This is a new formal framework for the theory of competitive equilibrium and its applications. Our "short-run approach" means the calculation of long-run producer optima and general equilibria from the short-run solutions to the producer's profit maximization programme and its dual. The marginal interpretation of the dual solution means that it can be used to value the capital and other fixed inputs, whose levels are then adjusted accordingly (where possible). But short-run profit can be a nondifferentiable function of the fixed quantities, and the short-run cost is nondifferentiable whenever there is a rigid capacity constraint. Nondifferentiability of the optimal value requires the introduction of nonsmooth calculus into equilibrium analysis, and subdifferential generalizations of smooth-calculus results of microeconomics are given, including the key Wong-Viner Envelope Theorem. This resolves long-standing discrepancies between "textbook theory" and industrial experience. The other tool employed to characterise long-run producer optima is a primal-dual pair of programmes. Both marginalist and programming characterizations of producer optima are given in a taxonomy of seventeen equivalent systems of conditions. When the technology is described by production sets, the most useful system for the short-run approach is that using the short-run profit programme and its dual. This programme pair is employed to set up a formal framework for long-run general-equilibrium pricing of a range of commodities with joint costs of production. This gives a practical method that finds the short-run general equilibrium en route to the long-run equilibrium, exploiting the operating policies and plant valuations that must be determined anyway. These critical short-run solutions have relatively simple forms that can greatly ease the fixed-point problem of solving for equilibrium, as is shown on an electricity pricing example. Applicable criteria are given for the existence of the short-run solutions and for the absence of a duality gap. The general analysis is spelt out for technologies with conditionally fixed coefficients, a concept extending that of the fixed-coefficients production function to the case of multiple outputs. The short-run approach is applied to the peak-load pricing of electricity generated by thermal, hydro and pumped-storage plants. This gives, for the first time, a sound method of valuing the fixed assets–in this case, river flows and the sites suitable for reservoirs.


INTRODUCTION
The article intends to identify the factors that can retain talented people and attract new talent in small and medium-sized urban areas of European scale, especially in regions with declining and ageing populations. The problem is topical in today's Europe and as well as in Japan. It is equally important to understand the skills needed and the sectors where talents are required in small and medium-sized urban areas with an ascending development trend.
The theoretical background of the research is based on literature studies on the theory of talent flow, knowing the factors of the talent flow in small and medium-sized cities, and building the talent flow models based on them. The article discusses the concept of talent (Michaels et al. 2001, several dictionaries, understanding of Valmiera residents). The researchers define that talented people fascinate others, create and implement ideas and have good reasoning skills. Until now, mainly in Europe and in the USA, the attraction of talent at the level of cities and regions has been implemented through migration policy. The administrative boundaries where the migrant talents come from are not as important as the factors that encourage the decisions on the choice of the place of living and work.
In Estonia a National Policy for Attracting and Retaining International Talents (2014) has been developed. The findings of the report on models for attracting talent in Europe through the public sector are relevant to small and medium-sized urban areas.
In the case study, there are no respondents representing a migrant group that is not a diaspora, and this is a specific feature of a small and medium-sized urban area.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The empirical part has been developed through a study in Valmiera City (Latvia, Europe) with a population of 23 thousand inhabitants, aiming at increasing this number by 5000 and further boosting growth  in the city's competitiveness in human resources. A survey of 25 experts was conducted initially to highlight the trends. In order to obtain the data, 29 interviews were conducted with the city's entrants, outgoing residents and the steady, already stable and welcoming residents of Valmiera. Also, an online survey of 81 university graduates was carried out to find out the major reasons for staying in or leaving the regional city of Valmiera.
The research city of Valmiera was compared to Ventspils, Rezekne and Jelgava in Latvia, as well as to two foreign cities in Northern Europe – the nearest neighbouring city of Tartu in Estonia and Joensuu in Finland. The cities were compared by socio-economic factors - population dynamics, economic development, access to culture, and political stability, which are important factors in attracting talent.
The research methodology is based on the theoretical findings of Ingram, Shapiro, Albouy on the impact of four dimensions in talent attraction: economic development, market competition, labour market conditions and national culture, as well as the impact of lifestyle on choice. According to these dimensions, interview questions have been developed, and, by grouping the content, the analysis of the responses has been carried out.
The previous study by the authors has been used as a secondary source. The study focused on the future skills needed for the labour force in the Vidzeme region in Latvia, and the compliance of the proposed education with the labour market requirements in the Vidzeme region of Latvia.
RESULTS
The results of the research show that a job offer providing the applicant the  possibility to demonstrate his capacity and pursue his or her objectives is of primary importance for the recruitment of skilled labour in a winning city in a rural area, followed by the appropriate housing and transport, and social infrastructure. As a secondary factor, lifestyle, which includes diversity, cultural environment, architecture and the presence of the natural environment, is important. The importance of the factors of attraction varies according to the stage of human life.
DISCUSSION
The results of the interviews show that small and medium-sized urban areas have the potential to attract talented human resources, taking into account the key attraction factors described in the theory.
The empirical analysis in the example of Valmiera reveals that a significant attraction factor in small and medium urban areas is social ties with the area. The labour market demand is also an important factor.
The results of the research revealed that in certain occupational groups in Valmiera (such as managers, social sciences in general), the labour market demand is lower than the supply.
In further research it would be necessary to carry out focus group interviews with migrants in small and medium-sized urban areas in order to find out the important factors in taking a decision on their choice of residence.
CONCLUSION
Small and medium-sized urban areas need to develop diversity and openness. This initiative needs to be strengthened both in the operation and investments of a municipality and in communication with the public. Virtually all of the examples discussed refer to migration as inevitable in attracting talent – highly skilled people.


The first and still the only book of its kind, this volume offers a concise introduction to human genetic linkage analysis and gene mapping. Jurg Ott provides mathematical and statistical foundations of linkage analysis for researchers and practitioners, as well as practical comments on available computer programs and websites. Each chapter ends with a set of problems, whose solutions are found at the end of the book. New to this edition is a chapter on complex traits, such as diabetes, some cancers, and psychiatric conditions. Also new is an overview of nonparametric approaches to linkage and association analysis. A chapter on two-locus inheritance introduces the reader to many of the intricate aspects of complex traits. Although the book's primary audience is in the field of genetics, physicians and others without sophisticated training in genetics can understand and apply the principles and techniques discussed.


This article analyzes the horizontal productivity spillover effects of foreign ownership on Turkish firms that are among the top 500 industrial enterprises in Turkey. Using a panel of 215 firms over the period 2004-2008, we find that domestic firms benefit from productivity spillovers from foreign-owned firms. However, absorptive capacity does not matter for productivity spillover benefits.


This paper explores the use of Gallup World Poll Data to assess the impact of the Great Recession on various dimensions of well-being in 41 OECD and/or EU countries from 2007 up until 2013. It should be read as a complementary background paper to the UNICEF Report Card which explores trends in child well-being in EU/OECD countries since 2007/8. Overall the findings provide clear indications that the crisis has had an impact across a number of self-reported dimensions of well-being. Indeed, a strong correlation between the intensity of the recession and the worsening of people's perceptions about their own life is recorded since 2007. Data also indicate that the impact has still not peaked in a number of countries where indicators were still deteriorating as late as 2013. A "League Table" is also presented where countries are ranked in terms of change between 2007 and 2013 for four selected Gallup World Poll indicators related material well-being, perceptions of how society treats its children, health and subjective well-being.


The topic of this book is the notion of 'focus' and its linguistic characterization. The main thesis is that focus has a uniform grammatical identification only as a syntactic element with – in English at least – a certain systematic phonological interpretation and – presumably universally – a range of semantic interpretations. In broad respects, the framework within this investigation is conducted is that of Chomsky & Lasnik (1977) and the subsequent Government and Binding framework. After considering defining the location of prominence in a focused phrase in terms of constituent structure, the author argues that an argument structure approach to the focus phrase/prominence relation is more promising. This is then exemplified in analyses of cleft focus and constructional focus.


Optimizing multiple competing black-box objectives is a challenging problem in many fields, including science, engineering, and machine learning. Multi-objective Bayesian optimization (MOBO) is a sample-efficient approach for identifying the optimal trade-offs between the objectives. However, many existing methods perform poorly when the observations are corrupted by noise. We propose a novel acquisition function, NEHVI, that overcomes this important practical limitation by applying a Bayesian treatment to the popular expected hypervolume improvement (EHVI) criterion and integrating over this uncertainty in the Pareto frontier. We argue that, even in the noiseless setting, generating multiple candidates in parallel is an incarnation of EHVI with uncertainty in the Pareto frontier and therefore can be addressed using the same underlying technique. Through this lens, we derive a natural parallel variant, $q$NEHVI, that reduces computational complexity of parallel EHVI from exponential to polynomial with respect to the batch size. $q$NEHVI is one-step Bayes-optimal for hypervolume maximization in both noisy and noiseless environments, and we show that it can be optimized effectively with gradient-based methods via sample average approximation. Empirically, we demonstrate not only that $q$NEHVI is substantially more robust to observation noise than existing MOBO approaches, but also that it achieves state-of-the-art optimization performance and competitive wall-times in large-batch environments.


Prostate diseases are a serious threat to the health and quality of life of ageing males. Prostate cells are hormone-dependent and as such are stimulated by androgens, for example testosterone (T) and dlhydrotestcsterone (DHT). Of the androgens, it is DHT that is the more potent. DHT is formed through the enzyme catalysed reduction of T by 5a-reductase (5AR) and requires NADPH as a co-factor. This enzyme is one of the major targets in androgen therapy for the treatment of prostate diseases since a reduction in DHT levels would result in a subsequent decrease in the stimulation of hormone-dependent prostate cells without affecting the amount of T produced by the prostate or the testes. As such, 5AR inhibitors would be expected to possess less side-effects, such as loss of libido. A number of compounds (steroidal and non-steroidal) have previously been reported as potent inhibitors of 5AR but only a few have entered clinical trials and even fewer have entered the clinic. As such, the development 'of a potent non-steroidal inhibitor is crucial in the fight against hormone-dependent prostatic diseases.
In the current study, we have reviewed the strategy for the treatment of hormone¬dependent prostate diseases and, in particular, we have considered the reported inhibitors of two of the most important enzymes, namely 17a-hydroxylase/17,20- lyase (P45017a) and 5AR. Within the research group, we have undertaken extensive studies into the molecular modelling of compounds against 5AR and therefore gained an insight into the active site of this enzyme. From our studies we determined the mimicking of the steroid A-ring was an important feature of a potential inhibitor. Furthermore, we determined that the coumarin backbone would undergo a reduction reaction (i.e. mimic the natural substrate) and therefore possess inhibitory activity. We have therefore synthesised a number of coumarin based compounds. In particular, we have synthesised a wide range of esters of the hydroxylated coumarin backbone. That is, using 4- and 7- hydroxycoumarin as starting material we reacted the. hydroxy compound with a range of acyl chlorides (from acetyl to decanoyl). In general, the reactions using 7-hydroxycoumarin proceeded in good yield and without major problems, although the larger alkyl chain containing acyl chlorides proved to be slow in reacting with 7 -hydroxycoumarin, and the time of reaction needed to be extended. The esters resulting from the use of 4-hydroxycoumarin proved to be relatively unstable and were observed to undergo hydrolysis with standing, however, it was possible to undertake spectral analysis (except elemental analysis) prior to degradation of the esters. The range of potential inhibitors were purified and fully characterised. A second aim of the study was to evaluate the synthesised compounds against 5AR, however, due to a lack of time, this was not achieved.


Abstract This article examines the civil society campaign to stop the construction of a military base in South Korea as a case study in both the promises and limits of global advocacy networks in the digital media age. First the article traces the historical and political contexts leading up to the 2007 decision by the South Korean government to locate the naval base on the coastline of Jeju Island, despite strong objections from residents of the targeted village. Then the article illustrates how local activists fighting the base gained support in the global peace, justice, and environmental movements, even if the larger protest campaign and the international media coverage it generated did not stop the project. The case illustrates how the notion of the 'global public sphere' remains highly contingent upon the readiness of local and global political actors to anticipate and overcome the persuasive and coercive powers of national governments as well as national political cultures that can enable authoritarian tactics to stifle public debate. It also illustrates how activists in the global justice movement often run into formidable obstacles when confronted by centralized political and economic power in specific national settings.


The main goal of this study was to assess the progress of vertebral stability after lumbar interbody fusion related to microcomputed tomography (micro CT), biomechanical analysis, and histological assessment towards spine fusion. Twelve male pigs were used; each underwent L2-3 discectomy and implantation of an iliac crest bone graft in two groups; six spines were harvested eight weeks (A1) and six spines 16 weeks (A2) after surgery (7 native spines for biomechanical analysis). The CT was performed by GE phoenix datos|x 2.0 with a sample drift correction. The samples were divided according to fusion quality. Biomechanical evaluation was carried out on the MTS Mini Bionix testing system. In the nondestructive mode, three cycles of pure bending moments were applied (5 Nm load limit) at a rate of 20 °/min in flexion (+40 °) and extension (-40 °). Two representative histological sections from four samples were obtained (A1, n = 2; A2, n = 2); areas of mature bone were quantified. In micro CT, better results were achieved in group A2 (not significant). Eight weeks after the operation, flexural stiffness decreased to 48% of its initial value for native cadavers (P < 0.05); after 16 weeks it was comparable to native cadavers, demonstrating the suitability of the implanted graft (P < 0.05). The newly formed bone tissue occupied an average area of 94.205 mm2 (A1) and 26.240 mm2 (A2). It was confirmed that micro CT, biomechanical analysis, and histological assessment are technically feasible and suitable for the evaluation of results of other methods of large bone defect treatment.


The kea, a crow-sized parrot that lives in the rugged mountains of New Zealand, is considered by some a playful comic and by others a vicious killer. Its true character is a mystery that biologists have debated for more than a century. Judy Diamond and Alan Bond have written a comprehensive account of the kea's contradictory nature, and their conclusions cast new light on the origins of behavioral flexibility and the problem of species survival in human environments everywhere. New Zealand's geological remoteness has made the country home to a bizarre assemblage of plants and animals that are wholly unlike anything found elsewhere. Keas are native only to the South Island, breeding high in the rigorous, unforgiving environment of the Southern Alps. Bold, curious, and ingeniously destructive, keas have a complex social system that includes extensive play behavior. Like coyotes, crows, and humans, keas are 'open-program' animals with an unusual ability to learn and to create new solutions to whatever problems they encounter. Diamond and Bond present the kea's story from historical and contemporary perspectives and include observations from their years of field work. A comparison of the kea's behavior and ecology with that of its closest relative, the kaka of New Zealand's lowland rain forests, yields insights into the origins of the kea's extraordinary adaptability. The authors conclude that the kea's high level of sociality is a key factor in the flexible lifestyle that probably evolved in response to the alpine habitat's unreliable food resources and has allowed the bird to survive the extermination of much of its original ecosystem. But adaptability has its limits, as the authors make clear when describing present-day interactions between keas and humans and the attempts to achieve a peaceful coexistence.


Ice cream could be make from cowpea milk. The making of ice cream was need stabilizer, emulsifier and foaming agent. The most widely used of stabilizer was carrageenan, and the emulsifier and foaming agent was whipping cream. The purpose of this study was to determine the appropriate amount of carrageenan and whipping cream to produce the good properties and high preference of cowpea milk ice cream. The research was conducted by Randomaized Complitely Block Desain with 2 factors. The first factor was the amount of carrageenan (0,1%, 0,3%, 0,5%). The second factor was the amount of whipping cream (10%, 20%, 30%) from the volume of milk, and repeatly 3 times. The observation were the overrun, brightness (colour reader), texture (pnetrometer), melting rate and sensory properties (the preference of color, texture, flavor and overall). The good properties of ice cream produced by adding of 0,5% carrageenan and whipping cream 30%. The ice cream had overrun 51,39%; texture 42,60 mm/10s; melting rate 13,47%/15 minute; brightness 89,28; the preference score of color, texture, flavor, and overall respectively 3,84; 3,92; 3,88 and 3,96 (rather like to like). Keywords : ice cream, cowpea milk, carrageenan, whipping cream


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of a history of ocular trauma and its association to age, sex, and biometric components. Materials and Methods: Residents of Shahroud, Iran aged 40-64 years, were sampled through a cross-sectional study using multistage cluster sampling. Three hundred clusters were randomly selected, and 20 individuals were systematically selected from each cluster. The subjects underwent optometric and ophthalmic examinations, and ocular imaging. A history of ocular trauma was determined through personal interviews. Results: The prevalence of a history of trauma and blunt trauma, sharp trauma, and chemical burns were 8.57%, 3.91%, 3.82%, and 1.93%, respectively. After adjusting for age, the rate of all types of trauma was significantly higher for males. Only the prevalence of chemical burns significantly decreased with aging. A history of hospitalization was stated by 1.64% of the subjects. The axial length was significantly longer in cases with a history of trauma. The corneal curvature was significantly larger in cases with a history of sharp trauma and chemical burns. The prevalence of corneal opacities was significantly higher among cases with a history of the blunt trauma odds ratio (OR = 2.33) and sharp trauma (OR = 4.46). Based on corrected visual acuity, the odds of blindness was 3.32 times higher in those with a history of ocular trauma (P < 0.001). Conclusion: A considerable proportion of the 40-64-year-old population reported a history of ocular trauma. This observation has important health implications. Blindness, corneal opacities, and posterior subcapsular cataract were observed more frequently among these cases, and they demonstrated differences in some ocular biometric components.


The Cabral-Dahab Science Park Management Paradigm has posed an important challenge to researchers, managers and policy-makers. Eight papers, which validate and apply the paradigm, are presented in this special issue. The papers cover a sufficient variety of countries to reinforce the importance of the paradigm from a global perspective: Brazil, Sweden, USA, China and Kuwait. While traditional organisational forms and systems encounter difficulties in the global economy, the science park, when properly managed, offers a potentially successful university-industry interface. The ten points of the Cabral-Dahab Paradigm provide guidance for success. The papers also provide a new definition of innovation and, as a consequence, of science parks.


Abstract Objective: To investigate the participation outcomes of individuals with severe acquired brain injury (ABI) who were provided with up to 12 months of intervention based on the Community Approach to Participation (CAP). Method: A case series study design was undertaken with a total of 85 participants from two private practices specialising in community-based, CAP rehabilitation for people with severe ABI. Inclusion criteria were the person had sustained an acquired brain injury, was aged over 18 years and had received up to 12 consecutive months of CAP input from one of the two practices within a three-year period between January 2004 and January 2007. Twenty-six of the 85 participants were an average of 343 days post injury (Early group) and 59 of the participants were an average of 10.2 years post injury (Late group). They were living in a range of community environments and residential facilities. Initial participants were identified for the study in January 2005. Data were gathered using the Functional Independence Measure (FIM™), Community Integration Questionnaire (CIQ), and Role Checklist (RC Part 1) at two time points: prior to intervention (baseline), and after a 12-month period or at discharge (TI). Within the intervention period, all participants received a customised community occupational therapy (OT) rehabilitation program based on the key principles of the CAP. Intervention focused on participation goals of the individual, and development of the associated skills that underpinned valued role performance. Results: Participants each received an average of 51.01 hours of CAP OT during the 12-month period of intervention. Considerable improvement was seen in functional independence, community integration, and role participation after intervention in both the Early and Late groups. A statistically significant increase in FIM™ and CIQ total scores was found for all participants from Baseline to T1. The number of roles in which participants engaged increased on average by almost one role per participant following intervention, from a mean of 3.06 to 3.99. Increased participation in volunteer, home maintainer, participant in organisations and hobbyist roles were most common. Conclusion: Increased functional independence, community integration, and participation in both the Early and Late groups over a 12 month period demonstrates the potential for improved participation outcomes for people with complex needs following ABI, even many years post injury.


Secondary metabolites produced by microorganisms were isolated and identified. These
metabolites are not essential for the growth of the producing culture, are usually synthesized as
closely related members of a chemical family and include compounds that act as hormones,
antibiotics and toxins. In the first chapter, actinomycetes were isolated from local marine
sediments and cultivated in order to determine bioactive metabolites of interest. Broad spectrum
antibiotic compounds produced as constitutional isomers were isolated from a strain identified as
Streptomyces malaysiensis. Additionally, a family of compounds which selectively inhibited
Mycobacterium smegamatis, a surrogate test organism used in the discovery of tuberculosis
treatments, were isolated from a strain identified as Streptomyces fimicarius. In the second
chapter, microcystin-LR, a potent liver toxin, and its derivatives were isolated from laboratory
cultures of Microcystis aeruginosa. During the isolation of these toxic metabolites, additional
unrelated peptides belonging to the microginin class of cyanopeptide metabolites were isolated
and identified. Structural determination of these five cyanopeptides revealed unique structural
features including the amino acid methionine, various sites of methylation on the modified
octanoic acid chain and the first tripeptide microginin.


Inverse modeling using satellite observations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) columns has been extensively used to estimate nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions in China. Recently, the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment‐2 (GOME‐2) and Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) provide independent global NO2 column measurements on a nearly daily basis at around 9:30 and 13:30 local time across the equator, respectively. Anthropogenic NOx emission estimates by applying previously developed monthly inversion (MI) or daily inversion (DI) methods to these two sets of measurements show substantial differences. We improve the DI method by conducting model simulation, satellite retrieval, and inverse modeling sequentially on a daily basis. After each inversion, we update anthropogenic NOx emissions in the model simulation with the newly obtained a posteriori results. Consequently, the inversion‐optimized emissions are used to compute the a priori NO2 profiles for satellite retrievals. As such, the a priori profiles used in satellite retrievals are now coupled to inverse modeling results. The improved procedure was applied to GOME‐2 and OMI NO2 measurements in 2011. The new daily retrieval‐inversion (DRI) method estimates an average NOx emission of 6.9 Tg N/yr over China, and the difference between using GOME‐2 and OMI measurements is 0.4 Tg N/yr, which is significantly smaller than the difference of 1.3 Tg N/yr using the previous DI method. Using the more consistent DRI inversion results, we find that anthropogenic NOx emissions tend to be higher in winter and summer than spring (and possibly fall) and the weekday‐to‐weekend emission ratio tends to increase with NOx emission in China.


The paper estimates a medium-term forecasting model used to generate short-term series of the quarterly GDP. The GDP used was computed using the expenditures decomposition method in accordance with the national accounts, and the data were generated by applying the principal components analysis and econometric techniques. The results of the model for the last two quarters of 2002 were compared with the data published by the Romanian National Institute of Statistics. (* This paper was prepared for the international workshop within the program Improvement of Economic Policy through Think Tank Partnership", held in Bucharest, Romania, on October 27-29, 2003, and is part of a grant by the U.S. Agency for International Development for the project "Mechanisms of Long-term Growth in the Economies in Transition (Cases of Russia and Romania)". The research partners of this project were Global Insight (former DRI-WEFA – USA), the Institute of Economic Forecasting (Romania) and the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-term Economic Forecasting (Russian Federation). This publication was made possible through support provided by the Moscow Office of the U.S. Agency for International Development, under the terms of Contract No. PCE-I-00-00-00014-00. The options, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Agency for International Development). Key Words: principal components analysis, macroeconomic forecasting, GDP decomposition, national accounts


Counterfactual regret minimization (CFR) is a fundamental and effective technique for solving Imperfect Information Games (IIG). However, the original CFR algorithm only works for discrete states and action spaces, and the resulting strategy is maintained as a tabular representation. Such tabular representation limits the method from being directly applied to large games. In this paper, we propose a double neural representation for the IIGs, where one neural network represents the cumulative regret, and the other represents the average strategy. Such neural representations allow us to avoid manual game abstraction and carry out end-to-end optimization. To make the learning efficient, we also developed several novel techniques including a robust sampling method and a mini-batch Monte Carlo Counterfactual Regret Minimization (MCCFR) method, which may be of independent interests. Empirically, on games tractable to tabular approaches, neural strategies trained with our algorithm converge comparably to their tabular counterparts, and significantly outperform those based on deep reinforcement learning. On extremely large games with billions of decision nodes, our approach achieved strong performance while using hundreds of times less memory than the tabular CFR. On head-to-head matches of hands-up no-limit texas hold'em, our neural agent beat the strong agent ABS-CFR 1 by 9.8±4.1 chips per game. It's a successful application of neural CFR in large games.


Nitrogen-containing electrocatalysts, such as metal–nitrogen–carbon (M–N–C) composites and nitrogen-doped carbons, are known to exhibit high activities for an oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Moreover, even if the mechanism by which nitrogen improves the activities is not completely understood, a strong electronic interaction between nitrogen and active sites has been found in these composites. Herein, we demonstrate a case in which nitrogen improves the electroactivity, but in the absence of a strong interaction with other components. The overpotentials of the ORR and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) on perovskite oxide catalysts were significantly reduced simply by mixing the catalyst particles with polypyrrole/carbon composites (pPy/C). Any strong interactions between pPy (a nitrogen-containing compound) and active sites of the catalysts are not confirmed. A scenario based on the sequential task allocation between pPy and oxide catalysts for the ORR was proposed: (1) molecular oxygen is incorporated into pPy as a form of superoxide (pPy+O2−), (2) the superoxide is transferred to the active sites of perovskite catalysts, and (3) the superoxide is completely reduced along the 4e ORR process.


Let $\mu$ be a Radon measure on $\mathbb{R}^d$. We define and study conical energies $\mathcal{E}_{\mu,p}(x,V,\alpha)$, which quantify the portion of $\mu$ lying in the cone with vertex $x\in\mathbb{R}^d$, direction $V\in G(d,d-n)$, and aperture $\alpha\in (0,1)$. We use these energies to characterize rectifiability and the big pieces of Lipschitz graphs property. Furthermore, if we assume that $\mu$ has polynomial growth, we give a sufficient condition for $L^2(\mu)$-boundedness of singular integral operators with smooth odd kernels of convolution type.


Since the establishment of the WTO TRIPS Agreement, government officials, international intergovernmental organizations, civil society groups, judges, academic commentators and the media have focused considerable attention on the interplay of intellectual property and human rights. In the mid-2000s, scholars have begun advocating the development of a human rights framework for intellectual property law and policy. As I pointed out in earlier works, such a framework will not only be socially beneficial, but will also enable countries to develop a balanced intellectual property system that takes international human rights obligations into consideration. While the development of a human rights framework for intellectual property is important, skeptics have warned about the danger of an "arranged marriage" between intellectual property and human rights. Although their concerns are understandable, it may be too late to deny the protection of human rights-based interests in intellectual creations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and many other international and regional instruments have all explicitly recognized the right to the protection of interests in intellectual creations as a human right. This chapter does not seek to reopen this debate, which has been widely explored and documented elsewhere. Rather, it examines three new challenges that may confront the development of this framework, especially from a pro-development perspective: (1) the "human rights ratchet" of intellectual property protection; (2) the undesirable capture of the human rights forum by intellectual property rights holders; and (3) the framework's potential bias against non-Western cultures and traditional communities.


Body dissatisfaction, unhealthy weight loss practices, and disordered eating behaviors occur frequently among women and can adversely influence physiological, psychological, and behavioral functioning (Hill, 2002). Although only a small percentage of women (1%-3%) have diagnosable eating disorders, many are at risk to develop an eating disorder during the college years. Mintz, O'Halloran, Mulholland, and Schneider-Paxton (1997) found that of 1,400 predominantly 1st-year female students, 4% had an eating disorder and 19% were at risk to develop an eating disorder. Young women who reported having dieted have been found to be 18 times more likely to develop an eating disorder than nondieters (Patton, Selzer, Coffey, Carlin, & Wolfe, 1999), and, in a study of first-year female college students, 15% of those deemed to be at risk to develop an eating disorder in the fall semester moved into the "probable bulimia" category by the spring semester (Drewnowski, Kurth, & Krahn, 1994). Data gathered over the last 2 decades have demonstrated that eating disorders are diagnosed in all ethnic and socioeconomic groups and that some ethnic minority groups may be especially vulnerable (A. E. Becker, Franko, Speck, & Herzog, 2003; Franko, Becker, Thomas, & Herzog, 2007; Marques et al., 2011; Talleyrand, 2010). Body dissatisfaction is a particularly potent risk factor for the development of eating disorders (Stice & Shaw, 2002) and is commonly experienced among minority women (Grabe & Hyde, 2006). On the basis of recent evidence, one group at particular risk to develop eating disorders is Latina women (Gordon, Castro, Sitnikov, & Holm-Denoma, 2010). For example, Alegria et al. (2007) analyzed data from the National Latino and Asian American Study (comprised of Latinas/Latinos ages 18 and older living in the United States) and found an estimated lifetime prevalence of 0.08% for anorexia nervosa, 1.61% for bulimia nervosa, 1.92% for binge eating disorder, and 5.61% for any binge eating. Recent analyses found the rates for bulimia to be significantly higher in Latina women than in Caucasian women (Marques et al., 2011). Data from strictly college student samples provide a similar picture. In a study of over 9,000 college students, A. E. Becker et al. (2003) found that Native American and Latina women reported the most severe eating disturbances but were the least likely to be referred for evaluation. In a recent study, Reyes-Rodriguez et al. (2010) documented that over 3% of 1st-year college students in Puerto Rico reported symptoms associated with bulimia, and nearly 10% exceeded the clinical cutoff point indicating the likelihood of an eating disorder diagnosis. Evidence indicates that a significant proportion of Latina women are at risk for body dissatisfaction, disordered eating behaviors, and eating disorders. Although a number of eating disorder prevention programs have been evaluated (Stice, Shaw, & Nathan, 2007), a surprisingly small number have been designed specifically for college students (C. B. Becker, Ciao, & Smith, 2008; Franko et al., 2005; Stice & Ragan, 2002; Taylor et al., 2006), and even fewer have focused on minority samples (Franko & George, 2008; Rodriguez, Marchand, Ng, & Stice, 2008). Given the high rates of disordered eating in Latina women, the first aim of the current study was to use an eating disorder prevention program to decrease body dissatisfaction in Latina college women. Although eating disorders are a concern for Latina women, perhaps an even greater health threat comes from obesity, which is common in this group. Epidemiologic data have indicated that obesity rates for non-Hispanic Black and Mexican American women are higher than for their non-Hispanic White counterparts (Flegal, Margaret, Ogden, & Curtin, 2010). A study of over 4,000 undergraduate students found that 30 of the 125 Hispanic students (24%) reported a body mass index (BMI) over 25, which falls in the overweight or obese range (Desai, Miller, Staples, & Bravender, 2008). …


I compute from first principles the local heating rate q (the amount of electromagnetic energy converted to heat per unit time per unit volume) for electromagnetic waves propagating in magnetically and electrically polarizable media. I find that, in magnetic media, this rate has two separate contributions, q(V) and q(S), the first coming from the volume of the medium and the second from its surface. I argue that the second law of thermodynamics requires that the volume contribution be positive and that this requirement, in turn, prohibits negative refraction. This result holds for active or passive media and in the presence of anisotropy and spatial dispersion.


High-power whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) emitted from microcavity lasers have attracted attention for many applications, such as optical signal processing, spectroscopy, optical sensors, and large-bandwidth optical communications. In this paper, we present a simple approach for controlling the output WGMs of erbium-doped silica microsphere lasers. With the presented scheme, accurate adjustment of the coupling gap between the collection fiber taper and the spherical surface allows us to select different single modes of the microsphere laser or different multimode configurations (also functions of the waist diameter of taper and the Er-doped concentration). The nonlinear frequency shift of the microsphere cavity as a function of intracavity power has also been studied. The high intensity and high side mode suppression ratio of the obtained single WGM are suitable for spectroscopy, optical sensors, and communications.


This story may sound familiar. Having spent my entire career on the academic bench, I decided it was time for a change. I still want to use my brain, I still want to be a part of the biomedical sciences, but I am ready to put the pipette down for good. After some self-reflection, I realised that writing grants and manuscripts is the most enjoyable part of my job. This is in contrast to some of my colleagues, who view writing as a chore which takes time away from research. Fortunately for me, I discovered that medical writing is a viable career option for people who are both passionate about science and about communicating the message it contains. Anyone contemplating a career change will probably hear two pieces of advice: learn as much as possible about the new career, and meet the people who actually do it. Once I decided to pursue medical writing as my next career step, I engaged in self-study. I learned about what medical writers do on a daily basis, where they come from, what kinds of backgrounds they have, and who employs them. I read numerous FDA and ICH documents. I studied textbooks on drug development and clinical trials. During this time, the internet was a valuable resource, in particular, the EMWA and the AMWA websites. As my enthusiasm for medical writing grew, the next logical step was to not only meet the people who are medical writers, but to learn from them. The EMWA conferences are ideal in this regard. In addition to providing extensive networking opportunities, it is also possible to participate in professional workshops taught by experienced medical writers. I was eager to take this next step in my career development, so it was not difficult to convince myself to go to Barcelona and leave behind the cold and dark Finnish autumn for a few days! I knew almost immediately after collecting my name tag that this conference would fulfil my goals of both learning and networking. The lunch and coffee breaks, talking to workshop leaders, and just chatting with classmates provided me with numerous new contacts. I had read before attending the conference that medical writers are nice people, now I know first-hand that this is true! I was truly amazed at the level of instruction at the workshops, regardless of the subject matter. In particular, my statistics instructor was able to so clearly convey the material that I left the course feeling ready to apply the concepts discussed right away. The workshops which covered documents such as investigator's brochures and clinical study protocols provided me with a solid foundation to build upon, should I encounter these documents in the future. While my transition from the laboratory into medical writing is a story which is still unfolding, I now feel confident in moving forward with the knowledge, ideas, and contacts I gained from attending the EMWA conference in Barcelona. I look forward to seeing you all next time.


Positionality in translation is often framed in terms of spatial metaphors, using such concepts as the "periphery," the "in between," and the "borderlands," among many others. Given that the Latin root for the word "translation," 'translatio,' means "to carry across," this tendency to think of the translator's position in the concrete terms of travel through physical space is not surprising. However, because the movement of information and ideas no longer requires material transportation, it may no longer be theoretically useful to approach positionality in such concrete terms, and thus a reassessment and re-contextualization of these spatial metaphors is needed. Moreover, the sociological turn's growing awareness of the translator's contextual embeddedness reinforces the need to re-conceptualize positionality, shifting away from notions of physical space and toward an ideological construct. Indeed, upon closer examination, these spatial metaphors often prove problematic in several ways, not the least of which being the common undertone of peripherality that readily associates translation with marginality and subjugation. This article analyzes some of the spatial metaphors commonly used in translation scholarship in order to interrogate what they can contribute to a reformulation of the translator's position in ideological rather than spatial terms. Turning to systems theory for a more nuanced and applicable take on peripherality and centrality, translation is removed from the subordinate position associated with physical notions of the periphery and shifted instead to an ideological position as an agent of inter- and intrasystemic transfer. The translator navigates the systemic periphery, a dynamic, fluid space of intersystemic overlap and interaction, but does not remain there. The translator's position is therefore both a shifting and powerful one, as translating the peripheral experience of confronting otherness into the centre results in the need to reformulate the Self, for the individual as well as potentially on a larger, systemic level.


The death of Walker Percy deprives us of one of the genuinely original voices in that galaxy of literary talent that we know as modern Southern literature. Walker began his career as a novelist comparatively late he was in his mid-40s when The Moviegoer appeared--but he made up for lost time, and the body of his published work--novels, essays--constitutes a distinguished performance indeed. My own acquaintance with Walker's writing goes back long before I knew him as a person (and I was not a close friend of his). In the late 1950s I came upon an article in the Sewanee Review entitled "Metaphor as Mistake" by an author named Walker Percy. It was an elucidation of the way in which the literary use of language can offer knowledge that is neither logical nor quantifiable--can neither be abstracted nor measured. It seemed to me so brilliant, in the way that it identified and explained the quality of knowledge of our experience that only art could provide, that I ordered extra copies and gave them to some behavioral psychologists I knew--which made about as much sense as offering a recording of The Magic Flute to the late Elvis Presley. When The Moviegoer was published in 1961, and by fortunate happenstance was called to the attention of the committee appointed to judge the National Book Awards competition, it became evident that a new and important variety of Southern writer had arrived on the scene. And if there were any lingering skepticism about it, the publication of The Last Gentleman in 1967 erased it. For here was a novelist who put behind him both the high tragic mode and the small-town rural comedy and wrote about educated, sophisticated moderns living in urban America and no longer hung up over the Supreme Court decision, the fall of Richmond, dynastic decline, or the inhospitality of the culturally retarded community to the sensitive artist-manque. The South he wrote about was the South that most of us inhabited. The malaise he saw it as suffering from was not a matter of the passing of the heroic virtues of an Age of Gold and the advent of an Iron Time; it was that of a too-smug, too-selfish material prosperity and a loss of spiritual direction. Walker was a Roman Catholic, and his novels were by design religious fiction, but unlike most of the Southern religious fiction that I have read (and Flannery O'Connor's, for all its accomplishments, is no exception in this respect), Walker's is not Jansenist; it is not written from a position of theological privilege located far above the struggle, judging the poor deluded sinners and consigning them to the fire. Unlike all too much of the religious fiction that I have encountered, when reading Walker's novels I don't ever get the feeling that the author is confusing his typewriter with the flaming sword wielded by the Avenging Angel, because this particular author includes himself among the sinful. His Catholicism is not a charter for smugness or arrogance. Nor is it an authorization of the self-important gesture, the self-congratulatory stance of the public martyr. In a later novel, The Second Coming, Walker's protagonist, Will Barrett, resolves to retreat deep into a cave and there await the ultimate confirmation of the existence of God and the end of the world; unfortunately, he no sooner takes up his desperate vigil that he comes down with a toothache. So much for the notion that God has an obligation to justify Himself to Will Barrett or Walker Percy. When I look at Walker's fiction as a whole, it seems to divide itself into two groups. The first two novels are richly textured, with much attention given to the documentation of place; the mode is realistic. …


Hawai'i and Fiji share strikingly similar histories of colonialism and plantation sugar production but display different legacies of ethnic conflict today. Pacific Island chiefdoms colonized by the United States and England respectively, the islands' indigenous populations were forced to share resources with a small colonizing elite and growing numbers of workers imported from South Asia. Both societies had long traditions of chiefly power exercised through reciprocity and descent; both were integrated into the plantation complex in the nineteenth century. Colonial authorities, however, constructed vastly different legal relationships with the indigenous peoples in each setting, and policy toward imported workers also differed in arrangements around land tenure and political participation. The legacies of these colonial arrangements are at the roots of the current crisis in both places. Focusing on the intimate relationship between law, culture, and the production of social knowledge, these essays re-center law in social theory. The authors analyze the transition from chiefdom to capitalism, colonizers' racial and governmental ideologies, land and labor policies, and contemporary efforts to recuperate indigenous culture and assert or maintain indigenous sovereignty. Speaking to Fijian and Hawaiian circumstances, this volume illuminates the role of legal and archival practice in constructing ethnic and political identities and producing colonial and anthropological knowledge.


Soil respiration (SR) is a major component of ecosystems' carbon cycles and represents the second largest CO 2 flux in the terrestrial biosphere. Soil temperature is considered to be the primary abiotic control on SR, whereas soil moisture is the secondary control factor. However, soil moisture can become the dominant control on SR in very wet or dry conditions. Determining the trigger that makes soil moisture as the primary control factor of SR will provide a deeper understanding on how SR changes under the projected future increase in droughts. Specific objectives of this study were (1) to investigate the seasonal variations and the relationship between SR and both soil temperature and moisture in a Mediterranean riparian forest along a groundwater level gradient; (2) to determine soil moisture thresholds at which SR is controlled by soil moisture rather than by temperature; (3) to compare SR responses under different tree species present in a Mediterranean riparian forest ( Alnus glutinosa, Populus nigra and Fraxinus excelsior ). Results showed that the heterotrophic soil respiration rate, groundwater level and 30 cm integral soil moisture (SM 30 ) decreased significantly from the riverside moving uphill and showed a pronounced seasonality. SR rates showed significant differences between tree species, with higher SR for P. nigra and lower SR for A. glutinosa . The lower threshold of soil moisture was 20 and 17% for heterotrophic and total SR, respectively. Daily mean SR rate was positively correlated with soil temperature when soil moisture exceeded the threshold, with Q 10 values ranging from 1.19 to 2.14; nevertheless, SR became decoupled from soil temperature when soil moisture dropped below these thresholds.


The Pliocene Epoch (5.33–2.59 Ma) is characterised by climatic conditions similar to those predicted for 2100, with enhanced warming in the (sub-)Arctic. The climate evolution at high latitudes is not well understood due to the sparsity of time-continuous palaeoenvironmental records. This study provides new records of Pliocene vegetation changes in Arctic Norway and the variability of the Norwegian Atlantic Current based on analyses of terrestrial and marine palynomorphs from ODP Site 642 (Norwegian Sea, 67°N) to assess climate variability and identify different scale forcing mechanisms.

The Piacenzian pollen record (3.60–3.14 Ma) shows vegetation changes between cool temperate and boreal forests during warmer-than-present and similar-to-present climate phases, respectively, implying shifts of the northern deciduous/mixed forest limit of 4–8° latitude. During warm phases, warmest month temperatures were 8–14°C higher than present. The development of peatlands during cooler phases may have amplified the cooling through CO2-drawdown and positive vegetation-snow feedbacks. The high regional and hemispheric-wide climate variability highlights the importance of well-dated, high-resolution records for regional to global palaeoenvironmental reconstructions and data-model comparisons.

Long-term Pliocene vegetation changes (5.03–3.14 Ma) reveal a continuous decline of thermophilic elements over successive warm phases, supporting the notion of long-term climate cooling caused by decreasing CO2 concentrations. This cooling is superimposed on shifts between cool temperate and boreal climate phases on multi-millennial timescales. Minima in eccentricity (400-ka), together with low-amplitude obliquity/precession cycles are associated with the development of boreal conditions. At 4.56 Ma, a marked decline in pollen influx suggests atmospheric circulation changes in response to the shoaling of the Central American Seaway, a hypothesis supported by model results. Subsequently, changes in northward heat transport via the North Atlantic Current strongly affected vegetation changes. The Pliocene climate evolution represents the later part of late Neogene cooling instead of a reversal of that trend.

Dinoflagellate cyst assemblage changes (3.320–3.137 Ma) indicate variations in Atlantic and Arctic water influence, corresponding to cool temperate and boreal terrestrial climatic conditions in Arctic Norway, respectively. These records emphasise a high climate variability on glacial-interglacial timescales and linkage of both marine and terrestrial environmental changes.


2013 marked a wonderful year for IEEE TKDE (Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering). While the statistics for November and December 2013 were not available when this editorial was written, TKDE received 822 submissions in the first 10 months of 2013. Among those submissions, 601 received their first round reviews, 20 submissions were invited for minor revision, 150 submissions were invited for major revision, 243 submissions were declined, and 188 were administratively rejected mainly due to topics out of the scope and clear incompetence in technical quality. Final decisions on 458 of those 822 submissions were made, among which 21 were accepted, while there are many other submissions that are still under revision or the second round review. In total, 125 submissions have been accepted in the first 10 months of 2013, including those submitted in 2013 and earlier. The statistics show that TKDE is in a healthy and fruitful state and, at the same time, remains a highly competitive venue for academic publication. I want to thank all authors who submitted to TKDE, and all reviewers and associate editors who helped to run the submission selection process as smoothly as it can be. Your consistent contributions and support make TKDE a fruitful and professional journal. I want to sincerely thank the four associate editors who finished their terms in the second half of 2013: Drs. Elena Ferrari, Wook-Shin Han, Haixun Wang, and Aidong Zhang. Their significant contributions to the quality and reputation of TKDE have benefited many authors, readers, and reviewers. At the same time, I want to officially welcome the six associate editors who joined the editorial board in the second half of 2013: Drs. Eamonn Keogh, Feifei Li, Tao Li, Ee-Peng Lim, Stan Matwin, and Myra Spiliopoulou. Particularly, Eamonn Keogh has been kind enough to rejoin the TKDE editorial board after he retired from his first service several years ago. This group of newly appointed associate editors represents our interest and determination in recruiting the most established and active working experts in the wonderful wide spectrum of knowledge and data engineering. Moreover, they are very committed and dedicated to serving the community and handling the review processes, as testified by their rich experience.


It has frequently been suggested that exceptionally large youth cohorts, the so-called "youth bulges," make countries more susceptible to political violence. Within two prominent theoretical frameworks in the study of civil war, youth bulges are argued to potentially increase both opportunities and motives for political violence. This claim is empirically tested in a time-series cross-national statistical model for internal armed conflict for the period 1950–2000, and for event data for terrorism and rioting for the years 1984–1995. The expectation that youth bulges should increase the risk of political violence receives robust support for all three forms of violence. The results are consistent both with an expectation that youth bulges provide greater opportunities for violence through the abundant supply of youths with low opportunity costs, and with an expectation that stronger motives for violence may arise as youth bulges are more likely to experience institutional crowding, in particular unemployment. Some contextual factors have been suggested to potentially enhance the effect of youth bulges. In an empirical test of these propositions, the study suggests that youth bulges are particularly associated with an increasing risk of internal armed conflict in starkly autocratic regimes, but a similar effect is also found for highly democratic countries. The interaction of youth bulges with economic decline and expansion in higher education appear to increase the risk of terrorism but not of rioting. Recent studies in economic demography find that when fertility is sharply decreasing, causing lower dependency ratios, large youth cohorts entering the labor market may lead to economic boosts. This study finds some empirical evidence complementing these results, indicating that the effect of youth bulges on political violence may decline along with reduced dependency ratios.


The advantages of the Therapeutic Apheresis (TA) with membrane modules, which became available since the mid-1970s, are a complete separation of the blood cells from the plasma. Autoimmune diseases have an immune pathogenesis and can produce auto antibodies (ab) and Circulating Immune Complexes (CIC), which are the origin of inflammation in various organs. The most patients with these diseases have a poor prognosis without treatment. TA in combination with immunosuppressive drugs has brought an increase in the survival rates over the last 40 years. The origin of autoimmune diseases is still generally unknown. The variety of autoimmune diseases ranges from those diseases in which autoimmunization is solely responsible for the condition (e.g., autoimmune hemolytic anemia) to those in which it possibly has a major influence on the course of the disease (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis), and those in which the autoimmunization results are probably only of diagnostic importance. The auto antibodies (auto-abs) activate different immunological processes which are self-destructive for the organs. These auto antibodies can be directed to all blood cells, too. With a case report of a woman, who was treated with Therapeutic Plasma Exchange (TPE) intermittently since her childhood, the authors show the efficacy of TPE in autoimmune diseases. The patients have had immunocomplex nephritis with a severe nephrotic syndrome which was diagnosed by a renal biopsy in the age of 14 months of the child. In the now more than 30 years old woman acute attacks of immunocomplex nephritis with nephrotic syndrome could be well controlled by TPE without excessive increases in the dosage of immunosuppressive drugs and a significant impairment in renal function.


DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION, AND ANALYSIS OF ELECTRICAL SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE FOR CUBESAT TO GROUND COMMUNICATIONS Anthony G. Cappiello Old Dominion University, 2019 Director: Dr. Dimitrie C. Popescu CubeSats facilitate a low barrier to entry in University and Industrial space research. With the rapid, low-cost development of CubeSats, the need for a reliable and robust communications subsystem becomes evident to ensure mission accomplishment. With the advent of Software Defined Radio, Old Dominion University is compelled to upgrade the rigid Legacy Hardware systems in place with inexpensive and flexible Software Defined Radio Solutions. Currently, Old Dominion University is on the cusp of conducting its first space science mission as a member organization of the Virginia Space Grant Consortium Cubesat Constellation and is manifest for launch on April 17, 2019 NASA Wallops Flight Facility. To conduct this mission, the design and construction of a 1U Nano-Satellite and the upgrade to existing ground station architecture was necessary. To relay data in a point-to-point fashion as required by the Science Mission, Old Dominion University has developed custom ground station hardware and software to communicate with its own satellite and the satellites of others. This thesis presents the salient design aspects in implementing a complete electrical system architecture for a 1U spacecraft and the upgrades required in the Ground Station Architecture to support the required demodulation and decoding of a 9600 baud GMSK signal from a model of the deployed satellite necessary to conduct a true science research mission as part of a University Satellite Constellation. The demodulating signal processing steps are designed in GNU Radio Companion and deals with parts of the AX.25 data link layer protocol. Additionally, analysis shall be presented to highlight the design choices made for both the spacecraft and the ground station and will demonstrate various system parameters and characteristics of interest based on the Orbital Simulation results obtained from Systems Toolkit (STK). Finally, results of the architecture design shall be reported on the system by measuring Communications Link Performance benchmarks such as Bit-Error-Rates (BER) and Signal-To-Noise Ratios (SNR).


This paper deals with the cost optimization of a pipe network using the technique of Genetic Algorithm. The software used for this purpose is WaterGEMS. Genetic Algorithm uses various factors for optimizing the cost and these factors depend upon the size of the network. An appropriate value of each factor is fixed by conducting sufficient number of trials and then a solution is obtained which gives the minimum cost.The method is first validated by a bench mark problem of two loop network given in literature. In the present study G.A. is applied for the cost optimization of a village pipe network of Budni block of Sehore district in M.P. (India) by changing the reservoir height. It is seen that the least cost of this pipe is attained at reservoir height of


Evaporation from the surface of a porous medium is a complex process, governed by interplay between (1) coupled liquid and vapor flow in the porous medium, and (2) relative humidity, temperature, and aerodynamic conditions in the surrounding air. In order to avoid the computational expense of explicitly simulating liquid, gas, and heat flow in the porous medium (and the possible further expense of simulating the flow of water vapor in the atmosphere), evaporative potentials can be treated in a simplified manner within a model where liquid is the only active phase. In the case of limited air mixing, evaporation can be approximated as a diffusion process with a linear vapor-concentration gradient. We have incorporated a simplified scheme into the EOS9 module of iTOUGH2 to represent evaporation as isothermal Fickian diffusion. This is notable because the EOS9 module solves a single equation describing saturated and unsaturated flow, i.e., phase transitions and vapor flow are not explicitly simulated. The new approach was applied to three simple problems and the results were compared to those obtained with analytical solutions or the EOS4 module, which explicitly considers advective and diffusive vapor flow. Where vapor flow within the porous medium can be neglected, this new scheme represents significant improvement over the computational expense of explicitly simulating liquid, gas, and heat flow, while providing an adequate reproduction of the overall hydrologic system. The scheme is set up to allow parallel flow of liquid and vapor, so that evaporation from an actively seeping face can be simulated. In addition, dynamic relative humidity boundary conditions can be simulated using standard iTOUGH2 features.


A simple and easy to integrate concept for multi-static beam steering using an existing dielectric ellipsoidal lens antenna is presented in this paper. Good antenna characteristics allow a modification of the antenna for the desired beam steering for industrial applications at 24 GHz. Based on the so-called geometrical-optical lens approach and 3D-electromagnetic field simulations the concept is investigated and the resulting effects of the modification are depicted. The antenna beam can be steered within a range only limited by the antenna dimensions. Using multiple feeding elements in one antenna within the same plane, a multistatic beam steering can be realized. For the multistatic approach, the circular waveguides for the antenna feeding are limiting the achievable steering angles, due to the minimal distance between two waveguides. Measurements of a first prototype confirm the expected behaviour and demonstrate the applicability for industrial purposes. Hence, the concept is suitable for the realization of multiple beam angles using only one antenna for a chosen number of feeding points.


Young, impoverished and ambitious, science student Mr Lewisham is locked in a struggle to further himself through academic achievement. But when his former sweetheart, Ethel Henderson, re-enters his life his strictly regimented existence is thrown into chaos by the resurgence of old passion. Driven by overwhelming desire, he pursues Ethel passionately, only to find that while she returns his love she also hides a dark secret. For she is involved in a plot of trickery that goes against his firmest beliefs, working as an assistant to her stepfather - a cynical charlatan mystic' who earns his living by deluding the weak-willed with sly trickery.


Since the discovery of the X-ray radiation by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen in 1895, the field of medical imaging has developed into a huge scientific discipline. The analysis of patient data acquired by current image modalities, such as computerized tomography (CT), magnetic resonance tomography (MRT), positron emission tomography (PET), or ultrasound (US), offers previously unattained opportunities for diagnosis, therapy planning, and therapy assessment. Medical image processing is essential to leverage this increasing amount of data and to explore and present the contained information in a way suitable for the specific medical task. In this tutorial, we will approach the analysis and visualization of medical image data in an explorative manner. In particular, we will visually construct the image processing algorithms using the popular graphical data-flow builder MeVisLab, which is available as a free download for noncommercial research. We felt that it could be more interesting for the reader to see and explore examples of medical image processing that go beyond simple image enhancements. The part of exploration, to inspect medical image data and experiment with image-processing pipelines, requires software that encourages this kind of visual exploration.


A major objection to top-down accounts of lexical recognition has been that they are incompatible with an account of acquisition, it being argued that bottom-up segmentation must precede lexical acquisition. We counter this objection by presenting a top-down account of lexical acquisition. This is made possible by the adoption of a flexible criterion as to what may constitute a lexical item during acquisition, this being justified by the extensive evidence of children's undersegmentation. Advantages of the top-down account offered over the bottom-up alternatives are that it presents a unified account of the acquisition of a lexicon and segmentation abilities, and is wholly driven by the requirements of comprehension. The approach described has been incorporated into an integrated model of acquisition processes, the incremental learning of which captures the gradual nature of child language development.


The study will seek a philosophical approach to terminal illness based on virtue ethics. The purpose is to find a framework in which the pursuit of health is regarded as an aspect of a person's character to be developed through life along with other virtues.
Terminal illness has been chosen as the focus of the study because it best challenges the preoccupation with cure of western medicine. The structure of institutional healthcare is presented as being influenced by remaining traditions of dualism, Newtonian science and Christianity which together jeopardise the viability of recent efforts towards patient autonomy. Such medicine tcnds towards treating symptoms rather than a patient as a whole. Philosophically this structure finds allegiance most closely with the goal oriented utilitarianism.
Faced with terminal illness in an environment of finite resources the temptation is towards euthanasia. The implication is that in existing institutional healthcare patients are not sufficiently empowered to make informed decisions about best options.
By contrast the work carried out in hospices is used as an example of a flatter structure of healthcare more in-keeping with a model where the individual is morally responsible for his or her health. The study points the way to the establishment of a community healthcare committed to education rather than cure. Where possible, it will be argued that the maintenance of health belongs to each individual. Economically this is seen as a cheaper means of providing healthcare for everyone. The philosophical disposition of such a person is put forward as towards virtue. A person spends a whole lifetime developing the
pursuit of health as an aspect of character.
The thesis argues that, by living a life of virtue in relation to health, a person ought to be in a position, if and when faced with terminal illness, to understand his or her moral position and to be able to make truly autonomous decisions at the end of life. The study will argue that those unable to be autonomous or virtuous in relation to health ought to be cared for by a revamped institutional healthcare system. By such means, the thesis attempts to avoid the creation of a
two tier system.


The long-neck Kayans have long been subjected to scrutiny by both Thai and foreign writers. This study traces the historical existence of the Kayans in Burma and their status as refugees within Thailand. Since the arrival of the first group of Kayans in late 1984, this tribe has been of interest to the provincial government of Mae Hong Son, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, NGOs and tourism developers. All of these groups, in one way or another, claim to be protecting the interest of the Kayans. This thesis investigates the validity of claims that Kayan interests are being protected. It further questions the government's move to centralise the Kayans into one settlement at Huay Pu Kaeng. I argue that the Kayan race is the most marginal beneficiary of the Kayan ethnic tourism and illustrate how their vulnerability has been exploited both by government agencies and tourism developers.


Conventional and reverse approaches to transformer design are presented in this paper. The first uses device ratings to determine the sizes of the core and windings. In the reverse approach, the physical characteristics and dimensions of the windings and core are the specifications. By manipulating the amount and type of material actually to be used in the construction of the transformer, its performance can be determined. Such an approach is essentially the opposite of the conventional transformer design method. Both design methods are applied to two sample high voltage transformers. The measured performances of the as-built transformers highlight the limitations in using the conventional method, which are overcome using the reverse approach.


Endoglin (Eng), an ancillary receptor of the transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ) signaling pathway superfamily, has been well recognized for its important function in vascular development and angiogenesis since its discovery more than a decade ago. Recent studies show that this receptor is also critical for the emergence of blood during embryonic development, and that at E7.5, endoglin together with Flk‐1 identifies early mesoderm progenitors that are endowed with hematopoietic and endothelial potential. These two lineages emerge in very close association during embryogenesis, and because they share the expression of the same surface markers, it has been difficult to distinguish the earliest hematopoietic from endothelial cells. Here, we evaluated the function of endoglin in hematopoiesis as development progresses past E7.5, and found that the hematopoietic and endothelial progenitors can be distinguished by the levels of endoglin in E9.5 yolk sacs. Whereas endothelial cells are Engbright, hematopoietic activity is primarily restricted to a subset of cells that display dim expression of endoglin (Engdim). Molecular characterization of these subfractions showed that endoglin‐mediated induction of hematopoiesis occurs in concert with BMP2/BMP4 signaling. This pathway is highly active in Engdim cells but significantly downregulated in the Eng knockout. Taken together, our findings show an important function for endoglin in mediating BMP2/BMP4 signaling during yolk sac hematopoietic development and suggest that the levels of this receptor modulate TGFβ versus bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling. Stem Cells 2013;31:1893‐1901


1. Natural populations deliver a wide range of products that provide income for millions of people and need to be exploited sustainably. Large heterogeneity in individual performance within these exploited populations has the potential to improve population recovery after exploitation and thus help sustaining yields over time. 2. We explored the potential of using individual heterogeneity to design smarter harvest schemes, by sparing individuals that contribute most to future productivity and population growth, using the understorey palm Chamaedorea elegans as a model system. Leaves of this palm are an important non-timber forest product and long-term inter-individual growth variability can be evaluated from internode lengths. 3. We studied a population of 830 individuals, half of which was subjected to a 67 % defoliation treatment for three years. We measured effects of defoliation on vital rates and leaf size – a trait that determines marketability. We constructed integral projection models in which vital rates depended on stem length, past growth rate, and defoliation, and evaluated transient population dynamics to quantify population development and leaf yield. We then simulated scenarios in which we spared individuals that were either most important for population growth or had leaves smaller than marketable size. 4. Individuals varying in size or past growth rate responded similarly to leaf harvesting in terms of growth and reproduction. By contrast, defoliation-induced reduction in survival chance was smaller in large individuals than in small ones. Simulations showed that harvest-induced population decline was much reduced when individuals from size and past growth classes that contributed most to population growth were spared. Under this scenario cumulative leaf harvest over 20 years was somewhat reduced, but long-term leaf production was sustained. A three-fold increase in leaf yield was generated when individuals with small leaves are spared. 5. Synthesis and applications This study demonstrates the potential to create smarter systems of palm leaf harvest by accounting for individual heterogeneity within exploited populations. Sparing individuals that contribute most to population growth ensured sustained leaf production over time. The concepts and methods presented here are generally applicable to exploited plant and animal species which exhibit considerable individual heterogeneity.


Nondestructive testing of thick multilayered structures is challenging because of the number of layers and the increased plate thicknesses. In this paper, ultrasonic guided waves are applied to detect and characterize delaminations inside a 23-layer hybrid structural laminate that consists of metallic, glass fiber composite and adhesive materials. A semi-analytical finite element (SAFE) technique is used to generate dispersion curves and wave structures for the purpose of selecting appropriate wave structures and hence test points for discontinuity detection and characterization. One guided wave mode and frequency is chosen as an example to achieve large in-plane particle displacements at regions of interest. The high sensitivity of the selected guided wave mode and frequency is first validated in a finite element model that simulates the interactions of the selected mode with a discontinuity. Theoretically driven experiments are then conducted and compared with bulk wave measurements. It is shown that guided waves can well detect and characterize deeply embedded damages inside thick multilayer fiber-metal laminates with suitable mode and frequency selection.


ARTICLE INFO In this paper an analytical model considering die arc and variable thickness for a dome portion of the deformed sheet is proposed for the axisymmetric sheet hydroforming process. The aim of the analysis is to calculate the thickness variation along the final shape and the required forming pressure in two cases of high and low blank holder forces. For analysis, first a mathematical relation for the thickness distribution in dome portion is proposed. Then, by applying the incompressibility law in plastic deformation the thickness distribution is calculated. After that, with the calculated thickness variation, the strains and the stresses all over the deformed sheet and the strain energy are determined. By equating the total strain energy with the external work, the forming pressure is calculated. The predictions of the proposed analytical model are validated by comparing them with the results available in the literature and they are found to be in good agreement.


Recent fieldwork by the Industries of Angkor Project (INDAP) has identified the first extensive evidence of iron production within an Angkorian Khmer (9th to 15th centuries AD) center at Preah Khan of Kompong Svay (Preah Khan) in Preah Vihear province, Cambodia. This immense 22-km2 temple complex appears to be an outpost of Khmer settlement situated in close proximity to Phnom Dek ("Iron Mountain"), the richest known source of iron oxide in Cambodia. Combined with the fact that Preah Khan's temple architecture dates between the late 10th to early 13th centuries, the period that the Khmer greatly expanded their territorial influence, our primary hypothesis is that this complex was established to gain access to and monitor production of iron for the capital of Angkor. The vast number and size of these iron slag concentrations, some up to 5 m in height by 35 m in length, precludes the use of traditional excavation and dating methods. Instead, this paper employs 14C dating of "in-slag" charcoal from surface slag cakes to produce a spatial chronology of late or "terminal" industrial activities. The results indicate that metallurgy was "last" practiced at various locations within Preah Khan in the mid-13th to late 17th centuries, with 3 distinct clusters between the late 13th and late 15th centuries. Based on this initial survey of surface collections, it appears that iron production at Preah Khan occurred after the final phase of masonry construction. More significantly, this work provides the first robust set of dates for late Angkorian and Middle period industrial activities in Cambodia.


The high cost and effect of out of pocket payments for health care on households in developing countries have led to the use of community-based health insurance (CBHI) as a viable alternative for health care funding. The overall objective of the study was to assess the perception and determinants of willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a proposed community based health insurance scheme in urban and rural households in Lagos State. The multi-stage sampling technique was used with 960 household heads enrolled in the study. A pre-tested, semi-structured, interviewer administered questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents. The contingent valuation method was used to elicit household willingness to enrol and pay for a proposed community based health insurance scheme. Data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences software (SPSS) version 17. This study revealed that 86.3% of the households in the rural LGA and 78.6% of the households in the urban LGA were willing to pay for the proposed community based health insurance scheme (p=<0.001). The households were willing to pay a mean amount of ₦957.56 and ₦754.83/household/month in the urban and rural area respectively (p<0.001). The paper concludes by emphasizing the high willingness among households to participate in the proposed hypothetical CHBI scheme. This highlights its prospects of increasing access to quality health care in Lagos especially amongst vulnerable low-income households.

 Key words: Willingness to pay, community based health insurance, health financing, contingent valuation.


Neodymium isotopes of fish debris from two sites on Demerara Rise, spanning ∼4.5 m.y. of deposition from the early Cenomanian to just before ocean anoxic event 2 (OAE2) (Cenomanian-Turonian transition), suggest a circulation-controlled nutrient trap in intermediate waters of the western tropical North Atlantic that could explain continuous deposition of organic-rich black shales for as many as ∼15 m.y. (Cenomanian–early Santonian). Unusually low Nd isotopic data (e Nd(t) ∼−11 to ∼−16) on Demerara Rise during the Cenomanian are confirmed, but the shallower site generally exhibits higher and more variable values. A scenario in which southwest-flowing Tethyan and/or North Atlantic waters overrode warm, saline Demerara bottom water explains the isotopic differences between sites and could create a dynamic nutrient trap controlled by circulation patterns in the absence of topographic barriers. Nutrient trapping, in turn, would explain the ∼15 m.y. deposition of black shales through positive feedbacks between low oxygen and nutrient-rich bottom waters, efficient phosphate recycling, transport of nutrients to the surface, high productivity, and organic carbon export to the seafloor. This nutrient trap and the correlation seen previously between high Nd and organic carbon isotopic values during OAE2 on Demerara Rise suggest that physical oceanographic changes could be components of OAE2, one of the largest perturbations to the global carbon cycle in the past 150 m.y.


This is a textbook for an introductory combinatorics course lasting one or two semesters. An extensive list of problems, ranging from routine exercises to research questions, is included. In each section, there are also exercises that contain material not explicitly discussed in the preceding text, so as to provide instructors with extra choices if they want to shift the emphasis of their course. Just as with the first three editions, the new edition walks the reader through the classic parts of combinatorial enumeration and graph theory, while also discussing some recent progress in the area: on the one hand, providing material that will help students learn the basic techniques, and on the other hand, showing that some questions at the forefront of research are comprehensible and accessible to the talented and hardworking undergraduate. The basic topics discussed are: the twelvefold way, cycles in permutations, the formula of inclusion and exclusion, the notion of graphs and trees, matchings, Eulerian and Hamiltonian cycles, and planar graphs. New to this edition are the Quick Check exercises at the end of each section. In all, the new edition contains about 240 new exercises. Extra examples were added to some sections where readers asked for them. The selected advanced topics are: Ramsey theory, pattern avoidance, the probabilistic method, partially ordered sets, the theory of designs, enumeration under group action, generating functions of labeled and unlabeled structures and algorithms and complexity. The book encourages students to learn more combinatorics, provides them with a not only useful but also enjoyable and engaging reading. The Solution Manual is available upon request for all instructors who adopt this book as a course text. Please send your request to email@example.com. The previous edition of this textbook was also translated into Korean and adopted at various schools.


Oak (Quercus spp.) afforestation in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley has involved planting 1-year-old bareroot seedlings on a relatively wide spacing in single-species stands or planting light-seeded species with oaks to form mixed-species stands. In the former case, the developing single-species stands have limited future management options because they do not provide structures that favor quality wildlife habitat or quality sawtimber production. In the latter case, species mixtures are being planted with little knowledge of subsequent stand development, leading to an inability to predict future stand composition for management purposes. In this article, we present a system to determine bottomland tree planting mixtures that will create single-cohort, mixed-species stands with a component of high-quality bottomland oak. Using individual species ecological life-history characteristics, such as early height growth pattern, relative twig diameter and durability, and developmental patterns in natural stands, bottomland species are rated for their ability to provide beneficial training effects that will lead to the development of quality oak boles. Incorporating such a system to determine species value in mixtures should provide an increased number of future options to meet explicit management objectives and promote improved restoration of bottomland hardwood ecosystems.


This article considers whether the Treasury's check-the-box regulations, which have been widely praised by tax practitioners, are valid. These regulations generally allow any unincorporated entity to elect whether it will be treated as a corporation or a partnership for tax purposes. When these regulations were first proposed, there was some debate as to whether such an elective regime was foreclosed by the statutory scheme, which requires that "associations" be taxed as corporations. This article argues that the focus of this debate was misplaced because, even assuming that the statutory scheme itself was sufficiently ambiguous as to permit an elective regime, the meaning of the term "association" was settled by the Supreme Court in the 1935 case of Morrissey v. Commissioner. In that case, the Court interpreted the term to mean any unincorporated entity that sufficiently resembles a corporation. Because this interpretation is inconsistent with a purely elective regime, this article argues that the check-the-box regulations are invalid. The basis for this argument is a trilogy of Supreme Court opinions that hold that when the Court interprets a statutory term, that interpretation is binding on the Executive Branch and may be altered only by an act of Congress or a subsequent opinion of the Court. Therefore, these cases stand for the proposition that, at least as far as the Executive Branch is concerned, a judicial interpretation of a statute is effectively incorporated into the underlying statute. This article also argues that the promulgation of the check-the-box regulations are but one example of the Treasury's and the IRS' recent tendency to promulgate taxpayer-friendly rules that are invalid. The article discusses the etiology of this phenomenon.


Automatic contact tracing is currently used in several countries in order to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Many governments decided to develop smartphone apps based on the "Exposure Notifications" designed by Apple and Google according to a decentralized approach previously proposed by the DP-3T team. Decentralization was pushed as a key feature to protect privacy in contrast to centralized approaches that could leverage automatic contact tracing to realize mass-surveillance programs. In this work, taking into account the privacy and integrity vulnerabilities of DP-3T systems, we show the design of a decentralized contact tracing system named Pronto-C2 that has better resilience against various attacks. We also discuss the significant overhead of Pronto-C2 when used in real-world scenarios.


This study investigates the potential use of wheat straw (Tritium sativum) which is an agricultural by-product for the removal of Ni²⁺ and Zn²⁺ from the waste water discharges. Scanning Electron Microscope was used to obtain images of the surface of wheat straw (WS) and Electron Disperive Spectroscopy was employed in elemental analysis of wheat straw, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy was used to get informations about the chemcial interaction of the wheat straw surface with the sorbed metallic ions. Simulated wastewater containing Ni²⁺ and Zn²⁺ was subjected to biosorption by WS. The effect of initial concentration, pH and temperature on the removal of metal ions on WS was investigated. For varied initial metal concentrations from 5 to 150 ppm the biosorption equilibrium was achieved between 2.5 to 5 hours. The percentage removal of sorption decreases with increasing concentration.

The experimental data were fitted to Langmuir, Freudlich and Temkin isotherms model fits better than the other two of single ionic system. For binary ionic system IAS-Freudndlich model served best. In addition the sorption by wheat straw conformed to pseudo second order kinetics with a good value of coefficient of determination (r² > 0.99). Free energy of biosorption ΔG°, enthalpy ΔH° and entropy ΔS° changes were also estimated and used to predict the nature of biosorption. The capacity of the sorption of wheat straw was compared with other common available sorbent.

On the basis of sorption capacity, regenerate ability and the cost analysis we can conclude that WS could be used as a sorbent material for removal N²⁺ and Zn²⁺ from an aqueous solution.


This paper analyzes impersonal constructions in Innu, an Algonquian language, closely related to Cree and spoken in North Eastern Quebec. Impersonalization is determined by the ranking of the suppressed entity on the animacy hierarchy. Suppressing an Animate 'subject' requires additional verbal derivation. By contrast, Inanimate subject verbs may have both a personal and an impersonal reading without further derivation. The language also exhibits a large number of lexical impersonal verbs since natural forces and elements of the landscape are lexicalized as verbs, or verb parts. Impersonal verbs belong to the class of Inanimate Intransitives and their suppressed 'actor' argument may never find syntactic realization as a lexical NP. Attention is drawn to the complex interaction between lexicalization patterns, constraints on the expression of subjecthood and information structure.
Keywords: Algonquian; Innu; Cree; Impersonals; Animacy Hierarchy; Natural forces


Mathematical morphology operations are applied in many real-time applications, such as video segmentation. For real-time requirement, efficient hardware implementation is necessary. This paper proposes a new architecture named Partial-Result-Reuse (PRR) architecture for mathematical morphological operations with flat structuring elements. Partial results generated during calculation process are kept and reused in this architecture to reduce hardware cost. With PRR concept and self-affinity property of structuring elements, the proposed architecture is more cost-effective and more general than existing morphology architectures. Moreover, it can be combined with systolic array to give consideration to both flexibility and hardware cost. We also propose a methodology to generate PRR architecture. With graphic method, the PRR architecture can be easily generated, and it can deal with structuring elements of any shape. The very large scale integration implementation of the PRR architecture shows that the area of processing element is small and can be fully piplelined without large overhead. The maximum frequency of the chip is 200 MHz in simulation, while processing speed of 550 morphological operations/s on a 720/spl times/480 frame can be achieved.


The thesis discusses various actuarial aspects of the management of a pension fund, in particular, those related to valuation of the pension fund. The investigation covers three main areas; the funding mechanism, investment and matching and control of the fund. In the part dealing with the funding mechanism, a model is introduced in order to assist analyses of the mechanism of a pension fund. The model notionally separates the fund into individual pots and a common pool, and notional moves of the assets between them, X-functions, are defined. Using this model, various events in the pension fund are analysed. Particularly, the model is shown to be useful for explaining the financial impact of withdrawals and the problem of cross-subsidy. In the next part, investment and matching are discussed referring to a collection of papers and books written by actuaries and economists. Two different types of matching are defined according to the definition of risk, which are named V-matching and S-matching. Based on this discussion on matching, the meanings of the use of a particular portfolio for valuation purposes are analysed. Finally, various means of controlling a pension fund are discussed in the light of control theory. A particular focus is set on the choice of the valuation basis as a means of control, and an extensive series of long term cashflow projections are carried out to explore the optimum way to choose the valuation basis under various scenarios of changing experience. The projections are carried out separately for three different aspects of the experience; the real rate of investment return, the dividend growth rate and the dividend yield, and the withdrawal rates. The results suggest that the use of averages of past experience over a long period suits best for different circumstances, and that delayed changes in the valuation basis after the corresponding changes in experience are useful for identifying more clearly the trend in the actual experience.


State-owned forest enterprises (SOFEs) in northeast China have experienced past economic loss and environmental degradation, causing government to seek reforms. Measurement of technical efficiency allows us to evaluate overall trends and how reforms affect production of social and environmental goods. Previous assessments have used small samples, short time periods, and viewed SOFEs as if they were profit-maximizers. We compared a traditional profit-maximization framework to an alternative "social firms" framework for SOFEs to classify inputs and outputs, and data envelopment analysis to measure the efficiency of 86 SOFEs from 2003 to 2009. We argue that the social firm framework is more appropriate for SOFEs given their stated objectives. We found no overall trend in pure technical efficiency over time for the social firm framework; however, there was an increase in pure technical efficiency for the profit maximization framework, consistent with past literature. At the same time, there were decreases in scale efficiency primarily due to higher levels of government investment. We compared groups of SOFEs that underwent a specific pilot forest tenure reform to those that did not, and we found no evidence to support that tenure reform improved technical efficiency. Published by Elsevier GmbH on behalf of Department of Forest Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå.