Due to the effect of aerosols present in the atmosphere on the satellite images, the study of the effect of local aerosols distribution on the satellite images is important. On the other hand, the study shows that the effect of aerosols on the greenhouse gases and consequently on climate is also undeniable and as a result, this puts more emphasize on the necessity of this study. Lack of information about modality of distribution of the aerosols in the atmosphere, brings uncertainties in the extraction of decent information from satellite images. Different methods of aerosol retrieval over the ocean have been deployed using AVHRR/NOAA image products. Over the continent, however due to the fact that the surface albedo is generally unknown and varies with time and wavelength, nothing much has so far been done and what is done is for desert dusts only. Some retrieval algorithms are developed based on the assumption of low reflectance of vegetation canopies in the blue and red portion of the electromagnetic spectra. Also few algorithms have been developed for multi-temporal studies based on constant surface reflectance. Application of all of these algorithms is tedious and very time consuming. On the other hand we need to extract decent information on a real time basis and this arises the need for an algorithm that can be performed as fast as possible and this was the objective of this study. The algorithm used for aerosol detection in this study is innovated using a combination of aerosol information model and optical thickness parameter calculated using visible and IR bands. In this study using Optical Thickness which is a measure of the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere, a fast method for relative correction of the satellite images is presented. In this method, surface reflectance in MIR is calculated from which, dark pixels are determined. Using surface reflectance of these dark pixels in red and blue, optical thicknesses are estimated. Finally using these calculated optical thicknesses, the effects of atmospheric aerosols has been removed from satellite imageries. The results show that in visible bands of MODIS where the effect of aerosols are more serious, the computed optical thickness can be used to estimate the effect of aerosols and help to eliminate its effects from images.


Recently, liquid-gas flows related to droplets, bubbles, and thin films on solid surfaces with thermal and wettability gradients have attracted widespread attention because of the many physical processes involved and their promising potential applications in biology, chemistry, and industry. Various new physical effects have been discovered at fluid-solid interfaces by experiments and molecular dynamics simulations, e.g., fluid velocity slip, temperature slip (Kapitza resistance), mechanical-thermal cross coupling, etc. There have been various models and theories proposed to explain these experimental and numerical observations. However, to the best of our knowledge, a continuum hydrodynamic model capable of predicting the temperature and velocity profiles of liquid-gas flows on non-isothermal, heterogeneous solid substrates is still absent. The purpose of this work is to construct a continuum model for simulating the liquid-gas flows on solid surfaces that are flat and rigid, and may involve wettability gradients and thermal gradients. This model is able to describe fluid velocity slip, temperature slip, and mechanical-thermal coupling that may occur at fluid-solid interfaces. For this purpose, we first employ the diffuse interface modeling to formulate the hydrodynamic equations for one-component liquid-gas flows in the bulk region. This reproduces the dynamic van der Waals theory of Onuki [Phys. Rev. Lett., 94: 054501, 2005]. We then extend Waldmann's method [Z. Naturforsch. A, 22: 1269-1280, 1967] to formulate the boundary conditions at the fluid-solid interface that match the hydrodynamic equations in the bulk. The effects of the solid surface curvature are also briefly discussed in the appendix. The guiding principles of our model derivation are the conservation laws and the positive definiteness of entropy production together with the Onsager reciprocal relation. The derived model is self-consistent in the sense that the boundary conditions are mathematically demanded by the bulk equations. A finite difference scheme is presented for numerically solving the model system. We show that some widely used boundary conditions can actually be recovered by taking appropriate limits. We also point out that the framework presented here for modeling two-phase flows on solid surfaces, from bulk equations to boundary conditions, is in a form that can be readily generalized to model other fluid-solid interfacial phenomena.


A shift of global proportions occurred in May 1808. Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Spain and deposed the Spanish king. Overnight, the Hispanic world was transformed forever. Hispanics were forced to confront modernity, and to look beyond monarchy and religion for new sources of authority. A World Not to Come focuses on how Spanish Americans in Texas used writing as a means to establish new sources of authority, and how a Latino literary and intellectual life was born in the New World. The geographic locale that became Texas changed sovereignty four times, from Spanish colony to Mexican republic to Texan republic and finally to a U.S. state. Following the trail of manifestos, correspondence, histories, petitions, and periodicals, Raul Coronado goes to the writings of Texas Mexicans to explore how they began the slow process of viewing the world as no longer being a received order but a produced order. Through reconfigured publics, they debated how best to remake the social fabric even as they were caught up in a whirlwind of wars, social upheaval, and political transformations. Yet, while imagining a new world, Texas Mexicans were undergoing a transformation from an elite community of "civilizing" conquerors to an embattled, pauperized, racialized group whose voices were annihilated by war. In the end, theirs was a world not to come. Coronado sees in this process of racialization the birth of an emergent Latino culture and literature.


Hypoxic-ischaemic injury to the brain is an important cause of perinatal death and seems to be the commonest cause of permanent neurodevelopmental disability in newborn infants who survive after intensive care. If this type of brain injury is to be prevented and treatment put on a rational basis, non-invasive methods are required for defining its mechanisms. This review has considered two such methods: magnetic resonance spectroscopy and near infrared spectroscopy. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy is used to measure, in brain tissue, the concentrations of the 'high energy' phosphorus metabolites that are dependent for their synthesis on the processes of oxidative phosphorylation. Intracellular pH can also be measured. Normal maturational changes in the brain have been defined and abnormalities detected in a range of conditions where hypoxic-ischaemic injury was suspected to have occurred. In laboratory animals the acute effects of curtailment of oxygen supply to the brain ('primary' energy failure) have been observed, and the effects of two commonly used treatments, infusions of sodium bicarbonate and glucose, have been tested. After resuscitation of newborn infants from severe intrapartum asphyxia, a latent period has often been noted before energy failure became detectable. This 'secondary' energy failure is due to a variety of damaging reactions initiated by the acute hypoxicischaemic episode and reperfusion of the brain. It is possible that in the future irreversible injury to brain cells following the episode may be prevented or ameliorated by the prompt use of cerebroprotective agents. The extent of abnormalities detected by magnetic resonance spectroscopy has prognostic implications: evidence of severe energy failure in the first days of life was regularly associated with subsequent death or with severe neurodevelopmental impairments. Many technical developments in magnetic resonance spectroscopy are under way, particularly employing proton (1H) spectroscopy, which will allow the intracerebral concentrations of a wide range of metabolites, including neurotransmitters, to be measured. The combination of spectroscopy with magnetic resonance imaging will permit quantitative data to be obtained from selected volumes within the brain. Near infrared spectroscopy is used to make observations at the cotside of the intracerebral concentrations of the chromophores oxyhaemoglobin, deoxyhaemoglobin, and oxidised cytochrome aa3, and it therefore provides information complementary to that obtained by magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Measurements can also be made of cerebral blood flow, cerebral blood volume, and other haemodynamic indices; in addition, the rea


Although the link between the nitrogen (N): phosphorus (P) stoichiometry of biota and availability has received considerable attention in aquatic systems, there has been relatively little effort to compare the elemental composition of biota and supply in terrestrial habitats. In this study, I explored the effects of a prominent topo-edaphic gradient, from dry hilltop to wet slope-base, and native ungulates on N and P of soils, plants, and rates of in situ net mineralization in grasslands of Yellowstone National Park. Nitrogen and P measurements were made May-September, 2000, in paired, grazed and 38-42 year fenced, ungrazed grassland at five topographically variable sites. Similar to findings from other grassland ecosystems, several site factors associated with organic activity, including soil moisture, C, and plant biomass, covaried with soil N concentration and/or net N mineralization. Soil P concentration and net P mineralization, however, were unrelated to those factors. Instead, net P mineralization was negatively related to soil pH, which is known to control the form of inorganic P and its availability, and soil P was uncorrelated with any soil or plant variable measured in the study. Because of being influenced by different soil properties, N and P net mineralization were unrelated among grasslands. Furthermore, supply and plant N:P ratios were uncorrelated in this grassland system. Based on critical N:P ratios reflecting nutritional limitation of plants, Yellowstone grassland vegetation ranged from being N limited to N-P co-limited. Grazers increased N-P co-limitation by enhancing plant N concentrations and the soil pH gradient across grassland sites regulated plant nutritional limitation by affecting plant-available P. These findings showed how ungulates and a landscape factor, i.e. soil pH, determined plant nutrient status among YNP grasslands differently by influencing plant N concentration versus plant P concentration, respectively.


H systems are DNA computing models, based on the operation of splicing. P systems are membrane computing models, where objects can evolve in parallel in a hierarchical membrane structure. In particular, the objects can be strings and the evolution rules can be based on splicing. Both H systems with certain controls on the use of splicing rules and P systems of various types are known to be computationally universal, that is, they characterize the recursively ennumerable languages. So, they are equivalent as the generative power. The present paper presents a direct simulation of some controlled H systems by splicing P systems. We achieve this goal for three basic regulation mechanisms: H systems with permitting contexts, H systems with forbidding contexts, and communicating distributed H systems. We can say that in this way we get a uniform \implementation" of the three types of H systems in the form of a \computing cell".


To use single‐column models (SCMs) as a research tool for parameterization development and process studies, the SCM must be supplied with realistic initial profiles, forcing fields, and boundary conditions. We propose a new technique for deriving these required profiles, motivated by the increase in number and scale of high‐resolution convection‐permitting simulations. We suggest that these high‐resolution simulations be coarse grained to the required resolution of an SCM, and thereby be used as a proxy for the true atmosphere. This paper describes the implementation of such a technique. We test the proposed methodology using high‐resolution data from the UK Met Office's Unified Model, with a resolution of 4 km, covering a large tropical domain. These data are coarse grained and used to drive the European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecast's Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) SCM. The proposed method is evaluated by deriving IFS SCM forcing profiles from a consistent T639 IFS simulation. The SCM simulations track the global model, indicating a consistency between the estimated forcing fields and the true dynamical forcing in the global model. We demonstrate the benefits of selecting SCM forcing profiles from across a large domain, namely, robust statistics, and the ability to test the SCM over a range of boundary conditions. We also compare driving the SCM with the coarse‐grained data set to driving it using the European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecast operational analysis. We conclude by highlighting the importance of understanding biases in the high‐resolution data set and suggest that our approach be used in combination with observationally derived forcing data sets.


In recent years, hashing has attracted more and more attention owing to its superior capacity of low storage cost and high query efficiency in large-scale cross-modal retrieval. Benefiting from deep leaning, continuously compelling results in cross-modal retrieval community have been achieved. However, existing deep cross-modal hashing methods either rely on amounts of labeled information or have no ability to learn an accuracy correlation between different modalities. In this paper, we proposed Unsupervised coupled Cycle generative adversarial Hashing networks (UCH), for cross-modal retrieval, where outer-cycle network is used to learn powerful common representation, and inner-cycle network is explained to generate reliable hash codes. Specifically, our proposed UCH seamlessly couples these two networks with generative adversarial mechanism, which can be optimized simultaneously to learn representation and hash codes. Extensive experiments on three popular benchmark datasets show that the proposed UCH outperforms the state-of-the-art unsupervised cross-modal hashing methods.


Research has consistently demonstrated that due to stratified socio-economic inequalities and gender-based disadvantages women from low-income countries and Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) specifically, experience extreme impacts from poverty. Such feminization of poverty has been accentuated, especially in Africa, by the spiraling debt crisis and high levels of absolute poverty, which intersect and interact with gender-biases and macro and micro dimensions of international development assistance. In particular, the negative impacts and limited success of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) have contributed to women's further disempowerment and marginalisation, through the cutbacks they conditionally prescribe for budgetary allocations in the social sectors. To address these shortcomings, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) launched the HIPC Debt Relief Initiative in 1996 which was subsequently enhanced in 1999. The HIPC Debt Relief Initiative has been introduced as a coherent strategy for assisting the economic development of poor countries linking debt relief funds to the reduction of extreme levels of poverty. A key element of the HIPC initiative is the required participation of all social groups and stakeholders in the activities and processes of national development and poverty eradication strategies. By undertaking a gender analysis of the Uganda PRSP/PEAP, this dissertation examines the extent to which participatory processes have included women and gender concerns within the PRSP framework of intervention. Such examination and analysis has involved the application of a comprehensive Gender and Development (GAD) analytical framework, focused on the empowerment approach. The initial findings indicate that although specific gender concerns continue to be neglected within the Uganda PRSP document, nevertheless the participatory process allowed the space for voices, especially women's voices, previously silent and invisible, to be heard within the corridors of power. The study concludes that there exists within the PRSP framework, spaces for more effective gender integration due to the inbuilt flexibility of the process, and the broadening of the consultative process through the ongoing revision of PEAP/PRSP policy. Additionally, there is the continuous monitoring, assessment and evaluation of the impacts generated by the country's poverty reduction plan and associated budgetary allocations. The analysis of the extent to which gender has been mainstreamed in the PRSP process has yielded outcomes and lessons that can be built upon for the attainment of equitable and sustainable development in HIPCs in Africa.


BACKGROUND
A three-monthly formulation of intramuscular paliperidone palmitate has been available on the Dutch and Belgian markets since 2016. AIM: To provide an overview of the indication, effectiveness and side-effects of this injectable three-monthly formulation of paliperidone and to offer considerations for clinical practice. METHOD: A clinically-oriented literature study. RESULTS: Three-monthly paliperidone palmitate depot appears to be as effective as the monthly paliperidone depot and has the same profile of side-effects. CONCLUSION: Three-monthly paliperidone palmitate is an effective treatment option for schizophrenia. However, future research and clinical practice need to clarify the position of this depot in the treatment trajectory.


Objective. To evaluate the association of synovitis, bone marrow edema (BME), and tenosynovitis in the progression of erosions quantified by hand magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at 1 year in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in remission. Methods. A total of 56 of 196 patients with early RA in remission at 1 year and with available MRI data at baseline and at 12 months were included. MRI images were assessed according to the Rheumatoid Arthritis Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scoring (RAMRIS) system. Persistent remission was defined as 28-joint Disease Activity Score-erythrocyte sedimentation rate ≤ 2.6 and/or Simplified Disease Activity Index ≤ 3.3 and/or the new boolean American College of Rheumatology/European League Against Rheumatism remission criteria for a continuous period of at least 6 months. Progression of bone erosions was defined as an increase of 1 or more units in annual RAMRIS score for erosions compared to baseline. Results. At 1 year, the majority of patients with RA in sustained remission showed some inflammatory activity on MRI (94.6% synovitis, 46.4% BME, and 58.9% tenosynovitis) and 19 of the 56 patients (33.9%) showed MRI progression of bone erosions. A significant difference was observed in MRI BME at 1 year, with higher mean score in patients with progression compared to nonprogression of erosions (4.8 ± 5.6 and 1.4 ± 2.6, p = 0.03). Conclusion. Subclinical inflammation was identified by MRI in 96.4% of patients with RA in sustained clinical remission. Significantly higher scores of BME after sustained remission were observed in patients with progression of erosions compared to patients with no progression. The persistence of higher scores of BME may explain the progression of bone erosions in patients with persistent clinical remission.


Coordination of autonomous non-point agents is studied in this work. Interactions between vehicles together with their internal dynamics have been modeled as a continuous, unconstrained differential game. In particular, collision prediction is shown to be achievable in a cooperative scheme through solving the boundary value equation associated with the dual problem. Optimal control formulation has been further applied in order to solve the coordination problem while coping with both time constraints and energy aspects of the system. The developed control scheme is further contrasted with the traditional negated gradient laws, which on the other hand can be shown to correspond to Nash Equilibria of non-cooperative strategies, in terms of its complexity and resultant trajectories. Furthermore, state feedback formation control is combined with the proposed cooperative scheme to alleviate its computational concerns. In addition, conflict-free navigation and convergence properties of the proposed scheme are verified in simulation.


Cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) is the maternal transmission of failed pollen production in hermaphroditic plants leading to a mixture of male-sterile and hermaphroditic individuals in the population (gynodioecy). Autosomal genes that can restore pollen fertility in the presence of male-sterile cytotypes are commonly observed. CMS in wild populations tends to be associated with (1) the maintenance of distinct cytotypes, each capable of causing male sterility by an apparently different mechanism since each is susceptible to only a particular subset of autosomal restorer alleles; (2) the maintenance of polymorphism at several autosomal restorer loci, with particular alleles or loci specialized for restoring pollen fertility when associated with particular cytotypes; (3) the maintenance of genetic differentiation among geographically distant populations; and (4) the maintenance of phenotypic diversity among populations, measured as the percentage of malesterile individuals. Observations and previous theoretical explanations were reviewed. A simulation model was then constructed, and the results of the simulations appear to be consistent with the evolutionary dynamics and patterns of genetic polymorphism inferred from wild populations. In the simulation models, when cytoplasmic male-sterility alleles are present and their associated autosomal pollen-restorer alleles are absent (cytoplasmic control), the frequency of females increases because of the ovule-fitness advantage usually associated with male sterility. When autosomal restorer alleles are present (autosomal control), the frequency of females tends to decline. The opposite directions of evolution favored by the cytoplasm and autosomes reflect the inherent conflict of interest between genomic subsets over the sex-allocation ratio. The evolutionary dynamics depend on an interaction between the phenotypic and genotypic frequencies and on the continual loss and reintroduction of genetic novelty over evolutionary time. A striking difference was observed between the potential genetic control of male sterility built into the simulation model, which reflects assumptions about the underlying physiological mechanisms of normal and aberrant pollen production, and the types of genetic control that would be inferred by performing classical genetic crossing experiments on a sample of the simulated population. This contrast between potential and inferred control is possibly an important general attribute of traits that are the resolution of a continual evolutionary conflict.


This paper uses firm-level data from Kenya and Malaysia for 2000-05 to investigate the existence of export spillovers from foreign-owned firms to domestic firms and their transmission mechanisms. The paper shows that exporting firms are larger, pay better wages and are more productive than non-exporters. Foreign firms are also more likely to export than domestic firms in both countries. However, foreign firms in Kenya are more labour intensive than those in Malaysia. Firms in Malaysia are more profitable, with higher wages and higher productivity, than firms in Kenya. There are contrasting results with regard to export spillovers. In Malaysia, there is evidence of positive spillovers largely from backward linkages and negative spillovers from competition effects and information channels. In Kenya, on the other hand, there is evidence of export spillovers through demonstration effects and the competition channel.


Geobacillus stearothermophilus T6 is a thermophilic, Gram-positive soil bacterium that possesses an extensive and highly regulated hemicellulolytic system, allowing the bacterium to efficiently degrade high-molecular-weight polysaccharides such as xylan, arabinan and galactan. As part of the xylan-degradation system, the bacterium uses a number of side-chain-cleaving enzymes, one of which is Axe2, a 219-amino-acid intracellular serine acetylxylan esterase that removes acetyl side groups from xylooligosaccharides. Bioinformatic analyses suggest that Axe2 belongs to the lipase GDSL family and represents a new family of carbohydrate esterases. In the current study, the detailed three-dimensional structure of Axe2 is reported, as determined by X-ray crystallography. The structure of the selenomethionine derivative Axe2-Se was initially determined by single-wavelength anomalous diffraction techniques at 1.70 Å resolution and was used for the structure determination of wild-type Axe2 (Axe2-WT) and the catalytic mutant Axe2-S15A at 1.85 and 1.90 Å resolution, respectively. These structures demonstrate that the three-dimensional structure of the Axe2 monomer generally corresponds to the SGNH hydrolase fold, consisting of five central parallel β-sheets flanked by two layers of helices (eight α-helices and five 310-helices). The catalytic triad residues, Ser15, His194 and Asp191, are lined up along a substrate channel situated on the concave surface of the monomer. Interestingly, the Axe2 monomers are assembled as a `doughnut-shaped' homo-octamer, presenting a unique quaternary structure built of two staggered tetrameric rings. The eight active sites are organized in four closely situated pairs, which face the relatively wide internal cavity. The biological relevance of this octameric structure is supported by independent results obtained from gel-filtration, TEM and SAXS experiments. These data and their comparison to the structural data of related hydrolases are used for a more general discussion focusing on the structure-function relationships of enzymes of this category.


Abstract : This thesis proposes that the U.S. Navy deter and, if necessary, combat potential minelayers by pursuing a pro-active' offensive mine warfare strategy. Central to this proposed strategy is the development, acquisition, and use of Remote Controlled (RECO) mines. It is argued that, given the historical problems the United States has had in the area of naval mine warfare, a strategy aimed at the aggressive deterrence of enemy mine laying be embraced so as to project forces ashore in future amphibious operations.


The Custom and Border Protection (CBP) border security policy was explicitly presented by former Acting Commissioner of CBP, David Aguilar, in testimony before the United States Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) on April 4, 2017 in testimony on the subject of "Fencing Along the Southwest Border." Important for discussion here are the key components of the DHS/CBP/Border Patrol's strategy, or sets of policies, laying forth elements of the border walls (including barriers, fences), personnel, and technology in order to hinder, or intercept, undocumented migrants (homo sacer) from entering the United States illegally—all socially constructed. Aguilar notes in his opening remarks "Maintaining a safe and secure environment along the U.S.—Mexico border is critical. A safe and orderly border that is predicated on the strong rule of law deprives criminal organizations, drug cartels, and criminal individuals the opportunity to thrive." In Aguilar's testimony, when pressed by Ranking Member Senator Claire McCaskill, he set forth the current needs for CBP/Border Patrol priority of the three elements in the following order: (1) Technology (border surveillance), (2) Personnel (numbers of agents along the border), and, (3) The Border Wall (physical infrastructure: fences, walls, and vehicle barriers). The security apparatus affects dwellers along the Rio Grande and undocumented border crossers, demonstrated here with an analysis of the application of President Trump's Zero Tolerance policy (April 6–June 20, 2018). The security framework applied in this paper will consist of theoretical approaches assessing border surveillance as a panopticon, the use of Border Patrol agents for apprehending, detaining and removing homo sacer, and the symbolism of the border wall as a spectacle and simulacrum—all understood in the pursuit of USA border security policy.


In this semitutorial paper, a comprehensive survey of closest point search methods for lattices without a regular structure is presented. The existing search strategies are described in a unified framework, and differences between them are elucidated. An efficient closest point search algorithm, based on the Schnorr-Euchner (1995) variation of the Pohst (1981) method, is implemented. Given an arbitrary point x /spl isin/ /spl Ropf//sup m/ and a generator matrix for a lattice /spl Lambda/, the algorithm computes the point of /spl Lambda/ that is closest to x. The algorithm is shown to be substantially faster than other known methods, by means of a theoretical comparison with the Kannan (1983, 1987) algorithm and an experimental comparison with the Pohst (1981) algorithm and its variants, such as the Viterbo-Boutros (see ibid. vol.45, p.1639-42, 1999) decoder. Modifications of the algorithm are developed to solve a number of related search problems for lattices, such as finding a shortest vector, determining the kissing number, computing the Voronoi (1908)-relevant vectors, and finding a Korkine-Zolotareff (1873) reduced basis.


SUMMARY Euchirella paulinae spec. nov. is described and illustrated in extenso ; various structures are outlined in detail for the first time. The external morphology of the new species is discussed with reference to the other species of the genus. Some brief remarks are made about the anatomical terminology of the mouthparts of Copepoda, and on the necessity to always describe new species really scrutinously. INTRODUCTION In the course of a revision of the aetideid genera Euchirella Giesbrecht, 1888 and Pseudochirella G. O. Sars, 1920, an undescribed species of Euchirella was found in the material originating from the Danish "Dana" Expedition 1928-30. The new species will be reported upon separately in the present paper. Its tentative relationships with the other species of the genus will be dealt with in a forthcoming study on Euchirella, while detailed accounts of the taxonomic value of several morphological structures, e.g., of the oral field, of the various mouthparts, and of the genital field, are in preparation. All specimens are preserved in 70% alcohol (ethanol), while dissected appendages have been mounted on slides in Berlese's Fluid. Observations on specimens in situ were made both under dissecting microscope and compound microscope, with the specimens in mono-ethylene-glycol. Preparations for the scanning electron microscope were made by air-drying after transfer through 96% alcohol and by sticking the parts on stubs provided with double-sided adhesive tape. The scan preparations were coated with one thin layer of gold only. Ultrasonic cleaning was applied to fouled specimens, if necessary.


The main objective of the Joint Country Financial Accountability Assessment (CFAA) and the Country Procurement Assessment (CPAR) is to contribute to the implementation of Public Sector Modernization Vision and Strategy for 2002-2012 and its Medium Term Socio-Economic Policy Framework. It also provides the basis for further donor harmonization. Building on earlier analytical work, it focuses on specific initiatives that can directly result in improvements in the country's management of public resources and in reducing public debt. This CFAA/CPAR does not duplicate the detailed information on overall financial accountability and procurement systems and practices that is already available in earlier diagnostics, but rather focuses on selected areas which the CFAA/CPAR team and the Government agreed required further improvement for the Government to meet its goal of establishing a modern public financial management system (PFM). The present CFAA/CPAR confirmed the persistence of systemic issues which continue to affect the systems' performance, and identified opportunities for generating new momentum for the ongoing PFM reform in Jamaica.


Learning to construct text representations in end-to-end systems can be difficult, as natural languages are highly compositional and task-specific annotated datasets are often limited in size. Methods for directly supervising language composition can allow us to guide the models based on existing knowledge, regularizing them towards more robust and interpretable representations. In this paper, we investigate how objectives at different granularities can be used to learn better language representations and we propose an architecture for jointly learning to label sentences and tokens. The predictions at each level are combined together using an attention mechanism, with token-level labels also acting as explicit supervision for composing sentence-level representations. Our experiments show that by learning to perform these tasks jointly on multiple levels, the model achieves substantial improvements for both sentence classification and sequence labeling.


The time-predictable design of computer architectures for the use in (hard) real-time systems is becoming more and more important, due to the increasing complexity of modern computer architectures. The design of predictable processor pipelines recently received considerable attention. The goal here is to find a trade-off between predictability and computing power. Branches and jumps are particularly problematic for high-performance processors. For one, branches are executed late in the pipeline. This either leads to high branch penalties (flushing) or complex software/hardware techniques (branch predictors). Another side-effect of branches is that they make it difficult to exploit instruction-level parallelism due to control dependencies. Predicated computer architectures allow to attach a predicate to the instructions in a program. An instruction is then only executed when the predicate evaluates to true and otherwise behaves like a simple nop instruction. Predicates can thus be used to convert control dependencies into data dependencies, which helps to address both of the aforementioned problems. A downside of predicated instructions is the precise worst-case execution time (WCET) analysis of programs making use of them. Predicated memory accesses, for instance, may or may not have an impact on the processor's cache and thus need to be considered by the cache analysis. Predication potentially has an impact on all analysis phases of a WCET analysis tool. We thus explore a preprocessing step that explicitly unfolds the control-flow graph, which allows us to apply standard analyses that are themselves not aware of predication. 1998 ACM Subject Classification C.3 [Special-Purpose and Application-Based Systems] RealTime and Embedded Systems


A 5,800-bp (base pair) HindIII-EcoRI DNA fragment containing malT, the positive regulator gene of the maltose regulon, and most of malP, the structural gene for maltodextrin phosphorylase, was cloned into pBR322. A sequence of 802 bp was established in a DNA segment containing the promotor for malPQ and the promoter for malT. A total of 611 bp separates the initiation codons for these two genes, which are transcribed in opposite directions. The malT product was identified as a 94,000 dalton polypeptide.


English, German, French and Dutch all exhibit a ditransitive construction in which the verb is combined with a subject and two NP objects (either unmarked or with overt dative and/or accusative case), which typically encode the agent, theme and recipient of a 'caused reception' event. In construction grammar terms, Goldberg (1995) posits 'Agent successfully causes Recipient to receive Patient' as the basic sense of the (English) ditransitive. Each of these ditransitive constructions, however, can also be used to encode a variety of other scenes in addition to basic transfer of possession events. This paper investigates the extent to which they can be used to encode benefactive events, i.e. events where an agent carries out an action (involving a patient) for the benefit of another person. The constructions in question will be shown to be subject to distinct constraints in this respect. Kittila's (2005, this volume) distinction between recipientbeneficiaries and other beneficiaries, for instance, turns out to be an important factor in English and (certain varieties of) Dutch, but not (or to a much lesser extent) in German and French. In addition, it will also be shown that in several of the languages under discussion, the semantic range of the benefactive ditransitive is subject to language-internal variation.


Two primary wage-support policies help low-income families: the minimum wage and targeted tax credits. Since 1997, when Congress last raised the minimum wage, the real value of the minimum wage has fallen about 20 percent because of inflation, while the earned income tax credit (EITC) and child credit have been expanded. This brief illustrates how current tax rules interact with the minimum wage and considers whether increased tax credits could substitute for minimum-wage increases for those earning the federal minimum wage. Increasing tax credits enough to substitute for raising minimum wage is probably infeasible because of the cost and the high marginal tax rates required. A more direct route to helping low-wage workers is to raise the minimum wage and index it to inflation.


This paper which was commissioned by the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications during the current Swedish EU presidency aims to identify and discuss some of the most important territorial potentials in the European Union. According to the EU Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion, the territorial diversity of European regions is a vital asset in economic development and competitiveness. The purpose of EU Cohesion Policy at the European level is to contribute to the Lisbon and Gothenburg objectives for growth, jobs and sustainable development. More specifically, the Cohesion Policy should promote the cohesion of the EU-territory by improving the use of all available resources in Europe's regions. The concept of territorial potential relates to numerous factors. These factors can be divided into tangible assets, such as natural and human resources, and intangible assets, like organisation, culture, social issues and governance. Un-mobilised territorial assets constitute territorial potentials that may be realised through policies and actions at various administrative levels. Seen against the backdrop of the deepest global economic slowdown in generations the identification of regional potentials and, furthermore, the elaboration of strategies and policies that might enable and facilitate the European regions to fully exploit these potentials, is more important than ever. To strengthen competitiveness one of the main challenges facing policy-makers and other concerned actors across the regions of Europe is to identify and mobilise the territorial potentials necessary for the creation of new jobs and sustainable economic growth. Understanding the nature of territorial potentials requires a process of analysing access to different types of resources in order to gain a more detailed knowledge of the economic base of the region. However, it also requires a regional process for prioritising and coordinating relevant stakeholders and policy-fields in order to implement the necessary policy initiatives.


Process modelling is gaining increasing acceptance by software engineers as a useful discipline to facilitate both process understanding and improvement activities. This position paper builds upon previous work reported at the 1997 ICSE workshop on process models and empirical studies of software engineering (Phalp and Counsell 1997). In the previous paper, we argued that simple counts could be used to support analysis of static process models. We also illustrated the idea with a coupling measure for Role Activity Diagrams, a graphical process modelling notation adapted from Petri Nets. At that time only limited empirical work had been carried out, based upon a single industrial study, where we found high levels of coupling in an inefficient process (a more thorough description may be found in (Phalp and Shepperd 1999)). We now summarise a more recent study, which uses a similar analysis of process coupling again based on simple counts. In the study, we compared ten software prototyping processes drawn from eight different organisations. We found that this approach does yield insights into process problems, which could potentially be missed by qualitative analysis alone. This is particularly so when analysing real world processes, which are frequently more complex than their text book counterparts. One notable finding was that despite differences in size and domain, role types across the organisations exhibited similar levels of coupling. Furthermore, where there were deviations in one particular role type, this led the authors to discover a relationship between project size and the coupling levels within that type of role. Given the simplicity of our approach and the complexity of many real world processes we argue that quantitative analysis of process models should be considered as a process analysis technique.


We introduce a new semi-orthogonal complex wavelet basis of L2(R2). The basis functions are associated to the complex gradient-Laplace operator, which plays a central role in image processing. We define analytically a single-generator wavelet that is shifted on the coset positions of the subsampling matrix. Next, we propose the "wavelet Marr pyramid" for an extension of the new basis that achieves near shift-invariance and steerability (using a Gaussian-like smoothing kernel), for a mild redundancy factor only. This new wavelet pyramid decomposition closely mimicks the basic operations of Marx's framework for early vision. The pyramid is implemented by a fast filterbank algorithm using the FFT.


Laurence-Moon-Bardet-Biedl syndrome (LMBBS) is an inherited genetic condition combination of two distinct disorders: Biedl-Bardet syndrome (BBS) and Laurence-Moon syndrome (LMS). BBS is characterized by polydactyly fingers or toes, obesity, renal failures and learning difficulties. The clinical signs of this condition vary among affected person, most person with Bardet-Biedl syndrome also develop a blurred central vision. LMS is a rare condition that may include cerebellar ataxia; vision abnormalities due to peripheral neuropathy; spastic paraplegia and intellectual disability. The cardinal clinical features include retinitis pigmentosa, obesity, polydactyly and hypogenitalism. The clinical complications significantly vary among differently affected siblings, include obesity, type 2 diabetes, elevated blood pressure and elevated cholesterol levels (hypercholesterolemia), renal complications, hypopituitarism; and short stature. This case study is first to report maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY) in LaurenceMoon-Bardet-Biedl syndrome among two south Indian patients. Key words: Laurence-Moon-Bardet-Biedl Syndrome, MODY, Diabetes.


Contexts for the performance of banal nationalism and belonging have changed markedly with the emergence of the Internet as a significant constituent and mediator of everyday activities. National anthems, depicted as echoed realizations of the imagined community, now exist in cyberspace, offering new public spaces for observing, participating in and responding to anthem spectacles. Drawing on the notion of 'networked narratives' (Page, Harper and Frobenius 2013), and previous research on modes of belonging (Jones and Krzyzanowski 2008, Krzyzanowski and Wodak 2008) this paper analyses user comments posted on six YouTube sites featuring New Zealand anthems. The analysis reveals how the commenting affordances of YouTube act as sites of narrative production for both the assertion of belonging, the evaluation of others' claims and also for the drawing of boundaries. Through this analysis of imagined communities in cyberspace, it is argued that web 2.0 spaces offer us a different way of accessing situated practices of banal nationalism and belonging, while highlighting the interface between the personal and the political in the complexities and contingencies of belonging.


Assuming that gender relationships are essential to any analysis of terrorism and political violence, I shall examine how the sex-gender stereotypes work, as well as their transgressions. The female military protagonists in the Abu Ghraib media scandal and the women prisoners of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the dirty protest in Armagh (1980) are used as a framework in which issues of visibility/invisibility, independence/ dependence, invulnerability/ vulnerability of women will be addressed. The paper pays particular attention to both the violence against the body and also to the use of the body as a political weapon. From this perspective I analyse both the differences and similarities of menstrual blood as a weapon of proximity in both contexts. The two cases have in common the fact that they occurred in prisons and that women embodied non-traditional roles: soldiers, women political prisoners, allowing for reflection from feminist perspectives on the female inclusion in the citizenship, on participation in political violence and terrorism and on agency and autonomy. Language: en


In the mass tort context, class action settlements have largely given way to a unique form of non-class aggregate settlements that this Article refers to as "private mass tort settlements." Although it has been argued that aggregation in tort law is "inevitable," the legal profession has struggled for many years to find an effective aggregate settlement mechanism for mass tort litigation that does not run afoul of the "historic tradition" that everyone should have their own day in court, assuming they want it. Over the last decade, however, as a result of the evolution of non-class aggregate settlements, a new opt-in paradigm for mass tort settlements has emerged that is true to that historic tradition. This Article discusses the new opt-in paradigm and the appropriate contours of judicial authority vis-a-vis private mass tort settlements. Private mass tort settlements present a difficult conundrum for presiding judges. On one hand, mass tort litigation requires active judicial involvement and oversight due to the sheer size and complexity of such matters. Thus, having been intimately involved in the litigation from its inception, it understandably seems natural for courts to want to exercise some degree of control over private mass tort settlements. But, on the other hand, like traditional one-on-one settlements and unlike class action settlements and other specific settlements, private mass tort settlements do not impact the rights of absent or unrepresented parties. Perhaps not surprisingly then, courts have struggled in applying established principles concerning the scope of judicial authority to evaluate and oversee the implementation of traditional settlements in the unfamiliar context of private mass tort settlements. This Article seeks to provide a clear path forward by first examining the limited contexts in which courts have the authority to evaluate and oversee the implementation of traditional settlements, highlighting the nature of the absent or unrepresented interests that judicial review is designed to protect in those traditional contexts. The Article then discusses the emerging opt-in paradigm for mass tort settlements and traces the paradigm's lineage to three recent cases: In re Baycol Products Liability Litigation, In re Vioxx Products Liability Litigation, and In re World Trade Center Disaster Site Litigation. The Article argues that the well-established maxim that courts lack authority over private one-on-one settlements should apply with equal force to private mass tort settlements because these non-class aggregate settlements allow each individual plaintiff to decide whether or not to settle on the terms offered and do not impact the rights of absent or unrepresented parties. In short, courts do not have—and do not need—the authority to review private mass tort settlements. The Article concludes by addressing the arguments that have been advanced to support judicial review of non-class aggregate settlements, debunking the "quasi-class action" theory that some courts have relied upon to regulate attorneys' fees in connection with mass tort settlements, and discussing the various ways in which courts may nevertheless be able to influence private mass tort settlements.


During the Late Bronze Age, the number of metal objects in the Baltic Sea region increased tremendously. Mobility and interaction in this northern inland sea intensified. This occurred in a period of prehistory when the ship was the predominant symbol in southern Scandinavia. The ship can be found in rock carvings, on bronze objects and by way of erected stone monuments: stone ship settings. These stone ships are mainly to be found in the Baltic Sea region, with a marked concentration on Gotland.The stone ship settings and their landscape context are the focus of this dissertation. The objective is to clarify whether it is possible to find evidence of social groupings of people in the Nordic Late Bronze Age (1100-500 BC), by focusing on the stone ship monument, adopting a maritime approach. These people might have been part of a maritime institution specializing in trade and long distance journeys during this period, thus achieving a more advanced maritime way of life in the Baltic Sea. Are the ship settings an expression of these specific groups of people, who utilized their practices to position and articulate themselves in the landscape? If such maritime institutions can in fact be traced, there must also be uniformly structured locations for these groups of people to meet in, some kind of antecedents of harbours.By taking an inland sea, the Baltic Sea, as a geographical demarcation, a different perspective of prehistory is attained. The area in the Late Bronze Age and earliest Iron Age (950/900-200 BC) differed from the Nordic Bronze Age sphere. The communities around the Baltic Sea, through the establishment and sharing of mutual interests, seem to have reached a certain degree of consensus. This concordance might well be largely explained by the complex dependency on metal. Such a manifestation would not have been possible without an infrastructure or network, in this case a maritime one. This is something which has previously been overlooked in discussions on the Bronze Age in the Baltic Sea.


Chemical reactions involving high-pressure acetylene are not easily performed in a standard laboratory setup. The risk of explosion and technical difficulties drastically complicate the equipment and greatly increase the cost. In this study, we propose the replacement of acetylene with calcium carbide, which was successfully utilized to synthesize practically useful vinyl thioesters in accordance with a simple and environmentally benign procedure. The reaction proceeded under mild conditions using a standard laboratory setup. The optimized reaction conditions allowed the selective synthesis of the vinyl thioesters in high yields, and the reaction conditions can be scaled up to synthesize grams of sulfides from inexpensive starting materials.


A novel scheme to generate, transmit, and receive an optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) continuous phase modulation (CPM) signal, which is combining minimum shift keying (MSK) coding with OFDM optical modulation, for downlink application in a 4×2.5-Gb/s wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) passive optical access network, is proposed and experimentally validated. We also realize wavelength remodulation for carrying upstream on-off keying (OOK) data to reduce the cost budget at the optical network unit. The experimental results show that the power penalties for the downlink and the uplink data after transmission over 25-km SMF-28 fiber are 0.1 dB and smaller than 0.4 dB, respectively.


Data aggregation in wireless sensor networks (WSN) is a rapidly emerging research area. It can greatly help conserve the scarce energy resources by eliminating redundant data thus achieving a longer network lifetime. However, securing data aggregation in WSN is made even more challenging, by the fact that the sensor nodes and aggregators deployed in hostile environments are exposed to various security threats. In this paper, we survey the current research related to security in data aggregation in wireless sensor networks. We have classified the security schemes studied in two main categories: cryptographic based scheme and trust based scheme. We provide an overview and a comparative study of these schemes and highlight the future research directions to address the flaws in existing schemes.


Despite growing national attention on the costs of accessing justice, surprisingly little information has been collected about the psychological 'costs' of engaging in litigation. This article summarizes the health and psychology literature, to present a picture of the impact that litigation can have on litigants' health, state of mind, life goals and social relationships. Set against professional obligations embedded in the lawyer's role, we assert that awareness of the negative impacts of legal processes on the emotional and psychological functioning of clients is important. With greater awareness, lawyers can better assess the value of litigation, prepare their clients (and themselves) for litigation stress, and, where appropriate, take preventative actions to minimize the negative aspects of the litigation experience. With that in mind, we identify positive solution-oriented responses to preventing, reducing and alleviating litigation stress. These strategies focus on client-centred communication, supports and planning.


Introduction: The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between kinesiophobia, quadriceps muscle strength and quality of life in patients with knee osteoarthritis. Materials and Method: We included 145 patients (age, 55.9±8 years) diagnosed with osteoarthritis of the knee in this study. Kinesiophobia, pain intensity, quadriceps muscle strength, disability and quality of life were evaluated using Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia, visual analogue scale, hand-held dynamometer, Lysholm scale and short form-36, respectively. Results: There was a significant relationship between pain at rest (p= .028), pain during activity (p=.015), disability (p=.019), vitality (p=.03) and social function (p=.036) of short form-36 and quadriceps muscle strength in females. No significant relationship was found between the test variables and quadriceps muscle strength (p> .05) in males. There was a significant relationship between pain during activity (p=.021), quadriceps muscle strength (p=.017), vitality (p=.026) and social function (p=.007) parameters of quality of life and kinesiophobia in females. There was a significant association between quadriceps muscle strength and kinesiophobia (p=.001) in males. Conclusion: Quadriceps muscle weakness was associated with increased pain intensity and disability and reduced quality of life in females but not in males with osteoarthritis. Additionally, kinesiophobia was associated with higher pain intensity during activity, quadriceps muscle weakness and poorer quality of life in females. In males, level of kinesiophobia was associated with quadriceps muscle weakness.


We are moving towards a world in which data have a life beyond the individual; where the value and potential of data are ever-changing as technological developments bring new possibilities. This immortality of data raises new ethical and societal issues that have not yet been fully articulated, and consequently we are unprepared to deal with. The challenges of dealing with large volumes of personal data are increasingly apparent in many fields of practice, although they may manifest in different ways. This workshop brings together participants from diverse domains to provide an opportunity to articulate across disciplines and stakeholders the commonalities in the issues that arise. We aim to stimulate debates about how we might work collaboratively to anticipate, manage and prevent future issues. The presentations and discussions will be used to prepare a summary white paper/symposium briefing document to be disseminated more widely.


Essay 'Stepping to Success' in the Rising Stars 2014 catalogue.

Rising Stars 2014 is a platform for some of the most exciting crafts by emerging makers from crafts and applied arts programmes across the UK. The exhibition tours from New Ashgate, Farnham, to Milton Keynes Arts Centre and Smiths Row, Bury St Edmunds.

The featured makers are Elodie Alexandre, Elizabeth Ashdown, Juliette Bigley, Rachel Britch, Jessica Coleman, Polly Collins, Brittany Delany, Eva Farkasova, Joanna Fronczak, Jessica Frost, Kerstin Haigh, Ruth Harrison, Anna Collette Hunt, Mirka Janeckova, Anum Khan, Lisa Larcombe, Beatrice Larkin, Anne Laycock, Beth Lewis-Williams, Agnieszka Maksymiuk, Elise Menghini, Kelly Munro, Izzy Parker, Anastasija Pjatnicka, Hajnalka Rezes, Charlotte Stockley, Julia Webster, Simon Wilks, Penny Wheeler, Hannah Rose Whittle, Cristina Zani and Sevak Zargarian.

The catalogue includes essays by Maureen Bampton, Lucy Day and Rebecca Skeels.

Rising Stars is supported by Arts Council England, Billmeir Charitable Trust, University for the Creative Arts and a-n.


Liquid-liquid extraction is a complex chemical purification process, which is associated with many thermodynamic and kinetic values. This makes its application in the recycling industry difficult, as it deals with waste streams that have highly variable compositions. In this regard, modelling an extraction process using microfluidics proves to be a useful approach to allow rapid adaptation to such composition changes, if development can be shown to be more accurate, faster, and safer than the classical batch approach with separate analysis. Here, the first automated microfluidic tool integrated with online X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is reported to study liquid-liquid extraction processes by enabling metal concentration quantification. The measurement is automated and performed for both aqueous and organic phases to improve accuracy. Overall, this fully automated approach shows that: (i) Thermodynamic and kinetic values associated with these processes can rapidly and efficiently be obtained simultaneously (in less than 13 hours with a resulting liquid use of less than 20 mL). (ii) Numerical simulations are consistent with the experimental data and provide rare insights regarding the respective contributions to the overall kinetic of the extraction system.


Throughout the world COVID-19 has been becomes critical pandemic which creates shutdown conditions for large part of population. In the whole world, confirmed cases and death rate are increasing in exponential way. It is creating panic environment in India also as condition of confirmed cases and suspected cases are enhancing continuously. To avoid the situation of community transmission Indian government, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, all states and union territories governments are working together and preventive tasks done by individual are depicted here. In this review various categories of corona viruses are described with various actions, controls and problems occurring in India. Small laziness can create the drastic situation in India also. Yoga is an ancient heath curing technique in India which plays a vital role in improving the immunity. How it works in our body it is also shown in the paper. A study on the behalf of age and gender is done from the data recorded by Indian government which concluded that maximum number positive cases are in age group between 21-40 years and male are more in number than female.


This paper proposes a systematic revision of the Oligocene Mongolian Ctenodactylidae, on the basis of abundant material obtained by screen/washing operations in stratified localities of the Ulantatal area (Inner Mongolia) (UTL1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 6 & 8). A Chinese-German team has collected several thousands of isolated rodent teeth, and a number of fragmentary jaws. A new genus is identified (Alashania nov. gen. tengkoliensis nov. sp.), and eight former species are reevaluated, Karakoromys decessus, Tataromys sigmodon, T. minor, T. plicidens, Yindirtemys ulantatalensis, Y. bohlini, Y. deflexus, with several synonymies. A new Yindirtemys species is described: Y. shevyrevae nov. sp. and another one close to that: Y. aff. shevyrevae nov. sp. Four new species, which are rare in the localities, remain in open nomenclature because they are not well-represented. Yindirtemys differs from the other genera by the permanence of crescentic structures, while the other genera show a general reduction of the trigonoid area (= anterior valley). We define a range of size variation for each well documented population. Although the dental morphology shows a wide range of variation, given that transitional morphologies occur in a single locality, it is possible to provide a clear definition for most species. We show that dental patterns of the different genera can be derived from the pattern of Karakoromys. As a number of Tataromyinae have been determined in several localities from China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, usually on the basis of scarce material, or surface collections, the present study would be used to re-evaluate their attribution inasmuch as the taxa are now placed in the Oligocene stratigraphy. The diversity of sizes and forms reflects the adaptive radiation of the family during the Oligocene, within a forested environment where the vegetation was probably abundant.


Intra-articular glenohumeral injections are an important part of orthopedic practices for both therapeutic and diagnostic purposes. Forty human cadaver shoulders were injected, 20 anteriorly and 20 posteriorly, to assess the accuracy of injections placed in the glenohumeral joint. After the needle was placed, 1 cc of gadolinium was injected into the joint to determine accuracy of position. The radiographic presence of intra-articular contrast was judged as an accurate injection. The anterior approach had an 80% accuracy rate and .75 positive predictive value. The posterior approach had a 50% accuracy rate and a .67 positive predictive value. Anterior injections produce a higher rate of accuracy than posterior injections.


3,3'-Dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride is an off-white powder with a melting point of 274 degrees C. 3,3'-Dimethoxybenzidine is used principally as an intermediate in the production of commercial bisazobiphenyl dyes for coloring textiles, paper, plastic, rubber, and leather. In the synthesis of the bisazobiphenyl dyes, the amine groups of 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine are chemically linked with other aromatic amines. A small quantity of 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine is also used as an intermediate in the production of o-dianisidine diisocyanate, which is used in isocyanate-based adhesive systems and as a component of polyurethane elastomers. 3,3'-Dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride was evaluated in toxicity and carcinogenicity studies as part of the National Toxicology Program's Benzidine Dye Initiative. This Initiative was designed to evaluate the representative benzidine congeners and benzidine congener-derived and benzidine-derived dyes. 3,3'-Dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride was nominated for study because of the potential for human exposure during production of bisazobiphenyl dyes and because benzidine, a structurally related chemical, is a known human carcinogen. NTP Toxicology and Carcinogenesis studies were conducted by administering 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride (greater than 97.5% pure) in drinking water to groups of F344/N rats of each sex for 14 days, 13 weeks, 9 months, or 21-months. The 21-month studies were intended to last 24 months but were terminated early because of rapidly declining survival due to neoplasia. Studies were performed only in rats because similar studies are being performed in mice at the National Center for Toxicology Research. Genetic toxicology studies were conducted with Salmonella typhimurium, Chinese hamster over (CHO) cells, and Drosophila melanogaster. Fourteen-Day Studies: All rats receiving drinking water concentrations up to 4,500 ppm lived to the end of the studies. Rats that received water containing 4,500 ppm 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride lost weight. Water consumption decreased with increasing concentration of chemical and at 4,500 ppm was less than one-fourth that by the controls. Lymphoid depletion of the thymus in males and hypocellularity of the bone marrow in males and females were seen at the 4,500-ppm concentration, but not at the next lower concentration or in controls. Thirteen-Week Studies: All rats receiving concentrations up to 2,500 ppm lived to the end of the studies. Final mean body weights of rats given drinking water containing 1,250 or 2,500 ppm 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride were 5%-20% lower than those of controls. Water consumption at these concentrations was 40%-60% that consumed by controls. Compound-related effects in rats given water containing 2,500 ppm 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride included a mind exacerbation of naturally occurring nephropathy and the presence of a yellow-brown pigment (lipofuscin) in the cytoplasm of thyroid follicular cells. Serum triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxin (T4) concentrations in females receiving 330 ppm or more and T4 concentrations in males receiving 170 ppm or more were significantly lower than in controls. Thyrotropin (TSH) concentrations were comparable in controls and exposed rats. Based on the chemical-related nephropathy and reductions in water consumption and body weight gain observed in the 13-week studies, doses for the long-term studies in male and female rats were 0 or 330 ppm 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride in drinking water administered for 9 months and 0, 80, 170, or 330 ppm administered for 21 months. Nine-Month Studies: Ten rats of each sex in control and 330-ppm groups were evaluated after 9 months. Significant decreases in T3 and T4 concentrations were seen in exposed male and female rats. Other lesions seen in exposed rats included foci of alteration in the liver, a carcinoma of the preputial gland in one male, a carcinoma of the clitoral gland in one female, and carcinoma of the Zymbal gland in two males. Body Weights and Survival in the Twenty-One-Month Studies: The average amount of 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride consumed per day was approximately 6, 12, or 21 mg/kg for low, mid, or high dose male rats and 7, 14, or 23 mg/kg for low, mid, or high dose female rats. Mean body weights of male and female rats began to decrease relative to those of controls after about 1 year of exposure at 170 or 330 ppm and were 6%-22% lower for males and 7%-17% lower for females. Survival of rats exposed to 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride was reduced because animals were dying with neoplasms or being killed in a moribund condition (survival at 21 months--male: control, 44/60, 73%; low dose, 8/45, 18%; mid dose, 0/75; high dose, 0/60; female: 45/60, 75%; 15/45, 33%; 6/75, 8%; 0/60). Because of these early compound-related deaths, the studies were terminated at 21 months. Nonneoplastic and Neoplastic Effects in the Twenty-One-Month Studies: Increased incidences of several nonneoplastic lesions were observed in exposed rats, including hematopoietic cell proliferation in the spleen and cystic and centrilobular degeneration and necrosis of the liver. Neoplasms attributed to 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride exposure were observed in rats at many tissue sites, including the skin, Zymbal gland, preputial and clitoral glands, oral cavity, small and large intestines, liver, brain, mesothelium, mammary gland, and uterus/cervix. The incidences of these neoplasms in male and female rats are given in the abstract summary table (see page 5 of the Technical Report). Genetic Toxicology: 3,3'-Dimethoxybenzidine was mutagenic in S. typhimurium strain TA100 with exogenous metabolic activation and in strain TA98 without activation; a weakly positive response was observed in strain TA1535 with metabolic activation. 3,3'-Dimethoxybenzidine induced sister chromatid exchanges and chromosomal aberrations in CHO cells with and without exogenous metabolic activation. 3,3'-Dimethoxybenzidine did not induce sex-linked recessive lethal mutations in adult male D. melanogaster exposed via feeding or injection. Conclusions: Under the conditions of these 21-month drinking water studies, there was clear evidence of carcinogenic activity of 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride for male F344/N rats, as indicated by benign and malignant neoplasms of the skin, Zymbal gland, preputial gland, oral cavity, intestine, liver, and mesothelium. Increased incidences of astrocytomas of the brain may have been related to chemical administration. There was clear evidence of carcinogenic activity of 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride for female F344/N rats, as indicated by benign and malignant neoplasms of the Zymbal gland, clitoral gland, and mammary gland. Increases in neoplasms of the skin, oral cavity, large intestine, liver, and uterus/cervix were also considered to be related to chemical administration of 3,3'-dimethoxybenzidine dihydrochloride. Synonyms: o-dianisidine dihydrochloride; 3,3'-dimethoxy-1,1-biphenyl)-4,4'-diamine dihydrochloride; 3,3'-dimethoxy-4,4'-diaminobiphenyl dihydrochloride


Molecular biology is emerging as an important domain for artificial intelligence research. The advantages of biology for design and testing of AI systems include large amounts of available online data, significant (but incomplete) background knowledge, a wide variety of problems commensurate with AI technologies, clear standards of success, cooperative domain experts, non-military basic research support and percieved potential for practical (and profitable) applications. These considerations have motivated a growing group of researchers to pursue both basic and applied AI work in the domain. More than seventy-five researchers working on these problems gathered at Stanford for a AAAI sponsored symposium on the topic. This article provides a description of much of the work presented at the meeting, and fills in the basic biology background necessary to place it in context.


The main effects of No Child Left Behind on the quality of teaching are likely to come through two provisions of the act. First, NCLB establishes benchmarks based on test score pass rates that schools must meet in order to remain in good standing and avoid sanctions. Since teachers are central to student performance, this accountability component of NCLB is likely to have direct effects on both the demand for and supply of teachers and therefore on both the composition of the stock of public school teachers and the distribution of those teachers among schools. Second, NCLB explicitly requires districts to have "highly qualified" teachers, and the enunciation and enforcement of such a standard might have an additional effect on the composition of teachers. We will discuss three avenues by which these requirements might affect the quality of teachers. First, we will argue that the requirements for "highly qualified" teachers are unlikely to have had any perceptible effect on the performance of students. Second, the combination of quality requirements and the more-stringent testing environment could make teaching appear more costly and risky as a profession and thus alter the composition of new entrants, but at least so far, we find no evidence of such effects. Finally, the accountability provisions might change the dynamics of the labor market for teachers, including decisions about hiring and job separation. While not completely understood, this channel might be quite important, especially at low-performing schools where the stress of the accountability requirements is highest. We will provide new evidence from Texas on the relationship between school accountability ratings and teacher transitions both out of schools and out of grades three through eight, the grades subject to NCLB testing requirements. Finally, we offer some observations about potential policy implications and a future research agenda.


The paper describes the human interface system in the autonomous and decentralized multi-agent robotic system ACTRESS. The human interface system coordinates the interaction between the human operator and robotic agents, monitors system's activities and presents them do the operator. The operator can send commands to individual robotic agents or a group of agents through the human interface. He can also intervene in the system based on monitored system status if and when necessary. The human interface also acts as a window through which the robotic agents contact the operator for judgment and advice. The paper presents the architecture of the human interface system. The architecture was designed so as to allow the operator to interact with the system through consistent interface in the real environment and in the simulator environment, in which robotic agents' programs are developed.<<ETX>>


Abstract. Groundwater levels in shallow aquifers underlying Asian mega-deltas are characterized by strong seasonal variations associated with monsoon rainfall. To resolve trend and seasonal components in weekly groundwater levels in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) Delta, we apply a nonparametric seasonal-trend decomposition procedure (STL) to observations compiled from 1985–2005 in Bangladesh. Seasonality dominates observed variance in groundwater levels but declining groundwater levels (>1 m/yr) are detected in urban and peri-urban areas around Dhaka as well as in north-central, northwestern, and southwestern parts of the country (0.1–0.5 m/yr) where intensive abstraction of groundwater is conducted for dry-season rice cultivation. Rising groundwater levels (0.5–2.5 cm/yr) are observed in the estuarine and southern coastal regions. This novel application of the STL procedure reveals, for the first time, the unsustainability of irrigation supplied by shallow aquifers in some areas (e.g., High Barind Tract) of the GBM Delta and the hydrological impact of potential seawater intrusion of coastal aquifers associated with sea-level rise. Our findings provide important insight into the hydrological impacts of groundwater-fed irrigation and sea-level rise in other Asian mega-deltas where monitoring data are limited.


The theory of conservative diffusion and its main applications are reviewed. A basic model for the theory is diffusion of a cold light gas in a warm heavy gas before relaxation when light gas remains cold and mean energy of its particles conserves. Unlike the Lorentz gas, where thermal energies of light and heavy atoms are equal, here the same order are their thermal speeds. Such conservative diffusion is described by two equations – the Hamilton-Jacobi and continuity equations, nonlinear under the probability density. They can be linearized by introduction of a complex probability amplitude, transforming them to the Schrodinger equation where one must add not probabilities, but probability amplitudes of alternatives. Mean free path and the corresponding momentum determine an elementary phase volume and a diffusion coefficient. The theory predicts a number of quasiquantum effects in classical systems. The formalism of quantum mechanics thus describes a classical conservative diffusion and quantum mechanics is only a special case of such diffusion in the vacuum, when the elementary phase volume is equal to the Planck constant. A conservative thermodiffusion at nonzero temperature gradient is studied also. Its properties, such as decreasing of intensity of fluctuations of particles (including redshift of frequencies), drift of particles to colder region and their thermodiffusive acceleration, not depending on the mass of particles, are similar to properties of gravitation. This allows us to identify gravitation by thermodiffusion in the physical vacuum. In the diffusive picture fluctuations of energy-momentum of classical particles due to interaction with vacuum lead to increasing of their mean energy, which appears as quantum phenomena, while corresponding local decreasing of vacuum energy density reveals as gravitation. The diffusive treatment of quantum theory thus leads to the thermodiffusive treatment of gravitation too with natural synthesis of theories of both phenomena. Observable effects following from the new theory are discussed. PACS: 03.65.Ta, 04.20.Cv, 02.50.Ey, 05.40.Jc


INTRODUCTION Our understanding of the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), schizophrenia (SCZ), and bipolar disorder (BD), lags behind other fields of medicine. The diagnosis and study of these disorders currently depend on behavioral, symptomatic characterization. Defining genetic contributions to disease risk allows for biological, mechanistic understanding but is challenged by genetic complexity, polygenicity, and the lack of a cohesive neurobiological model to interpret findings. RATIONALE The transcriptome represents a quantitative phenotype that provides biological context for understanding the molecular pathways disrupted in major psychiatric disorders. RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) in a large cohort of cases and controls can advance our knowledge of the biology disrupted in each disorder and provide a foundational resource for integration with genomic and genetic data. RESULTS Analysis across multiple levels of transcriptomic organization—gene expression, local splicing, transcript isoform expression, and coexpression networks for both protein-coding and noncoding genes—provides an in-depth view of ASD, SCZ, and BD molecular pathology. More than 25% of the transcriptome exhibits differential splicing or expression in at least one disorder, including hundreds of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs), most of which have unexplored functions but collectively exhibit patterns of selective constraint. Changes at the isoform level, as opposed to the gene level, show the largest effect sizes and genetic enrichment and the greatest disease specificity. We identified coexpression modules associated with each disorder, many with enrichment for cell type–specific markers, and several modules significantly dysregulated across all three disorders. These enabled parsing of down-regulated neuronal and synaptic components into a variety of cell type– and disease-specific signals, including multiple excitatory neuron and distinct interneuron modules with differential patterns of disease association, as well as common and rare genetic risk variant enrichment. The glial-immune signal demonstrates shared disruption of the blood-brain barrier and up-regulation of NFkB-associated genes, as well as disease-specific alterations in microglial-, astrocyte-, and interferon-response modules. A coexpression module associated with psychiatric medication exposure in SCZ and BD was enriched for activity-dependent immediate early gene pathways. To identify causal drivers, we integrated polygenic risk scores and performed a transcriptome-wide association study and summary-data–based Mendelian randomization. Candidate risk genes—5 in ASD, 11 in BD, and 64 in SCZ, including shared genes between SCZ and BD—are supported by multiple methods. These analyses begin to define a mechanistic basis for the composite activity of genetic risk variants. CONCLUSION Integration of RNA-seq and genetic data from ASD, SCZ, and BD provides a quantitative, genome-wide resource for mechanistic insight and therapeutic development at Resource.PsychENCODE.org. These data inform the molecular pathways and cell types involved, emphasizing the importance of splicing and isoform-level gene regulatory mechanisms in defining cell type and disease specificity, and, when integrated with genome-wide association studies, permit the discovery of candidate risk genes. The PsychENCODE cross-disorder transcriptomic resource. Human brain RNA-seq was integrated with genotypes across individuals with ASD, SCZ, BD, and controls, identifying pervasive dysregulation, including protein-coding, noncoding, splicing, and isoform-level changes. Systems-level and integrative genomic analyses prioritize previously unknown neurogenetic mechanisms and provide insight into the molecular neuropathology of these disorders. Most genetic risk for psychiatric disease lies in regulatory regions, implicating pathogenic dysregulation of gene expression and splicing. However, comprehensive assessments of transcriptomic organization in diseased brains are limited. In this work, we integrated genotypes and RNA sequencing in brain samples from 1695 individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, as well as controls. More than 25% of the transcriptome exhibits differential splicing or expression, with isoform-level changes capturing the largest disease effects and genetic enrichments. Coexpression networks isolate disease-specific neuronal alterations, as well as microglial, astrocyte, and interferon-response modules defining previously unidentified neural-immune mechanisms. We integrated genetic and genomic data to perform a transcriptome-wide association study, prioritizing disease loci likely mediated by cis effects on brain expression. This transcriptome-wide characterization of the molecular pathology across three major psychiatric disorders provides a comprehensive resource for mechanistic insight and therapeutic development.


The TT virus (TTV) is a DNA virus which was first identified in patients with non-A to -G hepatitis following blood transfusion. Sera from 100 attendees of hemodialysis (HD) unit of Al-Hussain University Hospital were tested for the presence of anti-HCV, HCV-RNA using nested polymerase chain reaction ""PCR"" with primers directed to the highly conserved 5' non-coding region of the HCV genome and TTV genome by nested-PCR using the primers of the open reading frame 1 (ORF). The overall prevalence of anti-HCV was 38 % from which only 22% were positive for HCV-RNA. TTV viremia was found in 26%, the prevalence of TTV infection was higher in patients with previous blood transfusion (18/26) and in those with diabetes mellitus (23/26). No significant relationship was found between TTV viremia and hepatitis C virus, age, sex, and duration of HD treatment. These findings support that TTV viremia is widespread among hemodialysis patients and can be detected in 26 % since no viremic patient had clinical or biochemical signs of liver disease.


"Samskrta-Subodhini: A Sanskrit Primer" marks the culmination of Professor Deshpande's experience of teaching Sanskrit at the University of Michigan for over twenty-five years. Tested in classes at Michigan and elsewhere and successively improved for over twenty years, the teaching materials in the book now offer an effective tool to learn and teach Sanskrit. It aims at teaching Sanskrit as a language, rather than as a religious or mystical entity. It also simplifies the process of learning Sanskrit by dissociating this language-learning process from the heavy burdens imposed both by the tradition of Indo-European linguistics and the tradition of indigenous Sanskrit grammarians in India. By treating Sanskrit as a productive language, rather than as a dead language merely to be deciphered, the book represents a significant advance over the traditional Western approach to the study of Sanskrit.Work on this book began in 1976, and now almost two generations of Professor Deshpande's students have used successively improved versions. The book's examples include many modified versions of classical Sanskrit passages from epic texts such as "The Mahabharata" and "The Ramayana." The book also contains examples from Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions, as well as samples of Sanskrit poetry and satire.Madhav M. Deshpande is Professor of Sanskrit and Linguistics in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan, where he has been on the faculty since 1972. His research relates to the fields of Paninian linguistics, historical linguistics, and sociolinguistics, as well as the cultural and linguistic history of India. Besides his research publications, Professor Deshpande has participated in Sastric and literary debates in Sanskrit and has also published Sanskrit poems and plays.


We consider the problem of inferring simplified topological substructures—which we term backbones—in metric and non-metric graphs. Intuitively, these are subgraphs with 'few' nodes, multifurcations, and cycles, that model the topology of the original graph well. We present a multistep procedure for inferring these backbones. First, we encode local (geometric) information of each vertex in the original graph by means of the boundary coefficient (BC) to identify 'core' nodes in the graph. Next, we construct a forest representation of the graph, termed an f -pine, that connects every node of the graph to a local 'core' node. The final backbone is then inferred from the f -pine through CLOF (Constrained Leaves Optimal subForest), a novel graph optimization problem we introduce in this paper. On a theoretical level, we show that CLOF is NP-hard for general graphs. However, we prove that CLOF can be efficiently solved for forest graphs, a surprising fact given that CLOF induces a nontrivial monotone submodular set function maximization problem on tree graphs. This result is the basis of our method for mining backbones in graphs through forest representation. We qualitatively and quantitatively confirm the applicability, effectiveness, and scalability of our method for discovering backbones in a variety of graph-structured data, such as social networks, earthquake locations scattered across the Earth, and high-dimensional cell trajectory data.


Abstract We link covering spaces with the theory of functions of bounded variation, in order to study minimal networks in the plane and Plateau's problem without fixing a priori the topology of solutions. We solve the minimization problem in the class of (possibly vector-valued) BV $\mathrm{BV}$ functions defined on a covering space of the complement of an ( n - 2 ) ${(n-2)}$ -dimensional compact embedded Lipschitz manifold S without boundary. This approach has several similarities with Brakke's "soap films" covering construction. The main novelty of our method stands in the presence of a suitable constraint on the fibers, which couples together the covering sheets. In the case of networks, the constraint is defined using a suitable subset of transpositions of m elements, m being the number of points of S. The model avoids all issues concerning the presence of the boundary S, which is automatically attained. The constraint is lifted in a natural way to Sobolev spaces, allowing also an approach based on Γ-convergence.


Whereas technical standards and Standard Setting Organizations (SSOs) are omnipresent and essential to mass production and mass communications, relatively little is formally known about the propensity of firms to belong to certain SSOs. This paper uses a social network analysis technique to empirically analyze the behavior of market participants and their propensities to belong to SSOs. We concentrate our study on standard setting organizations features and their intellectual property rights (IPR) policies such as licensing rules, disclosure requirements, as well as the features of the decision process of standards. Using data on more than 1060 member firms as participants in 28 SSOs, we are able to uniquely graph the membership of firms in SSOs by highlighting some important characteristics. Finally, a multinomial logit regression analysis studies the propensities of firms to belong to four SSOs and member firms' network communities.


We present a resolution analysis of an inversion of GPS data from the 2004 Mw 6.0 Parkfield earthquake. This earthquake was recorded at thirteen 1‐Hz GPS receivers, which provides for a truly coseismic data set that can be used to infer the static slip field. We find that the resolution of our inverted slip model is poor at depth and near the edges of the modeled fault plane that are far from GPS receivers. The spatial heterogeneity of the model resolution in the static field inversion leads to artifacts in poorly resolved areas of the fault plane. These artifacts look qualitatively similar to asperities commonly seen in the final slip models of earthquake source inversions, but in this inversion they are caused by a surplus of free parameters. The location of the artifacts depends on the station geometry and the assumed velocity structure. We demonstrate that a nonuniform gridding of model parameters on the fault can remove these artifacts from the inversion. We generate a nonuniform grid with a grid spacing that matches the local resolution length on the fault and show that it outperforms uniform grids, which either generate spurious structure in poorly resolved regions or lose recoverable information in well‐resolved areas of the fault. In a synthetic test, the nonuniform grid correctly averages slip in poorly resolved areas of the fault while recovering small‐scale structure near the surface. Finally, we present an inversion of the Parkfield GPS data set on the nonuniform grid and analyze the errors in the final model.


Multi-cell cascaded Electro-Thermal Micro-Actuators (ETMA) made of nickel alloys are analyzed by the finite element (FE) method. The computer simulation runs over the electrical, thermal, and mechanical phases of the ETMA operations. The main challenges of modeling are discussed. Some of the material's parameters such as the electrical resistivity, thermal expansion coefficient and emission are strongly temperature dependent. Furthermore, any measurements of such dependences are complicated by a magnetic phase transition occurring in nickel within the operating range of temperature. All the properties are sensitive to a particular composition of the material. The surface convection is additionally shape-dependent and, mainly due to small dimensions of the actuators, cannot be determined experimentally with sufficient accuracy. For the above reasons the use of the material data estimated from the available literature usually does not render reliable simulations. In the approach proposed the material characteristics of the ETMA considered are determined by utilizing the fact that for a given applied voltage the total current and displacement in the real actuators (performance parameters) are measured with a relatively high precision. Similar performance parameters, i.e. the total current and displacement can be obtained as output from the FE simulation in which some important material properties of the actuator's model are assumed in a parametric form (material's parameters). The FE simulation procedure is integrated with these real measurements in such a way that the


With ad-hoc application of the traditional element of marketing failing to sustainably cushion institutions against growing competition, universities are frantically searching for ways to differentiate themselves in the long term. This study ascertains the applicability of five empirically established brand equity constructs to Ghana's university industry. It is underpinned by a pragmatist philosophy - an objective-driven blend between the ontological and epistemological philosophical positions, and adopts a mixed-methods paradigm that combines qualitative and quantitative survey methods of data collection and analysis.

For the qualitative part, 22 valid face-to-face in-depth interviews with undergraduate students selected from four universities were used while the quantitative study used 625 self-administered questionnaires from undergraduate students from twelve universities. Thematic analysis was used for the qualitative data while for the quantitative data, the structural equation modelling technique of partial least squares (PLS) was employed to ascertain relationships between the five independent student-based brand equity (SBBE) constructs on one hand, and students' university brand preference (SUBP) as a dependent variable, on the other.

Results of the analysis indicate a positive relationship between most of the SBBE constructs studied and university preference in Ghana. Four SBBE dimensions namely; university institutional reputation (UIR), university institutional image (UII), university graduate employability (UGE) and perceived institutional service quality (PISQ) recorded significant positive relationships with students' university preference (SUP). Positive relationships were also obtained between university image and university reputation, university identity and university reputation, as well as between perceived institutional service quality and graduate employability. On the contrary, an insignificant relationship was obtained between university institutional identity (UI) and students' university preference. The correlation analysis also indicates significant positive relationships among all the independent SBBE variables. Cumulatively, the results indicate that the SBBE concept is applicable to Ghana's university context as the SBBE constructs and university preference are positively related. The prevalence of reputation, image, graduate employability and perceived institutional service quality in the research findings has implications for policy in the university sector. Also worthy of note is the significant positive relationship obtained between perceived institutional service quality and graduate employability; as well as between university institution identity, university institution image and university institution reputation.

Much of the existing academic work on higher education branding has concentrated on brand equity's antecedents and consequences. This study links empirically proven antecedents of university brand equity to university preference. Also, most of existing empirical research on brand equity in the university sector has focused on developed countries whose circumstances are fundamentally different from those of developing economies. This study is a novelty in the sub-Saharan African context where student-focused university branding is uncommon; and so comes as a significant contribution from Ghana, to the growing worldwide debate on university branding. While contributing a survey instrument that enhances SBBE research methodology, theoretically, the unique blend of SBBE constructs employed is unprecedented. Notwithstanding some limitations identified, this study presents an empirical model that stands to guide university management in judiciously dispensing scarce resources.


ABSTRACT Yeshiva boarding high schools were the leading educational institutions of state-religious education in Israel in the 1980s. These were institutions for boys only, which combined holy studies with regular high school diploma (Bagrut) subjects. Given the marginality of Mizrahi religion in the yeshiva high school daily life, this article points out the centrality of Mizrahi religiosity in the Purim events celebrated in theses yeshivot, as expressed in the personal histories of Mizrahi graduates. Research interviews' findings indicate that the educational staff used an institutional religious praxis as a tool for the construction of ethno-religious hierarchies. Granting Mizrahi religiosity a prestigious status in the Purim events, that took the form of inversion rites, or carnivals, in which the departure from the social order constitutes its reaffirmation, actually reaffirmed the extant social order according to which Mizrahi religiosity is of lower value while Ashkenazi religiosity is the proper correct religion. At the same time, the article shows how the Mizrahi students used the license given them in Purim to perform subversive rituals that criticized the institutional conduct in yeshivot, while striving to affirm their Mizrahi religiosity.


Women are relative newcomers to the traditionally male profession of conducting. To acquire a professional position, they first have to overcome lingering stereotypical attitudes about their gender, attitudes that only clutter and complicate the challenges normally faced on the road to any musical podium. As a result, only a few women have achieved significant positions in the field of conducting. Why, in an enlightened age, when numerous gender barriers have been overcome, do female conductors still struggle to reach the 'top' of the profession? The information provided in this document examines the emergence of women in music and the challenges they faced when entering the profession of conducting. This document will not include a detailed history of women in all aspects of music, only those which propelled women forward in their status, such as important women patrons, ensemble singers, and conductors. Women conductors in this document include: Margaret Hillis, Sarah Caldwell, Antonia Brico, Judith Somogi, Ethel Leginska, and Gena Branscombe. Each of these women was a first in their field: the first to conduct a major symphony, first to conduct an American orchestra, and first to conduct a major opera. The status of women in society has changed dramatically over the last century, but changing attitudes in professional organizations have been slow to develop. Society has accepted women as being capable of navigating space and administering in government rather than capable of leading a professional orchestra, choral ensemble, or operatic production. Changing attitudes, coupled with the work pioneered in the last twenty years by conductors such as JoAnn Falletta, Marin Alsop, and Alice Parker, have encouraged and enabled women to pursue conducting and enter the profession. As stated in a journal by Alan Rich, there are many reasons for not pursuing a career in music, but by today's standards, being female is no longer one of them.