We have been developing a Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) System for Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) structure of aircraft. This system can diagnose structural integrity of the composite and metal aircraft structure by analyzing a Lamb wave which is a type of ultrasonic wave. Our SHM system consists of Macro Fiber Composite (MFC) piezoelectric actuators, Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) optical fiber sensors, interrogation unit and control/analysis software. The MFC actuators and the FBG sensors are worked as source and detector of the Lamb wave, respectively. The Lamb wave propagates into aircraft structures and if there are some damages and defects in the structures, measured waveform will be changed. The analysis software of the SHM system can calculate degree of the damages and the defects by evaluation of the waveform change. The SHM system has been developed as an inspection and maintenance support system for the composite aircraft structure and it will reduce operation cost and improve flight safety. In the previous study, we had shown that the SHM system could diagnose debonding length quantitatively in the edge of the skin/stringer bonding region, generally called "Hot-Spot". And Probability of Detection (PoD) of the system was also evaluated. In this study, the SHM system is enhanced to be able to diagnose more widely region and its damage detection ability is evaluated. Test results show that the SHM system can diagnose structural integrity precisely not only in the HotSpot region but also entire bond-line of the composite aircraft structure. doi: 10.12783/SHM2015/25


This paper concerns the place of culture in ambulance services and the role of cultural perpetuation and the ways these are cross-cut by professional cultures. The paper argues that it is however difficult to define culture adequately and the ways in which it affects behaviour are obscure. Similarly, cultures may not be transformed as easily as sometimes suggested. Nevertheless, transforming cultures rather than changing structures is being seen as a favourite prescription seen by governments around the world. Using the conceptual framework of 'cultural perpetuation' (Obgonna and Harris, 2014), the paper provides empirical evidence about the various factors which perpetuate cultural characteristics in the ambulance service in the UK. The paper analyses the intra and extra cultural characteristics in a chosen ambulance trust and concludes that the ambulance response time targets are one of the key factors which counter change owing to cultural perpetuation which adds to the difficulties of delivering effective reforms. The key contribution of the paper is to explore the cultural perpetuation in an important healthcare organisation which is often neglected in management research.


This paper examines the current market for the New York State Partnership for Long-Term Care (NYSPLTC), a public-private partnership designed to encourage private insurance purchase. The potential market for long-term care insurance (LTCI) is analyzed based on market participants' ability to afford Partnership policies. Data from the U. S. Census and the NYSPLTC creates a demographic profile of potential purchasers. This profile identifies the subsets of the population who currently benefit from the policy and those who are eligible but not participating. The Partnership is not necessarily the best use of government resources because it may increase inequitable distribution of societal resources and may not create significant benefits to offset its costs. The policy subsidizes the cost of care for some who could fully pay, rather than dedicating limited resources to providing care for the poor. This trade-off is made under the assumption that strengthening the private LTCI market will eventually reduce reliance on publicly funded care. Long-term care financing is a market failure, as individuals do not presently have the proper incentives to make provision for the cost of possible end-of-life health and social care needs. This market failure must be dealt with in light of predicted increases in cost and increased usage of long-term care by the oldest old, our nation's fastest-growing demographic.


Confocal reflectance microscopy may enable real-time in vivo imaging and mapping of the margins of primary cutaneous melanoma. Confocal maps of primary, pigmented and amelanotic cutaneous melanomas show excellent correlation to histology. Subclinical, subsurface tumor margins may be determined for pre-surgical planning, to guide biopsy and excision.


Optical couplers such as fused optical fiber coupler are widely used in the
network communication systems as either splitters or combiners. There are
not much of theories available to describe the core and cladding interaction
model inside fused coupler's region. In this study, suitable Models for
analysis of core to cladding guidance interaction using BPM-CAD
simulation are created. While core guidance occurs in between core ratios
1 to 0.65, cladding guidance does support propagation at certain core ratio
lower than 0.65 with slightly different results between various Models. The
Models are also able to generate low excess losses in both the simulated
core guidance and cladding guidance.
Excess loss in real fused couplers depends on their elongations, which can
be controlled through certain set-up parameters such as torch head
positions and motor speed. The effects of changing hydrogen flowrate and torch head positions do not have direct relationship with the insertion loss
of WDM coupler, hence scientifically, the conclusion of fusion temperature
effect on coupling cannot be made. Some design parameters are found out
to confirm quite well with the parameters found from fabrication. This has
been demonstrated through theoretical pulling signatures for various fused
couplers.
Besides examining 1 x 2 fused couplers, the study on triangular shape
arrangement of 1 x 3 monolithic star couplers do indicate that equal
couplings in all output ports are possible if correct Intertwined Method of
twisting fibers is used. The same technology used in fabricating fused
coupler, is used to fabricate lattice filter, which has channel spacing 2.84
nm or 178 GHz. Generally, all the studies are carried out at most levels
including theory, simulation and experiment. These findings or data are
analyzed to show the relationship between them and they are also
discussed in details in this thesis


We propose a novel regularized adaptation technique for context dependent deep neural network hidden Markov models (CD-DNN-HMMs). The CD-DNN-HMM has a large output layer and many large hidden layers, each with thousands of neurons. The huge number of parameters in the CD-DNN-HMM makes adaptation a challenging task, esp. when the adaptation set is small. The technique developed in this paper adapts the model conservatively by forcing the senone distribution estimated from the adapted model to be close to that from the unadapted model. This constraint is realized by adding Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD) regularization to the adaptation criterion. We show that applying this regularization is equivalent to changing the target distribution in the conventional backpropagation algorithm. Experiments on Xbox voice search, short message dictation, and Switchboard and lecture speech transcription tasks demonstrate that the proposed adaptation technique can provide 2%-30% relative error reduction against the already very strong speaker independent CD-DNN-HMM systems using different adaptation sets under both supervised and unsupervised adaptation setups.


For possible applications of colloidal nanocrystals in optoelectronics and nanophotonics, it is of high interest to study their response at low excitation intensity with high repetition rates, as switching energies in the pJ/bit to sub-pJ/bit range are targeted. We develop a sensitive pump-probe method to study the carrier dynamics in colloidal PbS/CdS quantum dots deposited on a silicon nitride waveguide after excitation by laser pulses with an average energy of few pJ/pulse. We combine an amplitude modulation of the pump pulse with phase-sensitive heterodyne detection. This approach permits to use co-linearly propagating co-polarized pulses. The method allows resolving transmission changes of the order of 10−5 and phase changes of arcseconds. We find a modulation on a sub-nanosecond time scale caused by Auger processes and biexciton decay in the quantum dots. With ground state lifetimes exceeding 1 μs, these processes become important for possible realizations of opto-electronic switching and modulation...


he report covers OP-704 (approved in 1998), the IDB Action Plan on Natural Disasters (written in 2000), and operational and non-financial activities related to disaster prevention, mitigation and response undertaken by the Bank between 1995 and 2002. The report demonstrates that natural disasters pose great challenges to most of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and consequently to the Bank itself. The report concludes that there is a need in this situation to manage the risks from natural disasters with a view to reducing losses. At the same time, the report shows that risk management is a challenging proposition, conceptually and practically, with powerful incentives favoring reactive over proactive policies.


The electron emission properties of a material subject to incident radiation flux are key parameters in determining to what equilibrium charge a spacecraft will established under given environmental conditions. However, there is a complex relation between these emission properties and the charge built up in spacecraft insulators. Complex modeling codes have been developed to predict the potential a spacecraft will adopt as a consequence of its interaction with the space plasma. These require correct models of the electron yields as a function of charge to accurately predict the both the charge build up and the equilibrium potential of spacecraft components. This paper focuses on different methods appropriate to determine the fundamental electronic material property of total electron yield as the materials accumulates charge. Three methods for determining the uncharged total yield are presented: (i) The DC Continuous Beam Method is a relatively easy and accurate method appropriate for conductors and semiconductors with maximum total electron yield σmax<2 and resistivity ρ<106 Ω-cm. (ii) The Pulse-Yield Method seeks to minimize the effects of charging and is applicable to materials with σmax<4 and ρ up to >1024 Ω-cm. (iii) The Yield Decay Method is a very difficult and time consuming that uses a combination of measurement and modeling to measure the most difficult materials with σmax>4 and ρ up to >1024 Ω-cm. Data for high purity polycrystalline Au, Kapton HN, and polycrystalline aluminum oxide ceramic are presented. These data demonstrate the relative strengths and weaknesses of each method, but more importantly show that the methods described herein are capable of reliably measuring the total electron yield of almost any spacecraft material.


In connection with riding and handling of horses, many accidents that can cause severe injuries to both horses and humans are existent. The cause is in most cases that the horse is frightened. The horse's fear also affects its usefulness and it has been shown to have adverse effects on the horse's welfare. To increase safety and improve the welfare of both humans and horses, it is important to find appropriate training methods to reduce the fear of horses in frightening situations. This experimental study compares handled habituation to free habituation. The aim was to study the impact of these training methods on the horse's behaviour and habituation, and to find out which method is most successful to reduce the fear of horses in frightening situations. Twenty horses were randomly divided into groups of ten horses per training method. The horses had three training sessions each and then they were tested for the task, to go over a bridge consisting of assembled plywood boards lying on the ground.

About half of the horses passed the task, to go over the bridge, either correctly or with some small error. Only a very small difference between the two training methods were observed, handled habituation was found to be slightly better. Instead, a difference between horses with different use/breed and personality could be observed. The results indicate that the horses in the both training methods were calm during the test, all went with lowered heads and without any signs of escape behaviours or tenseness. During the training sessions the horses in handled habituation were closer to the bridge (P<0,05), and at the both training methods the horses were closer to the bridge for each training session. The study also found that horses with handled habituation showed more interest in the bridge compared to horses that were trained with free habituation, which had more interest to trot/canter and neigh to connect with other horses. Snorting and defecation were observed in more horses trained with free habituation while lowered head and escape behaviours were observed in more horses trained with handled habituation. Snorting, defecation and escape behaviours decreased from day one to day three.

It was concluded that training with habituation, both handled and free, can reduce fear in horses. It's a calm training method where the horses showed few behavioral signs of fear and these were of low accident risk. More research on habituation could be undertaken to develop the method so that accidents in riding and handling of horses can be reduced and horse welfare improved. Handled habituation was shown both in terms to cross the bridge, close to the bridge and behaviorally to be slightly more effective than free habituation. But the difference was very small and to draw any conclusions, further studies are required. This study suggests that humans may have a calming effect on the horses, but the training method that is best also seems to depend on the horse's personality.


Background/Context This article considers the role of Catholic schools, an institution born of the adaptation of previous immigrant waves, in the education of new immigrants and their native-born counterparts. The new immigrants enter a landscape in which education plays a much bigger role than it did for their predecessors and yet faces many challenges. Public schools, particularly in urban centers, struggle with financial difficulties and new standards of accountability. Although scholars and the media have praised Catholic schools for performing better than public schools in promoting academic achievement among urban low-income minority students, the Catholic system also faces fiscal difficulties, declining enrollments, and school closings. Purpose/Objective/Research Questions/Focus of Study We examine the use of Catholic school by families of different ethnic backgrounds and how attendance relates both to religious affiliation and to socioeconomic class. We also analyze whether attending or graduating from Catholic high school has a positive effect on educational attainment and on the incidence of arrest and incarceration for men, and early childbearing for women. Finally, we seek to understand why immigrant families choose Catholic schools and how their children experience them. Research Design We draw on data collected for the Immigrant Second Generation in Metropolitan New York Study (ISGMNY). The study includes survey data on 3,415 young adults aged 18–32 who were interviewed between 1998 and 2001. Respondents include second-generation immigrants and native-born individuals. The study also includes qualitative data from in-depth interviews. For this article, we use interviews conducted with 74 respondents from immigrant and native-born groups who attended Catholic high schools, and those who referenced Catholic schools in their educational history even if they did not attend. Conclusions/Recommendations For immigrant families who have arrived recently, religion seems to be more or less irrelevant to the decision to send their children to Catholic school. Instead, like many native Blacks and Latinos, these families choose Catholic schools to avoid what they see as a seriously deficient public school system. To some extent, this represents a rational choice, but for many immigrant families, it also reflects a lack of knowledge about the public education system. Although many low-income families would like to send their children to Catholic school, cost is an insurmountable barrier for many. With the exception of native-born Whites, socioeconomic factors are very important in shaping who can go to Catholic school and whether students can stay until graduation. In many cases, families were forced to withdraw their children by high school, when costs rise sharply. Nonetheless, overall, the data show a benefit in terms of educational attainment for nearly all groups, and also a positive impact in terms of avoiding of certain problems, such as early pregnancy for girls and trouble with police for boys.


2 Abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of seasonal change in thermal environment on blood constituents in Nubian goats under tropical conditions of northern Sudan at Shambat (16°N). The highest mean values of maximum ambient temperature (°C) were reported in dry summer, followed by wet summer and winter, while the highest values of relative humidity (%) were recorded in wet summer and lower values in winter and dry summer. The highest values of erythrocyte count, packed cell volume (PCV) and haemoglobin concentration (Hb) were during wet summer and the lowest values were in dry summer. The erythrocyte counts during winter and dry summer did not differ significantly, while the difference in (PCV) was not significant between wet summer and winter. The mean cell volume (MCV) and mean cell haemoglobin (MCH) were significantly higher during winter compared to wet and dry summer values. The total leukocyte count (TLC) was not affected significantly by seasonal change in thermal environment. The seasonal changes in the ratios of neutrophils, lymphocytes and eosinophils were not significant. The monocyte ratio was significantly higher during wet and dry summer, compared to winter value. There was progressive significant decrease in serum albumin level from wet summer, through winter to dry summer. The serum globulins level was significantly higher in dry summer.


Background: Osteoarthritis is a prevalent disease process that is characterized by degeneration of cartilage in weight-bearing joints. This loss of cartilage results in high levels of pain, joint stiffness, loss of range of motion and function, and psychological distress. Current osteoarthritis treatment focuses on reduction of pain and swelling and improvement of quality of life for the patients. Recently, mesenchymal stem cells have been of interest in this disease process due to their self-renewal, multipotent differentiation, and immunomodulatory properties. Can mesenchymal stem cell injections or implantation in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee improve level of function and magnetic resonance imaging results? Methods: An exhaustive search of available medical literature using MEDLINE-Ovid, CINAHL, and Web of Science was conducted using the key words "mesenchymal stem cell transplantation" and "osteoarthritis, knee". The results were screened with eligibility criteria. The remaining articles were evaluated and assessed for quality using GRADE. Results: Two studies met inclusion and exclusion criteria and were included in this systematic review. One prospective cohort study looked at 20 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee and performed mesenchymal stem cell implantation. The results showed overall improvement in level of function and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results. One therapeutic case series looked at 25 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee and performed mesenchymal stem cell injections. Although seven patients were lost to follow-up, results showed overall improvement in pain, level of function, and MRI results. Conclusion: Mesenchymal stem cell implantation or injections have been found to improve level of function and MRI results at two years after the initial procedure. However, there is not sufficient quality evidence to show that this treatment option should be implemented into standard of care for patients with osteoarthritis. While study results are promising, further research with larger study sizes, variable techniques, and longer follow-up are needed to validate this treatment and determine at what point in the osteoarthritis disease process it should be utilized. Degree Type Capstone Project Degree Name Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies


The inland waterway transportation system of the United States (U.S.) handles 11.7 billion tons of freight annually and connects the heartland of the U.S. with the rest of the world by providing a fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly mode of transportation. This dissertation aims to create decision support tools for maritime stakeholders to measure the economic impacts of the inland waterway transportation systems under real world scenarios including disruptions, demand changes, port expansion decisions, and channel deepening investments. Monte Carlo simulation, system dynamics, discrete-event simulation, agent-based modeling, and multiregional input-output modeling techniques are utilized to analyze the complex relationships between inland waterway transportation system components and regional economic impact factors. The first research contribution illustrates that the expected duration of a disruption determines whether decision makers are better off waiting for the waterway system to reopen or switching to an alternative mode of transportation. Moreover, total disruption cost can be reduced by increasing estimation accuracy of disruption duration. The second research contribution shows that without future investment in inland waterway infrastructure, a sustainable system and associate economic impacts cannot be generated in the long-term. The third research contribution illustrates that investing in bottleneck system components results in higher economic impact than investing in non-bottleneck components. The developed models can be adapted to any inland waterway transportation system in the U.S. by utilizing data obtained by publically available sources to measure the economic impacts under various scenarios to inform capital investment decisions and support an economically sustainable inland waterway transportation system.


Developing a sustainable agricultural model is one of the great challenges of the coming years. The agricultural practices inherited from the Green Revolution of the 1960s show their limits today, and new paradigms need to be explored to counter rising issues such as the multiplication of climate-change related drought episodes. Two such new paradigms are the use of functional-structural plant models to complement and rationalize breeding approaches and a renewed focus on root systems as untapped sources of plant amelioration. Since the late 1980s, numerous functional and structural models of root systems were developed and used to investigate the properties of root systems in soil or lab-conditions. In this review, we focus on the conception and use of such root models in the broader context of research on root-driven drought tolerance, on the basis of root system architecture (RSA) phenotyping. Such models result from the integration of architectural, physiological and environmental data. Here, we consider the different phenotyping techniques allowing for root architectural and physiological study and their limits. We discuss how QTL and breeding studies support the manipulation of RSA as a way to improve drought resistance. We then go over the integration of the generated data within architectural models, how those architectural models can be coupled with functional hydraulic models, and how functional parameters can be measured to feed those models. We then consider the assessment and validation of those hydraulic models through confrontation of simulations to experimentations. Finally, we discuss the up and coming challenges facing root systems functional-structural modeling approaches in the context of breeding.


An investigation is in progress in the NACA full-scale wind tunnel to determine the drag and propulsive efficiency of nacelle sizes. In contrast with the usual tests with a single nacelle, these tests were conducted with nacelle-propeller installations on a large model of a 4-engine airplane. Data are presented on the first part of the investigation, covering seven nacelle arrangements with nacelle diameters from 0.53 to 1.5 times the wing thickness. These ratios are similar to those occurring on airplane weighing from about 20 to 100 tons. The results show that the drag, the propulsive efficiency, and the overall efficiency of the various nacelle arrangements as functions of the nacelle size, the propeller position, and the airplane lift coefficient. The effect of the nacelles on the aerodynamic characteristics of the model are shown for both propeller-removed and propeller-operating conditions.


The first step in generating cellular diversity in the Drosophila central nervous system is the formation of a segmentally reiterated array of neural precursor cells, called neuroblasts. Subsequently, each neuroblast goes through an invariant cell lineage to generate neurons and/or glia. Using molecular lineage markers, I show that (1) each neuroblast forms at a stereotyped time and position; (2) the neuroblast pattern is indistinguishable between thoracic and abdominal segments; (3) the development of individual neuroblasts can be followed throughout early neurogenesis; (4) gene expression in a neuroblast can be reproducibly modulated during its cell lineage; (5) identified ganglion mother cells form at stereotyped times and positions; and (6) the cell lineage of four well-characterized neurons can be traced back to two identified neuroblasts. These results set the stage for investigating neuroblast specification and the mechanisms controlling neuroblast cell lineages.


Knowledge of your own and other's positions are frequently a prerequisite for acting, leading others, and interacting in and with the environment; to retrieve relevant information and to process and interpret it; and to understand, compile, and learn from observations of the surrounding and its dynamics. This holds for humans as well as for machines and systems made for supporting and controlling them. Consequently, systems which automatically provide position information of peoples are of interest and the larger subject area of this thesis. Position can be obtained from well-known infrastructure based systems such as GPS. However, these systems carry obvious drawbacks in their infrastructure dependence which gives them limited coverage and system robustness. By observing our own ability to localize ourselves, it is obvious that localization without infrastructure at with a better (relative) accuracy is achievable. The development over the last decades of sensor and processing hardware and statistical methods have started to make such localization possible. This thesis specifically concerns systems and statistical methods for infrastructure-free localization. The this primarily deals with statistical methods but also describe hardware in terms of high-level system designs.For many critical applications such as positioning of emergency responders, dismounted soldiers, and security personnel, it is unsuitable for the positioning system to be dependent on infrastructure or prior knowledge about the environment. Consequently, this thesis deals with systems and methods for infrastructure-free and prior-knowledge-free pedestrian localization. The thesis is specifically concerned with statistical methods but will also cover hardware in terms of high-level system designs. The thesis is composed of an introduction followed by a collection of papers which are divided into two parts, each concerning a separate problem area. The introduction motivates and describes the localization problem in general terms and gives a coherent guide to the articles.The first group of articles together describes an infrastructure-free system for tactical localization of small units of agents. The physical implementation of the localization system carries the name TOR (Tacitcal lOcatoR) and have been tested on fire fighters during realistic smoke diving exercises. This system primarily depends on pedestrian dead-reckoning based on foot-mounted inertial navigation and inter-agent radio ranging. The core parts of the system which are dealt with are: foot-mounted inertial navigation units which provides dead reckoning of individual agents, system structure and estimation algorithms which, based on the dead reckoning and inter-agent ranging, provides estimates of the agent positions, initialization algorithms for the estimation, and a user interface which exploits voice radio communication and 3D-audio to let the agents hear where they have each other.The second group of articles concerns low-level processing for extraction of spatial information of camera images (video), a prevailing infrastructure-free data source for relating an agent's position to the environment. These articles are focused on formalization and fast implementations of fundamental processing steps. An implementation of scale-space only relying on integer signal representation of image data and simple arithmetic operations is presented. Further, a unifying theory of feature point orientation assignment is derived and a novel method for the same is presented. Thereafter, the small but frequently occuring processing step in which image gradient samples are binned based on their argument, is treated and three fast solutions with varying properties are suggested. Finally, a localization system based on inertial navigation aided by imagery data is presented.


We introduce a simple growth model in which the sizes of entities evolve as multiplicative random processes that start at different times. A novel aspect we examine is the dependence among entities. For this, we consider three classes of dependence between growth factors governing the evolution of sizes: independence, Kesten dependence and mixed dependence. We take the sum X of the sizes of the entities as the representative quantity of the system, which has the structure of a sum of product terms (Sigma-Pi), whose asymptotic distribution function has a power-law tail behavior. We present evidence that the dependence type does not alter the asymptotic power-law tail behavior, nor the value of the tail exponent. However, the structure of the large values of the sum X is found to vary with the dependence between the growth factors (and thus the entities). In particular, for the independence case, we find that the large values of X are contributed by a single maximum size entity: the asymptotic power-law tail is the result of such single contribution to the sum, with this maximum contributing entity changing stochastically with time and with realizations.


The use of video analysis in Design-Based Research (DBR) seems to be promising, because the quality of video data matches the reality of educational fields. Educational fields are multidimensional and complex. And more than other types of data, video may capture, for example, the simultaneity of verbal and non-verbal interactions. This seems to be valuable in the quest for new insights and better designs of educational interventions. However, to date there has been limited use of video data in researching their design. This paper aims at reflecting how the benefits of video-based analysis may be utilised in DBR. Experiences with the collection and analysis of video data in a project to design self-organised learning (SOL) at a vocational school in Germany will be used as a case study to illustrate the type of findings that may feed into the DBR process. In this case, the project school had already introduced a sophisticated SOL model but was experiencing various implementation difficulties. Resolving issues like this requires insights into how exactly a concept is realised and what happens in the field. Therefore, video data on classroom interactions was gathered and sub-sequently analysed using the documentary method. This led to the reconstruction of two different types of orientation that were guiding the students when they dealt with their self-organised learning environment. In a subversive orientation, students playfully infiltrate the formal learning space with peer activities. In a confirming orientation, students stick to both, the (informal) rules of the (formal) learning arrangement and of the peer environment, thus expressing respect for the boundary between these two worlds. These findings have been used to redesign the SOL intervention.


In this study a thermal comfort ventilation strategy called 'ventilation shaft', which is a vertical shaft located at the rear of a single-sided unit and with an exhaust at the building's flat roof, is proposed for a single-sided residential unit in high-rise buildings in Bangkok. The main aim is to investigate its potential to maximize the unit's indoor air velocity and to extend the occupants' thermal comfort, which, therefore, reduces high electricity consumption due to cooling systems. By using the validated CFD code in DesignBuilder simulation software, the ventilation shaft's effectiveness was examined and its design was optimized. It was found that the proposed strategy can effectively increase the unit's air velocity from 0.05ms-1 to 1.44ms-1 (approximately 36% of the external wind speed of 4ms-1under wind incident angle of 0°). The external wind speed and direction relating to the unit's main window were found as the most influential external parameters, while the vertical shaft's size as well as the inlet and outlet's size and location with respect to the occupied area were the most influential design factors to determine its performance. A shaft height of at least 1m above the building flat roof, as well as an opening width of at least 50%-75% of the wall's width, is recommended for ensuring the best results. Openings' length, particularly the inlet's, only to cover the occupied level is also suggested to avoid excessive solar heat gain from the environment. Regarding thermal comfort, the ventilation shaft with its optimal design was attached to the rooms from floor 6th to floor 25th of the hypothetical building and found able to produce the required air speed for creating physiological cooling effect in most units. This could extend the occupants' thermal comfort time for up to 33% and 64% per day for a south- and a north-facing unit in the hypothetical building, respectively based on ASHRAE's adaptive comfort model, and could lead to significant energy savings of up to 68.8MW per annum and 5,291MW per annum for a typical residential building in Bangkok based on a typical electric ceiling fan and a split type air conditioner respectively. In conclusion, the proposed ventilation shaft is an effective windinduced strategy to increase the air velocity and create cross ventilation in a single-sided residential unit, which can enhance the natural ventilation potential to provide thermal comfort and reduce the a/c systems dependency in typical high-rise residential buildings in Bangkok and other hot-humid climates.


THE RAPID development of technologies in industry and medicine using static magnetic fields has resulted in an increase in human exposure to these fields and has led to a number of scientific studies of their possible health effects. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently developed a health criteria document on static electric and magnetic fields within the Environmental Health Criteria Program (WHO 2006). The document contains a review of biological effects reported from exposure to static fields and, together with other recent publications [mainly International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) 2003, McKinlay et al. 2004, and Noble et al. 2005], serves as the scientific database for the development of the rationale for the guidelines described in the current document, which supersede those published by ICNIRP in 1994 (ICNIRP 1994).


The Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment (SAGE) was developed at theUniversity of Illinois at Chicago's (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) to facilitate collaborative efforts that require the sharing of data-intensive information for analysis. SAGE is a cross-platform, communitydriven, open-source visualization and collaboration tool that enables users to access, display, and share a variety of dataintensive information, in a variety of resolutions and format, frommultiple sources, on tiled display walls of arbitrary size. SAGE walls have had the ability to display digital-cinema animations, high resolution images, high-definition videoconferences, presentation slides, documents, spreadsheets, and computer screens; however, there was no way to display and manipulate histologic whole-slide images (WSIs). Our desire was to create a tool to permit the importation, display, and manipulation of WSI in the SAGE environment.


With the pervasiveness of the information revolution, the preservation of intellectual property rights through patents, copyrights, and trademarks has become far more difficult. Knock-off imitations abound and outright piracy of everything from pharmaceuticals to films to music videos is rife, especially in the vibrant markets of developing countries. Enforcement of existing international laws is often weak and countries are at odds over what should be enforced. And beneath this conflict is one more profound: where is the border between the rights of authors, singers, and innovative manufacturers to profit from the fruits of their intellectual efforts and the rights of libraries and other institutions, as well as individuals, to have access to information? In this book, Michael Ryan explains the issues, politics, and diplomacy of balancing intellectual property rights with the public's right of access. He discusses the major negotiations to forge international policy in the 1980s and 1990s, including the bilateral U.S. intellectual property negotiations with China and other developing countries, the multilateral negotiations conducted at GATT, and the 1996 copyright treaties negotiated at the World Intellectual Property Organization. He analyzes the shaping context of global competition in intellectual property-intensive industries---pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals, film and music, publishing, information technology, and software---and the industries' policy advocacy tactics and strategies to protect their markets. He examines the role of the World Intellectual Property Organization and explores the new "knowledge diplomacy" that will establish the rules governing the exploitation of innovation and expression in a digital, twenty-first century global economy.


Socioeconomic and structural changes in the global food system, driven by rapid urbanization in the Global South, shape the nature and scale of food safety problems as well as the strategies designed to cope with them. These changes create new challenges for ensuring food security, given that food safety is an essential dimension of food security. By reviewing existing studies, this paper summarizes three key types of contaminant (microbiological, chemical, and physical) that compromise food safety. With analyses of three cases (avian flu, genetic modification contamination, and melamine-tainted milk) in the Global South, the paper explores how food safety is being driven and shaped by socioeconomic restructuring, particularly market liberalization in the food sector. The paper then provides an overview of various initiatives being taken by consumers, grassroots organizations, governments, and the food industry to address food safety challenges. It calls for a more holistic understanding of food safety that connects food safety and urban public health and recognizes food safety as a social and cultural issue connected with the food safety impacts of structural changes in food systems.


In a comparative study of the acceptability of medical abortion and surgical abortion among women in developing countries, patients at clinics in China, Cuba and India were allowed to choose between a surgical procedure and a medical regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol. The most common reasons women cited for choosing medical abortion were their desire to avoid surgery and general anesthesia; the reasons they mentioned most frequently for choosing surgical abortion were speed, simplicity and effectiveness. The failure rate for medical abortion varied from 5% in India to 16% in Cuba, while that for surgical abortion ranged from 0% in India to 4% in Cuba. Although side effects were more frequently reported by women who chose medical abortion, the majority of women at all sites were either satisfied or highly satisfied with their abortion experience, regardless of method (medical, 84‐95%; surgical, 94‐100%). At every site, medical abortion clients were significantly more likely than surgical clients to report being highly satisfied (China, 43% vs. 23%; Cuba, 59% vs. 39%; India, 69% vs. 54%), but also were more likely to report not being satisfied (China, 6% vs. 4%; Cuba, 17% vs. 7%; India, 5% vs. 0%). In China and India, women who had a medical abortion were significantly more likely than those who had a surgical abortion to say they would choose the same method again.


Six months before first presenting at our department in June, 1994, an 89-year-old woman had noticed, anterior to her right ear, a nodule that had gradually enlarged without rupture or drainage. During middle age, the patient had worked outdoors for over 20 years. After retirement, a scaly erythema began to appear on her face, and reappeared 7 times in 8 years. All these lesions were removed surgically and diagnosed as solar [...]


Critical infrastructure systems are vulnerable to physical and cyber attack. Securing these systems is a top priority for the U.S., but ongoing efforts ignore important aspects of the information technology (IT) lifecycle and focus primarily on securing the operational phase of these systems. Adversaries have ample opportunity to compromise our critical systems at every stage of those systems' lifecycles. We propose the use of trust anchors—functional elements that can be developed through trustworthy processes and introduced into process control systems to provide critical security services that cannot be influenced by malicious content— to address the lifecycle threats of the process control system. Secure obfuscation technology developed by Sandia National Laboratories enables one of the most important capabilities of trust anchors: It obfuscates trust anchors' functions and renders them tamper-proof in a cryptographically secure manner.


INTRODUCTION
Sports injuries in children and adolescent present a unique challenge to the physician. They are often seen for clinical conditions unique to their age group. This paper highlights the epidemiological aspect of sports-related overuse injuries in this age group.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This retrospective study reviewed all the paediatric patients diagnosed with overuses injuries during a 5 years and 7 months period. The overuse injuries were anterior superior iliac spine avulsion fracture, Osgood-Schlatter disease, Sinding-Larson-Johansson disease, osteochondritis dissecan and Sever's disease. We reviewed the literature and attempted to give an overview for each condition and the anatomical differences that contributed to their occurrence in this age group.

RESULTS
A total of 506 cases of the overuse injuries were seen during the study period. Seventy-three per cent were male patients. The knee joint was the commonest affected joint while the hip was the least affected joint. The mean age at diagnosis was younger in female compared to male for all conditions except in Sinding-Larson Johansson syndrome. Female was diagnosed at a mean age of 11.7 years while male at 10.8 years. Osgood-Schlatter disease was the commonest among the overuse injuries. There was no discernible racial predilection for these conditions except in the patients with anterior superior iliac spine avulsion.

CONCLUSIONS
Overuse injuries are not uncommon in children and adolescent. An adequate understanding of the anatomy of the sports the children participated in as well as the anatomical differences between adult and children may assist the primary care providers better meet parents' and coaches' expectations.


India is ecologically vast and has close to a billion-population living at risk of malaria. Given the evidence-based present-day intervention tools and large-scale implementation, India has recorded declining trends in disease transmission from 2 million cases in 2001 to close to a million cases in 2017 and embarked upon malaria elimination in keeping with the Global Technical Strategy by 2030. India is malaria endemic, but transmis- sion intensities varied across its landscape with just few States of the east, central and northeast contributing bulk (80%) of total positive cases. Plasmodium falciparum and P. vivax are the predominant infections of which there has been steady increase in proportions of the former for constituting >60% of total cases what was 50:50 in 2001, a phe- nomenon attributed to emerging drug resistance. With the rolling out of the available intervention tools, malaria elimination is foreseeable yet there are multiple challenges which must be addressed to overcome the constraints. We strongly advocate continued disease surveillance and monitoring, universal coverage and intensification of core- interventions for prevention and treatment prioritizing high-risk States, strengthening cross-border collaborations for information sharing and coordinated activities, and above all sustained allocation of resources, creating the enabling environment to end malaria transmission.


Adoption of electronic health records (EHR) systems in nonfederal acute care hospitals has increased, with adoption rates across the United States reaching as high as 94%. Of the 330 plus acute care hospital EHR implementations in Texas, only 31% have completed attestation to Stage 2 of the meaningful use (MU) criteria. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies that hospital chief information officers (CIOs) used for the successful implementation of EHR. The target population consists of 3 hospitals CIOs from a multi-county region in North Central Texas who successfully implemented EHRs meeting Stage 2 MU criteria. The conceptual framework, for this research, was the technology acceptance model theory. The data were collected through semistructured interviews, member checking, review of the literature on the topic, and publicly available documents on the respective hospital websites. Using methodological triangulation of the data, 4 themes emerged from data analysis: EHR implementation strategies, overcoming resistance to technology acceptance, strategic alignment, and patient wellbeing. Participants identified implementation teams and informatics teams as a primary strategy for obtaining user engagement, ownership, and establishing a culture of acceptance to the technological changes. The application of the findings may contribute to social change by identifying the strategies hospital CIOs used for successful implementation of EHRs. Successful EHR implementation might provide positive social change by improving the quality of patient care, patient safety, security of personal health information, lowering health care cost, and improvements in the overall health of the general population.


Introduction: In vitro and earlier animal studies implicated altered metabolism of caffeine as a probe for CYP1A2 enzyme activity in diabetic disease state. However clinical studies in humans reported controversial findings. This study is aimed to compare the differences in the metabolism of caffeine in Non-Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus (NIDDM) patients and in healthy subjects by using Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modelling with SimCYP simulator.
Methodology: A mechanistic Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model based disposition study for caffeine in healthy subjects and in diabetic patients using SimCYP simulator was performed by altering the CYP1A2 abundance as reported earlier. Prior to using the model for predictions in diabetic patients, model was validated for accuracy by comparing the model predicted and observed pharmacokinetics of caffeine from four independent clinical trials in healthy subjects.
Results and Conclusions: Results from the study confirmed the accuracy of the default SimCYP model for predicting caffeine pharmacokinetics in healthy Caucasian subjects. PBPK model for NIDDM patients found that Caucasian diabetic patient's caffeine clearance is 37% higher in comparison with healthy subjects and there by reduced exposure of the drug in diabetic patients suggesting a similar fate for other CYP1A2 substrates. Simulations also suggested a clinical trial design that could be utilized to further study the real differences in caffeine disposition in diabetic patients in comparison to healthy subjects.


Title of dissertation: DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF DECISION MAKING ALGORITHMS FOR INFORMATION SECURITY Alvaro A. Cárdenas, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 Dissertation directed by: Professor John S. Baras Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering The evaluation and learning of classifiers is of particular importance in several computer security applications such as intrusion detection systems (IDSs), spam filters, and watermarking of documents for fingerprinting or traitor tracing. There are however relevant considerations that are sometimes ignored by researchers that apply machine learning techniques for security related problems. In this work we identify and work on two problems that seem prevalent in security-related applications. The first problem is the usually large class imbalance between normal events and attack events. We address this problem with a unifying view of different proposed metrics, and with the introduction of Bayesian Receiver Operating Characteristic (BROC) curves. The second problem to consider is the fact that the classifier or learning rule will be deployed in an adversarial environment. This implies that good performance on average might not be a good performance measure, but rather we look for good performance under the worst type of adversarial attacks. We work on a general methodology that we apply for the design and evaluation of IDSs and Watermarking applications. DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF DECISION MAKING ALGORITHMS FOR INFORMATION SECURITY


The creation of new medical approaches based on stem cells to treat chronic kidney disease (CKD) and in particular end stage renal disease (ESRD) has become imperative in recent years, due to the significant burdens of patients affected by renal failure and to the limitations of dialysis and kidney transplantation to solve the problem. The initial prospective of utilizing stem cells for regenerating the affected kidney has been at the basis of excitement and hope for all patients affected by ESRD. Unfortunately, too many challenges have halted the possibility to make such regenerative approach a reality, and the vast majority of patients with CKD and renal insufficiency experience a reduced quality of life associated with high mortality. The problem appears particularly severe when ESDR develops in childhood. Children submitted to kidney transplantation have a 95% of survival rate at 5 years, but only 66% of them survive at 20 years after renal transplant. As a result, patients transplanted in childhood will need repeated renal transplants during their life. Renal regenerative medicine might experience a major renaissance in the next years, developing new methodologies stemmed from the previous attempts. Here, we present some major points to be addressed, in order to open a debate on the potential offered by the different regenerative methodologies: the "exogenous" approach; the "endogenous" approach; the "therapeutic" approach; the "prevention" approach. Proceedings of the 11 th International Workshop on Neonatology and Satellite Meetings · Cagliari (Italy) · October 26 th -31 st , 2015 · From the womb to the adult Guest Editors: Vassilios Fanos (Cagliari, Italy), Michele Mussap (Genoa, Italy), Antonio Del Vecchio (Bari, Italy), Bo Sun (Shanghai, China), Dorret I. Boomsma (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Gavino Faa (Cagliari, Italy), Antonio Giordano (Philadelphia, USA)


A major objective in microarray experiments is to identify a panel of genes that are associated with a disease outcome or trait. Many statistical methods have been proposed for gene selection within the last fifteen years. While the comparison of some of these methods has been done, most of them concentrated on finding gene signatures based on two groups. This study evaluates four gene selection methods when the outcome of interested is continuous in nature. We provide a comparative review of four methods: the Statistical Analysis of Microarrays (SAM), the Linear Models for Microarray Analysis (LIMMA), the Lassoed Principal Components (LPC), and the Quantitative Trait Analysis (QTA). Comparison is based on the power to identify differentially expressed genes, the predictive ability of the genelists for a continuous outcome ( G 2 checkpoint function), and the prognostic properties of the genelists for distant metastasis-free survival. A simulated dataset and a publicly available melanoma cell lines dataset are used for simulations and validation, respectively. A primary melanoma dataset is used for assessment of prognosis. No common genes were found among the genelists from the four methods. While the SAM was generally the best in terms of power, the QTA genelist performed the best in the prediction of the G2 checkpoint function. Identification of genelists depends on the choice of the gene selection method. The QTA method would be preferred over the other approaches in predicting a quantitative outcome in melanoma research. We recommend the development of more robust statistical methods for differential gene expression analysis.


We present our research on active caching in the WWW. We drew some key conclusions on the service properties and its significance, according to the results of our analysis of the WWW content. These conclusions include the percentage values of the potentially outdated Web content in the overall Web content after an object`s lifetime has passed. This paper provides reasons for using active caching


In this work, treating an artery as a prestressed thin-walled elastic tube and the blood as an inviscid fluid, the interactions of two nonlinear waves propagating in opposite directions are studied in the longwave approximation by use of the extended PLK (Poincaré-Lighthill-Kuo) perturbation method. The results show that up to O(k3), where k is the wave number, the head-on collision of two solitary waves is elastic and the solitary waves preserve their original properties after the interaction. The leading-order analytical phase shifts and the trajectories of two solitons after the collision are derived explicitly.


We determined the source of fatty acids in scleractinian corals by separately measuring and comparing the δ13C values of fatty acids in zooxanthellae and coral hosts from two scleractinian coral species (Montastraea faveolata and Porites astreoides) from reefs of the Florida Reef Tract. Using an isotopic mass balance approach, we show that zooxanthellae are the dominant source of fatty acids and that in many colonies heterotrophic feeding can be an important and significant source of essential ω3 fatty acids for corals. There is considerable variability in feeding behavior within species, between species, and within single reef sites. In individual colonies, essential ω3 fatty acids and energy resources such as triglycerides can be acquired from separate dietary sources, showing the importance of resource partitioning within the coral animal. Consistently, individual coral colonies acquire most of their energy‐rich saturated fatty acids from their symbiotic zooxanthellae. The particular feeding mode by which corals acquire their fatty acids appears to be specific to each coral colony. The ability of corals to modulate their feeding modes under different environments may provide an adaptive mechanism to sustain growth under stressful conditions.


Globalisation is presented by some as an inevitable force of history. However, it is very much the result of political and policy decisions made by powerful elites to advance their interests. Globalisation is not a benign, neutral process, but ideologically driven in the service of the rich and powerful. This ideology is neo-liberalism, which, in the name of 'competition' and 'efficiency', pursues a world in which the 'market' reigns over society. The impoverishment of Africa is a consequence of processes begun by political decisions in international organisations in which the odds are stacked against the South. Because of power imbalances, rules are made that disadvantage poor nations. Thus, international agreements have unequal outcomes. This article examines the effects of such decisions through the prism of the decimation of the clothing industry in South Africa. The article concludes with an exposition on insecurity as the leitmotif of the era.


This editorial is adapted from a speech given on 12 February 1996 at the AAAS annual meeting in Baltimore, MD. Not too long ago, the metaphors of science migrated easily to the realm of political and economic affairs. But today we either avoid scientific metaphors altogether or we lean on a crutch of Industrial Revolution metaphors that are splintering with age. In particular, we continue to rely on the metaphor of the factory—of mechanized mass production—well after it has exhausted much of its supportive force. Let me propose an updated metaphor that is more appropriate to the times and more muscular in its power to explain: the metaphor of distributed intelligence. In the beginning of the mainframe computer era, computers relied almost totally on huge central processing units surrounded by large fields of memory. The design was much like that of a mass-production factory. Then along came a new architecture called massive parallelism. This broke up the processing power into lots of tiny processors that were distributed throughout the field of memory. When a problem was presented, all of the processors would begin working simultaneously, each performing its small part of the task and sending its portion of the answer to be collated with the rest of the work that was going on. It turns out that this "distributed intelligence" approach is more effective for solving most problems. But somehow this idea, revolutionary as it was in the computer world, never traveled to other regions of our lives and didn9t come anywhere near politics. And that9s a shame. Because in the realm of politics or economics or public policy, the metaphor of distributed intelligence has enormous explanatory power. It offers insight into why democracy has triumphed over governments that depended exclusively on a central authority, and it helps explain why private-sector organizations are shedding their middle layers and transferring power, information, and influence to front-line workers. It also helps tell us why scientific concepts sometimes elude the vast majority of our elected officials. Individuals9 lack of scientific understanding undercuts support for the pursuit of further understanding, which fosters deeper ignorance, which further erodes support for battling that ignorance. It9s a vicious circle. At the very moment when a new age demands continued investments in science and technology, there are some in Congress who are threatening to turn the clock backward with the largest cuts in 15 years. Their science policy is straight out of science fiction. A few may talk like Johnny Mnemonic, but most support policies designed for Fred Flintstone. They promise to boldly go where no Congress has gone before, but their flight plan will take us into the ground. If the guiding metaphor is the factory, such proposals don9t seem outlandish. After all, the goal of the factory is to crank out more and more of the same thing at a lower and lower cost. Shaving a little here and a little there is smart business. But if the guiding metaphor is distributed intelligence, such proposals are terribly misguided because the circle of riches and research that distributed intelligence can produce is needed now more than ever and has already made a difference in this country. If we abandon our commitment to science and fail to understand the power of distributed intelligence, we risk losing the chaotic and unpredictable breakthroughs that basic science produces. Here at the edge of a new century, we have a choice of two paths. One path retreats from understanding, flinches in the face of challenges, and disdains learning. It leads to a know-nothing society in which the storehouses of knowledge dwindle, the spigots of discovery are turned off, and missions of exploration are stalled on the ground. This society bases regulations on suspicion instead of science, says that DDT isn9t harmful, and claims that global warming is the empirical equivalent of the Easter Bunny. But there9s another path—infinitely brighter and considerably more American. It leads to a learning society whose government continues to fund basic science and applied technology and in which the virtuous circle of progress and prosperity is alive and functioning. And it9s a trail that9s within our power to blaze. We have in our hands and minds and souls the power to create this learning society, which harnesses the power of distributed intelligence and uses it to improve our lives. As the very embodiment of that ideal, you have an obligation to help make it happen.


A signaling pathway in mice mediates the effects of caloric restriction that protect against age-related diseases. The extended life span and resistance to age-related diseases in animals exposed to caloric restriction have focused attention on the biochemical mechanisms that produce these effects. Selman et al. (see the Perspective by Kaeberlein and Kapahi) explored the role of the mammalian ribosomal protein S6 kinase 1 (S6K1), which regulates protein translation and cellular energy metabolism. Female knockout mice lacking expression of S6K1 showed characteristics of animals exposed to caloric restriction, including improved health and increased longevity. The beneficial effects included reduced fat mass despite increased food intake. Thus, inhibition of signaling pathways activated by S6K1 might prove beneficial in protecting against age-related disease. C. Selman, J. M. A. Tullet, D. Wieser, E. Irvine, S. J. Lingard, A. I. Choudhury, M. Claret, H. Al-Qassab, D. Carmignac, F. Ramadani, A. Woods, I. C. A. Robinson, E. Schuster, R. L. Batterham, S. C. Kozma, G. Thomas, D. Carling, K. Okkenhaug, J. M. Thornton, L. Partridge, D. Gems, D. J. Withers, Ribosomal protein S6 kinase 1 signaling regulates mammalian life span. Science 326, 140–144 (2009). [Abstract] [Full Text] M. Kaeberlein, P. Kapahi, Aging is RSKy business. Science 326, 55–56 (2009). [Summary] [Full Text]


Consider regularities and tendencies for the three types of entrepreneurial structures — small enterprises, medium enterprises and individual entrepreneurs. The aim of the research was to confirm the possibilities of describing indicators of aggregate entrepreneurial structures with the use of normal law distribution functions. Presented proposed by the author the methodological approach and results of construction of the functions of the density distribution for the main indicators for the various objects: the Russian Federation, regions, as well as aggregates of entrepreneurial structures, specialized in certain forms of economic activity. All the developed functions, as shown by the logical and statistical analysis, are of high quality and well-approximate the original data. In general, the proposed methodological approach is versatile and can be used in further studies of aggregates of entrepreneurial structures. The received results can be applied in solving a wide range of problems justify the need for personnel and financial resources at the federal, regional and municipal levels, as well as the formation of plans and forecasts of development entrepreneurship and improvement of this sector of the economy.


CO2 foam as a fracturing fluid for unconventional reservoir has been of huge interest due to its potential in solving various challenges related to conventional water-based fracturing. The rheological property of CO2 foam is a key factor controlling the efficiency of fracturing process and it is strongly influenced by different parameters such as foam quality, temperature, pressure and shear rate. The quantification of these parameters under reservoir conditions leads to the design of optimum injection strategy. However, the traditional modeling approaches are unable to provide fast and accurate prediction while considering combined effect of all these parameters. Here, we proposed a data driven approach based on supervised deep learning to estimate rheological property of CO2 foam as a function of foam quality, temperature, pressure, and shear rate. We exploit deep neural networks (DNNs) that are trained to learn the complex nonlinear aspects of the data. For the data generation, we performed a series of experiments for CO2 foams by varying different process variables. CO2 foams at different qualities were generated using conventional surfactant in a flow loop system and foam viscosity measurements were performed at HPHT under wide range of shear rate. The architecture of DNN was optimized to accurately estimate the foam apparent viscosity for given foam quality, temperature, pressure, and shear rate. The predictive capability of designed network is found to be significantly high, analyzed by regression coefficient approaching unity, low mean squared error, and low average absolute relative deviation (≪ 2.5%). The designed neural network allows robust and accurate prediction of foam apparent viscosity at different foam qualities under various reservoir condition, which demonstrates its practicality for CO2 foam projects for fracturing unconventional reservoirs.


Using PESSOA, a small open economy DSGE model, we analyze the size of short-runfiscal multipliers associated with fiscal consolidation under two distinct alternative scenarios, viz "normal times" and "crisis times." The crisis times scenario embodies a higher share of hand-to-mouth households, stronger nominal rigidities, and more severe financial frictions, which purportedly better refflect the underlying economic environment during the "Great Recession." Results show that fiscal multipliers can be twice as large in crisis times, being approximately 2 for a government consumptionbased fiscal consolidation in the first year. One-year ahead effects are also substantially larger if this type of consolidation is performed in crisis times. Revenue-based fiscal consolidations are also more recessive in crisis times, though the differences against normal times are less pronounced.


Creativity and Psychotic States in Exceptional People tells the story of the lives of four exceptionally gifted individuals: Vincent van Gogh, Vaslav Nijinsky, Jose Saramago and John Nash. Previously unpublished chapters by Murray Jackson are set in a contextual framework by Jeanne Magagna, revealing the wellspring of creativity in the subjects' emotional experiences and delving into the nature of psychotic states which influence and impede the creative process.

Jackson and Magagna aim to illustrate how psychoanalytic thinking can be relevant to people suffering from psychotic states of mind and provide understanding of the personalities of four exceptionally talented creative individuals. Present in the text are themes of loving and losing, mourning and manic states, creating as a process of repairing a sense of internal damage and the use of creativity to understand or run away from oneself. The book concludes with a glossary of useful psychoanalytic concepts.

Creativity and Psychotic States in Exceptional People will be fascinating reading for psychiatrists, psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, other psychoanalytically informed professionals, students and anyone interested in the relationship between creativity and psychosis.


The aim of the present study was to examine the effects of a herbal essential oil mixture on the performance of broilers produced by a young (30 wk) or an old breeder (80 wk) flock. One thousand and eight unsexed day-old broiler chicks (Ross-308) originating from the two breeder flocks were randomly allocated to three treatment groups of 336 birds each. Dietary treatments were: a control and two diets containing 24 mg/kg or 48 mg/kg of an essential oil mixture. There were no significant effects of dietary treatment on body weight of the broilers at 21 and 42 days. The effect of the age of the parents did not have a significant effect on body weight of the broilers at 21 and 42 days of age. Up to 21 days the feed intake of broilers from young breeders was reduced significantly as a result of the inclusion of the essential oil mixture in their diets, and a significant improvement in feed conversion ratio was recorded in these birds. Difference in regression coefficients for feed intake and feed conversion ratio between broilers from young and old breeder flocks was significant. Carcass yield and some internal organ weights such as the liver, pancreas, proventriculus, gizzard and small intestine were not affected by the addition of the essential oil mixture to the diet. Inclusion of essential oil mixture to the diet decreased mortality significantly at 21 days. South African Journal of Animal Science Vol. 36(2) 2006: 135-141


Health systems undergo demographic and with it associated epidemiological transition. They thus need manage change associated with this, which is continuous, incessant and speed and magnitude of change being dependent upon a multitude of contextual factors. Change management in health systems is a less researched and understood subject, given the large scale presence of inequalities in distribution of health care indices. Addressing inequalities in health care services delivery is thus a major cause of concern for both researchers and practioners. This multiple case embedded processual study compares the performance of two state health systems over time and how they have tackled the issue of change associated with the epidemiological transition they encountered. Critically, it posits that, to manage the requirements of transition, Health systems need to show a functional cognitive architecture which would maintain the attention of policy makers to the changes occurring in the health needs of the population, convert them into health interventions and its service delivery components, give direction to their macro processes to generate, allocate, distribute required resources and finally position appropriate administrative mechanisms to ensure execution resulting in desired health outcomes. Thus implementation of change is a function of Attention, Direction and Governance of health policy/programmes. It contributes to health care literature by giving a practitioner oriented model and posits that the model needs to be structured into the health systems if they are to successfully handle epidemiological transitions.


Abstract Are majority-Muslim countries laggards when it comes to developing liberal economic institutions? Using an Index of Economic Freedom and its component parts, this study finds that Muslim-dominant countries (>50% of the population) are positively associated with free-market capitalism. Protestant dominance is also positively correlated, but the association stems from just two components of the index, mainly "legal security and property rights protection." Surprisingly, Protestant countries correlate negatively with "small government" and "freedom to trade," two critical components of free-market capitalism. Muslim dominance shows positive correlations with all areas except for "legal security and property rights." The results are consistent when assessing similar variables measuring property rights and government ownership of the economy collected by the Varieties of Democracy Project. Capitalistic policies and institutions, it seems, may travel across religions more easily than culturalists claim.


Patellar tendinopathy (PT) is a debilitating condition that often affects those who are physically active. Gene variation is known to contribute to human tendinopathy but the role of DNA methylation, as an epigenetic factor, has only recently been discovered. Using a case-control approach, we sought to determine whether differences existed between the methylation status of the MMP11 gene promoter in patellar tendinopathy compared to healthy tendon. We used PCR and pyrosequencing to interrogate the methylation profiles of 4 CpG sites (areas of the genome rich in C/G nucleotides) upstream of the MMP11 gene in DNA from males with PT (n = 10) and those with healthy tendon (n = 10). We also conducted a correlation analysis to establish whether age influenced methylation in the PT patients and controls. We found a significant (p = 0.045) difference in the methylation status of a single CpG site 65 base pairs (bp) upstream of the MMP11 promoter between the PT group and controls. There were no other differences in the extent of MMP11 promoter methylation between the two groups. Interestingly, we also found that in controls the degree of methylation at a second CpG site, 55 bp upstream of the first exon, tentatively correlated (r = 0.77, p = 0.009) with age. However, the correlation did not reach significance when a potential outlier was removed. This is the first study to show an epigenetic alteration to a member of the MMP gene family in human patellar tendinopathy. The data add to our understanding of how epigenetics should be considered when developing appropriate risk models.


In this paper a spectrum efficient uplink communication method for cooperative wireless networks is presented. In cellular controlled peer to peer (CCP2P) cooperative wireless networks the mobile device is logically connected over cellular links with the base station and simultaneously over short-range links with neighboring mobile devices to form cooperative clusters. So far the physical communication over cellular links and over short-range links are separated in time or in frequency. Beyond this state of the art, we exploit a method, referred to as asymmetrical modulation, where a mobile device is generating signals that are conveyed towards the base station and the neighboring devices in the same frequency and even at the same time. The signal is composed in such a way that it has different meanings for the neighboring devices than the base station. While the base station is getting the coarse information, the neighboring devices are getting the fine grained information reading between the lines. Our analytical analysis and simulation results show that asymmetrical modulation can improve the spectrum efficiency and reduce the data queuing delay with neither degrading the symbol error rate performance nor increasing the average energy per bit.


Numerical modelling of transoceanic tsunami propagation, together with the detailed modelling of inundation of small-scale coastal regions, poses a number of algorithmic challenges. The depth-averaged shallow water equations can be used to reduce this to a time-dependent problem in two space dimensions, but even so it is crucial to use adaptive mesh refinement in order to efficiently handle the vast differences in spatial scales. This must be done in a 'wellbalanced' manner that accurately captures very small perturbations to the steady state of the ocean at rest. Inundation can be modelled by allowing cells to dynamically change from dry to wet, but this must also be done carefully near refinement boundaries. We discuss these issues in the context of Riemann-solver-based finite volume methods for tsunami modelling. Several examples are presented using the GeoClaw software, and sample codes are available to accompany the paper. The techniques discussed also apply to a variety of other geophysical flows.


Predictions of fault reactivation and the hydraulic seal of cap rock are integral parts of the seal integrity research programme of the Banzhongbei gas storage facility (BGS) to ensure the safe storage of natural gas in subsurface reservoirs. We attempt to combine the heterogeneity of geomechanical properties, including frictional coefficient and cohesive strength, into a workflow to estimate fault reactivation risk and the maximum sustainable fluid pressure that will not induce failure of trap-bounding faults and cap rock. Based on the Griffith – Coulomb Failure criterion, fault failure modes – including tensile failure, shear failure and hybrid failure – may occur under conditions of the same in situ stress field as a result of the strength heterogeneity of fault rocks, which plays a key role in the estimation of integrity of the entire fault trap. The juxtaposition of the seal on the BQ Fault with high shale gouge ratio (SGR) values makes a significant contribution to the high fluid pressure build-ups during gas injection, and its low strength properties lead to a higher reactivation risk for the Banqiao (BQ) Fault than for the B816 Fault. The increased pore-fluid pressure adjacent to the BQ Fault induced by gas injection should be lower than 9.7 MPa in order to avoid failure. Furthermore, the maximum sustainable fluid pressure of the cap rock is approximately 13.9 MPa at the locations of the injection wells.


As part of the American Society of Anesthesiology Brain Health Initiative goal of improving perioperative brain health for older patients, over 30 experts met at the fifth International Perioperative Neurotoxicity Workshop in San Francisco, CA, in May 2016, to discuss best practices for optimizing perioperative brain health in older adults (ie, >65 years of age). The objective of this workshop was to discuss and develop consensus solutions to improve patient management and outcomes and to discuss what older adults should be told (and by whom) about postoperative brain health risks. Thus, the workshop was provider and patient oriented as well as solution focused rather than etiology focused. For those areas in which we determined that there were limited evidence-based recommendations, we identified knowledge gaps and the types of scientific knowledge and investigations needed to direct future best practice. Because concerns about perioperative neurocognitive injury in pediatric patients are already being addressed by the SmartTots initiative, our workshop discussion (and thus this article) focuses specifically on perioperative cognition in older adults. The 2 main perioperative cognitive disorders that have been studied to date are postoperative delirium and cognitive dysfunction. Postoperative delirium is a syndrome of fluctuating changes in attention and level of consciousness that occurs in 20%–40% of patients >60 years of age after major surgery and inpatient hospitalization. Many older surgical patients also develop postoperative cognitive deficits that typically last for weeks to months, thus referred to as postoperative cognitive dysfunction. Because of the heterogeneity of different tools and thresholds used to assess and define these disorders at varying points in time after anesthesia and surgery, a recent article has proposed a new recommended nomenclature for these perioperative neurocognitive disorders. Our discussion about this topic was organized around 4 key issues: preprocedure consent, preoperative cognitive assessment, intraoperative management, and postoperative follow-up. These 4 issues also form the structure of this document. Multiple viewpoints were presented by participants and discussed at this in-person meeting, and the overall group consensus from these discussions was then drafted by a smaller writing group (the 6 primary authors of this article) into this manuscript. Of course, further studies have appeared since the workshop, which the writing group has incorporated where appropriate. All participants from this in-person meeting then had the opportunity to review, edit, and approve this final manuscript; 1 participant did not approve the final manuscript and asked for his/her name to be removed.


Today companies (especially large companies whose employees make a lot of international business trips) often have very large telephone bills. While international roaming technically works with GSM, the cost of phone calls from one country to another are often much higher than calls within a country. Despite political pressure to reduce the costs of roaming within the European Union, the cost of phone calls from one country to another are often quite expensive. A cost-saving solution is eagerly desired by many firms. OptiCall Solutions AB has designed an integrated system called the Dial over Data (DoD) solution. In this scheme, a caller sends a data request to the DoD server instead of directly making a call to the party that they wish to speak with. The DoD solution uses an Internet Protocol Private Branch Exchange (IP-PBX) to make two Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) calls, one to the caller and another to the callee, then bridges these two calls. To realize cost savings, the cost of these two calls and the cost of the infrastructure necessary to make the two calls and to bridge them must be lower than the cost of the direct call. Call Through is a service for making cheap international calls which is provided by many telecommunications companies. Instead of making a direct call to the party the caller wants to speak with, the caller makes a call to the local call-through service access number. The caller dials the actual callee's number after the call is established. The service provider then makes a call to the callee and bridges the two calls. The caller only needs to pay for a local call and the service subscription fee, rather than the expensive international call fee. This can greatly reduce the costs for user who need to make a lot international calls. Today, many companies use such a call-through service in order to reduce the total cost of their employees' calls. Additionally, the Mobile Extension (MEX) is a concept which gives mobile users the ability to use their mobile phone in the same manner as their fixed office phone, for example, by providing services such as setting presence and transferring a call. In addition, the user should experience a consistent interface, for example the calling number displayed for the callee should always be a number that the callee could use to return the call. In this thesis project, a mobile extension application called 'OptiCaller' based on the Symbian OS was developed and evaluated. This application is part of the DoD solution and provides client side functionality. Furthermore, it supports making call-through calls and using the MEX functions. Additionally, it is designed and implemented in a flexible way so that it can work with a variety of different PBX solutions. A provisioning system called 'OptiCaller Provisioning System' was also designed and evaluated. This provisioning system was tailored for the 'OptiCaller'. It provides administrators a platform to manage the OptiCaller application on the end-users' mobile phones.


AThis paper outlines how a paradigm shift is required when approaching cyber risk management for interbank payment systems, which are affected by the growing interconnectedness of systems, the digitalization of financial services and continuously evolving cyber threats. In this scenario, cyber threats may derive from a wider number of actors, who are constantly active on the Internet and able to exploit an increasing number of vulnerabilities and attack vectors to achieve their goals. Financial institutions should therefore assume that specific cyber threats can overcome any defence. Firstly, the paper outlines the theoretical reasons for this necessary paradigm shift; secondly, it aims to highlight the importance of all the stakeholders in strengthening the cyber resilience of payment systems, in particular the central and enabling role of messaging service operators, by providing an analysis of a real case study - the recent Bangladesh Bank cyber fraud; and finally, the paper aims to encourage discussion on the new paradigm and the adequacy of current regulatory frameworks and supervisory approaches.


Most option pricing models are set in continuous time in order for it to be (theoretically) possible to follow an option replication strategy that continuously rebalances a delta-neutral hedge. One big problem in applying such a model to the real world is that perfect replication theoretically entails trading an infinite amount of the underlying asset. With transactions costs, no matter how small, the cost of this strategy is also infinite. A delta hedge can not be rebalanced continuously, so how should one rebalance periodically to achieve the best replication at minimum cost? Some possibilities are to rebalance at fixed time intervals, or whenever the asset price moves by a preset amount, or when the option's delta differs from the position's hedge ratio by a given percentage. Other ideas have also been proposed, but it is still not clear which is best. In this article, Martellini and Priaulet examine this issue in an extensive simulation exercise. Among their results, they find that delta-based rebalancing works best under proportional transactions costs. But adding a fixed component to the transactions cost reduces the effectiveness of that strategy.


Departing from Benor and Levy's approach to binomials (2006), this study investigated the sequencing of word pairs by controlling grammatical, geographical, and semantic variables. Accordingly, 59 sex-determined noun pairs commonly actualized in American English were examined. The preferred sequencing of 56 of these pairs is predicted by a heuristic that applies three constraints sequentially: (1) the metrical constraint – if the pair's syllables are asymmetrical, the noun with fewer syllables comes first; (2) the family relationship constraint (discovered in this study) – if the pair's syllables are symmetrical and the pair expresses a family relationship, the feminine term precedes the masculine term; and (3) the power constraint, where the masculine noun precedes the feminine term in the remaining symmetrical pairs.


This study examines the fertility consequences of contraceptive discontinuation, describes cross-national variation in continuation rates, and assesses the usefulness of the contraceptive discontinuation rate as a summary outcome indicator of quality of care. In the 15 countries included in this analysis, the total fertility rate would be between 28 and 64 percent lower if the births following discontinuations that were not the result of a desire to become pregnant had not occurred. The all-method discontinuation rate for quality-related reasons emerges as the most likely candidate for a summary measure of quality of care. Within a year of starting use of a method, between 7 and 27 percent of women cease to practice contraception for reasons related to the quality of the service environment. The results imply that as fertility declines, family planning programs would profit from a shift in emphasis from providing methods to new clients toward providing services to reduce discontinuation rates.


Hurricanes can cause extensive damage to the coastline and coastal communities due to wind-generated waves and storm surge. While extensive modeling efforts have been conducted regarding storm surge, there is far less information about the effects of waves on these communities and ecosystems as storms make landfall. This report describes a preliminary use of NCCOS' WEMo (Wave Exposure Model; Fonseca and Malhotra 2010) to compute the wind wave exposure within an area of approximately 25 miles radius from Beaufort, North Carolina for estuarine waters encompassing Bogue Sound, Back Sound and Core Sound during three hurricane landfall scenarios. The wind wave heights and energy of a site was a computation based on wind speed, direction, fetch and local bathymetry. We used our local area (Beaufort, North Carolina) as a test bed for this product because it is frequently impacted by hurricanes and we had confidence in the bathymetry data. Our test bed conditions were based on two recent Hurricanes that strongly affected this area. First, we used hurricane Isabel which made landfall near Beaufort in September 2003. Two hurricane simulations were run first by passing hurricane Isabel along its actual path (east of Beaufort) and second by passing the same storm to the west of Beaufort to show the potential effect of the reversed wind field. We then simulated impacts by a hurricane (Ophelia) with a different landfall track, which occurred in September of 2005. The simulations produced a geographic description of wave heights revealing the changing wind and wave exposure of the region as a consequence of landfall location and storm intensity. This highly conservative simulation (water levels were that of low tide) revealed that many inhabited and developed shorelines would receive wind waves for prolonged periods of time at heights far above that found during even the top few percent of non-hurricane events. The simulations also provided a sense for how rapidly conditions could transition from moderate to highly threatening; wave heights were shown to far exceed normal conditions often long before the main body of the storm arrived and importantly, at many locations that could impede and endanger late-fleeing vessels seeking safe harbor. When joined with other factors, such as storm surge and event duration, we anticipate that the WEMo forecasting tool will have significant use by local emergency agencies and the public to anticipate the relative exposure of their property arising as a function of storm location and may also be used by resource managers to examine the effects of storms in a quantitative fashion on local living marine resources.


This
study aims to systematically synthesize more than 20 years of human resource
outsourcing (HRO) studies in a way that is meaningful, concise and, useful to
HRO researchers and practitioners. Using
grounded coding technique blended with integrative literature review,
empirical papers published from 1997 to 2018 are examined. This is the first
HRO literature review using such techniques to answer three key research
questions: What has the existing empirical academic literature revealed about the
determinants of HRO decisions and outcomes? What are the key issues emerged
from the literature? What are the gaps in knowledge which warrant future HRO
research? Other than providing a comprehensive insight into an emerging
research area, this review also contributes to laying an important foundation
for the initial descriptive HRO theory development. 36 dependent variables and
99 independent variables over 449 relationships were coded.


Cross-country regressions explaining output growth often obtain a negative effect from inflation. However, that result is not robust, due to the selection of countries in sample, temporal aggregation, and omission of consequential variables in levels. This paper demonstrates some implications of these mis-specifications, both analytically and empirically. In particular, for most G-7 countries, annual time series of inflation and the log-level of output are cointegrated, thus rejecting the existence of a long-run relation between output growth and inflation. Typically, output and inflation are positively related in these cointegrating relationships: a price markup model helps interpret this surprising feature.


This article indicates how an intergenerational group reflecting technique, as a culturally appropriate research method, is used to obtain insight into how important information between grandparents and grandchildren is transferred and to cast light on the relational dynamics between the two generations. The intergenerational group reflecting technique has been applied at a day care facility for the aged in a semiurban, historically disadvantaged community in South Africa. Eleven grandmothers between the ages of 71 and 96 years and 14 grandchildren between the ages of 3 and 13 years participate in the project. The findings demonstrate that the intergenerational group reflecting technique is, indeed, a culturally appropriate research method. Members of both generations, for example, confirm in one another's presence that the community is responsible for the well-being of children and that the relationships between the generations are based on observable, instrumental behaviour. They also agree on implicit, sociocultural norms that guide intergenerational relations to include obedience and respect. Additional information that could be used in social interventions and for policy development has been obtained on the grandmothers' strained relational interactions with older adolescents and young adults.


Today it became a huge challenge for Human Resource Managers to retain the employees for
longer time of period and decrease the rate of employee turnover. The main research objective is to find out
the correlation between job satisfaction and employee turnover intention in private hospital in Erbil. A
quantitative method was used to analyze the current study. 144 participants were involved in this study from
private hospital in Erbil. The correlation between job satisfaction factor as independent factor and turnover
as dependent factor, the value of R for the Job satisfaction is =.386** which indicates that turnover is a
positive and weak correlation with turnover intention. The coefficients analysis for this study, the value Beta
for turnover is = .386> 0.01, which supported the research hypothesis. This study showed that the there is a
positive correlation between job satisfaction and employee turnover. Finally, on the turnover intentions of
private hospital personnel in Erbil, most of them would quit in case if they have a better opportunities.


This study examines influences on strategic differences in skill learning that occur with increasing age. Older adults differ in their strategic approach to cognitive skill acquisition tasks, where their progression from slow algorithmic processing to faster memory-based processing is slowed relative to young adults. In addition to difficulties older adults have with learning new associations, the difference in task approach has been linked to strategic choice, where factors such as lower confidence change how they interact with the task (e.g., Touron, 2015). The present study sought to understand older adults' strategic task approach by manipulating the task items to be more naturalistic with everyday experience. Participants completed a task that associated grocery items with prices, which are easier to learn if the prices are consistent with everyday experience (Castel, 2005). The relations between the grocery items and prices were manipulated to be familiar by approximating market prices, or to be unfamiliar by being overpriced. I found that use of the market-prices facilitates older adults' strategic approach to the task, demonstrated through greater and earlier use of memory-based processing than older adults with overpriced items. Surprisingly, the young adults in the overpriced condition also showed less use of memory-based processing, linked with lower task confidence; young adults have not previously shown reluctance to use memory strategies in cognitive skill acquisition tasks. Consequences of task confidence are discussed, as well as implications for theories of cognitive skill acquisition.


This article uncovers the roots of Rasul v. Bush, the landmark Supreme Court decision holding that federal courts have jurisdiction to hear challenges to the detention at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, of foreign nationals captured abroad in the war on terror. Under entrenched views of precedent shared by lower courts, commentators, and the parties alike, the Court could only reach that result by either distinguishing or overruling Johnson v. Eisentrager, a World War II case that had found no jurisdiction for habeas petitioners captured and detained abroad. However, Justice Stevens' opinion for the Court took a more peculiar tack: It declared the case already overruled. Even stranger, the opinion did so by relying on an obscure dissent from an earlier case ignored by everyone else as irrelevant precedent concerning venue rather than jurisdiction. That dissent, in Ahrens v. Clark, was drafted in critical parts by a law clerk for Justice Rutledge named John Paul Stevens. The story of how Justice Stevens ingeniously related Eisentrager to the Ahrens dissent, and thereby reversed their precedential worth in Rasul, is a remarkable one in Supreme Court history. As told in this article, the story reveals the intriguing extent to which Stevens' work in Ahrens over fifty years ago influenced the reasoning if not the result in Rasul. This archaeology is essential for a full understanding of Rasul, as well as an appreciation of the decision's place in the history of the Supreme Court and the jurisprudence of Justice Stevens. The story also supplies insight into Rasul's ramifications on the ability of another important class of captives in the war on terror — those confined abroad outside of Guantanamo Bay — to challenge their detention in federal court.