The establishment of a national control programme (NCP) in Uganda has led to routine treatment of intestinal schistosomiasis with praziquantel in the communities along Lake Albert. However, because regular water contact remains a way of life for these populations, re-infection continues to mitigate the sustainability of the chemotherapy-based programme. A six-month longitudinal study was conducted in one Lake Albert community with the aim of characterizing water contact exposure and infection among mothers and their young preschool-aged children as the latter are not yet formally included within the NCP. At baseline the cohort of 37 mothers, 36 preschool-aged children had infection prevalences of 62% and 67%, respectively, which diminished to 20% and 29%, respectively, at the 6-month post-treatment follow-up. The subjects wore global positioning system (GPS) datalogging devices over a 3-day period shortly after baseline, allowing for the estimation of time spent at the lakeshore as an exposure metric, which was found to be associated with prevalence at follow-up (OR = 2.1, P = 0.01 for both mothers and young children and odds ratio (OR) = 4.4, P = 0.01 for young children alone). A social network of interpersonal interactions was also derived from the GPS data, and the exposures were positively associated both with the number and duration of peer interaction, suggesting the importance of socio-cultural factors associated with water contact behaviour. The findings illustrate reduction in both prevalence and intensity of infection in this community after treatment as well as remarkably high rates of water contact exposure and re-infection, particularly among younger children. We believe that this should now be formally considered within NCP, which may benefit from more in-depth ethnographic exploration of factors related to water contact as this should provide new opportunities for sustaining control.


Recent advances in motion recognition allow the development of Context-Aware Assistive Systems (CAAS) for industrial workplaces that go far beyond the state of the art: they can capture a user's movement in real-time and provide adequate feedback. Thus, CAAS can address important questions, like Which part is assembled next? Where do I fasten it? Did an error occur? Did I process the part in time? These new CAAS can also make use of projectors to display the feedback within the corresponding area on the workspace (in-situ). Furthermore, the real-time analysis of work processes allows the implementation of motivating elements (gamification) into the repetitive work routines that are common in manual production. In this chapter, the authors first describe the relevant backgrounds from industry, computer science, and psychology. They then briefly introduce a precedent implementation of CAAS and its inherent problems. The authors then provide a generic model of CAAS and finally present a revised and improved implementation.


A sedimentary deposit on the continental shelf off Caesarea Maritima, Israel, is identified, dated, and attributed to tsunami waves produced during the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1630–1550 B.C.E.) eruption of Santorini, Greece. The sheet-like deposit was found as a layer as much as 40 cm thick in four cores collected from 10 to 20 m water depths. Particle-size distribution, planar bedding, shell taphoecoensis, dating (radiocarbon, optically stimulated luminescence, and pottery), and comparison of the horizon to more recent tsunamigenic layers distinguish it from normal storm and typical marine conditions across a wide (>1 km 2 ) lateral area. The presence of this deposit is evidence that tsunami waves from the Santorini eruption radiated throughout the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, affecting the coastal people living there. Dates for the tsunami deposit bracket both the so-called "high" and "low" chronology for the Santorini eruption. In addition to resolving the question of the extent of tsunami impact from the Santorini eruption, the research presented also provides a new means of discovering, identifying, and studying continuous records of paleotsunami deposits in the upper shelf coastal environment. The latter is key to understanding past events, better interpreting sedimentological records, and creating stronger models for understanding tsunami propagation, coastal management, and hazard preparation worldwide.


Abstract The accuracy of two well-established numerical methods is demonstrated, and the importance of "bandwidth" examined, for computationally efficient Markov based extreme-value predictions associated with finite duration stationary sample paths of a non-linear oscillator driven by Gaussian white noise. By making the Poisson assumption of independent upcrossings, extreme exceedance probabilities are predicted via the mean threshold crossing rate, using numerical solutions of the stationary Fokker–Planck (FPK) equation. With bandwidth initially ignored, predicted exceedances using the Weighted Residual methods of Bhandari and Sherrer, Soize and Kunert, and the Finite Element method of Langley, are compared with nominally "exact" predictions for a heavily damped Duffing-type model obtained by using an explicit FPK solution—the FE method being established as superior. Predictions via FE solutions are then compared with very long Monte Carlo simulations, in which bandwidth effects are included. Two lightly damped non-linear oscillator models are examined, both with cubic stiffness, but different damping mechanisms—one model again being of simple Duffing-type with linear damping, the other being appropriate to single co-ordinate random vibration of a clamped–clamped beam, with wholly non-linear damping. The realistic damping parameter values assigned to the beam model are statistically equivalent to the linear damping level chosen for the simple model, at just above 1%. At this overall damping level, results clearly demonstrate that, for the probability levels and durations considered, bandwidth is only important for the linearly damped model—for the beam model with non-linear damping, bandwidth can be ignored, allowing accurate extreme exceedance predictions by using only the stationary FPK equation. The paper also demonstrates that the "limiting decay rate of the first-passage probability"—advocated by Crandall, Roberts and others, as a criterion for deciding the barrier height above which first-passage times can be assumed independent—proves grossly over-conservative as a corresponding criterion for deciding the independence level for use in stationary extreme-value prediction.


Purpose Few researchers have explored the negotiation experiences of academic medical faculty even though negotiation is crucial to their career success. The authors sought to understand medical faculty researchers' experiences with and perceptions of negotiation. Method Between February 2010 and August 2011, the authors conducted semistructured, in-depth telephone interviews with 100 former recipients of National Institutes of Health mentored career development awards and 28 of their mentors. Purposive sampling ensured a diverse range of viewpoints. Multiple analysts thematically coded verbatim transcripts using qualitative data analysis software. Results Participants described the importance of negotiation in academic medical careers but also expressed feeling naïve and unprepared for these negotiations, particularly as junior faculty. Award recipients focused on power, leverage, and strategy, and they expressed a need for training and mentorship to learn successful negotiation skills. Mentors, by contrast, emphasized the importance of flexibility and shared interests in creating win–win situations for both the individual faculty member and the institution. When faculty construed negotiation as adversarial and/or zero-sum, participants believed it required traditionally masculine traits and perceived women to be at a disadvantage. Conclusions Academic medical faculty often lack the skills and knowledge necessary for successful negotiation, especially early in their careers. Many view negotiation as an adversarial process of the sort that experts call "hard positional bargaining." Increasing awareness of alternative negotiation techniques (e.g., "principled negotiation," in which shared interests, mutually satisfying options, and fair standards are emphasized) may encourage the success of medical faculty, particularly women.


ABSTRACT The design of a spatial distribution structure is of strategic importance for companies, to meet required customer service levels and to keep logistics costs as low as possible. Spatial distribution structure decisions concern distribution channel layout – i.e. the spatial layout of the transport and storage system – as well as distribution centre location(s). This paper examines the importance of seven main factors and 33 sub-factors that determine these decisions. The Best-Worst Method (BWM) was used to identify the factor weights, with pairwise comparison data being collected through a survey. The results indicate that the main factor is logistics costs. Logistics experts and decision makers respectively identify customer demand and service level as second most important factor. Important sub-factors are demand volatility, delivery time and perishability. This is the first study that quantifies the weights of the factors behind spatial distribution structure decisions. The factors and weights facilitate managerial decision-making with regard to spatial distribution structures for companies that ship a broad range of products with different characteristics. Public policy-makers can use the results to support the development of land use plans that provide facilities and services for a mix of industries.


Case report. A 91-year-old woman was first observed due to a neoformation of the leg dating from 10 years according to the history. The physical examination showed a nodule of about 1 cm in diameter, with eroded surface, non-tender, mobile on the deep layers (Fig. 2), leading to diagnose squamous cell cr. The patient asked to postpone the removal of a couple of months. 2 months later the lesion had changed significantly. The physical examination showed a 3 cm ulcerated plaque and in the proximal skin below the knee about twenty asymptomatic nodules of 3-9 mm (Fig. 1) covered by intact skin, hard-elastic and movable on the superficial and deep layers. A biopsy of the primary lesion and removal of a metastatic nodule was performed. The histology showed in the ulcerated plaque and in the secondary nodule a proliferation of small basophilic cells (Fig. 3) with many mitoses and invasion of vessels. Immunohistochemistry confirmed the suspicion of metastatic Merkel cell cr. The patient began radiation therapy.


We analyse simulations of the Pacific Ocean oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) from 11 Earth system model contributions to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5, focusing on the mean state and climate change projections. The simulations tend to overestimate the volume of the OMZs, especially in the tropics and Southern Hemisphere. Compared to observations, five models introduce incorrect meridional asymmetries in the distribution of oxygen including larger southern OMZ and weaker northern OMZ, due to interhemispheric biases in intermediate water mass ventilation. Seven models show too deep an extent of the tropical hypoxia compared to observations, stemming from a deficient equatorial ventilation in the upper ocean, combined with too large a biologically driven downward flux of particulate organic carbon at depth, caused by particle export from the euphotic layer that is too high and remineralization in the upper ocean that is too weak. At interannual timescales, the dynamics of oxygen in the eastern tropical Pacific OMZ is dominated by biological consumption and linked to natural variability in the Walker circulation. However, under the climate change scenario RCP8.5, all simulations yield small and discrepant changes in oxygen concentration at mid depths in the tropical Pacific by the end of the 21st century due to an almost perfect compensation between warming-related decrease in oxygen saturation and decrease in biological oxygen utilization. Climate change projections are at odds with recent observations that show decreasing oxygen levels at mid depths in the tropical Pacific. Out of the OMZs, all the CMIP5 models predict a decrease of oxygen over most of the surface and deep ocean at low latitudes and over all depths at high latitudes due to an overall slow-down of ventilation and increased temperature.


The triumphant rise of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte over his Republican opponents has been the central theme of most narrative accounts of mid-nineteenth-century France, while resistance to the coup d'etat generally has been neglected. By placing the insurrection of December 1851 in a broad perspective of socioeconomic and political development, Ted Margadant displays its full significance as a turning point in modern French history. He argues that, as the first expression of a new form of political participation on the part of the peasants, resistance to the coup was of greater importance than previously supposed. Furthermore, it provides and appropriate testing ground for more general theories of peasant movements and popular revolts.Using manuscript materials in French national and departmental archives that cover all the major areas of revolt, the author examines the insurrection in depth on a national scale. After a brief discussion of the main characteristics of the insurrection, he analyzes its economic and social foundations; the dialectic of repression and conspiracy that fostered the political crisis; and the armed mobilizations, violence, and massive arrests that exploded as the result. A final chapter considers the implications of the insurrection for larger issues in the social and political history of modern France.


In biological transport mechanisms such as insect respiration and renal filtration, fluid travels along a leaky channel allowing exchange with systems exterior the the channel. The channels in these systems may undergo peristaltic pumping which is thought to enhance the material exchange. To date, little analytic work has been done to study the effect of pumping on material extraction across the channel walls. In this paper, we examine a fluid extraction model in which fluid flowing through a leaky channel is exchanged with fluid in a reservoir. The channel walls are allowed to contract and expand uniformly, simulating a pumping mechanism. In order to efficiently determine solutions of the model, we derive a formal power series solution for the Stokes equations in a finite channel with uniformly contracting/expanding permeable walls. This flow has been well studied in the case of weakly permeable channel walls in which the normal velocity at the channel walls is proportional to the wall velocity. In contrast we do not assume weakly driven flow, but flow driven by hydrostatic pressure, and we use Dacry's law to close our system for normal wall velocity. We use our flow solution to examine flux across the channel-reservoir barrier and demonstrate that pumping can either enhance or impede fluid extraction across channel walls. We find that associated with each set of physical flow and pumping parameters, there are optimal reservoir conditions that maximizes the amount of material flowing from the channel into the reservoir.


The overall aim of this research was to develop a standard quantitative method to evaluate the acid tolerance of probiotic cells. The approach was to expose the cells of different concentrations (103- 109 CFU/ml) to a range of pH (i.e. pH 1.5 to 2.5) in order to simulate the varying acidity of stomach. A standard simulated gastric fluid of fixed volume and three model probiotic cells were used in this study. The cell survival kinetics was determined and was described with a mathematical correlation. It was found that the overall death constant (kd ) for three tested strains increased with decrease in the pH and cell concentration. The death constant could be expressed by a general mathematical correlation, kd = k All[pH-9.02 . N0-0.19] where kAll is the acid intolerance indicator and No is the initial cell concentration. The data fitting analysis of this equation give 0.97701 values for coefficient of determination. The k All values of Lactobacillus acidophilus ATCC4356 was found to be lowest followed by Lactobacillus casei Shirota and Lactobacillus casei 01 was the highest. This indicates decreasing in acid intolerance of the cells. In conclusion, a standard and quantitative method has been developed to measure the acid tolerance of probiotic cells and to facilitate selection of strain and process technology.


Science communication is influenced by various factors of social context, such as politics, economy, culture and history, and these factors have different impact on science communication in different time and space domain. China is a country with appreciable regional diversity, where exist huge gap in economic, social, educational and science and technology development. The imbalance in development makes social context of science communication a prominent feature in the country. In China, the demand of citizens on science communication presents diversified and complex features, which were intensified by the leapfrog development of science communication pattern. Based upon above considerations, China is taking public science communication strategy in a localized way by government and the society as well. This paper discusses the functions which science communication played in reducing the regional imbalance in China.


A key challenge of entity set expansion is that multifaceted input seeds can lead to significant incoherence in the result set. In this paper, we present a novel solution to handling multifaceted seeds by combining existing user-generated ontologies with a novel word-similarity metric based on skip-grams. By blending the two resources we are able to produce sparse word ego-networks that are centered on the seed terms and are able to capture semantic equivalence among words. We demonstrate that the resulting networks possess internally-coherent clusters, which can be exploited to provide non-overlapping expansions, in order to reflect different semantic classes of the seeds. Empirical evaluation against state-of-the-art baselines shows that our solution, EgoSet, is able to not only capture multiple facets in the input query, but also generate expansions for each facet with higher precision.


Although some organizations are contemplating the potential impact of blockchain technology in today's economy, blockchain, itself, is quickly emerging to be a disruptive force. This is especially true in the circumstance of loyalty programs. Blockchain is a public, digital, and distributed database solution providing decentralized management of transactional data. This technology is transforming society in ways that were previously unimaginable. Whether it be the way individuals use their phones, cars, or the healthcare system, blockchain is applicable for a variety of economic sectors and transactions. Although many may argue that blockchain is in its early development stage, it still possesses the power to revolutionize industries and consumer habits at a global scale. Through implementation of blockchain for loyalty networks, companies eliminate the limitations and inefficiencies while elevating the customer experience with secure and immediate redemption options from a variety of vendors. Despite evolving rapidly, its implementations provide better security, privacy, performance, usability, data integrity, and scalability, to name a few. Hence, blockchain is likely to entice any individual for instantaneous incentives for every purchase.This paper aims to analyze the current, traditional loyalty programs and the challenges associated with them. It highlights how blockchain can resolve these challenges and provide a better experience. This report further explores the various types of loyalty programs that currently exist in the blockchain ecosystem and provides potential future implementations. Finally, the paper analyzes the implementation of coupons in comparison with loyalty points programs, highlighting the vast spread of blockchain implementation.


My intention in this article is to offer some insight into the practicalities and exigencies of teaching Feldenkrais for student actors within a vocational training in the UK and how it differs from teaching the public or even university students. This is based on my own experience of teaching for ten years in UK drama schools and also draws on my twenty years as an actor and theatre maker. There is a growing number of articles, chapters and even books (including my own recent publication 'Feldenkrais for Actors' (Worsley 2016) for academics, teachers and actors about the various relationships between acting and Feldenkrais, but this article seeks to address the very specific demands vocational courses put on a Feldenkrais Teacher and to offer some thoughts about ways to work within those constraints. Until recently, only a very few of us were teaching in vocational drama schools in the UK as opposed to teaching on university drama courses, dance courses or performance courses with a broader artistic remit. All these situations are different to teaching the public, but I also believe that while there are inevitable cross-overs, the aims and intended outcomes of all these kinds of courses are also different to each other, so I am keeping this discussion to what I have found specific to vocational drama schools in the UK. Over the last few years, more of these schools have begun to include the Feldenkrais Method® in different ways, and there appears to be a hunger amongst practitioners to discuss the issues this brings up. Given this article is based on my experience, it cannot be a complete picture, but my hope is that it might be, nevertheless, a useful contribution.


Chapter 1 is a survey paper for economists new to the field of a Monte Carlo simulation based method: particle filter. Particle filter can be applied to many flexible state space models such as non-linear, non-Gaussian, stochastic volatility models or stochastic volatility models with zero lower bound. These models have become increasingly popular in macro-economics and finance. The stochastic volatility model with zero lower bound is designed for applying zero interest rate policy. The primary purpose of this paper is to provide particle filter algorithms for these models and make comparisons of the Kalman filter, extended Kalman filter and particle filter. In Chapter 2, we estimate a non-linear, non-Gaussian state space model for the shortterm interest rate. The model features a potentially binding zero-lower bound constraint and stochastic volatility. We use the model to extract a measure of monetary policy uncertainty. We find that ignoring the zero-lower bound constraint on nominal interest rate leads to overestimation of the shadow rate and underestimation of the monetary policy uncertainty in recent periods. We find that the policy uncertainty is especially high at the beginning and the end of a quantitative easing episode. We also find a policy uncertainty shock lowers output growth and raises unemployment and seems to be a priced risk factor in the stock market. In Chapter 3, I build a probit model of yields and business cycles. The proposed model incorporates the interrelation of yields and a latent business cycle factor, which will be extracted from the joint model. Different to previous literature, this model allows iii for interactions of the latent business factor and a portfolio of yields. The parameters and the latent variable are estimated through likelihood maximization at one step. I use the fully adapted particle filter to generate the likelihood of the nonlinear model. I find that the model with the autocorrelated latent variable forecasts better than the model without autocorrelated latent variable in terms of in-sample and out-of-sample forecast. The model implied business cycle factor indicates all 7 recessions from 1969 to 2015.


This research assessed the geospatial supply of cellulosic feedstocks for potential mill sites in Kansas (KS), with procurement zones extending to Arkansas (AR), Iowa (IA), Missouri (MO), Oklahoma (OK), and Nebraska (NE). A web-based modeling system, the Kansas Biomass Supply Assessment Tool, was developed to identify least-cost sourcing areas for logging residues and upland hardwood roundwood biomass feedstocks. Geospatial boundaries were used according to the 5-digit zip code tabulation area (ZCTA). This higher level of resolution advanced the understanding of the geospatial economics of modeling the supply chain for cellulosic feedstocks. The analyses were conducted for six sub-regions (Chanute, Effingham, El Dorado, Manhattan, Ottawa, and Pratt) within Kansas that were identified by the US Forest Service as suitable for forest habitat. Atchison County of Effingham region had the least marginal costs for upland hardwood roundwood, ranging from $92.59 to $108.68 per dry metric ton, with an available annual supply of approximately 72 thousand dry metric tons. The least favorable was the El Dorado region, where the marginal costs ranged from $97.32 to $108.05 per dry metric ton, with an annual supply of approximately 4.4 thousand dry metric tons.


I have an Erdős number. Specifically, I have an Erdős number of 5. For the uninitiated, the concept of an "Erdős number" was created by mathematicians to describe how many "degrees of separation" an author of an article is from the great mathematician Paul Erdős. If you coauthored a paper with Erdős, you have an Erdős number of 1. If you coauthor a paper with someone with an Erdős number of 1, you have earned an Erdős number of 2. Coauthoring a paper with someone with an Erdős number of 2 gives you an Erdős number of 3, and so on.In 2010, I wrote an article on law and statistics in 2010 with my son, William Meyerson. He had previously written an article with Scott T. Chapman, who had written one with Lara K. Puwell, who in turn had coauthored a piece with Zsolt Tuza, who had actually written an article with Paul Erdős. Thus, William has an Erdős number of 4, which garners me an Erdős number of 5. I quickly discovered that I was not alone in feeling a sense of pride for having an "Erdős number." But as I thought about the path one must follow to earn a coveted Erdős number, I began to understand that the mathematical community views collaborative work in a vastly different manner than the legal academy where I have spent my career. In mathematics, it is expected that one will coauthor numerous pieces throughout one's career. In the law school culture, by contrast, coauthorship, while not unknown, is not a significant part of the academic tradition.This Article grew out of that insight. I wanted to explore whether my intuitive sense of these different attitudes towards collaboration was reflected empirically by a differing amount of coauthorship in the two fields, and, if so, what might be the reasons for such a difference. Finally, I wanted to explore whether there are lessons legal academics can learn from their counterparts in mathematics in terms of creating a culture that not only accepts but encourages coauthorship.The second Part of this Article discusses how mathematicians produced a culture of collaboration. I focus on the extraordinary career of Paul Erdős, and show how he helped create a social academic environment in which coauthorship is valued. The third Part explores the very different culture in legal academe. I begin the Part by exploring the disconnect between the individualistic culture of law schools and the collaborative culture of the legal community at large. I then discuss my study of legal coauthorship, which demonstrates that law professors collaborate at a rate much lower than their mathematical colleagues. Next, I explore the benefits that law professors and their students could gain from collaboration. The Article concludes with a consideration of some proposals to help turn the law school culture into one where collaboration and coauthorship are respected and encouraged.


The alarms against the menace of premarital sexual activities reached a crescendo but the behaviour of young people remained at variance with the alarms. This contradiction contributed to the growth of sexually transmitted diseases including human immune virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Thus, this study examined manifestation of human sexuality and its relevance to secondary schools in Nigeria using information derived from content analysis of secondary data. Results principally showed that human sexuality extended beyond procreation as it captured all the nuances of the socio-cultural contexts of a society. Different sexualities such as child sexuality, adolescent sexuality, adult sexuality and sexuality of the elderly produced specific implications for the entire society. Conclusively, understanding of the interdependent layers of human sexuality would promote the management of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and AIDS. Therefore, it was recommended that sexuality education should be emphasized in the socialization from infancy till death. Nobody would be too young or old for learning human sexuality. Critical steps should be taken to empower students towards scanning their sexual histories and acquiring the right skills to manage any detected or potential sexual problem.

 Key words: Schools, sexuality, STIs, youth.


Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this study analyzes the effects of AFDC benefits on living arrangements in combination with welfare participation. The study finds high rates of cohabitation and marriage among women receiving welfare. As well, results from the multivariate models indicate that the welfare system influences the decisions to cohabit and receive welfare. However, as the evidence partially depends upon the specific model adopted, results remain suggestive rather than conclusive. Nonetheless, the findings clearly show that, for women on welfare, cohabitation is a preferred alternative to marriage. If the relationship between the two living arrangements is ignored, estimates of the impact of the welfare system on living arrangements and welfare-participation decisions are potentially flawed.


The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is currently surveying 2500 deg2 of the southern sky to detect massive galaxy clusters out to the epoch of their formation using the Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. This paper presents a catalog of the 26 most significant SZ cluster detections in the full survey region. The catalog includes 14 clusters which have been previously identified and 12 that are new discoveries. These clusters were identified in fields observed to two differing noise depths: 1500 deg2 at the final SPT survey depth of 18 μK arcmin at 150 GHz and 1000 deg2 at a depth of 54 μK arcmin. Clusters were selected on the basis of their SZ signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) in SPT maps, a quantity which has been demonstrated to correlate tightly with cluster mass. The S/N thresholds were chosen to achieve a comparable mass selection across survey fields of both depths. Cluster redshifts were obtained with optical and infrared imaging and spectroscopy from a variety of ground- and space-based facilities. The redshifts range from 0.098 ⩽ z ⩽ 1.132 with a median of zmed = 0.40. The measured SZ S/N and redshifts lead to unbiased mass estimates ranging from 9.8 × 1014 M☉ h−170 ⩽ M200(ρmean) ⩽ 3.1 × 1015 M☉ h−170. Based on the SZ mass estimates, we find that none of the clusters are individually in significant tension with the ΛCDM cosmological model. We also test for evidence of non-Gaussianity based on the cluster sample and find the data show no preference for non-Gaussian perturbations.


In many areas of the world, particularly in arid regions or in areas experiencing population growth, there is increased competition over scarce water resources. This is likely to increase in the future due to continued population growth, urban expansion and the challenge of the impact of climate change on water resource availability. In this context, groundwater is likely to play a pivotal role in facing water scarcity. When different users share a common-pool resource, basic rules are usually established to manage access to the resource and ensure balance between demand and supply. Water authorities worldwide are increasingly paying added attention towards regulating the use of groundwater because of its strategic value, e.g. in times of drought or as a natural reserve. In the case of groundwater, although regulatory measures exist, they are often difficult to enforce. This paper explores the situation with a discussion of two aspects: first (and in line with this special issue on water ethics), an examination of the fundamental individual values that underpin behavior in relation to water use, and second, an investigation of the typologies of unauthorized water use, its main potential impacts, potential root causes and reflections on imperfect institutions and social norms.


During the past two decades the European Union (EU) has increasingly come to be recognised as an important international actor in environmental politics. The failure of the EU to instigate an ambitious post-2012 environmental framework agreement at the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen in 2009 may, however, signal a change in the EU's status as an international climate change actor. It raises the question of which conditions allowed the EU to be an actor in the first place. Drawing on the theoretical concept of actorness, the paper analyses the conditions for EU actorness in the area of climate change. It will be argued that for the EU to be an actor, all four criteria of actorness – recognition, authority, cohesion and autonomy – need to be present. While these criteria were present at the 1992 Rio Summit and the COP3 in Kyoto in 1997, a lack of autonomy and cohesion prevented the EU from being an international actor in Copenhagen.


This paper points to a lost and ignored strand of argument in the writings of liberalism's earliest defenders. These "classical" liberals recognized that market liberty was not always compatible with individual liberty. In particular, they argued that labor markets required intervention and regulation if workers were not to be wholly subjugated to the power of their employers. Functioning capitalist labor markets (along with functioning credit markets) are not "natural" outgrowths of exchange, but achievements hard won in the battle against feudalism. Further, and crucially, the existence of such markets required closing off other market choices.


The aim of this work was to study the effect of the application of a solid waste from olive oil production (alperujo) on the movement and persistence of the herbicide terbuthylazine (N2-tert-butyl-6-chloro-N4-ethyl-1,3,5-triazine-2,4-diamine). An experimental olive grove was divided in two plots: (i) Plot without organic amendment (blank) and (ii) Plot treated with alperujo during 3 years at a rate of 17920 kg of alperujo ha− 1. Terbuthylazine was applied to both plots at a rate of 2 kg ha− 1 a.i. Triplicates from each plot were sampled at 3 depths (0–10, 10–20 and 20–30 cm), air-dried, remains of olive leaves, grass roots, and stones removed and sieved through a 5 mm mesh sieve. Terbuthylazine was extracted with methanol 1:2 weight:volume ratio, the extracts were evaporated to dryness, resuspended in 2 mL of methanol, filtered and anylized by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Higher amounts of terbuthylazine were detected at each sampling depth in plots treated with alperujo. The increase in soil organic matter content upon amendment with alperujo slightly increased sorption, suggesting that other factors beside sorption affect terbuthylazine degradation rate in organic amended soils.


Numerous students are encouraged to study overseas in the hope of becoming competitive professionals in a global community. The two major benefits of studying abroad as commonly believed are foreign language acquisition and intercultural communicative competence development. To gain a deeper understanding of whether study abroad programmers have significantly positive impact on students' linguistic gains and development of intercultural communicative competence, this paper reviews recent research on the development of language proficiency and intercultural communicative competence in the context of study abroad. It is found that study abroad duration is one of the key factors that influence the development of sojourners' language acquisition and intercultural communicative competence. Students participated in one semester achieved the greatest development in terms of intercultural communicative competence. Regarding language learning, students' speaking, listening, and reading skills could be significantly improved in both long and short term programmers. However, their writing skills need comparatively longer time to be substantially enhanced. Strategies that can be employed to maximize the students' benefit from study abroad programmers are also identified.


The licentiate thesis is a piece of academic work under the theme of /Participation Literacy/. The thesis concerns the Web 2.0 concept construction. Web 2.0 is a new mind-set on the Internet. The main characteristics include "Web as a Platform", Collective Intelligence, Folksonomy and interfaces build with lightweight technologies such as Ajax. Web 2.0 is not only a technique, but also an ideology – an ideology of participation. A Web 2.0 service is completely web based and generally draws on open access. It includes tools for people to interact within areas such as encyclopaedias, bookmarks, photos, books or research articles. All Web 2.0 services are web communities. A web community is a group of individuals, linked together by a network of social relations with some degree of continu¬ity. Community members learn from each other and the knowledge base of the community grows for every interaction. The core values of Web 2.0 are democracy and participation. The licentiate thesis is divided into four main parts and two appendixes. The four parts constitute a foreword, a reading guide, a conceptual and empirical introductory discussion to the Web 2.0 concept; finally a series of constructions based on the Web 2.0 concept and the cyborg figure. Appendix I is a short conference paper called Technologically Navigating Cyborgs. Appendix II is a very short piece of fiction, written in Swedish. These appendixes comprise a background to the focus on the Web 2.0 and the cyborg concept.


High biological activity causes a distinct seasonality of surface water pH in the North Sea, which is a strong sink for atmospheric CO2 via an effective shelf pump. The intimate connection between the North Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean suggests that the variability of the CO2 system of the North Atlantic Ocean may, in part, be responsible for the observed variability of pH and CO2 in the North Sea. In this work, we demonstrate the role of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the dominant climate mode for the North Atlantic, in governing this variability. Based on three extensive observational records covering the relevant levels of the NAO index, we provide evidence that the North Sea pH and CO2 system strongly responds to external and internal expressions of the NAO. Under positive NAO, the higher rates of inflow of water from the North Atlantic Ocean and the Baltic outflow lead to a strengthened north‐south biogeochemical divide. The limited mixing between the north and south leads to a steeper gradient in pH and partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) between the two regions in the productive period. This is exacerbated further when coinciding with higher sea surface temperature, which concentrates the net community production in the north through shallower stratification. These effects can be obscured by changing properties of the constituent North Sea water masses, which are also influenced by NAO. Our results highlight the importance of examining interannual trends in the North Sea CO2 system with consideration of the NAO state.


How does the brain internally represent a sequence of sensory information that jointly drives a decision-making behavior? Studies of perceptual decision-making have often assumed that sensory cortices provide noisy but otherwise veridical sensory inputs to downstream processes that accumulate and drive decisions. However, sensory processing in even the earliest sensory cortices can be systematically modified by various external and internal contexts. We recorded from neuronal populations across posterior cortex as mice performed a navigational decision-making task based on accumulating randomly timed pulses of visual evidence. Even in V1, only a small fraction of active neurons had sensory-like responses time-locked to each pulse. Here, we focus on how these 'cue-locked' neurons exhibited a variety of amplitude modulations from sensory to cognitive, notably by choice and accumulated evidence. These task-related modulations affected a large fraction of cue-locked neurons across posterior cortex, suggesting that future models of behavior should account for such influences.


We consider two flavor magnetized quark matter in the presence of a repulsive vector coupling ($G_V$) devoting special attention to the low temperature region of the phase diagram to show how this type of interaction counterbalances the effects produced by a strong magnetic field. The most important effects occur at intermediate and low temperatures affecting the location of the critical end point as well as the region of first order chiral transitions. When $G_V=0$ the presence of high magnetic fields ($eB \ge 10 m_\pi^2$) increases the density coexistence region with respect to the case when $B$ and $G_V$ are absent while a decrease of this region is observed at high $G_V$ values and vanishing magnetic fields. Another interesting aspect observed at the low temperature region is that the usual decrease of the coexistence chemical value (Inverse Magnetic Catalysis) at $G_V=0$ is highly affected by the presence of the vector interaction which acts in the opposite way. Our investigation also shows that the presence of a repulsive vector interaction enhances the de Haas-van Alphen oscillations which, for very low temperatures, take place at $eB \lesssim 6 m_\pi^2$. We observe that the presence of a magnetic field, together with a repulsive vector interaction, gives rise to a complex transition pattern since $B$ favors the appearance of multiple solutions to the gap equation whereas $G_V$ turns some metastable solutions into stable ones allowing for a cascade of transitions to occur.


Generative adversarial networks (GANs) have been extremely successful in generating samples, from seemingly high dimensional probability measures. However, these methods struggle to capture the temporal dependence of joint probability distributions induced by time-series data. Furthermore, long time-series data streams hugely increase the dimension of the target space, which may render generative modeling infeasible. To overcome these challenges, we integrate GANs with mathematically principled and efficient path feature extraction called the signature of a path. The signature of a path is a graded sequence of statistics that provides a universal description for a stream of data, and its expected value characterizes the law of the time-series model. In particular, we a develop new metric, (conditional) Sig-$W_1$, that captures the (conditional) joint law of time series models, and use it as a discriminator. The signature feature space enables the explicit representation of the proposed discriminators which alleviates the need for expensive training. Furthermore, we develop a novel generator, called the conditional AR-FNN, which is designed to capture the temporal dependence of time series and can be efficiently trained. We validate our method on both synthetic and empirical datasets and observe that our method consistently and significantly outperforms state-of-the-art benchmarks with respect to measures of similarity and predictive ability.


To become proficient at landmine detection, novice deminers need to master several kinds of skills: the proper physical operation of the metal detector, the interpretation of the metal detector auditory feedback, and the abstract skill of constructing and interpreting mental representations of the "metallic signatures" produced by the buried objects. This last skill is particularly useful for safely dealing with mines laid out in cluster configurations, where their metallic signatures overlap and thus a danger exists that a deminer might either miss some of the mines or incorrectly assess their exact positions. However, some novice deminers find it challenging to learn how to properly reason about metallic signatures. We have developed Petals, a system that explicitly visualizes a trainee's metal detector operation history on a training task as well as the edge points of the metallic signatures that the trainee collected. Petals enables instructors to supervise multiple trainees at a time, to assess their performance at a glance, and to provide immediate and specific feedback both on the correctness of their final judgements about the number and positions of landmines, and on the process through which they arrived at their conclusions. The results of our field evaluations at the Humanitarian Demining Training Center showed that both the instructors and the trainees found the system a valuable addition to the training course. The results of a controlled study demonstrated that trainees who had access to Petals during training made significantly fewer errors (6% error rate) on relevant tasks during the final exam (which was conducted without Petals) than trainees who did not have access to Petals during training (those participants had a 21% error rate).


Thyroid diseases are commonly caused by an autoimmune response to thyroid antigens. Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT) is a T-cell mediated disease that ensues when the thyroid gland is destroyed by infiltrating lymphocytes specific antigens such as thyroglobulin (Tg) or thyroid peroxidase (TPO), leading to hypothyroidism. In Graves' disease (GD), autoantibodies against the thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor (TSHR) mimic the action of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and stimulate thyrocytes to overproduce thyroid hormones resulting in hyperthyroidism. Both spontaneous and experimentally induced animal models of HT exist and have contributed considerably to our understanding of the disease process. In contrast, difficulties in inducing TSHR- specific, stimulating antibodies have delayed the establishment of an animal model for GD. Recently, new strategies including immunization with TSHR-transfected fibroblasts and genetic immunization with eukaryotic expression vectors containing TSHR cDNA have provided promising results in mice, but further studies are required to optimize disease induction. The research described herein focuses on establishing a mouse model of GD through intradermal DNA immunization of BALB/cJ and AKR/J mice with varying doses of plasmid vectors carrying the homologous (murine) or heterologous (human) TSHR cDNA (Chapter 3). By using an algorithm-based approach, we have also identified human TSHR peptides with Aᴷ-binding potential and tested their immunogenicity and pathogenicity in AKR/J mice (Chapter 4). Finally, an alternative method for identifying pathogenic Tg epitopes using DNA immunization was introduced and preliminary data are being presented (Chapter 5).


Climate extremes have the potential to cause extreme responses of terrestrial ecosystem functioning. However, it is neither straightforward to quantify and predict extreme ecosystem responses, nor to attribute these responses to specific climate drivers. Here, we construct a factorial experiment based on a large ensemble of process-oriented ecosystem model simulations driven by a regional climate model (12 500 model years in 1985–2010) in six European regions. Our aims are to (1) attribute changes in the intensity and frequency of simulated ecosystem productivity extremes (EPEs) to recent changes in climate extremes, CO2 concentration, and land use, and to (2) assess the effect of timing and seasonal interaction on the intensity of EPEs. Evaluating the ensemble simulations reveals that (1) recent trends in EPEs are seasonally contrasting: spring EPEs show consistent trends towards increased carbon uptake, while trends in summer EPEs are predominantly negative in net ecosystem productivity (i.e. higher net carbon release under drought and heat in summer) and close-to-neutral in gross productivity. While changes in climate and its extremes (mainly warming) and changes in CO2 increase spring productivity, changes in climate extremes decrease summer productivity neutralizing positive effects of CO2. Furthermore, we find that (2) drought or heat wave induced carbon losses in summer (i.e. negative EPEs) can be partly compensated by a higher uptake in the preceding spring in temperate regions. Conversely, however, carry-over effects from spring to summer that arise from depleted soil moisture exacerbate the carbon losses caused by climate extremes in summer, and are thus undoing spring compensatory effects. While the spring-compensation effect is increasing over time, the carry-over effect shows no trend between 1985–2010. The ensemble ecosystem model simulations provide a process-based interpretation and generalization for spring-summer interacting carbon cycle effects caused by climate extremes (i.e. compensatory and carry-over effects). In summary, the ensemble ecosystem modelling approach presented in this paper offers a novel route to scrutinize ecosystem responses to changing climate extremes in a probabilistic framework, and to pinpoint the underlying eco-physiological mechanisms.


Larval supply in marine benthic invertebrates influences patterns of settlement and recruitment to adult populations. To successfully colonize newly formed or distant hydrothermal vents, which are discontinuous and ephemeral habitats, larvae of vent invertebrates must possess long‐range dispersal abilities. However, a significant proportion of locally produced larvae must remain within the adult habitat to maintain the observed dense assemblages of invertebrates. I compared spatial and temporal patterns in larval availability (flux and abundance) at hydrothermal vents within and between ridge segments in the northeast Pacific ocean at Axial Seamount and Endeavour Segment on the Juan de Fuca Ridge and at Magic Mountain on Explorer Ridge. Near‐bottom (within 50 cm) larval supply (individuals m−2 d−1) at five vents on Axial Seamount, measured with passively collecting traps in 2000 and 2001, varied temporally by an order of magnitude, but not spatially at scales of tens of meters to kilometers. The most abundant larval taxa were gastropods (particularly the limpet Lepetodrilus fucensis) and polychaetes. Larval abundance in the water column within the axial valley was measured with net tows by the remotely operated vehicle ROPOS at the three ridge segments: Axial Seamount (2000, 2001); Endeavour Segment (2001, 2002); Magic Mountain (2002). Abundance was greater by an order of magnitude at the Endeavour Segment than at Axial Seamount and Magic Mountain, and it did not differ between on‐vent (within tens of meters) and off‐vent (up to 5 km from the venting source) locations within the axial valley. The uniformly high abundance of larvae within axial valleys suggests that larval supply within a ridge segment is most likely localized, implying significant larval retention on the scale of vent fields and possibly ridge segments.


In this thesis, the study of cold gases of neon atoms in different metastable states is described. It contains measurements of the collisional parameters for both the 3s[3/2]2 and the 3s'[1/2]0 metastable state and the dependence of the inelastic loss on external fields. Furthermore, the investigation of frequency dependent laser-induced collisions, and the possibility to excite photoassociation resonances is presented. Based on previous measurements we have selected 22Ne for evaporative cooling. Although, we can experimentally achieve an increase in phase-space density with evaporative cooling, the relatively high inelastic collision parameters prevent the realization of a Bose-Einstein condensate in neon. For the measurements described here, neon atoms have been confined in a magneto-optical trap, in a magnetostatic trap, or in an optical dipole trap, respectively. By laser cooling inside the magnetic trap, atomic samples with more than 95 percent occupation of the magnetic substate m=+2 could be prepared. They have a typical temperature of 0.5 mK, central densities up to 1e11 cm^-3, and a central phase-space density of up to 2.2e-7. After loading the optical dipole trap from the magnetic trap, 2.5e6 atoms with typical temperatures of 0.1 mK, and central densities up to 5e10 cm^-3 were trapped. By evaporative cooling of the atoms in the magnetic trap we could increase the phase-space density by a factor of 200 to 5e-5. Also simulations of optimized evaporation for our experimental parameters show clearly that we are limited to a phase-space density on the order of 1e-5. From these simulations it became clear that a 5-fold increase in the "good-to-bad" ratio for evaporative cooling suffices to reach the quantum degenerate regime. Investigating the frequency dependence of laser-induced collisions did not reveal an experimental signature for the excitation of photoassociation resonances. For the 3D3 line a frequency dependence of laser enhanced Penning ionization was observed, which is interesting in itself. The absence of the collisional enhancement effect by laser light for the transition to the 3D2 line is intriguing and for an explanation calculations are required. Measurement of the two-body loss coefficient as function of the magnetic field showed a field dependence of the inelastic loss. These losses increase towards both small and large offset fields. In the magnetic trap, we are limited to offset fields < 50 G. In this range of fields, the two-body losses are too large to achieve a Bose-Einstein condensate of magnetically trapped metastable neon. The implementation of an optical dipole trap allowed us to trap the 3P0 metastable state. From the trap loss measurements we determined the two-body loss coefficient of the 3P0 metastable state for both bosonic isotopes 20Ne and 22Ne. For 20Ne we obtained s=6(+5,-4)e-10 cm^3/s and for 22Ne s=11(+7,-6)e-10 cm^3/s. These large two-body losses make it extremely unlikely to reach degeneracy with this metastable state. Nevertheless it is important that the 3P0 metastable state can be trapped to investigate other interesting physical effects. For example, it is essential to apply the STIRAP technique for trapped atoms and to realize the proposed coherent control of collisions. There is also a large interest in a precise determination of the lifetime of this metastable state, which is of importance for the verification of QED. We can also trap neon atoms in their energetically lowest magnetic substate 3P2(m=-2) with the perspective of reducing inelastic collisions in the energetically lowest state.


We study several periodic structures, in particular metamaterials to which we apply homogenization techniques. We first present a state of the art of the mixing formulas. We introduce the periodic unfolding method that takes into account bianisotropy, thermal and memory effects. The simulations are achieved in both time and frequency domains. However, this method does not take into account the intrinsic resonances of the inclusions. We implemented another homogenization technique, which is based on the Floquet-Bloch decomposition, and applied it to an array of split-ring based metamaterials. We close the ring and model mathematically its resonant behaviour to reduce the number of mesh elements in the airgap. We finally present the retrieval procedure of the effective parameters from measured S parameters. We characterize the materials in free space, with a focused beam system in the 6-18 GHz frequency range. To avoid the use of an anechoic chamber, we filter the S parameters in the time domain. Several materials are characterized. In particular, we obtained a very good agreement between the experimental and simulated behaviour of the split-ring resonator.


ABSTRACT Purpose: Lifestyle interventions can be effective in the management of overweight and obesity in children. However, ineffective guidance towards interventions and high attrition rates affect health impacts and cost effectiveness. The aim of this study was to gain insight into the factors influencing participation, in particular guidance towards, adherence to and completion of an intervention. Methods: A narrative literature review was performed to identify factors related to participation, leading to the development of the "Stages towards Completion Model". Semi-structured interviews (n = 33) and three focus group discussions (n = 25) were performed with children and parents who completed two different group lifestyle interventions, as well as with their coaches. Results: The main barrier to participating in a lifestyle intervention was the complex daily reality of the participants. The main facilitator to overcome these barriers was a personal approach by all professionals involved. Conclusions: Participation in a lifestyle intervention is not influenced by one specific factor, but by the interplay of facilitators and barriers. A promising way to stimulate participation and thereby increase the effectiveness of interventions would be an understanding of and respect for the complex circumstances of participants and to personalize guidance towards and execution of interventions.


A finite collection of simple closed curves in the real projective plane each two of which have exactly one point in common at which point they "cross" is called a pseudoline arrangement. Such arrangements seem to have been first systematically studied by Levi. Recently B. Grϋnbaum has called attention to the desirability for a better understanding of the differences as well as the similarities in the behavior of arrangements of lines and the arrangements of pseudolines. Among other things, Grϋnbaum asks if every pseudoline arrangement, not all curves of which intersect in a single point, must have a simple vertex (a point on exactly two of the curves of the arrangement) as is the case in line arrangements. In fact Kelly and Moser have shown that, in general, an n-line arrangement in an ordered projective plane has at least 3/7w simple vertices. It is shown here that their reasoning can be nearly dualized to prove the analogous result for pseudoline arrangements.


Although English School (ES) theorists have played a significant and explicit role in security studies, Bellamy and McDonald claim that this has not been the case. However, they fail to show how they have arrived at their conclusion. Moreover, Bellamy and McDonald conflate solidarism with cosmopolitanism, with the result that they wrongly claim that some theorists are 'weak' while others are 'deep' solidarists. In addition, their attempt to view human security as a reflection of solidarist trends in the ES is welcome, but their method risks undermining the ES. I propose that an ES perspective on security needs to incorporate elements from three streams of thought: pluralism, solidarism and cosmopolitanism. I contend that security ought to be viewed as people centred and that it should be embedded within international society's norms, rules and institutions.


This article covers some success and learning experiences attained during the developing of a hybrid approach to Sentiment Analysis (SA) based on a Sentiment Lexicon, Semantic Rules, Negation Handling, Ambiguity Management and Linguistic Variables. The proposed hybrid method is presented and applied to two selected datasets: Movie Review and Sentiment Twitter datasets. The achieved results are compared against those obtained when Na¨ıve Bayes (NB) and Maximum Entropy (ME) supervised machine learning classification methods are used for the same datasets. The proposed hybrid system attained higher accuracy and precision scores than NB and ME, which shows its superiority when applied to the SA problem at the sentence level. Finally, an alternative strategy to calculating the orientation polarity and polarity intensity in one step instead of the two steps method used in the hybrid approach is explored. The analysis of the yielded mixed results achieved with this alternative approach shows its potential as an aid in the computation of semantic orientations and produced some lessons learnt in developing a more effective mechanism to calculating the orientation polarity and polarity intensity.


Purpose: To generalize the equivalent field size (EFS) for non‐uniform fluence maps, to propose and verify a dose calculation method based on the generalized equivalent field size (GEFS). Method and Materials: A parallel‐beam dose table PDT(s,d) that consists of central axis dose (CAD) at various depths d of a water phantom for circular fields of various diameters s and can be obtained by the collapsed cone convolution/superposition (CCCS) method is used to define the phantom scatter Sp, Sp(s)=PDT(s,d ref)/PDT(s ref,d ref), where s ref and d ref are the reference depth and reference diameter, respectively. Sp can be extended for arbitrary fluence maps by integrating fluence with respect to the phantom scatter with proper normalization. More precisely, the phantom scatter at a point c on the reference plane is Żf(x)/f*(c)dSp(x‐c), where f*(c) is the closest non‐zero fluence to f (c). For any given fluence map, GEFS of a point is defined to be the diameter of a circular field that has the same phantom scatter at the reference depth. Once GEFS is determined, we use PDT again to look up dose. Results: GEFS is consistent with EFS for square fields. We tested the proposed dose calculation on various field shapes with uniform or non‐uniform intensity. The resulting dose distributions are within 3%/3mm from those calculated by the CCCS approach except near the fluence edges in the buildup regions. Conclusion: EFS is a useful tool for estimating dose of non‐standard fields. However, its application is limited to uniform fluence maps. In this work, we extend the application to non‐uniform fluence maps and propose a dose calculation method based on GEFS. The agreement between dose calculations based on GEFS and CCCS indicates that dose can be well approximated by scaling CAD along the radiation beam when the phantom scatter is estimated through GEFS.


Immigration-fuelled population growth has accelerated under the Rudd Government. Recent projections suggest that Australia may grow from its current 22 million to 35.9 million by 2050. This prospect has sparked a public debate about the country's demographic future. If population growth were to become an election issue how would Australian voters respond? Relevant new data are available from the latest Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, a mailout questionnaire sent to a large random sample of voters. It was completed between December 2009 and February 2010. The results show that only 31 per cent want growth while 69 per cent want stability. This is an increase on the proportions who have been pro-stability in the past: 50 per cent in 1977 and the 65 per cent in 2001.


Numerous studies have sought to empirically test the effectiveness of foreign aid as a tool for international development, with often inconsistent or contradictory results. New sources of disaggregated aid data now allow researchers to test the impact of individual sectors of aid on sector-specific outcomes. The paper investigates the effectiveness of foreign aid in the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) sector and seeks to identify constraints on WaSH aid effectiveness in recipient countries. Multilevel latent growth, dynamic panel, and instrumental variable regression models were estimated on a panel dataset comprising 125 recipient countries over 20 years. WaSH aid was consistently associated with improved health outcomes in middle-income countries; no effect on those outcomes was observed in low-income countries. Potential constraints on the effectiveness of WaSH aid – including political, economic, institutional, and technical constraints – were examined using subgroup analysis. The effectiveness of WaSH aid was found to have been constrained by government ineffectiveness and regulatory quality in recipient countries. Countries with large rural populations also appear to have benefitted less from WaSH aid than more urbanized recipient countries.


46 The regulations now encourage voluntary self-assessment. The Internal Revenue Service continues to attack problems of tax understatement, poor tax advice and careless return preparation. It released new regulations covering the accuracy-related penalty of Internal Revenue Code section 6662 and the section 6694 tax preparer penalties in December 1991. The IRS also issued revenue procedure 91-19 to update its rules of adequate disclosure to reduce a substantial understatement penalty and avoid a tax preparer penalty. This article reviews both the regulations and the updated disclosure rules. CPAs who prepare federal income tax returns should become familiar with these rules and regulations so their exposure to the accuracy-related and tax preparer penalties is minimized. ACCURACY-RELATED PENALTY REGULATIONS Section 6662 imposes a 20% accuracy-related penalty on any portion of a tax underpayment attributable to one or more of the following types of misconduct: * Negligence or disregard of rules or regulations. * Substantial understatement of income tax. * Substantial valuation misstatement under chapter 1 of the code. * Substantial overstatement of pension liabilities. * Substantial estate or gift tax valuation understatement. The penalty increases to 40% if the misconduct meets the section 6662 criteria for a goss valuation misstatement, a goss overstatement of pension liabilities or a gross estate or gift tax valuation understatement. The regulations provide ordering rules for computing the total accuracy-related and fraud penalties imposed on a given return and define terms related to the first three types of misconduct. The new guidelines apply to all taxpayers who file income tax returns and generally are effective for returns due after 1989. The adequate disclosure regulations, however, apply only to returns due after 1991. Ordering of penalties. The regulations clarify that only one accuracy-related penalty applies to a given return, even though the underpayment may be attributed to more than one type of misconduct. For example, the maximum penalty imposed on any portion of an underpayment attributable to both negligence (which alone triggers a 20% penalty) and a gross valuation misstatement (which alone triggers a 40% penalty) is 40%. The regulations also provide that an accuracy-related penalty may apply in addition to a section 6651 penalty for failure to timely file a tax return, but not in addition to a section 6663 fraud penalty. Negligence or disregard of rules or regulations. This component of the accuracy-related penalty applies if any portion of a tax underpayment results from negligence or disregard of rules or regulations. The regulations define negligence to include any failure to make a reasonable attempt to comply with the tax laws or to exercise ordinary and reasonable care in the preparation of a return. A taxpayer is negligent if he or she fails to keep adequate books and records or to substantiate items properly. A position is considered negligent if it lacks a reasonable basis. Negligence is strongly indicated when a taxpayer fails to include on a return income shown on an information return or fails to make a reasonable attempt to ascertain the correctness of a deduction, credit or exclusion that seems to be "too good to be true." Negligence also is strongly indicated when the returns of a partner and the partnership or an S corporation shareholder and the S corporation are not consistent. Disregard of rules or regulations includes any careless, reckless or intentional disregard of the code, temporary or final regulations, revenue rulings or notices. A disregard is careless if the taxpayer fails to exercise reasonable diligence to determine the correctness of a return position contrary to a rule or regulation; reckless if the taxpayer makes little or no effort, as judged by the standard of conduct for a reasonable person, to determine whether a rule or regulation exists; and intentional if the taxpayer knows of the disregarded rule or regulation. …


Inorganic polyphosphate (polyP) is a simple ancient polymer of linear chains of orthophosphate residues linked by high energy phospho-anhydride bonds ubiqui-tously found in all organisms. Despite its structural simplicity, it plays diverse functional roles. polyP is involved in myriad of processes including serving as microbial phosphagens, buffer against alkalis, Ca 2+ storage, metal-chelating agents, pathogen virulence, cell viability and proliferation, structural component and chemical chaperones, and in the microbial stress response. In mammalian cells, polyP has been implicated in blood coagulation, inflammation, bone differentiation, cell bioenergetics, signal transduction, Ca 2+ -signaling, neuronal excitability, as a protein-stabilizing scaffold, and in wound healing, among others. This chapter will discuss (1) polyP metabolism and roles of polyP in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, (2) the contribution of polyP to survival, cell proliferation, and motility involved in wound healing in human skin keratinocytes, (3) the use of polyP-containing platelet-rich plasma (PRP) to promote wound healing in acute and chronic wounds, including burns, and (4) the use of polyP-containing PRP in excisional wound models to promote faster healing. While polyP shows promise as a therapeutic agent to accelerate healing for acute and chronic wounds, the molecular mechanisms as a potent modulator of the wound healing process remain to be elucidated.


Dividing-wall columns (DWCs) are intensified processes that have attracted industrial and academic attention due to the reduction in operating and installation costs compared to traditional distillation systems. Several methodologies are available for the design of DWCs. Most of them consist of three parts: an analysis of operating variables; an analysis of the structural design (topology); and an optimization of the resulting preliminary design. This paper aims to study three widely used design methodologies reported in the literature for DWCs, i.e., Triantafyllou and Smith (T&S), minimum vapor (Vmin), and Sotudeh and Shahraki (S&S) methods, along with their implementation on process simulators. A proposed modification to the S&S methodology is also presented. A comparison of the methods is carried out and rated against designs with minimum total annual costs. The analysis considers the effect of different structural design variables to initialize the design procedure with each methodology. Five case studies involving mixtures with different ease of separation index were evaluated. The results show that the most efficient techniques were obtained with a modified Sotudeh and Shahraki's methodology. It was also found that the T&S approach stands out from the other methods, as it provided excellent initial designs for the case studies tested in this work.


We present a chatbot implementing a novel dialogue management approach based on logical inference. Instead of framing conversation a sequence of response generation tasks, we model conversation as a collaborative inference process in which speakers share information to synthesize new knowledge in real time. Our chatbot pipeline accomplishes this modelling in three broad stages. The first stage translates user utterances into a symbolic predicate representation. The second stage then uses this structured representation in conjunction with a larger knowledge base to synthesize new predicates using efficient graph matching. In the third and final stage, our bot selects a small subset of predicates and translates them into an English response. This approach lends itself to understanding latent semantics of user inputs, flexible initiative taking, and responses that are novel and coherent with the dialogue context.


OBJECTIVE
To examine variables that might predict abnormal outcome of status epilepticus among children.

DESIGN
Retrospective study.

SETTING
Regional hospital, Hong Kong.

PATIENTS
All children younger than 15 years who were admitted to the paediatric intensive care unit with status epilepticus between 1997 and 2002.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Neurodevelopmental outcomes.

RESULTS
Two of the 25 patients died, resulting in a mortality rate of 8%. No deaths were due to status epilepticus itself. No patient with febrile or idiopathic status epilepticus developed epilepsy. Neurological deterioration was observed in a quarter (six of 23) of the survivors. Symptomatic aetiology (acute or remote) and refractory status epilepticus were associated with adverse outcomes (P<0.05). Young age at status epilepticus (<12 months) and duration of status epilepticus (>60 minutes) tended to be more frequent among those who developed adverse outcome. Rectal diazepam was given before hospital arrival in only four patients.

CONCLUSIONS
Paediatric patients with status epilepticus who had normal neurodevelopmental status before the onset of an attack and who did not sustain an acute insult to the central nervous system or have progressive encephalopathy, had favourable outcomes. Prompt use of rectal diazepam or buccal midazolam administered by caretakers or paramedics should be encouraged.


We claim that knowing the ethnic group of human would increase the accuracy of the emotion recognition. This is due to the difference between the face appearances and expressions of various ethnic groups. To test our claim, we developed an approach based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) using backpropgation algorithm to recognize the human emotion through facial expressions. Our approach has been tested by using MSDEF dataset, and we found that, there is a positive effect on the accuracy of the recognition of emotion if we consider the ethnic group as input factor while building the recognition model. We achieved 8% improvement rate.


The mechanisms of disease processes resulting in dementia of which, Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a common example, remain elusive. To this end, a number of theories as plausible explanations have been suggested. Of these, the microbial, peripheral infection theory of Hunter and Miller (1900s) and Naguchi and Moore (1913) is the earliest proposal to explain possible causation of AD. Periodontal disease is a polymicrobial inflammatory disease reported to associate with AD via periodontal bacteria/bacteraemia, systemic inflammation, blood-brain barrier erosion, intra-cerebral inflammation and tissue injury, this chapter describes the original finding of four out of 10 confirmed AD brains with incidental infection of Porphyromonas gingivalis [P. gingivalis] outer membrane component lipopolysaccharide. A follow-on study examined the possibility of P. gingivalis translocation from the gingivae to the brain in the orally infected (n=12), apoliporprotein E knockout (ApoE-/-) mouse model at 12 and 24 weeks of monoinfections. Sensitive bacterial molecular speciation techniques confirmed the invasion of P. gingivalis into the brain at 12 weeks (p=0.006), and at 24 weeks of infection (p=0.0001). Immunolabeling using antibodies against complement proteins demonstrated the innate immune system activation via C3 fragmentation and its subsequent opsonisation onto vulnerable pyramidal neurons (p=0.032) in the hippocampus as ongoing bystander injury. These studies confirm the initiation of an infection mediated inflammasome assembly with implications for remote body organ inflammatory pathologies from periodontitis to dementia.


Services that architects provide are no longer constrained to offering inspiring design solutions to client needs and whims; their services are beginning to spread across domains to ensure that proposed designs are also 'green' and/or 'sustainable'. Indeed, design and delivery of sustainable buildings is gradually gathering momentum, manifest in the way that building performance and functionality are being viewed within an overall ecological context. The ongoing transformation from the traditional to a sustainable building design process is no longer a question of whether to build but rather how (Kibert 2005). Of the many tools available to aid sustainable design, building rating systems offer guidelines and means for comparing and benchmarking buildings performance (Fowler and Rauch 2006). The nature of sustainable building rating systems is such that they are evolving—in this respect this paper describes research that engages this paradigm through the deployment of a sustainable information framework and computational tools.


The previous papers in this series outlined a historical panorama and presented updated knowledge about putative risk factors and how eating disorders are distributed in various populations. In this final paper, we discuss in what way comorbidity findings and transdiagnostic issues may change our conceptions about 'an epidemiological case' from the current definition of eating disorders based on the recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (i.e. the DSM-5), and to what extent an alternative definition may introduce new perspectives of prevention. The paper also provides an update on issues relevant for treatment dissemination.


Charge transport occurs in a range of biomolecular systems, whose structures have covalent and noncovalent bonds. Understanding from these systems have yet to translate into molecular junction devices. We design junctions which have hydrogen-bonds between the edges of a series of prototype noncovalent nanobelts (NCNs) and vary the number of donor-acceptors to study their electrical properties. From frontier molecular orbitals (FMOs) and projected density of state (DOS) calculations, we found these NCN dimer junctions to have low HOMO-LUMO gaps and states at the Fermi level, suggesting these are metallic-like systems. Their conductance properties were studied with nonequilibrium Green's functions density functional theory (NEGF-DFT) and was found to decrease with cooperative H-bonding, that is, the conductance decreased as the alternating donor-acceptors around the nanobelts attenuates to a uniform distribution in the H-bonding arrays. The latter gave the highest conductance of 51.3 × 10-6 S and the Seebeck coefficient showed n-type (-36 to -39 μV K-1) behavior, while the lower conductors with alternating H-bonds are p-type (49.7 to 204 μV K-1). In addition, the NCNs have appreciable binding energies (19.8 to 46.1 kcal mol-1), implying they could form self-assembled monolayer (SAM) heterojunctions leading to a polymeric network for long-range charge transport.


Mercurialis annua is an androdioecious plant species, meaning populations may contain both male and cosexual individuals. It is able to modify resource allocation to male and female function in varying conditions, such as light and competition regimes. One component of resource allocation may involve changes in the relative timing of production of male and female flowers. A controlled greenhouse experiment was performed to test for the effects of shading on the production of male and female flowers in four populations. Evidence suggested that plants grown in shade would be relatively less female than those grown in the sun. Although the average number of day to the production of male versus female flowers did not show a response to shading, the number of plants producing male versus female flowers during early development differed between light treatments. The shade treatment induced a reduction in number of plants producing female flowers, as predicted by my hypothesis. The populations differed in their specific responses to shading, suggesting that populations have adapted individually to local selective pressures. Degree Type Open Access Senior Honors Thesis


IKEv2 is a protocol for setting up Virtual Private Network (VPN)
tunnels from a remote location to a gateway so that the VPN client can
access services in the network behind the gateway. Currently the IKE
SAs and tunnel mode Ipsec SA's are created implicitly between the
IP addresses that are used when the IKE_SA is established. These IP
addresses are then used as the outer (tunnel header) addresses for
tunnel mode IPSEC packets (transport mode IPsec SAs are beyond the
scope of this document). This document defines an IKEv2 extension that
allows the outer tunnel header addresses for the tunnel mode IPSEC
packets to be different than the IKE peer IP addresses.


We explore a recently proposed Variational Dropout technique that provided an elegant Bayesian interpretation to Gaussian Dropout. We extend Variational Dropout to the case when dropout rates are unbounded, propose a way to reduce the variance of the gradient estimator and report first experimental results with individual dropout rates per weight. Interestingly, it leads to extremely sparse solutions both in fully-connected and convolutional layers. This effect is similar to automatic relevance determination effect in empirical Bayes but has a number of advantages. We reduce the number of parameters up to 280 times on LeNet architectures and up to 68 times on VGG-like networks with a negligible decrease of accuracy.


Title of Document: FACTORS INFLUENCING MARYLAND FARMERS' ON-FARM PROCESSING LICENSE APPLICATION BEHAVIOR Meryl Brooke Lubran, Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Directed By: Dr. Mark Kantor Department of Nutrition and Food Science A 2005 regulation adopted by Maryland's state health department allowed farmers to sell foods processed in their home kitchen provided they complete an 8-hour food safety education course and apply for an on-farm processing license. Although more than 100 farmers completed the course, only 25 farmers applied for and received a license. The number of licenses granted has not met expectations and the health department is continually looking for ways to improve the program. The objective of this study was to identify factors that may influence Maryland farmers' intentions to apply for a license as well as their actual license application behavior using a model which combines two dominant theoretical paradigms – the Health Belief Model and the Theory of Planned Behavior. To test the proposed model, a mail survey was administered to farmers who completed the training, farmers who have an onfarm license, and to a systematic random sample of other Maryland farmers (n = 745). To explore reasons why the courses may not have encouraged more farmers to apply, a content analysis of the training presentations was conducted by two trained coders. The usable survey response rate was 15% (n = 110). Using structural equation modeling, the proposed model, predicting farmers' intentions to apply for a license, was found to have marginal fit. Significant direct relationships were found between farmers' attitudes, subjective norms, and their intentions. Significant indirect relationships were found between farmers' beliefs of perceived benefits and barriers and their attitudes. Using rare events logistic regression to predict license obtainment, and a multiple regression and two correlation analyses to test the proposed indirect relationships, the same relationships were found to predict actual behavior as behavioral intentions. An additional significant relationship was found between perceived behavioral control and behavior. Few differences were found between mean responses of farmers who did and did not attend the training. The content analysis of training materials revealed few persuasive strategies were utilized during training. These findings provide insight into factors affecting farmers' decisions to apply for an on-farm license, and suggest relevant factors, concerns, and issues to address in future educational outreach efforts. FACTORS INFLUENCING MARYLAND FARMERS' ON-FARM PROCESSING LICENSE APPLICATION BEHAVIOR


Post exercise lymphocytopenia is a well documented phenomenon. Studies have reported exercise induced DNA damage in leucocytes and have postulated a possible link to apoptosis. Five subjects of differing fitness levels underwent a ramped treadmill test to exhaustion. Venous sampling was undertaken before, immediately post exercise, and 24 and 48 hours after exercise. Single cell gel electrophoresis showed evidence of single strand DNA breaks (as evidenced by an increase in tail moment measurements using the comet assay) in 100% oflymphocytes immediately after exercise, and in the 24 hour and 48 hour post exercise samples. Flowcytometric analysis oflymphocytes revealed a minimal amount of both apoptosis and necrosis at all time intervals. Lymphocyte apoptosis has again been demonstrated after exercise, however the percentage of apoptosis was a maximum of 4.8% at 24 hours. These findings may in part account for the exercise induced lymphocytopenia and reduced immunity demonstrated by numerous previous other studies.


Background: Filial piety is a fundamental virtue that defines children's care-giving obligation to older parents in Chinese families. This study aims to evaluate whether gender difference exists in the expectation and receipt of filial piety among U.S Chinese older adults. Methods: Data were drawn from the PINE study, a population-based study of U.S. Chinese older adults aged 60 and above in the greater Chicago area. Guided by a community-based participatory research approach, a total of 3,159 Chinese older adults aged 60 and above were surveyed. Filial piety was examined in six domains, including care, respect, greeting, happiness, obedience, and financial support. Socio-demographic correlates with expectations and receipt of filial piety were examined. Multivariate regression analyses were conducted. Results: Female older adults were 1.02 points higher than male older adults in their perceived receipt of filial piety (PE=1.02, p<0.001) adjusted for the socio-demographics. Older women received more respect (p<0.001), greetings (p<0.001), happiness (p<0.01), and obedience (p<0.05). Women with an older age (r = 0.06, p<0.05) and a lower educational level (r = -0.11, p<0.01) received more filial piety while similar trends were not discovered among men. Being married was correlated with a higher level of filial piety receipt among men (r = 0.07. p<0.05) while the correlation was not significant among women. Discussion: This study provides insights to understand how the gender of the older parents influences their expectation and receipt of filial piety. Our findings have important implications to guide elder care practices with cultural and gender sensitivity.


Too often, discussion of how best to promote greater and more equitable access to higher education in the United States centers on a single set of challenges when in fact they are many, varied, and interrelated. There is the challenge of student diversity: the student body at the most elite institutions does not look like the population of the nation as a whole. There is the burden of cost: the price of higher education both deters potential students and burdens those who must borrow to enroll, whether they graduate or not. There are disturbing disparities in standardized test scores: the admissions criteria used by institutions that are most selective disfavor applicants whose families earn lower incomes and who are African American or Latino. There is the performance of for-profit higher education providers: these institutions produce worse outcomes for students, in the form of low completion rates, greater debt burdens, and greater likelihood of default, and they disproportionately serve students who are poor and African American or Latino. There is the potentially regressive effect of so-called merit aid: financial aid practices used by competitive colleges and universities to improve their placement in rankings work against recruitment of students who have greater financial need and in favor of those with higher test scores, who tend to be those whose families have more wealth or higher incomes. The goal of this Essay is to map the terrain and suggest possible implications of relationships among race, class, institutional incentives, measures of merit, and debt for possible reform. To be clear, the Essay assumes that greater and more equitable access to higher education is the ultimate ambition of both federal policy and institutional practice. Equitable access to higher education opportunity is an appropriate and critical question for legal scholars. Lawmakers and courts have given shape to the architecture that makes opportunity more available to some and less available to others. Historically, legal challenges to exclusive practices of colleges and universities have opened the gates for members of marginalized and subordinated groups.And regardless of the usefulness of the courts, legislation has, will, and must implement reforms. Part I of this Essay examines the role race plays in access to higher education. Part II assesses the role of wealth. Part III discusses the implications of conventional assessments of merit. Part IV examines the potentially important role played by academic support to help enrolled students achieve graduation. Part V discusses the impact of borrowing and indebtedness. In conclusion, Part VI identifies political obstacles to effective reform informed by recognition of the relationships previously analyzed in the preceding parts.


About 25% of patients seen in epilepsy clinics and monitoring units who do not respond to antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) have received a misdiagnosis.1-3 The eventual diagnosis for most of these patients will be psychogenic nonepileptic seizure (PNES)1,4-a somatoform conversion disorder. It is treatable, but diagnosis, delivery of the diagnosis, and management present significant challenges. A major barrier to care has been the stigma associated with the label "psychogenic."


This exploratory study seeks to identify urban-Malay secondary school students' perceptions regarding the
degrees of importance of twelve common social support (5S) types and six salient individual SS sources, in
relation to an academic problem. The levels of importance/preference ascribed to the SS types and sources of
SS were also examined for gender differences. 164 respondents (71 males and 93 females) volumarily
participated in the study. Data were collected using a survey questionnaire. The twelve categories of SS were
derived from Richard E. Pearson's (1986) Personal Support System Survey. Results showed that subjects'
preferences with respect to SS for academic problems are multifaceted. They desire a combination of
informational, emotional and appraisal supports from others. Subjects rated 'guidance' as the most important
supportive response should they experience academic problems. Perceptions regarding the levels of
importance attached to each SS type also differed between gender. Students perceived their parents as the most
important source of SS. Of their parents, mothers were regarded as more important. The findings suggest that
to help Malay students with academic problems, S5-focused interventions need to be multifaceted, teachers and
counselors need training in collaborating with parents regarding their children's academic difficulties, parental
support is more preferred than support from others, student-teacher communication needs improvement.
Gender differences in SS type preferences need further examination.


Today, when consumers receive prescription drug pharmacy leaflets (also known as 'consumer medication information' or CMI), they often appear in small font size, with cluttered layouts, and distracting information. This problem has attracted the attention of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in advocating for more comprehendible, accurate, and easy-to-access CMI formats. Our study of four different CMI prototypes shows that an expanded Over-the-Counter (OTC) Drug Facts prototype is the best for improving comprehension accuracy, and is especially effective for those with lower health literacy and health motivation. A simpler OTC prototype did not aid accuracy scores due in part to its lack of complexity; whereas the most complex prototype (the revised medication guide – similar to most CMI today) reduced leaflet likability and usage intentions. Finally, continued leaflet availability improved accuracy scores for lower health literacy and health motivation respondents. Implications for marketing and public health policy are offered.


There exist extensive debates on the relationship between school bureaucracy and student performance. Chubb and Moe (1988, 1990) contend that bureaucracy causes poorer student performance. On the contrary, Smith and Meier (1994, 1995) argue that school bureaucracy is a result of poor performing schools, not vice versa. Therefore, this essay reexamines this relationship through new evidence using panel data from over 600 school districts in New Jersey during the years 2001 - 2002 and 2005 - 2006. Findings from fixed-effect models support both Chubb and Moe's (1988, 1990) and Smith and Meier's (1994, 1995) views. At the 8th and 11th grade levels, school bureaucracy is associated with poorer student performance as measured by literacy and mathematic tests. On the other hand, at the 4th grade level, there is a lack of evidence to conclude that school bureaucracy is harmful to students' learning. This research suggests that we have to be very specific when articulating school administration reforms. An across-the-board solution of eliminating all school bureaucratic institutions and replacing them with market-like school operations may not bring about positive outcomes as some advocates have argued.


We draw from and extend Nonaka's (1994) theory of knowledge creation to develop a model of media selection and use in the knowledge conversion (KC) process. KC is a process wherein an individual is affected by the experiences of another. The outcomes of KC-transferred and transformed knowledge-hinge on the development of understanding. The KC process is enabled via various communicative and noncommunicative media. Because the KC process occurs over time, it possesses a temporal fabric or structure. We explore the practical realities of KC as a dynamic, time- and experience-dependent process. We consider how the temporal fabric of KC creates an evolving reciprocal relationship among perceived media utility, selection, and use of media, as well as switching and/or combining media. We propose and discuss two key factors as determinants of perceived media utility use in the KC process: (1) the temporal behavior of individuals engaged in the KC process and (2) individual and joint experience-based factors. We also discuss the role of contextual factors as antecedents. Finally, we offer and illustrate two primary temporal structures for KC media selection and use: (1) monophasic, wherein KC participants use a single medium at a time, and (2) polyphasic, wherein KC participants deploy multiple media simultaneously. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for the design of KC-enabling systems and directions for future research.


This paper describes an extension to the optimal power use surface (OPUS) methodology, which consists of applying a metaheuristic post-optimization process after a network has been designed through the OPUS algorithm. Four different types of metaheuristics were tested in this study. The OPUS methodology focuses on the setting up of efficient ways in which energy is dissipated and flow is distributed, thereby obtaining deterministic design after a few iterations. On the other hand, the stochastic techniques used for the post-optimization step mimic different phenomena, usually requiring several iterations. The proposed methodology is tested on four networks; three of these are benchmark problems. When compared to the results obtained through other methodologies, this algorithm stands out for allowing designs with constructive costs very close to the lowest found in other investigations. However, when compared to the results obtained through the OPUS algorithm alone, this approach reduces the capital cost of the network by a very small percentage while increasing the number of iterations required. This extension to the OPUS methodology proves that following hydraulic principles allows near-optimal results to be obtained, whose improvement demands a considerable number of iterations, providing minimum benefit as the reduction in cost is only 1% at most.


The author of the article identifies a constant interactive relationship between people and the world to which they belong, and describes the personal experience of using the interactive link with various outdoor environments. The testing of unknown landscapes opens new routes and new knowledge. experience is not separable from perception, emerges through interconnected systems, are interconnected as well as body-mind-world. The knowledge is through experiencing the flow of actions. The interaction, and shared living, it determines the constitution of the community.


Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibrium states with a three-dimensional helical core that display the characteristics of a saturated ideal internal kink mode are computed to model snake structures that have been observed in the JET tokamak (Weller et al 1987 Phys. Rev. Lett. 59 2303). The equilibrium states are calculated with a peaked pressure profile and a weak to moderate reversed core magnetic shear with a minimum safety factor qmin near unity in the neighbourhood of the mid-radius of the plasma. Snake equilibrium states are computed in the range 0.94 < qmin < 1.03. This range aligns with linearly unstable ideal MHD internal kink solutions of the purely axisymmetric branch of the equilibrium states. The energy difference between the bifurcated axisymmetric and helical snake equilibrium solutions is minimal. One very important novelty is that the helical structures are computed with an equilibrium code developed for three-dimensional (3D) stellarator applications in a tokamak context and cannot be obtained with standard Grad–Shafranov equation solvers.