A number of efforts in heterogeneous computing involve the development of basic architecture independent communication primitives. We present a new programming paradigm, called ActorSpace, which provides a new communication model based on destination patterns. An actorspace is a computationally passive container of actors which acts as a context for matching patterns. Patterns are matched against listed attributes of actors and actorspaces that are visible in the actorspace. Both visibility and attributes are dynamic. Messages may be sent to one or all members of a group defined by a pattern. The paradigm provides powerful support for component-based construction of heterogeneous scalable distributed applications. In particular, it supports open interfaces to servers and pattern-directed access to software repositories.


Method of the analog of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in plasmonic metal– dielectric–metal (MIM) waveguide is proposed by using symmetric side-coupled elliptic cavities and simulated by Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD). In this paper comparison and investigation in novel structure creating a slow light device based on plasmonic induced transparency (PIT), in ring resonator of elliptic shape with metal-dielectric-metal is examined. In this proposed structure, a ring resonator with two input ports and two output ports for occurrence and investigate of plasmon's mode in a waveguide system is examined. Poly metyle meta acrylate is used for dielectric that is sandwiched between gold metal layers. Wavelength of the pump for transparency of media is 1550 nm and wavelength of small signal in this structure is 820 nm. The length of this proposed device is 500 nm. In the proposed structure, we will get the real and imaginary of refractive index and slow down factor. The large group index get 33 in the cross way and 35 can be obtained at another PIT window. The results of this study can be used to design parabolic antennas and telecommunications, optical delay lines controlled.


The rise of pervasive computing presents unique opportunities due to increasing availability of smart devices such as mobile phones and tablets equipped with various sensors enabling Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies. The growth of mobile computing has led to an increase in access to digital music. With the growth of digital music, the development of music information sharing services for users becomes important. The existing sharing methods are based on the users' social network and preferences in music. However, sometimes, sharing music according to location and time is needed. This paper presents work on smart spaces equipped with NFC tags, deployed at different locations in hallways for discovering and sharing new music experiences. This concept provides a new way of interaction between passers-by for discovering music in relation to location. For example, the hallway locations use sensing devices to provide an automatic means of exchanging music information among the passers-by. We utilized NFC tags as Music-Relay hot spots. The hot spot retrieves information about the music a user is playing on her/his device while s/he is passing by the hot spot. The work contributes to a pervasive service that equips an environment with music context intelligence about a passer-bys choice of music and allows users to feel the musical presence of other users who have been in the same location at previous point in time. In general, this paper proposes a new music information sharing service using the music information captured from users at a specific location in time.


This introductory chapter shows the distinctive qualities of New Legal Realism (NLR), captures where it stands around its fifteenth anniversary, and explains the goal of the larger book. In doing so, we demonstrate NLR's fruitful continuation of the legal realist adventure as it reaches beyond historical and national boundaries to form new international conversations, based heavily on law-and-society networks and traditions. In addition, we provide a contrast to Empirical Legal Studies, because the NLR project clearly visible in this volume does not just use quantitative methods to study lawyers and legal institutions as they have been traditionally viewed. Instead, it includes chapters by social scientists and law professors using social science theory and multiple methods to understand law and address legal problems—across an impressive variety of subject areas such as immigration, policing, globalization, legal education, and access to justice. Finally, it offers a series of chapters from scholars—across an array of law and social science disciplines—explaining what particular disciplinary approaches offer to the process of translating law and empirical research. Overall, this volume highlights the powerful virtues of new legal realist research and an appreciation and awareness of the challenges of translation between social science and law.


In 1986, Egypt implemented a succession of comprehensive economic reforms both in the agriculture sector and more generally such as the Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Program (ERSAP) of 1991. Since then, the agricultural sector has been gradually transformed from one characterised by central planning and governmental controls to one that is more free market oriented.

This study employs the Policy Analysis Matrix technique to evaluate the impacts of reform policies on eleven major crops (wheat, maize, sugar cane, soy bean, broad bean, cotton, rice, tomatoes, potatoes, long and short berseem) and their associated crop rotations (crop mix) during the period 1986-2000. The PAM offers six tools of economic indicators. The first (private Cost Ratio) is used to identify the competitiveness of crops domestically. The second (Domestic Resource Cost) is employed in an attempt to identify those commodities in which Egypt has a comparative advantage/disadvantage. The third (Nominal Protection Coefficient for inputs and outputs) is used to measure the divergences between the domestic and international prices for inputs and output. The fourth (Effective Protection Coefficient) reflects the complete pattern of incentives to farmers in the tradable commodities markets, combining the separate influences of polices represented by the NPCO and NPCI measures. The fifth and sixth (profitability Coefficient and Subsidy Ratio to Producers) estimates the net protection effects afforded to each of the major sectors by the whole range of policy intervention.

The most important findings are that: (1) The Egyptian pricing policy in the reform era is still encouraging domestic production of importable products (by setting their prices above world prices) while export products are taxed relative to their equivalent world prices. (2) Cotton, the main historical export commodity, is shown to be grown with a comparative disadvantage since it receives the highest levels of subsidy. (3) On the other hand, wheat showed a remarkably positive example for the high response from farmers to the reformed pricing policies with an increase in its area and its productivity by 83% and 60% respectively. (4) There is a high response of change in planted area to water charges. The conclusion of these analyses is that the impact of policy changes has indeed been positive, especially in relation to areas of crop production. But many remains to be done, for example, growers' still face problems in marketing, accessing to inputs, processing and trade.


Introduction to Global Logistics offers a step-by-step guide to global logistics. Covering the breadth of logistics, this highly accessible text covers everything you need to know and is illustrated by engaging case studies of market leaders.In this comprehensive book John Manners-Bell provides an in depth definition, description and exploration of the strategic principles and practices in transportation modes and supply chain verticals, including: freight forwarding, contract logistics, shipping, road freight, air cargo and express. The book also examines major sectors, including Automotive, Chemical, Pharmaceutical, Retail, Consumer, and High Tech.Introduction to Global Logistics offers a detailed examination of key topics, including: how the logistics industry has developed, how it is influenced by macro-economic factors and demand-side trends, what the risks are to the industry, and how it will develop over the coming years. It examines important trends and developments that are shaping the industry, including 3D printing, megacities, and post-harvest food losses.


What if racial profiling were useful? Even, perhaps, very useful? Are the costs of racial profiling so significant that racial profiling should be banned? Courts and commentators do not ask these questions; indeed, they rarely, if ever, acknowledge that racial profiling may be useful. This paper explores what costs police would have to justify, and how they might do so in order to use racial profiling legally.
Using race as a part of a profile of criminal has some efficiency value; it is not solely (or even at all) about racial animus. Race is a marker of criminal behavior; it would be miraculous if it where not. Height, weight, gender, hair style, ear piercings, all of these characteristics almost surely delineate some difference in the commission rate of at least one crime. This is, essentially, a mathematical truism: race and crime are not independent. Because race is "useful" when "useful" is defined as "information worth more than zero," it is important to move beyond the initial question - is it useful - to the more important question - how useful is it? What do we give up in allowing or banning racial profiling? What are courts missing when they discuss racial profiling? This paper is an attempt to get at least some of the empirics correct regarding the direct costs and benefits of racial profiling; it leaves the important research of mapping the collateral consequences of racial profiling to others.
But even when one puts aside the collateral consequences of focusing the might of the criminal justice system on one specific race, there are many complicating factors in measuring how useful racial profiling. First, how do you measure the gap in crime rates (that is, the different crime rates for different racial groups and different crimes)? Without this, no one could calibrate their behavior: police would not know how much to profile, and the courts would not know how much reliance on race in police decision-making is too much. This is also important as a policy matter, to determine what society loses if racial profiling were not allowed. To be more concrete, what if whites were twice as likely to sell cocaine as Blacks were? Does this justify profiling them? Perhaps the answer to this depends on the base rate: how much more cocaine do white people sell? Is this a difference between one and two percent, or fifteen and thirty percent of individuals who could be targeted. One needs to know more than just a single statistic. A second complicating factor, beyond the initial measurement question, is whether race is too easy to over-use. People see race quickly, and believe it is a highly salient part of a persons physical description; police might over-rely on this characteristic because it is easy to determine (or at least perceived to be so). A third complication is that race is rarely the only available information about a potential suspect, and a better question than whether race is correlated with crime rates is whether information about a suspects race adds any useful information to a profile. But, again, the chance that these two probabilities are always equal, for every type of crime and any other possible set of information is zero. Race matters. This bears emphasis not because it isn't obvious, but because many opposed to racial profiling deem it inefficient automatically; that is, they argue that racial profiling does not work because race is not a predictor of criminality.
Answering these questions is a difficult, but not insurmountable task. But these questions also suggest that a simple focus on whether race is a predictor of criminality is misplaced; the answer to that first question is yes. The more important question, which legislatures, courts, legal and economic researchers alike have generally ignored, is when and how useful racial profiling is in different situations. To answer this question, one needs to investigate the costs and benefits of racial profiling, which the above complicating factors suggest can be done, but needs more attention to the detail of the reality of the relationship of race and crime to answer. This paper seeks to quantify the costs and benefits of racial profiling, and in doing so creates new methods to control for the problem of selection bias in the data that are generally available to evaluate this question.


This paper extends the Gotay-Nester and the Dirac theories of constrained systems in order to deal with Dirac dynamical systems in the integrable case. Integrable Dirac dynamical systems are viewed as constrained systems where the constraint submanifolds are foliated, the case considered in Gotay-Nester theory being the particular case where the foliation has only one leaf. A Constraint Algorithm for Dirac dynamical systems (CAD), which extends the Gotay-Nester algorithm, is developed. Evolution equations are written using a Dirac bracket adapted to the foliations and an abridged total energy which coincides with the total Hamiltonian in the particular case considered by Dirac. The interesting example of LC circuits is developed in detail. The paper emphasizes the point of view that Dirac and Gotay-Nester theories are dual and that using a combination of results from both theories may have advantages in dealing with a given example, rather than using systematically one or the other.


Thank you very much for downloading secure electronic transactions. As you may know, people have look hundreds times for their favorite readings like this secure electronic transactions, but end up in harmful downloads. Rather than enjoying a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they are facing with some harmful virus inside their computer. secure electronic transactions is available in our book collection an online access to it is set as public so you can download it instantly. Our digital library hosts in multiple countries, allowing you to get the most less latency time to download any of our books like this one. Kindly say, the secure electronic transactions is universally compatible with any devices to read.


We present a straightforward low cost liquid phase deposition method to coat arbitrary-shaped dielectric substrates with uniform electron beam sensitive polymer films. Furthermore, we investigate the use of electron beam lithography to pattern the coated pre-form substrates. The polymers studied are poly-methyl-methacrylate with different molecular weights, poly(methyl methacrylate-co-ethyl acrylate) and methyl methacrylate. The polymer coverage over the whole surface area is shown to be uniform and the thickness of the film dependent on the concentration of the polymer liquid used. As the uniform polymer layer is deposited on non-flat surfaces, we show that with an electron beam various surfaces, e.g. microlens arrays, can be re-patterned accurately with nanoscale features. Furthermore, we show the required dose for electron beam exposure to be dependent on the concentration and on the molecular weight of the polymer used.


A garden classic, The Genius of the Place reveals that the history of landscape gardening is much more than a history of design and style; it opens up a wide perspective of English cultural history, showing how landscape gardening was gradually transformed over two centuries into an art that has been widely imitated throughout Europe and North America.The English landscape garden is richly documented in this anthology. Over 100 illustrations accompany writings that range from Francis Bacon to Jane Austin; from the early 1600s, when Englishmen began to determine their own concept and form of the garden, through the first half of the eighteenth century when its distinctive feature emerged, to the heyday of the landscape garden under "Capability" Brown and the reactions to his pure formalism under Repton and Loudon in the 1800s. This edition contains a new introduction and bibliography covering the many developments in garden history during the last dozen years.John Dixon Hunt is Professor in the School of English and American Studies at the University of East Anglia and editor of the International Journal of Garden History. Peter Willis, an architect, is reader in the History of Architecture at the University of Newcastle.


Alpha-methylacyl-CoA racemase (AMACR) was first discovered by using cDNA microarray technology as a molecular marker for prostate cancer. Our recent microarray analysis of renal cell carcinomas showed a significant increase of AMACR mRNA levels in papillary renal cell carcinomas, but not in other subtypes. To investigate the value of this marker in pathologic diagnosis, we analyzed AMACR mRNA levels in cDNA microarrays from 70 kidney tumors. Furthermore, we evaluated the AMACR expression in 165 kidney tumors on tissue microarrays and 51 papillary carcinomas of other organs by immunohistochemistry. AMACR mRNA was significantly overexpressed in 7 of 8 papillary renal cell carcinomas with an average of 5.2-fold increase, and only in 2 of 62 nonpapillary kidney tumors. Immunohistochemistry demonstrated strong AMACR positivity in all cases of papillary renal cell carcinomas (41 of 41, 100%), including 6 metastatic papillary renal cell carcinomas, but only focal or weak reactivity in the minority (18 of 124, 15%) of other renal tumors including 13 of 52 clear cell renal cell carcinomas, 3 of 20 oncocytomas, and 2 of 17 urothelial carcinomas. All chromophobe (0 of 18) and sarcomatoid components of renal cell carcinomas (0 of 15) were negative for AMACR. Weak or focal AMACR immunoreactivity was detected in only 4 of 51 (8%) papillary carcinomas arising in other organs (2 of 14 thyroid, 2 of 13 lung, 0 of 6 breast, 0 of 6 endometrium, 0 of 6 ovary, and 0 of 6 pancreas). Using a combination of cDNA microarrays, tissue microarrays, and immunohistochemistry, we identified AMACR as a marker for papillary renal cell carcinoma, which could be valuable in subclassification of renal cell carcinomas and in the differential diagnosis of a metastatic papillary carcinoma.


This paper gives an overview over Meshfree Methods. Starting point is an extended and modified classification of Meshfree Methods due to three aspects: The construction of a partition of unity, the choice of an approximation either with or without using an extrinsic basis and the choice of test functions, resulting into a collocation, Bubnov-Galerkin or Petrov-Galerkin Meshfree Method. Most of the relevant Meshfree Methods are described taking into account their different origins and viewpoints as well as their advantages and disadvantages. Typical problems arising in meshfree methods like integration, treatment of essential boundary conditions, coupling with mesh-based methods etc.~are discussed. Some valuing comments about the most important aspects can be found at the end of each section. This text was revised in 2004


Observations of coseismic and postseismic deformation associated with the 2010 Mw = 8.8 Maule earthquake in south‐central Chile provide constraints on the spatial heterogeneities of frictional properties on a major subduction megathrust and how they have influenced the seismic rupture and postseismic effects. We find that the bulk of coseismic slip occurs within a single elongated patch approximately 460 km long and 100 km wide between the depths of 15 and 40 km. We infer three major patches of afterslip: one extends northward along strike and downdip of the major coseismic patch between 40 and 60 km depth; the other two bound the northern and southern ends of the coseismic patch. The southern patch offshore of the Arauco Peninsula is the only place showing resolvable afterslip shallower than 20 km depth. Estimated slip potency associated with postseismic slip in the 1.3 years following the earthquake amounts to 20–30% of that generated coseismically. Our estimates of the megathrust frictional properties show that the Arauco Peninsula area has positive but relatively low (a−b)σn values (0.01 ~ 0.22 MPa), that would have allowed dynamic rupture propagation into this rate‐strengthening area and afterslip. Given the only modestly rate‐strengthening megathrust friction in this region, the barrier effect may be attributed to its relatively large size of the rate‐strengthening patch. Coseismic and postseismic uplift of the Arauco Peninsula exceeds interseismic subsidence since the time of the last major earthquake in 1835, suggesting that coseismic and postseismic deformation has resulted in some permanent strain in the forearc.


Background: Asylum seekers are assumed to be a vulnerable group with respect to sexual and reproductive health. The objective of this study was to quantify induced abortion and teenage birth indicators for this group. Methods: The population comprised all female asylum seekers aged 15–49 in The Netherlands between September 2004 and August 2005. Information was collected about induced abortions from notification forms and electronic patient files. The central agency for the reception of asylum seekers provided population and birth data. Results: Among asylum seekers the abortion rate (14.4/1000 women) and teenage birth rate (49.1/1000) were higher than average in The Netherlands (8.6/1000 and 5.8/1000). Great differences were found between subgroups. High abortion rates were seen among women who were pregnant on arrival or got pregnant in the first months after arrival at the reception facilities. Abortion and teenage birth rates were particularly high among asylum seekers aged 15–19 from specific parts of Africa and Asia. Abortion ratios were high among asylum seekers aged 30–49 from parts of Europe and Asia. Decreases in the abortion rate and teenage birth rate were observed as the length of stay increased. Conclusion: Abortions and teenage births were more common among asylum seekers than among the overall population of The Netherlands. Increased rates were a consequence of subgroups being at high risk. Abortion and teenage birth rates were very high among women who were pregnant on arrival or got pregnant in the first few months after arrival, but decreased as the length of stay increased.


This study aims to determine the Influence of Price Perception, Service Quality, Variation Seeking Behavior and Electronic Banking against Customer Switching Behavior with Relationship Duration as Moderation Variable. The data is processed by Structural Equation Modeling. The researchers found that the perception of price, service quality, variation seeking behavior and electronic banking significantly influence the switching behavior of bank customers/customers. The duration of relationship as a moderating variable strengthens the influence of price perception, service quality, variation seeking behavior and electronic banking on the switching behavior of banking customers in DKI Jakarta Province. The findings from this research can be used as a strategy for designing products and services, marketing strategies and customer service practices by banks in Jakarta to reduce customers' switch. It can also help improve operational services and customer satisfaction and loyalty by understanding the banking behavior of each customer. Originality can be seen from the fact that this research is one of several studies focusing on the intention variables to switching interest by Jakarta banking customers such as variables variation seeking behavior, relationship duration that are used as a moderation variable. For further research, it is advisable to researchers: to focus on switching behavior from a wide range of consumers (companies or SMES) and investigate the difference between switching intentions or switching behavior. This study also provides a further way to analyze the effects of moderate variables such as convenience in the relationship between variables and switching intentions.


Under the Coalition Government the Education system within the UK was subject to much change and the Further Education section was among the most affected. With the funding strategy changes, the move from established National Qualification Framework (NQF) courses to Qualification Credit framework (QCF) caused disruption and the end to the traditional vocational model in some disciplines. It is on course model changes in IT and the attempt to identify the delivery of robust vocational skills that this dissertation will focus. This research will present a curriculum model that maps to a teaching framework for developing computing practical or computer / Information Technology (IT) / network engineering (vocational) skills at level 3, which has developed in response to external levers. This study compares the experiences of learners within the context of their Level 3 IT vocational course from two Further Education Colleges in the North of England. This research is based upon empirical research and experience conducted while teaching the curriculum, is a theoretical model of best practice and identifies a holistic view of skills development throughout the IT curriculum in response to changes in college, Government and economic policy. The paper will critically assess this Vocational Education and Training (VET) model, using a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data including survey data, interview findings, examination of qualifications frameworks material also the student experience, success rates etc, to determine the success or otherwise of this IT VET model.

This research aims to contribute to existing knowledge in the following areas:

• The study will examine Government Education policy interventions and initiatives from 2010 to 2014 which are directly related to the provision of VET at level 3 for 16+ learners.
• It will further attempt to identify coherence through courses by the exam boards pre and post the policy changes in terms of assessment methods
• The case study will present a report on an empirical enquiry undertaken in 2010-2015 under the Coalition Government which examines the relationship with VET in IT at level 3 and skills transfer at two Further Education Colleges in the North.
• The intention is to establish if the evidence of skills transfer on the vocational level 3 IT programs support the theory of improving the economic market in supplying a skilled workforce and looks at the interaction and interface between the level 3 IT provision and progression

The paper will consider how the identified external levers affect the structure and delivery of vocational curriculum so that a deeper understanding may be reached.


Apart from direct economic impacts, development projects have complex social and environmental impacts among which sustainability plays a major role. The Gallito Ciego reservoir was built to increase and improve agricultural production at the Jequetepeque valley in Peru. Cost-benefit analysis of rice production from 1992 to 2007 is used to measure the immediate economic impact of the project. Also, a matrix of other relevant impact indicators is constructed to expose changes in the project's environment during its life cycle. The main conclusion is that, even though there is a significant positive increase in income from agricultural production, the social and environmental impacts are not necessarily positive.


It has become commonplace to describe new social movements as 'rhizomic' in form, yet the full implications of this metaphor are rarely teased out, and the corollary that other political organisations are arborescent in form has been largely neglected in social science research. In this paper we employ Deleuze and Guattari's concept of rhizomic and arborescent assemblages to theorise a transition in the practice of political representation, drawing on an empirical study of British rural politics. We outline the principles of arborescent political assemblages, associated with traditional forms of political organisation, and the principles of rhizomic politics, associated with new social movements and protest activity. However, we proceed to argue that the binary opposition of arborescent and rhizomic forms of political assemblage is misleading, and contend that the spatial strategies associated with the state as an arborescent machine are critical to understanding both the lines of flight that produce periodic rhizomic flaring, and the entanglement of rhizomes and arborescent structures that mean that rhizomic politics never entirely escapes the arborescent. Therefore, the paper suggests that the rhizomic character of new social movements is not a revolutionary shift in political organisation, but rather is part of the ongoing, dynamic, and cyclical interplay of rhizomic and arborescent forms.


The core concept of genetic information flow was identified in recent calls to improve undergraduate biology education. Previous work shows that students have difficulty differentiating between the three processes of the Central Dogma (CD; replication, transcription, and translation). We built upon this work by developing and applying an analytic coding rubric to 1050 student written responses to a three‐question item about the CD. Each response was previously coded only for correctness using a holistic rubric. Our rubric captures subtleties of student conceptual understanding of each process that previous work has not yet captured at a large scale. Regardless of holistic correctness scores, student responses included five or six distinct ideas. By analyzing common co‐occurring rubric categories in student responses, we found a common pair representing two normative ideas about the molecules produced by each CD process. By applying analytic coding to student responses preinstruction and postinstruction, we found student thinking about the processes involved was most prone to change. The combined strengths of analytic and holistic rubrics allow us to reveal mixed ideas about the CD processes and provide a detailed picture of which conceptual ideas students draw upon when explaining each CD process.


Continuous monitoring of thermodynamic atmospheric profiles is important for many applications, e.g. assessment of atmospheric stability and cloud formation. Nowadays there is a wide variety of ground-based sensors for atmospheric profiling. Unfortunately there is no single instrument able to provide a measurement with complete vertical coverage, high vertical and temporal resolution, and good performance under all weather conditions, simultaneously. For this reason, in the last decade instrument synergies have become a strong tool used by the scientific community to improve the quality and usage of the atmospheric observations. The current thesis presents the microwave radiometer (MWR) and lidar synergy, which aims to overcome the specific sensor limitations.
On the one hand, lidar measurements can provide water vapor or temperature measurements with a high vertical resolution albeit with limited vertical coverage, due to overlapping function (OVF) problems, sunlight contamination and the presence of clouds. On the other hand, MWRs receive water vapor, temperature and cloud information throughout the troposphere though their vertical resolution is poor. The retrieval algorithm combining these two instruments is called Lidar and Microwave Synergetic Optimal Atmospheric Profiler (LIME SOAP) and is based on an Optimal Estimation Method (OEM). The main advantage of this technique with respect to other retrieval algorithms, e.g. neural networks, Kalman filters, etc., is that an OEM allows for an uncertainty assessment of the retrieved atmospheric products.
LIME SOAP combines measurements, i.e. MWR brightness temperatures and lidar water vapor mixing ratio and/or temperature profiles, with a priori atmospheric information taking the uncertainty of both into account. The method is applied to two different scenarios, i.e. ground based measurements during a two months campaign in Germany, and airborne measurements over tropical and subtropical Atlantic Ocean, for retrieving high vertical resolution profiles of absolute humidity (AH), temperature (T), relative humidity (RH) and liquid water path (LWP). For all retrievals, the studies in terms of theoretical error and degrees of freedom per signal reveal that the information of the two sensors is optimally combined. In addition, the vertical resolution of the products is improved when the MWR+lidar combination is performed with respect to the instruments working alone.
Different experiments are performed to analyze the improvements achieved via the synergy compared to the individual retrievals. Results show that, for example, when applying the LIME SOAP for ground-based AH profiling, on average the theoretically determined absolute humidity uncertainty is reduced by 60% (38%) with respect to the retrieval using only-MWR (only-Raman lidar) data, for two-months data analysis. For temperature, it is shown that the error is reduced by 47.1% (24.6%) with respect to the only-MWR (only-Raman lidar) profile, when using a collocated radiosonde as reference.
When retrieving RH, correlation between T and AH is included, which leads to improvements in the retrieved RH with respect to the case when T and AH are calculated independently. In addition it is shown that the Raman lidar T profile is not essential for the T and RH retrievals and using only the MWR temperature information provides products satisfactory for the specific case study. From the airborne perspective of HALO, the lidar non-overlap region is situated in the upper troposphere, where the amount of water vapor is reduced. Thus, the MWR improvement in the blind lidar region has less impact than in the ground based scenario.
The benefits of the sensor combination are demonstrated, being especially strong in regions where lidar data is not available, whereas if both instruments are available, the lidar measurements dominate the retrieval.


To train deep convolutional neural networks, the input data and the intermediate activations need to be kept in memory to calculate the gradient descent step. Given the limited memory available in the current generation accelerator cards, this limits the maximum dimensions of the input data. We demonstrate a method to train convolutional neural networks holding only parts of the image in memory while giving equivalent results. We quantitatively compare this new way of training convolutional neural networks with conventional training. In addition, as a proof of concept, we train a convolutional neural network with 64 megapixel images, which requires 97% less memory than the conventional approach.


CONTEXT
Asymptomatic gastroesophageal reflux (GER) is prevalent in children with asthma. Untreated GER has been postulated to be a cause of inadequate asthma control in children despite inhaled corticosteroid treatment, but it is not known whether treatment with proton pump inhibitors improves asthma control.

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether lansoprazole is effective in reducing asthma symptoms in children without overt GER.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
The Study of Acid Reflux in Children With Asthma, a randomized, masked, placebo-controlled, parallel clinical trial that compared lansoprazole with placebo in children with poor asthma control who were receiving inhaled corticosteroid treatment. Three hundred six participants enrolled from April 2007 to September 2010 at 19 US academic clinical centers were followed up for 24 weeks. A subgroup had an esophageal pH study before randomization.

INTERVENTION
Participating children were randomly assigned to receive either lansoprazole, 15 mg/d if weighing less than 30 kg or 30 mg/d if weighing 30 kg or more (n = 149), or placebo (n = 157).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
The primary outcome measure was change in Asthma Control Questionnaire (ACQ) score (range, 0-6; a 0.5-unit change is considered clinically meaningful). Secondary outcome measures included lung function measures, asthma-related quality of life, and episodes of poor asthma control.

RESULTS
The mean age was 11 years (SD, 3 years). The mean difference in change (lansoprazole minus placebo) in the ACQ score was 0.2 units (95% CI, 0.0-0.3 units). There were no statistically significant differences in the mean difference in change for the secondary outcomes of forced expiratory volume in the first second (0.0 L; 95% CI, -0.1 to 0.1 L), asthma-related quality of life (-0.1; 95% CI, -0.3 to 0.1), or rate of episodes of poor asthma control (relative risk, 1.2; 95% CI, 0.9-1.5). Among the 115 children with esophageal pH studies, the prevalence of GER was 43%. In the subgroup with a positive pH study, no treatment effect for lansoprazole vs placebo was observed for any asthma outcome. Children treated with lansoprazole reported more respiratory infections (relative risk, 1.3 [95% CI, 1.1-1.6]).

CONCLUSION
In this trial of children with poorly controlled asthma without symptoms of GER who were using inhaled corticosteroids, the addition of lansoprazole, compared with placebo, improved neither symptoms nor lung function but was associated with increased adverse events.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00442013.


BACKGROUND: Combined pulmonary fibrosis and emphysema (CPFE) is characterized by upper lung predominant emphysema and lower lung predominant fibrosis. However, optimal treatment of CPFE is not well known. AIMS AND OBJECTS: e reviewed the lung function change after CPFE treatment to evaluate treatment response. METHODS: We reviewed medical records of CPFE patients in Korea University Guro Hospital for 10 years. We evaluated pulmonary function test (FEV 1 , FVC, DL CO /VA, composite physiologic index [CPI; 91- (0.65×%predicted DLco) – (0.53×%predicted FVC) + (0.34×%predicted FEV 1 )] at baseline and after 24months) and treatment of CPFE patients. RESULTS: Thirty-nine CPFE patients treated as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) were analyzed. Among them, 13 patients were treated as COPD with long acting muscarinic antagonist (LAMA) and 12 patients were treated as IPF with steroid, other immunosuppressants or colchine. CPI changes within 24 months were lower with patients treated with COPD (17.99±13.70 with COPD treatment, 7.09±17.72 without COPD treatment, p =0.041). However, DL CO /VA change within 24 months (2.80±18.16 with IPF treatment, 24.25±17.10 without IPF treatment, p =0.002) and CPI change within 24 months (11.05±17.28 with IPF treatment, 21.81±8.37 without IPF treatment, p =0.048) were rather higher with patients treated with IPF. CONCLUSIONS: Patients treated as COPD with inhaled bronchodilator showed improvement in CPI. However, when treated as IPF with immunosuppressants, DL CO /VA and CPI after 24 months rather aggravated. Although this is a retrospective and limited data, patients with CPFE may get benefit when properly treated as COPD with proper long acting inhaled bronchodilator.


Forget Mexico the sombrero-in-hand superdebtor always on the edge of default, poverty, and social explosion. The Mexico that many now see is a dynamic economy about to take its place beside the United States and Canada in an integrated regional economy. The new vision is shared by the Bush administration, most economists, and a growing cohort of businessmen and bankers. The North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) could become a legal reality before the long-heralded economic unification of the European Community countries occurs at the end of next year. Tripolar global economy. Whether or not a formal North American Free Trade Area ever comes into being, the region's economies will be natural allies in global competition with two other regional economic powers. One is Western Europe, which in time may include the transitioning economies of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. The two key economic groups here are the 12-nation European Community (EC) and the six-nation European Free Trade Association (EFTA). The third pole is a cluster of fast growing Asian economies powered by Japan. This group includes Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. in population, the Asian group leads with a little more than 500 million. North America has 360 million, and the 12 EC countries have 326 million. In GNP, North America leads with about $6.0 trillion, followed by the EC with about $4.8 trillion and the Asian group with $3.5 trillion. Together, these groups, with about 23% of the world's population, produce about 70% its output. What's in it for bankers? The proposal for a U.S.-Mexico free-trade area came up so suddenly that many bankers haven't had time to take positions on it. But contacts with several bankers who are familiar with the plan yielded enthusiastic support for a trade agreement with Mexico folded into the existing free-trade area with Canada. Gary Jacobs, who heads $1.2 billion Laredo National Bank in the Texas border town of Laredo, calls the NAFTA package the " most important accord the U.S. has entered into in the last 50 years. Peter McPherson, who heads the Latin America Division of BankAmerica, also calls the agreement "historic" and hints that his bank is poised to open branches in Mexico as soon as present bans are lifted. Citibank chairman John Reed has said that with the opening of the Mexican economy and its banking sector, " we are going to be able to operate under the same rules and conditions that apply to any Mexican bank." Citibank, which has the only private foreign bank in the country, wants to open branches all over Mexico and offer whole-enchilada retail banking to service what another Citibanker called the imminent "takeoff of the middle class" there. Nonbank-bank American Express is eager to provide more travel-related financial services to what is already its most-profitable single market outside the U.S. The banking payoffs of free trade with Mexico fall into three categories: trade finance, corporate finance, and retail banking. Trade finance. As U.S.-Mexico trade grows, so will the need for letters of credit and banking expertise in foreign trade. The accompanying graph shows the pattern of this trade over the past 20 years: Exports and imports were well balanced in the 1970s, though on a slow growth path. Through most of the 80s, imports climbed steadily; exports lagged as Mexico struggled to achieve a positive trade balance. Beginning in 1988, both exports and imports zoomed as the Mexican reforms took hold and confidence grew. Forecasters expect this rapid growth to continue, with or without a trade agreement. Because trade with Mexico accounts for about 25% of the U.S. total and effects all regions, bankers anywhere can participate in the upsurge of trade finance. Of course, it helps if you're located at a trade gateway, like New York, San Francisco, or Laredo, Texas. …


Medical report generation, which aims to automatically generate a long and coherent report of a given medical image, has been receiving growing research interests. Existing approaches mainly adopt a supervised manner and heavily rely on coupled image-report pairs. However, in the medical domain, building a large-scale image-report paired dataset is both time-consuming and expensive. To relax the dependency on paired data, we propose an unsupervised model Knowledge Graph Auto-Encoder (KGAE) which accepts independent sets of images and reports in training. KGAE consists of a pre-constructed knowledge graph, a knowledge-driven encoder and a knowledge-driven decoder. The knowledge graph works as the shared latent space to bridge the visual and textual domains; The knowledge-driven encoder projects medical images and reports to the corresponding coordinates in this latent space and the knowledge-driven decoder generates a medical report given a coordinate in this space. Since the knowledge-driven encoder and decoder can be trained with independent sets of images and reports, KGAE is unsupervised. The experiments show that the unsupervised KGAE generates desirable medical reports without using any image-report training pairs. Moreover, KGAE can also work in both semi-supervised and supervised settings, and accept paired images and reports in training. By further fine-tuning with image-report pairs, KGAE consistently outperforms the current state-of-the-art models on two datasets.


Fara Warner has written about marketing, advertising and consumer trends for more than 15 years in various newspapers, magazines and books. She is the author of the book, The Power of the Purse, from which this article was taken. Women's access to money and power has transformed the way they approach brands, businesses, products and services. Women now influence the vast majority of purchasing decisions - and every year, they gain direct control over trillions in new wealth.


Runge-Kutta methods are the classic family of solvers for ordinary differential equations (ODEs), and the basis for the state of the art. Like most numerical methods, they return point estimates. We construct a family of probabilistic numerical methods that instead return a Gauss-Markov process defining a probability distribution over the ODE solution. In contrast to prior work, we construct this family such that posterior means match the outputs of the Runge-Kutta family exactly, thus inheriting their proven good properties. Remaining degrees of freedom not identified by the match to Runge-Kutta are chosen such that the posterior probability measure fits the observed structure of the ODE. Our results shed light on the structure of Runge-Kutta solvers from a new direction, provide a richer, probabilistic output, have low computational cost, and raise new research questions.


Two distinct substructures were produced in a Ni-30Fe austenitic model alloy by different thermomechanical processing routes. The first substructure largely displayed organized, banded subgrain arrangements with alternating misorientations, resulting from the deformation at a strain just before the initiation of dynamic recrystallization (DRX). By contrast, the second substructure was more random in character and exhibited complex subgrain/cell arrangements characterized by local accumulation of misorientations, formed through DRX. During the post-deformation annealing, the latter substructure revealed a rapid disintegration of dislocation boundaries leading to the formation of dislocation-free grains within a short holding time, though the former largely preserved its characteristics till becoming replaced by growing statically recrystallized grains.


We describe a case of retrovesical liposarcoma in a male patient with concurrent COVID-19. A 50-year-old man had lower urinary tract symptoms and dull pain along his right gluteus. Due to COVID-19 infection, management was delayed. During self-isolation, the patient developed urinary retention and his pain level was an eight on the Visual Analogue Scale. A urinary catheter and an epidural catheter were inserted without any difficulty. Abdominal-pelvic MRI revealed a retrovesical mass suspected of liposarcoma with clear borders from surrounding organs. Following two consecutive negative SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests, we proceeded with surgery. Histopathology was dedifferentiated liposarcoma. Postoperatively, the patient suffered reactivation of COVID-19, and he was eventually discharged after two consecutive negative results on the PCR test on Post Operative Day (POD)-10. Retrovesical dedifferentiated liposarcoma is rare and considered as high-grade liposarcoma. Although surgery may exacerbate COVID-19 infection, surgical resection of symptomatic high-grade sarcoma is prioritised and performed as soon as no infection detected.


Abstract In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the current focus of teachers' continuing professional development in the area of special educational needs is competency-based. This focus reflects the government's policy view of special educational provision in schools, which is closely compatible with a 'technical rational' (technicist) approach to management (Habermas, 1974). Technicist approaches assume that what needs to be managed, the purposes to be achieved and the management process are clear, fixed and unproblematic. Personal experiences of those closely concerned with the special needs area in schools, especially of those involved with designing or receiving special provision, suggest a contrary view. The real world in schools is fraught with uncertainty, complexity and conflicting viewpoints. This article will illustrate how a technicist approach is inadequate to address management practices in special educational provision. It will go on to discuss ways in which practice in this area can most effectively be conceptualised from the perspective of a reflective practitioner )Schön, 1983, 1987(


Textile has a high structure capacity, is adaptive to multiple situations and is applied in food, energy, environmental, construction and medical industries. Its stable and flexible characteristics are sure to attract even more attention. Biofunctional textile is one of the most important categories of functional textile, taking up 7% of the total amount, and is expected to be the most promising section of growth. Due to the restrict requirement of fibre production, chitosan is one of the few materials that can be spun into pure fibre. The pure chitosan fibre can be blend with other fibres and produce durable functional fabric suitable for medical as well as daily use. This article also reviewed existed modifica tion on chitosan material prepared for fibre spinning and technology related to chitosan- based textile production and discussed the difficulties and possible solutions in chitosan yarn spinning and possible ways of fabric forming.


Recent reports have proposed endoscopy as an alternative strategy to radiography for gastric cancer (GC) screening. The current study presents the first reported population‐based data from a large GC screening program that provided endoscopic examinations. A retrospective population‐based study was conducted using the National Cancer Screening Program (NCSP) database. We evaluated GC detection rates, sensitivity, specificity, and the positive predictive value of an endoscopic screening program for the average‐risk Korean population, aged 40 years and older, who underwent the NCSP from 2002 to 2005. The detection rates of GC by endoscopy in the first and subsequent rounds were 2.71 and 2.14 per 1000 examinations, respectively. Localized cancer accounted for 45.7% of screen‐detected GC cases. The sensitivity of endoscopy was 69% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 66.3–71.8). The endoscopic screening was less sensitive for the detection of localized GC (65.7%, 95% CI = 61.8–69.5) than for regional or distant GC (73.6%, 95% CI = 67.4–79.8). In the multiple logistic models for localized GC and all combined GC, the odds ratio (OR) of sensitivity for the undifferentiated type was statistically significantly higher than that for the differentiated type, whereas the OR of sensitivity for the mixed type was lower than that for the differentiated type. The sensitivity of the endoscopic test in a population‐based screening was slightly higher for the detection of regional or distant GC than for localized GC. Further evaluation of the impact of endoscopic screening should take into account the balance of cost and mortality reduction. (Cancer Sci 2011; 102: 1559–1564)


This brief studies the effects that announcements about unconventional monetary policies (large-scale asset purchases, refinancing operations, and forward guidance) have on nominal exchange rates. To this end, the authors use high-frequency intra-daily data and look at the variations in government future yields and in nominal exchange rates over a narrow window around the time of the announcements. They find that expansionary monetary policy shocks embedded in announcements made by the Federal Reserve depreciate the U. S. dollar. In contrast, the authors also find that similar unexpected expansionary announcements by foreign central banks result in an appreciation of the U. S. dollar.


After a brief summary of the ideas underlying the quantum theory of dispersion it is shown that it can be applied to the refraction of x-rays, although the assumption that the number of atoms in a wave length cube is large is no longer satisfied. A general formula for the index of refraction in terms of the atomic absorption coefficient α and the critical frequencies is given. From the condition, experimentally verified, that the electrons in the atom for impressed frequencies, large compared to their natural frequencies, shall act like free electrons as far as the index of refraction is concerned, a relation is obtained for α. From the failure of this relation when applied to the groups of electrons separately, conclusions are drawn as to the coupling of the groups. Some considerations on the origin of the Compton shifted radiation are added, from which it appears that in the wave description this radiation must be regarded as coming from all the atoms and as being coherent with the incident waves; a result suited to stress the difficulty of harmonizing the wave picture with that of quantum processes in the atoms.1


Raman spectroscopic studies of surface phenomena require special sample handling procedures. Among the parameters that must be considered in the designing of a cell for spectral studies of catalytic surface phenomena are: (1) facile sample alignment; (2) vacuum control; (3) temperature treatment capabilities to at least 600°C; (4) maximum optical transparency to minimize signal loss; and (5) sample rotation capabilities for those samples that are susceptible to decomposition upon continuous laser irradiation. It is noted that many, if not most, catalysts are susceptible to thermal degradation and therefore sample rotation is mandatory. A cell, herein described, that incorporates these parameters has been designed, constructed, and tested.


A survivability model can be a useful component of a tactical support system able to aid fighter pilots to assess the risk of getting hit by enemy fire from ground-based threats. This work identifies three desirable properties of such a model: it should allow for evaluating actions; it should enable domain experts to incorporate their knowledge; and it should represent uncertainties both regarding the locations of the threats as well as their future actions. A survivability model is suggested, which calculates the probability that the aircraft can fly a route unharmed and allows for routes of different lengths to be compared. A domain expert can describe the threats by specifying the risk of getting hit at a position of the route without having to consider the earlier actions of the aircraft and the threats. Three different threat models are suggested and compared. The influence of uncertainties regarding the positions of the threats is studied by calculating the probability density function for the survivability. Different representations that take into account both the uncertainty regarding the present and future situation are discussed. The results indicate that the suggested survivability model could be a useful component of a future tactical support system, even though some further development is needed.


I study the effect of improved financial intermediation on the process of capital accumulation by augmenting a standard model with a general contract space. With the extra contracts, intermediaries endogenously begin using ROSCAs, or Rotating Savings and Credit Associations. These contracts allow poor agents, previously credit rationed, access to credit. As a result, agents work harder and total economy-wide output increases; however, these gains come at the cost of increased inequality. I provide sufficient conditions for the allocations to be Pareto optimal, and for there to be a unique invariant distribution of wealth. I provide an analytic characterization of a simple model and use numerical techniques to study more general models.


Many discrete-event systems (DES's), such as manufacturing systems, database management systems, communication networks, traffic systems, etc., can be modeled as input-output discrete-event systems (I/O DES's). In this paper we formulate and study the problem of stable realization of such systems in the logical setting. Given an input and an output language describing the sequences of events that occur at the input and output, respectively, of an I/O DES, we study whether it is possible to realize the system as a unit consisting of a given set of buffers of finite capacity, called a dispatching unit. The notions of stable, conditionally stable, dispatchable and conditionally dispatchable units are introduced as existence of stable (or input-output bounded), and causal (or prefix preserving) input-output maps, and effectively computable necessary and sufficient conditions for testing them are obtained. >


: Although the clinical syndrome of sepsis is a major problem in equine neonates, the pathophysiology of this condition remains incomplete. Because the term sepsis describes a broad range of disorders with different underlying causes and often different prognoses, the understanding of this process is further complicated. Continued progress is being made, however, in defining the syndromes associated with sepsis and in elucidating the mechanisms involved in these processes. Attempts at modulating the septic process by interfering with the action of bacterial toxins or the production or activity of individual mediators have not been successful, thereby reinforcing that this is a multifactorial response. Fortunately, the complex interactions of intra- and extracellular messengers leading to clinical sepsis continue to be defined. An increased understanding of the processes involved in the septic response may aid in the identification of patients with these syndromes as well as improve the effectiveness of treatment regimens.


The atomic composition and chemical structure of polymers is fundamental to dictating properties and applications. While much work has addressed controlling pendant group functionalities and polymer molecular weight, much less work has focused on novel polymer backbone chemistries. Herein we report experimental and computational investigations of the polymerization of triisopropyl silyl (TIPS) ketene, and detail products formed. TIPS ketene reacts with an alkoxide initiator to give an enolate intermediate that propagates through either the carbon or oxygen atom, giving multiple functional groups in the resulting polymer backbone. This work indicates that silyl ketenes are suitable monomers for chain growth polymerizations, and that they can polymerize through both the CC and CO to prepare multiple polymer functionalities from a single monomer.


Due to economic and political changes in Poland the market for educational services has changed. A worldwide trend for an early start in foreign language (FL) instruction is reflected in the accelerated growth of numbers of younger children enrolled into various forms of FL learning in Poland. Recent changes in the new National Curriculum introduced the possibility of starting FL learning from the first grade of the elementary school. However, it seems that teacher training has not yet responded to the growing demand for qualified FL teachers of young learners (FLTYL).

This study presents the results of an evaluation of how the present TT provision meets the educational needs of teachers involved in teaching FL to young children and what changes should be made in order to address those needs in a better way. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to elicit information from different perspectives: current FLTYLs, prospective Early Years (EY) and FL teachers, and academic staff from the Higher Pedagogical School of Bydgoszcz, one of the institutions providing teacher training in Poland. Moreover, the findings were supported with the results of the surveys among the elementary and language school head teachers and parents of children from grades 1-3, which assessed the current and future needs in the area of FL teaching to young children.

The research findings suggest that the present TT is flawed in at least two aspects. First of all, it seems not to recognise how widespread early FL instruction has become and consequently fails to respond to a growing demand for a higher number of qualified FLTYLs. Secondly, neither FL teacher training nor Early Years Education teacher training appears to equip the teachers with the necessary competencies and qualifications. The two basic problems of acceptance and implementation of a new FLTYL training programme, or modifying the existing provision, are shortage of qualified teacher trainers and insufficient cooperation between the departments that traditionally work separately. As a result, arriving at a common policy regarding optimal FLTYL qualifications and competencies, course organisation, its content, and training methods to be used, is problematic. The study offers some solutions as to how the existing impasse might be overcome.


Black bear (Ursus americanus) damage to managed conifer stands during the spring in the U.S. Pacific Northwest is a continuing management concern. Because bear damage to managed conifers may reflect the limited availability of nutritious foods, supplemental feeding has been used to decrease damage. Highly palatable. pelleted feed is provided ad libitum from April until late June when berries ripen and such damage stops. We examined black bear use of supplemental feed during the spring and summer of 1998 and 1999 in western Washington. Bears were captured in areas where supplemental feed was provided and in control areas where no effort to reduce conifer damage occurred. Mass gains for bears captured twice were 153 ± 119 g/day (x ± SD) in the fed areas and 12 ± 104 g/day in non-fed areas. Fat gain for bears in the fed areas was 42 ± 50 g/day and 4 ± 59 g/day in the non-fed areas. However, because age-specific body masses and fat content did not differ between the 2 areas. short-term pellet feeding probably has no long-lasting effect on bear condition or productivity. The diet of bears in the fed areas was 55 ± 22% pelleted feed, 7 ± 7% animal matter, and 38 ± 18% vegetation. The diet of bears in the non-fed areas was 13 ± 17% animal matter and 87 ± 17% vegetation, Grass and sedge composed the majority of vegetation consumed in both areas. The energy content of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) sapwood was more digestible (60-67%) than grasses and forbs (18-47%). Smaller bears (adult females and subadult males and females) may do most of the damage because sapwood harvesting rates minimize nutritional gain to larger adult males.


Protagonists for 'the public understanding of science' still sometimes fail to recognize that there is also a need for 'the scientists' understanding of the public' and that for most of science most of the time we are all public. 'Science' is communicated to 'the public' through popular books, museums, TV, the Internet, but far too often the present state of scientific belief is presented uncritically as the onward march of truth as discovered by Euro-American males. This has contributed to a widespread public concern, if not mistrust, in many areas of science, not least genetics and neuroscience. Although researchers often criticize the media for misrepresenting their work, the hype and simplifications often begin with the press releases put out by the researchers, their institutions and the scientific journals themselves. I conclude by looking more optimistically at the ways in which, by bringing natural science into theatre, novels and other art forms, the fragmentation of our culture may be diminished.


Nanowires of Pr0.57Ca0.41Ba0.02MnO3 (PCBM) (diameter approximately 80-90 nm and length approximately 3.5 microm) were synthesized by a low reaction temperature hydrothermal method. Single-phase nature of the sample was confirmed by XRD experiments. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to characterize the morphology and microstructures of the nanowires. While the bulk PCBM is known to exhibit charge order (CO) below 230 K along with a ferromagnetic transition at 110 K, SQUID measurements on the nanowires of PCBM show that the charge order is completely absent and a ferromagnetic transition occurs at 115 K. However, the magnetization in the nanowires is observed to be less compared to that in the bulk. This observation of the complete 'melting' of the charge order in the PCBM nanowires is particularly significant in view of the observation of only a weakening of the CO in the nanowires of Pr0.5Ca0.5MnO3. Electron paramagnetic resonance experiments were also carried out on the PCBM nanowires using an X-band EPR spectrometer. Characteristic differences were observed in the line width of nanowires when compared with that of the bulk.


In the 1930s, as nations braced for war, the German military build up caught Britain and the United States off-guard, particularly in aviation technology. The unending quest for speed resulted in the need for radical alternatives to piston engines. In Germany, Dr. Hans von Ohain was the first to complete a flight-worthy turbojet engine for aircraft. It was installed in a Heinkel-designed aircraft, and the Germans began the jet age on August 27, 1939. The Germans led the jet race throughout the war and were the first to produce jet aircraft for combat operations. In England, the doggedly determined Frank Whittle also developed a turbojet engine, but without the support enjoyed by his German counterpart. The British came second in the jet race when Whittle's engine powered the Gloster Pioneer on May 15, 1941. The Whittle-Gloster relationship continued and produced the only Allied combat jet aircraft during the war, the Meteor, which was relegated to Home Defense in Britain. In America, General Electric copied the Whittle designs, and Bell Aircraft contracted to build the first American jet plane. On October 1, 1942, a lackluster performance from the Bell Airacomet, ushered in the American jet age. The Yanks forged ahead, and had numerous engine and airframe programs in development by the end of the war. But, the Germans did it right and did it first, while the Allies lagged throughout the war, only rising to technological prominence on the ashes of the German defeat. Pavelec's analysis of the jet race uncovers all the excitement in the high-stakes race to develop effective jet engines for warfare and transport.


FTIR spectroscopy was recently demonstrated to be a useful tool to obtain a unique fingerprint of the effects of several anticancer drugs on cells in culture. While FTIR spectroscopy appears to have a definite potential to sort anticancer drugs on the basis of the metabolic modifications they induced, the present challenge is to evaluate the drug-induced spectral changes in cancer cells on a larger scale. The coupling of FTIR spectroscopy with a high throughput screening extension could become a useful method to generate drug classifications based on their "modes of action". Practically, the robustness of this approach is jeopardized by the variability that can appear from one cell smear to the next. When a few cells are scattered on the support, strong scattering effects are observed and locally dense cell aggregates could result in non-linearity of the signal. A microscopic study using infrared imaging demonstrates that the mean HTS (96-well High Throughput Spectroscopy) spectra recorded on 96 well ZnSe plates are the averages of contributions characterized by a wide absorbance distribution and by Mie scattering effects which significantly vary from point to point. Spectrum quality is at its best at the highest cell concentrations, i.e. from 300 000 to 400 000 cells per well, which present the best S/N and a relatively smaller Mie scattering effect. When the breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 was treated with four different polyphenols, spectra showed quite similar variations with respect to control spectra, with more intense variations for the quercetin and EGCG compared to resveratrol and capsaicin. Correction of the spectra with the RMieS algorithm improved their clustering according to the polyphenolic treatment.


In this paper a Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) Physical layer (PHY) technique is proposed that allows Secondary User (SU) access to the traditional FM Radio spectrum (88-108 MHz) for alternative data communication applications. FM radio waves have excellent propagation characteristics for long distance transmission, and have high levels of penetration through buildings. Using tools such as a structured geolocation database of licensed Primary User (PU) FM Radio transmitters, unlicensed SUs can access portions of the 20 MHz-wide band and transmit signals that place spectral 'holes' with suitable guard bands around all known PUs. Based on the PU protection ratios published by Ofcom and the FCC, the operation of a FBMC (Filter Bank Multi-Carrier) transmitter is demonstrated for an urban environment, and through 'field test' simulation it is shown that the Out Of Band (OOB) leakage of the proposed PHY (energy in the 'holes' that can interfere with the PU) is 47 dB lower than that of using an equivalent OFDM PHY. The results show that the proposed PHY is a suitable candidate for DSA-SU communication (e.g. in smart city IoT applications), whilst ensuring the integrity of incumbent PU signals.


New breakthroughs in image coding possibly rely in signal decomposition through non-separable basis functions. The work proposed in this paper provides an adaptive way of representing images as a sum of two-dimensional features. It presents a low bit-rate image coding method based on a Matching Pursuit expansion, over a dictionary built on anisotropic refinement and rotation of contour-like atoms. This method is shown to provide, at low bit-rates, results comparable to the state of the art in image compression, represented here by JPEG-2000 and SPIHT, showing that the visual quality is generally better in the Matching Pursuit scheme. The coding artifacts are less annoying than the ringing introduced by wavelets at very low bit rate, due to the smoothing performed by the basis functions used in the MP algorithm. In addition to good compression performance at low bit rate, the new coder has the advantage of producing highly flexible scalable streams. These can easily be decoded at any spatial resolution, different from the original image, and the bitstream can be truncated at any point to match diverse bandwidth requirements. The spatial adaptivity is shown to be more flexible and less complex than transcoding operations generally applied to state of the art codec bitstreams. Due to both its ability for capturing the most important parts of multidimensional signals, and a flexible stream structure, the image coder proposed in this paper represents an interesting solution to image coding for visual communication applications.


BACKGROUND
Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) often suffer from exacerbations caused by infections of the bronchial tract.

OBJECTIVE
What effects do hydrotherapeutic applications according to Kneipp have on lung function, blood gases, immune system and quality of life of patients with COPD?

PATIENTS AND METHODS
20 patients with COPD (17 males, 3 females); mean age: 64; forced expiratory volume (FEV1): 62 of 100% (on average); no acute exacerbations, no oral corticosteroids. Measurements were performed (I) at 10 weeks pre-treatment, (II) immediately before therapy (I-II: baseline-period), (III) after 10 weeks treatment with 3 cold affusions and 2 cold washings of the upper part of the body (self-treatment) per week each, (IV) 3 months after completion of the treatment (follow- up). The following parameters were measured: lung function, blood gases, routine lab, experimental lab (interleukines, lymphocytes), maximal expiratory flow (PEF), quality of life and respiratory infections.

RESULTS
The pH increased over the course of the study. PEF and the number of lymphocytes significantly increased over the treatment (II-III). Intracellular expression of IL-4 by T lymphocytes decreased. However, the expression of IFN-gamma increased. Frequency of infections was lower during follow-up (IV) than before and during therapy. Quality of life after treatment was estimated to be good in all patients.

CONCLUSIONS
Repeated cold stimulations (affusions) can influence the frequency of respiratory infections and improve subjective well-being. It may cause an immunological modulation in terms of the Th1-type pattern.


"Since the launch of Sputnik I in 1957, thousands of satellites have been sent into space on missions to collect data about the Earth. Today, the ability to forecast weather, climate, and natural hazards depends critically on these satellite-based observations. Satellites have revolutionized how humans view and understand the home planet, helped address fundamental scientific questions, and enabled a plethora of applications with important societal benefits. Continued Earth observations from space will be required to address scientific and societal challenges of the future."


US EPA has finalized federal Water Quality Criteria for nonylphenol, a biodegradation intermediate of nonylphenol ethoxylates, which are commonly used surfactants. To provide information in support of this initiative, an assessment was made of the ability of wastewater treatment plants to remove these and other alkylphenol ethoxylate (APEO) surfactants that are used widely in domestic and industrial applications. This paper, based on a monograph prepared for the Alkylphenols & Ethoxylates Research Council (Melcer et al, 2006), summarizes the results of this work and provides guidance on the factors influencing treatment plant operation and on optimum values of these factors to ensure high removals of APEOs. In general, for activated sludge systems, it was found that criteria such as high solids retention time (SRT) and hydraulic retention time (HRT) that apply to the degradation of many complex man-made compounds also apply to APEOs; that is, a minimum SRT of approximately 10 days and a minimum HRT of 8-10 hours were required to ensure high levels of ultimate APEO degradation.


In this paper, we conduct an empirical study on discovering the ordered collective dynamics obtained by a population of artificial intelligence (AI) agents. Our intention is to put AI agents into a simulated natural context, and then to understand their induced dynamics at the population level. In particular, we aim to verify if the principles developed in the real world could also be used in understanding an artificially-created intelligent population. To achieve this, we simulate a large-scale predator-prey world, where the laws of the world are designed by only the findings or logical equivalence that have been discovered in nature. We endow the agents with the intelligence based on deep reinforcement learning, and scale the population size up to millions. Our results show that the population dynamics of AI agents, driven only by each agent's individual self interest, reveals an ordered pattern that is similar to the Lotka-Volterra model studied in population biology. We further discover the emergent behaviors of collective adaptations in studying how the agents' grouping behaviors will change with the environmental resources. Both of the two findings could be explained by the self-organization theory in nature.


One of the great joys of football fandom is that it provides the perfect opportunity to complain and make a point. For example, the referee was biased, the overpaid strikers hopeless, attendance poor, the tea weak and the pies inedible. That, for many fans, is a part of the attraction which football holds for them. Yet every so often, a situation will arise at a club where passive complaint is simply not enough - occasions where big business or individual greed set out to exploit those who walk through the turnstiles, where freedoms are curtailed or where incompetent management is ruining a proud legacy. Against these indignations, there comes a point when it is action and not words that are required. "Rebellion" is about those situations. Using anecdotes and interviews with the people at the heart of the movements, as well as ordinary fans, it examines many of the well-known protests and looks at how and why certain groups of fans succeeded in their particular battle. Just as importantly, it also looks at why other campaigns failed and how, all too often, those protests simply degenerated into ugly violence, hooliganism and intimidation. From the stratosphere of the Premiership to the lowest reaches of the national league, the author examines the greatest outcries of British football and investigates the tense, and at times, violent atmosphere behind each one: a gripping expose of organised dissent and disorganised ruckus.


The fight on tuberculosis initiated after World War II with the imposition of the Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine by the WHO in 1950, and the discovery of the drug streptomycin, which was rapidly followed by a recommended 4 drug regimen (isoniazid, ethambutol, rifampicin, pyrazinamide, and streptomycin being reserved to resistant cases). The diagnostic that justified a treatment was based on the microscopic examination of bacterial presence in sputum, that is, the bacilloscopy, and on culture in vitro of the pathogen, which is more expensive and much more demanding on time. During the following 7 decennia, this approach remained unchanged: no new vaccines were developed despite the documented observed ineffectiveness of the BCG, and the 4 drug regimen (plus streptomycin) admitted additional drugs only from 2012 on. The ineffectiveness of the original 4 + 1-drug cocktail, that became obvious in France in 1994, is traced in part to the immunodepressing effect of some of them. The use of only four drugs also favors defensive mutations by the pathogen. The late addition of more antibiotics to the regular regimen applied to multidrug-resistant-cases may be useful on the immediate term but side effects are crimpling and evidently, measures in addition to "more drugs" must be taken to control the disease. A diagnostic based exclusively on antigen detection remained the norm during nearly 7 decennia. This detection benefited from technologically improved methods (e.g., the interferon test and the numerous nucleic acid amplification tests). The latest of these is the GeneXpert/RIF test. This newly devised antigen test is a quantitative improvement on previous tests detecting the presence of the antigen. However, due to its centralized system of analysis and inaccuracy, it is not suited for rural areas, and it does not favor communication between mycobacteriologist, immunologist, and clinician. In this review article, the concentration is on those rare publications that highlighted the problem posed by various diagnostic tests and their application.


Access to efficient and affordable air transport services is indispensable to economic communities made up of dispersed islands. It is often claimed that the contribution of the sector would be greatly debilitated however without the presence of national or regional flag carriers. A multi-method, net economic impact assessment indicates that the direct impact of the sector in terms of employment and contribution to GDP increases with the presence of local flag carriers. Yet the more significant indirect macroeconomic impacts of the sector, in terms of consumer surpluses, incoming visitor expenditures and business investments are all found to be better facilitated by foreign carriers. The magnitude of impact was primarily determined by exogenous factors namely, relative size of a state's real GDP, relative contribution of other sectors, relative level of trade dependency and relative level of socio-economic development, with larger impacts being noted in smaller, poorly diversified islands, chiefly dependent on sustaining a net surplus of air transport facilitated incoming visitor expenditure. Improvements to the performance of the sector are aligned with increases in aggregate incoming demand, thus far better supplied by cheaper, more frequent foreign carrier services providing a higher quality of service to and from the main source markets. Positive direct impact levels in those states with home carriers, low levels of service importing and an inverse relationship between local carrier absence and levels of connectivity show local carriers also play a significant facilitating role in the region's air transport sector.


The paper is done based on a survey on 170 Romanian firms. The results of the questionnaire show that R&D intensity depends on turnover and on geographical location. However, various sector-based R&D intensities are not conclusive (except the under-performing food and beverages industry, and the over-achiever electrical machinery sector), probably because the economic transformation is still ongoing in Romania. Furthermore, the type of ownership does not influence significantly the extent of R&D activity. One possible explanation is that local market characteristics are more important than the structure of ownership. More than half of the respondent firms have a specialized R&D department, but most of these departments operate with very few employees. On industry average, last year 81% of firms introduced new products, 61% introduced new technological processes, and 48% introduced new methods of distribution. 40% of firms increased their R&D expenses (35% as a net balance), while only a net balance of 7% increased their R&D employees. Despite the large share of product innovators, some other figures are striking and could only be interpreted that a large share of the new products come from imports, licensing or imitation, rather than from own R&D. In this regard, 55% of product innovative firms did not increase their R&D expenses, and 40% of them do not operate a specialized R&D department, while 63% of firms which were not process innovators still acted as product innovators. Domestic competitiveness is significantly influenced by the introduction of new distribution methods. The fact that new products or new processes failed to be statistically significant for domestic competitiveness may suggest that the nature of competition on the domestic market is altered. Instead, foreign competitiveness of Romanian firms is not influenced by the distribution method, which is a confirmation of Romanian exporters' dependency on foreign intermediaries. Foreign competitiveness is strongly and positively correlated with the introduction of new products and with the existence of a specialized R&D department. Product innovation increases foreign competitiveness, which is a sign of the normal functioning of foreign markets.


When emission in a conical relativistic jet ceases abruptly (or decays sharply), the observed decay light curve is controlled by the high-latitude "curvature effect." Recently, Uhm & Zhang found that the decay slopes of three gamma-ray burst (GRB) X-ray flares are steeper than what the standard model predicts. This requires bulk acceleration of the emission region, which is consistent with a Poynting-flux-dominated outflow. In this paper, we systematically analyze a sample of 85 bright X-ray flares detected in 63 Swift GRBs and investigate the relationship between the temporal decay index α and spectral index β during the steep decay phase of these flares. The α values depend on the choice of the zero time point t0. We adopt two methods. "Method I" takes as the first rising data point of each flare and is the most conservative approach. We find that at the 99.9% confidence level 56/85 flares have decay slopes steeper than the simplest curvature effect prediction and therefore are in the acceleration regime. "Method II" extrapolates the rising light curve of each flare backward until the flux density is three orders of magnitude lower than the peak flux density, and it defines the corresponding time as the zero time point ( ). We find that 74/85 flares fall into the acceleration regime at the 99.9% confidence level. This suggests that bulk acceleration is common and may even be ubiquitous among X-ray flares, pointing toward a Poynting-flux-dominated jet composition for these events.


Employing resource-based perspectives of the firm as a theoretical foundation, this article empirically examines the relationship between women in two different types of leadership roles and environmentally sustainable firms. I study an unbalanced panel data set of 2,006 wine firms in Australia for the period 2007–2014. The results suggests that when accounting for their individual, independent effects, women in technical leadership roles are positively associated with environmental sustainability, while women in professional leadership roles are not. However, the potential complementarities of women in both roles are explored, their interactive, co-joint (complementary) effect explains significantly more variance in the environmental sustainability variable than their individual effects. The results are discussed along with limitations and directions for future research.


Intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) provide students with a one-on-one tutor, allowing them to work at their own pace, and helping them to focus on their weaker areas. The RUR1–Python Learning Environment (RUR-PLE), a game-like virtual environment to help students learn to program, provides an interface for students to write their own Python code and visualize the code execution (Roberge 2005). RUR-PLE provides a fixed sequence of learning lessons for students to explore. We are extending RUR-PLE to develop the Playing to Program (PtP) ITS, which consists of three components: (1) a Bayesian student model that tracks student competence, (2) a diagnosis module that provides tailored feedback to students, and (3) a problem selection module that guides the student's learning process. In this paper, we summarize RUR-PLE and the PtP design, and describe an ongoing user study to evaluate the predictive accuracy of our student modeling approach.


This volume contains information on analyzing sphingolipids, sphingolipid transport and trafficking, and sphingolipid-protein interactions and cellular targets. Its companion Volume 311 presents methods used in studying enzymes of sphingolipid biosynthesis and turnover, including inhibitors of some of these enzymes, genetic approaches, and organic and enzymatic syntheses of sphingolipids and analogs. The critically acclaimed laboratory standard for more than forty years, Methods in Enzymology is one of the most highly respected publications in the field of biochemistry. Since 1955, each volume has been eagerly awaited, frequently consulted, and praised by researchers and reviewers alike. Now with more than 300 volumes (all of them still in print), the series contains much material still relevant today--truly an essential publication for researchers in all fields of life sciences.


The growth in data generated by private and public organizations leads to several opportunities to obtain valuable knowledge. In this scenario, data science becomes pertinent to define a structured methodology to extract valuable knowledge from raw data. It encompasses a heterogeneous group of techniques that challenge the implementation of a single platform capable of incorporating all the available resources. Thus, it is necessary to formulate a data science workflow based on different tools to extract knowledge from massive datasets. In this context, high-performance computing (HPC) provides the infrastructure required to optimize the processing time of data science workflows, which become a collection of tasks that must be efficiently scheduled to provide results in acceptable time intervals. While few studies explore the use of HPC for data science tasks, in the best of our knowledge, none conducts an in-depth analysis of scheduling and load balancing on such workflows. In this context, this chapter proposes an analysis of scheduling and load balancing from the perspective of data science scenarios. It presents concepts, environments, and tools to summarize the theoretical background required to define, assign, and execute data science workflows. Furthermore, we are also presenting new trends concerning the intersection of data science, scheduling, and load balance.


Recently, intellectual property protection (IPP) techniques attracted a great deal of attention from semiconductor, system integration and software companies. A number of watermarking-based techniques have been proposed for IPP. One of the key limitations of watermarking is that it does not facilitate tracing of illegally resold intellectual property (IP). Fingerprinting resolves this problem by providing each customer with a unique instance of functionally identical IP. We propose a general technique which enables fingerprinting at all level of design process and is applicable to an arbitrary optimization step. In particular, we address the following fingerprinting problem: How to generate a large number of high quality solution for a given optimization problem by solving the initial problem only once. In addition we also discuss how to select a subset of k solutions from the pool of n solutions so that the solutions are maximally different.
In order to make our discussion concrete we focus on a single NP-complete problem -- graph coloring. We test the new fingerprinting on a number of standard benchmarks. Interestingly, while on random graphs it is relatively difficult to produce a large number of solutions without nontrivial quality degradation, on all real-life compilation graphs we are able to generate millions of solution which are all optimal.


This article reviews the state of thinking on the governance role of public ownership and control. Optimal governance systems depend on the path of institutional development. Nevertheless, the transfer of operational control over productive assets to the private sector often yields a desirable governance system, because it may be more difficult for citizens to constrain political abuse than for governments to regulate private activity. In weak institutional environments, however, the process needs to be structured to avoid capture of the regulatory process. The speed of transfer should be matched to progress in developing a strong regulatory governance system, to which certain residual rights of intervention must be vested. After all, institutions are simply governance mechanisms with some degree of autonomy from both political and private interests. The gradual creation of institutions partially shielded from political power must become central to the development of an optimal mode of regulatory governance. The article presents suggestions for establishing accountability in regulatory governance, in particular by creating an internal control system based on a rotating board with representatives of users, producers, and civil society, in a process involving frequent reporting and disclosure.


This paper compares two different styles of reasoning with inductively defined predicates, each style being encapsulated by a corresponding sequent calculus proof system. The first system supports traditional proof by induction, with induction rules formulated as sequent rules for introducing inductively defined predicates on the left of sequents. We show this system to be cut-free complete with respect to a natural class of Henkin models; the eliminability of cut follows as a corollary. The second system uses infinite (non-well-founded) proofs to represent arguments by infinite descent. In this system, the left rules for inductively defined predicates are simple case-split rules, and an infinitary, global condition on proof trees is required to ensure soundness. We show this system to be cut-free complete with respect to standard models, and again infer the eliminability of cut. The second infinitary system is unsuitable for formal reasoning. However, it has a natural restriction to proofs given by regular trees, i.e. to those proofs representable by finite graphs. This restricted "cyclic" system subsumes the first system for proof by induction. We conjecture that the two systems are in fact equivalent, i.e., that proof by induction is equivalent to regular proof by infinite descent.


Grammaticalization, and especially degrammaticalization, are polysemous terms. The term 'grammaticalization' has been used to refer to changes from a lexical item to a grammatical item ('primary grammaticalization'), and from a grammatical item to a 'more grammatical' item ('secondary grammaticalization'). Likewise, the term 'degrammaticalization' may refer to changes from a grammatical item to a lexical item ('primary degrammaticalization'), and from a 'more grammatical' to a 'less grammatical' item ('secondary degrammaticalization'), as well as to a number of other types of changes. This paper discusses Lehmann's parameters of grammaticalization as a taxonomic tool, arguing that the parameters can be used to describe both grammaticalization and degrammaticalization changes, as well as to identify different subtypes of grammaticalization and degrammaticalization, with special emphasis on degrammaticalization.


LINI commends the approach of the NLS that the landscape character assessment (LCA) process is a continuous process, rather than one which can be completed as a frozen presentation of landscape type and value. This must be stated in High Level Objective 3. Whilst Northern Ireland completed its landscape character assessment in 2000, it has not been updated since. In England, LCAs are continuously reviewed by the local authorities. Ireland's LCAs should be updated continuously on an all-island and cross-administrative boundary basis. The LCA process should be one which leads to an understanding of landscape 'value'. The process of landscape planning advocated by the ELC means that by addressing the value of landscape, all other matters are addressed as a result. As such, the LCA process can become the basis for all decisions relating to planning and governance processes. This does not just apply to 'the countryside', but to all places: urban, rural and peri-urban, countryside and seascape.The ELC advocates a 'landscape planning process', and LINI requests that the current tendancy towards land-use planning is seriously reconsidered to align with ELC requirements. LINI commends the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2010 for its mandatory objective for landscape policies in local development plans, but advises that for these to be meaningful, it is essential that there is consistency as to the use of the term landscape. These objectives must refer to all aspects of landscape (rural, urban, peri-urban, seascape, of good quality, ordinary and degraded condition), as more than likely most local authorities consider this to be an objective for countryside of high quality. Consistency in the NLS is essential: some professionals prefer the term 'place' to landscape. However, LINI advises that often place is understood as a spatial consideration, rather than being inclusive of the time and ecology aspects of landscape under the ELC landscape definition. LINI advises that the term 'landscape' should be used throughout, with a clear definition relating to 'place' given at the outset of the document.


We analyze potential effects of demographic change and political constellations on higher education spending. In our panel analysis of west German states (Laender) for the period 1985 to 2002 we find empirical evidence for the hypothesis of a negative relationship between demographic aging and spending on public higher education. In contrast to the hypothesis of the classical partisan theory that implies higher public expenditures under leftist parties, we find that governments under conservative parties or a coalition between social democrats and conservatives spend more on public higher education than governments run by the social-democratic party alone.


We present a space-time coded system which achieves high throughput and good performance using low- complexity detection and decoding. We focus on a Rate 2 quasi- orthogonal space-time block code structure which enables us to achieve an overall throughput of 5.6 bits/symbol period with good performance and relatively simple decoding using iterative parallel interference cancellation. We show that this can be achieved through the use of a bit-mapped coded modulation (BMCM) structure using parallel short low density parity check codes. The proposed system is shown to perform well on flat Rayleigh fading channels with a wide range of normalized fade rates, and to be robust to channel estimation errors. A comparison with bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) is also provided.