This dissertation examines the production of recreational resources associated with amenity development. I argue that recreational resources are produced along lines similar to the production of timber, water, or mineral resources. Their production depends on the material characteristics of the resource, infrastructure of development, institutional arrangements, and the cultural symbolic value of rural and natural spaces. Scholars of amenity development have glossed over both the material elements of recreational resources and the history of resource development related to amenity landscapes. As a result, these scholars have overlooked insights concerning the production of resource spaces and evolving relationships between the city and the countryside. The dissertation utilizes insights from critical resource geography, the environmental history of resource development, cultural landscape studies, and histories of the American West. Drawing from sources such as government reports, business records, archival records, personal interviews, and newspaper research I construct a narrative of recreational development in Bend, Oregon since 1950. Before Bend became emblematic of the recreational development of the New West it functioned largely as a single industry company town, making it an ideal place to consider the production of recreational resources at the end of the 20th century. After introducing the dissertation's goals and exploring the theoretical interventions it makes in chapter one, I examine, in chapter two, the resource relationships between Bend and its hinterland leading up to World War II, with particular attention to how the region's recreational opportunities were used alongside its timber and ranching resources. Chapter three addresses national concerns about recreational resource supply and demand by considering the work of the Outdoor Recreational Resource Review Commission and their effort to rationalize recreational resources and make them legible for conservation and development. Chapter four examines how one firm, Brooks Scanlon, converted some of its timberlands to a golf resort, capitalizing on the recreational amenities offered by its former timberland and setting the standard for further amenity development in Central Oregon. Chapter five examines the political debate about how to manage land on the urban fringe-land valuable for real estate development--in light of conflicts between the right to develop private property and the common good associated with symbolic and material characteristics of the countryside, in this case, migratory deer. Chapter six considers the infrastructure of the countryside and the city in the production of recreational resources through an examination of historical development and commercialization of the Century Drive Scenic Byway, Black Butte Ranch, and the Old Mill District. In Chapter seven, I return again to real estate development on the urban fringe to consider the impact of fire on exurban development and the institutional arrangements associated with reducing the risk and damage to recreational resources. Finally, I offer a conclusion that considers the production of recreational resources and its relationship to the production of space and the cultural landscape. RECREATION CAPITAL: NATURAL RESOURCES, AMENITY DEVELOPMENT AND OUTDOOR RECREATION IN BEND, OREGON


Abstract. This paper describes the implementation of a coupling between a three-dimensional ocean general circulation model (NEMO) and a wave model (WW3) to represent the interactions of the upper oceanic flow dynamics with surface waves. The focus is on the impact of such coupling on upper-ocean properties (temperature and currents) and mixed-layer depths (MLD) at global eddying scales. A generic coupling interface has been developed and the NEMO governing equations and boundary conditions have been adapted to include wave-induced terms following the approach of McWilliams et al. (2004) and Ardhuin et al. (2008). In particular, the contributions of Stokes-Coriolis, Vortex and surface pressure forces have been implemented on top of the necessary modifications of the tracer/continuity equation and turbulent closure scheme (a 1-equation TKE closure here). To assess the new developments, we perform a set of sensitivity experiments with a global oceanic configuration at 1/4° resolution coupled with a wave model configured at 1/2° resolution. Numerical simulations show a global increase of wind-stress due to the interaction with waves (via the Charnock coefficient) particularly at high latitudes. The modifications brought to the TKE closure scheme and the inclusion of a parameterization for Langmuir turbulence lead to a significant increase of the mixing thus helping to deepen the MLD. This deepening is mainly located in the Southern Hemisphere and results in reduced sea-surface currents and temperatures.


According to the folklore of economics, game theory has failed. This paper argues that that is an incorrect interpretation of the game theory literature. When faced with a well-posed problem, game theory provides a solution. When faced with an ill-posed problem, game theory fails to provide a solution. This is, indeed, the best one can hope for from a method of analysis! Further, some suggestions are made for facing game theory with well-posed economic problems.


Two different approaches can increase the accessibility of digital educational materials: content that has been built with the widest possible set of users in mind (universal design), or content that has been designed in such a way that it can be personalised to individual user needs and preferences (personalised design). This paper outlines a number of approaches that could be used to evaluate the provision of learning materials that have been adapted to or chosen for individual learners. A number of different perspectives are considered in this paper: a learner's perspective, the perspective of the tutor or teacher, and an institutional perspective. A number of complementary methodologies are presented. It is argued that the evaluation of a system that provides personalised learning content is a challenging activity that necessitates the application of multiple methods to effectively understand the underlying costs and benefits of providing personalised learning materials.


ABSTRACT School leaders must recognize and respect the freedom of expression rights of students within reasonable limits, but they may restrict student expression that creates material and substantial disruption to the educational process. The challenge for school leaders is to achieve the proper balance between the rights of students and the needs of their schools. This article addresses the First Amendment rights of students to free expression involving gay issues in public schools. Two cases are presented in which school leaders face lawsuits for banning certain forms of student expression. The article ends with a discussion of a number of conditions that may invite a lawsuit if school leaders fail to take certain precautions involving a ban on student expression. Students in public school enjoy many of the same constitutional rights as do adults. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court held in the landmark Tinker v. Des Moines(1969) case that students possess freedom of expression rights that do not end at the school house door. Although students enjoy constitutional rights in public schools, these rights are not absolute or unlimited but are subject to reasonable restrictions by school leaders. Two recent challenges have emerged regarding freedom of expression involving T-shirts worn in public schools that focus on gay issues. In both cases, students are alleging that their First Amendment freedom of expression rights have been violated based on a ban by school leaders on their wearing T-shirts-one in support of gay students and another that denounces gay students. Brad Mathewson, a Missouri high school student supporting gay rights decided to reveal his sexual orientation by wearing a T-shirt which stated, "I'm gay and I'm proud." The student alleged further that he was discriminated against based on his sexual orientation and that fellow students came to school with bumper stickers denouncing gay marriage without consequences by school officials. The district indicated that it took action against Mathewson only after students complained about harassment from students who wore gay pride T-shirts. In the second lawsuit in southern California, Tyler Harper, a devout evangelical Christian student who viewed homosexuality as a sin, sued the district after school leaders barred him from wearing a T-shirt containing the message, "Homosexuality is shameful." He wore his T-shirt in protest of his classmates' participation in the National Day of Silence sponsored by a New York City based gay and lesbian organization in which students showed their support for gay rights by not talking for a day. Although the students held opposing views, both felt that they had a right under the First Amendment to express their views. When school leaders censored their T-shirts, they took their cases to court. School leaders in both cases appear to be caught in the middle of a highly charged emotional issue. How far can students go in exercising First Amendment rights involving gay issues in public schools? Can school leaders ban expressions they view as unacceptable? What constitutes reasonable restrictions of students' freedom of expression rights in public schools? PRECEDENT CASES While there may not be concrete guidance by the courts in matters involving controversial expression by students in public schools, the following cases provide a sense of the court's posture in addressing some elements of free speech. A landmark case involving freedom of expression by students was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bethel v. Fraser (1986). The Court held that school officials are provided broad authority to discipline students for using offensive and lewd speech in public schools. This case arose when a student used an elaborate, graphic, and explicit sexual metaphor in a nominating speech involving a candidate during an assembly program. As a result, the student was punished by school officials for his speech. …


The acceptance of different provenances or seed origins of lodgepole pine Pinus contorta and Scots pine P. sylvestris as suitable oviposition sites was found to vary as a function of both tree age and insect species. Experiments on seedling lodgepole pine revealed that the pine sawfly, Neodiprion sertifer Geoffroy (Hymenoptera: Diprionidae), and the larch bud moth, Zeiraphera diniana Guennee (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), preferred more southerly provenances of lodgepole pine. The pine beauty moth, Panolis flammea Denis & Schiffermuller (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), however, preferred more northerly provenances. On mature lodgepole pine however, P. flammea exhibited a host change, preferring the more southerly provenances. Neodiprion sertifer showed a similar preference on both seedling and mature provenances. The results of this study suggest that some provenances of lodgepole pine become more resistant to attack by P. flammea as they mature, while others become more susceptible. This may be related to the feeding, strategies of the two insects: P. flammea larvae feed on current year foliage while N. sertifer feeds only on previous year foliage. It is possible that the mechanism for chemical defence of new shoots changes as the trees mature, and to a varying degree in different provenances, while defence of the previous years foliage remains unchanged. Results also indicate that odour alone as opposed to odour plus visual stimulation may invoke different ovipositional behaviour in N. sertifer .


Since the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act 120 of 1996 was promulgated in 15 November 2000 the courts are faced with the daunting task to determine whether a customary marriage is valid under the Act. The courts find it troublesome to determine exactly what the essential requirements under the living customary law are. One of the issues the courts have to deal with is the question whether the incorporation of a bride into her husband's family is an essential requirement for a valid customary marriage or can the families waive the requirement or condone non-compliance? The court in Mkabe v Minister of Home Affairs [2016] ZAGPPHC 460 found that the requirement can be waived or condoned. This case note criticises the Mkabe decision and illustrates why the incorporation of the bride is indeed an essential requirement for a valid customary marriage.


NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) spacecraft (formerly Solar Probe Plus) is scheduled for launch in July 2018 with a planned heliocentric orbit that will carry it on a series of close passes by the Sun with perihelion distances that eventually will get below 10 solar radii. Among other in-situ and imaging sensors, the PSP payload includes the two-instrument "Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun" suite, which will make coordinated measurements of energetic ions and electrons. The high-energy instrument (EPI-Hi), operating in the MeV energy range, consists of three detector-telescopes using silicon solid-state sensors for measuring composition, energy spectra, angular distributions, and time structure in solar energetic particle events. The expected performance of this instrument has been studied using accelerator calibrations, radioactive-source tests, and simulations. We present the EPI-Hi measurement capabilities drawing on these calibration data and simulation results for illustrations.


Understanding the regulation of apoptosis enables prediction of the most effective combination therapies. As Chief Scientific Editor Michael Yaffe has noted, a missing link in our ability to effectively treat cancer is information about the signaling pathways within the patient's cancer cells. Using knowledge of the BCL-2 family of proteins with BH3 domains that regulate a cell's sensitivity to stimuli that promote or "prime" cells to die by apoptosis, Monetero et al. developed a method called Dynamic BH3 Profiling (DBP) to assess priming in cancer cells, cell lines or patient tumor cells in response to various chemotherapeutic agents. Initial studies performed with non-small cell lung cancer cell lines with known resistance or sensitivity to specific drugs showed a positive correlation between the ability of specific drugs to prime the cells for death, as measured by the amount of mitochondrial membrane permeability triggered by proapoptotic BH3 peptides applied after exposure to the drug, and subsequent cell death days later. DBP also predicted drug cytotoxicity in breast cancer cell lines and multiple blood cancer cell lines. In a mouse melanoma allograft model, DBP analysis of the mouse melanoma cells, which had specific mutations affecting sensitivity to targeted therapies, to different kinase-targeted drugs singly or in combination predicted the combinations that were most effective at shrinking the tumors in vivo. DBP accurately sorted chronic myelogenous leukemia cells into those from patients that were sensitive to a drug that inhibits the kinase ABL and those that were resistant, establishing proof of principle in human cancer samples. DBP analysis of cell suspensions made from ovarian cancers showed that those patients with cells that exhibited robust priming had a longer progression-free survival period than those with cells that were less sensitive to BH3 peptide-induced priming. Thus, DBP shows the power of applying signaling knowledge to develop assays that can predict the most effective combination therapies, stratify patients into responding and nonresponding groups, and predict those patients who will most likely need additional treatment. DBP provides an important advance in precision medicine and personalized cancer therapy. J. Montero, K. A. Sarosiek, J. D. DeAngelo, O. Maertens, J. Ryan, D. Ercan, H. Piao, N. S. Horowitz, R. S. Berkowitz, U. Matulonis, P. A. Jänne, P. C. Amrein, K. Cichowski, R. Drapkin, A. Letai, Drug-induced death signaling strategy rapidly predicts cancer response to chemotherapy. Cell 160, 977–989 (2015). [PubMed]


Mindfulness is the increased ability to be aware and attentive to what is happening in the moment. The concept of mindfulness embodies being conscious of the present and not being in an automatic mode. Mindfulness training could have a positive impact on athletic performance, injury prevention, and recovery time in athletes, but differences among mindfulness levels in athletes is currently not well understood. The purpose of this study was to examine levels of mindfulness among athletes versus non athletes as well as examine whether differences in mindfulness exist between individual sport athletes and team sport athletes. Undergraduate student volunteers (n= 398) completed questionnaires to assess mindfulness and sport participation. Data analysis was conducted to determine whether differences in mindfulness exist between athletes and non-athletes and between individual versus team sport athletes. No significant differences in mindfulness were found based on athletic status. A significant difference was found based on gender, however; males in the sample reported higher levels of mindfulness than females. Further research should focus on self identified athlete status compared to researcher identified athlete status. Researchers should continue and look at these paradigms of mindfulness and athlete status to understand the potential for mindfulness-based interventions to enhance recovery and performance among athletes.


Objective To forecast dementia prevalence with a dynamic modelling approach that integrates calendar trends in dementia incidence with those for mortality and cardiovascular disease. Design Modelling study. Setting General adult population of England and Wales. Participants The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) is a representative panel study with six waves of data across 2002-13. Men and women aged 50 or more years, selected randomly, and their cohabiting partners were recruited to the first wave of ELSA (2002-03). 11392 adults participated (response rate 67%). To maintain representativeness, refreshment participants were recruited to the study at subsequent waves. The total analytical sample constituted 17 906 people. Constant objective criteria based on cognitive and functional impairment were used to ascertain dementia cases at each wave. Main outcome measures To estimate calendar trends in dementia incidence, correcting for bias due to loss to follow-up of study participants, a joint model of longitudinal and time-to-event data was fitted to ELSA data. To forecast future dementia prevalence, the probabilistic Markov model IMPACT-BAM (IMPACT-Better Ageing Model) was developed. IMPACT-BAM models transitions of the population aged 35 or more years through states of cardiovascular disease, cognitive and functional impairment, and dementia, to death. It enables prediction of dementia prevalence while accounting for the growing pool of susceptible people as a result of increased life expectancy and the competing effects due to changes in mortality, and incidence of cardiovascular disease. Results In ELSA, dementia incidence was estimated at 14.3 per 1000 person years in men and 17.0/1000 person years in women aged 50 or more in 2010. Dementia incidence declined at a relative rate of 2.7% (95% confidence interval 2.4% to 2.9%) for each year during 2002-13. Using IMPACT-BAM, we estimated there were approximately 767 000 (95% uncertainty interval 735 000 to 797 000) people with dementia in England and Wales in 2016. Despite the decrease in incidence and age specific prevalence, the number of people with dementia is projected to increase to 872 000, 1 092 000, and 1 205 000 in 2020, 2030, and 2040, respectively. A sensitivity analysis without the incidence decline gave a much larger projected growth, of more than 1.9 million people with dementia in 2040. Conclusions Age specific dementia incidence is declining. The number of people with dementia in England and Wales is likely to increase by 57% from 2016 to 2040. This increase is mainly driven by improved life expectancy.


The brilliant and disturbing work Qui a Connu Lolita? (Who Knew Lolita?), or as it is more provocatively titled in the authors' English translation Who Killed Lolita?, starts with a precis: voices tell us there have been three deaths, of a mother and her two children, the bodies found in their Marseilles apartment two months later. This is a composition for radio, not a collection of easy evidence for a police dossier. Who did kill Lolita? Who is to blame? The program draws its power from suggestion, like footnotes plucked from a subterranean soundtrack. It poses uncomfortable questions and leaves the listener to find answers, if any there be, and to harken to voices whispering from the shadows which hint at psychological depression, at pride, at faith, hope and charity. Church bells function to create beats, and they establish the rhythm of scenes, but tellingly (tollingly?), they also suggest and judge. The pace is deliciously careful, pausing all along to invite the listener in to the program, leaving wide spaces for the imagination. The more people we hear from, the more murky the mystery becomes. Long after hearing a powerful documentary feature, what is it you most remember about it? The atmospherics, a sound, a striking image, a provocatively posed question that can't be avoided, yet has no simple answer? Many moments in Lolita may transport you into another realm of listening, a heightened sense of wonder at the producers' skills. I'll point your attention to just two gob-smacking scenes which got under my skin, and will stay with me forever. Qui a Connu Lolita/Who Killed Lolita? is a deeply fascinating work. Listen, and you will never forget it.


Durunna, O. N., Block, H. C., Iwaasa, A. D., Scott, S. L., Robins, C., Khakbazan, M., Dugan, M. E. R., Aalhus, J. L., Aliani, M. and Lardner, H. A. 2014. Impact of calving seasons and feeding systems in western Canada. II. Meat composition and organoleptic quality of steaks. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 94: 583-593. Fatty acid profiling, meat and organoleptic quality assessments were conducted on 160 carcasses of crossbred steers born into one of two calving systems and later assigned to one of two postweaning feeding systems. The steers were weaned from either an early calving or late calving system and later assigned to either a rapid-gain feeding (RF) or a slow-gain feeding (SF) system. The RF steers received a silage-hay diet during the backgrounding period prior to finishing, while the SF steers received a hay diet at backgrounding and then grazed alfalfa-meadow bromegrass pasture and annual cereal swaths prior to finishing. All treatment groups received a conventional diet during finishing until the steers attained a target backfat thickness or body weight. Fatty acid analyses were conducted on longissimus dorsi muscle (LDM) and subcutaneous fat samples. Other analyses included LDM composition, tenderness and taste panel evaluations. Total saturated fatty acid was greater (P<0.02) in samples from RF steers, while total monounsaturated fatty acid was greater (P<0.01) in SF steers. The SF steers had greater (P<0.01) conjugated linoleic acid concentration. There was no main or interaction effect (P>0.05) on beef aroma, flavour and tenderness but the SF steaks had lower (P=0.02) cooking losses than RF steaks. The SF strategy has the potential to create a value chain that would lead to finished steers with higher backfat omega-3, conjugated linoleic acid and trans vaccenic acid and less cooking moisture losses.


At present, there are two military commission cases involving terrorism defendants incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay making their way through the appellate courts. In both cases, the defendants are challenging their convictions for "providing material support for terrorism." While this is a federal offense that could be prosecuted in an Article III court, the legal issue in these appeals is whether providing material support is also a war crime subject to the jurisdiction of a military tribunal. Congress incorporated the offense into the Military Commissions Act, but that is not dispositive, since it is arguably beyond Congress' legislative competence to create war crimes out of whole cloth and then impose them on foreign nationals having no jurisdictional nexus to the United States. As a result, the Government has not disputed that there must be at least some historical evidence that the conduct now styled "providing material support" to an enemy previously has been treated as a war crime, where the defendant was a non-resident alien who owed no duty of allegiance to the injured State. In what might be fairly described as a desperate attempt to discharge its burden of persuasion, the Government has now embraced the only "precedent" that comes close to fitting this description. This is problematic, however, because it is also one of the most notorious episodes in the history of American military justice. In 1818, then Major General Andrew Jackson led an armed invasion of Spanish Florida, thereby instigating the First Seminole War. In the course of the conflict, his troops captured two British citizens who had been living in Florida among the Seminole Indians. In his inimitable style, Jackson impetuously ordered the summary trial and execution of these men, allegedly for "inciting" the Seminoles to engage in "savage warfare" against the United States. Worse yet, Jackson's immediate motivation for the invasion was to recapture fugitive slaves, who had escaped from the adjacent States and found refuge among the Seminoles. In addition to territorial expansion, his mission was to return this "property" to their "rightful" owners and prevent Florida from serving as a safe haven for runaway slaves. Remarkably, the legal basis of the Government's assertion of military jurisdiction over material support charges therefore rests on Jackson's decision to execute two men, who were almost certainly innocent, in the context of a war of aggression waged to vindicate the property rights of antebellum Southern slaveholders. The purpose of this essay is to reintroduce the episode to a wider audience, and to reflect on the implications of the Government's decision to rely on it as a precedent for a modern war crimes prosecution.


OBJECTIVES
In many studies it has been reported, that leptin may play an important role not only in the regulation of food intake and body weight but can modify immune response. The aim of our study was to estimate the effects of the administration of exogenous leptin on serum concentration of proinflammatory cytokines (interleukin 6-IL 6 and tumor necrosis factor alpha-TNF alpha) and anti-inflammatory cytokine (interleukin 10 - IL 10) during LPS induced acute inflammation. We also estimated leptin's influence on pituitary, thyroid, adrenal and gonadal hormones in response to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induced acute inflammation.

METHODS
Male rats Wistar-Kyoto were divided into four groups, which received respectively: placebo (0.9% NaCl), LPS, leptin and leptin with LPS. The TNF alpha and IL 6 serum concentrations were measured after 2 hours and IL 10 after 4 hours. The pituitary, thyroid, adrenal and gonadal hormones serum concentrations were measured after 2 and 4 hours. Cytokine concentrations were estimated using ELISA tests and hormones concentrations using RIA tests.

RESULTS
Leptin did not have an effect on both cytokine responses (proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory) in the time of LPS-induced acute inflammation. Leptin enhanced LPS-induced increasing of corticosterone secretion after 2 hours and decreased LPS-induced inhibition of testosterone secretion after 4 hours.

CONCLUSIONS
Leptin can modulate hormone response during LPS-induced acute inflammation.


Objective: To assess airborne nicotine concentrations as an indicator of second-hand smoke (SHS) exposure in public places in both urban and rural areas of China. Design: Measurement of vapour-phase nicotine concentration using a common protocol in all locations. A total of 273 samplers were placed for 7 days in urban and rural areas of China, including Beijing and the capital city, and a county (rural) area of the following provinces: Sichuan (Chengdu/Mianzhu), Jiangxi (Nanchang/Anyi) and Henan (Zhengzhou/Xin'an). Setting: Samplers were placed in hospitals, secondary schools, city government buildings, train stations, restaurants and entertainment establishments (internet cafes, mahjong parlours and karaoke bars) in each location. Main outcome measure: The time-weighted average airborne concentration of nicotine (μg/m3) was measured by gas chromatography. Results: Airborne nicotine was detected in 91% of the locations sampled. Beijing had the highest nicotine concentrations in most indoor environments (median 3.01 μg/m3) and Chengdu had the lowest concentrations (median 0.11 μg/m3). Overall, restaurants and entertainment establishments had the highest nicotine concentrations (median 2.17 and 7.48 μg/m3, respectively). High nicotine concentrations were also found in government buildings and in train stations. Conclusions: The data collected in this study provide evidence that SHS exposure is frequent in public places in China. Environmental nicotine concentrations in China provide evidence for implementation and enforcement of smoke-free initiatives in public places in China and indicate the need for protecting the public from exposure to SHS.


Sustained and well-designed leadership development is essential in school systems that desire high-quality teaching and learning for all students in all classrooms. Such leadership development prepares leaders to be instructional leaders and to create school cultures that promote continuous improvements in teaching and learning and surround both young people and adults with supportive relationships. The pressures created by high standards and testing requirements and the guidance provided by long-range planning are insufficient in themselves to continuously improve teaching and learning across a school system. Instead, such improvements will occur by developing teamwork, real-time professional learning, and system and school cultures that allow new ideas and practices to grow and flourish. Without teamwork and sustained professional learning, systemwide continuous improvements are fated to remain a fervent wish, rather than become a reality. It is critically important that teamwork and high-quality professional learning begin at the highest leadership levels in a school system and that district leaders be fully committed to and engaged in their own development. Significant change throughout the system requires that leaders be willing and able to change their own beliefs, understanding, and actions. The kind of team-based real-time professional learning I advocate for leaders is very different from the "sit-and-get" sessions still commonly experienced by most school and district administrators. Such activities--which sometimes are little more than a series of speakers who offer their views on a variety of subjects--are often markedly separate from leaders' core day-to-day responsibilities, seldom build on one another to develop complex understandings and skills, do little to promote teamwork within the school system, and reinforce the mistaken notion that good staff development is a series of "presenters" who "convey" ideas and research to relatively passive recipients. I Believe Based on more than 40 years of experience as an educator (with more than 30 of those years dedicated to the field of professional learning), my careful reading of the professional literature in education and related fields, and conversations with tens of thousands of administrators and teachers from a variety of settings, I have acquired a number of beliefs about leadership and leadership development that I offer as propositions in the spirit of dialogue. * I believe that significant improvements in teaching and learning for all students begin with significant change in leaders. Therefore, leadership development focuses on affecting what leaders believe, understand, say, and do each day. Leadership development is sufficiently robust that it literally changes the brains of leaders as they acquire new beliefs, deepen their understanding of important subjects, and develop new habits. * I believe that the quality of relationships in schools profoundly affects the quality of teaching and learning. Therefore, leadership development creates relationships among leaders that inspire hope rather than resignation, provides support in implementing new practices, and inspires the courage necessary to consistently act in ways that promote the welfare of all young people. * I believe that individuals working inter-dependently in teams pursuing goals that stretch their capacities can accomplish far more than individuals working alone. Therefore, leadership development engages leaders in genuine teamwork based on ambitious goals for student learning as a primary means of continuous improvement that overcomes the centrifugal forces of professional isolation. * I believe that if all students are to experience high-quality teaching and learning and be surrounded by supportive relationships, their teachers must also be surrounded by such relationships and experience continuous real-time professional learning. …


This paper estimates the impact of a large temporary poverty relief program, Uruguay's PANES—on birth outcomes. Using program administrative data and longitudinal vital statistics, a significant and precisely estimated reduction in the fraction of low-weight newborns (less than 2,500 g. ) on the order of 10 to 20 percent was found to be a result of treatment. The cash (and in-kind) transfer components of the program were considered to drive the results, suggesting that unrestricted social assistance has the potential to positively affect birth outcomes, most likely through improved nutrition. Assuming that all the effect of the program was through the transfer, an elasticity of low birthweight with respect to welfare transfers on the order of around 0. 30 can be inferred.


The Arabian Gulf is a semi-enclosed sea with very high evaporation and low discharge rates resulting in extreme saline and thermal conditions. Additionally the system is characterized by a weak hydrodynamic flushing resulting in pollutant build-up over time. As a result, compared to open marine systems, added stress imposed by pollutants is likely to have severe consequences. Qatar has witnessed a rapid expansion in coastal development, linked to its industrial and population growth in recent decades. While economically and socially valuable, the growth comes with an associated environmental cost and Qatar's marine environment now faces many pressures including eutrophication, inputs of domestic sewage, discharge of industrial waste and the resuspension of sediment due to coastal construction. Although the threats pose to biota inhabiting Qatar's marine environment are evident, their extent has yet to be fully assessed. A large percentage of contaminants in the aquatic environment consist of potentially (directly or indirectly) genotoxic, carcinogenic and mutagenic substances. A genotoxin can modify the genetic material at non lethal and non cytotoxic concentrations and has often belated effects which are significantly important at the population and community levels. Genotoxins have particularly high ecotoxicological relevance in situations of chronic exposure to low doses and to multiple contaminants (e.g. in case of PAHs rich tarballs arriving in the shorelines), raising he need to establish genotoxicological profiles of the ecosystems. Indeed several regulatory developments such as: EU – Marine Strategy Framework Directive, the or US – Environmental Protection Agency – Integrated Risk Information System have stressed explicitly on the need of the detection and assessment of potential carcinogenic and mutagenic toxicants using genotoxicity endpoints. The analysis of cytogenetic endpoints in organisms exposed to contaminants in their natural environment contributes significantly to the early detection of genotoxic damage. The relevance of cytogenetic parameters and atypical cytogenetic features, such as numerical chromosomal abnormalities, i.e. aneuploidy, have largely proven their relevance as alerting indicators of poor environmental health and relevant biomarkers for the early detection of environmental stressors. The use of marine invertebrates for in situ environmental assessment is a widely accepted method for identifying risks to the ecosystems. Moreover, at the DNA and chromosome levels they express qualitatively similar types of induced damage to that found in higher organism (e.g. numerical and structural chromosomal aberrations). In this study, we aimed to take a step towards Qatar's marine sustainability by assessing the health status of the marine environment, and providing early alerting symptoms of degradation, by having as specific objectives: i) to measure the levels, in abiotic (water, sediments) and a marine invertebrate model species, of various anthropogenic contaminants (metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, (PAHs) and Total polyaromatic hydrocarbons (TPH) at 3 selected sites around the Qatari coast, ii) measure the biological response at the chromosome level, and iii) determine the main drivers of genotoxicity through a multivariate analysis in order to establish a first partial genotoxicological profile of the Qatar Marine Zone. The 3 selected sampling sites, with expected different levels and sources of pollution were: South of Al Khor, Al Wakra harbor and South of Doha harbor. Two sampling campaigns were performed, one in summer and one in winter, to evaluate the role of the abiotic parameters, among others, on the bioavailability of the studied contaminants. The native pearl oyster Pinctada radiata was selected as model and surrogate species due to, its wide distribution along the Qatari coast, filter feeder and sessile mode of life and to its ability as a bivalve to bioaccumulate pollutants. Chemical analyses of the main trace metals and hydrocarbons were performed in water, sediment and P. radiata samples. The evaluation of the aneuploidy levels in P. radiata was estimated in 25–30 animals from each sampling site and season, by counting the total number of aneuploid metaphases over 30 metaphases counted per individual. The evaluation of the aneuploidy level on Pinctada radiata from the three sampling sites revealed an occurrence of significantly higher levels in Al-Wakra harbor (17% in summer and 20% in winter) and South of Doha harbor (19% in summer and 17% in winter), when compared to Al Khor (5% in summer cand 7% in winter). No statistically significant differences were observed between seasons in each location. In order to investigate the discrepancy between sampling sites and seasons with respect to all estimated descriptors and to evaluate the relationship between all the studied parameters, a principal component analysis (PCA) was performed. Aneuploidy levels were highly correlated to mercury and PAHs levels in the bivalve tissue. Moreover, the higher aneuploidy levels registered at Al Wakra harbor (both seasons) and Doha harbor (summer) showed a high correlation with the contaminants levels in P. radiata tissues. South of Al Khor (in both sampling seasons) was highly positively correlated with Cadmium (Cd), although this contamination was not responsible for a significant increase of the aneuploidy levels. The studied genotoxic contaminants were found to be highly variable among considered locations and between sampling seasons. Indeed, the 6 observations (contaminants levels among three sampling sites at two sampling seasons) differ substantially, no site or sampling season grouping being observed, which suggests an important spatial and temporal variability of the bioaccumulation of pollutants into P. radiata tissues. The aneuploidy levels, however, were consistently different among sampled locations, but did not differ between the two sampling seasons, suggesting that aneuploidy is the consequence of a local chronic contamination, and not a direct response to the temporal variability of the contaminants in P. radiata tissues. The results of this study confirm the suitability of the cytogenetic endpoints to discriminate, categorize the studied sites as regards to their level of contamination, underlining the added value of the detection of the genotoxicity levels in the marine environment to environmental health assessment and mitigation research programs. Further studies should be developed, under the specific hydrological and toxicological conditions of the Qatar Marine Zone (QMZ), to better explain the underlining mechanisms of such genotoxicity in the local filter feeders. The establishment of a Genotoxicological profile of the QMZ would be a valuable contribution to a wider approach on environmental diagnosis or prognosis, contributing to the protection and sustainability of the QMZ natural habitats and resources.


ABSTRACT ABSTRACT ABSTRACT ABSTRACT Background: Incinerator workers are not considered to have arsenic overexposure although they have the risk of overexposure to other heavy metals. Aim: To examine the relationship between arsenic burden and risk of occupational exposure in employees working at a municipal refuse incinerator by determining the concentrations of arsenic in the blood and urine. Settings and Design: The workers were divided into three groups based on their probability of contact with combustion-generated residues, namely Group 1: indirect contact, Group 2: direct contact and Group 3: no contact. Healthy age- and sex-matched residents living in the vicinity were enrolled as the control group. Materials and Methods: Heavy metal concentrations were measured by atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Downstream rivers and drinking water of the residents were examined for environmental arsenic pollution. A questionnaire survey concerning the contact history of arsenic was simultaneously conducted. Statistical analysis: Non-parametric tests, cross-tabulation and multinomial logistic regression. Results: This study recruited 122 incinerator workers. The urine and blood arsenic concentrations as well as incidences of overexposure were significantly higher in the workers than in control subjects. The workers who had indirect or no contact with combustion-generated residues had significantly higher blood arsenic level. Arsenic contact history could not explain the difference. Airborne and waterborne arsenic pollution were not detected. Conclusion: Incinerator workers run the risk of being exposed to arsenic pollution, especially those who have incomplete protection in the workplace even though they only have indirect or no contact with combustion- generated pollutants.


This paper presents an experimental study into the global behavior of glass columns with square hollow cross-section under axial compression. In the research, totally 6 specimens were tested. All specimens were of the same geometry (length 750 mm, width 150 mm and 10 mm) but had different composition. Half of them were made of monolithic glass, with the other half made of laminated glass. The adopted interlayer material is PVB which is widely used in practice. During the test, vertical displacement, lateral deflection and normal stresses at mid-span were measured. For all specimens, local failure mechanism at the top or bottom due to progressive cracking was found, without any damage occurred at the glued joint. However, there is significant difference between the specimens made of monolithic glass and those made of laminated glass. Laminated glass columns had a sufficient residual capacity, able to carry compressive load in the post-crack stage, while monolithic glass columns collapsed quickly after the appearance of the first crack. Subsequently, the influence of the initial geometrical imperfection was studied in detail. Based on the results of experiment, the current findings could be further extended to various glass columns typologies (e.g. different cross-sections) in order to build appropriate practical design rules.


ABSTRACT The U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Science Center collects and processes Global Positioning System (GPS) data throughout the western United States to measure crustal deformation related to earthquakes and tectonic processes as part of a long‐term program of research and monitoring. Here, we outline data collection procedures and present the GPS dataset built through repeated temporary deployments since 1992. This dataset consists of observations at ∼1950 locations. In addition, this article details our data processing and analysis procedures, which consist of the following. We process the raw data collected through temporary deployments, in addition to data from continuously operating western U.S. GPS stations operated by multiple agencies, using the GIPSY software package to obtain position time series. Subsequently, we align the positions to a common reference frame, determine the optimal parameters for a temporally correlated noise model, and apply this noise model when carrying out time‐series analysis to derive deformation measures, including constant interseismic velocities, coseismic offsets, and transient postseismic motion.


The aim of this research is to analyse and project the effects of changing climate on Lithuanian river runoff and water temperature. Climate change is expected to affect the extremes of the major river indices that impact fundamental ecological processes in river ecosystems. The available runoff and temperature data of rivers from three different hydrological regions of Lithuania were used. HBV software was applied for modelling of hydrological processes in the selected river catchments. The expected future changes of runoff and water temperature were projected according to a new set of scenarios (called representative concentration pathways) presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report. The projected extreme values of runoff (flood and low flow discharges) and water temperatures in the beginning and the end of the 21st century were compared to the ones from the past period. The results showed a decrease of spring flood discharges and summer low flows and an increase of river water temperature at the end of the 21st century. The results are going to be used for an integrated assessment of the impact of climate change on aquatic animal diversity and productivity.


European countries have experienced massive structural transformations over the past twenty-five years with the privatization of state-owned industries, the liberalization of markets, and the rise of the European Union. According to one prominent line of analysis, these changes have led to the Americanization of European regulatory styles: previously informal and cooperative modes of regulation are becoming adversarial and litigation-driven, as in the American system. This article explores the Americanization hypothesis with a structured comparison of data privacy regulation in four countries (France, Britain, Germany, and Italy) and a review of three other policy areas. It finds that European regulatory systems are indeed converging, but not on American-style litigation. Rather, they are moving towards a common administrative model of deterrence-oriented regulatory enforcement and industry self-regulation -- called here "cooperative legalism." The explanation for this emerging regulatory strategy is to be found in government responses to market liberalization, as well as in the pressure created by the governance process of the European Union.


Wine tourism is attracting considerable attention in Australia and a number of states have embarked on vigorous wine tourism development programmes to bolster the perceived economic benefits of tourism (Hall, Johnson & Mitchell 2000). This paper simply describes the process by which a wine tourism strategy was prepared for the state of Western Australia (WA). The strategy is one of the first to be prepared and it is hoped that it can be used as an exemplar for others which will no doubt follow. The strategy was prepared in 1999, refined in 2000 and will be released in 2001. Wine and tourism are two Australian success stories (Macionis and Cambourne 2000) and the WA wine tourism strategy charts an exciting future for the development of a synthesis of these two great industries. The outstanding 'value added' element of the wine tourism industry fosters job creation, stimulates local businesses, especially in regional areas, and enhances both wine exports and international tourism. The broad ranging industry encompassing a range of industries demands a government approach to its future growth. Such synergy provides an exceptional opportunity for the wine and tourism industries to capitalize on the State s existing wine tourism products as well as the growing demand for wine tourism. The WA strategy was developed in accord with the Australian National Wine Tourism Strategy and covered a range of issues. These include raising the awareness and understanding of the value added benefit of tourism to the wine industry; establishing an industry standard for wine tourism outlets and facilities; increasing the skill level of employees in the wine tourism industry; understanding links between wine, food and the Australian lifestyle; and identifying the impediments to the development of wine tourism in Western Australia. This paper provides an overview of the background, process and outcomes of the draft strategy.


While the existence of cholesterol/sphingolipid (raft) membrane domains in the plasma membrane is now supported by strong experimental evidence, the structure of these domains, their size, their dynamics, and their molecular composition remain to be understood. Raft domains are thought to represent a specific physical state of lipid bilayers, the liquid-ordered phase. Recent observations suggest that in the mammalian plasma membrane small raft domains in ordered lipid phases are in a dynamic equilibrium with a less ordered membrane environment. Rafts may be enlarged and/or stabilized by protein-mediated cross-linking of raft-associated components. These changes of plasma membrane structure are perceived by the cells as signals, most likely an important element of immunoreceptor signalling. Pathogens abuse raft domains on the host cell plasma membrane as concentration devices, as signalling platforms and/or entry sites into the cell. Elucidation of these interactions requires a detailed understanding raft structure and dynamics.


After doing research on Google File System, we find out some methods to improve the performance of Google file system. Google File System is a scalable distributed file system for large size distributed data-intensive applications. It provides high fault tolerance while running on inexpensive commodity hardware and it delivers high aggregate performance to a large number of clients. But there are some limitations in it such as it uses same chunk size to append and write data. Fixed chunk size decreases its performance for append data. So we will explain some methods to increase its performance by changing some attributes of typical Google File System. This paper is divided into five parts. First part presents the basic introduction of Google File System, second part provides the performance of GFS cluster for a 64 MB chunk size, third part shows the performance of real time GFS clusters, fourth part presents a method to increase the performance of GFS, and finally part fifth concludes the effect of variable size chunk on GFS.


The non-thermal high-energy electron effects on Langmuir wave-particle interaction are investigated using an initial value approach. A Vlasov-Poisson simulation is employed based on the splitting scheme by Cheng and Knorr (1976). The kappa distribution function is taken as an example of non-thermal electrons. The modification is manifested as an increase in the Landau damping rate and a decrease in the real frequency for a long wavelength limit. A part of the analyses using the modified plasma dispersion function (Summers and Thorne 1991) is reproduced for l = 2, 3 and 6. The dispersion relation from the initial value simulation and the plasma dispersion function compare favorably. (PACS numbers: 52.35.Fp, 52.35.Sb, 52.65.Ff).


Amici take no position on whether BOOKING.COM is generic, but write to encourage the Court to be cautious in resolving this case, which involves a generic term combined with a common top-level domain name identifier (.com). Trademark applications raise almost infinitely varied scenarios, including generic terms combined with other elements, and the top-level domain name identifier has some specific features that make it analogous to functional matter. Whatever rule the Court adopts should be highly attentive to the risks to competition of overassertion of registered marks that are largely or entirely comprised of generic elements.

Because courts deciding infringement cases are often unfamiliar with the context of a trademark registration, they may miss limitations on the scope of the registered mark that the Trademark Office believed existed and, as a result, enforce broader rights than the registrants should actually have. Ordinary businesses receiving cease and desist letters are even more unlikely to have the expertise to understand the limits on a registration. This practical reality should guide the Court's standards for registrations with generic components.

Relatedly, the Court should reaffirm the basic principle that "de facto secondary meaning" does not give rise to protectability as a trademark. Courts have long distinguished between "de facto secondary meaning" and secondary meaning "to which courts will attach legal consequences." De facto secondary meaning refers to an association between a generic term and a particular producer that is usually the result of an extended period of market dominance, whether achieved through advertising or through lack of competition. Because of the need to protect potential and future competition, a generic term cannot be appropriated as a trademark even if it has de facto secondary meaning The practical exclusivity afforded by domain name registration means that there may often be de facto secondary meaning in domain names, which can be difficult to distinguish from true trademark secondary meaning. This easily elided distinction affects how the Court should evaluate Booking.com's survey, which purports to show secondary meaning.

But the fact that de facto secondary meaning does not lead to trademark status does not mean it is irrelevant to the law. Even when a term is not protectable as a trademark, narrower unfair competition remedies may be available to prevent true passing off. When a term is generic or a product shape is functional, neither can be protected as a trademark and others may not be enjoined from competing using the term or shape.. Those competitors, however, may be required to distinguish themselves in the market by adding identifiers or otherwise differentiating their use, if the competitors' use might deceive consumers. Thus, a rule that strongly protects competition by denying registration to generic terms does not leave consumers exposed to clever bad actors.


Background Nurses are often the first to activate the chain of survival when a cardiorespiratory arrest happens. That is why it is crucial that they keep their knowledge and skills up-to-date and their attitudes to resuscitation are very important. The main aim of this study was to analyse whether the level of theoretical and practical understanding affected the attitudes of nursing staff. Methods A questionnaire was designed using the Delphi technique (three rounds). The questionnaire was adjusted and it was piloted on a test-retest basis with a convenience sample of 30 registered nurses. The psychometric characteristics were evaluated using a sample of 347 nurses using Cronbach's alpha. Descriptive analysis was performed to describe the sociodemographic variables and Spearman's correlation coefficient to assess the relationship between two scale variables. Pearson's chi-squared test has been used to study the relationship between two categorical variables. Wilcoxon Mann Whitney test and the Kruskal–Wallis test were performed to establish relationships between the demographic/work related characteristics and the level of understanding. Results The Knowledge and Attitude of Nurses in the Event of a Cardiorespiratory Arrest (CAEPCR) questionnaire comprised three sections: sociodemographic information, theoretical and practical understanding, and attitudes of ethical issues. Cronbach's alpha for the internal consistency of the attitudes questionnaire was 0.621. The knowledge that nurses self-reported with regard to cardiopulmonary arrest directly affected their attitudes. Their responses raised a number of bioethical issues. Conclusions CAEPCR questionnaire is the first one which successfully linked knowledge of cardiopulmonary resuscitation to the attitudes towards ethical issues Health policies should ensure that CPR training is mandatory for nurses and all healthcare workers, and this training should include the ethical aspects.


OBJECTIVES
To investigate beliefs about medications held by people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), what factors are related to these specific medication beliefs, and whether these beliefs influence adherence.

METHODS
The design was a cross-sectional postal questionnaire survey of people with RA. The Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire was used to assess beliefs about the necessity of medication and concerns about it. Questionnaires were mailed to 600 out-patients with RA.

RESULTS
The response rate was 57.3%. Most (74.3%) respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their arthritis medications are necessary for their health. However, 47.4% were concerned about potential adverse consequences. The overall necessity score (mean 19.2, s.d. 3.13) was higher than the concerns score (mean 15.84, s.d. 3.53; P<0.001). Greater disability was associated with higher necessity scores (r = 0.36; P<0.001). Greater helplessness correlated with higher concerns scores (r = 0.49; P<0.001). There was no association between RA knowledge and beliefs about medications (necessity scale, r = 0.02, P = 0.66; concerns scale, r=-0.08, P = 0.14). Concerns scores for non-adherent participants (mean 17.88, s.d. 3.29) were higher than for the adherent group (mean 15.64, s.d. 3.51; P = 0.002).

CONCLUSIONS
Most people with RA have positive beliefs about the necessity of their medication. However, levels of concern are high and associate with helplessness and non-adherence. The Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire may identify people at risk of poor adherence and provide a focus for patients to discuss their beliefs, providing opportunities to improve adherence.


A triblock copolymer has been prepared in which a main chain polymeric discotic liquid crystal is capped at both ends with blocks of poly(ethylene oxide). It has been characterized by GPC, DSC, polarizing microscopy, small- and wide-angle X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, and rheometry. The copolymer undergoes microphase separation, giving a nanostructured material consisting of a hexagonal array of poly(ethylene oxide) rods in a matrix of columnar liquid crystal. It is found that the alignment of these rods is determined by that of the liquid crystal. Hence, under shear, both the columns of the discotic and the rods of poly(ethylene oxide) align perpendicular to the shear direction. At lower temperatures the poly(ethylene oxide) regions crystallize, and a lamellar structure is obtained.


We describe a real-time pedestrian detection system intended for use in automotive applications. Our system demonstrates superior detection performance when compared to many state-of-the-art detectors and is able to run at a speed of 14 fps on an Intel Core i7 computer when applied to 640×480 images. Our approach uses an analysis of geometric constraints to efficiently search feature pyramids and increases detection accuracy by using a multiresolution representation of a pedestrian model to detect small pixel-sized pedestrians normally missed by a single representation approach. We have evaluated our system on the Caltech Pedestrian benchmark which is currently the largest publicly available pedestrian dataset at the time of this publication. Our system shows a detection rate of 61% with 1 false positive per image (FPPI) whereas recent other state-of-the-art detectors show a detection rate of 50% ~ 61% under the `reasonable' test scenario (explained later). Furthermore, we also demonstrate the practicality of our system by conducting a series of use case experiments on selected videos of Caltech dataset.


Even if people have asserted the existence of a poverty trap within the forest, it has never been empirically tested that forest and poverty interactions lead to a poverty trap from which poor forest people could not escape (Angelsen and Wunder, 2003). This paper tests whether such a mechanism arises within forest communities and analyses the different livelihoods forest people could implement. Data used are from the Tsimane' Amazonian Panel Study (TAPS 2002-06) and have been complemented by qualitative data collected in June-July 2008. The poverty trap mechanism studied is inspired by Carter and Barrett's model defined for their studies of agrarian communities (Carter and Barrett, 2006). They intend to show that an S-shape exists in the asset accumulation process of households due to the presence of increasing returns to assets at an unstable equilibrium. An asset index is computed through factor analysis to estimate the asset accumulation process. To test the S-shape, different regression techniques are used: parametric, nonparametric and semiparametric. The parametric regression uses a fourth-degree polynomial regression to estimate the relationship between the change in asset index and its lagged value. For both nonparametric and semiparametric regressions, penalised splines and LOWESS estimators are used. All three regressions show that a poverty trap mechanism does not occur for the Tsimane', there is no S-shape in the asset accumulation and it seems concave. These results contradict Carter's and Barrett's results, because here Tsimane' households have a wide range of activities and assets. Households rely on diverse assets to achieve their livelihood. They use forest resources in addition to agriculture, so they are not pushed further into poverty if forest resources are depleted, they would rely more on agriculture as also land constraints are weak.


James Abijah Brooks (1855-1944) was one of the four Great Captains in Texas Ranger history, others including Bill McDonald, John Hughes, and John Rogers. Over the years historians have referred to the captain as "John" Brooks, because he tended to sign with his initials, but also because W. W. Sterling's classic Trails and Trials of a Texas Ranger mistakenly named him as Captain John Brooks. Born and raised in Civil War-torn Kentucky, a reckless adventurer on the American and Texas frontier, and a quick-draw Texas Ranger captain who later turned in his six-shooter to serve as a county judge, Brooks's life reflects the raucous era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century American West. As a Texas Ranger, Brooks participated in the high profile events of his day, from the fence-cutting wars to the El Paso prizefight, from the Conner Fight–where he lost three fingers from his left hand–to the Temple rail strike, all with a resolute demeanor and a fast gun. A shoot-out in Indian Territory nearly cost him his life and then jeopardized his career, and a lifelong bout with old Kentucky bourbon did the same. With three other distinguished Ranger captains, Brooks witnessed and helped promote the transformation of the elite Frontier Battalion into the Ranger Force. As a state legislator, he brokered the creation of a South Texas county that bears his name today, and where he served for twenty-eight years as county judge. He was the quintessential enforcer of frontier justice, scars and all.


Entrants and incumbents can create new products and displace the products of competitors. Incumbents can also improve their existing products. How much of aggregate productivity growth occurs through each of these channels? Using data from the U.S. Longitudinal Business Database on all nonfarm private businesses from 1983 to 2013, we arrive at three main conclusions: First, most growth appears to come from incumbents. We infer this from the modest employment share of entering firms (defined as those less than 5 years old). Second, most growth seems to occur through improvements of existing varieties rather than creation of brand new varieties. Third, own‐product improvements by incumbents appear to be more important than creative destruction. We infer this because the distribution of job creation and destruction has thinner tails than implied by a model with a dominant role for creative destruction.


The article discusses the authors' ambivalent attitude towards their protagonists, drawing on Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Eduard Vilde's Mäeküla piimamees (Milkman of the Manor). Firstly, the hypothesis based on Aristotle's Poetics and the idea of Pericles having been a possible prototype of Oedipus is proposed, according to which Sophocles could have been critical of the tyrant of Thebes as a noble representative of a polis at war with Athens, justifying his pains in addition to showing compassion. Such an interpretation is in contrast with the humanist and protest-driven glorification initiated by Friedrich Nietzsche. Another example of the author's "hypocrisy" is Thomas Hardy's novel that is generally, and with reason, read as critical of Victorian society. However, the work's reception has failed to address the motif of mystical revenge on the inheritor of the bloodline of foreign conquerors that occurs in the shadow of a woman's tragedy and is executed with consistency, yet is not seen as the text's rival dominant. Still, without considering the opposing line of interpretation that constitutes a parallel in its tragic irony, the understanding of the novel will remain superficial. The third example of the author's split viewpoint can be found in the first Estonian novel to excel in artistic maturity that also stands out as the first psychological and erotic novel. Vilde's social-critical programme in the name of the oppressed country people and women's emancipation clashes in an intriguing way with his erotomanic objectifying gaze on the woman which rather represents a patriarchal attitude bent on subordinating the other sex. Vilde's ambivalence towards his wayward heroine makes her a most interesting character whose mystery cannot be solved unequivocally.


Objective Identify risk factors for 30-day reoperation and readmission after parathyroidectomy for primary hyperparathyroidism. Study Design Retrospective analysis of the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) database from 2012 through 2014. Subjects and Methods Patients undergoing parathyroidectomy and parathyroid reexploration for primary hyperparathyroidism. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to determine risk factors for reoperation and readmission. Results Of the 9439 patients who underwent parathyroidectomy, 72 patients underwent 1 reoperation in the first 30 days after surgery, and 8 patients underwent 2 reoperations. The most common reasons were hematoma (25%) and persistent hyperparathyroidism (15.9%). Risk factors included smoking (odds ratio [OR], 1.86; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.97-3.31), insulin-dependent diabetes (OR, 2.38; 95% CI, 1.02-4.86), and history of bleeding disorder (OR, 3.95; 95% CI, 1.48-8.79). In total, 182 (1.9%) patients were readmitted within 30 days of surgery; the most common cause was hypocalcemia (17.0%). Risk factors included operative time (hours) (OR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.1-1.5), insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (OR, 2.01; 95% CI, 1.2-3.3), dyspnea with moderate exertion (OR, 5.77; 95% CI, 0.86-14.67), and age (decade) (OR, 1.16; 95% CI, 1.02-1.32). Patients undergoing outpatient surgery were less likely to be readmitted (OR, 0.49; 95% CI, 0.35-0.69) or undergo reoperation (OR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.27-0.73). Conclusions Thirty-day reoperation rate after parathyroidectomy was low and most commonly occurred due to hematoma. Risk factors for readmission were multifactorial and associated with perioperative factors, patient factors, and medical comorbidities. Preoperative counseling for patients at increased risk of readmission and reoperation may decrease these rates.


Multiwavelets are generated from refinable function vectors by using multiresolution analysis. In this paper we investigate the approximation properties of a multivariate refinable function vector associated with a general dilation matrix in terms of both the subdivision operator and the order of sum rules satisfied by the matrix refinement mask. Based on a fact about the sum rules of biorthogonal multiwavelets, a coset by coset (CBC) algorithm is presented to construct biorthogonal multiwavelets with arbitrary order of vanishing moments. More precisely, to obtain biorthogonal multiwavelets, we have to construct primal and dual masks. Given any primal matrix mask a and a general dilation matrix M, the proposed CBC algorithm reduces the construction of all dual masks of a, which satisfy the sum rules of arbitrary order, to a problem of solving a well organized system of linear equations. We prove in a constructive way that for any given primal mask a with a dilation matrix M and for any positive integer k, we can always construct a dual mask a~ of a such that a~ satisfies the sum rules of order k. In addition, we provide a general way for the construction of Hermite interpolatory matrix masks in the univariate setting with any dilation factors. From such Hermite interpolatory masks, smooth Hermite interpolants, including the well known cubic Hermite splines as a special case, are obtained and are used to construct biorthogonal multiwavelets. As an example, a C Hermite interpolant with support [&3, 3] is presented. Then we shall apply the CBC algorithm to such Hermite interpolatory masks to construct biorthogonal multiwavelets. Several examples of biorthogonal multiwavelets are provided to illustrate the general theory. In particular, a C dual function vector with support [&4, 4] of the cubic Hermite splines is given. 2001 Academic Press


In this chapter, I explore how judges—and, more generally, U.S. courts—deal with legal disputes when they must consider not only laws and facts, but also religion, or maybe even more precisely, theology. Indeed, in a wide range of circumstances, judges are confronted with cases where the outcome in some way or another requires them to issue a decision that is predicated, to varying to degrees, on a theological question upon which there is some debate. While in American law the ostensibly simple answer to this question is simply that the Constitution prohibits courts from adjudicating religious questions, the reality is far more complicated. Indeed, the justifications for the religious question doctrine are quite different when considered in the context of private law cases—such as cases involving the interpretation of religious terminology in commercial instruments—and public law cases—where courts are asked to apply the state's regulatory infrastructure in circumstances that invariably require some sort of interrogation of religious doctrine or practice.

In each sphere, the consequences of applying the religious question doctrine look different and may therefore encourage different strategies and outcomes. When judges dismiss private law cases that implicate theological questions, they often leave aggrieved parties without a remedy for legal wrongs that can have significant consequences, either financial or otherwise. When judges dismiss public law cases that implicate theological questions, they often limit the law's reach and leave some spheres of the human condition beyond the scope of legitimate government regulation.

These consequences highlight the need for U.S. courts to reconsider the contours of the constitutional limitations on their authority to engage matters of theology. In the discussion below, I identify why a number of jurisprudential approaches may provide courts with more flexibility in the private law context. This disparity derives from fundamental disagreements over the origins of and animating principles behind the religious question doctrine, disparities which I argue courts should take seriously so as to avoid too-freely renouncing their central duty of resolving disputes submitted on the courthouse doorstep.


The population value of coefficients of correlation based on ranks depends only on the copula underlying the true distribution. We consider data sets that share the same dependence structure, but present different margins. For instance, data may be expressed in different currencies or measured by indices that cannot be compared across populations. A mixture of empirical copulas is built, yielding weighted coefficients of correlation. The consistency of the estimates and their asymptotic distributions are derived for scalar weights. We also consider the case where data-based weights detect adaptively the similarities between the copulas underlying each population, with the idea of making a compromise between bias and variance. Simulations are used to explore the finite sample behavior of these weighted methods.


Facilitated by an Engineer and a Social Scientist, both of whom have expertise in Engineering Education Research and Evaluation (EERE), this interactive workshop is divided into three main sections, each one focusing on a different area of evaluation. It will build on research conducted at Aston University School of Engineering and Applied Science to explore and critique the value of introducing CDIO across the first year undergraduate curriculum. Participants will be invited to consider the pedagogical and engineering related challenges of evaluating the academic and practical value of CDIO as a strategy for learning and teaching in the discipline. An empirical approach to evaluation developed by the researchers to provide empirically grounded evidence of the pedagogical and vocational value of CDIO will form the theoretical and conceptual basis of the workshop. This approach is distinctive in that it encapsulates both engineering and social science methods of evaluation. It is also contemporaneous in nature, with the researchers acting as a 'fly on the wall' capturing data as the programme unfolds. Through facilitated discussion and participation, the workshop will provide colleagues with the opportunity to develop a cross-disciplinary, empirically grounded research proposal specifically for the purposes of critically evaluating CDIO. It is anticipated that during the workshop, colleagues will work together in small groups. Suitable pedagogical approaches and tools will be suggested and a purposefully developed Engineering Education Research Guide, written by the workshop facilitators, will be given to all participants to inform and support the Workshop approach.


Abstract Arterial switch operation has become the standard of care for d-transposition of great arteries and has excellent short- and long-term outcomes. We report the case of a newborn with a diagnosis of d-transposition of great arteries with intact ventricular septum and a low-risk coronary artery anatomy who developed coronary artery vasospasm while coming off bypass following arterial switch operation in the operating room. The coronary artery spasm led to severe biventricular dysfunction and need for extracorporeal membranous oxygenation support. Despite extracorporeal membranous oxygenation and inotropic support, there was no improvement in the left ventricular function, and cardiac transplantation was performed after 8 days. The explanted heart showed extensive infarction of both ventricles. Both the coronary ostei were patent with no evidence of thrombus, suggesting coronary artery vasospasm rather than embolus or thrombus formation. This is the first case of coronary artery vasospasm in a neonate with d-transposition of great arteries leading to cardiac transplantation. We speculate that early identification of patients who are at a high risk for coronary vasospasm and prophylactic or timely infusion of papaverine directly into the coronary arteries may be beneficial in this condition.


Media Studies 2.0 seeks to rewire the discipline of media studies from prevailing notions of
aggregate third-person, top-down or imposed identities (as found within the domain of industrial mass
communications media) toward what it sees as the communication of new bottom-up, first-person or
singular reflexive identities favored within the post-fordist, post-industrial spaces of the internet, social
networking sites, second life-like domains and computer game spaces. This article will point toward
many of the hidden, though still important, intersections between these two supposedly separate
conceptions through the use of a case study that throws notions of clean "communication" into question.
From this it will go on to argue for a recognition of such new media spaces as better conceptualized
through Bataille's notion of ʻGeneral Economy' and Derrida's notion of ʻUndecidability', as dually taken
forward in the work of Arkady Plotnitsky. The conclusion? Far from modern teletechnologies offering a
new sense of micro-community or as channels of individual self-expression (a new Rousseauian or
McLuhanesque global village of intimate contact), these emergent teletechnologies serve to further
displace or undecide the locus of any signature context of communication, which this article takes as a
cause for celebration.


In this paper, a space-time hole filling approach is presented to deal with a disocclusion when a view is synthesized for the 3D video. The problem becomes even more complicated when the view is extrapolated from a single view, since the hole is large and has no stereo depth cues. Although many techniques have been developed to address this problem, most of them focus only on view interpolation. We propose a space-time joint filling method for color and depth videos in view extrapolation. For proper texture and depth to be sampled in the following hole filling process, the background of a scene is automatically segmented by the random walker segmentation in conjunction with the hole formation process. Then, the patch candidate selection process is formulated as a labeling problem, which can be solved with random walks. The patch candidates that best describe the hole region are dynamically selected in the space-time domain, and the hole is filled with the optimal patch for ensuring both spatial and temporal coherence. The experimental results show that the proposed method is superior to state-of-the-art methods and provides both spatially and temporally consistent results with significantly reduced flicker artifacts.


A design methodology based on an odd-mode excited tire-wheel assembly is presented for tire pressure monitoring systems. The tire-wheel assembly is investigated using the finite-integration technique-based simulator CST Microwave Studio. Numerical investigations using a pair of electrically small dipoles inside the tire-wheel assembly show that the odd-mode excitation provides in-phase magnetic currents of standing waves along the angular direction on both sides of the tire-wheel assembly, resulting in the strong radiation in the plane normal to its axis. It is also shown that the odd-mode is excited by an electrically small loop antenna that has the aperture normal to the angular direction to enhance the magnetic coupling. The validity of the numerical investigations is confirmed by the measurements of a commercially available tire-wheel assembly at 434 MHz, where a loop antenna is installed into a transmitter. The effectiveness of the odd-mode excitation is numerically confirmed in a car body model having the tire-wheel assemblies rotated on the ground.


Double negative (DNG) metamaterials, which have both negative permittivity and negative permeability, have attracted intensive interest in the last few years for their exotic properties, such as negative refraction, reversed Doppler effect, reversed Vavilov-Cerenkov effect, and the possibility of making perfect lens. Theoretical investigations and practical experiments are being well undergone by many research groups over the world. Applications are found in RF circuit design, antenna size reduction, resonance devices, etc. As one of the most important building blocks, transmission lines have intensive applications in RF and microwave engineering, such as couplers, phase shifters, filters, and leaky wave antennas. By replacing the conventional dielectric materials with DNG medium, we found numerous interesting properties. The complete mode spectrum and dispersive behavior of DNG medium are different from their DPS counterparts. Complex surface modes are found to be existing in a grounded DNGmedium slab. When applying DNGmedium to dipole radiation, both horizontal electric dipole (HED) and horizontal magnetic dipole (HMD) exhibits greatly enhanced radiation pattern due to the slow attenuation of the complex modes on the interface. Microstrip line with DNG is also investigated. It has large attenuation in low frequency band which implies that it is a good candidate for leaky antenna. At higher frequency, the attenuation drops to zero and the propagation constant bifurcates. The method of moment is one of the most successful and efficient approaches in solving integral equations. However, the internal resonance problem of integral equations has plagued solutions of integral equations. A well known example is the internal resonance existing in both electric field integral equation (EFIE) and magnetic field integral equation (MFIE) for PEC scatterers or penetrable scatterers. xviii In the second part of my presentation, we will introduce the concept of original resonance and model resonance, followed by numerical matrix resonance and right-hand-side (RHS) resonance. We will thoroughly study their subtle differences and give numerical examples. The errors in electric current and scattered field near the resonances are studied for both EFIE and MFIE in solving for scattering solution from a 2D circular cylinder.


Abstract The evolution of sociality in insects holds a central place in evolutionary theory. By examining the phylogenetic patterns of solitary and social behavior and how they correlate with ecological variables, we may identify factors important in the evolution of sociality. In this study, we investigated historical and biogeographical patterns of sociality in a socially polymorphic bee species (one that demonstrates both social and solitary nesting behavior). This unique system allows for a more powerful examination of evolutionary transitions in sociality than interspecific studies of obligately social and solitary species. We conducted a phylogenetic analysis among populations of the halictine bee Halictus rubicundus and then identified relationships among mitochondrial DNA sequence data, sociality, environmental conditions at the nesting site, and geographic location of populations of this species. Within North America, populations of H. rubicundus expressing social and solitary behavior belong to different genetic lineages. Sociality is also correlated with at least one environmental variable used in this study. Taken together, the results support the predictions for genetic control of sociality, but they are still consistent with social behavior at some level being determined by the environmental conditions at the nesting site. Corresponding Editor: K. Ross


The perception of motion can be generated by modulating the contrast relationships among objects, backgrounds, and thin lines separating them (Gregory and Heard, 1983; Shapiro et al. 2005; and others). This motion can be called "illusory" since no elements in the image physically change location. Here we examine a variant of this type of motion to see the extent to which it produces eye movements and whether we can predict the direction of illusory motion by examining only the eye movement data. The stimulus consisted of a large mid-luminance colored diamond (visual angle 16 degrees) bordered by thin (0.07 deg) edges and surrounded by a background (19 deg). Both the edges and background modulated in luminance between light and dark at 2 Hz; due to differences in timing between these elements, the diamond appeared to move continously in one direction (up, down, left, or right, depending on condition) though the diamond itself did not change position (Flynn and Shapiro, 2012). An eye tracking camera (50 Hz, Cambridge Research Systems) mounted to a chin rest tracked the gaze of naive observers (n = 30) who were asked simply to "watch" the stimulus on a computer monitor. Each observer saw 50 3-second trials presented in ranomized blocks of 5 conditions (up, down, left, right, no motion). An analysis of the slope of the eye movements'change in position shows that observers' eye movements drift in the direction of perceived motion. Additionally, an anylsis of the eye postion following saccades shows that observers' gazes center around the leading edge of the stimulus in each motion condition. We conclude that illusions of motion appear to create reliable patterns of eye movements which resemble responses to real motion. Eye tracking data can be used to predict the direction of illusory motion perceived by the observer. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Major increases are currently taking place in the United States in the application of sewage wastes to agricultural land. This paper reviews literature relating to the question of whether such applications involve hazard from human disease organisms. Evidence on the matter is still inadequate. Processed sewage wastes often contain residual pathogenic viruses, bacteria, cysts of protozoa, and ova of helminths, but most sewage-related disease outbreaks have been attributed to use of raw sewage waste water, raw sludges, or night soils on food crops consumed raw, to contamination of drinking water from septic tanks, or to consumption of raw shellfish from sewage-polluted waters. Although subject to relatively high levels of exposure to pathogens in aerosols, waste water treatment plant workers appear to be unaffected, but data on this are limited. Percolation of waste water at a moderate rate through soils of medium to fine texture removes most bacteria and viruses; pathogen movement in surface runoff water may present a greater hazard for spreading disease. Techniques that completely disinfect sludges may fail to stabilize them so that putrefaction is a problem. Properly conducted composting stabilizes raw sludge and destroys most pathogens. Certain fungi and actinomycetes generated during composting may have allergenic potentialities of import for workers at sludge composting sites.


As the volume of available data created from social media grows, creating value out of this information becomes an interesting challenge. This work presents an approach to identify a users country of origin from just looking at a single tweet. The approach focuses on using only metadata, while disregarding the actual content of the tweet. This work also looks at the scalability of the approach using Naive Bayes algorithm. The experiments concludes that using metadata to predict a user geolocation is a viable approach that scales to a stable accuracy with increasing data size.


In this paper, a three dimensional analysis of an ultra-compact sharp trench waveguide bend structure modified with small local photonic crystals is presented. The structure used here is based on a previous proposal [1]. To fully investigate the behavior of the structure, especially mode coupling and off plane radiation losses - (that are ignored in two dimensional calculations [1]) as well as the limitations caused by the effective index approximation in the two-dimensional (2D) simulations, we simulated realistic three dimensional structures using the finite integration technique. Furthermore, a structure on an InP substrate is compared with a Si/SiO2 based structure in order to check the influence of vertical index contrast on the device performance. One of the structures based on InP substrate was then fabricated and characterized to validate our conceptual predictions.


Since convolutional neural networks (CNNs) perform well at learning generalizable image priors from large-scale data, these models have been extensively applied to image restoration and related tasks. Recently, another class of neural architectures, Transformers, have shown significant performance gains on natural language and high-level vision tasks. While the Transformer model mitigates the shortcomings of CNNs (i.e., limited receptive field and inadaptability to input content), its computational complexity grows quadratically with the spatial resolution, therefore making it infeasible to apply to most image restoration tasks involving high-resolution images. In this work, we propose an efficient Transformer model by making several key designs in the building blocks (multi-head attention and feed-forward network) such that it can capture long-range pixel interactions, while still remaining applicable to large images. Our model, named Restoration Transformer (Restormer), achieves state-of-the-art results on several image restoration tasks, including image deraining, single-image motion deblurring, defocus deblurring (single-image and dual-pixel data), and image denoising (Gaussian grayscale/color denoising, and real image denoising). The source code and pre-trained models are available at https://github.com/swz30/Restormer.


Design artefacts are vital to communicate design outcomes, both in remote and co-located settings. However, it is unclear how artefacts are used to mediate interactions between designers and stakeholders of the design process. The purpose of this paper is exploring how professional design teams use artefacts to guide and capture discussions involving multidisciplinary stakeholders while they work in a co-located setting. An earlier draft of this paper was paper published in the Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics (ECCE 2017). This work adds substantial clarification of the methodology followed, further details and photographs of the case studies, and an extended discussion about our findings and their relevance for designing interactive systems. We report the observations of six design meetings in three different projects, involving professional design teams that follow a user-centered design approach. Meetings with stakeholders are instrumental for design projects. However, design teams face the challenge of synthesizing large amounts of information, often in a limited time, and with minimal common ground between meeting attendees. We found that all the observed design meetings had a similar structure consisting of a series of particular phases, in which design activities were organized around artefacts. These artefacts were used as input to disseminate and gather feedback of previous design outcomes, or as output to collect and process a variety of perspectives. We discuss the challenges faced by design teams during design meetings, and propose three design directions for interactive systems to coordinate design meetings revolving around artefacts.


The reactivity of zirconia nanoparticles has been investigated by means of DFT+U calculations as a function of the morphology and stoichiometry. For comparative purposes, a single Au atom has been deposited on the stoichiometric and O-deficient regular (101) surface, on the stepped (156) surface, and on nanoparticles in the range of 0.9–1.9 nm in size. We show that, under stoichiometric conditions, nanostructuring leads to enhanced binding energies and redox processes with the supported metal that are not found on the extended surfaces. These new features are due to the structural flexibility and peculiar electronic structure displayed by the nanoparticles. In this respect, nanostructuring of oxide supports can modify and possibly improve the catalytic activity of the deposited metals. In contrast, we show that under reducing conditions nanostructuring stabilizes the O vacancies making zirconia nanoparticles less reactive toward Au adsorption than O-deficient extended surfaces.