Given a large dataset of users' ratings of movies, what is the best model to accurately predict which movies a person will like? And how can we prevent spammers from tricking our algorithms into suggesting a bad movie? Is it possible to infer structure between movies simultaneously? In this paper we describe a unified Bayesian approach to Collaborative Filtering that accomplishes all of these goals. It models the discrete structure of ratings and is flexible to the often non-Gaussian shape of the distribution. Additionally, our method finds a co-clustering of the users and items, which improves the model's accuracy and makes the model robust to fraud. We offer three main contributions: (1) We provide a novel model and Gibbs sampling algorithm that accurately models the quirks of real world ratings, such as convex ratings distributions. (2) We provide proof of our model's robustness to spam and anomalous behavior. (3) We use several real world datasets to demonstrate the model's effectiveness in accurately predicting user's ratings, avoiding prediction skew in the face of injected spam, and finding interesting patterns in real world ratings data.


SUMMARY. In this study a new co-crystal of ticagrelor with quercetin has been fabricated with improved solubility. Ticagrelor is a class VI drug with poor solubility and permeability; hence an attempt has been made to improve its solubility by co-crystallization technology. A co-crystal is a structurally homogeneous crystalline material containing an active pharmaceutical ingredient and the co-former in definite stoichiometric amounts. In this study the conformer selected was quercetin based on ease of hydrogen bond formation and also as quercetin will provide a synergistic effect with ticagrelor. The co-crystal of ticagrelor with quercetin was prepared in two ratios (1:1, 2:1). Ticagrelor formed stable co-crystals in the ratios 1:1 and 2:1. The formation of co-crystal was confirmed by PXRD, DSC, and FTIR. The dynamic solubility of co-crystals in the ratios 1:1 and 2:1 increased by approximately 1.6 fold as compared to pure drug


Award-winner Jean Andrews has been called "the first lady of chili peppers" and her own registered trademark, "The Pepper Lady." She now follows up on the success of her earlier books, Peppers: The Domesticated Capsicums and The Pepper Trail , with a new collection of more than two hundred recipes for pepper lovers everywhere. Andrews begins with how to select peppers (with an illustrated glossary provided), how to store and peel them, and how to utilize various cooking techniques to unlock their flavors. A chapter on some typical ingredients that are used in pepper recipes will be a boon for the harried cook. The Peppers Cookbook also features a section on nutrition and two indexes, one by recipe and one by pepper type, for those searching for a recipe to use specific peppers found in the market. The majority of the book contains new recipes along with the best recipes from her award-winning Pepper Trail book. The mouth-watering recipes herein range from appetizers to main courses, sauces, and desserts, including Roasted Red Pepper Dip, Creamy Pepper and Tomato Soup, Jicama and Pepper Salad, Chipotle-Portabella Tartlets, Green Corn Tamale Pie, Anatolian Stew, South Texas Turkey with Tamale Dressing, Shrimp Amal, Couscous-Stuffed Eggplant, and Creamy Serrano Dressing.


The wind resource varies with of the day and the season of the year and even some extent from year to year. Wind energy has inherent variances and hence it has been expressed by distribution functions. In this paper, we present some methods for estimating Weibull parameters, namely, shape parameter (k) and scale parameter (c). The Weibull distribution is an important distribution especially for reliability and maintainability analysis. The suitable values for both shape parameter and scale parameters of Weibull distribution are important for selecting locations of installing wind turbine generators. The scale parameter of Weibull distribution also important to determine whether a wind farm is good or not. The presented method is the analytical methods and computational experiments on the presented methods are reported.


We study the vulnerability of 130 banks directly supervised by the European Central Bank's Single Supervisory Mechanism. Illustrative stress tests using banks' balance sheet data reveal that significant stress prevails in the euro area's smaller and medium-sized banks, many of them located in southern Europe. The banks we identify as stressed also have performed substantially worse on the stock market. The vulnerable banks are typically hobbled by non-performing loans to European businesses.

Strengthening the banking system, therefore, is important to achieve sustainable recovery because it will revitalise credit to the healthier segments of the economy. But instead of emphasising bank recapitalisation, as in past years, we believe the task is to shrink the banking sector to a healthier core.


OBJECTIVE
To observe the clinical characteristics of infections in adult acute leukemia (AL)patients during chemotherapy in hospital, and identify the risk factors for infections.

METHODS
A retrospective study of patients with AL who underwent chemotherapy between July 2010 and Dec 2014 in the First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University was conducted. Clinical features and risk factors for infections were analyzed.

RESULTS
191 patients with AL received a total of 728 courses of chemotherapies. During these admissions, 385(52.9%) infections episodes occurred. The common infections sites were lower respiratory tract infection(36.3%,153/374), bloodstream infection(17.1%, 64/374), oral infection(13.6%,51/374), and perianal infection(13.4%, 50/374). 164 strains of pathogenic bacteria were detected. Gram- negative bacteria were recorded in 59.1% of documented pathogens, and Gram- positive bacteria were responsible for 32.9% of infections. Multivariate unconditioned logistic analysis of factors identified consistent independent risk factors for no completely remission(OR=0.142, P< 0.001), duration of neutropenia longer than 7 days(OR=12.764, P<0.001), general wards(OR=1.821, P< 0.001), and hospitalization interval longer than 10 days(OR=0.720, P=0.039).

CONCLUSION
Infections after chemotherapy for AL continues to be common. AL patients with induction chemotherapy or severe neutropenia faced an increased risk of infections by multivariate analysis. And patients with short-term stay or laminar flow wards seem to be less susceptible to infections.


By taking an exploratory tack and drawing on interviews with journalists from five Spanish online news media, this article investigates journalists' attitudes toward emotions in reporting. The article shows that journalists in the sample hold two opposing types of attitudes toward emotion: strategic avoidance and strategic use. It examines the extent to which such attitudes shape their views of the place and role of emotions in journalism, their judgments on the news value of emotions, their perceptions of the relationships between emotions and objectivity, their decisions on whether emotions enter (or not) the news production process, and how emotions are represented in their stories. The article contributes to current research on the value of emotionality in journalism by focusing on online journalists and complementing recent studies on journalists' perception and use of emotions in other media outlets, for instance, newspapers and television.


Background: Child malnutrition is a major public health problem in Ethiopia. Surprisingly, the highest level of stunting is found in food surplus areas of the country. Objective: To identify the determinants of stunting in food surplus areas of West Gojam Zone. Method: A community based cross-sectional survey was conducted on 622 mother-child pairs of 0-59 month old children in Mecha and Wenberma Woredas of West Gojam Zone, Northern Ethiopia between May and June 2006. The study investigated the differential impact of demographic and socio-economic factors, health related factors and dietary factors on stunting among under-five children. Both bivariate analysis and multivariate analysis (logistic regression model) were used to identify the determinants of under-five stunting. Results: The analyses revealed that 43.2 (12.0-17.6) 95% CI percent of the children under age five were suffering from chronic malnutrition, 14.8 (39.3-47.1) 95% CI percent were acutely malnourished and 49.2 (45.3-53.1) 95% CI percent were found to be under-weight. The main contributing factors for under-five stunting were found to be sex of the child, child's age, diarrhea episode, deprivation of colostrum, duration of breastfeeding, pre-lacteal feeds, type of food, age of introduction of complementary feeding and method of feeding. Conclusion: The findings of this study led to the realization that inappropriate feeding practice is the principal risk factor which brought about nutritional deprivation among under-five children in food surplus areas of Ethiopia. Thus, the importance of appropriate feeding during infancy and childhood cannot be overstated even in food surplus areas. The high prevalence of malnutrition in the study area points out the need to revisit the impression held by many people that malnutrition is not a problem in food surplus areas. Development and implementation of preventive policies aimed at addressing child malnutrition should also consider food surplus areas of the country. [Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 2009;23(2):98-106]


This paper reports on the reality of classroom‐based inquiry learning in science, from the perspectives of high school students and their teachers, under a national curriculum attempting to encourage authentic scientific inquiry (as practiced by scientists). A multiple case study approach was taken, utilising qualitative research methods of unobtrusive observation, semi‐structured interviews and document analysis. The findings showed purposeful and focused learning occurring, but students were acquiring a narrow view of scientific inquiry where the thinking was characteristically rote and low‐level. The nature of this learning was strongly influenced by curriculum decisions made by classroom teachers and science departments in response to the assessment requirements of a high stakes national qualification. As a consequence of these decisions, students experienced structured teaching programmes in which they were exposed to programme content that limited the range of methods that scientists use to fair testing and to pedagogies that were substantially didactic in nature. In addition, the use of planning templates and exemplar assessment schedules tended to reduce student learning about experimental design to an exercise in "following the rules" as they engaged in closed rather than open investigations. Thus, the resulting student learning was mechanistic and superficial rather than creative and critical, counter to the aims of the national curriculum policy that is intent on promoting students' knowledge and capabilities in authentic scientific inquiry.


In this paper we assess the short- and mid-term effects of two cash transfer programmes in Uganda in terms of child underweight, school attainment, and the monetary returns to these indirect effects. Using a micro-simulation approach we test how the scale-up of these pilot interventions could affect human capital indicators and income growth. We first use panel data to estimate the links between income, child health, and school attainment. Thereafter we insert the estimates in a micro-simulation model to predict how cash transfer programmes could generate income returns through higher education attainment and compare programmes in terms of their rates of return.


This paper provides an overview of the R package gets, which contains facilities for automated general-to-specific (GETS) modeling of the mean and variance of a regression, and indicator saturation (IS) methods for the detection and modeling of outliers and structural breaks. The mean can be specified as an autoregressive model with covariates (an "AR-X" model), and the variance can be specified as an autoregressive log-variance model with covariates (a "log-ARCH-X" model). The covariates in the two specifications need not be the same, and the classical linear regression model is obtained as a special case when there is no dynamics, and when there are no covariates in the variance equation. The four main functions of the package are arx, getsm, getsv and isat. The first function estimates an AR-X model with log-ARCH-X errors. The second function undertakes GETS modeling of the mean specification of an 'arx' object. The third function undertakes GETS modeling of the log-variance specification of an 'arx' object. The fourth function undertakes GETS modeling of an indicator-saturated mean specification allowing for the detection of outliers and structural breaks. The usage of two convenience functions for export of results to EViews and STATA are illustrated, and LTEX code of the estimation output can readily be generated.


Kaffir lime leaf (Citrus hystrix) is a source of natural flavouring widely used for a long term in the Asian country. The major constituent of Citrus hystrix has been
reported is citronellal which is responsible for flavour. Usually kaffir lime leaves flavour available in the market is synthetic. Thus, this study is to introduce a natural
kaffir lime leaves flavour based on extraction. Generally, conventional method has many disadvantages like production of thermally destructive compounds in the extract, time consuming and lower yield of the extract obtained. Current extraction methods like hydrodistillation and Soxhlet extraction are tedious, labour and time consuming. Thus, the major objectives of this study were to optimise more efficient and rapid Pressurised Liquid Extraction to produce quality kaffir lime leaves oleoresin. Optimised Pressurised Liquid Extraction conditions were at a temperature of 65.65 oC and a static time of 5.02 minutes. Flavour profilling of the extract obtained from this optimised condition was also been carried out using GC-MS.
The compounds determined were sabinene, myrcene, α-pinene and citronellal. The concentration of the major marker compound, citronellal in the extract was 0.28 mg/100g. Moisture content in the fresh leaves was 59.22±0.39% and for
dried leaves was 13.15±0.27%. The total percentage yield of the extract obtained using optimised condition was 56.16%. The volatile oil was analysed by using GC-MS to identify the major marker compound and the flavour profile of
Citrus hystrix.


As a result of fieldwork on Cape York Peninsula, and ongoing revision of type specimens in lieu of the recent revision of Australian Acromastigum, two new species are described. Acromastigum carcinum represents a newly discovered species, currently known only from one location within the Jardine River National Park. The lowland and tropical monsoonal habitat of this species is highly unusual within the genus, and hints at the existence of a distinct, if species poor, bryofloristic element within tropical monsoon lowland habitats. Acromastigum implexum has been long recognised in Australia under the name A. echinatiforme, however comparison with the original material of that species confirms Australian plants represent a distinct species. Acromastigum implexum inhabits tropical montane rainforest habitats. Both species are currently known only from Australia, but both, particularly A. carcinum, may occur in similar habitats overseas.


I. Introduction China has developed tremendously after the country launched its reforms and adopted its open door policy in 1978. For three decades, China has gained a two-digit annual growth rate on average when it gradually deviated away from the traditional doctrines of a central-planned economy and put into practice the market oriented economy. With the rapid economic development, cities, as centers for economic activities, have been expanding at an unprecedented speed. Though urbanization plays a huge role in stimulating growth, it has imposed serious environmental problems, such as pollution of air, water and solid waste, land use and resources allocation, which have become an obstacle to sustainable economic growth. The Chinese now have an urgent need to face the increasingly important issue of environmental protection and adhere to the principles of sustainable economic growth. The paper examines the relationship between rapid economic growth and vast expansion of urban areas in China, and explains that, though urbanization has fueled the growth and become the "engine of development", it has resulted in serious environmental problems, which demand immediate solutions. The paper proposes a series of effective options to tackle the environmental issues, including privatization of environment related industries, such as garbage disposal, decreeing law and regulations to, first of all, mitigate or minimize pollution, then guarantee a systematic way to clear up pollution if it does happen and also calls for increasing the environmental awareness of the whole society so that it will adopt the principle of sustainable economic growth. The paper is structured as follows: Section II describes the relationship between economic development and urbanization: economic growth leading to urbanization and then urbanization driving economic growth. Section III identifies the major environmental problems associated with urbanization in China and posits their negative consequences. Section IV offers some possible options for tackling the environmental problems and demands for the sustainable economic growth. Section V summarizes and presents a conclusion. II. Urbanization and Economic Growth 2. 1 Economic Growth Leads to Urbanization Following the initiation of the reform and opening policy in 1978, China began to make major reforms to its economy, deviating gradually from its traditional path of socialism and adopting aspects of a market-orientated economic system. In the subsequent years, China emphasized raising personal income and consumption and introducing new management systems to help increase productivity, the living standard, and technological quality without exacerbating inflation, unemployment, and budget deficits. Reform began in the agricultural, industrial, fiscal, financial, banking, regulatory and labor systems. The decision to allow direct foreign investment was extremely successful in attracting foreign capital to China, initially in several small "special economic zones" along the coast, then spreading to 14 coastal cities and 3 coastal regions as the designated "open area". The inflow of international capital greatly stimulated Chinese economic growth, particularly in the areas of international trade, the infrastructure, the transfer of technology and managerial know-how, human resources, and the increase in personal incomes. The introduction of the Household Responsibility System marked the beginning of agricultural reform, which allowed peasants to lease land from the collective for a fixed period provided they delivered to the collective a minimum quota of produce, usually basic grain. Once they had met the quota, they could sell any surplus they produced. This was the first step in breaking away from organized communes and allowing peasants to produce on their own, and sanctioned the sale of surplus production and other cash crops in newly freed markets. …


SUMMARY: The impact of yellow-legged gulls on Audouin's gulls was studied by means of observations from a blind, at the Ebro Delta, the Chafarinas Islands and the Columbretes Islands colonies, during different stages of Audouin's Gulls breeding cycle. The rates of predation (upon eggs and chicks) and kleptoparasitism (aerial and on courtship and chick-feeding regurgitates) were recorded to evaluate this impact. Kleptoparasitism and predation rates recorded at the three colonies may be considered low when compared with similar studies dealing with other gull species. It seems that interactions did not represent a threat to the population dynamics of Audouin's Gulls in any of the three colonies. The highest rates of aerial kleptoparasitism, courtship feeding and chick mortality were recorded at the Columbretes Islands, and the lowest at the Ebro Delta. The ratio of the number of yellow-legged gulls to the number of Audouin's gulls seems to influence the rate of disturbances. Food availability was also likely to play an important role in the number of interactions, which increased when food was in shorter supply. The study at the Ebro Delta and Chafarinas Islands was restricted to some subcolonies and hence results may not be necessarily representative of the entire colonies. The existence of some yellow-legged gull individuals specialised as predators was recorded. Finally, we discuss the suitability of several conservation measures commonly applied in colonies where both species breed syntopically.


This article presents the successive changes and evolution of the frameworks for 21st century competencies, since the appearance of the first conceptual models during the final years of the last century, and also it is a review of the competencies that are needed in the 21st century with a special focus on the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) competencies. The included frameworks have been elaborated by diverse institutions such as international organizations, private consortia and also governments as a guideline for educational policies in elementary and secondary schools. Later, the frameworks are compared and analyzed according to a classification of the competencies into general categories, in order to visualize some trends and obtain some insights about the direction they are heading. Finally, it provides some suggestions for the conception of future frameworks. https://doi.org/10.34105/j.kmel.2013.05.002b


I can speak from first hand experience about the lack of health care within the prison service, albeit from the perspective of the much over populated female estate.

The job of being a prison doctor is hard. Many inmates are drug users or self harmers. They pull fast ones to get legal prescriptions to alleviate the gnawing need for heroin or crack cocaine. They try to get sick notes so they do not have to work. However, not all prisoners are addicts or skivers, yet we are treated as if we are. On the "out," as it is colloquially known in prison, a general practitioner doesn't have to ascertain physically that someone has been up all night vomiting—his or her word is accepted as the truth. Unfortunately, someone residing at Her Majesty's pleasure is and always will be an inmate first and foremost.

From my experience there is a complete lack of health care for everyone. At HMP Drake Hall there is no night cover, and only three officers on for a population of 315 women, which is shocking. This led to one pregnant inmate being taken down to the segregation unit to miscarry—the segregation unit is the only place where there are officers constantly in attendance. We had no panic buttons in our cells to call for help in an emergency. Losing a baby is bad enough without being subjected to this type of dehumanising treatment.

Other inmates are the main carers for those who are sick and mentally ill. I personally telephoned Stafford Hospital's maternity unit, using my own valuable telephone units, in an attempt to get some help for the woman, only to be told that unless a directive came from the prison itself the hospital could do nothing. This inmate was finally transferred to HMP Foston Hall, which has a hospital wing. It was some days before the medical staff arranged a scan, only to discover that the inmate had been carrying twins and had lost only one. It is inconceivable that this could happen anywhere other than in prison.

So vast is the scale of mental health problems that accompany the physical needs of women in prison that it would take a team of highly trained and dedicated professionals to begin to come to grips with them. Most women in prison have been sexually abused either during childhood or in adolescence. These problems are greatly magnified simply because women come into prison with all their emotional baggage (unlike men, who "get their heads down and do their time" while their wives or girlfriends keep their lives intact for them.) Women have often left their children behind and are typically the sole or primary carers. Not knowing where the children are and not seeing them on a regular basis, if at all given the distances some mothers are placed away from their families, only makes matters worse. There are only 13 women's prisons in England and none in Wales.

Without doubt the most horrific thing that I have come across while in prison is "decrutching." This is the term used when a prisoner comes in with drugs secreted in her vagina and other inmates pin her down and remove those drugs with any available tool. This has led to serious injuries, which are all kept quiet because if the victim reports them, she will be charged with supplying. Female rape with implements—does it get any worse than this?

Finally a warning—hepatitis and HIV are rife in the female estate and most women conduct sexual relationships with other prisoners for all sorts of reasons. Many are also prostitutes when not in prison. These relationships go on without any protection or education at all. How long before the ticking bomb explodes into the wider population and everyone pays the price?


Lithomargic clay is a commonly found below Laterite soil throughout the Konkan belt of South India. Being a soft soil, it is very problematic to work with; showing high
strength in dry conditions but suffering a significant fall in strength under wet circumstances. A heavy rainfall condition in the Konkan belt makes the area highly
prone to erosion, landslides and slope failures. Thus, this study aims to strengthen the available soil by using coconut coir mats as reinforcement. The strength
characteristics of the soil reinforced with the coir mats at different positions were studied, by conducting direct shear and unconfined compressive strength tests, to
attain ideal reinforcement positioning. Cashew Nut Shell Liquid Oil (CNSL), a commonly used industrial disinfectant was used to improve durability and attain better strength characteristics. It was observed that both the proposed reinforcements, i.e. coir mats and coir mats coated in CNSL oil increased the strength of the clay. With untreated coir mats as reinforcement, an increase of 88% was attained in the compressive strength with the mats positioned at one third from both the ends of the mould, parallel to the base and a tenfold increase in the cohesion of the soil when the
mats were placed in three layers i.e. one third from both ends and the centre vertical to the plane of shear. A further increase of 1.76% and 6.92% was achieved in the
compressive strength and the cohesion value respectively when the coir mats were coated with CNSL oil.


BACKGROUND
We reviewed 212 consecutive patients who underwent stage I palliative surgery for hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) at our institution between January 1983 and June 1993.

METHODS AND RESULTS
Six surgeons participated in the care of these patients. Follow-up is 97% complete. Preoperative anatomic and physiological factors and procedural features of the stage I operation were analyzed for impact on stage I mortality, survival to stage II palliation, and actuarial survival. Hospital mortality was not significantly lower during the second half of the study period (P = .242). Operative mortality was 46.2%. Multivariate analysis revealed improved stage I operative survival in patients with mitral stenosis (MS) and aortic stenosis (AS; P = .006). Additional risk factors for stage I mortality were a lower immediately pre-stage I pH (P = .034) and weight < 3 kg (P = .015). Overall first-year actuarial survival for MS/AS was 59%, and it was 33% for all others (P = .001). Among stage I survivors, patients with MS/AS were more likely to survive to stage II palliation (P = .031). Analysis of actuarial survival of stage I survivors showed that a smaller ascending aorta (P < .001), aortic atresia (P < .001), and mitral atresia (P = .002) were all risk factors for intermediate death.

CONCLUSIONS
Preoperative anatomic and physiological state are predictors of stage I mortality. HLHS anatomic subtype also influences intermediate outcome, most notably pre-stage II attrition. These data may be useful in choosing initial management for patients with HLHS.


The euro is already present throughout Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe today. Against this backdrop, the OeNB has been regularly conducting household opinion polls for years in the countries that make up this economic space. The survey questions place special emphasis on euro cash holdings. The results show that the choice to hold euro cash is based on a wide variety of motives, above all geographic proximity, coupled with increasing economic interlinkages, the desire to minimize risk, and tradition. Decisions to have savings in euro or to take out euro-denominated loans can be attributed to similar considerations. In addition, macroeconomic factors such as inflation and exchange rate expectations may also play a role. What clearly emerges is that the extent of currency substitution varies considerably from country to country. In terms of cash, Slovenia, which was about to adopt the euro at the time of the most recent poll, is the frontrunner (approximately 40% of the population reported euro cash holdings in the second half of 2006). Hungary is last, with only a 7% rate. In terms of savings and loans, Croatia posts the highest percentage according to both the OeNB survey and the aggregated bank balance sheet data (approximately 80% of all savings deposits and/or borrowings of households and enterprises are denominated in foreign currency). At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Czech Republic, a country with approximately 10% in both areas.


Hepatic ischemia and reperfusion injury (IRI) is an inflammatory condition and a significant cause of morbidity and mortality after surgery. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) have been widely implicated in the pathogenesis of inflammatory diseases. Among the different MMPs, gelatinases (MMP-2 and MMP-9) are within the most prominent MMPs detected during liver IRI. While the role of MMP-9 in liver damage has been fairly documented, direct evidence of the role for MMP-2 activity in hepatic IRI remains to be established. Due to the lack of suitable inhibitors to target individual MMPs in vivo, gene manipulation is as an essential tool to assess MMP direct contribution to liver injury. Hence, we used MMP-2-/- deficient mice and MMP-2+/+ wild-type littermates to examine the function of MMP-2 activity in hepatic IRI. MMP-2 expression was detected along the sinusoids of wild-type livers before and after surgery and in a small population of leukocytes post-IRI. Compared to MMP-2+/+ mice, MMP-2 null (MMP-2-/-) mice showed exacerbated liver damage at 6, 24, and 48 hours post-reperfusion, which was fatal in some cases. MMP-2 deficiency resulted in upregulation of MMP-9 activity, spontaneous leukocyte infiltration in naïve livers, and amplified MMP-9-dependent transmigration of leukocytes in vitro and after hepatic IRI. Moreover, complete loss of MMP-2 activity impaired the degradation of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP-1) in extensively damaged livers post-reperfusion. However, the administration of a PARP-1 inhibitor to MMP-2 null mice restored liver preservation to almost comparable levels of MMP-2+/+ mice post-IRI. Deficient PARP-1 degradation in MMP-2-null sinusoidal endothelial cells correlated with their increased cytotoxicity, evaluated by the measurement of LDH efflux in the medium. In conclusion, our results show for the first time that MMP-2 gene deletion exacerbates liver IRI. Moreover, they offer new insights into the MMP-2 modulation of inflammatory responses, which could be relevant for the design of new pharmacological MMP-targeted agents to treat hepatic IRI.


The study of group actions is more than a hundred years old but remains to this day a vibrant and widely studied topic in a variety of mathematic fields. A central development in the last fifty years is the phenomenon of rigidity, whereby one can classify actions of certain groups, such as lattices in semi-simple Lie groups. This provides a way to classify all possible symmetries of important spaces and all spaces admitting given symmetries. Paradigmatic results can be found in the seminal work of George Mostow, Gregory Margulis, and Robert J. Zimmer, among others. The papers in "Geometry, Rigidity, and Group Actions" explore the role of group actions and rigidity in several areas of mathematics, including ergodic theory, dynamics, geometry, topology, and the algebraic properties of representation varieties. In some cases, the dynamics of the possible group actions are the principal focus of inquiry. In other cases, the dynamics of group actions are a tool for proving theorems about algebra, geometry, or topology. This volume contains surveys of some of the main directions in the field as well as research articles on topics of current interest.


On 11 August 2011, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, the Minister of Health, launched the Green Paper on the National Health Insurance (NHI) during a post-cabinet media briefing in Pretoria. The NHI is expected to be an innovative system of healthcare funding which will give all South Africans access to appropriate, efficient and quality health services and affordable, quality health care, regardless of socio-economic status. 1 He was succinct in his briefing that the timeline for this project is 14 years, with the first five years focused on building and preparation. Dr Motsolaedi stressed that the cornerstone of the proposed NHI is universal coverage, with a financing system that will ensure provision of essential health care to all citizens of South Africa (and legal long-term residents), regardless of their employment status and ability to make a direct monetary contribution to the NHI Fund. 2


This casebook gathers a collection of ambitious essays about both parts of the novel (1605 and 1615) and also provides a general introduction and a bibliography. The essays range from Ramon Menendez Pidal's seminal study of how Cervantes dealt with chivalric literature to Erich Auerbachs polemical study of Don Quixote as essentially a comic book by studying its mixture of styles, and include Leo Spitzer's masterful probe into the essential ambiguity of the novel through minute linguistic analysis of Cervantes prose. The book includes pieces by other major Cervantes scholars, such as Manuel Duran and Edward C. Riley, as well as younger scholars like Georgina Dopico-Black. All these essays ultimately seek to discover that which is peculiarly Cervantean in Don Quixote and why it is considered to be the first modern novel.


Microbial degradation of nicotine is an important process to control nicotine residues in the aqueous environment. In this study, a high active nicotine degradation strain named Pseudomonas sp. JY-Q was isolated from tobacco waste extract (TWE). This strain could completely degrade 5.0 g l−1 nicotine in 24 h under optimal culture conditions, and it showed some tolerance even at higher concentrations (10.0 g l−1) of nicotine. The complete genome of JY-Q was sequenced to understand the mechanism by which JY-Q could degrade nicotine and tolerate such high nicotine concentrations. Comparative genomic analysis indicated that JY-Q degrades nicotine through putative novel mechanisms. Two candidate gene cluster duplications located separately at distant loci were predicted to be responsible for nicotine degradation. These two nicotine (Nic) degradation-related loci (AA098_21325—AA098_21340, AA098_03885—AA098_03900) exhibit nearly completely consistent gene organization and component synteny. The nicotinic acid (NA) degradation gene cluster (AA098_17770–AA098_17790) and Nic-like clusters were both predicted to be flanked by mobile genetic elements (MGE). Furthermore, we analyzed the regions of genomic plasticity (RGP) in the JY-Q strain and found a dynamic genome carrying a type VI secretion system (T6SS) that promotes nicotine metabolism and tolerance based on transcriptomics and used in silico methods to identify the T6SS effector protein. Thus, a novel nicotine degradation mechanism was elucidated for Pseudomonas sp. JY-Q, suggesting its potential application in the bioremediation of nicotine-contaminated environments, such as TWEs.


The presented book review is devoted to "Otkhodniks" by Plusnin Ju., Zausaeva Ya., Zhidkevich N., Pozanenko A. (editor — S. Kordonsky). Otkhodnichestvo is a type of labor migration implying a scenario in which an adult, able-bodied family member temporarily leaves home to seek work in another area. Otkhodnichestvo has a long history in Russia but a new wave of its mass dissemination appeared in recent decades. The reviewed book defines a concept of otkhodnichestvo, considers what similarities and dissimilarities there are between this phenomenon and other forms of labor migration (i.e. jobbers, rotation workers, and temporary cross-border migrants). It reveals the otkhodniks' motivation and economic patterns, describes typical social and demographic characteristics of contemporary wandering workers, evaluates otkhodniks' cultural and social impact on local their community's everyday life, etc. The book is based on a series of fieldwork studies conducted by the authors in small Russian towns over the last four years. The book is published with support from the Social Research Support Foundation "Khamovniki". In the review Barsukova discusses her impressions of the book, outlining its unusual genre. One uncontestable advantage of the book is an ethnographic material allowing readers to become immersed in all details of otkhodnik life. Otkhodniks usually come from small rural towns. They are forced to leave their homes to seek jobs in other areas because there are no opportunities for them to earn money in their permanent place of residence. Moreover, a key driver of the discussed form of labor migration is the otkhodniks' aspiration to provide normal living conditions for their family members. The book review author highlights that otkhdoniks should be discussed not just in terms of their informal employment, the context of family relationship transformation should also be taken seriously into account.


With the media frenzy over the past few years surrounding the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and other similar corporate governance reforms, many people have become numb to the effect of such reforms—especially executives of privately held companies. However, despite the original public company application of many of these reforms, people are beginning to realize that their shadow is extending much further and having dramatic effects on the way private companies conduct business. The restrictions of these reforms are affecting everything from the sources and processes of finding capital to the relationships companies have with their insurers, lenders, and customers. As a result, private companies need to react now to become familiar with the provisions of these reforms and become aware of what steps can be taken to lessen their impact—or risk being blindsided at a later date.


Working paper developed from a lecture presented in Seoul about the role of Korea in the New World Order. Summarizes the historical background of the concept of a New World Order and its evolution after the Gulf War of 1990-91. Describes the fundamental issue behind the New World Order as whether the global diffusion of technological capacity in the late 20th century (and the associated spread of the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction) must lead to chaos, or can be organized in a stable peace. Asserts the important role of regional as well as global institutions in building a New World Order, citing historical successes and failures in Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, and the Pacific Basin. Discusses the importance of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the key role of the Republic of Korea in expanding and strengthening APEC in order to create peace and economic development throughout the Pacific Basin.


We present cosmological parameter results from the final full-mission Planck measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies, combining information from the temperature and polarization maps and the lensing reconstruction. Compared to the 2015 results, improved measurements of large-scale polarization allow the reionization optical depth to be measured with higher precision, leading to significant gains in the precision of other correlated parameters. Improved modelling of the small-scale polarization leads to more robust constraints on many parameters, with residual modelling uncertainties estimated to affect them only at the 0.5σ level. We find good consistency with the standard spatially-flat 6-parameter ΛCDM cosmology having a power-law spectrum of adiabatic scalar perturbations (denoted "base ΛCDM" in this paper), from polarization, temperature, and lensing, separately and in combination. A combined analysis gives dark matter density Ωch2 = 0.120 ± 0.001, baryon density Ωbh2 = 0.0224 ± 0.0001, scalar spectral index ns = 0.965 ± 0.004, and optical depth τ = 0.054 ± 0.007 (in this abstract we quote 68% confidence regions on measured parameters and 95% on upper limits). The angular acoustic scale is measured to 0.03% precision, with 100θ* = 1.0411 ± 0.0003. These results are only weakly dependent on the cosmological model and remain stable, with somewhat increased errors, in many commonly considered extensions. Assuming the base-ΛCDM cosmology, the inferred (model-dependent) late-Universe parameters are: Hubble constant H0 = (67.4 ± 0.5)  km s−1 Mpc−1; matter density parameter Ωm = 0.315 ± 0.007; and matter fluctuation amplitude σ8 = 0.811 ± 0.006. We find no compelling evidence for extensions to the base-ΛCDM model. Combining with baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements (and considering single-parameter extensions) we constrain the effective extra relativistic degrees of freedom to be Neff = 2.99 ± 0.17, in agreement with the Standard Model prediction Neff = 3.046, and find that the neutrino mass is tightly constrained to ∑mν <  0.12  eV. The CMB spectra continue to prefer higher lensing amplitudes than predicted in base ΛCDM at over 2σ, which pulls some parameters that affect the lensing amplitude away from the ΛCDM model; however, this is not supported by the lensing reconstruction or (in models that also change the background geometry) BAO data. The joint constraint with BAO measurements on spatial curvature is consistent with a flat universe, ΩK = 0.001 ± 0.002. Also combining with Type Ia supernovae (SNe), the dark-energy equation of state parameter is measured to be w0 = −1.03 ± 0.03, consistent with a cosmological constant. We find no evidence for deviations from a purely power-law primordial spectrum, and combining with data from BAO, BICEP2, and Keck Array data, we place a limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio r0.002 <  0.06. Standard big-bang nucleosynthesis predictions for the helium and deuterium abundances for the base-ΛCDM cosmology are in excellent agreement with observations. The Planck base-ΛCDM results are in good agreement with BAO, SNe, and some galaxy lensing observations, but in slight tension with the Dark Energy Survey's combined-probe results including galaxy clustering (which prefers lower fluctuation amplitudes or matter density parameters), and in significant, 3.6σ, tension with local measurements of the Hubble constant (which prefer a higher value). Simple model extensions that can partially resolve these tensions are not favoured by the Planck data.


The book The Energy Sector and Energy Policy of the Czech
Republic is divided into eight chapters. The first describes
the key actors and the legislative framework of the energy
sector of the Czech Republic, including an analysis of the
Government, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of
the Environment, and other legislative and regulatory bodies
and political parties. The second chapter introduces the rich
and complicated history of the development of the Czech
national energy sector. The following chapters familiarize the
reader with the coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, renewables
industries, and electricity and heat. The book is recommended
to scholars and researchers, as well as experts in the relevant
fields of study, but will also serve as a guide for those
outside academia who work with the topic daily, such as in
public administration.


The one-bit-matching conjecture for independent component analysis (ICA) has been widely believed in the ICA community. Theoretically, it has been proved that under the assumption of zero skewness for the model probability density functions, the global maximum of a cost function derived from the typical objective function on the ICA problem with the one-bit-matching condition corresponds to a feasible solution of the ICA problem. In this note, we further prove that all the local maximums of the cost function correspond to the feasible solutions of the ICA problem in the two-source case under the same assumption. That is, as long as the one-bit-matching condition is satisfied, the two-source ICA problem can be successfully solved using any local descent algorithm of the typical objective function with the assumption of zero skewness for all the model probability density functions.


In the last decade, cash transfer programmes have become popular components of poverty reduction strategies in Sub Saharan African countries. Along with well established benefits such as a reduction in food insecurity and increased school enrolment, recent research has found these programmes are also effective in promoting on-farm activities and investments in agricultural assets. In addition, some cash transfer interventions have proven effective in improving nutritional status of children living in beneficiary households. In this paper, we use data from the Mchinji Social Cash Transfer pilot programme to assess if the programme had an impact on child nutritional status and to what extent this impact can be linked to increases in agricultural production by beneficiary households. At the household level, the analysis shows a substantial impact on household food and non-food expenditure as well as a shift in the consumption preferences towards better nutrients. At the individual level, we find children of age 0-5 residing in beneficiary households being, on average, taller compared to the control group which translates into a significant reduction in the stunting rate among children. Further, we find that the programme positively affected food consumption out of own production and that children living in families experiencing a shift toward home production of foods, such as meat and fish, benefitted more in terms of nutritional outcomes. JEL Classification: I15, I38, O12, O22, Q12


MODERN HISTORY AND POLITICS "The Infidel Within." Muslims in Britain since 1800, by Humayun Ansari. London, UK: C. Hurst & Co., 2004. xiv + 438 pages. Bibl. to p. 424. BP 14.95. Among the first Muslims in the British islands were travellers, sailors, and settlers. During the Middle Ages, some of these had not gone there voluntarily; they were captured pirates who had practiced their trade off the shores of North Africa. The British subsequently got better acquainted with its Muslim neighbors, as the Empire lured additional numbers from the colonial peripheries into the center. Humayun Ansari presents a well-written history of Islam in Great Britain, focusing on the periods before and after the Second World War. In it, Dr. Ansari, a professor at the University of London, raises this main question: has a British-Muslim identity developed? Indeed, he sheds light on this question by exploring the waves of Muslim arrivals to Britain. But one soon finds that there is no big common denominator among British Muslims, so colorful is the tapestry that the social fabric of these people forms. British Muslims come from all over the world, speak many languages, and form social layers. Not only that, this mosaic has grown increasingly complex as a result of the patterns of immigration in the two phases before and after 1975. There are now two million Muslims in Britain, three-quarters of them under 25 years of age. They will influence the country for many decades to come. The historical part of this inspiring book will definitely stimulate scholars to do comparative studies, for instance in Central Europe where a similar work is lacking. "The Crescent and the Brandenburg Gate: Muslims in Germany since 1731" is a study that has yet to be written. However, here I shed light only on Ansari's central question about British-Muslim identity. This scholar, whose own roots lie in Pakistan, starts with what Orientalists and Islamists have in common, that is stressing what separates Islam and the West in the light of their own homegrown minorities: the other, the opposite, or even the "infidel within." For centuries, says Ansari, the secular West has stigmatized Islam as irrational, violent, and fanatical. Consequently, the conclusion drawn in the West is that Muslims must be controlled and held at bay. The pictures of the Islamic revolution in Iran, the burning of the Salman Rushdie novel Satanic Verses, the "hysteria" surrounding the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, have further deepened the British public's antipathy towards Muslims. As a result, explains Ansari, Muslims are exposed to hostility. Although Prime Minister Tony Blair said that this does not arise from Islam in itself, the press lumps Muslims and extremists together. But according to public opinion polls, maintains the author, the great majority of Muslims are loyal to Great Britain. Humayun Ansari hits the nail on the head. However, there is much more to think about. The deep Western fear of Islam is rooted in contemporary, not just historical circumstances. To be sure, attacks by Muslims on Europe have run for 1,000 years; and the continent was a hair's breath away from being under Ottoman rule. But it is also true that in the contemporary era of mass tourism, many citizens of the West have journeyed to the East. Having done so, few indeed would afterwards exchange their lifestyle in the West for that of the East, given the sharp differences in terms of human rights, civil society, and the role of women. These are only some of the reasons for so much Western "opposition" to Islam. What Ansari calls "hysteria around the Iraqi raid of Kuwait" is based on the history of Europe: If the swallowing up of a neighboring country by the dictator of Baghdad had been permitted, it would have thrown the world back to the time after 1933, when the Nazis annexed one country after the other. …


When Voltaire published his first philosophical tale in Paris in 1748, Zadig, ou la destinee, he expected it to be censured. But on the contrary, the oriental story was celebrated as exquisite entertainment. Why wasn't the narrative read as unacceptable political critique? And why had the author envisioned such a reaction? In this paper, I suggest that the tale's inscription of the reader and of an allegorical model of reading, deliberately mislead the recipients. The contemporary readers amused themselves comparing the Babylonian court with the Versailles of Louis XV, a comparison which did not seem to threaten the royal power. The reception has ever since been marked by an impulse to consider the story in a historical-biographical light - as an allegorical mirror image of Voltaire's personal experiences as a courtesan. In a critical edition from 1965, Zadig is symptomatically called "l'anti-Versailles". The focus on the allegorical link between the representation of the Babylonian court and the court of Louis XV, seems to have blinded scholars to the fact that most of the story actually takes place outside the court. Taking the representation of the outside world as my point of departure, I will argue that the narrative's critical agenda is not exposed through allegory. The tale's explosive political message is rather to be found in a comparative exposure of the contemporary political order, characterized by the breakdown of princely power and the emergence of a global power of money.


The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs, created digital flood-inundation maps for an 8.3-mile reach of the Elkhart River at Goshen, Indiana, extending from downstream of the Goshen Dam to downstream from County Road 17. The inundation maps, which can be accessed through the USGS Flood Inundation Mapping Science Web site at http://water. usgs.gov/osw/flood_inundation/, depict estimates of the areal extent and depth of flooding corresponding to nine selected water levels (stages) at the USGS streamgage at Elkhart River at Goshen (station number 04100500). Current conditions for the USGS streamgages in Indiana may be obtained on the Internet at http://waterdata.usgs.gov/. In addition, streamstage data have been provided to the National Weather Service (NWS) for incorporation into their Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service (AHPS) flood-warning system (http://water. weather.gov/ahps/). The NWS forecasts flood hydrographs at many places that are often collocated with USGS streamgages. NWS-forecasted peak-stage information may be used in conjunction with the maps developed in this study to show predicted areas of flood inundation. In this study, flood profiles were computed for the stream reach by means of a one-dimensional step-backwater model. The model was calibrated using the most current stagedischarge relation at the Elkhart River at Goshen streamgage. The hydraulic model was then used to compute nine watersurface profiles for flood stages at 1-foot (ft) intervals referenced to the streamgage datum and ranging from approximately bankfull (5 ft) to greater than the highest recorded water level (13 ft). The simulated water-surface profiles were then combined with a geographic information system (GIS) digital-elevation model (DEM), derived from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data having a 0.37-ft vertical accuracy and 3.9-ft horizontal resolution in order to delineate the area flooded at each water level. The availability of these maps, along with Internet information regarding current stage from USGS streamgages and forecasted stream stages from the NWS, provide emergency management personnel and residents with information that is critical for flood response activities such as evacuations and road closures as well as for postflood recovery efforts.


Purpose: The purpose of this project was to implement a Wellness program to address the health disparities in a vulnerable population. The population targeted was a local population that was served at a mental health facility for socioeconomically disadvantaged. The program focused on improving knowledge of cardiovascular health, empowerment and communication skills. Significance: The significance of the project is the improvement in ones wellness by provision of education, empowerment and communication skills. The attaining of these skills can translate into other areas of wellness and improved health outcomes. Populations at risk due to socioeconomic and racial differences can benefit from programs targeted to their specific needs. Methods: The methodology utilizing the theoretical framework of self-efficacy included the assessment of needs, the obtainment of stakeholder support from the organization, the implementation of the educational program and awareness campaign followed by evaluation of participants. Project Outcomes: Participants benefited from cardiovascular screening, educational counseling and skills regarding cardiovascular health, communication and selfefficacy. High risk real time identification of hypertensive individuals occurred. Faculty and staff improved their knowledge of subject area and supported the program by embracing the content alongside the patient participants. Clinical Relevance: The project can act as a template for replication in other facilities or to focus on other commonly seen health issues. Sustainability based on easy replication and low cost and applicability to high risk vulnerable populations provides significant value in today's health care climate.


The roadside billboards, as a distractor, seem to have been investigated and efforts have been made in order to determine the extent to which they affect the safe driving behaviour. Most studies suggest that the existence of roadside advertising billboards, in general, alters drivers' behaviour, but they are quite ambiguous in quantifying this impact. This research aims to investigate and quantify this effect by means of driving simulator experiment including 31 young participants. The experimental procedure included driving in urban environment in high and low traffic conditions, with or without advertising billboards on the roadside, while unexpected events were designed to take place. Regression statistical modelling techniques were developed in order to investigate the impact of roadside advertising on several driving performance measures. The models' application indicated that roadside advertising leads to slight decrease of the mean speed, but at the same time slight increase of the reaction time and lateral position of the vehicle from the right borderline.


Abstract United Arab Emirates (UAE) women have enthusiastically taken advantage of the educational opportunities available for all after the discovery of oil. Their access to higher education has expanded considerably, opening new opportunities to them for participation and career development. This exploratory study has attempted to gain an insight into the challenges married female Emirati students undergo during their learning journey to pursue the Bachelor of Education teaching degree. The study also examines motivating factors and strategies, albeit individual and/or institutional serving as support factors. The research has been positioned within a socio-cultural framework of the UAE context. This article delineates the complexities of balancing married life juxtaposed with the demands of being a student teacher within a 21 st century tomorrow's multicultural perspective school framework. The need for tertiary level supportive services empowering and inspiring these students is also discussed within the daily life family reality, community and society at large.


We examined the effects of temperature on the interaction between Legionella pneumophila and phagocytes of guinea pigs. The body temperatures of guinea pigs infected with a sublethal dose (1.2 × 104 CFU) or a lethal dose (1.0 × 105 CFU) of L. pneumophila elevated from 38.4±0.15 C to 40.2±0.42 C or 40.3 ± 0.62 C, respectively. The intracellular bacterial killing by and bacterial proliferation in the phagocytes were examined at 33, 37, 40, and 42 C, using in vitro culture systems of peritoneal macrophages or polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) of guinea pigs. In all the macrophages incubated at different temperatures, significant intracellular bacterial killings were observed at 4 hr after in vitro phagocytosis. After 24 hr of incubation, there was about a 100‐fold increase of CFU and the number reached a maximum after 48 hr of incubation in the macrophages incubated at 42 C as well as 37 and 40 C, suggesting that macrophages support the intracellular bacterial growth in hyperthermia. In the PMN, L. pneumophila CFU 4 hr or 12 hr after the infection were significantly lower at 42 C than those at 37 C (P<0.05), indicating that the bactericidal capacity of PMN was enhanced at 42 C compared to 37 C. However, in all the PMN incubated at different temperatures, there were about 10‐fold increases of CFU 24 hr after the infection, suggesting that PMN as well as macrophages support intracellular bacterial growth in hyperthermia. The extracellular bacterial growth was examined at 33, 37, 40, and 42 C in buffered yeast extract (BYE) broth or RPMI 1640 medium containing 50% guinea pig serum as a permissive or non‐permissive liquid medium for the bacterial growth, respectively. Inhibition of bacterial growth in BYE broth at 42 C, and a decrease of CFU in RPMI 1640 medium containing 50% guinea pig serum at 42 C were observed. In conclusion, hyperthermia may be beneficial by restricting extracellular bacterial survival, but it exerts no beneficial effect on the restriction of intracellular bacterial growth in phagocytes, though PMN showed enhanced initial killing at 42 C. These results suggest that fever, or hyperthermia itself, may not largely contribute as a nonspecific host defense early in the course of legionellosis.


In this paper we discuss and compare a set of classical and Bayesian longitudinal models to predict small-medium enterprise (SME) default probability, taking unobservable firm and business sector heterogeneities, as well as time variation, into account. By using a panel data set of German SMEs, we compare a large set of models by looking at their in-sample and out-of-sample forecasts. To choose the best model, we consider both a threshold independent criteria as well as a novel financial loss function. In terms of in-sample performances, we find that Bayesian models perform much better that classical longitudinal models and pooled logit models. Similarly, the former models show significant lower loss functions compared with the latter models. Instead, the out-of-sample performances are much closer and complex models are not statistically different from a simple pooled logit model.


Hanno Pahl: Textbook Economics: A Social Studies of Science Perspective. The paper arguesthat introductory textbooks in economics are an important object of inquiry. Althoughthe knowledge presented in this type of literature often does not cover the research frontiersof the discipline, economics textbooks are influential media of the external communicationof mainstream economics as well as agents of academic socialization on the inside. Therefore,they need to be analysed in terms of content and rhetorical strategies, a task that is notidentical with the general critique of neoclassical economics. A case study is undertaken toidentify symptomatic and problematic framings of the bodies of knowledge in three populartextbooks. The final section contextualizes the findings and poses further research questions.


Theoretical analyses of social inequality often regard ethnicity as a complicating factor, external to processes of class structuration. This has frequently resulted from the attempt to separately analyse various 'dimensions' of inequality, a tradition deriving largely from Weber's distinction between economic classes and status groups. Since ethnic groups are treated by sociologists working within the Weberian tradition as a kind of status group, they are viewed as a mode of group formation which competes with the formation of classes as coherent social entities.
Ethnicity is viewed as a complicating factor precisely because it is often significant in various structures of inequality. Its importance in processes of labour market segmentation, which produces jobs characterised by widely differing wages, conditions of work and career paths, is supported by evidence of the concentration of certain ethnic groups in specific occupations. The thesis argues that these processes of segmentation affect class composition and the internal structure of classes through the introduction of new productive positions and the alteration of existing ones. Consequently, ethnicity is empirically significant in some processes forming the structure of class.
A suggested solution to this theoretical problem is the integration of subjective and objective aspects of class. The view that objective structures are created and maintained regardless of the consciousness and activity of participants is rejected. Rather, consciousness is viewed not only as the product of objective social location, but also as creating and changing objective structures. This allows for the incorporation of ethnicity into explanatory accounts, since ethnicity is referred to primarily with respect to cultural attributes. This includes both the attitudes, norms and values of ethnic group members, and assessments of ethnit groups by others.
The thesis investigates the ways in which ethnicity has been operative in historical processes whereby the labour force in Australia has been supplied, especially in the post-war years. In addition, the generation of new positions in the production process, and the way in which workers have been allocated to them, have also been processes in which ethnicity has been operative. These considerations allow the development of a proposed analytical framework which can be used to examine processes of class formation.
The way in which ethnic factors, interacting with various structural mechanisms, are operative in the crucially important stage of initial allocation of workers to positions, is illustrated by an examination of the labour market experience of Vietnamese migrants in Hobart. The study does not test the argument of the thesis, but rather is concerned to illustrate the theoretical position adopted. The limited evidence available in the study adds weight to the concern to include ethnicity in accounts of processes of class formation. Further research is required in order to more fully test, modify and extend this argument, and proposals for this are offered.


This work was made for the co-curated exhibition 'Permittivity of Free Space' at APT Gallery, Deptford, London.

In 1972, the Apollo 17 mission to the Moon included the first scientist-astronaut, Harrison Schmitt, with a PhD in Geology. The installation includes original footage of Schmitt's regolith discoveries in the volcanic Taurus-Littrow Valley, contrasted with footage from recent LROC lunar flyovers projected onto ground basalt.

The lunar regolith is primarily composed of basaltic and anorthositic rock, disintegrated through continuous bombardment by interstellar charged atomic particles and meteoric impacts. Technological advancements in cameras can make the lunar surface seem less real, or rather more virtual than the hazy 1972 live footage. Schmitt's zero-gravity excitement at finding orange soil is palpable through the grainy moon-dust covered camera lens, which he periodically cleans with a large brush.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 claims that all outer space is an international commons and it forbids all nations from claiming territorial sovereignty. The Moon Treaty of 1979 states that 'the Moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind and that an international regime should be established to govern the exploitation of such resources when such exploitation is about to become feasible' (http://www.unoosa.org). Yet since 2017, Trump's Agency Review Team (ART) have been in discussion with NASA about mining possibilities.

Trump's resistance to the globally agreed aims of both treaties, through potential commodification of the Moon's assets, resonates with aspects of the Permittivity of Free Space i.e. the resistance that material has to the flow of electricity and also applies to the vacuum of space.

Co-curation
The curatorial concept was co-developed by India Gabb, Nicola Rae, Lucy Wheeler, Zoe Wheeler, in discussion with members of Space 10 in the Unconference Space during Arts Work of the Future: Digital Maker Collective at Tate Exchange, March 2018, and later the title was co-developed with Paul Malone.

'The title of this exhibition refers to the resistance that material has to the flow of electricity - a principle that also applies to the vacuum of space. The exhibition attempts to align this concept to the process of curatorial practice in which each artist also becomes a co-curator. It is our intention is to allow for the progressive migration of art works within the space, as well as the potential for change over two weeks. These translocations are intended to alter perception of the works as well as of the gallery space itself. By taking transitory and sequential ownership of the space, the participating artists engage in creating alternative meanings in ways that allow agency.

Through discussions and experiment, the artworks will be moved around the gallery through the use of wheels, skids, tripods, platforms, mobile projections and virtual reality. The structure of the gallery becomes a site of freedom of movement resisting fixed notions of meaning. Interfaces act as membranes in which ideas and archives from online communities can permeate into real and physical manifestations. We intend to address this by accessing open source concepts in the creation of installations and utilise materials harvested from the locality. The aim is to transfer our ideas into this specific location and so relate to the everyday inhabitance of a space. We would like to create an open system in which ideas permeate between the artists and surrounding community.'


The characteristics of a possible dislocation etch for cadmium have been studied in detail and the factors affecting the action of the solution have been isolated. They are the orientation of the crystal surface and the composition of the etch. It has been shown that for reproducible etching the crystal surface must be parallel to a low index crystallographic plane to within +/-1° and the necessary techniques for preparing square cross-section crystals with such surfaces have been developed. The ionic compositions of the etch and the chemical polish employed, both solutions of nitric acid in ethanol, have been elucidated by chemical and spectroscopic methods and an attempt has been made to identify the fundamental mechanism of dislocation etching in the cadmium-etch system. The etch has been used to study the dislocations injected into cadmium single crystals sectioned by spark erosion machining. The experimental method used has novel features and it has been shown that the nature and depth of the damage introduced by this cutting technique depend on the spark energy employed and the diameter of the cutting wire used. This investigation has enabled thin foils free from sectioning damage to be prepared from bulk crystals and although lack of time has prevented a transmission electron microscopy study of deformed crystals reaching fruition, some observations made on foils prepared from undeformed crystals are recorded in an appendix. The etch has revealed that in crystals deformed in tension the dislocation density increases linearly with shear strain, a result at variance with the only previous report on this aspect of cadmium's behaviour. This report is critically appraised in an appendix. An attempt has been made to correlate the changes in the dislocation density of deformed and subsequently annealed crystals with their attendant changes in residual resistivity, dislocation density being estimated by the etch pit technique and residual resistivity by an a.c. mutual inductance method. An appendix presents a theoretical analysis showing how the complex components of the permeability of a rectangular section specimen placed in the a.c. apparatus may be computed.


It is not uncommon to hear criticisms of the university today. From the right, the university is seen as nothing more than a mere liberal bastion or hotbed for leftist ideological indoctrination. And from the left, the university is considered nothing more than a factory, part and parcel of the military-industrial complex, or a mere puppet of corporate control. The centrality of corporate, neoliberal logics, ideologies of managerialism and excellence, and the universalization of individualist policies over and above public purposes all seem to indicate that the university is undergoing a major identity crisis. What many of these analyses fail to recognize is the underlying educational logic at work in higher education—a logic that informs both conservative and progressive analyses of the university. Building on the work of Giorgio Agamben, we present a critical analysis of the connections between the university's educational logic of learning, the rise of student debt, and neoliberalism. We then suggest studying as an alternative model of university education that suspends the economy of learning and its connections with debt. To further expand upon Agamben's ontological analysis of study as a state of educational potentiality, we explore its political and economic dimensions through a psychoanalytic-Marxist framework. In particular, we draw upon Marxist notions of reification to understand how learning and debt are lived by the student, and in turn, how Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic notion of dehiscence provides a way in which the student can experience studying as a dereified expression of educational life. The result will be a theory of study that is capable of undermining educational investments made by and through neoliberalism into learnification.


Frequent blood pressure (BP) assessment is key to the diagnosis and treatment of many severe diseases, such as heart failure, kidney failure, hypertension, and hemodialysis. Current "gold-standard'' BP measurement techniques require the complete blockage of blood flow, which causes discomfort and disruption to normal activity when the assessment is done repetitively and frequently. Unfortunately, patients with hypertension or hemodialysis often have to get their BP measured every 15 minutes for a duration of 4-5 hours or more. The discomfort of wearing a cumbersome and limited mobility device affects their normal activities. In this work, we propose a device called eBP to measure BP from inside the user's ear aiming to minimize the measurement's impact on users' normal activities while maximizing its comfort level. eBP has 3 key components: (1) a light-based pulse sensor attached on an inflatable pipe that goes inside the ear, (2) a digital air pump with a fine controller, and (3) a BP estimation algorithm. In contrast to existing devices, eBP introduces a novel technique that eliminates the need to block the blood flow inside the ear, which alleviates the user's discomfort. We prototyped eBP custom hardware and software and evaluated the system through a comparative study on 35 subjects. The study shows that eBP obtains the average error of 1.8 mmHg and -3.1 mmHg and a standard deviation error of 7.2 mmHg and 7.9 mmHg for systolic (high-pressure value) and diastolic (low-pressure value), respectively. These errors are around the acceptable margins regulated by the FDA's AAMI protocol, which allows mean errors of up to 5 mmHg and a standard deviation of up to 8 mmHg.


This is the first of a series of papers dedicated to unveiling the mass composition and dynamical structure of a sample of flattened early-type galaxies in the Coma cluster. We describe our modifications to the Schwarzschild code of Richstone et al. Applying a Voronoi tessellation in the surface of section, we are able to assign accurate phase-space volumes to individual orbits and to reconstruct the full three-integral phase-space distribution function (DF) of any axisymmetric orbit library. Two types of tests have been performed to check the accuracy with which DFs can be represented by appropriate orbit libraries. First, by mapping DFs of spherical γ-models and flattened Plummer models onto the library, we show that the resulting line-of-sight velocity distributions and internal velocity moments of the library match those derived directly from the DF to a precision better than that of present-day observational errors. Secondly, by fitting libraries to the projected kinematics of the same DFs, we show that the DF reconstructed from the fitted library matches the input DF to a rms of about 15 per cent over a region in phase space covering 90 per cent of the mass of the library. The accuracy achieved allows us to implement effective entropy-based regularization to fit real, noisy and spatially incomplete data.


The speed of the economic downturn in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has been exceptional, causing mass layoffs—in Germany up to 30% of the workforce in some industries. Economic rationale suggests that the decision on which workers are fired should depend on productivity-related individual factors. However, from hiring situations we know that discrimination—i.e., decisions driven by characteristics unrelated to productivity—is widespread in Western labor markets. Drawing on representative survey data on forced layoffs and short-time work collected in Germany between April and December 2020, this study highlights that discrimination against immigrants is also present in firing situations. The analysis shows that employees with a migration background are significantly more likely to lose their job than native workers when otherwise healthy firms are unexpectedly forced to let go of part of their workforce, while firms make more efforts to substitute firing with short-time working schemes for their native workers. Adjusting for detailed job-related characteristics shows that the findings are unlikely to be driven by systematic differences in productivity between migrants and natives. Moreover, using industry-specific variation in the extent of the economic downturn, I demonstrate that layoff probabilities hardly differ across the less affected industries, but that the gap between migrants and natives increases with the magnitude of the shock. In the hardest-hit industries, job loss probability among migrants is three times higher than among natives. This confirms the hypothesis that firing discrimination puts additional pressure on the immigrant workforce in times of crisis.


Shortlisted for the FT/Goldman Sachs Book of the Year Award 2008 "ONE OF THE SMARTEST INVESTORS ON THE PLANET." MONEY MAGAZINE "This book is an essential read for those who wish to understand the modern world of investing." Alan Greenspan When Markets Collide is a timely alert to the fundamental changes taking place in today's global economic and financial systems and a call to action for investors who may fall victim to misinterpreting important signals. While some have tended to view asset class mispricings as mere "noise," this compelling book shows why they are important signals of opportunities and risks that will shape the market for years to come. One of today's most respected names in finance, Mohamed El-Erian puts recent events in their proper context, giving you the tools that can help you interpret the markets, benefit from global economic change, and navigate the risks. The world economy is in the midst of a series of hand-offs. Global growth is now being heavily influenced by nations that previously had little or no systemic influence. Former debtor nations are building unforeseen wealth and, thus, enjoying unprecedented influence and facing unusual challenges. And new derivative products have changed the behavior of many market segments and players. Yet, despite all these changes, the system's infrastructure is yet to be upgraded to reflect the realities of today's and tomorrow's world. El-Erian investigates the underlying drivers of global change to shed light on how you should: Think about the new opportunities and risks Construct an appropriately diversified and internationalized portfolio Protect your portfolio against new sources of systemic risk Best think about the impact of central banks and financial policies around the world Offering up predictions of future developments, El-Erian directs his focus to help you capitalize on the new financial landscape, while limiting exposure to new risk configurations. When Markets Collide is a unique collection of books for investors and policy makers around the world. In addition to providing a thorough analysis and clear perspective of recent events, it lays down a detailed map for navigating your way through an otherwise perplexing new economic landscape.


Refractive index imaging is a label-free technique that enables long-term monitoring of the internal structures and molecular composition in living cells with minimal perturbation. Existing tomographic methods for the refractive index imaging lack 3-D resolution and result in artifacts that prevent accurate refractive index quantification. To overcome these limitations without compromising the capability to observe a sample in its most native condition, we have developed a regularized tomographic phase microscope (RTPM) enabling accurate refractive index imaging of organelles inside intact cells. With the enhanced accuracy, we quantify the mass of chromosomes in intact living cells, and differentiate two human colon cancer lines, HT-29 and T84 cells, solely based on the non-aqueous (dry) mass of chromosomes. In addition, we demonstrate chromosomal imaging using a dual-wavelength RTPM, which shows its potential to determine the molecular composition of cellular organelles in live cells.


This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of comic-books, mobilising them as a means to understand better the political context in which they are produced. Structured around key political events in the US between 1938 and 1975, the author combines analyses of visual and textual discourse, including comic-book letters pages, to come to a more complete picture of the relationship between comic-books as documents and the people who read and created them. Exploring the ways in which ideas about the US and its place in the world were represented in major superhero comic-books during the tumultuous period of US history from the Great Depression to the political trauma of Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War, Superheroes and American Self-Image sheds fresh light on the manner in which comic-books shape and are shaped by contemporary politics. As such it will appeal to scholars of cultural and media studies, history and popular culture.


This outstanding book is the first comprehensive introduction to the English School of International Relations. Written by leading ES scholar Barry Buzan, it expertly guides readers through the English School's formative ideas, intellectual and historical roots, current controversies and future avenues of development. Part One sets out the English School's origins and development, explaining its central concepts and methodological tools, and placing it within the broader canon of IR theory. Part Two offers a detailed account of the historical, regional and social structural strands of the English School, explaining the important link between the school's historical projects and its interest in a societal approach to international relations. Part Three explores the School's responses to the enduring problems of order and justice, and highlights the changing balance between pluralist and solidarist institutions in the evolution of international society over the past five centuries. The book concludes with a discussion of the English School's ongoing controversies and debates, and identifies opportunities for further research. For students new to the topic this book will provide an accessible and balanced overview, whilst those already familiar with the ES will be prompted to look afresh at their own understanding of its significance and potentiality.


Proton therapy is an efficient high-precision radiotherapy technique. The number of installed proton units and the available medical evidence has grown exponentially over the last 10 years. As a technology driven cancer treatment modality, specific sub-analysis based on proton beam characteristics and proton beam generators is feasible and of academic interest. International synchrotron technology-based institutions have been particularly active in evidence generating actions including the design of prospective trials, data registration projects and retrospective analysis of early clinical results. Reported evidence after 2010 of proton therapy from synchrotron based clinical results are reviewed. Physics, molecular, cellular, animal investigation and other non-clinical topics were excluded from the present analysis. The actual literature search (up to January 2020) found 192 publications, including description of results in over 29.000 patients (10 cancer sites and histological subtypes), together with some editorials, reviews or expert updated recommendations. Institutions with synchrotron-based proton therapy technology have shown consistent and reproducible results along the past decade. Bibliometrics of reported clinical experiences from 2008 to early 2020 includes 58% of publications in first quartile (1q) scientific journals classification and 13% in 2q (7% 3q, 5% 4q and 17% not specified). The distribution of reports by cancer sites and histological subtypes shown as dominant areas of clinical research and publication: lung cancer (23%), pediatric (18%), head and neck (17%), central nervous system (7%), gastrointestinal (9%), prostate (8%) and a miscellanea of neplasms including hepatocarcinoma, sarcomas and breast cancer. Over 50% of lung, pediatric, head and neck and gastrointestinal publications were 1q.


In this volume, the authors, from European, Canadian and American universities, focus on a very topical issue, the relations between nation states and national minorities which emerged in the 20th and 21st centuries. Dealing with various original case studies, such as Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Israel, or Malaysia, these relationships are studied from the perspective of the authorities of the new nation states and from the perspective of the minorities. The theoretical approach is inspired by Rogers Brubaker's work on 'nationalising states' (Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2011) and this leading author in the field provides a new discussion on the concept. The authors pay particular attention to the historical contexts in which the dynamics between nation-states and minorities developed and provide an innovative way of thinking about nationalism today.Given its position at the crossroad of different fields and broad geographical spectrum this book is relevant to a wide audience of scholars in the fields of nationalism, minority studies, citizenship studies, and multiculturalism.


Abstract. While social scientists have long focused on socioeconomic and demographic factors, physical modelers typically study soil loss using physical factors. In the current environment, it is becoming increasingly important to consider both approaches simultaneously for the conservation of soil and water, and the improvement of land use conditions. This study uses physical and socioeconomic factors to find a coefficient that evaluates the combination of these factors. It aims to determine the effect of socioeconomic factors on soil loss and, in turn, to modify the universal soil loss equation (USLE). The methodology employed in this study specifies that soil loss can be calculated and predicted by comparing the degree of soil loss in watersheds, with and without human influence, given the same overall conditions. A coefficient for socioeconomic factors, therefore, has been determined based on adjoining watersheds (WS I and II), employing simulation methods. Combinations of C and P factors were used in the USLE to find the impact of their contributions to soil loss. The results revealed that these combinations provided good estimation of soil loss amounts for the second watershed, i.e., WS II, from the adjoining watersheds studied in this work. This study shows that a coefficient of 0.008 modified the USLE to reflect the socioeconomic factors, such as settlement, influencing the amount of soil loss in the studied watersheds.


Treating chronic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and type 2 diabetes mellitus is a hot topic that has been discussed widely and investigated extensively, but never solved, due in part to their high complexity. Integrating disease-related information using a systems approach may help improve our knowledge of stages of the disease, thus improving the accuracy of diagnosing chronic disease.
With respect to integrative thinking, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)‒based concepts may provide a suitable holistic model, as TCM describes disease syndromes/phenotypes as an experience-based reference from the systems level. Systems-based metabolomics provides a comprehensive picture of small molecular metabolites as a readout and provides biological interpretations of the pathophysiology of disease. The rapid, highly sensitive, non-invasive measurement of ultra-weak photon emission (UPE) -- which measures spontaneously emitted photons at the surface of the skin--has been proposed for supporting TCM-based diagnostics and for reflecting the whole body's physiological and pathological status. Combining metabolomics with TCM-based diagnostics will provide a robust model for investigating the biological processes that underlie UPE.
This thesis aimed to investigate system-wide perturbations by using/combining metabolomics, UPE and TCM-based diagnostics, to provide i) a systems view of chronic disease, and ii) personalized phenotyping guided by TCM-based principles.


The complexity of the atmospheric aerosol and its connection with clouds and climate are illustrated with a host of examples against the background of our present limited state of understanding. A discussion of related feedbacks demonstrates the difficulties of resolving all respective research issues. The key role of aerosols and clouds in anthropogenic climate change make the high uncertainties related to them ever more painful. Nevertheless, there are suggestions to manipulate aerosols and clouds by climate engineering to counteract global warming. Before considering such remedies the aerosol-cloud-climate conundrum needs to be reduced to a level of uncertainty that is comparable to those related to anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Considering the complexity of the aerosol/ cloud system the challenge will be to identify the necessary essential knowledge and differentiate that from marginal details and focus research efforts on these essentials in order to simplify the complex aerosol-cloud system without loosing indispensable features.


Gallium Oxide (Ga2O3) has emerged over the last decade as a new up-and-coming alternative to traditional wide bandgap semiconductors. It exists as five polymorphs (α-, β-, γ-, δ-, and e-Ga2O3), of which β-Ga2O3 is the thermodynamically stable form, and the most extensively studied phase. β-Ga2O3 has a wide bandgap of ~4.8 eV and exhibits a superior figure-of-merit for power devices compared to other wide bandgap materials, such as SiC and GaN. These make β-Ga2O3 a promising candidate in a host of electronic and optoelectronic applications. Recent advances in β-Ga2O3 single crystals growth have also made inexpensive β-Ga2O3 single crystal grown from the melt a possibility in the near future. Despite the plethora of literature on β-Ga2O3-based devices, understanding of contacts to this material --- a device component that fundamentally determines device characteristics — remained lacking. For this research, ohmic and Schottky metal contacts to Sn-doped β-Ga2O3 (-201) single crystal substrates, unintentionally doped (UID) homoepitaxial β-Ga2O3 (010) on Sn-doped β-Ga2O3 grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), and UID heteroepitaxial β-Ga2O3 (-201) epitaxial layers on c-plane sapphire by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) were investigated. Each of the substrates was characterized for their structural, morphological, electrical, and optical properties, the results will be presented in the following document. Nine metals (Ti, In, Ag, Sn, W, Mo, Sc, Zn, and Zr) with low to moderate work functions were studied as possible ohmic contacts to β-Ga2O3. It was found that select metals displayed either ohmic (Ti and In) or pseudo-ohmic (Ag, Sn and Zr) behavior under certain conditions. However, the morphology was often a problem as many thin film metal contacts dewetted the substrate surface. Ti with a Au capping layer with post-metallization annealing treatment was the only consistently reliable ohmic contact to β-Ga2O3. It was concluded that metal work function is not a dominant factor in forming an ohmic contact to β-Ga2O3 and that limited interfacial reactions appear to play an important role. Prior to a systematic study of Schottky contacts to β-Ga2O3, a comparison of the effects of five different wet chemical surface treatments on the β-Ga2O3 Schottky diodes was made. It was established that a treatment with an organic solvent clean followed by HCl, H2O2 and a deionized water rinse following each step yielded the best results. Schottky diodes based on (-201) β-Ga2O3 substrates and (010) β-Ga2O3 homoepitaxial layers were formed using five different Schottky metals with moderate to high work functions: W, Cu, Ni, Ir, and Pt. Schottky barrier heights (SBHs) calculated from current-voltage (I-V) and capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements of the five selected metals were typically in the range of 1.0 – 1.3 eV and 1.6 – 2.0 eV, respectively, and showed little dependence on the metal work function. Several diodes also displayed inhomogeneous Schottky barrier behavior at room temperature. The results indicate that bulk or near-surface defects and/or unpassivated surface states may have a more dominant effect on the electrical behavior of these diodes compared to the choice of Schottky metal and its work function. Lastly, working with collaborators at Structured Materials Industries (SMI) Inc., heteroepitaxial films of Ga2O3 were grown on c-plane sapphire (001) using a variety of vapor phase epitaxy methods, including MOVPE, and halide vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE). The stable phase β-Ga2O3 was observed when grown using MOVPE technique, regardless of precursor flow rates, at temperatures ranging between 500 – 850 °C. With HVPE growth techniques, instead of the stable β-phase, we observed the growth of the metastable α- and e-phases, often a combination of the two. Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) shows the better lattice matched α-phase first growing semi-coherently on the c-plane sapphire substrate, followed by domain matched epitaxy of e-Ga2O3 on top. Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) revealed that epilayers forming the e-phase contain higher concentrations of chlorine, which suggests that compressive stress due to Cl- impurities may play a role in the growth of e-Ga2O3 despite it being less than thermodynamically favorable.


SUMMARY.—Open-habitat birds in recently burned areas: the role of the fire extent and species' habitat breadth. Aims: To evaluate the occurrence of open-habitat and steppe-land bird species in Western Mediterranean burned areas and to assess the role of the extent and location of the fire on species richness and composition. At the species level, the relationship was explored between habitat breadth, distribution extent and the ability to occupy recently burned areas. Location: Iberia and Southern France Methods: Fieldwork and bibliography were assembled to obtain breeding bird inventories for 21 burned areas, mostly large wildfires (135- 23,800 ha). The sampling effort was standardized in relation to the area in the 11 fire locations surveyed using transects. Results: Single burned areas contained 0 to 15 open-habitat species (mean = 7.6), and in all the areas combined there were 22 species, including 17 with an unfavourable conservation status in Europe. The most frequent were Carduelis cannabina, Lullula arborea, Alectoris rufa, Oenanthe hispanica and Emberiza cia, but characteristic steppe-land birds such as O. leucura, Calandrella brachydactyla and C. rufescens also bred in particular burned areas. After controlling for the extent of the species range in the Spanish distribution Atlas, passerine occurrence in burned areas was positively related to the species' habitat breadth in a gradient of unburned habitats. Cluster analysis separated a species-poor group of fire locations from a species-rich group, and showed that some neighbouring areas had a similar species composition. However, there was no spatial autocorrelation between burned areas, and species composition was correlated with the fire extent (Mantel test). Species richness tended to increase with increasing fire area. From the regression equation 5, 9, 12-13 and 16-17 open-habitat species may be expected to occur in burned areas of 100, 1000, 10,000 and 100,000 ha, respectively. Conclusions: This study stresses the importance of biogeographical constraints on colonisation of new habitat patches created by disturbances. The extent of the fire rather than the proximity between burned areas influenced species richness and composition of open-habitat birds in recently burned areas. The best post-fire colonisers were generalists regarding habitat structure. The role of large wildfires in the conservation of threatened open-habitat birds seems to be significant and merits further study.


Regardless of the increasing attention for the issues related to managing a corporation's real estate portfolio, little is known about the organisational and financial impact of CREM on the corporation and vice versa. This paper aims to highlight the value of managing corporate real estate and its contribution to the performance of a corporation both in a financial and no-financial manner. Based on the results of case studies a number of examples of added value are identified and an overview is presented of the impact of the elements on the financial performance of the corporation.


This thesis presents a GPU accelerated implementation of a high order splitting scheme with a spectral element discretization for the incompressible Navier Stokes (INS) equations.
While others have implemented this scheme on clusters of processors using the Nek5000 code, to my knowledge this thesis is the first to explore its performance on the GPU.
This work implements several of the Nek5000 algorithms using OpenCL kernels that efficiently utilize the GPU memory architecture, and achieve massively parallel on chip computations.
These rapid computations have the potential to significantly enhance computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations that arise in areas such as weather modeling or aircraft design procedures.
I present convergence results for several test cases including channel, shear, Kovasznay, and lid-driven cavity flow problems, which achieve the proven convergence results.