The Taiwan orogeny is young and presently very active. To improve understanding of the tectonics of Taiwan, especially the present of fluid of interconnected fluids such as water and partial melts in the Earth's crust, a transect across the central island of Taiwan by using broadband magnetotelluric (MT) soundings was made from 1995-2006. More than 80 MT stations were surveyed around this transect and a profile almost perpendicular to the regional strike of Taiwan was obtained. A 2-D constrained inversion was implemented and included static shift, topography and the ocean effect. This resistivity model is characterized by three main conductive anomalies located beneath the Coastal Plains, Central Range and Longitudinal Valley. Correlation of the conductors to the seismicity, the heat flow and surface geology of Taiwan suggest that the Coastal Plain conductor represents fluids, the Central Range conductor reflects both fluids and the effect of enhanced temperature, and the Longitudinal Valley conductor depicts the suture zone of the plates' boundary, respectively. These low resistivity zones could represent zones of reduced viscosity that may control the deformation of this active orogen. The GPS observations of a general motion in Taiwan area support this tectonic implication.


Abstract. The Otariidae (fur seals and sea lions) are an important and highly visible component of Southern Hemisphere marine mammal faunas. However, fossil material of Southern Hemisphere otariids is comparatively rare and often fragmentary. One exception is the Pleistocene sea lion Neophoca palatina King, 1983a, which is known from a nearly complete skull from the North Island of New Zealand. However, the phylogenetic affinities of this taxon are poorly known, and comparisons with other taxa have been limited. We provide an extensive redescription of Neophoca palatina and diagnose this taxon using a morphometric approach. Twenty measurements of the skull were collected for N. palatina, as well as for all extant Australasian otariids and several fossil Neophoca cinerea Perón, 1816. Using principal component analysis, we were able to segregate taxa by genus, and N. palatina was found to cluster with Neophoca according to overall size of the skull as well as increased width of the intertemporal constriction and interorbital region. N. palatina can be distinguished from all other Australasian otariids by its unusually broad basisphenoid. Discriminant function analysis supported referral of Neophoca palatina to Neophoca with very high posterior probability. These results confirm the treatment of Neophoca palatina as a distinct species of Neophoca and highlight the former broad distribution and greater tolerance for colder temperatures of this genus. These results also suggest that New Zealand may have played a pivotal role in the diversification of Southern Hemisphere otariid seals.


Honey is one of the most appreciated and valued natural products introduced to humankind since ancient times. Honey is used not only as a nutritional product but also in health described in traditional medicine and as an alternative treatment for clinical conditions ranging from wound healing to cancer treatment. The aim of this review is to emphasize the ability of honey and its multitude in medicinal aspects. Traditionally, honey is used in the treatment of eye diseases, bronchial asthma, throat infections, tuberculosis, thirst, hiccups, fatigue, dizziness, hepatitis, constipation, worm infestation, piles, eczema, healing of ulcers, and wounds and used as a nutritious supplement. The ingredients of honey have been reported to exert antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antiproliferative, anticancer, and antimetastatic effects. Many evidences suggest the use of honey in the control and treatment of wounds, diabetes mellitus, cancer, asthma, and also cardiovascular, neurological, and gastrointestinal diseases. Honey has a potential therapeutic role in the treatment of disease by phytochemical, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and antioxidant properties. Flavonoids and polyphenols, which act as antioxidants, are two main bioactive molecules present in honey. According to modern scientific literature, honey may be useful and has protective effects for the treatment of various disease conditions such as diabetes mellitus, respiratory, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, and nervous systems, even it is useful in cancer treatment because many types of antioxidant are present in honey. In conclusion, honey could be considered as a natural therapeutic agent for various medicinal purposes. Sufficient evidence exists recommending the use of honey in the management of disease conditions. Based on these facts, the use of honey in clinical wards is highly recommended.


The chapter examines the relationship between innovation and HRM, through the literature on recognising, leveraging and releasing the creative and innovative behaviours of employees across specialisms, and across levels of the hierarchy. It develops a four-stage conceptualisation of innovation: problem identification; idea generation; idea evaluation; and implementation. It identifies two areas that would benefit from more focused research. First, distinguishing between environments where creativity and innovation is overtly required, as opposed to job roles where creative outcomes, while valuable, are not expressly called for as part of the job. Second, examining the effect that HRM has on individual creativity (idea generation) and the more collective process of innovation implementation. It examines the process of bottom-up emergence, and the ways in which HRM can support and underpin employees' efforts not just to generate ideas, but also to work with others to foster their implementation.


In this study, we evaluated concentrations of twelve essential and non-essential elements (As, Cd, Co, Cu, Pb, Mg, Mn, Hg, Mo, Se, Ag, and Zn) in tissues of ringed seals (Phoca hispida) and polar bears (Ursus maritimus) of arctic Alaska (USA). All samples were collected between 1995–97 in conjunction with subsistence harvests. The essential elements are reported to help develop reference ranges for health status determination and to help assess known or suspected interactions affecting toxicoses of cadmium (Cd) and mercury (Hg). In some tissues, Cd, Hg, and selenium (Se) were present at concentrations that have been associated with toxicoses in some domestic animals. Nevertheless, tissue levels of all elements were within ranges that have been reported previously in other pinnipeds and polar bears. Significant associations included: Cd with Zn or Cu; Cu with Zn or Ag; and Hg with Se, Zn, or Cu. This study found hepatic Hg: Se molar ratios to be lower than unity and different between the two species. Based upon significant differences in mean tissue elemental concentrations for polar bear versus ringed seal, we concluded that biomagnification factors (bear/seal) were significant for: Cu in liver and muscle; Pb in kidney; Se in kidney and muscle; Zn in liver and muscle; and Hg in liver. Possible explanations for observed elemental correlations (i.e., interactions) and ancillary mechanisms of Cd and Hg detoxification are discussed.


Yttria (3 mol %)-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) thin films were deposited using radio frequency (rf) magnetron sputtering. The YSZ thin films were deposited over a range of temperatures (22–300 °C), pressures (5–25 mTorr), and gas compositions (Ar∕O ratio). Initial studies characterized a select set of properties in relation to deposition parameters including: refractive index, structure, and film stress. X-ray diffraction (XRD) showed that the films are comprised of mainly monoclinic and tetragonal crystal phases. The film refractive index determined by prism coupling, depends strongly on deposition conditions and ranged from 1.959 to 2.223. Wafer bow measurements indicate that the sputtered YSZ films can have initial stress ranging from 86 MPa tensile to 192 MPa compressive, depending on the deposition parameters. Exposure to ambient conditions (25  °C, 75% relative humidity) led to large increase (∼100MPa) in the compressive stress of the films. Environmental aging suggests the change in compressive stress ...


A lack of infrastructure development is seen as one of the leading obstacles for India in realizing its economic growth potential. Private capital will be needed to finance the significant program of infrastructure development for India to grow domestically and position itself globally. Infrastructure spending in India is particularly politicized and could gain efficiencies through a new approach utilizing global capital markets. Newly developed financial innovations can be used to enable infrastructure financing in a way that reduces agency costs, information gaps, and improper incentives. The invisible hand of global capital markets may prove more capable in setting infrastructure project agendas of the future that span varied administrations and political agendas.


This document describes an experimental investigation into dense collections of hard spherical particles just large enough to be studied using a light microscope. These particles display colloidal properties, but also some similarities with granular materials. We improve the quantitative analysis of confocal micrographs of dense colloidal systems, which allows us to show that methods from simulations of granular materials are useful (but not sufficient) in analysing colloidal systems, in particular colloidal glasses and sediments. Collections of spheres are fascinating in their own right, but also make convincing models for real systems. Colloidal systems undergo an entropy-driven fluid-solid transition for hard spheres and a liquid-gas transition for suitable inter-particle attraction. Furthermore, experimental colloidal systems display a so far not well-understood glass transition at high densities, so that the equilibrium state is not achieved. This may be due to limited experimental timescales, but experiments under reduced gravity (both using the Space Shuttle and densitymatching solvents) suggest that it is not. Most colloidal studies have used scattering (i.e. non-microscopical) techniques, which provide no local information. Microscopy (particularly confocal) allows individual particles and their motion to be followed. However, quantitative microscopy of densely-packed, solidlyfluorescent particles, such as colloidal glasses, is challenging. We report, to our knowledge for the first time, a quantitative measure of confidence in individual particle locations and use this measure in an iterative best-fit procedure. This method was crucial for the investigation of the colloidal samples reported in this thesis. One of the disadvantages of microscopy is that it requires particles too large to be truly colloidal; gravity is no longer negligible. The particles used here rapidly sediment to form solid "plugs", which are supposedly "random close packed" (RCP). At least in some cases, this is not the case, since some particles remain free to move. This observation, as well as some literature results, suggest that gravity has some influence on the structure of the sediment. In this document we consider some ideas from literature not normally considered in colloidal studies. Firstly, we discuss the RCP state, and the preferred Maximally Random Jammed state. Secondly, we borrow a technique designed to identify structures known as bridges in simulations of granular materials. Finding bridges, i.e. structures stable against gravity, in colloidal samples is the primary aim of this thesis. Gravity is important in colloidal sphere packings both in sediments and in glasses; its effect is not known but the best available candidate is bridging. The basic results of this analysis, the bridge size distributions, are close to those for granular systems, but differ little for samples of different volume fractions. We identify important stages of the analysis which require more investigation. Whilst questioning the usefulness of the bridge properties, we identify some related packing properties which show interesting trends. No theoretical predictions exist for these quantities. We investigated initially a non-density-matched system, but compare our results with a nearly density-matched system. The results from both systems are similar, despite the particles apparently acquiring a charge in the latter case. This thesis shows that reliable confocal microscopy of very dense systems of solidly-fluorescent particles is possible, and provides a range of unreported properties of dense sedimenting and sedimented nearly-Brownian sphere packings. It provides several suggestions for further analysis of these experimental systems, as well as some to be performed by those who simulate granular matter.


The problem of part supplier selection is a major concern for all manufacturers when seeking to enhance the products' quality and productivity. The objective of this paper is to propose an integrated genetic algorithm based grey goal programming (G3) approach to solve the part supplier selection problem. The main factor in part supplier selection is the assembly relation of the parts so as to find the suitable suppliers combination for the parts of a product. We first identify the main factors affected on supplier selection. We then present a grey-based goal programming model to work as the fitness function to evaluate the suppliers with respect to the total deviation the factors have from the ideal values. Since the objective is to find the best solution, a genetic algorithm is used to solve this problem for faster and better evaluation. The novelty of this integrated approach is to apply both qualitative and quantitative factors at once in one model and to use the grey theory to cover the lack of information of qualitative factors in order to find a solution in a near real situation.


There is an increased incidence of congenital heart disease among children with Down syndrome. The most common lesion is complete atrioventricular septal defect (cAVSD). Failure to recognise this defect early in life can have very serious consequences. Hence, in this paper, we have chosen to focus more on this lesion than on others. Children with cAVSD and already irreversible pulmonary vascular disease continue to present in paediatric cardiology clinics too late for corrective surgery to be carried out. The child's future health, and indeed survival, may be severely compromised by late diagnosis. This suggests that the importance of diagnosis in the first few weeks of life is not universally recognised.

The early recognition of cAVSD and other major shunt lesions is of paramount importance, but despite this, we explain that urgent indiscriminate referral to paediatric cardiologists of all newborns with the syndrome is not necessary. We will outline surveillance principles that should allow child health teams to develop effective screening protocols appropriate to local service provision and level of clinical experience and specialist interest available.

In a population not affected by prenatal diagnosis, between 40% and 60% of babies born with Down syndrome have congenital heart defects. Of these, 30%–40% are cAVSDs.1,–,3 Conversely, approximately 80% of all cAVSDs occur in children with Down syndrome.4,–,6

With regard to the prevalence of other cardiac anomalies, we have not found any contemporary studies that describe, in samples of reasonable size, the frequency and range of lesions identified by echocardiography. There are several earlier studies from which we have chosen, as an illustration, two population-based studies.1 2 (table 1).

View this table:

Table 1
Cardiac lesions in children with Down syndrome

In these two studies, because very few lesions were identified by echocardiography, findings from clinical examination, …


Background Scholars are bringing much-needed attention to the persistent problem of academic underachievement among African American children in the United States, who continue to lag behind White school children in all socioeconomic groups. This is especially true of impoverished African Americans. Although some link these outcomes to poor student attitudes, recent scholarship casts doubt on the prevalence and significance of the role of adversarial attitudes on school outcomes. In addition, most of the extant research of student attitudes among African American students reflects research with middle school and high school students. We know little about the attitudes of elementary-age African American children living in low-income neighborhoods. Focus of Study This qualitative study aims to address this gap in our knowledge by examining whether oppositional attitudes toward learning prevail among African American children attending two low-income urban elementary schools in California. We also examine how what African American children say they want in teachers relates to what we document as good teaching. Research Design This study used a qualitative design that included face-to-face interviews with children, participant observation in the school and after-school labs, and videotape of classroom interactions in after-school sites. We helped establish the after-school sites as pedagogical laboratories designed to examine how less skilled teachers learn to improve their practice and how children learn with an exemplary teacher. Data Analysis We content-analyzed interview data to examine how children defined and described effective and ineffective teaching. We also used content analysis of participant observations to assess school climate and institutional culture. We developed a code manual to content-analyze videotaped lab data to identify characteristics of the after-school lab that supported positive and productive classroom behaviors in the students. Conclusions We conclude that low-come urban children do want to learn, regardless of their actual demonstrated ability levels, and they appear to be resilient in this respect. We found that elementary school-age low-income African American children are aware of strengths and deficiencies in their teachers and can name each explicitly. Even within controlling or negative school environments that reflect a pervasive culture of low expectations, they overwhelmingly expressed a desire for teachers who treated them well, helped them learn, and who were fair and caring toward them. Moreover, given the opportunity to work with a teacher who worked with them in ways consistent with what they looked for in good teachers, the children in our study responded with productive classroom behaviors.


This is a novel which interweaves the creative and critical in new ways, offering an account of birds, humans, the banking crisis and climate change, literature and literary theory, from multiple perspectives.

Silas and Ethel Woodlock have retired from the business of undertaking to spend their twilight years by the sea but things are not as easy as they'd hoped, and it's all to do with herring gulls. Stephen Osmer and Lily Lynch are a glamorous young couple on the London literary scene. While Lily pursues an ambitious public art project about 'cinematic intentions', we encounter Osmer's brilliance as an arts journalist, writing a dangerously provocative essay about social justice and the banking crisis, as well as a diatribe about two people called Nicholas Royle, one a novelist, the other a literary critic.

Nicholas Royle's magnificent new novel combines a page-turning story about literary theft, adultery and ambition with a poetic and moving investigation into our relationship to birds and to the environment. It is exquisitely inventive and very funny, juxtaposing the stuff of scandalous gossip with scathing reports of how the world has gone to hell in a handcart. Playfully commenting on the main story are 17 interlinked 'Hides'. Beautifully illustrated by artist Natalia Gasson, these short texts — primarily about birds, ornithology and films (including Hitchcock's) — give us a different view of the themes that fly out of the novel: the messy business of being human, the fragility of the physical world we inhabit and the nature of writing itself.

Compelling, audacious and dazzling in its linguistic playfulness and formal invention, An English Guide to Birdwatching explores the fertile hinterland between fact and fiction. In its focus on birds, climate change, the banking crisis, social justice and human migration, it is intensely relevant to wider political concerns; in its mischievous wit and wordplay, and post-modern (or 'post-fiction') sensibility, it pushes the boundaries of what a novel might be.


There is a rapid growth in the number of applications using sensitive and personal information on the World Wide Web. This growth creates an urgent need to maintain the anonymity of the participants in many web transactions and to preserve the privacy of their sensitive data during data dissemination over the web. First, maintaining the anonymity of users on the World Wide Web is essential for a number of web applications. Anonymity cannot be assured by single interested individuals or an organization but requires participation from other web nodes owned by other entities. Second, preserving the privacy of sensitive data is another very important issue in web transactions. Today, exchanging and sharing personal data between various participants in web transactions endangers privacy. In this article, we discuss various research directions and challenges that need to be addressed while trying to accomplish our goal of maintaining the anonymity of participants and preserving the privacy of sensitive data in web transactions. To maintain anonymity of participants in a web transaction, we propose a method based on the modi fied form of the club mechanism with economic incentives, a solution which rests upon the Prisoner's Dilemma approach. We compare our approach to other well-known dat a-sharing approaches such as Crowds, Tor, Tarzan and LPWA. To maintain the privacy of sensitive data, we propose a solution based on privacy-preserving data dissemination (P2D2). We also present a solution to implement our approach using Semantic Web Rule Languages and Jena—a Java-based inference engine.


Cr3+ doped MgO was spectroscopical investigated. From the absorption spectrum, the crystal field and Racah parameters were determined, giving Dq = 1615cm-1, B = 586cm-1, and C = 3249 cm-1, thus Dq/B = 2.75 and C/B = 5.54. The emission covers the spectral region between 700nm - 1100nm, the emission lifetime at room temperature is 30μs. The peak emission cross section at 880nm was determined to be » 4´10^-20 cm2. Continuous wave laser oscillation of Cr3+:MgO at room temperature was realized under argon-ion laser pumping at 476nm. The free running laser wavelength was 840nm. Threshold pump power was 80mW, maximum output power was 20mW.


In dynamically typed programming languages, type errors can occur at runtime. Executing the test suites that often accompany programs may provide some confidence about absence of such errors, but generally without any guarantee. We present a program analysis that can check whether a test suite has sufficient coverage to prove a given type-related property, which is particularly challenging for program code with overloading and value dependent types. The analysis achieves a synergy between scalable static analysis and dynamic analysis that goes beyond what can be accomplished by the static analysis alone. Additionally, the analysis provides a new coverage adequacy metric for the completeness of a test suite regarding a family of type-related properties. Based on an implementation for Dart, we demonstrate how such a hybrid static/dynamic program analysis can be used for measuring the quality of a test suite with respect to showing absence of type errors and inferring sound call graph information, specifically for program code that is difficult to handle by traditional static analysis techniques.


This paper represents an attempt to seek a better way to measure poverty in Malaysia. Many studies,including government published figures employ the head-count ratio as the index of poverty. However,this measure is a narrow measure of povety. Specifically, it ignores the distribution of income among the poor, and hence has its limitation. Here, besides the usual simple head-count ratio (H) that was reported in most previous studies as well as in government documents, better poverty measures were employed - the poverty-income gap ratio (I), Sen (S), Clark, Hemming and Ulph Index (P*) and Foster, Greer and Thorbecke (FGT) indices of poverty. These indices introduce a welfare function that is sensitive to the distribution of income among the poor. Thus, they provide a richer picture of the nature of poverty and thus could be used for policy design with a greater level of confidence. Furthermore, the
FGT index of poverty was decomposed to examine the contribution of different groups to total poverty. These indices were calculated using the Malaysian Family Life Survey (MFLS) data.


Biodiversity is a heritage of life that could hold the information needed for the wellbeing of human kind. The challenge of biodiversity preservation was addressed by various management solutions, the newest being the adaptive management. The paper aims to give insights for the application of adaptive management and to reveal its potential for increasing the effectiveness of ecosystem management in the Danube Delta. Carefully designed adaptive management action plans could allow important improvements in the information base that support decisions related to reed valuation


In this essay, Deleuze and Guattari's ideas as discussed in their book, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, are critically examined with a view to determining the merits of their ideas as a basis for a philosophy of music education. Three principal questions are at the heart of this analysis: What are Deleuze and Guattari asking us to believe? What is our assessment of their contributions and detractions? What are the implications of our analysis for music education? Our approach is dialogical in juxtaposing an analysis of their ideas construed more broadly with an examination of selected metaphors that they use, and thereby combining literal and figurative thought. While their thinking constitutes a limited and flawed basis for a philosophy of music education, they prompt insights that are valuable for music education thought and practice.


Speculative execution is a promising approach for exploiting parallelism in many programs, but it requires efficient schemes for detecting conflicts between concurrently executing threads. Prior work has argued that checking semantic commutativity of method invocations is the right way to detect conflicts for complex data structures such as kd-trees. Several ad hoc ways of checking commutativity have been proposed in the literature, but there is no systematic approach for producing implementations.
 In this paper, we describe a novel framework for reasoning about commutativity conditions: the commutativity lattice. We show how commutativity specifications from this lattice can be systematically implemented in one of three different schemes: abstract locking, forward gatekeeping and general gatekeeping. We also discuss a disciplined approach to exploiting the lattice to find different implementations that trade off precision in conflict detection for performance. Finally, we show that our novel conflict detection schemes are practical and can deliver speedup on three real-world applications.


Soybean rust is a highly mobile infectious disease and can be transmitted across short and long distances. Soybean rust is estimated to cause yield losses that can range between 1%-25%. An analysis of spatio-temporal infection risks within the United States is performed through the use of a unique data set. Observations from over 35,000 field-level inspections between 2005 and 2007 are used to conduct a county-level analysis. Statistical inferences are derived by employing zero-inflated Poisson and negative binomial models. In addition, the model is adjusted to account for potential endogeneity between inspections and soybean rust finds. Past soybean rust finds and inspections in the county and in the surrounding counties, weather and overwintering conditions, and plant maturity groups and planting dates are all found to be significant factors determining soybean rust. These results are then used to accordingly price annual insurance contracts or indemnification programs that cover soybean rust damages.


Colloidal nanocrystals (NCs, i.e., crystalline nanoparticles) have become an important class of materials with great potential for applications ranging from medicine to electronic and optoelectronic devices. Today's strong research focus on NCs has been prompted by the tremendous progress in their synthesis. Impressively narrow size distributions of just a few percent, rational shape-engineering, compositional modulation, electronic doping, and tailored surface chemistries are now feasible for a broad range of inorganic compounds. The performance of inorganic NC-based photovoltaic and light-emitting devices has become competitive to other state-of-the-art materials. Semiconductor NCs hold unique promise for near- and mid-infrared technologies, where very few semiconductor materials are available. On a purely fundamental side, new insights into NC growth, chemical transformations, and self-organization can be gained from rapidly progressing in situ characterization and direct imaging techniques. New phenomena are constantly being discovered in the photophysics of NCs and in the electronic properties of NC solids. In this Nano Focus, we review the state of the art in research on colloidal NCs focusing on the most recent works published in the last 2 years.


Purpose: This study examined whether and how Ignatian ideals influence faculty participation in role expectations as outlined in the Faculty Self-Assessment and Professional Development Plan of Rueckert-Hartman College of Health Professions (RHCHP) at Regis University (RU). The study's aim was fourfold: (a) determine faculty perceptions of whether and how RU's core Ignatian values influence participation in role expectations, (b) identify desires related to further exploration of core Ignatian values, (c) identify potential needs of faculty development regarding the RU mission of guiding faculty role expectations,  and (d) identify service-related activities important to faculty. Participants: Faculty and Deans were invited to participate. Method: An exploratory descriptive methodology was used. Likert scale survey data were analyzed according to qualitative content analysis and quantitative frequency measures. Results: Survey results revealed that care of the person , men and women for others , and contemplatives in action were perceived to be most influential among the faculty role expectations, while finding God in all things was perceived to be least influential. Conclusions: The faculty perceived that most Ignatian values are important to role expectations. Faculty express the need for education related to implementation of these values in their faculty roles.


Autonomous management capability is the main pillar for paving Zero-touch Networks and efficiently deliver and operate use cases under the light of 5G requirements. To this end, Closed Control Loop (CCL), Intent-Based Networking (IBN), and Machine Learning (ML) are regarded as enablers to automatically executed all operational processes, ideally without human intervention. In this context, the ETSI Zero-touch network and Service Management (ZSM) framework specifies an end-to-end network and service management reference architecture for managing the full lifecycle of services. However, the whole process of service monitoring is not yet well-consolidated in ETSI ZSM. In this work, we propose the Monitoring Model Generator (MMG) component to automatically construct templates for service monitoring. MMG implements a novel methodology where service deployment models and standard information models are used as inputs to generate a high-level monitoring template, called Service Monitoring Model (SMM) and built upon an ontology-based schema based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF) vocabulary. We present a proof of concept implementation along with an experimental functional validation of the MMG and using RDF data in turtle syntax and format. The resulting monitoring models are then used to define actual monitoring KPIs and construct management policies in a control loop architecture.


Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that arises from a complication of severe infection characterized by a systemic inflammatory response (SIRS). As a time critical illness requiring early identification and treatment, delayed recognition of sepsis can lead to organ failure and death. Effective sepsis protocols need to be established and implemented to reduce the number of patients declining to sepsis in the hospital setting. For this project, nursing practice and knowledge of SIRS and sepsis protocol were assessed to obtain a baseline measure of the nurses' knowledge. A root cause analysis was used to identify existing barriers to performing timely sepsis screening and discrepancies with the inpatient units' sepsis algorithm and the hospital's protocol. The CNL students collaborated with the Director of the Sepsis Screening Committee to develop a "Sepsis Screening Observation Checklist" to ensure nurses were documenting the sepsis screenings in a timely manner. A chart review audit was conducted by using a "Sepsis Chart Screening Data" form, allowing students to review EMR charts of 100 patients in five inpatient units. The students administered a "Sepsis Survey" to assess nurses' knowledge of sepsis and obtain feedback of the current sepsis protocol. Results indicated that vital signs were reported to nurses in a timely manner 50% of the time, and only 38% of the participating nurses feel adequate sepsis educational resources were provided. The participants' responses and subjective interpretation of the current sepsis protocol suggested that inpatient units would benefit from the project's sepsis educational campaign to improve early sepsis identification.


Using the Incongruity Theory of humor (Attardo, 2001; Morreall, 1983; Schwarz, 2010) and the Interactional Sociolinguisitic Methodology of discourse analysis, we examine the incongruous elements, such as moral short-comings, ignorance, and impersonation used in Seinfeld to set up a situation conducive to humor. We analyze the contextualization cues used to support these incongruities, such as genre change, footing alteration, exaggeration, prosody, intonation, marked lexical choices. We present an examination of two scenes taken from the episodes, "The Marine Biologist" and "The Red Dot". We identify the specific incongruities, and then formulate an in-depth analysis of the contextualization cues and how they are implemented, resulting in humor. Our research provides an original contribution to the field of linguistic studies of humor not only by using a new corpus of data, but by providing an analysis of the contextualization cues implemented to create humor, contributing to the linguistic field of research on humor.


OBJECT
Evidence from the CURE Children's Hospital of Uganda (CCHU) suggests that treatment for hydrocephalus in infants can be effective and sustainable in a developing country. This model has not been broadly supported or implemented due in part to the absence of data on the economic burden of disease or any assessment of the cost and benefit of treatment. The authors used economic modeling to estimate the annual cost and benefit of treating hydrocephalus in infants at CCHU. These results were then extrapolated to the potential economic impact of treating all cases of hydrocephalus in infants in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

METHODS
The authors conducted a retrospective review of all children initially treated for hydrocephalus at CCHU via endoscopic third ventriculostomy or shunt placement in 2005. A combination of data and explicit assumptions was used to determine the number of times each procedure was performed, the cost of performing each procedure, the number of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) averted with neurosurgical intervention, and the economic benefit of the treatment. For CCHU and SSA, the cost per DALY averted and the benefit-cost ratio of 1 year's treatment of hydrocephalus in infants were determined.

RESULTS
In 2005, 297 patients (median age 4 months) were treated at CCHU. The total cost of neurosurgical intervention was $350,410, and the cost per DALY averted ranged from $59 to $126. The CCHU's economic benefit to Uganda was estimated to be between $3.1 million and $5.2 million using a human capital approach and $4.6 million-$188 million using a value of a statistical life (VSL) approach. The total economic benefit of treating the conservatively estimated 82,000 annual cases of hydrocephalus in infants in SSA ranged from $930 million to $1.6 billion using a human capital approach and $1.4 billion-$56 billion using a VSL approach. The minimum benefit-cost ratio of treating hydrocephalus in infants was estimated to be 7:1.

CONCLUSIONS
Untreated hydrocephalus in infants exacts an enormous price from SSA. The results of this study suggest that neurosurgical intervention has a cost/DALY averted comparable to other surgical interventions that have been evaluated, as well as a favorable benefit-cost ratio. The prevention and treatment of hydrocephalus in SSA should be recognized as a major public health priority.


Aeolian processes are believed to play a major role in the landscape evolution of Mars. Investigations on Martian aeolian landforms such as ripples, transverse aeolian ridges (TARs), and dunes, and aeolian sediment flux measurements are important to enhance our understanding of past and present wind regimes, the ongoing dust cycle, landscape evolution, and geochemistry. These aeolian bedforms are often comprised of loose sand and sharply undulating topography and thus pose a threat to mobility and maneuvers of Mars rovers. Here we present a first-hand account of the distribution, morphologies, and morphometrics of TARs in Oxia Planum, the recently selected ExoMars 2020 Rover landing site. The gridded mapping was performed for contiguous stretches of TARs within all the landing ellipses using 57 sub-meter high resolution imaging science experiment (HiRISE) scenes. We also provide the morphological descriptions for all types of TARs present within the landing ellipses. We use HiRISE digital terrain models (DTMs) along with the images to derive morphometric information for TARs in Oxia Planum. In general, the average areal TAR coverage was found to be 5.4% (±4.9% standard deviation), increasing from west to east within the landing ellipses. We report the average TAR morphometrics in the form of crest–ridge width (131.1 ± 106.2 m), down-wind TAR length (17.6 ± 10.1 m), wavelength (37.3 ± 11.6 m), plan view aspect ratio (7.1 ± 2.3), inter-bedform spacing (2.1 ± 1.1), slope (10.6° ± 6.1°), predominant orientations (NE-SW and E-W), and height (1.2 ± 0.8 m). While simple TARs are predominant, we report other TAR morphologies such as forked TAR, wavy TAR with associated smaller secondary ripples, barchan-like TAR, networked TAR, and mini-TARs from the region. Our results can help in planning the rover traverses in terms of both safe passage and scientific returns favoring aeolian research, particularly improving our understanding of TARs.


N2 flux rates (net denitrification) were measured over a diel cycle, seasonally, in 12 benthic habitats across three warm temperate Australian coastal systems. Dark N2‐N fluxes were strongly controlled by sediment oxygen demand (SOD) across the 3 estuaries, 4 seasons, and 12 benthic habitats (r2 = 0.743; p < 0.001; n = 142; slope = 0.0170). However, some of the slopes differed significantly between seasons and among estuaries and habitats, and all of the slopes were correlated with the δ13C values and C:N ratios of sediment organic matter. Ternary mixing diagrams with the contribution of algal, seagrass, and terrestrial/mangrove material to sediment organic matter showed that habitats, seasons, and estuaries dominated by a mixture of seagrass and algal material had the lowest slopes, and slopes increase as habitats, seasons, and estuaries have an increasing contribution from terrestrial/ mangrove material. Overall, the slopes of dark N2 fluxes versus SOD were low compared to previous studies, most likely due to either, or a combination of, the C:N ratio of the organic matter, the mixture of C:N ratios making up the organic matter, the structure of the organic matter, and/or the SOD rates. This study demonstrated that it is not only the quantity but also the type (quality), and maybe the mixture, of organic matter that is an important control on denitrification. As such, rapid global changes to detrital sources to coastal systems due to losses of mangrove, seagrasses, and saltmarshes, and associated increases in algae and macrophytes, are also expected to impact system level losses of nitrogen via denitrification.


This paper addresses the problem of indexing and querying very large databases of binary vectors. Such databases of binary vectors are a common occurrence in domains such as information retrieval and computer vision. We propose an indexing structure consisting of a compressed bitwise trie and a hash table for supporting range queries in Hamming space. The index structure, which can be updated incrementally, is able to solve the range queries for any radius. Our approach significantly outperforms state-of-the-art approaches.


One subunit of the interleukin-6 (IL-6) receptor, which activates Janus kinases upon ligand binding, is gp130. Tyrosine phosphorylation of gp130 recruits protein phosphatase 2 (SHP2) and signal transducer and activator 3 (STAT3). Ohtani et al. utilized knock-in technology to create mice deficient in only the gp130-mediated SHP2 pathway or the gp130-mediated STAT3 pathway to dissect the roles these two pathways play in IL-6 signaling. Eliminating the SHP2 response resulted in prolonged IL-6-induced STAT3 phosphorylation. STAT3 signaling was required for embryonic development, where as SHP2 signaling-deficient mice were viable and fertile. STAT3 signaling was required for induction of astrocytes by IL-6 cytokines. Reciprocal roles for STAT3 signaling and SHP2 signaling (STAT3 providing a positive signal and SHP2 providing a negative signal) were found for cytokine and immunoglobulin responses and lymphoid organ homeostasis. Thus, mice deficient in SHP2 signaling developed splenomegaly and lymphadenopathy, and demonstrated increased induction of acute phase proteins and increased antibody production by B cells in response to thymus dependent antigens. Ohtani, T., Ishahara, K., Atsumi, T., Nishida, K., Kaneko, Y., Miyata, T., Itoh, S., Narimatsu, M., Maeda, H., Fukada, T., Itoh, M., Okano, H., Hibi, M., and Hirano, T. (2000) Dissection of signaling cascades through gp130 in vivo: Reciprocal roles for STAT3- and SHP2-mediated signals in immune responses. Immunity 12: 95-105. [Online Journal]


Motility is an essential factor for an organism's survival and diversification. With the advent of novel single-cell technologies, analytical frameworks and theoretical methods, we can begin to probe the complex lives of microscopic motile organisms and answer the intertwining biological and physical questions of how these diverse lifeforms navigate their surroundings. Herein, we summarize the main mechanisms of microscale motility and give an overview of different experimental, analytical, and mathematical methods used to study them across different scales encompassing the molecular-, individual- to population-level. We identify transferable techniques, pressing challenges, and future directions in the field. This review can serve as a starting point for researchers who are interested in exploring and quantifying the movements of organisms in the microscale world.


Abstract:  Exceptionally abundant specimens of Conularia aff. desiderata Hall occur in multiple marine obrution deposits, in a single sixth‐order parasequence composed of argillaceous and silty very fine sandstone, in the Otsego Member of the Mount Marion Formation (Middle Devonian, Givetian) in eastern New York State, USA. Associated fossils consist mostly of rhynchonelliform brachiopods but also include bivalve molluscs, orthoconic nautiloids, linguliform brachiopods and gastropods. Many of the brachiopods, bivalve molluscs and conulariids have been buried in situ. Conulariids buried in situ are oriented with their aperture facing obliquely upward and with their long axis inclined at up to 87 degree to bedding. Most specimens are solitary, but some occur in V‐like pairs or in radial clusters consisting of three specimens, with the component specimens being about equally long or (less frequently) substantially different in length. The compacted apical end of Conularia buried in situ generally rests upon argillaceous sandstone. With one possible exception, none of the examined specimens terminates in a schott (apical wall), and internal schotts appear to be absent. The apical ends of specimens in V‐like pairs and radial clusters show no direct evidence of interconnection of their periderms. The apical, middle or apertural region of some inclined specimens abuts or is in close lateral proximity to a recumbent conulariid or to one or more spiriferid brachiopods, some of which have been buried in their original life orientation. The azimuthal bearings of Conularia and nautiloid long axes and the directions in which conulariids open are nonrandom, with conulariids being preferentially aligned between 350 and 50 degree and with their apertural end facing north‐east, and nautiloids being preferentially aligned between 30 and 70 degree. Otsego Member Conularia were erect or semi‐erect, epifaunal or partially infaunal animals, the apical end of which rested upon very fine bottom sediment. The origin of V‐like pairs and radial clusters remains enigmatic, but it is probable that production of schotts was not a regular feature of this animal's life history. Finally, conulariids and associated fauna were occasionally smothered by distal storm deposits, under the influence of relatively weak bottom currents.


Accounting regulatory regimes play a critical role in ensuring the reliability of financial data and the credibility of a company, and ultimately in supporting the stability of an economy. For the United States, the collapse of the Enron Corporation and the eruption of other financial statement related scandals a decade ago stand as clear reminders of the importance of reliable audit reviews and adequate regulatory oversight. These scandals led to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (Sarbanes- Oxley Act). This legislation created an independent accounting oversight board to supervise the U.S. accounting industry and instituted a number of new audit-related requirements. Prompted in part by these U.S. actions, many Asian economies have established similar regulatory bodies and standards for their domestic accounting industry.


Vegetable cropping systems are becoming larger, more specialised and increasingly reliant
on agro-chemicals to manage pests, diseases and weeds. These trends in vegetable
production have resulted in increased efficiencies and allowed producers to maintain
profitability in a marketplace with greater competition and declining gross margins.
However, concern is growing among consumers about the impacts of chemicals on human
health and the environment. This research program explores the benefits and costs of
alternative vegetable production systems with increased plant species diversity and their
potential to reduce chemical inputs.
The first trial conducted in this study focused on strip cropping with the view of adding
additional layers of diversity in subsequent experiments. The trial used large plots with
mixtures and monocultures of three vegetables: onions (Allium cepa), broccoli (Brassica
oleracea var. italica) and potatoes (Solanum tuberosum). These vegetables were chosen to
maximise diversity as they all have very different harvested products and do not share any
major pests or diseases. This initial trial found that most vegetable diseases were too
virulent to control with diversity alone and that onions were very poor competitors and
hence not suited to mixed cropping systems. Furthermore, production benefits were found
to occur at the zone of interaction, meaning that smaller plots with increased replication
could be used in subsequent experiments. There were also trends indicating that the insect
pest of broccoli Plutella xylostella was restricted by the mixed cropping system.
A cover crop of cereal rye (Secale cereale) was chosen as an additional layer of diversity in
the second trial conducted in 04/05, due its ability to be easily killed and rolled to form a
thick mat of plant material for suppressing weeds. Results from this experiment found that
the numbers of P. xylostella and the aphid Brevicoryne brassicae in broccoli were
significantly reduced by the cover crop but not by the broccoli/potato strip crop. Another
pest of broccoli, Pieris rapae, was not affected by either treatment. The experiments also
showed that there were no significant differences in yield or quality of both potatoes or broccoli, in spite of the fact that broccoli grown in a cover crop matured one week later than broccoli grown in conventionally prepared soil (i.e. a bare soil background). Experiments in 05/06 showed that reductions in the numbers of P. xylostella and B. brassicae in broccoli grown in the cover crop were primarily due to interference with host location and not predation or reduced host plant attractiveness. The reductions in P. xylostella numbers are of particular significance to Brassica producers as this insect has the proven ability to become resistant to every known insecticide, therefore any non-chemical control method could result in substantial reductions in insecticide use and insecticide resistance. However, P. rapae was not affected by the rye cover crop presumably due to superior host location ability and egg spreading behaviour. These results were supported by data from a semi-commercial trial. In contrast to the previous years results, rye cover crop was shown to have significant effects on broccoli growth, reducing the number of leaves, plant biomass and yield as well as again delaying harvest by approximately one week. However, the rye cover crop improved the quality parameters, reduced the severity of hollow stem, eliminated excessive branching and removed the need for mechanical weeding. An economic analysis based on the experimental outcomes of this thesis indicated that using the rye cover crop in a broccoli production system reduced the total variable costs by $323/ha (6.7%) but also reduced the gross margin by $151/ha (5.9%) when compared to conventional practice. However, only a 2% increase in yield, or a 7% price premium due to the reduced chemical use, would be required to eliminate this deficit. The study also showed that mechanical challenges stemming from increasing plant species diversity in existing vegetable cropping systems, could be readily overcome through the modification of existing, commercially available farm machinery/equipment.
In summary, introducing plant species diversity into the conventional vegetable cropping system, in the form of a cover crop, showed considerable benefits to broccoli production in terms of reduced insect pest pressure and quality improvements. Strip cropping as a diversification strategy did not result in increased yields or quality and had no significant effect on insect behaviour in the crops studied. Furthermore, this approach would be more difficult to implement commercially than the rye cover crop due to increased management complexity and incompatibility of chemical weed management strategies. Therefore future research efforts should focus on increasing plant species diversity in the vertical plane (above and below) using cover crops, rather than the horizontal plane (side by side) using strip cropping.


A VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS IN HELL: YULETIDE GHOSTS AND NECESSARPLEASURES IN THE AGE OF CAPITAL Brandon Chitwood Marquette University, 2012 This dissertation explores how the cultural and literary development – one might argue, creation – of a specifically Victorian Christmas arose in response to social anxieties related to the expansion of industrial capitalism, Darwinian theories of evolution, and the increasingly problematic definition of the family during the nineteenth century in Britain. Using a Lacanian psychoanalytic lens, the dissertation explores how the liminal figure of the ghost pervades the literary narrativization of the Christmas holiday, and how such ghosts provided uncanny comforts to a reading public increasingly horrified by social, economic, and natural forces seemingly beyond their control. The dissertation argues that the success of the literary institution of Christmas as a necessary assurance of cultural pleasure in the face of social anxiety has made it perhaps the most long-lived of Victorian artifacts. Indeed, the importance of Christmas to our late capitalist present suggests post-modernity is not so far removed from Victorian sensibilities as we might suspect. The first chapter of A Victorian Christmas in Hell examines the seminal role of Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol in constructing the Victorian Christmas narrative, and its astonishing longevity as a living cultural touchstone to the present day. The chapter argues that A Christmas Carol's success is due in large part to its construction of a seductive injunction to enjoy that deflects and transcends social anxiety. The second chapter examines the role of mourning and grief that pervades Victorian Christmas texts, and how this focus on melancholy paradoxically underwrites the command to enjoy Christmas. The third chapter focuses on how the uncertainty of the role of women in Victorian culture helped lend a volatility, urgency, and horror to the genre of the Christmas ghost story – a genre developed in large part by women writers. The fourth chapter explores the role of children in Christmas ghost stories, and argues that the social guilt of child abuse gave rise to the figure of the child ghost: a transcendent figure with the power to believe in the fantastic and phantasmic aspects of Christmas for an increasingly skeptical, and guilt-ridden adult population. A brief postscript considers the possible evolution of the Christmas narrative beyond its capitalist trappings. What would a post-Victorian Christmas look like after capitalism? Is it even possible, or desirable, to exorcise our Victorian Christmas ghosts?


Objectives: To compare the effectiveness of epsilon aminocaproic acid (EACA) to tranexamic acid (TA) in reducing blood loss and transfusion requirements in patients undergone cardiac surgery under cardiopulmonary bypass. Design: Randomized, double blinded study. Outcome variables collected included; baseline demographic characteristics, type of surgery, amount of 24 hour chest tube drainage, amount of 24 hour blood products administered, 30 day mortality and morbidity and length of stay. We analyzed the data using parametric and non-parametric tests as appropriate. Setting: Single center tertiary-care university hospital setting. Participants: 114 patients who had undergone cardiac surgery under cardiopulmonary bypass. Interventions: Standard dose of intra-operative EACA or TA was compared in patients undergone cardiac surgery under cardiopulmonary bypass. Results: There was no statistically significant difference between groups when analyzing chest tube drainage. However, there was a significant difference in the administration of any transfusion (PRBC's, FFP, platelets) intra-operatively to 24 hours postoperatively, with less transfusion in patients receiving EACA compared to TA (25% vs. 44.8%, respectively P = 0.027). Additionally, there was no significant difference in terms of adverse events during the one month follow up period. Conclusion: The findings of this study suggest that EACA and TA have similar effects on chest tube drainage but EACA is associated with fewer transfusions in CABG alone surgeries. Our results suggest that EACA can be used in a similar fashion to TA which may result in a cost and morbidity advantage.


Abstract This paper explores how design thinking connects to concepts of knowledge creation and innovation. A case study of a knowledge sharing network in the social services sector is used to illustrate how design thinking supports Ba, the spaces for knowledge creation. Further exploration of the four enabling conditions for Ba resulted in delineation of two distinct types: relational and structural. Relational enablers support three groups of enabling conditions: interaction, shared values and communication. It is proposed that design thinking aligns well with relational enabling conditions for Ba to create the ideal spaces for knowledge creation. The group of structural enablers can assist or obstruct change and relate to the culture and management approaches of an organization, which may or may not be assisted by design thinking. However, to ensure that design thinking is not undermined, and innovation is achieved, the presence of an appropriate structural enabler is critical for success.


Human embryo implantation is mainly regulated by the endocrine system. Since the ovary, fallopian tube, and fundus can directly communicate through the mesosalpinx and ovarian ligament, the local concentration of progesterone in the pathway of the developing embryo is considered to be higher than in systemic blood circulation. The immune system promotes embryo implantation by stimulating progesterone production of the ovary and by inducing endometrial differentiation. The recognition of the developing embryo in the fallopian tube by the immune system is achieved through the para-aortic lymph nodes. On the basis of the above evidence, the autologous immune cells activated in vitro were demonstrated to improve clinical pregnancy rates in patients with repeated implantation failures. In addition, the autonomic nerve system that innervates the fundus, the ovary, and the fallopian tube from the para-aortic region is proposed to regulate the environment of the pathway of the developing embryo. From these findings, we suppose that a unique unilateral functional unit to promote human embryo implantation exists in the pathway of the developing embryo including the para-aortic regions and propose naming this novel functional unit the Fundus-Ovary-Salpinx-Para-aorta Implantation Promoting unit (FOSPa-IP unit).


Introduction
Mountain biking (MTB) is composed of several sub-disciplines, with Olympic Cross-Country (XCO) and Downhill (DH) being the most popular. Much of the current research on MTB pertains to the aerobic demands of XCO racing, with comparisons often made to road cycling. No studies have compared elite level XCO and DH bikers. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the anaerobic power and cadence characteristics of elite XCO to DH riders.
Methods
Twelve male elite mountain bikers (n=6 XCO, n=6 DH; age 21.83 ± 3.71 yrs; stature 179.67 ± 4.40 cm; mass 72.50 ± 5.45 kg) took part in this study. An inertial load cycling test was performed as described in previous studies(3), on an SRM cycle ergometer instrumented with a scientific version SRM Powermeter. Inertial load was adjusted to ensure riders achieved 130-150 revs.min-1 within 4-7 s. Peak power (Wpeak), cadence at Wpeak (CADopt) and power to weight ratio (W.kg-1) were calculated for each rider as the mean from 3 trials. Statistical differences between XCO and DH were determined using independent t-tests with significance set at p≤0.05.
Results
A significant difference between DH and XCO was found for CADopt (114.93 ± 5.41 and 107.96 ± 4.63 revs.min-1, p<0.05), respectively. No other differences were revealed between groups. The mean recorded values for DH and XCO were 1137.76 ± 135.84 and 1113.86 ± 75.22 W for Wpeak and 15.21 ± 2.05 and 15.95 ± 0.75 W.kg-1 for power to weight ratio, respectively.
Discussion
The findings of comparable Wpeak between groups may indicate that high anaerobic power is not a prerequisite for success in elite DH. However, significant differences were found in CADopt, where DH riders had a higher cadence when producing Wpeak compared to XCO riders. This may reflect training specificity and the greater emphasis on repeated accelerations in DH(2) and the lower cadences elicited by XCO riders(1). Further research is therefore warranted to compare laboratory and field-based performance in these two population groups.


AIM
To investigate the therapeutic effect of radical treatment and palliative treatment in stage IV pancreatic cancer patients.

METHODS
81 patients were enrolled in the study. Radical treatment was performed on 51 patients, while 30 patients were put under palliative treatment. The procedural safety and interval survival for stage IV pancreatic cancer (IS-IV) was assessed by almost 2.5 years of follow-ups. The IS-IV of patients under the two kinds of treatment, and the effects of treatment timing and frequency on IS-IV, were compared.

RESULTS
The IS-IV of patients who received radical treatment was significantly longer than those who received palliative treatment (P < 0.001). The IS-IV of patients who received delayed radical or palliative treatment was longer than those who received accordingly timely treatment (P = 0.0034 and 0.0415, respectively). Multiple treatments can play an important role in improving the IS-IV of patients who received radical treatment (P = 0.0389), but not for those who received palliative treatment (P = 0.99).

CONCLUSION
The effect of radical treatment was significantly more obvious than that of palliative treatment, and multiple radical treatments may contribute more to patients than a single radical treatment.


Locating existing septic systems and determining the extent of soil contamination after septic system failure can be destructive, time consuming, and a nuisance to homeowners. The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of noninvasive electromagnetic induction (EMI) for locating a failed septic system in fine‐textured glacial‐till‐derived soils. Components of a failed septic system were located with a push probe, georeferenced with a theodolite, and surveyed with a dual receiver EMI sensor (DUALEM‐2) in December 2001 (wet soil moisture condition) and July 2002 (dry soil moisture condition). Three transects located perpendicular to the soil absorption field trenches were sampled to a depth of 1.2 m and used to ground reference the EMI survey. Near‐surface (1‐m depth) apparent conductivity (ECa) was significantly correlated to unweighted average electrical conductivity from soil saturated paste extracts (ECsat; r = 0.79). The ECa below the soil absorption field was higher than the surrounding native soil under both dry and wet soil moisture conditions. Individual soil absorption trenches had a higher ECa than background ECa under both soil moisture conditions. A higher ECa pattern that was apparent in December 2001 associated with discharge of wastewater at shallow depths was not evident in July 2002 after the system had been abandoned for 6 mo. While more research is warranted, results from this study suggest that electromagnetic induction is a promising technique to identify the location of septic system components, failed septic systems, and their associated effluent plumes.


This thesis presents studies on the design of a novel two-handed spatial interface for engineering assembly, informed by a number of qualitative studies using a realistic assembly model within a fully working virtual environment (VE). The results show that the two-handed spatial interface has the potential to reduce task-performance times by more than 25%, over an existing one-handed spatial interface. The VE is the IVPS (Interactive Virtual Prototyping System) at University of Leeds, which supports interactive engineering assembly. The main contribution of this research is to demonstrate an improved understanding of task performance for engineering assembly.

By understanding the assembly task-performance through the evaluation of the existing IVPS using a desktop-based interface, the strengths and weakness of the existing interaction techniques are studied. The results strongly suggest that there is a need to know if more expressive spatial interaction could improve the task-performance for engineering assembly within a VE.

By understanding the assembly task-performance through an evaluation of a one-handed spatial interaction model within the IVPS, a number of problems in spatial selection and positioning have been identified. They are the problems of scale (such as selecting a very small feature from a component), slide (such as manipulating constrained components in an assembly), global precision (such as manipulating the entire scene in which some components are long way from the centre of rotation) and related precision (such as manipulating the selected component related to the other components).

A novel cube-based two-handed spatial interface has therefore been designed to overcome these problems in spatial selection and positioning. It assigns to the nondominant hand tasks such as positioning that can be performed by a sequence of 1DOF sub-tasks. This leaves the dominant-hand to perform the tasks such as 6DOF manipulation of assemblies, selection and attachment. This interface uses a physical cube to provide the user with a spatial frame of reference. The evaluation results show that the cube-based two-handed spatial interface has the potential to reduce the task-performance time by more than 25%, over the existing one-handed spatial interface. A tentative hypothesis is finally generalized and offers opportunities for further research.


This paper discusses the distribution of inflected infinitives in standard and non-standard European Portuguese. In the standard variety, inflected infinitives are generally available in non-obligatory control contexts, but can only occur in obligatory control contexts when the temporal orientation of the complement is not specified by the matrix verb. An explanation for this fact is offered along the lines of an Agree theory of control. This analysis also accounts for the possibility of controlled inflected infinitives, which bear morphological inflection but which cannot license nominative, occurring in non-standard varieties of European Portuguese: they are considered the result of the spell out of the Agree operation that takes place in control contexts.


The American West is defined first and foremost by aridity, scarcity, and variability of water resources. In response to this geographic imperative, the region has evolved a robust menu of legal, institutional, and community-based approaches to managing water and conflicts at local, state, and national levels. While far from perfect, this framework may offer lessons to other regions throughout the world that are increasingly faced with water conflicts due to scarcity and variability of water resources. The resulting menu of approaches reflects an adaptive, collaborative, and nested system of governing water resources.


Abstract. Recent studies have shown significant sea surface salinity (SSS) changes at scales ranging from regional to global. In this study, we estimate global salinity means and trends using historical (1950–2014) SSS data from the UK Met. Office Hadley Centre objectively analyzed monthly fields and recent data from the SMOS satellite (2010–2014). We separate the different components (regimes) of the global surface salinity by fitting a Gaussian Mixture Model to the data and using Expectation–Maximization to distinguish the means and trends of the data. The procedure uses a non-subjective method (Bayesian Information Criterion) to extract the optimal number of means and trends. The results show the presence of three separate regimes: Regime A (1950–1990) is characterized by small trend magnitudes; Regime B (1990–2009) exhibited enhanced trends; and Regime C (2009–2014) with significantly larger trend magnitudes. The salinity differences between regime means were around 0.01. The trend acceleration could be related to an enhanced global hydrological cycle or to a change in the sampling methodology.


The aim of this study was to examine the adverse effects of zinc nanoparticles on hematological indices of trout and investigate the improvement of these indices after vitamin C treatments. This study assesses the protective role of vitamin C in fish exposed to ZnO NPs. Two concentrations of ZnO-NPs (40 and 80 mg L-1) and two doses of vitamin C (400 and 800 mg per kg of feed) were used to treat 162 specimens of Oncorhynchus mykiss. No mortality was observed during the test. After 5 and 10 days of exposure, hematological data were analyzed according to routine clinical methods. Statistical analysis showed significant changes in WBCs and RBC on day 10 (p >0.05), while significant increase in neutrophils and monocytes, and decrease in lymphocyte cells were recorded (p <0.05). ZnO-NPs stimulated the immune system of O. mykiss, but this effect did not have any lethality on this species at 40 and 80 mg L-1. Vitamin C in different concentrations could help to prevent rainbow trout from the toxic effects of this nano metal.


Turbomachinery often suffers various defects such as impeller cracking, resulting in forced outage, increased maintenance costs, and reduced productivity. Condition monitoring and damage prognostics has been widely used as an increasingly important and powerful tool to improve the system availability, reliability, performance, and maintainability, but still very challenging due to multiple sources of data uncertainties and the complexity of analytics modeling. This paper presents an intelligent probabilistic methodology for anomaly prediction of high-fidelity turbomachine, considering multiple data imperfections and multivariate correlation. The proposed method adeptly integrates several advanced state-of-the-art signal processing and artificial intelligence techniques: wavelet multiresolution decomposition, Bayesian hypothesis testing, probabilistic principal component analysis, and fuzzy stochastic neural network modeling. The advanced signal processing is employed to reduce dimensionality and to address multivariate correlation and data uncertainty for damage prediction. Instead of conventionally using raw time series data, principal components are utilized in the establishment of stochastic neural network model and anomaly prediction. Bayesian interval hypothesis testing metric is then presented to quantitatively compare the predicted and measured data for model validation and anomaly evaluation, thus providing a confidence indicator to judge the model quality and evaluate the equipment status. Bayesian method is developed in this study for denoising the raw data with multiresolution wavelet decomposition, quantifying the model accuracy, and assessing the equipment status. The dynamic stochastic neural network model is established via the nonlinear autoregressive moving average with exogenous inputs approach. It seamlessly integrates the fuzzy clustering and independent Bernoulli random function into radial basis function neural network. A natural gradient method based on Kullback-Leibler distance criterion is employed to maximize the log-likelihood loss function. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology and procedure is demonstrated with the 11-variable time series data and the forced outage event of a real-world centrifugal compressor.


A covered cod-end experiment was conducted employing 70
hauls of fish and shrimp trawls in the South China Sea and the
Malacca Straits to determine the selectivity pattern of
Malaysian trawls . This study was conducted in order to
alleviate the intensive fishing effort on the fishery stocks
especially towards the juveniles of commercially important
species .
A mathematical model was developed to predict the
selection curve based on the standard length and maximum body
depth of fish and shrimp species retained by the net .collection in a selectivity experiment is now simplified to
obtaining the two parameters from fish or shrimp sampled from
any catch .
Results of the study revealed that the 25 mm cod-end fish
trawl retained 98 . 2 percent as compared to the 51 mm cod-end
which retained 56 . 1 percent of the catch . With the shrimp
trawl , the 25 mm cod-end retained 9 2 . 6 percent while the 38 mm
cod-end retained 5 1 . 35 percent of the catch .


Selenium (Se) is an element recognized as an essential micronutrient in eukaryote organisms. Selenoproteins contain selenium as selenocysteine, the 21 amino acid. Selenium plays a role in cell growth and functioning. At low concentrations, it can induce growth and at high concentrations, it can cause a cell to stop growing and potentially have toxic effects on the cell and organism. When selenium levels are high, oxidative stress results by the production of reactive oxidative species. Selenoproteins, however, can aid the antioxidant response in the cell. Ticks are arthropods of interest, as they are one of few that contain many selenogenes, possibly the reason for their robust antioxidant system. Ticks are obligate hematophagous ectoparasite and require this strong and organized antioxidant system for when oxidative stress is induced during blood feeding and digestion. In this study, the effects of sublethal sodium selenite concentration on the female Amblyomma maculatum tick's antioxidant system were investigated. The oxidative stress analysis of ticks injected with sublethal concentration of sodium selenite (0.1μM Na2SeO3) compared with 1X PBS injected Amblyomma female ticks. Once tissues were obtained, transcriptional gene expression was performed for all antioxidants including selenogenes. The transcript level of selenogene M (SelM), and selenogene N (SelN) revealed up-regulation. A lipid peroxidation (MDA assay), and fluorescent assays were utilized to quantify the relative oxidative stress and visually examined oxidative stress effects on tick tissues. Oxidative stress was illustrated in the assay and confocal and gave insight on how tick antioxidant system responds to a sublethal sodium selenite concentration. The outcomes could lead to understanding tick physiology and give insight on tick antioxidant system. Key Terms: Amblyomma maculatum, obligate hematophagous ectoparasite, oxidative stress, selenoprotein, sodium selenite, Selenium, gene expression ii


TOPICAL ANESTHESIA OF THE TYMPANIC MEMBRANE An experimental animal study University of Umeå Medical Dissertations Abstract No 200 — ISSN 0346-6612 Sten-Hermann Schmidt, M.D. Department of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology & Head and Neck Surgery, University of Umeå, Umeå, Sweden Myringotomy plays an important role in otological therapy. The procedure requires an efficient anesthesia, which can be obtained without general anesthesia. However, the use of local anesthetics on the tympanic membrane (TM) has been abandoned in many places, as general anesthesia has been readily available. In the present study the effects of some commonly used topical anesthetics on the TM structure and inner ear were tested in an animal model (rat and guinea pig). Four different anesthetic compounds—Xylocaine®, Bonain's liquid, phenol and Emla®—were applied to the TMs of the animals, which were sacrificed 10 minutes to 5 months after application. Morphological effects regarding time after treatment and number of applications were elucidated. At sacrifice the tissue was fixed and the TMs analysed by light microscopy (LM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). In nine animals phenol, Xylocaine® Spray or Emla® was applied to the round window niche and ABR recordings were made at 24 h to 6 months after exposure. After the final ABR evaluation the animals were sacrificed and the cochleae prepared for LM and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). On the TM phenol and Bonain's liquid caused instant destruction of the keratiniz ing stratified squamous epithelium followed by long-lasting hyperplasia of this epithelium and the underlying connective tissue. A pronounced hyperplasia of these two layers was also noted for the Xylocaine® Spray group, but without immediate destruction of the keratinizing epithelium. The extent of structural changes differed in relation to the extent of spreading of the agent. Emla® showed little, if any, sign of epithelial reaction and had no effect on the connective tissue. Regarding the inner ear Emla®, Xylocaine® Spray and phenol induced significantly impaired ABR thresholds mainly affecting the higher frequencies. However, the impaired ABR thresholds were reversible and at the end of the experiment there was no significant impairment com pared to the control data. All agents, except Xylocaine®, damaged the hair cells in the basal part of the cochlea as shown by cytocochleogram and SEM analysis. Instant destruction of the epidermis seems to be necessary for an instant anesthetic effect. All agents caused profound connective tissue reactions. The manner of ap plication, depending on the physical properties of the agent, determined the extent of the structural changes. The changes of the connective tissue were concentrated to the submucosal layer, which seems to be the area for reconstruction of the damaged TM. All agents caused functional inner ear changes. With the exception of Xylocaine® they also caused morphological alterations of the cochlea. The functional changes were partly reversible. Topical anesthetics applied to the TM should be used with caution and when used in an appropriate manner they can be considered safe, especially in an inflamed middle ear, with a thickened round window membrane, which should pre vent the agents from reaching the inner ear structures.


This study interrogates the participation
of private security companies in crime control in Nigeria, with focus on the
challenges militating against their performance in security provisioning. The
police are the statutory agency invested with the powers of ensuring the
security of lives and property of citizens in Nigeria. The rising incidence of
crimes such as kidnapping, armed robbery, murder, terrorism, and human
trafficking among others has demonstrated that the police have failed in
providing the required protection for the citizens. The paper argues that the apparent
inability of the police to adequately provide protection for all citizens
provided the nucleus for individuals to search for alternative security
provisioning, which culminated in the emergence of private security companies
in crime control in Nigeria. The study contends that since the emergence of
private security companies into the theatre of security provisioning, they have
played critical role in ensuring security; thereby complementing the efforts of
the police. However, they are confronted with certain challenges which militate
against their performance. Some of the challenges include: lack of firearms, lack
of supervision and lack of cooperation from the police among others. The study
recommends among others: establishment of a security institute, improved synergy
with the police, and government recognition of the private security sector.


The goal of the Redundancy, Diversity, and Interdependent Document Relevance workshop was to explore how ranking, performance assessment and learning to rank can move beyond the assumption that the relevance of a document is independent of other documents. In particular, the workshop focussed on three themes: the effect of redundancy on information retrieval utility (for example, minimizing the wasted effort of users who must skip redundant information), the role of diversity (for example, for mitigating the risk of misinterpreting ambiguous queries), and algorithms for set-level optimization (where the quality of a set of retrieved documents is not simply the sum of its parts). This workshop built directly upon the Beyond Binary Relevance: Preferences, Diversity and Set-Level Judgments workshop at SIGIR 2008 [3], shifting focus to address the questions left open by the discussions and results from that workshop. As such, it was the first workshop to explicitly focus on the related research challenges of redundancy, diversity, and interdependent relevance – all of which require novel performance measures, learning methods, and evaluation techniques. The workshop program committee consisted of 15 researchers from academia and industry, with experience in IR evaluation, machine learning, and IR algorithmic design. Over 40 people attended the workshop. This report aims to summarize the workshop, and also to systematize common themes and key concepts so as to encourage research in the three workshop themes. It contains our attempt to summarize and organize the topics that came up in presentations as well as in discussions, pulling out common elements. Many audience members contributed, yet due to the free-flowing discussion, attributing all the observations to particular audience members is unfortunately impossible. Not all audience members would necessarily agree with the views presented, but we do attempt to present a consensus view as far as possible.


With the continued development of open access policies, it is important to promote consensus‐building projects with the various stakeholders. This article gives an account of how such collaboration has facilitated the construction of the project Héloïse. This project is a French information service dedicated to describing the policies of French publishers on the self‐archiving of scientific publications. Héloïse represents a real tool of mediation whose development involved much debate between publishers and research stakeholders. This article seeks to demonstrate that the development of trust between the actors involved in the project was a major component of its success.


This paper proposes a novel approach for global localisation of mobile robots in large-scale environments. Our method leverages learning-based localisation and filtering-based localisation, to localise the robot efficiently and precisely through seeding Monte Carlo Localisation (MCL) with a deeplearned distribution. In particular, a fast localisation system rapidly estimates the 6-DOF pose through a deep-probabilistic model (Gaussian Process Regression with a deep kernel), then a precise recursive estimator refines the estimated robot pose according to the geometric alignment. More importantly, the Gaussian method (i.e. deep probabilistic localisation) and nonGaussian method (i.e. MCL) can be integrated naturally via importance sampling. Consequently, the two systems can be integrated seamlessly and mutually benefit from each other. To verify the proposed framework, we provide a case study in large-scale localisation with a 3D lidar sensor. Our experiments on the Michigan NCLT long-term dataset show that the proposed method is able to localise the robot in 1.94 s on average (median of 0.8 s) with precision 0.75 m in a largescale environment of approximately 0.5 km2.


Salamanders in the Appalachian region have been extensively studied, but the majority of research assessing the impacts of logging has focused on terrestrial species that are not dependent on stream habitats for egg deposition or larval development. I have collected data on both larval and adult salamanders in headwater streams in western North Carolina to determine the impacts of even-aged timber harvest on salamander populations and to assess the efficacy of riparian buffers in ameliorating these effects. My data show that larval two-lined salamanders are negatively impacted by increased stream sedimentation following riparian logging and that increasing the riparian buffer around the stream reduces sedimentation effects; larval black-bellied salamanders were not significantly affected by riparian alteration. Adult and juvenile salamanders dependent on terrestrial habitat were also affected; seal salamander densities were significantly higher in streams with little to no riparian buffer while Ocoee salamanders were significantly less abundant. It is unlikely that salamanders will persist or thrive for more than a season or two in logged forests due to a significant deterioration in body condition of Ocoee salamanders in logged riparian areas. My results indicate that current riparian forest conservation measures are inadequate to preserve either larval or adult salamander populations.


Billions of "smart" things in our lives have been equipped with various sensors. Current devices, such as smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, and VR/AR headsets, are equipped with a variety of embedded sensors, e.g. accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, camera, GPS sensor, etc. Based on these sensor data, many technologies have been developed to track human motion at different granularities and to enable new applications. This dissertation examines two challenging problems in human motion tracking. One problem is the ID association issue when utilizing external sensors to simultaneously track multiple people. Although an "outside" system can track all human movements in a designated area, it needs to digitally associate each tracking trajectory to the corresponding person, or say the smart device carried by that person, to provide customized service based on the tracking results. Another problem is the inaccuracy caused by limited sensing information when merely using the embedded sensors located on the devices being tracked. Since sensor data may contain inevitable noises and there is no external beacon used as a reference point for calibration, it is hard to accurately track human motion only with internal sensors.In this dissertation, we focus on applying multimodal sensing to perform human motion tracking in mobile systems. To address the two above problems separately, we conduct the following research works. (1) The first work seeks to enable public cameras to send personalized messages to people without knowing their phone addresses. We build a system which utilizes the users' motion patterns captured by the cameras as their communication addresses, and depends on their smartphones to locally compare the sensor data with the addresses and to accept the correct messages. To protect user privacy, the system requires no data from the users and transforms the motion patterns into low-dimensional codes to prevent motion leaks. (2) To enhance distinguishability and scalability of the camera-to-human communication system, we introduce context features which include both motion patterns and ambience features (e.g. magnetic field, Wi-Fi fingerprint, etc.) to identify people. The enhanced system achieves higher association accuracy and is demonstrated to work with dense people in a retailer, with a fixed-length packet overhead. The first two works explore the potential of widely deployed surveillance cameras and provide a generic underlay to various practical applications, such as automatic audio guide, indoor localization, and sending safety alerts. (3) We close this dissertation with a fine-grained motion tracking system which aims to track the positions of two hand-held motion controllers in a mobile VR system. To achieve high tracking accuracy without external sensors, we introduce new types of information, e.g. ultrasonic ranging among the headset and the controllers, and a kinematic arm model. Effectively fusing this additional information with inertial sensing generates accurate controller positions in real time. Compared with commodity mobile VR controllers which only support rotational tracking, our system provides an interactive VR experience by letting the user actually move the controllers' positions in a VR scene. To summarize, this dissertation shows that multimodal sensing can further explore the potential power in sensor data and can take sensor-based applications to the next generation of innovation.


WO3 was investigated as a possible support material for monolayer Pt ORR electrocatalysts in acid electrolyte. It was found that as-prepared Pt/WO3 showed enhanced activity for the ORR and superior electron transfer ability compared to conventional Pt/C and bulk polycrystalline Pt. However, similar to other tungsten derived supports, most notably WC, the Pt/WO3 electrocatalyst showed significant performance degradation that was tied directly to the formation of water-soluble hydrogen tungsten bronze (HxWO3) on the support surface that was identified by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). This information, combined with previous work by our group on WC supports, are also combined to propose a series degradation pathway for WC and WO3 supports in acid media, which is relevant for proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells.


Abstract. The issue touched upon in the research is connected with the interdisciplinary attitude towards the study of the constantly changing landscape in the nineteenth century Central Europe. Such interdisciplinarity results from the combination of the historical approach with the geographical attitude towards the examination of the past presented by unique cartographic materials.The aim of the research was to work out the method of employing cartographic sources and adapting other sources of spatial information for the study and presentation of the landscape transformations in the nineteenth century that occurred as a result of the industrialization process in Europe.Prussian manuscript topographic maps at 1 : 25 000 scale along with early nineteenth-century maps depicting the pre-industrial landscape constitute a significant cartographic source of knowledge. Apart from city plans and other maps, also space descriptions, preserved statistical data, documents, inventories and archives were utilized as sources of spatial information. Photographs, postcards and prints depicting the nineteenth-century landscape were another relevant source of information. Moreover, the data collected during field work, e.g. pictures and short videos made in selected research areas, were also highly useful. The research was conducted, for example, in towns of Greater Poland of different level of economic development. A few types of settlement units were selected, i.e. the village, the town with a mansion (palace), the 'Olęder' settlement and the town.On the basis of maps and archives collected for the research area the multimedia method of presentation of landscape types and their transformations, with the employment of geoinformation tools, was suggested. That methodology of multimedia integration of historical materials allowed one to demonstrate consecutive stages of the transformation characteristic of the nineteenth-century landscape.As a result, it became possible to define landscape types for the areas of different level of transformation and preserve the pre-industrial state. Short videos consisting of several sequences that demonstrated the changing form of specific topographic objects, elements of the landscape from the nineteenth century till this day, were the effect of the work. On the basis of the nineteenth-century topographic maps that employed the hatching method for the demonstration of the relief the models of the terrain were generated, which allowed one to create the transition from the parallel perspective to the bird's eye view that was employed to depict the pre-industrial landscape.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: When the clinical and radiologic characteristics of an unusual cervical spinal cord complication of intra-arterial (IA) chemotherapy with blood brain– barrier (BBB) disruption in the vertebral circulation are documented. Seven cases are reported and analyzed in search of a pathophysiologic explanation. METHODS: We retrospectively identified 94 patients who received a total of 380 standardized regimens of IA carboplatin, IA or IV etoposide phosphate, and IV cyclophosphamide infusion in conjunction with osmotic BBB disruption of the vertebral artery. We describe seven of those patients in whom unexpected neck pain developed followed by neurologic symptoms primarily in the upper extremities. RESULTS: The symptoms correlated with MR abnormalities (T1 hypointensity, T2 hyper-intensity, and unusual contrast enhancement) in the cervical spinal cord, usually involving the gray matter. The neurologic deficits and MR changes were generally transient. One patient who received a flu vaccination 48 hours before the chemotherapy incurred progressive myelitis and expired. CONCLUSION: The pathophysiology of this complication is probably multifactorial but may be related to vascular streaming and an atypical inflammatory toxic reaction to carboplatin and etoposide. The complication has not recurred during a 6-month period following modifi-cation of the protocol.


Here we derive measures quantifying the information loss of a synaptic signal due to the presence of neuronal noise sources, as it electrotonically propagates along a weakly-active dendrite. We model the dendrite as an infinite linear cable, with noise sources distributed along its length. The noise sources we consider are thermal noise, channel noise arising from the stochastic nature of voltage-dependent ionic channels (K+ and Na+) and synaptic noise due to spontaneous background activity. We assess the efficacy of information transfer using a signal detection paradigm where the objective is to detect the presence/absence of a presynaptic spike from the post-synaptic membrane voltage. This allows us to analytically assess the role of each of these noise sources in information transfer. For our choice of parameters, we find that the synaptic noise is the dominant noise source which limits the maximum length over which information be reliably transmitted.


A B S T R A C T The impact of left turns on operation is probably the most significant factor in the performance of conventional intersections. As a result engineers have looked to alternative measures for dealing with left turns at intersections to improve performance, some of which have been unconventional schemes. The purpose of this thesis is to introduce a new unconventional intersection scheme, the Upstream Signalized Crossover (USC), which is a four-legged intersection designed to eliminate left turn opposing conflicts by crossing the left and through traffic to the left side of the road at all four approaches before the intersection. The crisscrossing of traffic upstream of the intersection results in four additional secondary signalized intersections. The operation of the USC intersection was analyzed, along with a typical conventional intersection, using the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) 2000 methodology and simulation models that were developed using VISSIM. The H C M analysis employed the Syncro software to compute the signal timings and offsets for the multiple signals of the USC. The results from this analysis indicated that a significant reduction in average delays could be achieved by the USC intersection when directly compared to conventional intersections. The average delays computed for the USC was about 45 % to 60% less for the same traffic volumes that caused a sample conventional intersection to fail and was able to accommodate between 15% and 20% more traffic before the USC reached failure. The VISSIM simulation model revealed that the USC was not as sensitive to left turn volumes as compared to conventional intersections and has the potential for handling large left turn volumes while maintaining acceptable levels of performance for through traffic. However, when compared to a conventional intersection the analysis did not show significant improvements in left turn delays for the USC, which may indicate that progression between the primary and secondary signals for the left turn movements were not as favourable. Future analysis of the USC intersection should develop and utilize a more dynamic technique for optimizing the signals for both the through and left turn movements. The USC has 50% less crossing conflicts than a typical four-legged conventional intersection and as a result could offer a significant reduction in left turn opposing collisions. The potential for rear-end collisions could be higher for the USC given the additional signals; however, this should be mitigated by improving the coordination and progression between the signals.


With the increasing importance of cloud computing, compliance concerns get into the focus of businesses

more often. Furthermore, businesses still consider security and privacy related issues to be the most prominent

inhibitors for an even more widespread adoption of cloud computing services. Several frameworks try to address

these concerns by building comprehensive guidelines for security controls for the use of cloud services.

However, assurance of the correct and effective implementation of such controls is required by businesses

to attenuate the loss of control that is inherently associated with using cloud services. Giving this kind of

assurance is traditionally the task of audits and certification. Cloud auditing becomes increasingly challenging

for the auditor the more complex the cloud service provision chain becomes. There are many examples

for Software as a Service (SaaS) providers that do not own dedicated hardware anymore for operating their

services, but rely solely on other cloud providers of the lower layers, such as platform as a service (PaaS)

or infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers. The collection of data (evidence) for the assessment of policy

compliance during a technical audit is aggravated the more complex the combination of cloud providers becomes.

Nevertheless, the collection at all participating providers is required to assess policy compliance in the

whole chain. The main contribution of this paper is an analysis of potential ways of collecting evidence in an

automated way across cloud provider boundaries to facilitate cloud audits. Furthermore, a way of integrating

the most suitable approaches in the system for automated evidence collection and auditing is proposed.