Interferometric optical testing using computer-generated hologram (CGH) has provided an approach to highly accurate measurement of aspheric surfaces. While designing the CGH null correctors, we should make them with as small aperture and low spatial frequency as possible, and with no zero slope of phase except at center, for the sake of insuring low risk of substrate figure error and feasibility of fabrication. On the basis of classic optics, a set of equations for calculating the phase function of CGH are obtained. These equations lead us to find the dependence of the aperture and spatial frequency on the axial distance from the tested aspheric surface for the CGH. We also simulate the optical path difference error of the CGH relative to the accuracy of controlling laser spot during fabrication. Meanwhile, we discuss the constraints used to avoid zero slope of phase except at center and give a design result of the CGH for the tested aspheric surface. The results ensure the feasibility of designing a useful CGH to test aspheric surface fundamentally.


This case explores French consumer goods company Danone's novel approach to knowledge management. In 2007, Human Resource Chief (Executive Vice President) Franck Mougin assesses the company's knowledge-sharing tools and considers his options going forward. Through informal knowledge marketplaces and sharing networks, Danone had helped managers connect with each other and share good practices peer-to-peer, rather than relying on traditional hierarchical lines of communication or IT repositories. From 2004 to 2007, Mougin and his team had found that 5,000 Danone managers around the world - the company conducted business in 120 countries - had shared about 640 now-documented good practices. In 2007, the strategic importance of saving time in a decentralized organization through adoption of colleagues' good practices was put to a test. Should the knowledge management tools be extended to include all employees and external partners on a regular basis? And on top of sharing good practices, could it be extended to include the creation of new solutions and processes? Would this require more formalization of processes and more tracking of results? The case illustrates Mougin's options on taking knowledge management into the future of Danone.


Pragmatic communication deficits are among the most recognized deficits following right hemisphere brain damage (RHD). Deficits in one's ability to comprehend and produce appropriate language leads to conversational exchanges that are often unsuccessful. Research to explore the nature of these deficits has focused primarily on the influence of language comprehension deficits while language production deficits have been relatively unexplored. Questions are the most explicit avenue of gathering information. While ineffective question use has recently been observed in individuals following RHD, there are no known published studies that investigate question use specifically. The purpose of this study was to determine if people with RHD use questions differently than people with no history of brain damage (NBD) during structured tasks and, if so, in what ways. Chi-square and two-sample t-tests were employed to determine differences in question use. Correlation analyses were conducted to determine if the use of specific types of questions were associated with cognitive-linguistic performance and empathy. Results showed that participants with RHD used questions less frequently and differently than participants with NBD. There were significant group differences in the quantity and quality of questions used during structured discourse tasks. Moreover, the distribution of question types was different, especially with respect to the discourse tasks, suggesting that, in participants with RHD, the use of specific types of questions may vary depending on the task. No significant correlations were noted between question type and cognitive-linguistic performance measures or question type and empathy scores.


This study uses a longitudinal, qualitative research methodology to compare residents' prior attitudes towards relocation from restructured neighbourhoods with their experiences post-move. Participants were householders in families with children, with interviews carried out shortly before, and up to 18 months after relocation. There was generally a good fit between prior attitudes and post-experiences, although those who had not wanted to move reported more gains than expected, and those who had wanted to move to 'get on' with their lives had yet to make major changes in their lives after relocation. There was some retrospective reassessment of prior attitudes after relocation, consistent with the notion of low expectations among deprived area residents. There were both social and psychosocial gains from relocation, with a weak prior sense of community and inconsistent effects of distance upon social outcomes. Important mediators of adult experiences and outcomes were personality, health status and relations with children.


ABSTRACT
This study investigated the PM1-2.5 (the intermodal fraction of particulate matter) representing the transition area between the fine and coarse size ranges. Due to this characteristic, PM1-2.5 may contain particles from both modes. The aim of this work was to examine the associations between PM1-2.5 and the coarse (PM2.5-10)/fine (PM1) fraction under different meteorological conditions at various sites in the Czech Republic during winter and summer.
Size-resolved PM mass concentrations were determined and meteorological parameters recorded at an urban industrial and a suburban site in Ostrava during winter 2014 and at an urban traffic site and a suburban site in Prague during summer 2014 and winter 2015. The influence of sources producing the coarse/fine fraction on PM1-2.5 was investigated with an elemental composition analysis and an ion analysis (Ca2+-representing PM2.5-10 and SO42–-representing PM1).
During all campaigns, PM1-2.5 accounted for 1–26% of PM10. In winter, crustal elements (Si, Fe, and Ca) significantly influenced the coarse fraction and even PM1-2.5 at all sites, while sulfur was significant in PM1-2.5 and the fine fraction at suburban sites. The median SO42– concentration was higher than the Ca2+ concentration in PM1-2.5 at all sites, except the industrial site, due to a specific source. The increased SO42– amount in PM1-2.5 was also observed in summer during rainy days (Prague urban site). In summer, crustal elements were important in both, PM1-2.5 and the coarse fraction, while S still dominated in PM1. Median SO42– concentrations in PM1-2.5 and the coarse fraction were significantly lower than in winter. The enrichment factors and wind speed-direction analysis helped to reveal potential air pollution sources.
To conclude, according to the performed analyses, PM1-2.5 was influenced by the sources of the coarse fraction during all campaigns. The additional significant influence of sources producing the fine fraction was evident under increased relative humidity conditions.


Since its first detection in the North Central region in July 2000, the soybean aphid (Aphis glycines Matsamura) has caused considerable loss in soybean (Glycine max L.) yield, bean quality, and producer income. Discovered first in Wisconsin and then in adjoining states, it is currently distributed in 21 US states and parts of Canada. In 2003, over 42 million acres of soybean in the North Central US were infested and over 7 million acres were treated with insecticides to control soybean aphid (Landis et al. 2003). Populations exceeding 24,000 aphids per plant and 40% losses in seed yield have been reported (DiFonzo & Hines 2002). Even prior to the outbreak of 2003, the Soybean Strategic Pest Management Plan identified soybean aphid as one of the key drivers of insecticide use in the North Central region (Smith & Pike 2002). This paper first describes the interaction with and impacts of the soybean aphid on soybean. Then the treatment decision model is developed and impacts analyzed. In the last section, some comments are made on how the results of this work on soybean aphids can be adapted to the impact of soybean rust (Phakopsora pachyrhizihas), another new pest of soybean. The following paragraphs summarize these parts in more detail. Unlike other corn-soybean insect pests, the soybean aphid treatment decision is more complex than growers are used to making. The presence of pests such as weeds, diseases, nematodes, and other more common pests is usually known before planting decisions are made. These pests also are slower to reproduce and more predictable in their growth rate than soybean aphid. Thus treatment and timing decisions to control them are made within a more stable situation. With soybean aphids, however, growers face a pest with unpredictable colonization and a long window of crop susceptibility. Also, soybean aphids are not like other pests in that their populations are capable of doubling every 2-3 days and can rebound after insecticide applications. The soybean aphid affects plant growth and reproduction directly. Soybean yield can be affected eventually at high populations. At the present time, entomologists are not certain about what defines a population high enough to impact yield. The impact of aphids depends on many factors, the most important being: initial date of aphid colonization, aphid population growth rates, length of colonization, soybean plant growth stage, treatment timing and efficacy, the lag between the decision to treat and application of insecticide, aphid population regrowth and recolonization, and weather. Soybean is more susceptible to aphids in the earlier reproductive stages of plant growth (R1-R5) compared to later stages. Aphid colonization is rare in earlier vegetative stages and may not occur until the most susceptible period is over. Currently available insecticides are highly effective, but with essentially no residual effect, populations can regrow or recolonize in the same field. If the first colonization occurs early in the susceptible stage, two or more treatments may be needed. On a calendar basis, soybean susceptibility can be described as highest during July and into August with potential but lower impacts into September. Aphid colonization may occur as early as late June or as late as late August and even September; however, since it is a relatively new pest in the U.S., entomologists do not have a strong understanding of soybean aphid biology. Building on the early work by Hueth and Regev (1974) and Hall and Norgaard (1973) and incorporating concepts from recent unpublished AAEA selected papers, the treatment decision model is developed (with uncertainty incorporated) and the impacts and treatment options analyzed. The impact of the soybean aphid on yield is described as a function of plant growth stage and cumulative aphid days (CAD) with CAD described as a function of the date of colonization, growth rate, and insecticide application(s) and efficacy. The aphid growth rate is a function of temperature. These functions are estimated using economic and entomological data. Using an example from Minnesota, the preliminary model estimated the value of using a threshold of 100 aphids per plant was estimated to have a treatment value of $41.57 per acre with colonization occurring in mid-July during the growth stage with the highest yield susceptibility, weather conditions were such that the aphid population was doubling every 3 days, and the lag between decision and treatment application was 7 days. Under the same conditions, a threshold of 250 aphids per plant was estimated to have a treatment value of $39.80 per acre. A threshold of 500 aphids was estimated to have a treatment value of $37.88. If colonization occurred earlier in the susceptible stage, say, July 1, the number of treatments increases to two per season and the value of those treatments increases. Using the same conditions as above except for an earlier colonization date and allowing for a second treatment, the value of two treatments with a threshold of 100 aphids per plant was estimated to be $71.02 per acre. With a threshold of 250 aphids, the value of the two treatments was estimated to be $59.77 per acre. For a threshold of 500, the value was estimated to be $41.54 per acre. Other results show the impact of changing parameters and coefficients. These preliminary results indicate that the current economic threshold of 250 aphids per plant accepted by many but not all entomologists may be too high. Earlier and more frequent treatments may be needed when aphids colonize earlier and enjoy good reproductive weather. Late season colonization may not need to be treated except with fast growth conditions. This model for the treatment of soybean aphids can be adjusted to help understand the treatment decision for soybean rust. With soybean rust, growers also face the uncertainty in the occurrence and severity infestation and in the magnitude of the resulting impact if infestation does occur. Rust may spread faster than soybean aphid, so growers may need more remote warning systems. However, the basic model of the impact of the soybean aphid will improve our understanding of the soybean rust problem.


Development of renewable energy projects within photovoltaic energy sector has reached unrestrainable pace in recent years and thus the investors are more vigilantly considering the further business deployment towards this sector. Underpinned with clear support from KfW Development Bank, the company MACS Energy & Water GmbH decided to facilitate future verification of credit lines towards these projects by deploying special eSaveTM software which would include technical and financial appraisals specially designed for their clients. Hereof this thesis comprises the initial phase development of this software within the MS Excel and endeavors to provide a proper guideline for the software engineers included in this task in the company. In order to simplify the explanation process this report sticks to 50 kW power plant project in Prokuplje. It is anticipated that this model would enhance, improve and expedite the feasibility analysis between the cooperatives by delivering the projections of energy yield, payback periods and sensitivity analysis of the loan conditions specified for the target country and PV projects in the same. However, besides this main task this report aims to fulfill all the other necessary prerequisites for accomplishing a good due diligence practice. Therefore the thesis places its focus to Republic of Serbia where exceptional due diligence reports were made, among which the Prokuplje project, and compiles the assessments in terms of legal, environmental and risk into one general framework for PV projects in this country. By doing so, the desktop-based model and results obtained with this user-friendly tool can lean on the full due diligence assessment and provide the reader a clear comprehensive overview of possibility to invest into this renewable energy sector in Republic of Serbia.

Keywords: PV, Due diligence, Serbia, eSaveTM, feasibility, model


Agricultural air quality is a hot topic around the country. Increasing interest in air quality regulation of farms is the result of many changes, including the trend toward larger farms having greater concentrations of animals, and increased knowledge and awareness of air emissions from livestock sources. This document provides background on current air quality regulations, why they were implemented, what swine operations are affected, and how to comply, when necessary. Indoor air quality will not be directly discussed here, but readers should understand that indoor air quality and outdoor air quality are related, and the level of indoor air quality is not necessarily indicative of emission levels.


This project attempts to demonstrate the working of a Heterogeneous Distributed Database. It focuses primarily on fault tolerance and concurrency control in a distributed environment. Fragmentation, Replication and Query processing form the integral part of the program. The purpose of the software is that it allows the potential user to work in the heterogeneous environment. The potential user can access the database remotely. This software allows the user to fragment the data, to replicate the data and store it at different sites and lastly it enables user to fire a query from a remote pc and they can obtain the desired result set. It is a fault tolerant system which enhances its usability and acceptability in the database industry for applications in various sectors of the economy. The configuration file consists of metadata of the database and the list of IP address where the respective databases are stored.


This report by the COT considers adverse reactions to food both of immune origin (food allergy) and non-immune origin (food intolerance). The report was drafted by a specially constituted Working Group of the Committee with the following terms of reference: to consider whether the incidence and prevalence of adverse reactions to foods and ingredients are changing; to consider those foods identified as commonly causing adverse reactions and rank them separately for prevalence, potency and severity of reaction; to consider the underlying mechanisms; to identify factors, both genetic and environmental, which may increase the risk to health.


Bacterial fermentation products regulate the number and function of regulatory T cells in the mouse colon. Regulatory T cells (Tregs) in the gut are important sentinels in maintaining the peace between our gut and its trillions of resident bacteria and are regulated by specific strains of bacteria in mouse models. Smith et al. (see the Perspective by Bollrath and Powrie ) asked whether metabolite(s) generated by resident bacterial species may regulate Tregs in the gut. Indeed, short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), bacterial fermentation products of dietary fibers produced by a range of bacteria, restored colonic Treg numbers in mice devoid of a gut microbiota and increased Treg numbers in colonized mice. The effects of SCFAs on Tregs were mediated through GPCR43, a receptor for SCFAs, which is expressed on colonic Tregs. Mice fed SCFAs were protected against experimentally induced colitis in a manner that was dependent on GPCR43-expressing Tregs. P. M. Smith, M. R. Howitt, N. Panikov, M. Michaud, C. A. Gallini, M. Bohlooly-Y, J. N. Glickman, W. S. Garrett, The microbial metabolites, short-chain fatty acids, regulate colonic Treg cell homeostasis. Science 341, 569–573 (2013). [Abstract] [Full Text] J. Bollrath, F. Powrie, Feed your Tregs more fiber. Science 341, 463–464 (2013). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Social networks can represent many different types of relationships between actors, some explicit and some implicit. For example, email communications between users may be represented explicitly in a network, while managerial relationships may not. In this paper we focus on analyzing explicit interactions among actors in order to detect hierarchical social relationships that may be implicit. We start by employing three well-known ranking-based methods, PageRank, Degree Centrality, and Rooted-PageRank (RPR) to infer such implicit relationships from interactions between actors. Then we propose two novel approaches which take into account the time-dimension of interactions in the process of detecting hierarchical ties. We experiment on two datasets, the Enron email dataset to infer manager-subordinate relationships from email exchanges, and a scientific publication co-authorship dataset to detect PhD advisor-advisee relationships from paper co-authorships. Our experiments show that time-based methods perform considerably better than ranking-based methods. In the Enron dataset, they detect 48% of manager-subordinate ties versus 32% found by Rooted-PageRank. Similarly, in co-author dataset, they detect 62% of advisor-advisee ties compared to only 39% by Rooted-PageRank.


Abstract The Narendra Modi government after coming to power in May 2014 initiated the 'Act East' policy to further enhance New Delhi's engagement with the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. However, India's engagement with the two Koreas has not seen any significant improvement under the Modi government. North Korea's isolationist policies and its involvement with India's neighbouring countries with regard to the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies have proved detrimental for relations between New Delhi and Pyongyang. Following the United Nations Security Council resolutions India has restricted its trade relations with North Korea since 2017, except for food and medical assistance to this reclusive state. On the other hand, India's interest in South Korea also appears to have waned as bilateral trade relations have not witnessed any dramatic improvement in recent years. Despite South Korea's claims of being a 'middle power' country, its reluctance to take a stand on several issues that concern India has diminished hopes for further improvement in relations between New Delhi and Seoul. This article seeks to discuss the issues and challenges that hamper the improvement of relations between India and the two Koreas in the context of the Modi government's 'Act East' policy.


At the centre of this study is the theoretical and empirical analysis of action-formation mechanisms in norm-relevant situations. Basically two mechanisms are employed, namely action according to a) moral principles and b) the principle of deterrence. Con icting assumptions concerning the way these mechanisms work are deduced from two theoretical perspectives, the high-cost/low-cost hypothesis and Situational Action Theory (SAT). While the high-cost/low-cost hypothesis leads to the assumption that criminal action is explained by the principle of deterrence in high-cost situations and, in low-cost situations, by moral principles, it follows from SAT that, in high-cost situations, the principle of deterrence has an e ect only on those persons with weak moral principles, and in uences of moral principles are expected in low-cost situations. Empirical analysis of these hypotheses is conducted with the help of data that have been collected as part of a mail survey (n=2383) of a disproportionately layered random sample of residents of an East German city. Data analyses are carried out in order to estimate the in uences of the theoretically speci ed predictors simultaneously for high-cost and low-cost situations with multiple group comparisons. The study's results partially support both theoretical perspectives. They are nally discussed with respect to theoretical and methodological aspects.


The hypothesis that a role for insulin in the metabolism of T cells would be evident after cell activation when receptors appear was tested to validate the T cell model and to analyze the mechanism by which insulin may function in immunoregulation. Measuring the flux rates of 3-O-[methyl-3H]-D-glucose and aminoisobutyric acid, alpha-[1-14C], lactate production and oxidation, and glucose oxidation from carbon 1- and carbon 6-labeled substrates, it was determined that (a) mitogens such as phytohemagglutinin enhance basal T lymphocyte intermediary metabolism, (b) physiologic concentrations of insulin have no impact on the metabolism of unstimulated, cultured, receptor-negative lymphocytes, and (c) insulin provided to receptor bearing lymphocytes augments intermediary metabolism above mitogen stimulated levels. The importance of the pentose phosphate shunt pathway for energy metabolism in the stimulated lymphocyte was confirmed. These studies demonstrate that insulin has a classical physiologic role to play in the activated lymphocyte further validating the use of this cell to examine potential receptor defects in disorders of carbohydrate metabolism. By enhancing energy metabolism of stimulated lymphocytes, insulin serves biologic economy and thus may perform its immunoregulatory role.


In Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye, the two protagonists conclude their escalating series of transgressions with the murder of a priest, the narrative effectively ending with the subsequent removal of the corpse's eye. A similar incident occurs in Pynchon's first novel, V., when a group of Maltese children discovers a priest trapped in the ruins of a bombed building. The children remove several of the priest's body parts, including one of the eyes. The rudimentary elements of this coincidence–that in both Bataille's and Pynchon's stories the moral character of the priest is dubious, and that in both cases the murder/ mutilation is carried out by children–warrant investigation. Beyond these primary concurrences, however, Pynchon and Bataille share a much broader intertextual space.


The Queen Charlotte fault (QCF) is a dextral transform system located offshore of southeastern Alaska and western Canada, accommodating ∼4.4  cm/yr of relative motion between the Pacific and North American plates. Oblique convergence along the fault increases southward, and how this convergence is accommodated is still debated. Using seismic reflection data, we interpret offshore basement structure, faulting, and stratigraphy to provide a geological context for two recent earthquakes, an M w 7.5 strike‐slip event near Craig, Alaska, and an M w 7.8 thrust event near Haida Gwaii, Canada. We map downwarped Pacific oceanic crust near 54° N, between the two rupture zones. Observed downwarping decreases north and south of 54° N, parallel to the strike of the QCF. Bending of the Pacific plate here may have initiated with increased convergence rates due to a plate motion change at ∼6  Ma. Tectonic reconstruction implies convergence‐driven Pacific plate flexure, beginning at 6 Ma south of a 10° bend the QCF (which is currently at 53.2° N) and lasting until the plate translated past the bend by ∼2  Ma. Normal‐faulted approximately late Miocene sediment above the deep flexural depression at 54° N, topped by relatively undeformed Pleistocene and younger sediment, supports this model. Aftershocks of the Haida Gwaii event indicate a normal‐faulting stress regime, suggesting present‐day plate flexure and underthrusting, which is also consistent with reconstruction of past conditions. We thus favor a Pacific plate underthrusting model to initiate flexure and accommodation space for sediment loading. In addition, mapped structures indicate two possible fault segment boundaries along the QCF at 53.2° N and at 56° N.


In this landmark work of investigative reporting, former "Financial Times" correspondent Alexandra Harney uncovers a story of immense significance to us all: how China's factory economy gains a competitive edge by selling out its workers, environment, and future. Harney's firsthand reporting brings us face-to-face with a world in which intense pricing pressure from Western companies combines with ubiquitous corruption and a lack of transparency to exact a staggering toll in human misery and envionmental damage. This eye-opening expose offers, for the first time, an intimate look at the defining business story of our time.


Immigration to the UK has grown a lot over the last 20 years and a significant fraction of this growth has been from other EU countries, especially after 2004 and the accession of the eight East European countries ('A8'). There are now around 9 million individuals (and 7.4 million adults of working age) living in the UK who were born abroad. The number of immigrants from EU countries living in the UK has tripled from 0.9 million to 3.3 million over this period. In the 2016 referendum debate, a major argument of the Leave campaign was that Brexit would allow more control over the flow of immigrants to the UK from the EU. Many people continue to be concerned that high levels of immigration have hurt their jobs, wages and quality of life. Higher immigration has increased overall national income (more workers will generate more GDP) and benefited the immigrants who have come to the UK since, by and large, they are better off than in their country of origin. But has it been harmful to people born in the UK?


WWW.SAIS-CARI.ORG/PUBLICATIONS 3 DURING THE BEIJING SUMMIT of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2006, the Chinese government pledged to build 10 agro-technology demonstration centers across Africa. Since then, the figure has increased to 25 and it will likely increase again in the future. One of the main goals of the demonstration centers is to share the experience of China's technology-driven agricultural modernization with African countries. This paper uses empirical evidence from the Dakawa center in Tanzania to examine the role of these centers in diffusing selected agrotechnologies to local farmers. The Dakawa center has struggled to balance the goal of technological diffusion with other interests, most notably the manifestation of China's soft power and its commercial goal of operating a financially selfsustaining farm. Yet, despite these broad ambitions, the center has managed to contribute a great deal towards multi-actor efforts to lessen the information and knowledge barriers hindering the adoption of improved rice farming technology by farmers in Dakawa. Other barriers to technology adoption, including financial constraints and socio-cultural ties to traditional practices, necessitate that the demonstration center improve its collaboration with other related actors. SAIS-CARI WORKING PAPER NO. 12 | APRIL 2017: "Diffusing Chinese rice technology in rural Tanzania: Lessons from the Dakawa agro-technology demonstration center"


The performance of standard learning procedures has been observed to differ widely across groups. Recent studies usually attribute this loss discrepancy to an information deficiency for one group (e.g., one group has less data). In this work, we point to a more subtle source of loss discrepancy---feature noise. Our main result is that even when there is no information deficiency specific to one group (e.g., both groups have infinite data), adding the same amount of feature noise to all individuals leads to loss discrepancy. For linear regression, we thoroughly characterize the effect of feature noise on loss discrepancy in terms of the amount of noise, the difference between moments of the two groups, and whether group information is used or not. We then show this loss discrepancy does not vanish immediately if a shift in distribution causes the groups to have similar moments. On three real-world datasets, we show feature noise increases the loss discrepancy if groups have different distributions, while it does not affect the loss discrepancy on datasets where groups have similar distributions.


A novel and differentially expressed gene, named nrg-1, was identified by EST expression profiling and subsequently isolated as a 2.2-kb full-length clone from a rat PC12 cell cDNA library. Sequence analysis reveals that nrg-1 encodes a putative seven transmembrane spanning domain protein with structural features characteristic of receptors belonging to the G-protein-coupled receptor gene superfamily. The 400-amino-acid protein encoded by nrg-1 exhibits a high degree of sequence identity (40-44%) to the Edg receptor family; members include Edg-1, Edg-2, Edg-3, Edg-4, and H218. Both Northern analysis andEST expression profiling revealed that whole-tissue distribution of nrg-1 mRNA is restricted, found almost exclusively in brain. Transcripts of nrg-1 could be ubiquitously detected in different regions, with very prominent expression in lower brain regions such as the midbrain, pons,medulla, and spinal cord. In PC12 cells, nerve growth factor induces neuronal differentiation and repressed expression of nrg-1. Two other agents that differentiate PC12 cells, fibroblast growth factor and dibdutyryl cAMP, down-regulated nrg-1 mRNA levels. Epidermal growth factor, and agent that does not induce differentiation, did not repress nrg-1 mRNA levels. In a PC12 cell mutant that is deficient in protein kinase A activity (AB.11), all three differentiating agents were unable to down-regulate nrg-1 mRNA. Hence, protein kinase A appears to be an obligatory cellular component in nrg-1 mRNA regulation. Chromosomal mapping employing a rat somatic cell readiation hybrid panel demonstrated that nrg-1 is linked to marker D8Rat54 and tightly associated with H218 on chromosome 8.


Consumer product companies are establishing internal programs where they are voluntarily compensating consumers for damages caused by their products. When a company implements a refund program in response to a threatened or pending class action, may federal courts rely solely on the voluntary refunds in denying class certification? The short answer is yes. This Article analyzes Rule 23(b)(3) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the requirement that a class action be "superior to other available methods for fairly and efficiently adjudicating the controversy." The Article argues that courts must compare the superiority of a class action not only to judicial procedures but also to a company's voluntary refund program. This Article also contends that a court must deny class certification when a reimbursement policy is fair and efficient. These arguments are strongly supported by the Advisory Committee Notes to the 1966 amendment to Rule 23, commentary by two former members of the Committee, the original purpose of the superiority requirement, and courts' and commentators' initial interpretations of the 1966 amendment. Last, the Article discusses what features a refund program must have to be a fair and efficient alternative to a class action. Surprisingly, no federal court or scholar has analyzed the history or purpose of Rule 23(b)(3) as it applies to voluntary refund programs. Further, the relevancy of a refund program to the denial of class certification has been addressed in only one article (which took an opposing view) and by only a few courts.


Abstract The purpose of this technical note is to introduce a definition for breeding gain and other performance parameters for nuclear reactors and their associated fuel cycle. The newly proposed performance parameters have a more general nature than expressions currently in common use. Since the performance parameters require a weighting scheme, which expresses how individual isotopes contribute to the overall fuel cycle performance (breeding, transmutation, or otherwise) of the reactor, expressions are derived for the isotope weight factors. In this technical note, weighting schemes are introduced for a breeding fuel cycle and a transmutation fuel cycle, and the proposed definitions are applied to specific example calculations of a pressurized water reactor mixed oxide irradiation, a breeder reactor cycle, and a transmutation reactor cycle. It will be shown by an example that a net destruction of transuranic material will not always lead to a reduction of the decay heat released from the spent nuclear fuel. This effect is due to the buildup during irradiation of isotopes with a high decay heat release. With the general performance parameters defined in the present work, it is possible to more fully characterize (advanced) nuclear fuel cycles, incorporating long-term radioactivity in a straightforward manner.


The chapter aims to introduce an integrated approach to concepts of (1) smart cities and (2) age-friendly cities and communities. Although these ideas are widely promoted by the European Union and the World Health Organisation, they are perceived as separate. Meanwhile, these concepts are closely intermingled in theory and practise concerning the promotion of healthy and active ageing, a universal design, usability and accessibility of age-friendly environments, reducing of the digital divide and robotic divide, and reducing of older adults' social isolation. The conclusion underlines the need for participatory creation of ambient assisted living (AAL) technologies and applications with older adults and the need for advocacy to promote AAL in the context of the silver economy especially in the Central and Eastern Europe.


We develop an explicit two level system that allows programmers to reason about the behavior of effectful programs. The first level is an ordinary ML-style type system, which confers standard properties on program behavior. The second level is a conservative extension of the first that uses a logic of type refinements to check more precise properties of program behavior. Our logic is a fragment of intuitionistic linear logic, which gives programmers the ability to reason locally about changes of program state. We provide a generic resource semantics for our logic as well as a sound, decidable, syntactic refinement-checking system. We also prove that refinements give rise to an optimization principle for programs. Finally, we illustrate the power of our system through a number of examples.


Background and aims: Anxiety disorders during pregnancy are of great significance. Few studies have examined the association of psychosocial factors, particularly anxiety, with weight retention and obesity postpartum. This study is aimed to investigate the extent to which trimesters of pregnancy and early postpartum anxiety is associated with weight retention 1 year after childbirth. Methods: Sixty two class 2 & 3 obese (BMI ≥35 kg/m2) and 245 normal weight (BMI 18.5–24.9 kg/m2) pregnant women in first trimester of pregnancy were enrolled after calculation of pre-pregnancy BMI from Dec 2012 to Jan 2016 and reported Anxiety symptoms on Beck Anxiety Inventory Scale (BAI) at 1st, 2nd and 3rd trimesters of pregnancy and 6–8 weeks postpartum. A scores ≤15 were considered as minimal and/or mild anxiety and scores ≥16 as moderate to severe anxiety. Associations between antenatal and postpartum anxiety with risk of substantial weight retention (at least 5 kg) 1 year after childbirth were assessed. Results: One hundred and fifty two women (78.8%) with normal prepregnancy BMI had not nor had mild anxiety during or after pregnancy, while these amounts were 31 women (67.4%) in obese group. 27 (14.0%) in normal BMI and 9 women (19.6%) in obese group experienced antenatal anxiety only, 4 (2.1%) in normal group and 2(4.3%) in obese group experienced postpartum anxiety only and 10(5.2%) in normal group and 4 women (8.7%) in obese group experienced both antenatal and postpartum depression. In all trimesters of pregnancy and postpartum period obese women had more anxiety than normal BMI group, however it was not statistically significant (p=0.1). At 1 year, participants retained a mean of 2.52 kg (range −10 to 17) in normal BMI group and 18.1% retained at least 5 kg and in obese group slightly decrease was shown: –0.02 kg (range −14 to 12) with 11.1% with retained weight at least 5 kg. Binary logistic regression analyses, after adjustment for weight-related covariates, maternal sociodemographics, and parity, antenatal and postpartum anxiety showed antenatal anxiety, either alone or in combination with postpartum anxiety, was not associated with substantial weight retention (odds ratio (OR): 1.15, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.07, 19.10). Conclusion: The relationship of obesity with anxiety during pregnancy and after delivery should be taken into consideration by heath care providers when managing obese pregnant women; not only to investigate its impacts on mood, but also to control the effects of mood on inappropriate consequences of obesity. Moreover identifying the other risk factors for weight retention after birth to prevent obesity and its sequels on women to better decision making in prenatal care guidelines contents are required.


The aim of this article is to describe how parents and preschool teachers talk about children's interactional skills in parent–teacher conferences in the Swedish preschool and how this can be related to socialization processes. The analyses show that children's communicative skills, such as turn-taking in conversation and co-operation, are considered as important for both parents and teachers and talked about in terms of trouble or success. Children's skills are often assessed by using chronological age as a parameter. Our analysis suggests that the talk about children's interactional skills may be interpreted in terms of deficiency discourses founded primarily on theories in developmental psychology, and that parents, and particularly the teachers, present themselves as socializing agents with regard to children.


James Hogg's "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" is a Scottish classic, a quintessentially Gothic tale of psychological horror, and a relentless attack on Calvinist dogma. The "Penguin Classics" edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Karl Miller. Robert Wringham's family is composed of a dissolute father and brother, a pious mother, and a rival father in the person of a fanatical Calvinist minister. He comes to believe that he is one of the elect, predestined to be saved, while others are damned. Sure of his freedom from the dictates of morality, he embarks on a series of crimes in the company of a new friend Gil-Martin, a man of many likenesses who can be mistaken for Robert, and who explains that they are as one in the holy work of purifying the world. But who is Gil-Martin? And what does he truly desire? The Gothic double or doppelganger is nowhere more powerfully imagined than in "Confessions of a Justified Sinner", once called 'the greatest novel of Scotland'. This new edition has an introduction by Karl Miller, which discusses the presence of the novel in the life and times of James Hogg. It also contains two of Hogg's most interesting stories, "Marion's Jock" and "John Gray o' Middleholm". James Hogg (1770-1835) born in Ettrick, in the Scottish Borders. A shepherd for many years, Hogg was writing poems by the 1790s, aiding Walter Scott with material for his collection of ballads, "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border". In 1810 he moved to Edinburgh, where he published several volumes of verse, and worked on the "Spy" and "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine". "Confessions of a Justified Sinner" was published anonymously in 1824, and is now generally seen as his masterpiece. If you enjoyed "Confessions of a Justified Sinner", you might like Matthew Lewis's "The Monk", also available in "Penguin Classics". "A Scottish classic, a world classic". (Ian Rankin). "A sinister, funny, moving tale of demonic possession, murder and religious fanaticism". ("Sunday Telegraph").


Random Forest (RF) is a widely used algorithm for classification of remotely sensed data. Through a case study in peatland classification using LiDAR derivatives, we present an analysis of the effects of input data characteristics on RF classifications (including RF out-of-bag error, independent classification accuracy and class proportion error). Training data selection and specific input variables (i.e., image channels) have a large impact on the overall accuracy of the image classification. High-dimension datasets should be reduced so that only uncorrelated important variables are used in classifications. Despite the fact that RF is an ensemble approach, independent error assessments should be used to evaluate RF results, and iterative classifications are recommended to assess the stability of predicted classes. Results are also shown to be highly sensitive to the size of the training data set. In addition to being as large as possible, the training data sets used in RF classification should also be (a) randomly distributed or created in a manner that allows for the class proportions of the training data to be representative of actual class proportions in the landscape; and (b) should have minimal spatial autocorrelation to improve classification results and to mitigate inflated estimates of RF out-of-bag classification accuracy.


Teachers are being increasingly held accountable for their quality of student instruction. They need to prepare well for each lesson taught and provide for individual differences among learners. Documentation of teaching success is desired. Tracking results of teacher effectiveness is salient. Thus, there needs to be an effective approach to use in noticing how well each teacher is doing in time. Quality of Criteria in Rating Standards used in the rating process must be carefully chosen with heavy involvement of teachers, supervisors, and school administrators. They need careful research, scrutiny, and study, prior to implementation. Social studies is a highly important academic discipline and needs to be included in any mandated system of testing to indicate its saliency. There are a plethora of reasons to be given for the importance of the social studies. A major reason being that threats to humanity exist if nations continually spend excessive amount of money on the military as well as plan attacks against each other. Deaths, destruction, and wounded individuals result. Post traumatic stress is commonly discussed and this involves traumas veterans experience from actual fighting in wars. Ways need to be found to minimize/eliminate militaristic fervor among inhabitants of any nation. There are a plethora of ways to spend moneys to benefit humanity such as quality, affordable health care. Too may people go bankrupt when a costly malady hits a family. Then too moneys may be spent on improving infrastructure of an area such as safe roads, bridges, flood control projects, and safety in cities. Crime is rampant in certain areas where hostile gangs operate. More police and fire protection is necessary, the latter is indicated with the many cases of arson occurring. Corruption in corporations is very costly to society with extremely high salaries paid to CEOs and board members, even with a failing economic operation. In addition stock options, and bonuses add to these unfortunate ventures. Morality and ethics are certainly a problem and a major one at that. Thus, there are numerous reasons which might well be given to stressing strong social studies curricula in the public schools. This must include economic development, a democratic society, achievements in medical science, accomplishments in the fine arts and in architecture, as well as high productivity in agriculture, among others. Social studies teachers must provide leadership to emphasize quality in the curriculum. Quality may come from well prepared teachers, continual inservice education, adequate and purposeful teaching materials of instruction, support from school administrators and curriculum directors, and cooperating parents (Ediger, 2009). The question then arises," How should social studies teachers be appraised?" First, social studies teachers must become efficacious in that they are highly knowledgeable and confident in their chosen profession. They possess not only the knowledge but also needed methodology to provide for individual differences among pupils. Pupils are the focal point of attention. They must do the learning and be assisted to attain optimally in the social studies. Thus, pupils need to achieve well in subject matter, in skills, and in attitudes (Ediger, 2008). Second, developing good citizens should be at the heart of teaching and learning situations. The social studies teacher needs to serve as a model. He/she needs to take an active role in societal responsibilities, exemplify good human relations, manage personal finances effectively, and develop a good self concept. The social studies teacher guides pupils to be very knowledgeable about implementing standards of being a good citizen. This is more than passing tests, which is important, but also there needs to be the desire to improve society for the benefit of all (See Smith and Lambert, 2008). Third, achieving advanced university degrees in the social sciences assists in developing leadership qualities to improve in the teaching of the social studies. …


This study sought to verify the association between health status and physical activity levels among the elderly who are participants and non-participants in social welfare groups in Florianópolis in the State of Santa Catarina, Brazil. The sample included 1,062 elderly people (625 women), mean age 71.9 (± 7.6). The variables analyzed were gender, age, schooling, marital status, physical activity levels (International Physical Activity Questionnaire) and physical health status information (Brazil Elderly Schedule Questionnaire). Data were analyzed by Chi-square test. The results revealed that 60.6% were classified as physically active (total physical activity level) and 74% of the elderly reported illness. Illness status was more prevalent among social welfare group participants than non-participants. However, a better positive perception of physical health status was observed among social groups participants. For women, participation in social welfare groups was associated with a positive perception of physical health status (p<0.001) and with illness (p=0.005). The conclusion was that participation in social welfare groups contributes to a better perception of physical health status, as well as for the maintenance of adequate physical activity levels.


The movement of expansive soils is usually due to a change of suction near the soil surface. The properties of the soil that govern the amount and rate of movement are the suction compression index, and the unsaturated permeability and diffusivity. Methods of using these to determine suction and heave (or shrinkage) profiles with depth are outlined. Methods of estimating these properties using simple laboratory tests, namely Atterberg limits, water content, dry density, porosity, sieve analysis, and hydrometer analysis are presented. Differential movement governs the design of slabs-on-ground, highway and airport pavements and canal linings, which are themselves controlled by the edge moisture variation distance. Graphs of the edge moisture variation distance as it changes with the unsaturated diffusivity and the Thornthwaite Moisture Index are presented for both the center lift and edge lift distortion modes. The values were computed using a coupled unsaturated moisture flow and elasticity finite element program which had been calibrated to match reasonably well the measured suctions in an extensive field study involving several pavement sites in a number of different climatic zones in Texas.


The involvement of nicotinamide adenine nucleotides (NAD+, NADH) in the regulation of glycolysis in Lactococcus lactis was investigated by using13C and 31P NMR to monitor in vivothe kinetics of the pools of NAD+, NADH, ATP, inorganic phosphate (Pi), glycolytic intermediates, and end products derived from a pulse of glucose. Nicotinic acid specifically labeled on carbon 5 was synthesized and used in the growth medium as a precursor of pyridine nucleotides to allow for in vivo detection of13C-labeled NAD+ and NADH. The capacity ofL. lactis MG1363 to regenerate NAD+ was manipulated either by turning on NADH oxidase activity or by knocking out the gene encoding lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). An LDH−deficient strain was constructed by double crossover. Upon supply of glucose, NAD+ was constant and maximal (∼5 mm) in the parent strain (MG1363) but decreased abruptly in the LDH− strain both under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. NADH in MG1363 was always below the detection limit as long as glucose was available. The rate of glucose consumption under anaerobic conditions was 7-fold lower in the LDH− strain and NADH reached high levels (2.5 mm), reflecting severe limitation in regenerating NAD+. However, under aerobic conditions the glycolytic flux was nearly as high as in MG1363 despite the accumulation of NADH up to 1.5 mm. Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase was able to support a high flux even in the presence of NADH concentrations much higher than those of the parent strain. We interpret the data as showing that the glycolytic flux in wild type L. lactis is not primarily controlled at the level of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase by NADH. The ATP/ADP/Pi content could play an important role.


Femtosecond laser direct writing is employed for the fabrication of buried tubular waveguides in bulk poly(methyl methacrylate). A novel technique using selective chemical etching is presented to resolve the two-dimensional refractive-index profile of the fabrication structures. End-to-end coupling in the waveguides reveals a near-field intensity distribution that results from the superimposition of several propagating modes with different azimuthal symmetries. Mode analysis of the tubular waveguides is performed using the finite-difference method, and the possible propagating mode profiles are compared with the experimental data.


Google-Wide Profiling (GWP), a continuous profiling infrastructure for data centers, provides performance insights for cloud applications. With negligible overhead, GWP provides stable, accurate profiles and a datacenter-scale tool for traditional performance analyses. Furthermore, GWP introduces novel applications of its profiles, such as application-platform affinity measurements and identification of platform-specific, microarchitectural peculiarities.


* A history of how the U.S and Royal navies fought the oceanic war, linking high-level governmental decisions about strategy to the operational use of fleets Focusing on the oceanic war rather than on the war in the Great Lakes, this study charts the War of 1812 from the perspectives of the two opposing navies at sea, one the largest navies in the world, the other a small, upstart navy just three decades old. While American naval leadership searched for a means of contesting Britain's naval dominance, the English sought to destroy the U.S. Navy and protect its oceanic highways. Instead of describing battles between opposing warships, Kevin McCranie evaluates entire cruises by American and British men-of-war, noting both successes and failures and how they translated into broader strategies. In the process, his study becomes a history of how the two navies fought the oceanic war, linking high-level governmental decisions about strategy to the operational use of fleets in the Atlantic and Caribbean and from the south Pacific to the Indian Ocean. This comprehensive work offers a balanced appraisal of the sea war, taking into account the strategic considerations of both sides and how the leadership from each side assessed, planned, and implemented operational concepts. It draws on a wealth of British and American archival sources to help the reader understand strategic imperatives and the correlation between these imperatives and why the oceanic war was conducted in the manner it was. All American warships cruises, not just those that resulted in battles, are covered, but the author's action-packed accounts of battles hold special appeal.


In order to determine the incubation temperature of eggs laid by non‐avian dinosaurs, we analysed the oxygen isotope compositions of both eggshell carbonate (δ18Oc) and embryo bone phosphate (δ18Op) from seven oviraptorosaur eggs with preserved in ovo embryo bones. These eggs come from the Upper Cretaceous Nanxiong Formation of Jiangxi Province, China. Oviraptorosaur theropods were selected because of their known brooding behaviour as evidenced by preserved adult specimens fossilized in brooding posture on their clutch. Incubation temperature of these embryos was estimated based on the following considerations: eggshell δ18Oc value reflects the oxygen isotope composition of egg water fluid; embryo bones precipitate from the same egg fluid; and oxygen isotope fractionation between phosphate and water is controlled by the egg temperature. A time‐dependent model predicting the δ18Op evolution of the embryo skeleton during incubation as a function of egg temperature was built, and measured δ18Oc and δ18Op values used as boundary conditions. According to the model outputs, oviraptorosaurs incubated their eggs within a 35–40°C range, similar to extant birds and compatible with the known active brooding behaviour of these theropod dinosaurs. Provided that both eggshell and embryo bones preserved their original oxygen isotope compositions, this method could be extended to investigate some reproductive traits of other extinct groups of oviparous amniotes.


Languages with inheritance and polymorphism assume that a subclass instance can substitute a superclass instance without causing behavioral differences for clients of the superclass. However, programmers may accidentally create subclasses that are semantically incompatible with their superclasses. Such subclasses lead to bugs, because a programmer may assign a subclass instance to a superclass reference. This paper presents an automatic testing technique to reveal subclasses that cannot safely substitute their superclasses. The key idea is to generate generic tests that analyze the behavior of both the subclass and its superclass. If using the subclass leads to behavior that cannot occur with the superclass, the analysis reports a warning. We find a high percentage of widely used Java classes, including classes from JBoss, Eclipse, and Apache Commons Collections, to be unsafe substitutes for their superclasses: 30% of these classes lead to crashes, and even more have other behavioral differences.


It is predicted that the global phenomena of Climate change will have far reaching effects and implications on different local urban systems. For incidence, global average sea levels are expected to rise between 7 and 36 cm by the 2050s, and between 9 and 69 cm by the 2080s. Waterfront communities are the first to be affected by such impacts putting them at high risk. Planning tools are needed to assist these communities and increase their adaptive and learning capacities in the face of diverse challenges to their urban sub-systems. The research investigates a number of sustainability frameworks and assessment rating systems for neighbourhoods and communities. It investigates the sustainable evaluation criteria carried out by three assessment rating systems. First is the LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, USA), the second is BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, UK), and the third is the Estidama PEARL rating system (UAE).Examples of waterfront communities which applied the previous rating systemsare analyzed in order to determine the applicability and relevance of these systems to waterfront communities in particular. The research concludes with a proposed framework of indicators for waterfront communities. The similarities and differences between the different rating systems and featured indicators specific to waterfront planning applied in the analyzed examples, yet absent in the three rating systems, have informed the selection of indicators in the proposed assessment framework. The proposed framework could be an effective tool for the planning and development of a waterfront community in the MENA region. In order to validate the framework, theset of environmental and physical indicators were applied on the case study of Abu Qir waterfront, Alexandria, Egypt. Conclusions and recommendations  are made that would enhance the resilience of this waterfront community and provide a comprehensive tool for its sustainable planning.


PURPOSE
For small photon fields, accurate values of tissue-phantom ratios (TPR) are difficult to obtain either by direct measurement or by the conventional method of converting from measured percentage-depth doses (%dd). This study aims to develop an empirical method to accurately obtain TPRs from %dd curves for small radiosurgery beams.

METHODS
The Monte Carlo simulation codes BEAMnrc/DOSXYZnrc were used to simulate the accelerator head and accessory. The Monte Carlo directly calculated TPR values as a function of depth were compared with TPRs converted from %dd curves in a water phantom for field sizes ranging from 4 mm diameter to 10×10 cm2 fields. Direct measurements of TPRs were performed with the detector remaining fixed at an SAD of 100 cm and increasing the detector depth by adding water.

RESULTS
Using the Monte Carlo values, we developed an empirical formula to obtain TPRs from %dd. The conventional method of obtaining TPRs from %dd underestimate TPR by 3.4% and 0.6% at a depth 1.5 cm and overestimate TPR by 6.2% and 1.7% at a depth of 25 cm for 4 mm and 30 mm diameter circular fields, respectively. The empirical formula is derived from realistic Monte Carlo simulations using field sizes ranging from 4 mm to 30 mm and depth ranging from 1.5 cm to 25 cm. TPRs calculated using this function deviate from TPRs directly calculated from Monte Carlo by less than 0.5%. The accuracy of this empirical formula is validated against the directly measured TPRs in water.

CONCLUSION
The developed empirical method has the potential to greatly simply the work in obtaining TPRs from measured %dd curves for small fields. By using this developed empirical formula the uncertainties between directly measured TPRs and converted TPRs from measured %dd curves are within 1%.


The low conceptual level presented by students in the study of classical physics has led to a number of investigations in order to improve academic performance. Among the strategies we can mention the importance of knowing the alternative conceptions prior to teaching. The goal is to develop and apply our own test question pool to determine specific conceptual errors about Newton's laws and determine the conceptual level of 140 students in the first semester of engineering. The results reflected in the justifications of their responses show a low conceptual analysis about particle dynamics. Such is the fact that only 4% of young people respond correctly to the definition of force. This shows that in the classes the resolution of exercises is prioritize without taking into account the theoretical reasoning.


In this paper we explore the relative importance of persistent and non-persistent mutex relations in the performance of Graphplan- based planners. We also show the advantages of pre-compiling persistent mutex relations. Using TIM we are able to generate, during a pre-processing analysis, all of the persistent binary mutex relations that would be inferred by Graphplan during each graph construction. We show how the efficient storage of, and access to, these pre-processed persistent mutexes yields a modest improvement in graph construction performance. We further demonstrate that the process by which these persistent mutexes are identified can, in certain kinds of domain, allow the exploitation of binary mutex relations which are inaccessible to Graphplan. We present The Island of Sodor, a simple planning domain characterizing a class of domains in which certain persistent mutexes are present but are not detectable by Graphplan during graph construction. We show that the exploitation of these hidden binary mutexes makes problems in this kind of domain trivially solvable by STAN, where they are intractable for other Graphplan-based planners.


Fears of a 'race to the bottom' in labour standards may have been overstated. Nevertheless, using Sweden as a case study, it is argued that the diminished capacity of trade unions to defend labour standards following the Laval judgement of the European Court of Justice, together with a decline in trade union density, a limited remit of enforcement authorities and recent changes to the Swedish labour migration regime, may have detrimental impacts on labour standards, particularly in low-skill low-wage occupations. In combination, these developments are creating new spaces for migrant precariousness within the context of a formerly well-regulated Swedish labour market model.


An elevated tricuspid regurgitant jet velocity (TRV) is associated with hemolysis and early mortality in sickle cell disease, yet risk factors, clinical parameters, and mortality associated with this biomarker in thalassemia are poorly defined. This report summarizes the prevalence of an elevated TRV in 325 patients screened by Doppler echocardiography in the Thalassemia Clinical Research Network. A documented TRV was reported in 148 of 325 (46%) of patients. Average age was 25.9 years (range, 5-56 years) and 97% were transfusion-dependent. Mean TRV was 2.3 ± 0.4 m/s (range, 0.2-3.5 m/s). An abnormal TRV ≥ 2.5 m/s was identified in 49 of 148 (33%) of patients with a documented TRV, 5% (8/148), with a TRV ≥ 3.0 m/s, suggesting significant PH risk. Older age was strongly associated with a high TRV; however, 16% of children had a TRV ≥ 2.5 m/s. A history of splenectomy, hepatitis C, smoking, or high white blood cell count was associated with TRV elevation. In summary, an elevated TRV is noted in one-third of transfusion-dependent thalassemia patients with a documented value and develops in both children and adults. Age, splenectomy, hepatitis C, and smoking are significant univariate risk factors, with splenectomy surfacing as the dominant risk factor over time. Mortality was low in this cohort. Prospective longitudinal studies are needed. This study is registered at http://www.clinicaltrials.gov as NCT00661804.


Young male office and shop clerks occupied a precarious social and economic position on the margins of respectable middle-class Victorian society. Their status was compromised by the reality of their occupational experience; frequently subject to the paternalistic control of their employers some clerks came to question their claim to masculinity. H.G. Wells never forgot his early experiences as a shop assistant, recalling with horror his loss of independence and dignity. (1) In fact, manipulative paternalism stripped them of their identity and denied them full adulthood. (2) Even married clerks' masculinity was undermined by their "complicity in suburban domesticity." (3) "Born a man, died a clerk" was a cruel but effective insult directed at a vulnerable occupational and social set. Certainly there is much evidence in the middle-class fiction of the late-nineteenth century to support the stereotype of the pathetic, emasculated shop assistant as, for example, a "counter-jumper." However, as A. James Hammerton suggests in his work on the lower-middle-class companionate marriage, such strident criticism of the lower-middle-class husband reflects as much about middle-class fears as it explains lower-middle-class life. (4) This paper reconstructs the lower-middle-class experience by examining its members as social agents, as participants in daily cultural life, rather than by assessing society's perceptions and representations of them. Through a discussion of lower-middle-class men's efforts to regulate their own leisure experience it can be demonstrated that they were not always as meek and dependent, and unmanly, as has been assumed. Specifically, by examining the development of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in one provincial city, Leicester, and by focusing in particular on the conflict between the YMCA's patrons and its members, it is possible to conclude that young men were engaged in a struggle to construct their own masculine identity. Ironically, young lower-middle-class men, often represented in the popular press and in the popular imagination as effeminate, employed consumerism, popularly known to compromise masculinity, to shape a voluntary association more to their liking. (5) This suggests that the role of the male as consumer was contested and multi-form, not monolithic. (6) While some forms of shopping could be particularly damaging to a man's masculinity, men could consume leisure opportunities in order to reinvent their public masculine identity. The YMCA was arguably the most important and visible of institutions catering to the spiritual, physical, and mental needs of young men. (7) According to its benefactors the YMCA saved young clerks from indolence, selfishness, gambling, drink, and impurity. (8) The YMCA served to help young men resist these temptations in a brotherhood of manliness; the association trained young men to be "strong, manly, true, good, upright, trying to help the younger or weaker chaps, and keep them in the right way." (9) This transformation in the role of the YMCA is generally well-known, the forces promoting it less so. This study focuses on the checkered history of the Leicester YMCA and argues that its ultimate popularity was the result of a process of negotiation between the middle-class patrons who were responsible for establishing and operating the association, and those young office and shop employees the association was attempting to instruct. Significantly, these young men learned, through such associational politics, that as consumers they were in a position to influence their terms of engagement in associational activity and exercise some degree of social authority. In Leicester the struggle culminated in a heated confrontation between rival YMCA factions over a motion to purchase a billiard-table. This "affair of the billiard-table" symbolized the victory of the "reformers" within the Leicester YMCA general committee, the association's executive body; the reformers accepted the members' calls for the delivery of enhanced recreational opportunities. …


Hardware predictors are widely used to improve the performance of modern processors. These predictors are mostly used in data or instruction prefetching mechanisms and branch predictors. Hardware-based prefetchers and branch predictors can work dynamically based on the program's run-time behavior. However, most of the hardware-based predictor mechanisms depend on detecting patterns (data access patterns, branch patterns, etc) and they require very complex mechanisms to be able to capture irregular patterns. Software techniques, like software prefetching, can help to improve the performance of the applications with behaviors that are difficult to capture by hardware mechanisms. On the other hand, they mostly rely on execution special instructions repeatedly during the execution which is likely to create an instruction overhead. Also, they cannot respond to the run-time behaviors like hardware mechanisms. To overcome the weaknesses of prediction mechanisms, we proposed mechanisms which combine the strengths of hardware and software mechanisms. In this thesis, we examined ways to use the knowledge we can extract from the software to inform hardware mechanisms. We enable hardware-based systems to capture complex software behaviors just using the information it receives from the software instead of using large history tables and buffers to try to make predictions. First, we proposed our hardware-based prefetching mechanism called Sequential Prefetcher with Adaptive Distance (SPAD). SPAD uses a simple method of hardware prefetching that integrates timeliness into sequential prefetching. It can outperform recently proposed complex prefetchers with simpler and smaller hardware. In the second chapter, we proposed a software supported hardware prefetching mechanism called Array Tracking Prefether (ATP). This mechanism targets irregular memory access patterns and relies on compiler/programmer to configure hardware prefetching mechanism. By combining the strength of software and hardware methods, ATP outperforms proposed software only and hardware-only solutions. Finally, we proposed another software-assisted prefetcher for pointer intensive in-memory database applications, Node Tracker (NT). Although NT is proposed as a prefetcher, it is capable of using the knowledge it extracts from the prefetched data to help CPU pipeline in other ways to increase throughput. While tightly integrated with CPU, NT can achieve up to 19x speedup for the targeted applications.


Economic development is linked with increased state capacity including the ability to mobilise domestic tax resources. For many developing countries, high levels of informality are a major constraint in this regard. Yet, economic incentives like changing the tax rate or increasing the filling and audit rate can be ineffective in a highly informal economic structure. In this paper, we explore possible roles for behavioural interventions such as sharing information about peers' tax behaviour to engineer higher tax compliance. Based on an artefactual field experiment among own account workers in Nigeria, we find that information interventions can play an important role in ensuring tax compliance. Specifically, targeting information around what people can directly observe can be a way to improve tax compliance. Providing information on punishment or good practices that appeal to feelings of morality yields higher tax compliance.


The sequences of the gene encoding VP7 (the major outer capsid protein) from one bovine and three human rotavirus strains were determined because of their unusual VP7 specificities. Two of the human strains (PA 169 and PA 151) had VP7 serotype 6 specificity whereas the two other strains, recovered from a child (HAL 1166) and a calf (678) belonged to VP7 serotype 8. The serotype 8 strains exhibited a high degree of sequence conservation when compared with each other and with other serotype 8 strains previously sequenced. The serotype 6 human strains shared a greater degree of sequence similarity with previously reported serotype 6 bovine strains than with other rotavirus serotypes; however the degree of sequence similarity among PA 169, PA 151 and the bovine strains was lower than had been previously reported for strains belonging to the same serotype. The demonstration of rotavirus serotypes that are shared between human and animal species supports the concept that interspecies transmission occurs and may play a role in rotavirus evolution.


N THE LAST SECTION* we dealt not only with the true nature of Weight, Measure, and Number, but also with their "fall" in connection with the temporal missions and the eternal messages of the Old Indian, Old Persian, and Egypto-Chaldean cultures. Seen from the standpoint of human nature, these three great principles contain the meaning of man's need to come to terms in his life [vital] body, sentient [desire] body, and sentient [emotional] soul with the three axioms of human destiny: toil, suffering, and death. For the three "curses of the Father," which have overhung the destiny of man ever since his fall into sin, demand of him a spiritual and moral struggle in his life body, his sentient body, and his sentient soul. And indeed, human consciousness is obliged to evoke a sacrificial force in the life body in order to descend into the sphere of the active world of physical existence. "Weight," as readiness for incarnation in the physical, is not to be found in the physical sphere itself, but in the etheric from which the physical is taken and molded. That which is experienced in the physical as the "toil" of earthly activity may be experienced in the etheric as love for the Earth mission, as true "Weight." Similarly, in the sentient body, man is in a position to encounter consciously the "suffering" which he experiences in the life body. Here he can be conscious of its true content, can acquire a conscious relationship to it. And here he can experience it as the mission in time, as true "Measure," whereas the life body is itself "time." But it is only in the sentient soul that man first meets with the whole tragedy of the problem of "death." This is because it is only in the soul, and for the soul, that that external event and the pain of it becomes an inner karmic question; i.e., a question concerning the value and nature of the "Number" of individual beings. It is a question whether this number is an eradicable product of nature, or whether it is rooted in the eternity of the Godhead—hence ineradicable. Thus the main problem of the Egypto-Chaldean age was immortality, as is clearly shown, for instance, in the Gilgamesh myth. The main problem of the Old Persian culture, on the other hand, was the objective relationship between good and evil in the world and in the Zend-Avesta. Preserved until this day are echoes which show us that the important thing in the Old Persian age was to feel the "cosmic year" as the measure of this relationship in the stream of time. Further, the main problem of the Old Indian culture was the value of human activity in the physical world. Thus, for example, the Bhagavad Gita, although of later origin, is entirely devoted to this problem. During the fourth, the Greco-Latin cultureepoch, there was added to the three problems—the "value of the world of deeds"; the relationship between good and evil; and immortality—a fourth; namely, the problem of freedom. For as man meets with the first three problems in the life body, the sentient body, and the sentient soul, so he encounters the problem of freedom with the awakening of the intellectual soul. It is the intellectual soul which makes man conscious of being placed between that which he knows and wills and cannot do, and that which he does not will and yet does. We can hardly find a better formula for this


Background: Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) has a high tumor-associated mortality rate among gynecological cancers. Although CA125 is a well-studied biomarker for ovarian cancer, it is also elevated under numerous conditions, resulting in decreased specificity. Recently, we identified a novel tumor-associated antigen, salt-inducible kinase 3 (SIK3), during tumorigenesis in ovarian cancer. However, the association between SIK3 expression and patient outcomes in ovarian cancer remains unclear. Materials and Methods: We collected EOC samples from 204 patients and examined tumor SIK3 expression by immunohistochemistry (IHC) and CA125 expression in tumors and serum. The expression levels of SIK3 and CA125 were correlated with patient survival. SIK3 expression was silenced with SIK3-specific shRNAs to investigate the possible mechanisms related to chemoresistance in serous-type ovarian cancer cell lines OVCAR4 and SKOV3. Results: In advanced-stage serous ovarian cancer, patients with low SIK3 expression have poorer overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) than patients with high SIK3 expression. Ovarian cancer cells with SIK3 knockdown display increased chemoresistance to Taxol plus cisplatin treatment, which is associated with the upregulation of the ABCG2 transporter. In addition, in serous ovarian cancer, SIK3 expression is inversely correlated to ABCG2 expression, and patients with low SIK3 and high ABCG2 expression have worse prognosis than patients with high SIK3 and low ABCG2 expression. Conclusion: Our results demonstrated that serous EOC patients with low SIK3 expression have poor prognosis, which is associated with chemoresistance mediated by ABCG2 upregulation. SIK3 and ABCG2 expression levels may be potential prognostic markers to predict the outcome in serous EOC patients.


Data collection in health programs databases is prone to errors that might hinder its use to identify risk indicators and to support optimal decision making in health services. This is the case, in colo-rectal cancer (CRC) screening programs, when trying to optimize the cut-off point to select the patients who will undergo a colonoscopy, especially when having insufficient offer of colonoscopies or temporary excessive demand. It is necessary therefore to establish "good practice" guidelines for data collection, management and analysis. With the aim of improving the redesign of a regional CRC screening program platform, we performed an exhaustive analysis of the data collected, proposing a set of recommendations for its correct maintenance. We also carried out the curation of the available data in order to finally have a clean source of information that would allow proper future analyses. We present here the result of such study, showing the importance of the design of the database and of the user interface to avoid redundancies keeping consistency and checking known correlations, with the final aim of providing quality data that permit to take correct decisions.


Aspect extraction in online product reviews is a key task in sentiment analysis and opinion mining. Training supervised neural networks for aspect extraction is not possible when ground truth aspect labels are not available, while the unsupervised neural topic models fail to capture the particular aspects of interest. In this work, we propose a weakly supervised approach for training neural networks for aspect extraction in cases where only a small set of seed words, i.e., keywords that describe an aspect, are available. Our main contributions are as follows. First, we show that current weakly supervised networks fail to leverage the predictive power of the available seed words by comparing them to a simple bag-of-words classifier. Second, we propose a distillation approach for aspect extraction where the seed words are considered by the bag-of-words classifier (teacher) and distilled to the parameters of a neural network (student). Third, we show that regularization encourages the student to consider non-seed words for classification and, as a result, the student outperforms the teacher, which only considers the seed words. Finally, we empirically show that our proposed distillation approach outperforms (by up to 34.4% in F1 score) previous weakly supervised approaches for aspect extraction in six domains of Amazon product reviews.


AgGaS2 has been used to generate more than 2 μW of cw mid-infrared radiation near 3.2 μm by difference-frequency mixing of the outputs of an extended-cavity diode laser near 795 nm (pump wave) an a compact diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser at 1064 nm (signal wave). An external ring enhancement cavity was used to build up the signal power inside the nonlinear crystal by as much as 14.5 times. The novel mid-infrared source incorporating a single diode laser could be angle-tuned from 3.155 to 3.423 μm (from 3170 to 2921 cm−1). This system was used to detect the Doppler-broadened fundamental ν3-asymmetric stretch vibration of methane (CH4) by both direct and wavelength-modulation absorption spectroscopy.


The purpose of this review is to analyze and evaluate the research findings on using Plagiarism Detection Services (PDS) in universities. In order to do that, conceptual issues about plagiarism are examined and the complex nature of plagiarism is discussed. Subsequently, the pragmatic forms of student plagiarism are listed and PDS strategies on detecting plagiarism are accounted briefly. Research findings are categorized into four interconnected areas: (a) effectiveness and efficiency of PDS; (b) university and course context; (c) perceptions and attitudes towards use of PDS from educators; and (d) perceptions and attitudes towards use of PDS from students. Finally, the authors discuss their own perspective on the issue of implementing PDS in various educational contexts.


Page iv Abstract Dye design is one of the most important and challenging areas in dye-sensitised solar cell research. The purpose of the work in this thesis is to synthesise and characterise novel ruthenium(II) and copper(I) dyes that will provide insight into the number of binding groups required and the potential use of chromophoric ligands. A series of four simple Ru(II) dyes have been synthesised with the general formula Ru(4,4'(R)-bipyridine)2(NCS)2 where R represents CH3 or CO2H. The study investigates the number of acid groups required to successfully bind to TiO2 whilst maintaining efficient charge injection. The series consists of one acid group, two acids, two acids on adjacent bipyridines, and three acids groups. Dye uptake was studied via optical waveguide spectroscopy, providing information on dye diffusion, adsorption and desorption kinetics, and surface coverage. Interestingly, the two acid groups on adjacent ligands suggested poor/slow binding to TiO2 surface and a high degree of dye aggregation in comparison to two acid groups on the same ligand. The dye with three binding groups showed strong adsorption to TiO2 and better dye coverage, resulting in a high efficiency. The complexes were all fully characterised by electrochemistry, photoluminescence, absorption spectroscopy, DFT calculations and solar cell performance testing. To date, there has been limited exploration of copper(I) complexes as potential alternatives to ruthenium(II) sensitisers, with even fewer publications reported for Cu(I) heteroleptic species. The neutral complexes that were synthesised are of the general formula: Cu(4,4'(R)-6,6'-(CH3)-bipyridine)(β-diketonate) and Cu(4,4'-(R)-6,6'-(CH3)-bipyridine)(dipyrrin) where R represents CH3 or CO2Et. Additional blocking groups on the ligands are introduced to minimise structural change during oxidation or MLCT excitation. Improved stability and reproducibility have been shown for complexes containing the dipyrrin ligand, likely due to better steric constraints and better π-overlap with the bipyridine. There has also been a remarkable improvement in light absorption, from 450 nm to 600 nm. In-situ solar studies have been carried out on the Cu(4,4'-(R)-6,6'-(CH3)-bipyridine)(dipyrrin) series and a 0.41% efficiency has been achieved. Computational studies supports the experimental data in which the main transition appears to be ligand centred (dipyrrin) with a small MLCT contribution.


The contributions of the superior prefrontal cortex (SPFC) and the superior parietal lobule (SPL) in generating voluntary endogenous and reflexive visually guided saccades were investigated using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Subjects made choice saccades to the left or right visual field in response to a central arrowhead (endogenous go signal) or a peripheral asterisk (exogenous go signal) that were presented along with a single TMS pulse at varying temporal intervals. TMS over the SPFC increased latencies for saccades made in response to an endogenous go signal toward the contralateral hemifield. No effects were observed when the go signal was exogenous and TMS was over the SPFC or when TMS was over the SPL for either saccade type. The delayed contralateral endogenous saccades observed in this study are likely a consequence of disruption in the normal operations of the human frontal eye field.


A conceptual framework for specifying knowledge architectures is represented. Knowledge architecture is considered independently of its implementation; abstraction of knowledge system as an interpreted free deductive system is used for analysis of knowledge-based systems. Visual notation for knowledge modules and their connections is introduced and used in analysis of known knowledge based tools.


Hybrid team arrangements or partially virtual teams are increasingly being utilised as the structure for construction project teams. However, little research has been conducted on the quality of the communications of these teams. To address the identified research gap, this study adopted a sequential mixed-methods approach. In the first phase, a multidisciplinary literature review identified 7 major indicators of the quality of communications. After conducting 17 interviews with construction experts, the study customised these indicators for the construction context, in form of a list that comprised 12 indicators. Based on the indicators in this list, a questionnaire survey was then designed to elicit construction practitioners' perceptions on changes in the quality of communications in hybrid team arrangements compared to teams that were fully collocated. Data from the 285 completed questionnaires in Australia then underwent confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In the findings, the move to hybrid working arrangements was shown to create changes in 10 of the 12 indicators. The identified list of indicators is a significant contribution to the literature, and provides construction practitioners with guidance in assessing the quality of communications in these teams. The findings also shed light on the primary changes in the quality of communications resulting from the increasing use of hybrid team arrangements.


`Globalization' has largely superseded the term `economic interdependence' to describe the rapidly growing links between nations, economies, and societies. The effects that the internationalization of the world system has on social equality, the environment, and economic growth are, however, still largely disputed. In this article, we discuss the literature that covers another intensively debated issue and which attempts to assess the relationship between trade and interstate conflict. Although liberal economists maintain that economic interdependence exerts an unconditionally pacifying influence on interstate relations, we show that the most recent formal work expects that trade will have a negligible and, in the perspective of one important model at least, even an amplifying effect on conflict. Much empirical work, by contrast, supports the claim that the relationship between trade and conflict is direct and not mitigated by contextual factors. We review the different controversies on the link between economic interdependence and militarized disputes and outline some major challenges that have not yet been adequately dealt with in the scientific study of war and peace.


The purpose of this paper is to assess the management systems and establish the extent to which they are effective in enhancing the performance of the road passenger transport companies in Rwanda. Three hundred thirty four (334) respondents were randomly and purposively selected from three transport companies. The data was analyzed using SPSS and MS Excel for windows statistical software and frequencies, pie charts, frequency tables and chi-square (X 2 ) tests of relationships were conducted to determine the pattern among the study variables. The results showed a statistically significant relationship in the vehicle management systems among the three road transport companies (p=0.000<0.05). Findings of both private and public companies indicated that all were moderately effective using scientific accepted formats. Finally, the research recommends that the government owned ONATRACOM Company should put more effort in cost management because the findings revealed that cost management is given less attention by the management. Private transport companies should consider implementing briefing, pre-journey and en-route information as some of the important passenger management systems.


Looks at the implications of building brand equity in a marketing rather than balance sheet sense. Uses the case example of Chivas Regal to illustrate how the global brand of a multinational organisation can be developed and whether a "global" advertising campaign can be built. Examines the role of marketing research in this process. In order to determine how a brand's equity can be developed, the core and local values of a global brand as seen by consumers need to be clearly identified. However, running a global advertising campaign is expensive for the organisation. Pre‐testing in international marketing research helps in reducing risks with the positive effects of obtaining feedback and informing those involved. The discussion in the paper covers the pre‐testing of a global advertising campaign, in particular the appropriateness of qualitative and quantitative pre‐testing methods and then the measures used for post‐campaign assessment. The discussion also includes the appropriateness of single measures of brand equity.


Angiotensin II causes renal injury through hemodynamic and other effects, and pressor doses of angiotensin II induce heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) as a protective response. The present studies examined the hemodynamic effects of more clinically relevant, lower doses of angiotensin II, and the role of HO activity in influencing these effects. Under euvolemic conditions, angiotensin II increased arterial pressure and renal vascular resistance. Angiotensin II did not induce oxidative stress, inflammation/injury-related gene expression, or proteinuria, and did not alter extrarenal vascular reactivity. At these doses angiotensin II failed to increase HO-1 or HO-2 mRNA expression, or HO activity. Inhibiting HO activity in angiotensin IItreated rats by tin mesoporphyrin (SnMP) further increased renal vascular resistances, decreased renal blood flow, and blunted the rise in arterial pressure, without inducing oxidative stress or altering expression of selected vasoactive/injury/inflammation-related genes; SnMP did not alter vasorelaxation of mesenteric resistor vessels. We conclude that, in this model, renal vasoconstriction occurs without the recognized adverse effects of angiotensin II on GFR, renal blood flow, oxidative stress, vascular reactivity, proteinuria, and injury-related gene expression; renal HO activity is essential in preserving perfusion of the angiotensin II-exposed kidney. These findings represent an uncommon example wherein function of a "stressed" organ (by angiotensin II), but not that of the "unstressed" organ, requires intact renal HO activity, even when the imposed stress neither induces HO-1 nor HO activity. These findings may be germane to conditions attended by heightened angiotensin II levels, "ineffective" renal perfusion, and susceptibility to acute kidney injury. Running Head: Renal Effects of Angiotensin II 3


The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of an intervention aimed at increasing time on task during silent sustained reading periods teacher modeling on reading fluency and comprehension scores in fifth grade students. Five classrooms in a rural county in eastern North Carolina served as the participants with one class used as a control and one class that was dropped from the study. Target students from each class were administered curriculum based measurements of oral reading fluency and comprehension twice weekly throughout the study and a multiple baseline across settings and participants design was used to document the effectiveness of the intervention on reading achievement. Students did not demonstrate significant increases on either reading fluency or comprehension following the application of teacher modeling and did not differ significantly from the student in the classroom that did not receive the intervention. Additionally direct behavior ratings completed to document time on task during silent sustained reading periods did not demonstrate an increase in time on task following the application of the intervention.


Internet access and service utilization has been exploding in mobile devices, through the leverage of WLAN, 3G and now LTE connections. It is this explosion as well that is stressing the underlying fabric of the Internet, and motivating new solutions, such as Software Defined Networking (SDN), to build the controlling support and extension capabilities of the Future Internet. However, SDN has yet to reach the necessary traction to be deployed, and has been more relayed towards experimentation supporting frameworks and away from wireless environments. This paper explores SDN mechanisms and increments them with Media Independent Handover services from the IEEE 802.21 standard, coupling them in a single framework for the dynamic optimized support of OpenFlow path establishment and wireless connectivity establishment. The framework was implemented over open-source software in a physical testbed, with results showing the benefits that this solution brings in terms of performance and signaling overhead, when compared with more basic approaches.


In this paper, a storm surge prediction system for the Spanish Waters is presented. The system, named Nivmar, is based on the ocean circulation Hamsom model and on the harmonical prediction of tides computed from data measured by the tide gauge network Redmar, managed by Puertos del Estado. Nivmar is executed twice a day, running Hamsom forced by meteorological fields derived from the INM (Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia) operational application of Hirlam atmospheric model. Data from Redmar tide gauges is used to to forecast the tidal elevations, to validate the system and to perform data assimilation, correcting systematic errors in the mean sea level due to physicals processes that are not included in the ocean model (i. e. steric height). The forecast horizon is 48 hours. In order to validate the system with measured data from Redmar a very stormy 5 months period was selected. Results from this test (November 95 to March 96) are presented. Data from this experiment shown that Nivmar is able to correctly predict sea level in the region. A simple data assimilation scheme for sea level is described and results from its application are studied. Finally, special focus is made in future plans and potential developments and applications of the system.


As the immigrant teenage son of a Croatian miller, Steve Nelson arrived in the United States after World War I and entered a world of chronic unemployment, low wages, dangerous work, and discrimination. Following the path taken by many fellow immigrant workers, he joined the Communist Party. He became a full-time organizer and ultimately a major leader, only to resign in 1957 after unsuccessful attempts to democratize the American party. This remarkable oral biography, recounted in collaboration with two historians, describes day-to-day life in the party and traces Nelson's career from his beginnings in the Pennsylvania coalfields to his secret work as party courier in the Far East; form the battlefields of Civil War Spain to the jails of Cold War Pittsburgh; and from a small group of Communist autoworkers in Detroit to the upper reaches of a party leadership in New York. It is the frank and analytical account of a leading American working-class activist.


A recurring hypothesis about the agreement phenomena generalized as closest-conjunct
agreement takes this pattern to result from reduced clausal conjunction, simply displaying the
agreement of the verb with the nonconjoined subject of the clause whose content survives ellipsis
(Aoun, Benmamoun & Sportiche 1994, 1999; see also Wilder 1997). Closest-conjunct agreement
is the dominant agreement pattern in the South Slavic languages Slovenian and
Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. A natural question is whether closest-conjunct agreement in these
varieties may indeed be analyzed as entirely derived from conjunction reduction. In this article,
we report on two experiments conducted to test this. The results reject the hypothesis as far as
these languages are concerned, thereby upholding the relevance of models developed to account
for closest-conjunct agreement within theories of agreement.