Internal audit (IA) has become an important and integral function of organizations in achieving their objectives and protecting their assets. Nonetheless, IA effectiveness has received scant attention in the literature, especially in the context of developing countries such as Libya. Such settings offer the potential to enhance the understanding of IA practices where standards for such practices are not formally adopted and the rationale for establishment of IA tends to remain more coercive than normative. This study seeks to examine the perceived effectiveness of the IA function in Libyan public enterprises (state-owned) by employing institutional theory and Marx's (1978) theory of the circuit of industrial capital. It addresses the issue of IA effectiveness by identifying seven qualitative factors considered to be important for effective IA, namely, independence, competence, scope of internal auditing work, performance of internal auditing work, coordination and co-operation between the internal and external auditor, management support, and awareness of the benefits of effective internal auditing within organizations. In order to attain the research objectives, this study followed a qualitative research design. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with chief executive officers, IA directors, managers of administrative affairs, managers of financial affairs and the general auditors, and was supplemented with analysis of relevant archival evidence.

This study identifies four potential threats to internal auditor independence due to the absence of (1) direct communication with the board of directors; (2) submission of reports to the highest level of management; (3) restrained reporting on IA findings; and (4) full access to all necessary information. Analysis of qualitative data illustrates that there were weaknesses in specific elements relating to the competence of internal auditors in terms of their low level of experience and professional qualifications, and computer technology skills. The results show that the level of IA effectiveness is limited due to the narrow scope of IA work, limited use of career internal audit staff, and lower organizational status of IA departments. It is concluded that lower perceptions of IA effectiveness signifies IA customers' expectation of a broader scope of work and internal audit professionalism. The results also suggest that coercive establishment of IA does not necessarily lead to effective IA departments if normative processes of professionalism are absent.

The results of this study indicate that there are weaknesses in specific elements relating to co-operation between the internal and external auditor. Libyan IA directors do not believe external auditors assist them in achieving or improving their activities. In additon, external audit working papers are unavailable to internal auditors. The findings of this study also indicate a general consensus among Libyan participants that there is dissatisfaction regarding top management support to internal audit departments and the extent of top management support to internal audit is considered inadequate in Libyan public enterprises. The interview results also reveal inadequate awareness of the benefits of effective internal auditing within Libyan public enterprises.

Overall, based on the results of this study, it can be argued that internal auditing operates in ways that are decoupled in some important areas from those envisaged by the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) and other organizations in the field. Therefore, from the perspective of institutional isomorphism, IA in Libyan public enterprises is not perceived as value-adding or having the capacity to improve an organization's operations. Furthermore, IA may not play an important role in assisting organizations to minimize wastage, maximize employment levels and increase wage rates and production levels, and minimize capital devaluation as much as possible under the circumstances. Based on the perspective of Institutional theory and Marx's theory, and the results of qualitative data analysis overall, IA in Libyan public enterprises is not perceived as being effective.

The study contributes to the IA literature and practice in several ways. First, it introduces a new perspective for explaining the IA effectiveness by identifying two groups of factors impacting on IA effectiveness. these relate to International Standards for Professional Practice of Internal Auditing (ISPPIA) (independence, competencies, scope of work and work performance) and those related to external factors influencing IA effectiveness (the coordination and co-operation between the internal and external auditor, management support, and awareness of the benefits of effective internal auditing within organizations). Specifically, this study establishes a factor not identified by prior research that may influence IA effectiveness, namely, awareness of the benefits of having internal auditing. Therefore, it will fill an important gap in previous research by proposing different perspectives to explain IA effectiveness. Second, it contributes to knowledge regarding IA effectiveness by using a qualitative research design. Qualitative data analysis allows for a deeper understanding of a phenomenon and, rather than just measuring previously known constructs it allows for the identification of new contextual issues and relationships. Third, it contributes to the limited literature employing Marx's theory of the circuit of industrial capital in accounting in general and IA research in particular. Specifically, this study contributes to the literature by establishing a theory-based link between IA effectiveness and an added assurance in relation to production processes. Fourth, it also extends IA research under institutional theory. Specifically, this study contributes to the literature by establishing a theory-based link between IA effectiveness and normative isomorphism which increases proficiency within organizations and arises when institutional changes occur due to an organization's recognition of professions. Finally, prior IA research has largely focused on the empirical context of developed economies, whereas the findings of this study may be considered to add valuable additional insights to the literature emanating from the empirical setting of a developing country.


Advances in computational statistics provide a general framework for the highdimensional models typically needed for ecological inference and prediction. Hierarchical Bayes (HB) represents a modelling structure with capacity to exploit diverse sources of information, to accommodate influences that are unknown (or unknowable), and to draw inference on large numbers of latent variables and parameters that describe complex relationships. Here I summarize the structure of HB and provide examples for common spatiotemporal problems. The flexible framework means that parameters, variables and latent variables can represent broader classes of model elements than are treated in traditional models. Inference and prediction depend on two types of stochasticity, including (1) uncertainty, which describes our knowledge of fixed quantities, it applies to all unobservables (latent variables and parameters), and it declines asymptotically with sample size, and (2) variability, which applies to fluctuations that are not explained by deterministic processes and does not decline asymptotically with sample size. Examples demonstrate how different sources of stochasticity impact inference and prediction and how allowance for stochastic influences can guide research.


Abstract Běhounekite, orthorhombic U(SO4)2(H2O)4, is the first natural sulphate of U4+. It was found in the Geschieber vein, Jáchymov (St Joachimsthal) ore district, Western Bohemia, Czech Republic, crystallized on the altered surface of arsenic and associated with kaatialaite, arsenolite, claudetite, unnamed phase UM1997-20-AsO:HU and gypsum. Běhounekite most commonly forms short-prismatic to tabular green crystals, rarely up to 0.5 mm long. The crystals have a strong vitreous lustre and a grey to greenish grey streak. They are brittle with an uneven fracture and have very good cleavage along {100}. The Mohs hardness is about 2. The mineral is not fluorescent either in short- or long-wavelength UV radiation. Běhounekite is moderately pleochroic, α∼β is pale emerald green and γ is emerald green, and is optically biaxial (+) with α = 1.590(2), β = 1.618(4), γ = 1.659(2) (590 nm), 2V (calc.) = 81º, birefringence 0.069. The empirical formula of Běhounekite (based on 12 O atoms, from an average of five point analyses) is (U0.99Y0.03)Σ1.02(SO4)1.97(H2O)4. The simplified formula is U(SO4)2(H2O)4, which requires UO2 53.77, SO331.88, H2O 14.35, total 100.00 wt.%. Běhounekite is orthorhombic, space group Pnma, a = 14.6464(3), b = 11.0786(3), c = 5.6910(14) Å, V = 923.43(4) Å3, Z = 4, Dcalc = 3.62 g cm-3. The seven strongest diffraction peaks in the X-ray powder diffraction pattern are [dobs in Å (I) (hkl)]: 7.330 (100) (200), 6.112 (54) (210), 5.538 (21) (020), 4.787 (42) (111), 3.663 (17) (400), 3.478 (20) (410), 3.080 (41) (321). The crystal structure of běhounekite has been solved by the charge-flipping method from singlecrystal X-ray diffraction data and refined to R 1 = 2.10 % with a GOF = 1.51, based on 912 unique observed diffractions. The crystal structure consists of layers built up from [8]-coordinate uranium atoms and sulphate tetrahedra. The eight ligands include four oxygen atoms from the sulphate groups and four oxygen atoms from the H2O molecules. Each uranium coordination polyhedron is connected via sulphate tetrahedra with other uranium polyhedra and through hydrogen bonds to the apices of sulphate tetrahedra. The dominant features of the Raman and infrared spectra of běhounekite are related to stretching vibrations of SO4 tetrahedra (~1200-950 cm1), O-H stretching modes (~3400-3000 cm1) and H-O-H bending modes (~1650 cm1). The mineral is named in honour of Frantisěk Běhounekite, a well known Czech nuclear physicist.


The United Kingdom is fortunate that it is insulated against some of the needless overtesting, overtreating, and overdiagnosing that doctors in the United States are rising up against. Instead, we have the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which offers evidence based appraisals of healthcare interventions and screening and which protects against treatments of little or no efficacy being offered on the NHS. We also have the UK National Screening Committee, which provides critical reviews and recommendations of what screening is effective and useful.

Does this mean that we can relax? Unfortunately not. The general practice contract has improved the quantification of what we do, but the price of this is that more patients are exposed to guidelines rich in pharmaceutical recommendations. Some may be beneficial. However, most lack guidance about when …


A short-cut design procedure was developed, allowing the quick approx. design of nonisothermal, packed, absorption columns by hand. The method is not based on simplifying assumptions, but on a correlation of a large no. of rigorously obtained liq. temp. profiles. The rigorous computations include a wide range of system properties and operating conditions. Correlation of the liq. temp. profiles was possible by correlating the temp. of the exit liq. and a temp. assocd. with the internal temp. max. sep. Also, the need for graphical integration in cases with equil. lines curved due to the temp. variations was eliminated by replacing the curved equil. line by 2 straight lines and correlating the slopes of those lines. The method is more reliable than the conventional approx. calcn. methods based on simplifying assumptions and is often less time consuming. [on SciFinder (R)]


Data-processing programs are becoming increasingly important in the Big-data era. However, two notable problems of these programs may cause sub-optimal data- processing results. On one hand, these programs contain large number of floating-point computations. Due to the limited precision of floating-point representations, errors are introduced, propagated and accumulated in series of computations, making the computation results unreliable. We call this problem as floating-point instability. On the other hand, these programs are heavily parameterized. As no universal optimal parameter configuration exists for all possible inputs, the setting of program parameters should be carefully chosen and tuned for each input. Otherwise, the result would be sub-optimal. Manual tuning is infeasible because the number of parameters and the range of each parameter value may be big.We try to address these two challenges in this dissertation. For floating-point instability problem, we develop a novel runtime technique to capture different output variations in the presence of instability. It features the idea of transforming every floating point value to a vector of multiple values $-$ the values added to create the vector are obtained by introducing artificial errors that are upper bounds of actual errors. The propagation of artificial errors models the propagation of actual errors. When values in vectors result in discrete execution differences (e.g., following different paths), the execution is forked to capture the resulting output variations.For parameterized data-processing programs, we develop a white-box program tuning framework to tune the program parameter configuration for optimal data-processing result of each program input. To further reduce the parameter configuration overhead, we propose the first general framework to inject artificial intelligence (AI) in the program, so the intelligent program is able to predict the parameter configuration for each incoming input directly. However, similar to many other ML/AI applications, the crucial challenge lies in feature selection, i.e., selection of the feature variables for predicting the target parameter specified by the users.Thus, we propose a novel approach by combining program analysis and statistical analysis for better program feature variables selection which further helps better target parameter prediction and improves the result.


This paper conceptualizes the diverse responses and solutions to the environmental and climate crisis as a battle of modernities, where a well-entrenched and efficient 'carbon modernity' is increasingly challenged by alternative visions of social well-being and industrial development. This 'battle' shows that, although the twenty-first century's scenarios of a sustainable future may vary, the common rallying cry is most often for the mobilization of modernity's innovative potential to get the planet out of its current predicament, and less so the idea of a return to a Spartan, pre-modern nature-utopia. There is now a plethora of concepts describing the greening of modernity, from 'sustainable development', 'ecological modernization', 'green growth' and 'transformation' to the 'post-growth', 'no-growth' or even 'de-growth' economy. The paper contends that it is time to put these concepts – and their accompanying practices – into dialogue with one another and imbue them with an overarching cultural objective. The suggested concept of 'ecomodernity' reconciles the modernity of the Enlightenment with a return to oikos – the ancient concept of the more-than-human 'household' or 'natural home' – reclaiming the discarded connection between humans and nature. The paper drafts the cultural contours of ecomodernity in terms of a pivotal paradigm shift in education, which involves redefining human identity, reimagining the balance between competition and cooperation, and supplementing knowledge with wisdom.


The pivotal issue of transplant rejection diagnosis and management is design, conduct, and analysis of clinical trials. The historical experience with clinical trials of major immunosuppressive drugs (cyclosporine and especially tacrolimus) is examined in this article. Cyclosporine was a turning point in transplantation, providing an extraordinary improvement over previous therapies. Additionally, early investigational experience with tacrolimus was shown to be important in rescue from cyclosporine failure. Experience with tacrolimus in liver recipients for primary therapy led to understanding that the side effect profile was similar to cyclosporine and that the important side effects of tacrolimus (toxicity and diabetes) could be lessened by altering the drug dose. Early dosing regimens were determined by attempts to balance the toxicities (representing a dose ceiling) against rejection (for minimum dosing). Drug levels became understandable and trough levels could be used to guide therapy. However, when the multicenter liver trial was implemented, high starting doses were included in the protocol design, ignoring information obtained with drug level monitoring. Disregard for this information led to a distortion of the potential value of tacrolimus. Historical controls from the Pittsburgh experience suggested that tacrolimus was a critical immunosuppressant, and the randomized trial against cyclosporine confirmed the drug's ability to compete. The multicenter liver trial, however, was not balanced across treatment arms for other immunosuppressive agents (ie, higher doses of prednisone from center to center, additional induction protocols at various centers). Additionally, analysis of study results differed across continents, and the role of tacrolimus in cyclosporine rescue was not examined thoroughly. When tacrolimus was proposed for use in extrahepatic organ transplantation, again the Pittsburgh experience, as well as experience from other single centers, was determined inadequate evidence of efficacy, and randomized trials were required by the FDA. The fact that multicenter trials in transplantation have historically been poorly designed or analyzed weighed against the dramatic improvements shown from historically controlled studies or single-center trials should lead to question of the regulatory requirement for multicenter randomized trials for all organ types.


Abstract. Because the total air content (TAC) of polar ice is directly affected by the atmospheric pressure and temperature, its record in polar ice cores was initially considered as a proxy for past ice sheet elevation changes. However, the Antarctic ice core TAC record is known to also contain an insolation signature, although the underlying physical mechanisms are still a matter of debate. Here we present a high-resolution TAC record over the whole North Greenland Ice Core Project ice core, covering the last 120 000 years, which independently supports an insolation signature in Greenland. Wavelet analysis reveals a clear precession and obliquity signal similar to previous findings on Antarctic TAC, with a different insolation history. In our high-resolution record we also find a decrease of 4–6 % (4–5 mL kg−1) in TAC as a response to Dansgaard–Oeschger events (DO events). TAC starts to decrease in parallel to increasing Greenland surface temperature and slightly before CH4 reacts to the warming but also shows a two-step decline that lasts for several centuries into the warm interstadial. The TAC response is larger than expected considering only changes in air density by local temperature and atmospheric pressure as a driver, pointing to a transient firnification response caused by the accumulation-induced increase in the load on the firn at bubble close-off, while temperature changes deeper in the firn are still small.


The aim of this project is to utilize high-throughput molecular methods to investigate the diets of three nonnative and one native Hawaiian bird species. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has made it possible to produce thousands of sequencing reads of DNA in a relatively short amount of time. This metabarcoding technology has been used to identify a range of different taxa, from bacteria in the human gut to fungi in the soil. More recently, this approach has been used to identify insects in the diets of birds and other species, including bees and bats. Samples underwent genomic sequencing using a targeted approach of the cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene, a region that is present in all insects. DNA was extracted from bird feces and stomach contents using protocols designed for fecal material and a genomic region was amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using universal COI primers. The resulting amplified sequences were compared to an online reference database of millions of insect sequences for taxonomic identification. Data were analyzed for diet variation within and between each species of bird, as well as were compared to arthropods sampled from areas where these birds were observed foraging. The results showed there were a large variety of insects and spiders consumed by birds. There was overlap of insect order between the species of birds, but when diets were examined at a species level, bird species were preying on different insects.


This article analyzes the representation of Hawaa (Eve) in Kenyan poet Abdilatif Abdalla's epic poem Utenzi wa Maisha ya Adamu na Hawaa [Epic of the Life of Adam and Eve]. Building on Alamin Mazrui's contention that the poem can be compared to John Milton's Paradise Lost, scholarly debate on Milton's treatment of Eve becomes a lens through which to more closely examine Abdalla's Hawaa and the larger gender implications of her role in the poem's narrative. Close reading of Abdalla's poem through this lens reveals a far less misogynistic interpretation of Hawaa than previous critics of the poem have recognized. Taking into consideration Abdalla's depiction of Hawaa's creation, her role in the couple's transgression against God, and her relationship with Adam before and after their expulsion from Paradise, this article argues that the poet offers Hawaa as an archetype not of female inferiority and treachery but of human fallibility and capacity for growth.


This paper studies the effect of monetary incentives on mortgage renegotiation. Lenders are sometimes willing to renegotiate mortgage contracts with homeowners who are at risk of foreclosure. This paper models the renegotiation process as a simple sequential move game in which the homeowner first seeks renegotiation and the lender responds by deciding whether or not to modify the terms of the mortgage. The model is used to examine outcomes in the presence of monetary incentives given to the homeowner and lender like those given by U.S. government programs during the recent foreclosure crisis. The results show that, in the absence of monetary incentives, lenders renegotiate with a subset of homeowners who avoid foreclosure as a result. The introduction of incentives expands the set of homeowners who receive modifications and avoid foreclosure. We show that under certain conditions, incentives also lead lenders to renegotiate with homeowners who subsequently end up in foreclosure.


This report examines the challenges of advancing the use of electronic shipping papers as an alternative to the current paper-based hazardous materials communication system. Paper copy hazardous materials shipping papers have several drawbacks: they are labor intensive and subject to human error; they are perishable and may not be available to emergency responders in the event of an incident; and they are difficult to exchange between modes or different vehicles within a mode. The use of internationally compatible electronic data-sharing technologies could significantly improve the exchange of hazardous materials shipping information among shippers, carriers, regulatory agencies, and emergency responders. Timely access to accurate hazardous materials shipping information will likely reduce errors in information exchange, improve efficiency, enhance security, and improve the response efforts in the event of a hazardous materials incident.


To prevent unregulated activation, kinases have evolved different means to inhibit their intrinsic enzymatic capability. By examining the crystal structure of the EphB2 tyrosine receptor kinase, Wybenga-Groot et al. have identified the mechanism by which the kinase regulates its own activation. The juxtamembrane segment (on the cytoplasmic side) of unphosphorylated EphB2 adopts an α-helical structure that interferes with kinase activation. ATP binding to the receptor is not inhibited; rather, the α helix interferes with the movement of the kinase's activation loop to a position that favors activation. On the other hand, the authors suggest that apposition of the α helix and the kinase domain would prevent the phosphorylation of the tyrosines (known to be docking sites for signaling proteins) that reside in the α helix. Phosphorylation of two tyrosines in the juxtamembrane segment would cause the separation of the α-helical segment from the activation loop, freeing the catalytic domain for activation. Thus, the data suggest that EphB2 utilizes a mechanism whereby its kinase activity and its essential docking-site tyrosine residues are inaccessible until the proper stimulatory signals are present. L. E. Wybenga-Groot, B. Baskin, S. H. Ong, J. Tong, T. Pawson, F. Sicheri, Structural basis for autoinhibition of the EphB2 receptor tyrosine kinase by the unphosphorylated juxtamembrane region. Cell 106, 745-757 (2001). [Full Text]


In order to overcome the silence that had been instilled by colonial-ism, several postcolonial female writers employ fiction to restore their local culture and reflect on their representation in historical writings. For female writers, literature often becomes a medium through which they can become active agents of their own destiny by establishing a voice for themselves. Writing becomes a means of reclaiming traditional discourses relating to women. The following study is primarily focused on Calixthe Beyala, a Cameroonian novelist, and specifically concentrates on the manner in which Beyala makes use of her female protagonist in Tu t"appelleras Tanga to portray the realities facing African Francophone females. The study aims at illustrating that the female protagonist plays a critical role in mirror-ing both the conditions of females in African societies and the conditions pertaining to Womanism in a universal context. Through the role of the protagonist, the study reveals that there seems to be some relationship between fiction and society which is definitely enough for fictional characters to be used as prototypes for social roles and attitudes. In order to further investigate the manner in which African actualities are able to exist in fictional narratives, the study draws an extensive comparison between the fictional narrative Tu t"appelleras Tanga and selected non-fictional Cameroonian laws ranging from 1980 to 2017. By addressing the intentions of fictional narratives, the study reveals a possible association between Beyala"s fiction and the African world of actuality relative to the African females" predicament that is associated with patriarchal dominance, prostitution, the lack of agency as well as economic exploitation. To conclude, the paper maintains that Francophone African female novelists, and in particular, Beyala, make use of fictional narratives to not only highlight the pivotal issues regarding the status of African women but also creates a voice for future female generations to become empowered through the act of narration.


Fungus is a member of a large group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds (British English: moulds), as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, Fungi, which is separate from plants, animals, protists and bacteria. One major difference is that fungal cells have cell walls that contain chitin, unlike the cell walls of plants and some protists, which contain cellulose, and unlike the cell walls of bacteria. These and other differences show that the fungi form a single group of related organisms, named the Eumycota (true fungi or Eumycetes), that share a common ancestor (is a monophyletic group). This fungal group is distinct from the structurally similar myxomycetes (slime molds) and oomycetes (water molds). The discipline of biology devoted to the study of fungi is known as mycology. Mycology has often been regarded as a branch of botany, even though it is a separate kingdom in biological taxonomy. Genetic studies have shown that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants.


Law as a regulator of the conduct of social subjects cannot be directly equated with other methods of controlling the behavior in society. The grounds of legally significant actions allow determination of the context of the application of legal rules. The meaning of each legal term, as argued by L. Wittgenstein, depends on its "context of use" and the conventions of use at the moment. Therefore, the interpretation of the rules cannot be based solely on the principles of logic and be completely neutral. On the one hand, "we follow the rule blindly", but at the same time, the repeatability of the behavior of other people and the ability to observe their behavior (by analogy with the mathematical concepts of addition and sum) encourage "learning" the rules and acting in accordance with the rules.

The ascription of the legal language and the "imputation" principle of the legal interpretation of facts allow defining a key concept that cannot exist beyond the constructed social reality. The attempts to analyze non-legal factors appeal not to legal arguments but to other phenomena. The legal term in its nature not only describes empirical facts but also encourages action.The most dismal example of a change in philosophical argumentation and legal reasoning in the philosophy of law is the influence of Quine's arguments. In the context of the methodology of legal explanation, the naturalization of the epistemology of law is possible only when the limitations and specifics of traditional methods of interpretation of legal reality are considered.

The paper focuses on the analysis of some arguments made by the analytical legal philosophers regarding the linguistic content of legal rules with no reference to any social determination or formulation of the significant judgments about the linguistic nature of legal reality.


Cognitive electrophysiology concerns the study of the brain's electrical and magnetic responses to both external and internal events. These can be measured using electroencephalograms (EEGs) or magnetoencephalograms (MEGs). With the advent of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), another method of tracking brain signals, the tools and techniques of ERP, EEG and MEG data acquisition and analysis have been developing at a similarly rapid pace, and this book offers an overview of key recent advances in cognitive electrophysiology. The chapters highlight the increasing overlap in EEG and MEG analytic techniques, describing several methods applicable to both; they discuss recent developments, including reverse correlation methods in visual-evoked potentials and a new approach to topographic mapping in high-density electrode montage; and they relate the latest thinking on design aspects of EEG/MEG studies, discussing how to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio as well as statistical developments for maximizing power and accuracy in data analysis using repeated-measure ANOVAS.ContributorsDenis Brunet, Douglas Cheyne, Marzia De Lucia, Sam M. Doesburg, John J. Foxe, Karl J. Friston, Marta I. Garrido, Sara L. Gonzalez Andino, Rolando Grave de Peralta Menendez, Jessica J. Green, Todd C. Handy, Anthony T. Herdman, Stefan J. Kiebel, Edmund C. Lalor, Theodor Landis, Teresa Y. L. Liu-Ambrose, John. J. McDonald, Christoph M. Michel, Marla J. S. Mickleborough, Micah M. Murray, Lindsay S. Nagamatsu, Barak A. Pearlmutter, Durk Talsma, Gregor Thut, Anne-Laura van Harmelen, Lawrence M. Ward


The paradigm of Federated learning (FL) deals with multiple clients participating in collaborative training of a machine learning model under the orchestration of a central server. In this setup, each client's data is private to itself and is not transferable to other clients or the server. Though FL paradigm has received significant interest recently from the research community, the problem of selecting the relevant clients w.r.t. the central server's learning objective is under-explored. We refer to these problems as Federated Relevant Client Selection (FRCS). Because the server doesn't have explicit control over the nature of data possessed by each client, the problem of selecting relevant clients is significantly complex in FL settings.
In this paper, we resolve important and related FRCS problems viz., selecting clients with relevant data, detecting clients that possess data relevant to a particular target label, and rectifying corrupted data samples of individual clients. We follow a principled approach to address the above FRCS problems and develop a new federated learning method using the Shapley value concept from cooperative game theory. Towards this end, we propose a cooperative game involving the gradients shared by the clients. Using this game, we compute Shapley values of clients and then present Shapley value based Federated Averaging (S-FedAvg) algorithm that empowers the server to select relevant clients with high probability. S-FedAvg turns out to be critical in designing specific algorithms to address the FRCS problems. We finally conduct a thorough empirical analysis on image classification and speech recognition tasks to show the superior performance of S-FedAvg than the baselines in the context of supervised federated learning settings.


This paper describes the engineering geological characteristics of rock mass in the headrace tunnel, powerhouse, and intake portal of the Kankai Hydroelectric Project. The project area lies in the Lower Siwaliks of east Nepal and consists of alternating sandstone and mudstone beds with frequent siltstone intercalations. The rock mass of the project area was classified according to rock mass rating (RMR) and rock mass quality index (Q) systems. It is of very poor, poor, to fair quality (categories V, IV, and III) in the headrace tunnel; of very poor quality (category V) in the powerhouse; and of fair quality (category III) in the intake portal. The stability analysis of irregularly jointed and fractured rocks of the area was carried out using SWEDGE and UNWEDGE. The analysis gave the safety factor of 0.45, 0.64, and 0.45, respectively for the powerhouse, intake portal, and headrace tunnel. The final safety factors obtained after the installation of support for powerhouse, intake portal, and headrace tunnel were 1.14, 3.33, and 4.53, respectively.


Abstract Children's early development serves as the foundation for later health, learning and well-being. The inclusion of early childhood development (ECD) in the Sustainable Development Goals implies that countries must report on the percentage of children under 5 years of age who are "developmentally on track." This note briefly reflects on the history of global ECD goals and their measurement and outlines the challenge ahead: creating a workable strategy for ECD measurement that balances the need for national relevance with globally comparable data. The global variation in the timing and nature of early childhood skills acquisition presents an important opportunity as countries set their own standards for what it means to be developmentally on track. Country-driven measurement and standard setting, derived from measurement approaches that meet international expectations for quality, can have an important influence on policy and practice. Countries can measure the development of their youngest citizens in a way that is most relevant and useful to them, so that they may use those data to ensure that all children have the opportunity to fulfill their potential.


We used the equations of state of dense nuclear matter to construct the macroscopic properties of neutron stars and test them using available observational results. The Dirac-Brueckner-Hartree-Fock mean field calculations approximated by their parameterized form are the basis of our calculations. We calculated the central pressure and density and correspondingly the possible radius and mass both with and without allowance for hyperons first, and compared these results with recent astronomical observations, and, finally, we included effect of deformation and rotation.


As they pursue economic development, developing countries possess high demand for processes and technologies that have climate-friendly methods or alternatives. However, these nations currently face barriers to entry because of trade policies and intellectual property regulations that render procurement of these technologies cost-prohibitive. In light of the recent breakdown in negotiations at the United Nations climate conference in Bali to remove tariffs on green technology, a new approach to green technology diffusion should be considered in order to balance the demand among developing nations for fluid technology transfers with the profit-driven needs and intellectual property considerations of technology holders. A potential solution to overcome the high fixed costs of technology diffusion could involve the creation of a global exchange forum in which transnational green technology holders, green venture capitalists, and developing country entrepreneurs could broker for efficient allocation of investment, resources, and technologies.


The wireline gamma-ray log is sensitive to open-hole conditions and, in particular, the diameter. This means that the log can jump at casing points. Although environmental corrections exist, they can fail at these points. We present a Bayesian method for deriving a new quantity – the shifted gamma–ray index – that takes these shifts into account by fitting a piecewise linear function to open-hole data in a depth window around the casing point. Because it is Bayesian, the method enables us to assess our uncertainty about its performance. This method requires very little knowledge of the borehole or drilling conditions but relies on the assumption that the lithology is consistent. Investigating the other wireline logs enables us to assess whether this assumption is valid. We demonstrate our method using well data from offshore mid-Norway.


Bridge is an important artificial target in the field of remote sensing analysis. A method for automatic recognition of bridges over water in high-resolution remote sensing images is presented. Firstly, we establish bridge knowledge models. Based on top-down knowledge-driven, the flow is composed of two steps: hypothesis and testing. Hypothesis is rough positioning including such techniques: waters segmentation, ROI extraction with morphology operator and connectivity sign, candidate regions detection. In testing process, the possible bridge is authenticated using gray features, and the parameters such as coordinates and azimuth of bridge can be obtained. Experiments are executed on the high-resolution remote sensing images, and the results confirm the validity of the proposed method.


Web surveys have become popular recently because of their attractive advantages of data collection. However, in web surveys, bias may occur mainly due to limited coverage and self-selection. This paper reviews characteristics and problems of web surveys, and describes some adjustment weighting methods for reducing the bias. Propensity score adjustment is used for correcting selection bias due to non-probability sampling, and calibration adjustment is used for correction coverage bias. Those bias reduction methods will be explored by comparing face-to-face survey (reference survey) results with web survey results for the Social Survey produced by Statistics Korea. The methods studied include different variable selection methods for propensity score calculation and different propensity score weighting methods.


ON THE QUESTION OF WHERE the study of nature should begin, Aristotle's teaching is clear and familiar. His first treatise on natural science, the Physics, tells us, at the very beginning, that the investigation of nature must start from the things which are more knowable and certain to us and proceed towards those which are clearer and more certain in themselves; for the same things are not "knowable relatively to us" and "knowable" absolutely. So in the present inquiry we must follow this method and advance from what is more obscure by nature, but more certain to us, towards what is more certain and more knowable by nature.--Now what is to us plain and obvious at first is rather confused wholes, the elements and principles of which become known to us later by analysis. Thus we must advance from [vague] generalities to particulars. For it is a [vague] whole that is more known to sense perception, and a generality is likewise a kind of whole, comprising many things within it, like parts. Much the same happens in relation of the name to the definition. A name, such as "circle," means vaguely a sort of whole: the definition analyses this whole into its parts [i.e. defining parts]. Similarly a child begins by calling all men "father," and all women "mother," but later on distinguishes each of them. (1) Should the thought occur to us that modern science may have rendered this mode of procedure obsolete, just as it has invalidated much of Aristotle's cosmology, we shall find no support for our suspicion in one of the more advanced expositors of the scientific outlook, namely Lord Russell. Just last year, he wrote of a "prejudice" which he describes as "perhaps the most important in all my thinking." ... This is concerned with method. My method invariably is to start from something vague but puzzling, something which seems indubitable but which I cannot express with any precision. I go through a process which is like that of first seeing something with the naked eye and then examining it through a microscope. I find that by fixity of attention divisions and distinctions appear where none at first was visible, just as through a microscope you can see the bacilli in impure water which without the microscope are not discernible. There are many who decry analysis, but it has seemed to me evident, as in the case of the impure water, that analysis gives new knowledge without destroying any of the previously existing knowledge. This applies not only to the structure of physical things, but quite as much to concepts. "Knowledge," for example, as commonly used is a very imprecise term covering a number of differ ent things and a number of stages from certainty to slight probability. It seems to me that philosophical investigation, as far as I have experi ence of it, starts from that curious and unsatisfactory state of mind in which one feels complete certainty without being able to say what one is certain of. The process that results from prolonged attention is just like that of watching an object approaching through a thick fog: at first it is only a vague darkness, but as it approaches articulations appear and one discovers that it is a man or a woman, or a horse or a cow or what not. It seems to me that those who object to analysis would wish us to be content with the initial dark blur. Belief in the above process is my strongest and most unshakable prejudice as regards the methods of philo sophical investigation. (2) Now, what can such a mode of procedure have to do with our question, which is where we ought to begin a study of nature? The method described means that we should begin with generalities which, though vague, are quite certain. Of course no intellect with a speculative vitality can rest in these generalities however reassuring in their certainty. The mind wants to know as much as it can about as much as there is to know. …


Traditionally research into how we perceive our external world focused on the unisensory approach, examining how information is processed by one sense at a time. This produced a vast literature of results revealing how our brains process information from the different senses, from fields such as psychophysics, animal electrophysiology, and neuroimaging. However, we know from our own experiences that we use more than one sense at a time to understand our external world. Therefore to fully understand perception, we must understand not only how the brain processes information from individual sensory modalities, but also how and when this information interacts and combines with information from other modalities. In short, we need to understand the phenomenon of multisensory perception.
The work in this thesis describes three experiments aimed to provide new insights into this topic. Specifically, the three experiments presented here focused on examining when and where effects related to multisensory perception emerged in neural signals, and whether or not these effects could be related to behaviour in a time-resolved way and on a trial-by-trial basis. These experiments were carried out using a novel combination of psychophysics, high density electroencephalography (EEG), and advanced computational methods (linear discriminant analysis and mutual information analysis).

Experiment 1 (Chapter 3) investigated how behavioural and neural signals are modulated by the reliability of sensory information. Previous work has shown that subjects will weight sensory cues in proportion to their relative reliabilities; high reliability cues are assigned a higher weight and have more influence on the final perceptual estimate, while low reliability cues are assigned a lower weight and have less influence. Despite this widespread finding, it remains unclear when neural correlates of sensory reliability emerge during a trial, and whether or not modulations in neural signals due to reliability relate to modulations in behavioural reweighting. To investigate these questions we used a combination of psychophysics, EEG-based neuroimaging, single-trial decoding, and regression modelling. Subjects performed an audio-visual rate discrimination task where the modality (auditory, visual, audio-visual), stimulus stream rate (8 to 14 Hz), visual reliability (high/low), and congruency in rate between audio-visual stimuli (± 2 Hz) were systematically manipulated. For the behavioural and EEG components (derived using linear discriminant analysis), a set of perceptual and neural weights were calculated for each time point. The behavioural results revealed that participants weighted sensory information based on reliability: as visual reliability decreased, auditory weighting increased. These modulations in perceptual weights emerged early after stimulus onset (48 ms). The EEG data revealed that neural correlates of sensory reliability and perceptual weighting were also evident in decoding signals, and that these occurred surprisingly early in the trial (84 ms). Finally, source localisation suggested that these correlates originated in early sensory (occipital/temporal) and parietal regions respectively. Overall, these results provide the first insights into the temporal dynamics underlying human cue weighting in the brain, and suggest that it is an early, dynamic, and distributed process in the brain.

Experiment 2 (Chapter 4) expanded on this work by investigating how oscillatory power was modulated by the reliability of sensory information. To this end, we used a time-frequency approach to analyse the data collected for the work in Chapter 3. Our results showed that significant effects in the theta and alpha bands over fronto-central regions occurred during the same early time windows as a shift in perceptual weighting (100 ms and 250 ms respectively). Specifically, we found that theta power (4 - 6 Hz) was lower and alpha power (10 – 12 Hz) was higher in audio-visual conditions where visual reliability was low, relative to conditions where visual reliability was high. These results suggest that changes in oscillatory power may underlie reliability based cue weighting in the brain, and that these changes occur early during the sensory integration process.

Finally, Experiment 3 (Chapter 5) moved away from examining reliability based cue weighting and focused on investigating cases where spatially and temporally incongruent auditory and visual cues interact to affect behaviour. Known collectively as "cross-modal associations", past work has shown that observers have preferred and non-preferred stimuli pairings. For example, subjects will frequently pair high pitched tones with small objects and low pitched tones with large objects. However it is still unclear when and where these associations are reflected in neural signals, and whether they emerge at an early perceptual level or later decisional level. To investigate these questions we used a modified version of the implicit association test (IAT) to examine the modulation of behavioural and neural signals underlying an auditory pitch – visual size cross modal association. Congruency was manipulated by assigning two stimuli (one auditory and one visual) to each of the left or right response keys and changing this assignment across blocks to create congruent (left key: high tone – small circle, right key: low tone – large circle) and incongruent (left key: low tone – small circle, right key: high tone – large circle) pairings of stimuli. On each trial, subjects were presented with only one of the four stimuli (auditory high tone, auditory low tone, visual small circle, visual large circle), and asked to respond which was presented as quickly and accurately as possible. The key assumption with such a design is that subjects should respond faster when associated (i.e. congruent) stimuli are assigned to the same response key than when two non-associated stimuli are. In line with this, our behavioural results demonstrated that subjects responded faster on blocks where congruent pairings of stimuli were assigned to the response keys (high pitch-small circle and low pitch large circle), than blocks where incongruent pairings were. The EEG results demonstrated that information about auditory pitch and visual size could be extracted from neural signals using two approaches to single-trial analysis (linear discriminant analysis and mutual information analysis) early during the trial (50ms), with the strongest information contained over posterior and temporal electrodes for auditory trials, and posterior electrodes for visual trials. EEG components related to auditory pitch were significantly modulated by cross-modal congruency over temporal and frontal regions early in the trial (~100ms), while EEG components related to visual size were modulated later (~220ms) over frontal and temporal electrodes. For the auditory trials, these EEG components were significantly predictive of single trial reaction times, yet for the visual trials the components were not. As a result, the data support an early and short-latency origin of cross-modal associations, and suggest that these may originate in a bottom-up manner during early sensory processing rather than from high-level inference processes. Importantly, the findings were consistent across both analysis methods, suggesting these effects are robust.
To summarise, the results across all three experiments showed that it is possible to extract meaningful, single-trial information from the EEG signal and relate it to behaviour on a time resolved basis. As a result, the work presented here steps beyond previous studies to provide new insights into the temporal dynamics of audio-visual perception in the brain. All experiments, although employing different paradigms and investigating different processes, showed early neural correlates related to audio-visual perception emerging in neural signals across early sensory, parietal, and frontal regions. Together, these results provide support for the prevailing modern view that the entire cortex is essentially multisensory and that multisensory effects can emerge at all stages during the perceptual process.


For large software systems, the testing phase tends to have comparatively much higher cost than all the previous life-cycle phases taken together, obviously resulting in much more efforts. A good measure of software testability can help better manage the testing phase effort. This paper proposes a fuzzy model for measurement of software testability based on five-object oriented metrics. Empirical data of testing time of five software projects has been collected and used to evaluate the performance of the model. Keywords: Testability, Fuzzy system modeling, CK metrics.


Vibratory rollers are commonly used for compaction of embankments and landfills. This task is time consuming and constitutes a significant part of most large construction and infrastructure projects. By improving the compaction efficiency, the construction industry would reduce costs and environmental impact.This research project studies the influence of the vibration frequency of the drum, which is normally a fixed roller property, and whether resonance can be utilized to improve the compaction efficiency. The influence of frequency on roller compaction has not before been studied but the concept of resonance compaction has previously been applied successfully in deep compaction of fills and natural deposits.In order to examine the influence of vibration frequency on the compaction of granular soil, small-scale compaction tests of sand were conducted under varying conditions with a vertically oscillating plate. Subsequently, full-scale tests were conducted using a vibratory soil compaction roller and a test bed of crushed gravel. The results showed that resonance can be utilized in soil compaction by vibratory rollers and plates and that the optimum compaction frequency from an energy perspective is at, or slightly above, the coupled compactor-soil resonant frequency. Since rollers operate far above resonance, the compaction frequency can be significantly reduced, resulting in a considerable reduction in fuel consumption, environmental impact and machine wear.The thesis also presents an iterative equivalent-linear method to calculate the frequency response of a vibrating foundation, such as a compacting plate or the drum of a roller. The method seems promising for predicting the resonant frequency of the roller-soil system and can be used to determine the optimum compaction frequency without site- and roller-specific measurements.


Objectives To examine variation in source of information about sexual matters by sociodemographic factors, and associations with sexual behaviours and outcomes. Design Cross-sectional probability sample survey. Setting British general population. Participants 3408 men and women, aged 17–24 years, interviewed from 2010–2012 for third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles. Main outcome measures Main source of information (school, a parent, other); age and circumstances of first heterosexual intercourse; unsafe sex and distress about sex in past year; experience of sexually transmitted infection (STI) diagnoses, non-volitional sex or abortion (women only) ever. Results Citing school was associated with younger age, higher educational level and having lived with both parents. Citing a parent was associated, in women, with lower educational level and having lived with one parent. Relative to other sources, citing school was associated with older age at first sex (adjusted HR 0.73 (95% CI 0.65 to 0.83) men, 0.73 (0.65 to 0.82) women), lower likelihood of unsafe sex (adjusted OR 0.58 (0.44 to 0.77) men, 0.69 (0.52 to 0.91) women) and previous STI diagnosis (0.55 (0.33 to 0.91) men, 0.58 (0.43 to 0.80) women) and, in women, with lower likelihood of lack of sexual competence at first sex; and experience of non-volitional sex, abortion and distress about sex. Citing a parent was associated with lower likelihood of unsafe sex (0.53 (0.28 to 1.00) men; 0.69 (0.48 to 0.99) women) and, in women, previous STI diagnosis. Conclusions Gaining information mainly from school was associated with lower reporting of a range of negative sexual health outcomes, particularly among women. Gaining information mainly from a parent was associated with some of these, but fewer cited parents as a primary source. The findings emphasise the benefit of school and parents providing information about sexual matters and argue for a stronger focus on the needs of men.


Visual 4D planning and scheduling technique that combines 3D CAD models with construction activities (time) has proven benefits over traditional tools, such as bar charts and network diagrams. In 4D models, project participants can effectively visualise and analyse problems regarding sequential, spatial, and temporal aspects of construction schedules. As a consequence, more robust schedules can be generated and hence reduce reworks and improve productivity. Currently, there are several working research prototypes and commercial software that have ability to generate 4D model. However, two major issues arise regarding the current 4D development approaches and the use of commercial software. These are the limited feasibility to large and complex projects, and inflexibility to incorporate more construction problems (nD modelling) especially for process constraints such as spatial conflicts, and availability of information and resources. As a part of the VIRCON project, an EPSRC funded research, this paper introduces a pragmatic approach to develop extensible 4D visualisation using two real life case studies. ProVis, a 4D simulator, was developed using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), accessing the integrated products and processes from the VIRCON database and produces 4D model in the AutoCAD environment. This 4D tool is also integrated with a Critical Space Analysis (CSA) tool (another VIRCON tool) and is able to visualise spatial overload of the construction site. The paper details 4D development process based on the proposed approach and discusses efforts spent to convert general project information (2D drawings and schedules) to 4D models. It is concerned that a little additional effort was needed to develop the extensible 4D model based on the proposed approach. In addition, no commercial 4D software was used to achieve the visualisation process.


Abstract In recent years, land use changes led to a rapid decline and fragmentation of J. communis populations in Germany. Population isolation may lead to a restricted gene flow and, further, to negative effects on genetic variation. In this study, genetic diversity and population structure in seven fragmented J. communis populations in Saxony, Germany, were investigated using nuclear microsatellites (nSSR) and chloroplast single nucleotide polymorphism (cpSNP). In all Saxony J. communis populations, a high genetic diversity was determined but no population differentiation could be detected whatever method was applied (Bayesian cluster analysis, F-statistics, AMOVA). The same was true for three J. communis out-group samples originating from Italy, Slovakia and Norway, which also showed high genetic diversity and low genetic differences regarding other J. communis populations. Low genetic differentiation among the J. communis populations ascertained with nuclear and chloroplast markers indicated high levels of gene flow by pollen and also by seeds between the sampled locations. Low genetic differentiation may also provide an indicator of Juniper survival during the last glacial maximum (LGM) in Europe. The results of this study serve as a basis for the implementation of appropriate conservation measures in Saxony.


A cluster-sampling, cross-sectional study was conducted for assessing the prevalence of Cryptosporidium infection in children less than 16 years of age from three villages, Dondian, Linshan, and Fuziyin, in rural Anhui in eastern China. Among 320 apparently healthy children less than 10 years of age from Dondian who had stool specimens collected, cryptosporidial oocysts were found in stools of three children from Dondian, and no positive specimens were found in 239 children studied from Linshan. In addition, a total of 610 serum samples from children in these three villages were tested for specific IgG antibody to Cryptosporidium with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and the prevalence rates were 42.3%, 51.7%, and 57.5%, respectively, in Dondian, Linshan, and Fuziyin. Seroprevalence increased progressively with age. No detectable antibody was found in infants between two and six months of age, and seropositivity steadily increased after one year of age. Among 36 sera from adults 15-60 years of age without diarrheal illness in Huanglu villages of rural Chaohu, 50% (18 of 36) were positive. As expected, a good correlation was found in the specific IgG antibody between the paired serum specimens from 30 matched mother-neonates who showed transplacental transfer of IgG. However, little or no IgM antibody was seen in the neonates even though several mothers had a positive anticryptosporidial IgM enzyme-linked immunoassay result. Forty randomly selected serum samples from children less than four years of age in a similarly impoverished semiurban community in Fortaleza, Brazil, where the majority of households also have pit toilets and shared community water supplies and 172 serum samples from patients one month to 29 years of age admitted to the University of Virginia Hospital without diarrhea were also examined. In Fortaleza, almost all children acquired antibody by their second year of life, demonstrating the high prevalence of this infection. In rural Anhui, only about half the children were infected by 5-7 years of age. The overall prevalence rate (16.9%) of seropositivity among children and young adults in Virginia was much lower than in China and Brazil. These results indicate that cryptosporidial infection is ubiquitous, and is highly endemic in these impoverished communities. The difference between China and Brazil may reflect earlier weaning, hygiene practices, poorer water or sanitation, multiple siblings in family and geographic environment in Brazil.


A central challenge in neuroscience is understanding how neural system implements computation through its dynamics. We propose a nonlinear time series model aimed at characterizing interpretable dynamics from neural trajectories. Our model assumes low-dimensional continuous dynamics in a finite volume. It incorporates a prior assumption about globally contractional dynamics to avoid overly enthusiastic extrapolation outside of the support of observed trajectories. We show that our model can recover qualitative features of the phase portrait such as attractors, slow points, and bifurcations, while also producing reliable long-term future predictions in a variety of dynamical models and in real neural data.


We review the factorization theorem for the production of a heavy color-neutral final state with a transverse momentum much smaller than its invariant mass in the framework of soft collinear effective field theory (SCET). This phase space region is plagued by large logarithms of widely separated scales, including large logarithms of rapidity ratios, that need to be resummed for sensible results. In this thesis we use a recently developed formalism that introduces a rapidity regulator in addition to dimensional regularization. This results in an additional renormalization scale, which enables one to also resum rapidity logarithms. The factorized cross sections can be written as a product (convolution) of hard, beam and soft functions in position (momentum) space. We compute the soft function to next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) and determine all relevant anomalous dimensions. Based on the known renormalization group structure, we perform an important cross check of the results by deriving an all order formula for the logarithmic structure of the soft and beam functions. This also allows us to obtain the beam functions to NNLO by comparing to known results in another scheme. With our results, one can now compute the transverse momentum distribution of Higgs production to next-to-next-to-leading-log-prime (NNLL$'$) accuracy. A new feature in this formalism is that one can directly perform the complete set of relevant scale variations in order to estimate the uncertainty in the resummed cross section. (Less)


Evolution of the regional imbalances over the territory is closely linked with the development of commodity-cash relations and hence with creation of the market economy. Since the establishment of the market economy in most countries over the world; rent, interest, yield and wage became the major market driver of the production factors in order to make its localization decisions. It led to spatial organization and deployment of the scarce resources over the territory. The specific feature of these scarce resources is, that they are distributed unevenly over the territory. In the background affects centrifugal and centripetal forces which condition the concentration of the scarce resources in some areas and conversely its deconcentration in other areas. Main object of the paper is to analyse and evaluate effects of centrifugal and centripetal forces on regional economies of the Central Europe countries and recognize some common spatial patterns of the development. In our empirical research we focus on the Central Europe countries, namely Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. Our sample consists regions of these countries on NUTS III level. For analysis of spatial imbalance within the territory of CE countries we use state variable - regional GDP / capita. In terms of examining causal relations of regional disparities in CE countries is appropriate to rely on tools of spatial statistical analysis. From this point we are concerned with measuring the spatial relations within the regional structure of CE countries. Preliminary we suppose that strongest influence of the centrifugal and centripetal forces is present around the core regions of CE countries, namely: Praha, Bratislava, Wien and Budapest. The object of our paper is measuring the intensity of these forces. Primarily, we examine the spatial imbalance within regions of the CE countries via using the Moran's autocorrelation statistics, I (1950). We suppose that the spatial differentiation within the regions of CE countries acquire more or less regular pattern, so it, indicates that regional imbalance is conditioned also spatially. Secondary, in more details we focus on local patterns in spatial-temporal data on the wealth, centering on our core regions. For these purpose we use the statistics G_i (d) introduced by Getis and Ord (1992). Our research is based on secondary data sources collected in statistical databases of CE countries . As a basis for measurement we took indicator of regional GDP / capita converted to dollars at PPP. We expect to show on the effects of centrifugal and centripetal forces, which creates clear clusters around the core regions. It also supposes that some signs of the spatial imbalances over the territory are also presents. In conclusion we have to examine possible factors which condition present state.


The main aim of this research project is to investigate the relationship
between students and their electronic learning environments, and in particular,
how eLearning spaces influence and are influenced by the adaptable and adaptive
learning attitudes of the new student generation. In particular, it focuses on what
I defined as digital students as young adult students who have grown up with
active participation in technology as an everyday feature of their lives. The
characteristics of the technologically confident digital students were found to
include a strong need for instantaneity, a desire to control their environment and
to channel their social life via extensive use of technology.


Nicotine use is very prevalent in the schizophrenic population, which is a 2.5 fold greater than the general population. In the present study, the drug quinpirole (dopamine D2/D3 agonist) or saline was given neonatally to 25 Sprague-Dawley male and female rats. Rats were randomly assigned to condition. Beginning postnatal day 33 animals were given twice daily administrations of nicotine (0.5 mg/kg free base). After the first of the daily injections they were placed in a locomotor arena every other day for behavioral testing. One day after behavioral testing, the dorsal striatum and nucleus accumbens were removed for brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) assay. BDNF is a neurotrophin that plays an important role in neuronal development, neuronal maintenance and plasticity, and synaptic activity. Results showed that nicotine produced locomotor sensitization but this was not enhanced by neonatal quinpirole, unlike past work. Regarding BDNF, there was a significant increase in the nucleus accumbens in rats treated with nicotine; neonatal quinpirole increased the BDNF response produced by nicotine. Nicotine produced an increase in dorsal striatum BDNF that was not affected by neonatal quinpirole treatment. Importantly, it appears that nicotine administrations, that occurred in two different contexts, may result in differential behavioral results relative to nicotine administrations given consistently in the same context.


An analysis is made of the stability of an airplane with ailerons free, with particular attention to the motions when the ailerons have a tendency to float against the wind. The present analysis supersedes the aileron investigation contained in NACA Technical Report no. 709. The equations of motion are first written to include yawing and sideslipping, and it is demonstrated that the principal effects of freeing the ailerons can be determined without regard to these motions. If the ailerons tend to float against the wind and have a high degree of aerodynamic balance, rolling oscillations, in addition to the normal lateral oscillations, are likely to occur. On the basis of the equations including only the rolling motion and the aileron deflection, formulas derived for the stability and damping of the rolling oscillations in terms of the hinge-moment derivatives are also presented showing the oscillatory regions and stability boundaries for a fictitious airplane of conventional proportion. The effects of friction in the control system are investigated and discussed.


This paper compares conventional and distributed MIMO systems from a measurement campaign. The environment chosen was a laboratory from the Technical University of Cartagena. There are many scatters in this laboratory, so it is favourable for the implementation of a MIMO system as the capacity would be high. Different configurations of the transmitter are studied for both systems in order to obtain the optimal one. The channel sounder used is based on a multiport network analyzer (MNA) and a fast switch. The measurement process is controlled by a laptop. Results of mean capacity and complementary cumulative distribution functions (CCDF) of capacity are presented. It can be observed from results that the capacity obtained from the distributed MIMO system is around the capacity of an independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) fading channel. In the case of using a conventional MIMO system, the capacity obtained for the lambda and the 2lambda element separation configuration is similar, but when using the lambda/2 element separation the capacity is low.


This article studies several variants of the location-routing problem using a cooperative game-theoretic framework. The authors derive characteristics in terms of subadditivity, convexity, and non-emptiness of the core. Moreover, for some of the game variants, it is shown that for facility opening costs substantially larger than the costs associated with routing, the core is always non-empty. The theoretical results are supported by numerical experiments aimed at illustrating the properties and deriving insights. Among others, it is observed that, while in general it is not possible to guarantee core allocations, in a huge majority of cases the core is non-empty.


The European patent system consists of national offices and the European Patent Office (EPO), which cooperate on legal questions, while competing on fees and service quality. This competition could result in differentiation of the service offered by offices and in market segmentation, which might benefit patent applicants. To date there is little evidence on whether firms regularly choose between EPO and national offices, nor which parameters influence this choice. Such evidence is needed, if the functioning of the EPS as a whole is to be assessed. We provide the first analysis of competition between patent offices within the EPS. The paper provides a recursive model of the two principal choices made by patent applicants in the EPS: the selection of examining offices and of jurisdictions in which patent protection is obtained. We then derive and estimate instrumental variables models to establish the relative importance of fees, grant rates, examination duration and firm and patent characteristics in these choices. We identify sectors and types of firms that predominantly rely on the national offices or the EPO, but we also identify significant levels of switching, driven by variation in grant rates across offices and by fee changes as well as variation in the duration of examination. We discuss implications of our work for theoretical and empirical analyses of patent systems, and we discuss how the likely introduction of a Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court will affect the system and its governance mechanisms.


In the high dimensional setting, we investigate common regularization approaches for fitting logistic regression models with binary response variables. A literature review is provided on generalized linear models, regularization approaches which include the lasso, ridge, elastic net and relaxed lasso, and recent post-selection methods for obtaining p-values of coefficient estimates proposed by Lockhart et. al. and Buhlmann et. al. We consider varying n, p conditions, and assess model performance based on several evaluation metrics such as their sparsity, accuracy and algorithmic time efficiency. Through a simulation study, we find that Buhlmann et. al's multi sample splitting method performed poorly when selected covariates were highly correlated. When λ was chosen through cross validation, the elastic net had similar levels of performance as compared to the lasso, but it did not possess the level of sparsity Zou and Hastie have suggested.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the network promotion role of export promotion programmes in driving small and medium enterprises' (SMEs) export performance.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on a dual institutional and network-based approaches to internationalisation, the study tests an integrative model that explores the mediating role of SMEs' relationships in the link between government export promotion programmes (both informational and experiential forms) and export performance. The model was tested using a sample of 160 UK small and medium exporter firms. The data were analysed through a structural equation modelling technique.

Findings

The study finds that whilst both informational and experiential export promotion programmes improved all forms of SMEs' relationships, only experiential forms had an indirect effect on export performance. Further, only relationships with foreign buyers had a positive impact on export performance.

Research limitations/implications

The results of this research provide directions for export promotion organisations in targeting their network support provision and for SMEs in utilising such a support. The study calls for similar research in different contexts to validate the proposed model.

Originality/value

This study brings novel findings to the extant literature by conceptualising and validating the importance of the "network promotion" element of export promotion programmes.


The problem and the solution. Most executives are aware of the negative consequences associated with an organizational crisis and focus on communications and public relations as a reactive strategy. However, many neglect the other leadership responsibilities associated with organizational crises.This may result from lack of formal training and on-the-job experiences that prepare executives to lead crises. Executives who enable their organizations to recover from a crisis exhibit a complex set of competencies in each of the five phases of a crisis—signal detection, preparation and prevention, damage control and containment, business recovery, and reflection and learning. In this article, through the use of qualitative research design and the analysis of firms in crises, we examine leadership competencies during each phase of a crisis. In addition, this article links the important role of human resource development to building organizational capabilities through crisis management activities.


We report on the investigation of spectral leakage's impact on the reconstruction of Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT). We discuss the shift-variant nature introduced by the spectral leakage and develop a novel spatial-domain FD-OCT image formation model. A proof-of-concept phantom experiment is conducted to validate our model. Compared with previous models, the proposed framework could better describe the image formation process, especially when the fineness of the axial structure approaches the theoretical resolution limit.


Inhibin is a secreted tumor suppressor and an activin antagonist. Inhibin alpha null mice develop gonadal sex cord-stromal tumors with 100% penetrance and die of a cachexia-like syndrome due to increased activin signaling. Because Sma and Mad-related protein (SMAD)2 and SMAD3 transduce activin signals in vitro, we attempted to define the role of SMAD3 in gonadal tumorigenesis and the wasting syndrome by generating inhibin alpha and Smad3 double mutant mice. Inhibin alpha and Smad3 double homozygous males were protected from early tumorigenesis and the usual weight loss and death. Approximately 90% of these males survived to 26 wk in contrast to 95% of inhibin-deficient males, which develop bilateral testicular tumors and die of the wasting syndrome by 12 wk. Testicular tumors were either absent or unilaterally slow growing and less hemorrhagic in the majority of double-knockout males. In contrast, development of the ovarian tumors and wasting syndrome was delayed, but still occurred, in the majority of the double-knockout females by 26 wk. In double mutant females, tumor development was accompanied by typical activin-induced pathological changes. In summary, we identify an important function of SMAD3 in gonadal tumorigenesis in both sexes. However, this effect is significantly more pronounced in the male, indicating that SMAD3 is the primary transducer of male gonadal tumorigenesis, whereas SMAD3 potentially overlaps with SMAD2 function in the ovary. Moreover, the activin-induced cachexia syndrome is potentially mediated through both SMAD2 and SMAD3 or only through SMAD2 in the liver and stomach. These studies identify sexually dimorphic functions of SMAD3 in gonadal tumorigenesis.


The poor solubility of carbon nanotubes in aromatic solvents is a well known issue. This work is concerned with the fundamentals of the dissolution process of carbon nanotubes. Based on previous studies about adsorption of small aromatics on carbon nanotubes, different arrangements and different numbers of aniline molecules on single walled zigzag and armchair nanotubes are investigated by ab initio density functional based tight binding method. Thereby adsorption energies and distances are obtained. These are compared with results of nanotube bundles. Finally a possible reaction process is formulated and potential curves for different arrangements are calculated. The results of our study are consistent with a low solution ability of small aromatics with respect to carbon nanotubes. Even if insertion of aniline into nanotube bundles is possible, thermal motion of room temperature would squeeze out the aniline. For better solvation the solvents must have larger pi systems or adsorption enhancing substituents.


This article is a documentation of community organizing written from the point of view of the peasants of BUFFALO in Bukidnon. It shares the struggles of a peasant organization in building and sustaining collective actions in pursuit of genuine agrarian reform. BUFFALO celebrated its 21st founding anniversary on February 2008. Two decades of struggle taught them that through militancy and collective action, they can overcome any challenge that will come their way. This documentation also reflects BUFFALO's own assessment of their organization and the lessons they learned from their two decades of organizing work.


We investigate the impact of cirrus cloud heterogeneity on the direct emission by cloud or surface and on the scattering by ice particles in the thermal infrared (TIR). Realistic 3‐D cirri are modeled with the 3DCLOUD code, and top‐of‐atmosphere radiances are simulated by the 3‐D Monte Carlo radiative transfer (RT) algorithm 3DMCPOL for two (8.65 μm and 12.05 μm) channels of the Imaging Infrared Radiometer on CALIPSO. At nadir, comparisons of 1‐D and 3‐D RT show that 3‐D radiances are larger than their 1‐D counterparts for direct emission but smaller for scattered radiation. For our cirrus cases, 99% of the 3‐D total radiance is computed by the third scattering order, which corresponds to 90% of the total computational effort, but larger optical thicknesses need more scattering orders. To radically accelerate the 3‐D RT computations (using only few percent of 3‐D RT time with a Monte Carlo code), even in the presence of large optical depths, we develop a hybrid model based on exact 3‐D direct emission, the first scattering order from 1‐D in each homogenized column, and an empirical adjustment linearly dependent on the optical thickness to account for higher scattering orders. Good agreement is found between the hybrid model and the exact 3‐D radiances for two very different cirrus models without changing the empirical parameters. We anticipate that a future deterministic implementation of the hybrid model will be fast enough to process multiangle thermal imagery in a practical tomographic reconstruction of 3‐D cirrus fields.


Phosphorylated chimeric proteins target signaling components for degradation. The ability to selectively interfere with protein function not only is useful for studying cellular biology but also is an important therapeutic strategy. Hines et al. modified their previously developed protein degradation system called PROTAC (proteolysis targeting chimeras) to incorporate amino acid sequences that function as phosphorylation-dependent binding sites for specific proteins, along with an E3 ligase recognition sequence for degradation and a poly-D-arginine sequence to mediate cell permeability, and called this new system phosphoPROTAC. They created two such phosphoPROTACs: TrkAPPFRS2α contained a phosphorylation-dependent binding site for the adaptor FRS2α, an effector of the nerve growth factor (NGF) receptor TrkA, and ErbB2PPPI3K contained the p85 subunit binding site for phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K), which is phosphorylated by the neuregulin receptor, the ErbB2-ErbB3 heterodimer. Treatment of PC12 cells, a rat pheochromocytoma cell line, with TrkAPPFRS2α resulted in a dose-dependent reduction in FRS2α and inhibition of activation of extracellular signal–regulated kinase (ERK) and neuronal differentiation in response to NGF. Application of ErbB2PPPI3K to various neuregulin-responsive cancer cell lines reduced the abundance of the p85 subunit, inhibited phosphorylation of the downstream kinase Akt, and reduced cell viability. Phosphorylation-deficient variants of these two phosphoPROTACs were not effective, and the stability of other phosphorylation-dependent binding proteins was not affected by the phosphoPROTACs, nor was the target protein affected by stimulation of phosphoPROTAC-treated cells with ligands for other receptors. Finally, mice injected subcutaneously with the ovarian cancer cell line OVCAR8 had smaller tumors when injected intraperitoneally with ErbB2PPPI3K compared with mice injected with either control solution or the nonphosphorylated variant ErbB2NPPI3K. Thus, phosphoPROTAC is a method of conditionally knocking down protein function and thus selectively disrupting phosphorylation-dependent signaling. J. Hines, J. D. Gough, T. W. Corson, C. M. Crews, Posttranslational protein knockdown coupled to receptor tyrosine kinase activation with phosphoPROTACs. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110, 8942–8947 (2013). [Abstract] [Full Text]


In late 2002 a number of bomb blasts brought home the realisation that the South African white right did not disappear after the 1994 election. The police have made a number of arrests and seem to have stopped the
bombings - for now. The white right cannot garner the support necessary to execute a successful coup in South Africa. However, given sufficient backing, the extreme white right could maintain a sustained sabotage
campaign and impair South Africa's international image while damaging race relations in the country.


We study the problem of attacking video recognition models in the black-box setting, where the model information is unknown and the adversary can only make queries to detect the predicted top-1 class and its probability. Compared with the black-box attack on images, attacking videos is more challenging as the computation cost for searching the adversarial perturbations on a video is much higher due to its high dimensionality. To overcome this challenge, we propose a heuristic black-box attack model that generates adversarial perturbations only on the selected frames and regions. More specifically, a heuristic-based algorithm is proposed to measure the importance of each frame in the video towards generating the adversarial examples. Based on the frames' importance, the proposed algorithm heuristically searches a subset of frames where the generated adversarial example has strong adversarial attack ability while keeps the perturbations lower than the given bound. Besides, to further boost the attack efficiency, we propose to generate the perturbations only on the salient regions of the selected frames. In this way, the generated perturbations are sparse in both temporal and spatial domains. Experimental results of attacking two mainstream video recognition methods on the UCF-101 dataset and the HMDB-51 dataset demonstrate that the proposed heuristic black-box adversarial attack method can significantly reduce the computation cost and lead to more than 28% reduction in query numbers for the untargeted attack on both datasets.


This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the Workshop on Controlled Natural Language, CNL 2009, held in Marettimo Island, Italy, in June 2009. The 16 revised full papers presented together with 1 invited lecture were carefully reviewed and selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement from 31 initial submissions. The papers are roughly divided into the two groups language aspects and tools and applications. Note that some papers fall actually into both groups: using a controlled natural language in an application domain often requires domain-specific language features.


We have developed an algorithm called Q5 for probabilistic classification of healthy versus disease whole serum samples using mass spectrometry. The algorithm employs principal components analysis (PCA) followed by linear discriminant analysis (LDA) on whole spectrum surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization time of flight (SELDI-TOF) mass spectrometry (MS) data and is demonstrated on four real datasets from complete, complex SELDI spectra of human blood serum. Q5 is a closed-form, exact solution to the problem of classification of complete mass spectra of a complex protein mixture. Q5 employs a probabilistic classification algorithm built upon a dimension-reduced linear discriminant analysis. Our solution is computationally efficient; it is noniterative and computes the optimal linear discriminant using closed-form equations. The optimal discriminant is computed and verified for datasets of complete, complex SELDI spectra of human blood serum. Replicate experiments of different training/testing splits of each dataset are employed to verify robustness of the algorithm. The probabilistic classification method achieves excellent performance. We achieve sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive values above 97% on three ovarian cancer datasets and one prostate cancer dataset. The Q5 method outperforms previous full-spectrum complex sample spectral classification techniques and can provide clues as to the molecular identities of differentially expressed proteins and peptides.


This study attempts to analyse the major challenges encountered in the organisation of the Southern Sudan Referendum on Self-Determination and how these challenges were addressed, enabling the referendum to take place in a peaceful environment, with a high degree of transparency and fairness. In doing so it aims to identify a few lessons which, though emerging from the particular experience of the Sudan, can be used as a general paradigm in future similar contexts. The Southern Sudan Referendum Commission had less than four months to prepare, organise and conduct the operations within a broad mandate conferred by the Southern Sudan Referendum Act, many sections of which lacked clarity. The interpretation and application of this law represented, in several instances, a serious challenge to the organisation of the referendum, adding complexity to a process already made difficult by time and operational constraints amplified by the size of the territory and the highly sensitive political environment characterised by mistrust among the partners in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The study begins with a brief introduction to the political and legal background of the referendum and of the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, including its role and structure. It proceeds with an analysis of the legal and regulatory framework, aimed at identifying the main challenges to the process and the solutions found in order to allow the referendum to take place in a timely, peaceful and orderly manner.


Madame Merle of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1880-81) represents the paradox of authorship: she functions at once as the most prolific creator in the novel and the character most aggressively rendered invisible by the social relations she helps produce. When Madame Merlewas neither writing, nor painting, nor touching the piano, she was usually employed upon wonderful tasks of rich embroidery, cushions, curtains, decorations for the chimney-piece; an art in which her bold, free invention was as noted as the agility of her needle. She was never idle . . .1James devotes nearly the entire chapter 19 of The Portrait of a Lady to elaborating her "fecund" artistry, the "multiplicity" of her aesthetic interests, and her "loquacious and confidential" discourses with Isabel, the consummate object of her artfulness. The performativity, range, nature, and effect of Madame Merle's artistry - from her piano playing to her "innumerable letters" to her wildly effective orchestration of Isabel Archer's marriage to Gilbert Osmond - correspond to James's portrait of one of his favorite authors: French novelist George Sand. According to James, Madame Sand exhibits "a greater fecundity, considering the quality of her work, than any writer of our day."2 What's more, her "great quality from the first was the multiplicity of her interests."3 Imbedded in the richly metaphorical accretion of Madame Merle's character are signs of James's perspective on female authorship, the gender of artistic creation, and nearly everything he had to say about the controversial, crossdressing George Sand.How can we pursue connections such as these without reductively equating Madame Merle with George Sand? Reaching beyond the simple gesture of equivalence requires exploring the dynamics among James, his critical conception of Sand, and his characterization of Madame Merle. It means addressing how the elements of fiction emerge out of a critical act. As James's implicit analysis of Sand's literature and lifestyle, Madame Merle becomes a rhetorical proxy through which he works out his fascination with Sand and his evolving definition of literary mastery. Madame Merle functions as a surrogate author. Through her characterization, James tries on the experience of a nineteenth-century woman writer at the same time as he novelizes a theory of mastery that circumscribes the female artist. The result is an implicit act of literary criticism that suggests new methods of studying both authorship and influence.For twenty-first-century critics, the term "influence" seems tarnished and outdated. Viewed as a practice akin to biographical criticism, influence analysis connotes patriarchal traditionalism and the dusty obsolescence of a topic in vogue over thirty years ago.4 And yet, new work in transnational literary studies demands a theoretical vocabulary for analyzing precisely the kinds of cross-cultural exchanges that constitute influence. Studying, for example, transatlantic genres, immigrant fictions, or global cultural exchanges is a form of influence analysis. Critics today do not embrace theories of influence or intertextuality largely, I think, because these warring terms are mired in debates that diminished the usevalue of both while failing to unite their different methodological benefits. This essay asks, how can we revitalize influence and intertextuality for twenty-first-century scholarship that so clearly treads the same interpretive ground? I propose a concept called the surrogate -author function, which argues for the intrinsic function of literary criticism in fiction. Beginning with a sketch of the antagonistic critical history of influence and intertextuality, I construct this model by engaging recent debates about critique and revising the hermeneutical strategies of Michel Foucault, Nancy K. Miller, and Harold Bloom. In the essay's final section, I offer a reading of The Portrait of a Lady that illustrates the possibilities of this theory for scholars today. …


Roads are an integral part of the transport system. A country's road network should be efficient in order to maximize economic and social benefits. They play a significant role in achieving national development and contributing to the overall performance and social functioning of the community. It is acknowledged that roads enhance mobility, taking people out of isolation and therefore poverty. This paper looks at development trends Uganda's cities and towns are taking in recent times. It forecasts on the likely futuristic tendencies and explores the possibilities that need to be harnessed and embraced to turn urban areas into modern cosmopolitan areas. It looks at the historical perspective but also borrows experiences from relevant literature from published works about urban mobility and transport planning. It enumerates the challenges faced by Uganda's towns and cities which are closely linked to lack of urban mobility planning and draws learning experiences from well known examples of cities both in developed countries and in Africa that have been transformed to embrace modern urban transport planning strategies.


Job security provisions are commonly invoked to explain the high and persistent European unemployment rates. This belief has led several countries to reform their labor markets and liberalize the use of fixed-term contracts. Despite how common such contracts have become after deregulation, there is a lack of quantitative analysis of their impact on the economy. To fill this gap, we build a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents and firing costs in the tradition of Hopenhayn and Rogerson (1993). We calibrate our model to Spanish data, choosing in part parameters estimated with firm-level longitudinal data. Spain is particularly interesting, since its labor regulations are among the most protective in the OECD, and both its unemployment and its share of fixed-term employment are the highest. We find that fixed-term contracts increase unemployment, reduce output, and raise productivity. The welfare effects are ambiguous.


Five trenches were excavated to a depth of 5 to 8 ft along the path of an abandoned railroad grade near the city of New Castle to investigate potential near-surface faults that may be related to earthquake activity in northern Delaware. Seismic reflection profiles along this line suggested the existence of significant faulting in the area, which lies along a postulated fault trend in eastern New Castle County. Subsequent drilling, however, failed to substantiate displacement interpreted for faults in the sedimentary section. Detailed examination of exposures in the trenches also failed to reveal the existence of near surface faults. Together these findings suggest that there has been minimal or no modern near-surface fault activity in this area of New Castle County.


This thesis is a comprehensive study of the poetry of Norman MacCaig. His poems have received relatively little critical attention and scholars appear to have concentrated on a few specific points such as MacCaig's characteristic restraint or his inscription in a given literary tradition. Critics have notably pointed out different dichotomies in his works. I argue that these dichotomies are fundamentally interrelated. It is characteristic of MacCaig's writing to simultaneously engage with and challenge philosophical and linguistic concepts and positions as well as literary traditions and stylistic choices. These dichotomies are both a cause and a symptom of this phenomenon. They take on a structuring role in a body of works often regarded as a collection of independent lyrics rather than a cohesive totality. The first half of the thesis will follow a thematic approach: considering first the poetic project MacCaig outlines and the interplay of celebration, faithfulness to the object and the problem of perception; then the treatment of religion and the divine by this notoriously atheist author and how it relates to his worldview. This will provide a basis to address MacCaig's lifelong concern with the relationship between perception, language and description and what this entails for both his writing and his philosophical positions. In the second half of this study, I will address MacCaig's engagement with tradition – and its limits – through consideration of three different modes and how they relate to his writing project: elegy, pastoral and amatory verse, regarding the latter two as specific examples of the former. Through these interconnected studies of MacCaig's poetry, I argue that the critical tendency to