Sodium wasting during the neonatal period is the consequence of a physiological aldosterone resistance, related to a low renal mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) expression at birth, both in humans and mice. To investigate whether aldosterone is involved in the neonatal regulation of MR expression, we compared aldosterone and corticosterone levels and renal MR expression by quantitative real-time PCR, between aldosterone synthase (AS) knockout, heterozygous, and wild type (WT) mice, at birth and postnatal d 8. Analysis of MR transcripts showed a similar expression profile in all genotypes, demonstrating that the lack of aldosterone does not modify either the low renal MR expression at birth or its postnatal induction. However, mRNA levels of the α-subunit of the epithelial sodium channel, a MR target gene, were significantly higher in WT compared with AS knockout mice, both at birth and postnatal d 8, despite high corticosterone levels in AS knockout mice, indicating that aldosterone is required for optimal renal induction of the epithelial sodium channel. Using organotypic cultures of newborn WT kidneys, we confirmed that aldosterone does not regulate MR expression at birth, but is instead capable of increasing MR expression in mature kidneys, unlike dexamethasone. In sum, we demonstrate both in vivo and in vitro, that, whereas aldosterone has no significant impact on renal MR expression at birth, it is crucial for optimal MR regulation in postnatal kidneys and for appropriate hydroelectrolytic balance. Understanding of MR-regulatory mechanisms could therefore lead to new therapeutic strategies for the management of sodium loss in preterms and neonates.


Abstract. For the first time, carbon monoxide (CO) and formaldehyde (HCHO) satellite retrievals are used together with methane (CH4) and methyl choloroform (CH3CCl3 or MCF) surface measurements in an advanced inversion system. The CO and HCHO are respectively from the MOPITT and OMI instruments. The multi-species and multi-satellite dataset inversion is done for the 2005–2010 period. The robustness of our results is evaluated by comparing our posterior-modeled concentrations with several sets of independent measurements of atmospheric mixing ratios. The inversion leads to significant changes from the prior to the posterior, in terms of magnitude and seasonality of the CO and CH4 surface fluxes and of the HCHO production by non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC). The latter is significantly decreased, indicating an overestimation of the biogenic NMVOC emissions, such as isoprene, in the GEIA inventory. CO and CH4 surface emissions are increased by the inversion, from 1037 to 1394 TgCO and from 489 to 529 TgCH4 on average for the 2005–2010 period. CH4 emissions present significant interannual variability and a joint CO-CH4 fluxes analysis reveals that tropical biomass burning probably played a role in the recent increase of atmospheric methane.


This study investigates the use of accounting policies contained in national standards or IAS that are not acceptable under US GAAP. Four policy areas (measurement of tangible assets, available-for-sale marketable securities and intangible assets; and the treatment of research and development expenditure) were considered for 506 listed firms from the United Kingdom (UK), Australia, France, Germany and Japan at 1999/2000. The main use of policies equivalent to IAS "options" was among firms from the UK and Australia. The study outlined how IAS adoption in 2005 (in the UK, France, Germany and Australia) and further IASB/FASB convergence activities will impact on policies currently used by firms from the sample countries. Keywords: International accounting convergence; international accounting standards; IAS; US GAAP; accounting policy choice; measurement of tangible, intangible and financial assets, research and development (R&D) expenditure. I. INTRODUCTION International convergence of accounting standards has emerged as a common goal of standard setters for financial reporting, with the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC), and subsequently the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), as the focal point for harmonization initiatives (McGregor 1999). The IASC has worked for many years to develop one set of standards suitable for use by companies throughout the world (IASB 2003a). The importance of the international standard setter in the global community setting increased significantly with IOSCO1 recommending the use of IAS2 for cross-border listings (IOSCO 2000) and the announcement by the Commission of the European Union (EU) that listed companies from all member states must use IAS in their consolidated financial reports from 2005 (IASC 2000a). The influence of IAS has also increased following corporate collapses in the United States of America (US) in 2001 - 2002. Company failures such as Enron and WorldCom have prompted a re-evaluation of the so-called rule-based approach of US GAAP1 and consideration of the principles-based approach of IAS (Schipper 2003). There has been considerable progress in recent years in harmonizing IAS and US accounting standards and practices (see Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu 2003a). The US has become more involved with international standard setting following the creation of the IASB in 2000 (IASC 2000b). The US's standard setting agency FASB4 is one of the IASB's eight liaison standard setters. FASB commenced the IAS/US GAAP convergence project to address outstanding differences between the two sets of accounting standards (IASB 2002) and to work towards common requirements in IAS and US GAAP. Some of the remaining key differences between IAS and US GAAP are the focus of this study. A number of IAS require a policy, or allow the use of an optional treatment (that is, they allow a choice of accounting policy), that is not acceptable under US GAAP. To achieve uniform global standards these differences must be reconciled. They present a challenge to the FASB and IASB who seek to produce standards that are conceptually sound and are acceptable to preparers and users of financial statements. The aim of this study is to investigate the use of accounting policies in national standards and IAS that are not acceptable under US GAAP to determine the extent to which policies equivalent to IAS "options" are used among an international sample of firms. Thus the study shows the number of firms which use policies that are harmoni/ed with both US GAAP and IAS, effectively using an "international benchmark" policy. In some cases, harmonization reflects national requirements that arc consistent with the common US GAAP/IAS policies. In other cases, firms can exercise policy choice so it is possible to observe the extent to which firms choose a policy that is consistent with both US GAAP and IAS as Barth and Clinch (1996) suggested they might. The topic of the study is important because of the resources being devoted to international convergence of accounting standards and the impact that changes in standards have on firms' reported earnings. …


The island communities celebrate the feast of St. John the Baptist (San Juan) every 24th of June by going out to the sea with their families. Despite knowing that their home would also be flooded while they are away, Servillana's family continue to cheerfully observe the long-standing tradition. They reveal their resilient spirit, assured by the thought that the tide will inevitably ebb at the end of the day.
Although the mass migration theory claims that communities living in low-lying islands will inevitably relocate away from their homes as a result of sea level rise, the communities of Tubigon so far continue living on their islands, striving to maintain their cultural practices and social relations despite the challenges of tidal flooding. This shows that, compared to sea level rise, the communities' sense of identity and attachment to place could play a greater role in their final decision to relocate or not.


Pulse tube coolers for space applications have been developed for many years at CEA/SBT. After successful developments of products in the 50 – 80 K range, our focus has changed to temperature below 20 K. Our work is based on compressors delivering about 100 W of mechanical input power to the cold fingers with a goal of several hundred milliwatts of cooling power. Most of the work performed to achieve such low temperature is based on an intercepted configuration, which permits us to focus our research on the low temperature stage. A review of the different phase shifting methods (including active phase shift and cold inertance) and the associated measured performances are presented. In parallel, studies on tube configuration and temperature at warm end have been undertaken. Experimental results are presented on a pulse tube cooler with minimum temperature below 15 K.


Bacteria and picophytoplankton can be decomposed by chlorine in disinfection process of drinking water treatment, and organic matters released from them would contribute to assimilable organic carbon (AOC). Therefore, the specific AOC formation potential of each picoplankton, i.e. bacteria and picophytoplankton, in the chlorination were evaluated and compared in this research. The nutrient state of bacteria affects onto its specific AOC formation potential. The specific AOC formation potential of bacteria starved, which expected to be similar state to natural bacteria in a reservoir, was 0.8 × 10−13 g/cell. It was half of that of bacteria in the logarithmic growth phase. The difference of specific AOC formation potential of bacteria between in the logarithmic growth phase and in the starving condition would be caused by the amount of cellular organic carbons. The specific AOC formation potential of picophytoplankton was 6.4 × 10−13 g/cell, and 8 times higher than that of bacteria starved. The AOC formed by chlorination of picoplankton should be considered for AOC control in summer season when both bacteria and picophytoplankton multiply.


Background and Purpose: According to the psychologists, the parents' actions have a significant impact on shaping up children's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between parenting styles and the religious attitude and mental health in female students of second grade secondary school in Babol. Materials and Methods: This descriptive correlational study was conducted on 336 female students in Babol, using simple random sampling method. For data collection, the General Health Questionnaire-28, Baumrind's Parenting Style Inventory, and Seraj's religious attitude survey were employed. The data were analyzed using descriptive analysis and Pearson product-moment correlation through SPSS version 16. Results: According to the results of the study, there was a negative correlation between the dictatorial parenting styles and mental health (r=-0.122, P<0.026). However, the authoritative (r=-0/036, P<0.515) and permissive (r=-0.049, P<0.375) parenting styles demonstrated no significant correlation with mental health. Furthermore, religious attitude was revealed to have a positive correlation between the dictatorial (r=0.183, P<0.001) and authoritative (r=0.142, P<0.009) parenting styles. Nevertheless, there was no significant relationship between the permissive parenting styles and religious attitude. Conclusion: As the findings of the present study demonstrated, parenting styles were effective in religious attitude and mental health of the female students. It is concluded that parents should be provided with necessary trainings in order to improve their parenting styles.


In recent years the industrial application of advanced control techniques for the process industries has become more demanding, mainly due to the increasing complexity of the processes themselves as well as to enhanced requirements in terms of product quality and environmental factors. Therefore the process industries require more reliable, accurate, robust, efficient and flexible control systems for the operation of process plant. In order to fulfil the above requirements there is a continuing need for research on improved forms of control. There is also a need, for a variety of purposes including control system design, for improved process models to represent the types of plant commonly used in industry.

Advanced technology has had a significant impact on industrial control engineering. The new trend in terms of advanced control technology is increasingly towards the use of a control approach known as an "intelligent" control strategy. Intelligent control can be described as a control approach or solution that tries to imitate important characteristics of the human way of thinking, especially in terms of decision making processes and uncertainty. It is also a term that is commonly used to describe most forms of control systems that are based on artificial neural networks or fuzzy logic.

The first aspect of the research described in the thesis concerns the development of a mathematical model of a specific chemical process, a pH neutralization process. It was intended that this model would then provide an opportunity for the development, implementation, testing and evaluation of an advanced form of controller. It was also intended that this controller should be consistent in form with the generally accepted definition of an "intelligent" controller. The research has been based entirely around a specific pH neutralization process pilot plant installed at the University Teknologi Petronas, in Malaysia. The main feature of interest in this pilot plant is that it was built using instrumentation and actuators that are currently used in the process industries. The dynamic model of the pilot plant has been compared in detail with the results of experiments on the plant itself and the model has been assessed in terms of its suitability for the intended control system design application.

The second stage of this research concerns the implementation and testing of advanced forms of controller on the pH neutralization pilot plant. The research was also concerned with the feasibility of using a feedback/feedforward control structure for the pH neutralization process application. Thus the study has utilised this control scheme as a backbone of the overall control structure. The main advantage of this structure is that it provides two important control actions, with the feedback control scheme reacting to unmeasured disturbances and the feedforward control scheme reacting immediately to any measured disturbance and set-point changes. A non-model-based form of controller algorithm involving fuzzy logic has been developed within the context of this combined feedforward and feedback control structure.

The fuzzy logic controller with the feedback/feedforward control approach was implemented and a wide range of tests and experiments were carried out successfully on the pilot plant with this type of controller installed. Results from this feedback/feedforward control structure are extremely encouraging and the controlled responses of the plant with the fuzzy logic controller show interesting characteristics. Results obtained from tests of these closed-loop system configurations involving the real pilot plant are broadly similar to results found using computer-based simulation. Due to limitations in terms of access to the pilot plant the investigation of the feedback/feedforward control scheme with other type of controllers such as Proportional plus Integral (PI) controller could not be implemented. However, extensive computer-based simulation work was carried out using the same control scheme with PI controller and the control performances are also encouraging.

The emphasis on implementation of advanced forms of control with a feedback/feedforward control scheme and the use of the pilot plant in these investigations are important aspects of the work and it is hoped that the favourable outcome of this research activity may contribute in some way to reducing the gap between theory and practice in the process control field.


This paper describes a Virtual Design Studio exercise involving three academic institutions – University of Hong Kong (China), ETH Zurich (Switzerland), and University of Washington, Seattle (USA) – whereby teachers and students, obviously on three different continents and in three different time zones, roughly eight hours apart, were working on a common design project using computer-aided design systems, video-conferencing and a web-based central database that managed and displayed all works throughout the process. The 24 hour design cycle is a metaphor for a more open and international approach to design, facilitated through computer networks. It implies a new form of collective authorship and distributed credits and thus deals with some of the essential challenges and opportunities the internet poses to creative disciplines.


We used a configurational comparative approach, the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), to study multiple causal interactions characterizing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Our data set is based on seven local case studies at three time periods. Results reveal a limited number of pathways describing the articulation of causes of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon under different contexts. Roads are often combined with biophysical conditions and the occurrence of extractive activities in the explanation of deforestation. This study reached conclusions via a reproducible and formal procedure that was applied at a regional scale while accounting for the geographic diversity of land-use trajectories.


Abstract In contrast to the situation in plants inhabiting most of the world's ecosystems, mycorrhizal fungi are usually absent from roots of the only two native vascular plant species of maritime Antarctica, Deschampsia antarctica and Colobanthus quitensis. Instead, a range of ascomycete fungi, termed dark septate endophytes (DSEs), frequently colonise the roots of these plant species. We demonstrate that colonisation of Antarctic vascular plants by DSEs facilitates not only the acquisition of organic nitrogen as early protein breakdown products, but also as non‐proteinaceous d‐amino acids and their short peptides, accumulated in slowly‐decomposing organic matter, such as moss peat. Our findings suggest that, in a warming maritime Antarctic, this symbiosis has a key role in accelerating the replacement of formerly dominant moss communities by vascular plants, and in increasing the rate at which ancient carbon stores laid down as moss peat over centuries or millennia are returned to the atmosphere as CO2.


Shallow-water marine sediments of the Kap Kabenhavn Formation at lat 82°30′ N, Perry Land, North Greenland, contain an abundance of well-preserved remains of terrestrial vegetation and invertebrate fauna indicative of a mosaic of forest tundra environments having similarities to present conditions in Labrador. The presence of foraminifera faunas, marine molluscs, and one mammal species (supported by studies of paleomagnetism and amino acid diagenesis) suggests an age of ∼2 Ma, at the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition. At this time, the arctic tree line was located 2500 km to the north of its present position in the northwest Atlantic region, and forest tundra vegetation existed in lowland areas bordering on an Arctic Ocean without perennial sea-ice cover.


The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether pregnancy affects endothelin (ET)-1-induced contraction, the density ofET receptors, and the ratio of receptor subtypes (ET(A) and ET(B)) in uterine smooth muscle in humans. We also investigated which ET receptor subtypes mediate ET-1-induced contraction in the human uterus. In uterine membrane preparations, (125)I-labeled ET-1 ((125)I-ET-1) binding sites (Bmax) in pregnant women did not differ from those in age-matched nonpregnant women (596.2 +/- 107.1 vs. 512.1 +/- 167.7 fmol/mg protein). The dissociation constant (Kd) in pregnant women did not differ from that in nonpregnant women. Competitive displacement experiments with (125)I-ET-1 binding to the membranes using BQ-123 (ET(A) receptor antagonist) showed that the percentage of ET(A) receptors in uterine muscle was significantly higher in pregnant women than in nonpregnant women (P < 0.01). The calculated ratios of ET(A) to ET(B) receptors in pregnant and nonpregnant uteri were 92:8 and 68:32, respectively. Combination treatment with BQ-788 (ET(B) receptor antagonist) completely inhibited the BQ-123-resistant component of (125)I-ET-1 specific binding. ET-1 caused dose-dependent contractions in isolated human uteri from both pregnant and nonpregnant women. The maximum response was markedly greater in pregnant women than in nonpregnant women, whereas pD2 (-log[EC50]) values did not differ between pregnant and nonpregnant uteri. In pregnant human uterus, BQ-123 (10(-6) M) significantly shifted the dose-dependent curve of ET-1 response to the right, whereas BQ-3020 (ET(B) receptor agonist) did not cause contraction. These results suggested that ET-1-induced contraction of the human uterus is mediated through only ET(A) receptors and that ET-1-induced uterine contraction in humans is markedly increased during pregnancy. In addition, the present study suggests that, although (125)I-ET-1 Bmax are not altered during pregnancy, the proportion of ET(A) receptors is increased and that of ET(B) receptors is decreased in the pregnant human uterus.


In this study, the influence of different chip breaker geometries on cutting forces and tool stresses developed during turning was investigated experimentally. For this purpose, turning tests in accordance with ISO 3685 were carried out on AISI 1050 steel using uncoated and coated cemented carbide cutting tools with different chip breaker geometries. The tests were carried out at different cutting parameters. The cutting forces were measured using a Kistler 9257B type dynamometer. The effect of cutting force variation on tool stresses was analysed using finite element analysis software (ANSYS). The analyses results showed that the coated tools were subjected to higher stresses than the uncoated ones. However, the stresses on the uncoated tools were found to be higher than those on the coated tools at the heavy cutting conditions. In addition, the chip breaker geometry was also found to result in variation in the stresses acting on the tools.


Pipe jacking is the remote placement of pipes underground by means of a tunneling machine that carries a train of pipe behind it. This is a relatively new technology in the United States, but has been used overseas for many years. The technique is also called microtunneling when smaller dia pipes, those too small to permit a man entry, are used. The principal advantage of this method is the lack of surface disruption. This minimizes both citizen objections and environmental problems, such as the destruction of trees in cut and cover work. Another important consideration is that the technique minimizes the need for dewatering, which can be both costly and time-consuming. There have been fewer than a dozen projects completed in this country and the biggest one to date is underway in Staten Island, New York. There 60 in dia sewer pipes are being jacked into place as deep as 80 ft in watery soils. Several projects are described, and some contractors and engineers using the method discuss jacking problems with U.S. manufactured concrete pipes. European manufacturers have developed special pipes with smooth sides and special joints for this purpose. Moles are costly, up to $900,000 for one machine and intermediate jacking stations add significantly to project costs, so it is important to have smooth pipes that minimize the thrust necessary to place the pipe. A new lightweight fiberglass pipe, also a European import, has been used at several projects and seems superior to concrete.


Most web application security testing efforts are concentrated around penetration testing which is an art based on hacker's psyche, thought process, and determination to exploit software vulnerabilities. But, does it yield a high level of confidence and sense of security in a developer's mind? The answer is a "may be" especially when the bad guy is obsessed with figuring out new exploits to hack your application. The web application developers have begun to think about intrinsic security that is, building security throughout the SDLC. We build applications based upon well-formed customer requirements. Why should we not, then, build our applications based upon the fundamental principles of security and then harden security from the hacker's perspective? This paper discusses an approach that aligns the web application security testing with the three basic principles of security namely, Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. The approach first establishes the requirements dictated by each element of CIA especially Confidentiality as it places the most stringent requirements on an application. Using the STRIDE model, the paper illustrate the most vulnerable processes in an application thus highlighting the test-intensive areas. It then deduces acceptance criteria and illustrates thought process to develop a test plan which spans over both static and dynamic (traditional testing) code analysis. The paper continues to demonstrate how to apply the DREAD model to prioritize the vulnerabilities found during testing to facilitate the removal of the most critical vulnerabilities first.


One of the besetting problems of the present age is the conflict between criticism and commitment. Those who hold strong convictions fear that rational criticism may corrode the moral and religious foundations of society. Advocates of rational critique tend to perceive people with strong convictions as fanatics. The Middles Ages was likewise a time when people were both deeply committed and relentlessly rational. In "Peregrinations of the Word," Louis Mackey examines the way important medieval thinkers dealt with the relation of faith and reason, in the hope that their example may assist contemporary society in harmonizing belief and critical vigilance."Peregrinations of the Word" consists of essays on five medieval philosophers: Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus. An essay on the tension between autobiography and theology in Augustine's Confessions is followed by a commentary on the dialogue of faith and reason in his "On the Teacher." A third essay shows how Anselm's "Proslogion" both constructs and deconstructs the ontological proof of God's existence. There is a discussion of Bonaventure's staging of the opposition between Aristotle and the scriptures in terms of the respective languages. Finally there is an examination of the ways Duns Scotus's distinctive positions on the Incarnation, the Immaculate Conception, and the Eucharist shape his philosophical views.Though each of these essays is an independent study, they have as a common theme the relation between faith and reason as understood in the Middle Ages; e.g., the conflict between the hermeneutic of reason and that of revelation in the construction of self; the dialectic of philosophical demonstration and devotional submission required of all discourse about God; and the resources available to medieval theology for resolving the conflict of nominalism and realism. Mackey maintains that medieval philosophy can only be understood in its theological and scriptural milieu. He has argued this point by showing how that milieu enabled these five thinkers to deal with a variety of philosophical issues. He concludes persuasively that religious beliefs and exegetical concerns did not shackle the medieval mind but rather liberated it and empowered it.Louis Mackey is Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin.


Confusions arise when 'stable' is equated with 'foundational.' Spurred on by the image of a house`s foundation, it is tempting to think that something provides effective support to the extent that it is rigid and stable. We will argue that when considering the role of perception in grounding our concepts, exactly the opposite is true. Our perceptual system supports our ability to acquire new concepts by being flexibly tuned to these concepts. Whereas the concepts that we learn are certainly influenced by our perceptual representations, we will argue that these perceptual representations are also influenced by the learned concepts. In keeping with one of the central themes of this book, behavioral adaptability is completely consistent with representationalism. In fact, the most straightforward account of our experimental results is that concept learning can produce changes in perceptual representations, the 'vocabulary' of perceptual features, that are used by subsequent tasks.

This chapter reviews theoretical and empirical evidence that perceptual vocabularies used to describe visual objects are flexibly adapted to the demands of their user. We will extend arguments made elsewhere for adaptive perceptual representations (Goldstone, Schyns, & Medin, 1998; Schyns, Goldstone, & Thibaut, 1998), and discuss research from our laboratory illustrating specific interactions between perceptual and conceptual learning. We will describe computer simulations that provide accounts of these interactions using neural network models. These models have detectors that become increasingly tuned to the set of perceptual features that support concept learning. The bulk of the chapter will be organized around mechanisms of human perceptual learning, and computer simulations of these mechanisms.


Recommender systems aim to provide users with personalised recommendations of items based on their preferences. Such systems have during the last 15 years been applied in many domains and have enjoyed an increased popularity both in research communities and commerce. In this thesis our overlying aim is to work towards creating a recommender system for tourists visiting Trondheim. We begin this work by addressing the cold-start user problem, which is the problem of giving high-quality recommendations to new users who the system has little or no information about. The problem is severe in the tourist domain where the majority of users are cold-start users. To properly address the problem, we present a systematic literature review of the recommender system literature identifying nine types of solutions to the cold-start user problem. We evaluate the solution types in context of the tourist domain, and find that using demographic user data is the best solution in this domain. We include this solution as a part when we propose a design of a location-aware Bayesian recommender system for tourists visiting Trondheim.


The proposal for a European Statute of association is a pioneering example of an attempt to find space for the third sector in European Union policy. It was first put forward some twenty years ago, but has failed to generate significant interest outside a small circle of promoters and objectors. The instrument has remained stalled in policy design procedures, and in 2005, it is far from clear that it will become part of the body of European law in the foreseeable future. This paper seeks to develop an explanation for this state of affairs. Theoretically, it emphasises the enduring importance of the policy's origins as an initiative developed, framed and designed by French policy actors categorically fused with the European level. The initiative is associated with a particular political and ideological approach, which has succeeded in sustaining momentum in its country of origin, but simultaneously created hostility amongst powerful actors in a small number of other countries. At the same time, it has left the majority of potentially interested countries in a state of puzzlement or indifference. Against this backdrop, the analysis stresses a small number of key features of the process which tend to constrain its resolution. First, the policy's promoters rely on its successful functioning as a symbol to mobilise support, but its economic character - including its bundling with other economie sociale Statutes - means that objectors and sceptics respectively reject and fail to empathise with it. This problem is bound up with its origins in a particular national tradition. Second, this difficulty is aggravated by its complex and necessarily legal-technical character, which impose limits on the extent to which its value and meaning can be straightforwardly communicated outside a charmed circle of experts. There is also considerable ambiguity concerning the extent to which it potentially directly or indirectly interacts with established domestic legal and regulatory frameworks, making the issue deeply political as well as technocratic in character. Third, being processed by the community method - at least under the current system of 6 monthly rotating Presidencies of the Council - policy design has suffered from stop-go problems, with a marked lack of continuity in terms of actor and institutional attention. Crucially, these difficulties have been perpetuated by the structural weaknesses of pro-Statute policy entrepreneurship evident both within the Commission and the relevant third sector bodies themselves in Paris and Brussels, and in the underdeveloped nature of links between this level and national level structures. Empirically, the argument is based upon research conducted at two levels. First, interview and documentary evidence gathered in Brussels in 1998/99, and research conducted in Brussels and Paris between 2002 and 2005 under the auspices of the Third Sector European Policy network. Second, evidence collated at the national level, also as part of TSEP, in the first half of 2003 - when the Statute was unexpectedly prioritised for processing during the Greek Presidency.


We describe initial experiments using meta-learning techniques to learn models of fraudulent credit card transactions. Our experiments reported here are the first step towards a better understanding of the advantages and limitations of current meta-learning strategies on real-world data. We argue that, for the fraud detection domain, fraud catching rate (True Positive rate) and false alarm rate (False Positive rate) are better metrics than the overall accuracy when evaluating the learned fraud classifiers. We show that given a skewed distribution in the original data, artificially more balanced training data leads to better classifiers. We demonstrate how meta-learning can be used to combine different classifiers and maintain, and in some cases, improve the performance of the best classifier.


PARENTS' INFLUENCE ON CHILD SOCIAL SELF-EFFICACY AND SOCIAL COGNITION Denise M. Gardner, B.A. Marquette University, 2011 Self-representations, such as self-efficacy, are salient factors in child development. Selfefficacy refers to the child's estimation of his/her ability to successfully complete a given task. Self-efficacy develops as children attempt various tasks and receive feedback about their performance. Social self-efficacy, one dimension of self-efficacy, refers to a child's estimation of his/her ability to form and maintain interpersonal relationships. Previous research has demonstrated a relationship between child self-efficacy and parent-child interaction variables. Social cognition refers to the manner in which children interpret and analyze social behavior. Social cognition develops through children's interactions with important others and may be related to social self-efficacy in that it allows children to create expectations about the reactions of others and the outcomes of their own behavior. The present study will examine the development of social self-efficacy and social cognition in the context of the parent-child relationship. Children ages 8 to 10 and their parents participated in the present study. Parents and children completed self-report measures assessing social self-efficacy, parenting style, and selfesteem. Parent and child social cognition was measured using the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale-Revised (SCORS-R), which is a structured method of coding responses to the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Ratings were made for four social cognitive scales: Complexity of Representations of People, Affective Quality of Relationships, Capacity for Emotional Investment in Relationships, and Understanding of Social Causality. There was a moderate, positive correlation between parent social self-efficacy and child social self-efficacy. These effects were maintained while controlling for the influence of parent global self-esteem. Additionally, there was a strong, positive correlation between parent and child scores for Affective Quality of Relationships. A hierarchical multiple regression model containing child gender, age, and sociocognitive scores, and parent social self-efficacy scores predicted a significant amount of the variance in child social self-efficacy scores. The current study demonstrates a statistically significant relationship between parent social self-efficacy and child social self-efficacy. Significant differences between parent and child sociocognitive scores suggest a developmental trajectory of sociocognitive skills. The results of the present study may contribute to a better understanding parental influence on child social self-efficacy and social cognition.


ABSTRACT The exudate of germinated spores of B. cereus IFO 13597 in 0.15 M KCl–50 mM potassium phosphate (pH 7.0) contained a spore-lytic enzyme which has substrate specificity for fragmented spore cortex from wild-type organisms (cortical-fragment-lytic enzyme [CFLE]), in addition to a previously characterized germination-specific hydrolase which acts on intact spore cortex (spore cortex-lytic enzyme [SCLE]) (R. Moriyama, S. Kudoh, S. Miyata, S. Nonobe, A. Hattori, and S. Makino, J. Bacteriol. 178:5330–5332, 1996). CFLE was not capable of degrading isolated cortical fragments from spores of Bacillus subtilis ADD1, which lacks muramic acid δ-lactam. This suggests that CFLE cooperates with SCLE in cortex hydrolysis during germination. CFLE was purified in an active form and identified as a 48-kDa protein which functions as anN-acetylglucosaminidase. Immunochemical studies suggested that the mature enzyme is localized on a rather peripheral region of the dormant spore, probably the exterior of the cortex layer. A gene encoding the enzyme, sleL, was cloned in Escherichia coli, and the nucleotide sequence was determined. The gene encodes a protein of 430 amino acids with a deduced molecular weight of 48,136. The N-terminal region contains a repeated motif common to several peptidoglycan binding proteins. Inspection of the data banks showed no similarity of CFLE with N-acetylglucosaminidases found so far, suggesting that CFLE is a novel type ofN-acetylglucosaminidase. The B. subtilis genome sequence contains genes, yaaH and ydhD, which encode putative proteins showing similarity to SleL.


Research from a variety of fields including psychology and linguistics have found correlations and patterns in personal attributes and behavior, but efforts to understand the broader heterogeneity in human behavior have not yet integrated these approaches and perspectives with a cohesive methodology. Here we extract patterns in behavior and relate those patterns together in a high-dimensional picture. We use dimension reduction to analyze word usage in text data from the online discussion platform Reddit. We find that pronouns can be used to characterize the space of the two most prominent dimensions that capture the greatest differences in word usage, even though pronouns were not included in the determination of those dimensions. These patterns overlap with patterns of topics of discussion to reveal relationships between pronouns and topics that can describe the user population. This analysis corroborates findings from past research that have identified word use differences across populations and synthesizes them relative to one another. We believe this is a step toward understanding how differences between people are related to each other.


Abstract Palaeomagnetic apparent polar wander (APW) paths from the world's cratons at 1300–700 Ma can constrain the palaeogeographic possibilities for a long-lived and all-inclusive Rodinia supercontinent. Laurentia's APW path is the most complete and forms the basis for superposition by other cratons' APW paths to identify possible durations of those cratons' inclusion in Rodinia, and also to generate reconstructions that are constrained both in latitude and longitude relative to Laurentia. Baltica reconstructs adjacent to the SE margin of Greenland, in a standard and geographically 'upright' position, between c. 1050 and 600 Ma. Australia reconstructs adjacent to the pre-Caspian margin of Baltica, geographically 'inverted' such that cratonic portions of Queensland are juxtaposed with that margin via collision at c. 1100 Ma. Arctic North America reconstructs opposite to the CONgo+São Francisco craton at its DAmaride–Lufilian margin (the 'ANACONDA' fit) throughout the interval 1235–755 Ma according to palaeomagnetic poles of those ages from both cratons, and the reconstruction was probably established during the c. 1600–1500 Ma collision. Kalahari lies adjacent to Mawsonland following collision at c. 1200 Ma; the Albany–Fraser orogen continues along-strike to the Sinclair‐Kwando‐Choma‐Kaloma belt of south-central Africa. India, South China and Tarim are in proximity to Western Australia as previously proposed; some of these connections are as old as Palaeoproterozoic whereas others were established at c. 1000 Ma. Siberia contains a succession of mainly sedimentary-derived palaeomagnetic poles with poor age constraints; superposition with the Keweenawan track of the Laurentian APW path produces a position adjacent to western India that could have persisted from Palaeoproterozoic time, along with North China according to its even more poorly dated palaeomagnetic poles. The Amazonia, West Africa and Rio de la Plata cratons are not well constrained by palaeomagnetic data, but they are placed in proximity to western Laurentia. Rift successions of c. 700 Ma in the North American COrdillera and BRAsiliano-Pharuside orogens indicate breakup of these 'COBRA' connections that existed for more than one billion years, following Palaeoproterozoic accretionary assembly. The late Neoproterozoic transition from Rodinia to Gondwanaland involved rifting events that are recorded on many cratons through the interval c. 800–700 Ma and collisions from c. 650–500 Ma. The pattern of supercontinental transition involved large-scale dextral motion by West Africa and Amazonia, and sinistral motion plus rotation by Kalahari, Australia, India and South China, in a combination of introverted and extroverted styles of motion. The Rodinia model presented here is a marked departure from standard models, which have accommodated recent discordant palaeomagnetic data either by excluding cratons from Rodinia altogether, or by decreasing duration of the supercontinental assembly. I propose that the revised model herein is the only possible long-lived solution to an all-encompassing Rodinia that viably accords with existing palaeomagnetic data.


First intraocular lens (IOL) implantation was performed by Dr. Harold Ridley. This first IOL was completely different from the IOLs we use today. IOL technology is one of the fastest developing technologies in recent years in ophthalmology. Monofocal in the bag IOL is the most commonly used IOL according to American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) surveys. In developing countries, use of this IOL are almost standart. There are many different monofocal IOL options on the market and determination of appropriate IOL must be individualized for each patient to reach perfect postoperative outcomes. The aim of this manuscript is to investigate different properties of IOLs on the market in light of evidence based medicine and to give hints about the individualizilation of the IOL selection. For this purpose, our manuscript emphasizes different properties of IOLs and does not refer any trademarks of IOLs.


The interdisciplinary field of regenerative medicine holds the promise of repairing and replacing tissues and organs damaged by disease and of developing therapies for previously untreatable conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, and renal failure. Derived from the fields of tissue engineering, cell and developmental biology, biomaterials science, nanotechnology, physics, chemistry, physiology, molecular biology, biochemistry, bioengineering, and surgery, regenerative medicine is one of the most influential topics of biological research today. Derived from the successful Principles of Regenerative Medicine, this volume brings together the latest information on the advances in technology and medicine and the replacement of tissues and organs damaged by disease. Chapters focus on the fundamental principles of regenerative therapies that have crossover with a broad range of disciplines. From the molecular basis to therapeutic applications, this volume is an essential source for students, researchers, and technicians in tissue engineering, stem cells, nuclear transfer (therapeutic cloning), cell, tissue, and organ transplantation, nanotechnology, bioengineering, and medicine to gain a comprehensive understanding of the nature and prospects for this important field. * Highlights the fundamentals of regenerative medicine to relate to a variety of related science and technology fields * Introductory chapter directly addresses why regenerative medicine is important to a variety of researchers by providing practical examples and references to primary literature * Includes new discoveries from leading researchers on restoration of diseased tissues and organs


Most agreement systems target a grammatical entity within the sentence, typically the subject but in some cases the object or the dative. There is another kind of agreement found in languages such as Souletin, a Basque dialect, that targets the hearer. I will look at this type of so-called allocutive agreement and pursue two main issues. First, although it targets the hearer, the form of the agreement is the same as the regular phi-feature agreement used for subject/object. This means that the allocutive agreement must be part of a probe-goal relation, leading to the question, where is the goal? I argue that something like Ross's Performative Analysis furnishes the second-person goal. Second, the distribution of the allocutive agreement is essentially the same as the politeness marking on the verb in Japanese, which leads to the hypothesis that, despite Japanese being characterized as a typical agreementless language, the politeness marker is, in fact, an implementation of second-person agreement. Moreover, this allocutive agreement in Japanese has a distribution that limits it to the root clause as originally conceived by Emonds (1969).


Despite significant
 positive developments within topics of biological anthropology, archaeology,
 and related academic areas in Latin America, we noted a lack of coordination
 and communication among them. Available publications provide syntheses within
 different areas of biological anthropology, yet few have attempted
 integration of the distinct subfields. We decided to address the development
 and current issues of most major areas of Latin American biological
 anthropology in a single volume with chapters by distinguished, experienced
 scholars who live and work in Latin America, are knowledgeable about the
 topics, have published extensively on them, and who were recommended by specialists
 within six geographical regions of interest: Brazil and northeastern South
 America, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, northwestern South America,
 and southern South America. Six subdisciplines within biological anthropology
 were defined for academic coverage: (1) biodemography and epidemiology; (2)
 bioarchaeology and skeletal biology; (3) paleopathology; (4) forensic
 anthropology; (5) population genetics; and (6) growth, development, health,
 and nutrition. Though these six subdisciplines overlap to an extent, each
 offers a distinct history of development and presents unique issues to
 address. Chapters generally cover topics of history, the state of knowledge,
 methodological perspective, and areas in need of additional research.
 Although the text is in English, abstracts in English, Spanish, and
 Portuguese are included.


The special section considers the relevance of a reflexive engagement with archives in psychology, and explores the value of archives as a resource for empirical inquiry and scholarship. The contributions offer reflective commentaries on the potential and limitations of working with (and within) archives. They also highlight the range of theoretical, methodological and practical issues that psychologists might want to take into account when engaging in this kind of inquiry, including the need to treat archives and archiving as set of societal practices through which the past is not only preserved, but also constructed, and constituted.


We examine application of relational learning methods to reinforcement learning in spatial navigation tasks. Specifically, we consider a goal-seeking agent with noisy control actions embedded in an environment with strong topological structure. While formally a Markov decision process (MDP), this task possesses special structure derived from the underlying topology that can be exploited to speed learning. We describe relational policies for such environments that are relocatable by virtue of being parameterized solely in terms of the relations (distance and direction) between the agent's current state and the goal state. We demonstrate that this formulation yields significant learning improvements in completely homogeneous environments for which exact policy relocation is possible. We also examine the effects of non-homogeneities such as walls or obstacles and show that their effects can be neglected if they fall outside of a closed-form envelope surrounding the optimal path between the agent and the goal. To our knowledge, this is the first closed-form result for the structure of an envelope in an MDP. We demonstrate that relational reinforcement learning in an environment that obeys the envelope constraints also yields substantial learning performance improvements.


CCNP Official Exam Certification Library Fifth Edition CCNP Certification Library is a comprehensive review and practice package for the four Cisco CCNP exams: BSCI, BCMSN, ISCW, and ONT. The four books contained in this package, CCNP BSCI Official Exam Certification Guide, Fourth Edition, CCNP BCMSN Official Exam Certification Guide, Fourth Edition, CCNP ISCW Official Exam Certification Guide, and CCNP ONT Official Exam Certification Guide, present complete reviews and ample opportunities to test your knowledge of CCNP exam topics. These authorized Cisco CCNP study guides are written by CCIE certified individuals and certified Cisco instructors, bringing years of teaching and consulting experience together in an ideal test preparation format. CCNP BSCI Official Exam Certification Guide, Fourth Edition, helps you evaluate your ability to use advanced IP addressing and routing in implementing scalability for Cisco integrated services routers (ISRs) connected to LANs and WANs. This book covers all the topics on the CCNP BSCI exam 642-901. CCNP BCMSN Official Exam Certification Guide, Fourth Edition, covers all the topics on the CCNP BCMSN exam 642-812 and helps you understand how to implement scalable multilayer switched networks. CCNP ISCW Official Exam Certification Guide covers all the topics on the CCNP ISCW exam 642-825 and tests your ability to secure and expand the reach of an enterprise network to teleworkers and remote sites with a focus on securing remote access and VPN client configuration. CCNP ONT Official Exam Certification Guide covers all the topics on the CCNP ONT exam 642-845 and examines your ability to optimize and apply effective quality of service (QoS) techniques for converged networks. Every chapter in each Cisco Press Official Exam Certification Guide focuses your study and tests your knowledge of the subject through specially designed assessment features. Do I Know This Already? quizzes assess your knowledge and help you decide how much time you need to spend on each section. The detailed Foundation Topics sections review the exam topics you will need to master. Each chapter includes a Foundation Summary section full of tables and concise reviews for quick reference. Challenging chapter-ending review questions and scenario-based exercises test your knowledge of the subject matter, reinforce key concepts, and ensure that you understand how all the technologies work together in a real-world environment. Finally, each books companion CD-ROM has a robust, customizable test engine that allows you to take practice exams that mimic the real testing environment. You can take a full sample exam, focus on particular topic areas, randomize answers for reusability, track your progress, examine your strengths and weaknesses, and refer to an electronic version of the book to review concepts. CCNP Certification Library, Fifth Edition, is part of a recommended learning path from Cisco that can include simulation and hands-on training from authorized Cisco Learning Partners and self-study products from Cisco Press. To find out more about instructor-led, e-learning, and hands-on instruction offered by authorized Cisco Learning Partners, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/authorizedtraining. Coverage of all four CCNP exams enables you to identify and fill your knowledge gap before the exam date. Prepare for the BSCI 642-901, BCMSN 642-812, ISCW 642-825, and ONT 642-845 CCNP BCSI Official Exam Certification Guide, Fourth Edition, coverage includes essential routing principles for designing and managing scalable network; EIGRP, OSPF, and IS-IS functions and operations; basic BGP configuration; multicast routing; Cisco IOS routing features, including redistribution, route filtering, and DHCP; and IPv6 addressing and the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 CCNP BCMSN Official Exam Certification Guide, Fourth Edition, coverage includes Spanning Tree Protocol concepts; virtual LAN (VLAN), VLAN trunking, and inter-VLAN routing; gateway redundancy technologies and protocols; wireless LAN topologies, components, connectivity, and standards; implementing a Cisco Unified Wireless Network; wireless client access; access layer voice concepts; and preventing and mitigating attacks against switched network security CCNP ISCW Official Exam Certification Guide coverage includes the Cisco hierarchical network model as it pertains to the WAN; teleworker configuration and access with broadband technologies; Frame mode MPLS; IPsec VPN implementations; Cisco device hardening; Cisco IOS Firewall features; and Cisco IOS Intrusion Prevention System(IPS) features CCNP ONT Official Exam Certification Guide coverage includes implementing a voice-over-IP (VoIP) network; implementing QoS on converged networks; specific IP QoS mechanisms for implementing the DiffServ QoS model; AutoQoS; wireless security; and basic wireless management 4 Companion CD-ROMs The four companion CD-ROMs contain test banks with a total of more than 800 practice questions, including simulation-based questions, and the full text in electronic format. This volume is part of the Exam Certification Guide Series from Cisco Press. Books in this series provide officially developed exam preparation materials that offer assessment, review, and practice to help Cisco Career Certification candidates identify weaknesses, concentrate their study efforts, and enhance their confidence as exam day nears. Category: Cisco PressCisco Certification Covers: BSCI exam 642-901, BCMSN exam 642-812, ISCW exam 642-825, and ONT exam 642-845 $179.99 USA / $224.99 CAN


Globalization is the "buzzword" in today's world and it has brought unprecedented impacts to the Asia Pacific region including the Philippines. The Philippines, although politically unequipped, has optimistically joined the "bandwagon" and is now struggling to reinvent its governance to cope with international and national pressures on globalization. Among these are the complexities and challenges in managing national affairs, institutionalization issues on globalization and the difficulties in reaping the fruits of participation and accountability. This article centers on two themes: the public sector capacity of the country to manage globalization, and participation and accountability in globalization. The role of the private sector and civil society in coming up with innovations and new approaches to deal with the changed situation is given emphasis. The article also tackles the policy implications of globalization and the lessons learned in the Philippines and in Asia at large.


A division vice president blows the whistle on corruption at the highest levels of his company. A young manager refuses to work on her boss's pet project because she fears it will discredit the organization. A CEO urges his board, despite push back from powerful, hostile members, to invest in environmentally sustainable technology. What is behind such high-risk, often courageous acts? Courage in business, the author has found, seldom resembles the heroic impulsiveness that sometimes surfaces in life-or-death situations. Rather, it is a special kind of calculated risk taking, learned and refined over time. Taking an intelligent gamble requires an understanding of what she calls the "courage calculation": six discrete decision-making processes that make success more likely while averting rash or unproductive behavior. These include setting attainable goals, tipping the power balance in your favor, weighing risks against benefits, and developing contingency plans. Goals may be organizational or personal. Tania Modic had both types in mind when, as a young bank manager, she overstepped her role by traveling to NewYork--on vacation time and on her own money--to revitalize some accounts that her senior colleagues had allowed to languish. Her high-risk maneuver benefited the bank and gained her a promotion. Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy weighed the risks and benefits before deciding to report a fellow officer who had plagiarized a research paper at a professional army school. In her difficult courage calculation, loyalty to army standards proved stronger than the potential discomfort and embarrassment of "snitching" on a fellow officer. When the skills behind courageous decision making align with a personal, organizational, or societal philosophy, managers are empowered to make bold moves that lead to success for their companies and their careers.


Liability in tort and the regulation of safety are considered as means of controlling accident risks using the instrumentalist, economic method of analysis.Four general determinants of the relative social desirability of liability and regulation are first identified--differences in knowledge about risky activities as between a social authority and private parties; the possibility that parties would not be able to pay fully for harm done; the chance that they would not face suit for harm done; and administrative costs. On the basis of analysis of these determinants, it is suggested that the choices observed to be made between liability and regulation are, when broadly viewed, socially rational: Notably, activities that create the risk of the typical tort and that are little regulated characteristically display features leading us to say that they ought to be controlled mainly by liability. And activities that are much regulated -- especially ones involving significant hazards to health or to the environment -- ought to be directly constrained in important ways, taking into account their usual features.


ABSTRACT One of the most fundamental questions surrounding the new Paris Agreement is whether countries' proposals to reduce GHG emissions after 2020 are equally ambitious, considering differences in circumstances between countries. We review a variety of approaches to assess the ambition of the GHG emission reduction proposals by countries. The approaches are applied illustratively to the mitigation part of the post-2020 climate proposals (nationally determined contributions, or NDCs) by China, the EU, and the US. The analysis reveals several clear trends, even though the results differ per individual assessment approach. We recommend that such a comprehensive ambition assessment framework, employing a large variety of approaches, is used in the future to capture a wide spectrum of perspectives on ambition. POLICY RELEVANCE Assessing the ambition of the national climate proposals is particularly important as the Paris Agreement asks for regular reviews of national contributions, keeping in mind that countries raise their ambition over time. Such an assessment will be an important part of the regular global stocktake that will take place every five years, starting with a 'light' version in 2018. However, comprehensive methods to assess the proposals are lacking. This article provides such a comprehensive assessment framework.


It is still unclear how the visual system perceives accurately the size of objects at different distances. One suggestion, dating back to Berkeley's famous essay, is that vision is calibrated by touch. If so, we may expect different mechanisms involved for near, reachable distances and far, unreachable distances. To study how the haptic system calibrates vision we measured size constancy in children (from 6 to 16 years of age) and adults, at various distances. At all ages, accuracy of the visual size perception changes with distance, and is almost veridical inside the haptic workspace, in agreement with the idea that the haptic system acts to calibrate visual size perception. Outside this space, systematic errors occurred, which varied with age. Adults tended to overestimate visual size of distant objects (over-compensation for distance), while children younger than 14 underestimated their size (under-compensation). At 16 years of age there seemed to be a transition point, with veridical perception of distant objects. When young subjects were allowed to touch the object inside the haptic workspace, the visual biases disappeared, while older subjects showed multisensory integration. All results are consistent with the idea that the haptic system can be used to calibrate visual size perception during development, more effectively within than outside the haptic workspace, and that the calibration mechanisms are different in children than in adults.


Background: Patients with coronary artery disease also have psychological disorders, such as stress and depression, especially if they underwent coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery; a type of bypass surgery that forms new routes around narrowed and blocked coronary arteries, permitting increased blood flow to deliver oxygen and nutrients to the heart muscle. Objectives: The current study aimed at comparing the effect of Islamic educations and breathing techniques with heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback therapies on HRV, psychophysiological coordination, and stress in patients undergoing CABG. Methods: A total of 60 patients who underwent CABG surgery were selected and randomly assigned to three equal groups of the Islamic educations, breathing techniques, and control. The experimental groups received an eight-week intervention as a two-hour session per week with home practices. The control group received only the routine hospital care. The stress, HRV, and psychophysiological coordination levels of the subjects were evaluated before and after the interventions in the three groups using depression, anxiety, and stress scale-21 for stress and emWave Desktop software for HRV and psychophysiological coordination. The data were analyzed using ANCOVA and descriptive tests with SPSS version 21. Results: The results showed a significant difference among the three groups in the increase of HRV and psychophysiological coordination and decrease of stress. Moreover, stress level reduced more in the Islamic educations group, while HRV and psychophysiological coordination levels increased more in the breathing techniques group. Conclusions: Based on the results, it is recommended using both Islamic educations and breathing techniques as well as HRV biofeedback therapies in rehabilitation programs for patients undergoing CABG in hospitals.


The development of a security community in the north of Europe has been made difficult by two trends that could be observed throughout the 1990s. On the analytical level, a shift of emphasis from compatible to common values has substantially altered the original conception of a security community. Applied to Europe's north, this has been accompanied by calls for adaptation by the former socialist part of the region to norms and values prescribed by the West. This may result in a weak internalization of norms and values that, in turn, may be insufficient for the development of the sense of community necessary to a security community. On the policy level, what has already been achieved in regard to a security community's core value - peaceful change - seems to have been frequently underestimated, in particular with respect to the achievements of the Russian Federation. Taken together, both trends have resulted in an underestimation of the steps already taken towards security community-building in the north of Europe.


Several thousand genes can be monitored simultaneously using cDNA microarray technology. To exploit the huge amount of information contained in gene expression data, adaptation of existing and development of new computational methods are required. Recently, the Fuzzy C-Means (F-CM) method has been applied to cluster cDNA microarray data sets. To overcome some shortcomings of F-CM and to improve its performance, it was embedded into a variable neighborhood search (VNS) metaheuristic. The methodology was used to cluster four cDNA microarray data sets. Results show that VNS+F-CM substantially improves the findings obtained by F-CM. This methodology may yield significant benefit in the improvement of decision support systems used for gene expression classification.


We use data from the GAMA and GALEX surveys to demonstrate that the UV upturn, an unexpected excess of ultraviolet flux from a hot stellar component, seen in the spectra of many early-type galaxies, arises from processes internal to individual galaxies with no measurable influence from the galaxies' larger environment. We first define a clean sample of passive galaxies without a significant contribution to their UV flux from low-level star formation. We confirm that galaxies with the optical colours of red sequence galaxies often have signs of residual star formation, which, without other information, would prevent a convincing demonstration of the presence of UV upturns. However, by including (NUV−u) and WISE (W2–W3) colours, and FUV data where it exists, we can convincingly constrain samples to be composed of non-star-forming objects. Using such a sample, we examine GALEX photometry of low-redshift GAMA galaxies in a range of low-density environments, from groups to the general field, searching for UV upturns. We find a wide range of (NUV−r) colours, entirely consistent with the range seen – and attributed to the UV upturn – in low-redshift red sequence cluster galaxies. The range of colours is independent of group multiplicity or velocity dispersion, with isolated passive galaxies just as likely to have blue UV-to-optical colours, implying significant upturn components, as those in richer groups and in the previous data on clusters. This is supported by equivalent results for (FUV−r) colours which are clear indicators of upturn components.


A facsimile first edition hardback of the Miss Marple books, published to mark the 75th anniversary of her first appearance and to celebrate her new-found success on television. When The Murder at the Vicarage was published in October 1930, little did the literary world realise that Agatha Christie, already famous for her early Poirot titles, was introducing a character who would become the best-loved female sleuth of all time. The 14 Marple books would appear at intervals over the next 49 years, with Miss Marple's Final Cases published in 1979, three years after Agatha's death. To mark the 75th anniversary of Miss Marple's first appearance, and to celebrate her renewed fortunes as a primetime television star, this collection of facsimile first editions will be the perfect way to enjoy these books in their original form - 12 novels and two short story collections. Reproducing the original typesetting and formats from the first editions from the Christie family's own archive copies, these books sport the original covers which have been painstakingly restored from the best available copies, reflecting five decades of iconic cover design.


Major hydropower projects, such as the grand ethiopian Renaissance Dam (geRD) in ethiopia, invite enquiry into the potential to increase the generation, transmission and distribution of power, how best to finance these infrastructures and how to balance them with the call for a sustainable development approach. Analyses of these projects make little reference, however, to the potential for interregional co-operation that goes beyond the construction of the dam and a focus on power pooling. Concentrating on the geRD, this paper identifies several challenges to energy co-operation between ethiopia and regional stakeholders. it argues that ethiopia's ownership of the geRD, the recent trade agreement between SADC, the Common Market for eastern and Southern Africa and the east African Community, and growing interest in regional power pooling have created a timely opportunity for greater energy co-operation. Such cooperation will be sustained by an increase in power supply in these regions, but also by shifting national perspectives on regional prospects.


Background: In 2015, large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNEC) was removed from the large cell carcinoma group and classified with small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) constituting two members of the high-grade neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) of the lung. However, the difference between high-grade LCNEC and SCLC in terms of clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis has not been fully understood owing to the rarity of LCNEC. Patients and methods: Patients with high-grade LCNEC and SCLC at initial diagnosis between 2001 and 2014 were identified using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program database. Clinicopathological characteristics between high-grade LCNEC and SCLC were compared using the Pearson's chi-squared test or Fisher's exact test. Differences in overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) were compared using the log-rank test, Cox models and propensity score matching (PSM) analysis. Results: A total of 1223 patients with high-grade LCNEC and 18182 patients with high-grade SCLC were enrolled. To the best of our knowledge, this study involved the largest number of high-grade LCNEC patients to date, with respect to a comparison between high-grade LCNEC and high-grade SCLC patients. There were significant differences in age, sex, race, laterality, SEER stage, nodal status, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, but not marital status, between high-grade LCNEC and SCLC patients. High-grade LCNEC patients had a better OS and CSS than high-grade SCLC patients. Subgroup analysis also confirmed the better prognosis of the high-grade LCNEC patients in the regional stage, distant stage and surgery subgroups. However, no significant difference in prognosis was observed between the two non-surgery subgroups, which was confirmed using PSM analysis. Furthermore, high-grade LCNEC patients showed different metastatic patterns to high-grade SCLC patients. Conclusion: These results suggested that high-grade LCNEC and high-grade SCLC were different histological types, and that a detailed classification for high-grade NETs of the lung was needed.


The U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to secure for limited times the exclusive right of authors to their writings. Curiously, those rights, as enacted in our copyright laws, have not included the right to be recognized as the author of one's writings. Yet, the interest in being identified with one's work is fundamental, whatever one's conception of the philosophical or policy basis for copyright. That is, whether one sees copyright as a personality right conferring on the author the ownership of the fruits of her labor, or as an economic incentive scheme to promote the production of works of authorship, or as a public works program designed to fill the public domain, (or, most accurately, as a combination of the three), giving credit where it is due is fully compatible with both the author-regarding and the public-regarding aspects of these goals. Most national copyright laws guarantee the right of attribution (or paternity); the leading international copyright treaty, the Berne Convention, requires that Member States protect other Members' authors' right to claim authorship. For a time, it seemed as if the Lanham Federal Trademarks Act provided partial coverage: by making false and confusing designations of origin actionable, the Act - many thought - afforded authors relief against misattributions of authorship. Even so, the trademarks law would only have reprimanded giving credit to one to whom credit was not due; it would not have afforded an affirmative right to claim authorship. In other words, giving incorrect credit may have been actionable; giving no credit was not. Last June, however, the US Supreme Court interpreted the Lanham Act to deny false attribution claims as to the origin of a communicative product. The Court thus drastically limited invocation of the trademarks law to enforce authors' interests in being recognized as the creators of their works. In the wake of Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox, what recourse do authors have in the US to claim authorship? I will first address the Dastar decision, to discern if any residue of attribution rights remains under the Lanham Act. Next, I will consider the extent to which the Copyright Act does, or might, afford attribution rights. That inquiry leads to the (despondent) answer that in the U.S. neither the copyright nor the trademarks laws establish a right of attribution generally applicable to all creators of all types of works of authorship. After examining other common law countries' recent enactments protecting attribution rights, I propose an amendment to the U.S. Copyright Act to add a federal right of attribution of authorship.


This briefing paper collates for the first time statistics about Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) across Scotland. The statistics presented here were originally published in individual MAPPA annual reports, which each report on a different geographic area of Scotland. The paper begins by outlining the MAPPA arrangements in Scotland and compares information about offenders managed through MAPPA in Scotland with those in England and Wales. The paper then focuses on a detailed examination of the data available about MAPPA in Scotland. The figures outlined in the paper are presented in the appendix, where all tables referred to in the paper can be found.


The widening participation agenda means that students will be entering degree courses with increasingly diverse needs, particularly with respect to the academic skills necessary for successful tertiary study in Australia. This paper presents findings from a mixed methods project investigating first year social work students' perceived role in academic skills and their development. Students expressed the perception that academic skill requirements and how they would be assessed should be made explicit, and identified a stigma associated with accessing study support services. The paper concludes that an intentional design strategy, such as embedding academic skills into the curriculum, helps bridge the different expectations between academics and students in the teaching and learning of academic skills, and hence constitutes a socially inclusive strategy to teaching professional courses such as social work, within higher education.  Recommendations to enhance the success and sustainability of such an initiative in the current higher education environment are offered.


ABSTRACT Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate nutritional status at the presentation of lymphoma as predictor for therapy outcome. Methods: We have analised 115 pts, m- 59/ f- 56, with newly diagnosed lymphoproliferative disorders( Jan 2012-mar 2014.) with curable modality of therapy. Pts with paliative treatment were excluded. We have analised influence of their nutritional status on therapy outcome:complete remission (CR), partial remission (PR), very good partial remission (VGPR), early death (ED), early relaps (ER) and stable dissease (SD) or progressive dissease (PD). Alse we have calculated risk according age, clinical stage and agressivnes of primary dissease. According to ECOG PS we divided pts in two groups:ECOG PS less than 2, and 2 and more. Nutritional status was screenined using NRS2002 (nutritional assement proposed by ESPEN) and MNA ("mini nutritional assesment"). We also had information about infiltration of gastrointestinal tract (GIT). Results: We had 95 pts with agressive lymphoma and 20 pts with indolent lymphoma. Median age was 60,5 (23-85)years, ECOG PS 0-1 47pts vs. 68 pts with ECOG PS 2 and more. We has 38pts in CS less than III and 77 pts with CS III and more. Median weight loss was 8,3(0-33)%, median BMI was 24,3 (16,7-38,6)kg/m2. Median percentage of weight loss per month was 2,7 (0-10)% . We have divided pts in two groups with loss until 3% per month or over 3% per month. As outcome of therapy 91pts achieved CR, VGPR or PR as favorable outcome and 24 pts had ED, ER, SD or PD. According NRS2002 we had two groups less than 3 vs. 4 and more. For MNA 11 and more vs. less than11. Binary logistic model for outcome previously explaned was significant (Wald 33,7, p Conclusions: Besides ECOG PS nutritional assesment can be predictor for therapy outcome in lymphoma pts. MNA screening was better predictor than NRS2002. Implementation of nutritional assesment in initial staging for pts with limforpoliferative dissease can reveal patients that need nutritional suport along with treatment. Study has limitation for implementing comorbidity indexes in model and larger group can be more conclusive. Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


Semiconductor photocatalysis has many, varied applications with frequent research in environmental areas such as pollution abatement, heavy metal recovery, water and air purification and the destruction of microorganisms as well as hydrogen production from water, corrosion inhibition and self-cleaning surfaces. However, another field with considerable scope lies in the use of photocatalysis for metal deposition. Photocatalytic metallisation of semiconductor surfaces is an established technology that has been employed predominantly to improve and enhance the photocatalytic properties of the semiconductor, a process known as doping. This review examines the use of semiconductor photocatalysis in driving conventional metal deposition techniques, in photocatalytic sensitisation of substrates prior to a further electroless deposition step and its potential utility in the initiation of electroless metal deposition for the formation of complete metal layers. The latter will focus particularly on the recently developed Photocatalytically Initiated Electroless Deposition (PIED) process, a one-step metal deposition process which utilises photocatalysis to directly metallise insulating substrate surfaces. The process is spatially selective and offers several advantages over traditional, non-photocatalytic techniques such as enhanced controllability and purity of the deposit as well as being operationally cheaper and environmentally cleaner with reduced material requirements and fewer preparation steps. PIED has been successfully utilised to produce layers of various metals including Ag and Pd on mesoporous TiO2 (m-TiO2) coated quartz glass slides and polymer substrates. Such metallised insulating materials have potentially wide applications in membrane and separation technology, electrode / solid electrolyte composites for energy storage and fuel cells.


To determine whether clinical outcomes differed by occurrence of severe hypertension in the international CHIPS trial (Control of Hypertension in Pregnancy Study), adjusting for the interventions of "less tight" (target diastolic blood pressure [dBP] 100 mm Hg) versus "tight" control (target dBP 85 mm Hg). In this post-hoc analysis of CHIPS data from 987 women with nonsevere nonproteinuric preexisting or gestational hypertension, mixed effects logistic regression was used to compare the following outcomes according to occurrence of severe hypertension, adjusting for allocated group and the influence of baseline factors: CHIPS primary (perinatal loss or high-level neonatal care for >48 hours) and secondary outcomes (serious maternal complications), birth weight <10th percentile, preeclampsia, delivery at <34 or <37 weeks, platelets <100×109/L, elevated liver enzymes with symptoms, maternal length of stay ≥10 days, and maternal readmission before 6 weeks postpartum. Three hundred and thirty-four (34.1%) women in CHIPS developed severe hypertension that was associated with all outcomes examined except for maternal readmission (P=0.20): CHIPS primary outcome, birth weight <10th percentile, preeclampsia, preterm delivery, elevated liver enzymes (all P<0.001), platelets <100×109/L (P=0.006), and prolonged hospital stay (P=0.03). The association between severe hypertension and serious maternal complications was seen only in less tight control (P=0.02). Adjustment for preeclampsia (464, 47.3%) did not negate the relationship between severe hypertension and the CHIPS primary outcome (P<0.001), birth weight <10th percentile (P=0.005), delivery at <37 (P<0.001) or <34 weeks (P<0.001), or elevated liver enzymes with symptoms (P=0.02). Severe hypertension is a risk marker for adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes, independent of BP control or preeclampsia co-occurrence. Clinical Trial Registration— URL: http://pre-empt.cfri.ca/. Unique identifier: ISRCTN 71416914. URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/. Unique identifier: NCT01192412.


Anthropomimetic robotics differs from conventional approaches by capitalizing on the replication of the inner structures of the human body, such as muscles, tendons, bones, and joints. Here we present our results of more than three years of research in constructing, simulating, and, most importantly, controlling anthropomimetic robots. We manufactured four physical torsos, each more complex than its predecessor, and developed the tools required to simulate their behavior. Furthermore, six different control approaches, inspired by classical control theory, machine learning, and neuroscience, were developed and evaluated via these simulations or in small-scale setups. While the obtained results are encouraging, we are aware that we have barely exploited the potential of the anthropomimetic design so far. But, with the tools developed, we are confident that this novel approach will contribute to our understanding of morphological computation and human motor control in the future.


If religion once seemed to have played out its role in the intellectual and political history of Western secular modernity, it has now returned with a vengeance. In this engaging study, Hent de Vries argues that a turn to religion discernible in recent philosophy anticipates and accompanies this development in the contemporary world. Though the book reaches back to Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, and earlier, it takes its inspiration from the tradition of French phenomenology, notably Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, and, especially, Jacques Derrida. Tracing how Derrida probes the discourse on religion, its metaphysical presuppositions, and its transformations, de Vries shows how this author consistently foregrounds the unexpected alliances between a radical interrogation of the history of Western philosophy and the religious inheritance from which that philosophy has increasingly sought to set itself apart. De Vries goes beyond formal analogies between the textual practices of deconstruction and so-called negative theology to address the necessity for a philosophical thinking that situates itself at once close to and at the farthest remove from traditional manifestations of the religious and the theological. This paradox is captured in the phrase adieu ( a dieu), borrowed from Levinas, which signals at once a turn toward and a leave-taking from God-and which also gestures toward and departs from the other of this divine other, the possibility of radical evil. Only by confronting such uncanny and difficult figures, de Vries claims, can one begin to think and act upon the ethical and political imperatives of our day.


Inadequate wastewater and fecal sludge treatment, disposal, and end use systems are arguably the greatest obstacles to achieving sustainable urban sanitation in unserved regions. Strategies for planning and implementing urban sanitation are continually evolving. Demand-driven sanitation with household and community participation is broadly thought to be the way forward. We are skeptical that more time and resources spent garnering household and community demand for sanitation will amount to the much-needed improvements in the treatment and end use components of sanitation systems. We propose shifting the incentives for sanitation from "front-end users" to "back-end users," thereby leveraging demand for the products of sanitation (e.g., treated wastewater, fertilizer, alternative fuel) to motivate robust operation and maintenance of complete sanitation systems. Leveraging the resource value of wastewater and fecal sludge demands a reuse-oriented planning approach to sanitation, an example of which is the Design for Service approach presented in this commentary.


This paper presents OpenXView, a model for open, large scale XML data integration systems, characterized by the autonomy of users that publish XML data on a common topic. Autonomy implies frequent and unpredictable changes to data and a high degree of structure heterogeneity. OpenXView provides an original integration schema, based on an hybrid ontology - XML schema structure model. We propose solutions for several important problems in such systems: easy access to data through a simple query language over the common schema, simple data integration view management when data changes and scalable query rewriting algorithms. This paper focuses on source identification for query rewriting in OpenXView, i.e. the computation of combinations of sources that can answer a user query. It proposes two algorithms for minimal source combinations, scalable with the number of sources. The first one is based on a general branch-and-bound strategy, while the second one, very efficient, is limited to queries whose number of attributes is no more than 8, sufficient in most applications.


Problem Statement: Didactic training is a major component of the professional development of future teachers. However, the problem of the formation of their professional culture has not been sufficiently elaborated. Purpose of Study: A critical analysis of the literature has showed significant weakness of the culturological component of future teachers' didactic training. Methods: It is the cultural approach that includes systemic, competence-based, personal, axiological and other approaches to professional development. Findings and results: The paper actualizes the concept of 'pedagogical responsibility' and considers the basic aspects of the professional and didactic culture of future history teachers. Conclusions and Recommendations: Under conditions of information abundance, an important feature of any human being is critical thinking as the ability to interpret and analyze facts, to build arguments and to draw conclusions.


This contribution develops a political as well as an educational approach to the concept of ›Stellvertretung‹ following Hobbes's ›Leviathan‹, Derrida's reading of Rousseau in his work ›Grammatology‹ and an ethnographic analysis. In this regard ›Stellvertretung‹ cannot simply be understood in terms of representation, delegation or advocacy with reference to a conclusive identification, function and purpose. Therefore this paper outlines how the concept involves hegemonic strategies in reference to the problem of justification, recognition and authority.


Agriculture still suffers huge financial losses each year from air pollution, but is now itself being examined with increasing vigilance as a source of pollution. Controlled fire has always been used by farmers for the preservation of food, for the destruction of pests and diseases, and for the disposal of wastes. Disposal of wastes—including straw, stubble, tree prunings, dead trees, and brush clearing on rangeland—produces smoke, odors, dust and air-borne particulate matter that is increasingly objectionable (but not necessarily harmful) to city dwellers as they continue to move out into rural areas. On the other hand, people-produced damage to farm crops from photo-chemical pollutants (resulting mostly from automobile exhaust) often occurs in the absence of analytical instruments that show first signs of air pollution. It is therefore important that there be continued surveillance of air pollution damage to agriculture, as well as measurement of amount and effects of agriculturally-produced pollution. This article discusses legislation, regulations and control aspects of the air pollution problem on a statewide basis, and offers a course of action for the future.


As technology improves exciting new services such as video phone become possible and economically viable but their deployment is hampered by the inability of the present networks to carry them. The long term vision is to have a single network able to carry all present and future services. Asynchronous Transfer Mode, ATM, is the versatile new packet -based switching and multiplexing technique proposed for the single network. Interest in ATM is currently high as both industrial and academic institutions strive to understand more about the technique. Using both simulation and analysis, this research has investigated how the performance of ATM switches is affected by architectural variations in the switch fabric design and how the stochastic nature of ATM affects the timing of constant bit rate services. As a result the research has contributed new ATM switch performance data, a general purpose ATM switch simulator and analytic models that further research may utilise and has uncovered a significant timing problem of the ATM technique.
The thesis will also be of interest and assistance to anyone planning on using simulation as a research tool to model an ATM switch.


Extracted from text ... 32 THE QUALITY EDGE September 2006
education
The five pillars of a
quality school (Part II)
Last month a description was given of the quality model in education for
schools. The model consists of five pillars: values, leadership, improvement
plans, communications and finally tools which include techniques. The
August article described the crucial importance of values in the model.
This article by Dr Richard Hayward will focus on the second and third
pillars of the quality model namely leadership and improvement plans.
Figure 1: The five pillars of quality education.
Leadership in the quality school
The traditional leadership style of ..


This paper examines the coding properties of benefaction in Toba, such as case marking, agreement and word order, as well as the alignment patterns in derived ditransitive clauses. Toba does not have non-derived ditransitive verbs with three obligatory arguments (agent, theme and recipient) but uses applicatives in order to incorporate more than two arguments in a clause. In clauses where the arguments appear as lexical noun phrases, the recipient or beneficiary argument of the ditransitive clause behaves as the patient of the transitive one, appearing in the same functional slot and behaving alike as to verb agreement. Only with the derived verb 'give' is it possible to clearly distinguish between a recipient and a recipient-beneficiary. Thus, following Kittila's (2005: 277) classification, Toba is a beneficiary-prominent language.


Simulation model is an easy way to build up models to represent real life scenarios, to identify bottlenecks and to enhance system performance. Using a valid simulation model may give several advantages in creating better manufacturing design in order to improve the system performances. This paper presents result of implementing a simulation model to design hard disk drive manufacturing process by applying line balancing to improve both productivity and quality of hard disk drive process. The line balance efficiency showed 86% decrease in work in process, output was increased by an average of 80%, average time in the system was decreased 86% and waiting time was decreased 90%. Keywords—line balancing, arena, hard disk drive process, simulation, work in process (WIP)


Creative Learning in the Primary School uses ethnographic research to consider the main features of creative teaching and learning within the context of contemporary policy reforms. In particular, the authors are interested in the clash between two oppositional discourses - creativity and performativity - and how they are resolved in creative teacher practice. The book complements previous work by these authors on creative teaching by giving more consideration to creative learning.

The first section of the book explores the nature of creative teaching and learning by examining four key features: relevance, control, ownership and innovation. The authors devote a chapter to each of these aspects, outlining their properties and illustrating them with a wide range of examples, mainly from recent practice in primary schools.

The second section presents some instructive examples of schools promoting creative learning, and how creative primary schools have responded to the policy reforms of recent years. The chapters focus specifically on:

how pupils act as a powerful resource for creative learning for each other and for their teachers;

how teachers have appropriated the reforms to enhance their creativity;

and how one school has moved over a period of ten years from heavy constraint to high creativity.

The blend of analysis, case-study material and implications for practice will make this book attractive to primary teachers, school managers, policy makers, teacher educators and researchers.


Is today's thinking conditioned by body-mind dualism? A rebellion against the biological order seems to have silently infiltrated our world view. Suicide bombers appear to share the fascination with destruction, of writers such as Mishima, Pasolini and Foucault. A liberation from the body to reestablish a - possibly mystical - union of soul and cosmos and an assertion of the mind's omnipotence appear to be common features of forms of behaviour that seem to be taken for granted in contemporary thought. Is the new misogyny, which rejects motherhood in the name of feminism, contributing in any way to these trends? This review of our society by a woman psychoanalyst - a non-medic and graduate of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris - presents a sharp and rigorous analysis of the strange and violent mechanisms that are erupting in the world today.


This dissertation, comprising five chapters, aims at describing and evaluating the current state of affairs in Uzbek Agriculture particularly its cotton sector, and comparing it with that of Pakistan.
Chapter I introducing the dissertation presents a general view of the Agricultural sector of Independent Uzbekistan. It also describes historical background to agricultural I organization and management on the territory of present day Uzbekistan. It briefly discusses the mode of agriculture and land tenure system during the nineteenth century and emergence of Collective Farms, State Farms, Private Holdings and Cotton Monoculture in the period of Soviet Uzbekistan.
Chapter 2 describes the organization and management of Uzbek agricultural sector during the Soviet era in considerable detail. Internal organization, legal and actual status, and income, expenditure of collective farms and state farms etc., have been explained. Development of cotton monoculture in Soviet Uzbekistan, to fulfil demands of Soviet Russia, its merits and pitfalls has been narrated. It also analyses the Soviet operative management system of the agricultural farms; its production and marketing policies.
Chapter 3 deals with the post Soviet Uzbek agricultural policy, structural changes,
 privatization process, agrarian reforms, input and output markets, water Management and evaluates the performance of agricultural sector since independence. The chapter also looks at the cotton sector management, role of government plans in cotton production, marketing and domestic consumption.
Chapter 4 provides an overview of Pakistan's agriculture, especially cotton sector, compares and contrasts Pak-Uzbek agricultural sectors, their cotton production, processing and trading policies. It also identifies fields of mutual interest Concerning cotton sector since it is vital for the economics of both.
Chapter 5 concludes that though Sovkhoz and Kolkhoz in Uzbekistan are transformed into Shirkat (cooperative[s]) but the change is more cosmetic than in substance. The Shirkat, main producers of cotton, are still subject to government plans and resemble more the old Soviet Kolkhoz management. The state still monopolizes agricultural land, which can neither be sold nor purchased. Thus, the need to create a real sense of ownership by distributing land amongst the productive Canners is emphasised. Moreover, creation of market institutions for the supply of inputs and output where prices are determined by the interaction of demand and supply are emphasised. This would motivate farmers and in turn increase productivity.