cases, pre-service teachers' observation skills and ability to discern the effects of different strategies are neither questioned nor investigated. Purpose of Study: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of video use on pre-service teachers' ability to observe and evaluate teaching practices and explore how that ability develops. Methods: This study was conducted with the participation of 26 senior preservice science and technology teachers who were enrolled in a teacher practice course during the fall semester of their fourth-year undergraduate education program. Three different videos were used as instructional tools; participating pre-service teachers were asked to evaluate the teaching practice in each video. A three-item questionnaire was used for data collection purposes. Findings and Results: The findings of the study suggest that, initially, preservice teachers failed to notice details and were only partially able to recognize the main features of a teaching practice. Most participant comments focused on what the teacher was doing rather than on students. As time progressed, participants' ability to notice instructional strategies was found to be developed through use of videos.


A new concept ('enzyme sharing') concerning the interaction of marine nematodes and microbes in the degradation of sedimentary detritus is presented. Elements of this concept are (1) the notorious tendency of many aquatic nematodes to agglutinate detrital particles by mucus secretions, (2) new observations on the stimulation of microbial growth by nematodes in agar plates, and (3) literature data on limited endogenous proteolytic capacities of aquatic nematodes.Observations on nematode-microbe associations in agar plates prompted the conceptual synthesis. In agar medium without the addition of any nutrients a spectacular growth of bacteria was visible on the sinusoidal crawling trails of nematodes only 2-3 days after introduction of the worms (species of Adoncholaimus, Anoplostoma and Sabatieria). Juveniles of Anoplostoma that hatched in the agar cultures left their minute trails in the medium and these were rapidly occupied by bacteria. The nematodes repeatedly visited their bacterial trails, which persisted as a peculiar biotic structure for more than one year and survived the nematodes.In sterile agar preparations containing the fluorogenic methylumbelliferyl-beta-glucoside in the presence of the nematode Adoncholaimus an enhanced fluorescence of the medium was visible indicating beta-glucosidase activity. We therefore assume that oncholaimid nematodes discharge enzymes that alone, or in concert with microbial activities, contribute to the hydrolytic cleavage of refractory polysaccharides containing beta-glucosidic bonds such as agar components and cellulose. The sugars thus produced may then be taken up by the nematodes and concomitantly support the conspicuous growth of microbes. Since we did not observe any feeding of the nematodes on the associated microbes in agar plates, we question the nutritive potential of intact microbial cells for a number of nematodes abounding in detrital habitats, and call attention to the significance of ambient dissolved or adsorbed organic monomeric nutrients.Consequently, we perceive the puzzling perpetual accretion of detrital organic particles to sediment agglutinations by nematodes as an adaptation for operating an 'enzymatic reactor' for the production of dissolved nutrients. We hypothesize a relationship of mutual commensalism of nematodes and heterotrophic microbes in detrital habitats and propose the term 'enzyme sharing' for this relationship. Both parties invest in a common enzyme pool that decomposes organic detritus for their nutrition. We present here evidence that nematodes contribute beta-glucosidase that is involved in the cellulase system. Data from the literature suggest that microbial enzymatic processing of detrital proteins results in amino acids available to nematodes which apparently have no efficient proteolytic enzyme system in their intestines.


This paper investigates the empirical significance of push- and pull factors of different types of capital flows – FDI, portfolio and "others" (including loans) – to emerging market and developing economies. Based on an extensive quarterly mixed time-series panel dataset for 32 emerging market and developing economies from 2009 to 2017, we rigorously test down broadly specified empirical models for the three types of capital inflows to parsimonious final models in a Hendry-type fashion. Regarding push factors, our study focuses on the relative importance of global liquidity and economic policy uncertainty vis-a-vis country-specific pull factors when assessing the drivers of capital flows to a broad set of emerging market and developing economies. Global liquidity, economic policy uncertainty and other risk factors, such as the US yield spread, turn out to be the most significant drivers of portfolio flows, but are also relevant to the other two categories of flows. Our capital flow-type specific estimation results underscore the need for policymakers to analyse the composition of observed capital inflows to assess vulnerabilities related to external financing and safeguard financial stability.