The goal of this contribution is twofold: on the one hand, to review two relatively recent contributions in the field of Eskimo-Aleut historical linguistics in which it is proposed that Eskimo-Aleut languages are related genealogically to Wakashan (Holst 2004) and?/or Nostratic (Krougly-Enke 2008). These contributions can be characterized by saying that their authors have taken little care to be diligent and responsible in the application of the comparative method, and that their familiarity with the languages involved is insufficient. Eskimo-Aleut languages belong to a very exclusive group of language families that have been (and still are) used, sometimes compulsively, in the business of so-called "long-range comparisons". Those carrying out such studies are very often unaware of the most basic facts regarding the philological and linguistic traditions of those languages, as a result of what mountains of very low quality works with almost no-relevancy for the specialist grow every year to the desperation of the scientific community, whose attitude toward them ranges from the most profound indifference to the toughest (and most explicit) critical tone. Since Basque also belongs to this group of "compare-with-everything-you-come-across" languages, it is my intention to provide the Basque readership with a sort of "pedagogical case" to show that little known languages, far from underrepresented in the field, already have a very long tradition in historical and comparative linguistics, i.e. nobody can approach them without previous acquaintance with the acquaintance with the materials. Studies dealing with the methodological inappropriateness of the Moscow School's Nostratic hypothesis or the incorrectness of many of the proposed new taxonomic Amerindian subfamilies (several of them involving the aforementioned Wakashan languages), that is to say, the frameworks on which Krougly-Enke and Holst work, respectively, are plenty (i.a. Campbell 1997: 260-329, Campbell & Poser 2008: 234-96), therefore there is no reason to insist once more on the very same point. This is the reason why I will not discuss per se Eskimo-Aleut–Wakashan or Eskimo-Aleut–Nostratic. On the contrary, I will focus attention upon very concrete aspects of Krougly-Enke and Holst s proposals, i.e. when they work on "less ambitious" problems, for example, dealing with the minutiae of internal facts or analyzing certain words from the sole perspective of Eskimo-Aleut materials (in other words, those cases in which even they do not invoke the ad hoc help of Nostratic stuff). I will try to explain why some of their proposals are wrong, demonstrate where the problem lies, and fix it if possible. In doing so, I will propose new etymologies in an attempt at showing how we may proceed. The main difference between this and handbook examples lies in the reality of what we are doing: this is a pure etymological exercise from beginning to end. I will try to throw a bit of light on a couple of problematic questions regarding Aleut historical phonology, demonstrating how much work should be done at the lowest level of the Eskimo-Aleut pyramid; it is technically impossible to reach the peak of the pyramid without having completed the base. As far as Aleut is regarded, I will mainly profit not only from the use of the traditional philological analysis of Aleut (and, eventually, of Eskimo) materials, but also of diachronic typology, bringing into discussion what in my opinion seems useful, and in some cases I think decisive, parallels. It is worth noting that this paper makes up yet another part of a series of exploratory works dealing with etymological aspects of the reconstruction of Proto-Eskimo-Aleut, with special emphasis on Aleut (vid. i.a. Alonso de la Fuente 2006/2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2010a), whose main goal is to become the solid basis for an etymological dictionary of the Aleut language, currently in progress.


In IT governance, there are two types of responsibilities, first is IT value governance and second is IT risk governance. The primary objective of this study is to examine the second type of responsibility, IT risk governance and specifically looking into the involvement of the board, senior management and all management levels in IS/IT security.
Prior research has shown a lack of involvement by the board and senior management in understanding IS/IT security problems, unbalanced implementation of IS/IT security within the formal, technical and informal components and lack of internal controls application over IS/IT security. The gap found in this study has lead to the development of two major research questions, Research Question 1-In what way does the involvement of Boards and senior management impact on the implementation of IS/IT security governance? and Research Question 2-How can directing and monitoring actions in the technical, formal and informal components of IS/IT security governance in corporations be implemented effectively and efficiently? The two research questions have steered the development of the conceptual framework, the model of IS/IT security governance and the research methods.
The IS/IT security governance model is an extension of the conceptual framework, the model prescribes several areas relating to the elements of the three components, formal, technical and informal and component interactions (Relationship Type 1-Formal/Informal, Relationship Type 2-Formal/Technical and Relationship Type 3-Technical/Informal) within Malaysian Publicly Listed Corporations. The model suggests IS/IT security ought to be included within risk management and internal controls practices, through 'directing' and 'monitoring' actions and exclusively emphasises the supervision role and the relationship between the supervisor (giver) and the holder of responsibility. Because the nature of study is sensitive and confidential; the study has adopted a triangulation method. Data were collected using interviews and a mail survey as primary sources and website analysis as a secondary source. 12 interviews were conducted with CEOs, CIOs, other senior managers and IT manager from eight companies of Group A (Top) and Group B (Middle) across different industries. Despite a low response rate for the mail survey, the data have high validity as interviews and responses involved appropriate people in leading organisations in Malaysia from Group A(Top) and Group B(Middle)- high profit and large market capitalisation
organisations and experienced senior managers. Content analysis over 210 annual reports of website data from Group A, Group B and Group C was conducted.
The data from interviews, survey and website analysis have supported the model of IS/IT security governance. The findings from the interview data are consistent with the elements of formal, technical and informal components and component interactions; risk management and internal controls over IS/IT security and 'directing' and 'monitoring' actions over IS/IT security are supported. The results of the survey have shown that the respondents had similar perspectives as the model. The website analysis revealed that two factors may determine IS/IT security governance, the group type and industry type.


In this thesis, a new numerical ocean model, Tempest, has been developed for application to simple process studies of large-scale ocean dynamics. This model allows for hydrostatic, non-hydrostatic, quasi-hydrostatic, and quasi-geostrophic model options to be employed and is a rigid-lid, fully three-dimensional model that allows for two-dimensionally varying bottom topography using a terrain-following coordinate transformation. To assess the accuracy and validity of this model a number of preliminary test cases are considered. These consist of a complex linear advection test, various convection studies including those defined over oneand two-dimensionally varying bottom topography, and a series of ocean gyre tests. Next, the stability characteristics of a barotropic and a surface intensified baroclinic coastal jet are analyzed. Barotropic jets are characterized by significant horizontal shear and can give rise to both barotropic and baroclinic modes. Furthermore, barotropic jets are often more greatly impacted by variations in the bottom topography compared to surface-intensified baroclinic jets. On the other hand, baroclinic jets have both strong horizontal and vertical shear and are representative of more commonly observed physical jets in the ocean. That being said, baroclinic jets are often more difficult to study numerically due in part to the variations in the isopycnals from the definition of the background jet structure. To gain insights into the growth and structure of the instabilities that can arise from the perturbation of these jets both linear stability calculations and nonlinear simulations are performed. The linear stability calculations allow us to consider a wide range of parameters efficiently. The effects of prograde and retrograde topography as well as varying degrees of stratification are considered. Guided by the results from the linear stability calculations, a set of nonlinear simulations are chosen. Using both the hydrostatic and quasi-geostrophic model options, a comparison between the two sets of results are made and non-QG effects are observed. As well, the results from the linear stability calculations are validated.


[1] The Cariaco Basin has shallow connections with the Caribbean Sea, and these are further reduced at times of lower sea level, such as at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). A numerical model was developed to describe the oceanography and biogenic sedimentation in the Cariaco Basin and nearby Caribbean. The model is run with different sea levels in order to simulate the changing oceanography and the development of deep water anoxia in the Cariaco Basin since the LGM. In the main sequence of numerical experiments, the surface forcing is kept fixed at present-day values while the sea level is changed in order to separate the effects of sea level from the effects of climate. As the sea level rises, the main sedimentation zone moves first to the shallow broad northern sill and NE part of the Cariaco Basin and then, once sea level reaches approximately 60 m below present, moves south to the northern coast of mainland Venezuela. The model shows that there would be an overall increase in sedimentation in the basin as the sea level rises, even if there was no change in the surface forcing. However, the model also shows that sedimentation at particular points in the basin exhibits more complicated behavior, which needs to be taken into account when interpreting individual records. Preliminary numerical experiments examine the effects of changing surface forcing while keeping the sea level at LGM values, and the applicability of a mathematical hydraulic control model in this case is also considered.


Purpose: We assess whether statistical recording of international travel activity towards a country in financial crisis environment underestimates the actual picture of its tourism receipts. Design/Methodology/Approach: Considering the case of Greece and using data during a period including the financial crisis, a VECM estimation highlights the factors endogenously affecting the recorded international travel receipts. Findings: The performance of international travel receipts during the Greek crisis cannot be explained only by changes in variables proposed in the appropriate theoretical background like foreign demand and relative prices. In addition, inward travel activity in the country has been adversely affected by the rise in domestic turmoil following the crisis, while travel receipts indicators underestimate actual tourism performance during periods of intense turbulence in the financial system. Practical Implications: Accounting for such under recording, policy makers can more accurately assess the performance and actual contribution of the tourism sector to an economy under stress, upon designing the appropriate sectoral policy interventions. In parallel, tourism sector stakeholders can form a better-informed view about the sector's actual trends and prospects. Originality/Value: In the case of the Greek financial crisis we find that the effective income contribution of the tourism sector to Greek service providers was considerably higher than recorded international receipts, by circa 4.6% of annual revenues and cumulatively by €2.8 billion during the four-year period following the imposition of capital controls.


An accurate two-dimensional self-consistent numerical model for MOS transistors which is able to predict avalanche behavior is presented. This model aims at a more principal understanding of the physical processes which arise from the avalanche effect and which eventually lead to breakdown. The system of the fundamental semiconductor equations with several generation/recombination mechanisms is solved. To improve the description of the ionization process, correction terms are introduced which account for the fact that the gate induced field does not cause ionization. Holes which are generated in the pinch-off region by impact ionization cause a bulk current; the voltage drop at the parasitic bulk resistance initiates an internal feedback mechanism. Thus a negative resistance branch of the drain current characteristic can arise. However, at high current levels, introduced by a high gate bias and/or a short channel, this snap-back effect is often counterbalanced by strong recombination. Snapback voltage can be estimated with this model.


"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein The implicit gender bias and stereotypes in our society continue to impact gender diversity in executive leadership roles within organizations. The critical demand of highpotential talented female leaders to fill the gap in the corporate pipeline of senior executive positions continues to increase in our global world. Our technologically advanced society impacts this demand, the global climate of organizational change, the competition in products and services, and the impact of implicit bias and gender stereotypes influence corporate growth, innovation, long-term sustainability, and financial stability. Organizational performance depends upon advancing gender diversity by promoting female leaders into the organizational pipeline. The current dearth of qualified leaders in organizations can improve by providing Women's Executive Leadership Development Programs and Female Executive Leadership Coaching to women leaders, thereby decreasing the perilous leadership gap and increasing organizational performance and individual performance. Empirical research studies have measured the outcomes of Women's Leadership Development Programs, and Executive Leadership Coaching for female executives demonstrated improvements in individual and organizational performance and economic and financial successful outcomes. The analysis of the measurement documented by research in supporting gender inclusion in identifying female executive leaders, providing Women's Executive Leadership Programs, and providing the efficacy of female Executive Leadership Coaching in organizations. Thereby, THE DYNAMICS OF GENDER IDENTITY AND IMPLICIT BIAS IMPACTING WOMEN'S EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS AND FEMALE EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP COACHING 3 demonstrating the connection between women's leadership development programs and coaching female leaders as a predictor of organizational success. The overall results included increasing executive women's abilities to provide leadership in team building, strategy, productivity, communication, goal setting, self-confidence, active listening and creating a shared agreement between individual and organizational objectives. According to research studies, (Feldman, Lankau, 2005), the creation of a framework for the leadership development programs and coaching of female leaders contribute to a positive financial outcome and improvement in individual and organizational performance.


The financial and geologic advantages of drilling slim holes instead of large production wells in the early stages of geothermal reservoir assessment has been understood for many years. However, the practice has not been fully embraced by geothermal developers. We believe that the reason for this is that there is a poor understanding of testing and reservoir analysis that can be conducted in slim holes. In addition to reservoir engineering information, coring through the cap rock and into the reservoir provides important data for designing subsequent production well drilling and completion. Core drilling requires significantly less mud volume than conventional rotary drilling, and it is typically not necessary to cure lost circulation zones (LCZ). LCZs should be tested by either production or injection methods as they are encountered. The testing methodologies are similar to those conducted on large-diameter wells; although produced and/or injected fluid volumes are much less. Pressure, temperature and spinner (PTS) surveys in slim holes under static conditions can used to characterize temperature and pressure distribution in the geothermal reservoir. In many cases it is possible to discharge slim holes and obtain fluid samples to delineate the geochemical properties of the reservoir fluid. Also in the latter case, drawdown and buildup data obtained using a downhole pressure tool can be employed to determine formation transmissivity and well properties. Even if it proves difficult to discharge a slim hole, an injection test can be performed to obtain formation transmissivity. Given the discharge (or injection) data from a slimhole, discharge properties of a large-diameter well can be inferred using wellbore modeling. Finally, slim hole data (pressure, temperature, transmissivity, fluid properties) together with reservoir simulation can help predict the ability of the geothermal reservoir to sustain power production.


Milk products are based mostly on casein micelles, fat globules, and whey proteins. The former two constituents are corpuscular and whey proteins become corpuscular when coagulated. Structural changes in these basic constituents during processing have been studied by electron microscopy. This review discusses the structures of yoghurt, curd, cheeses (hard cheeses, mould-ripened cheeses, cream cheeses, and process cheese), cream, milk powders, and nontraditional dairy products. Defects and deviations from traditional structures of these products are explained where the causes are known. Examples of such causes are foaming of milk, presence of unusual ingredients (bacterial polysaccharides, whey protein concentrates), and alterations in manufacturing procedures (temperature regimens, ultrafiltration, or microparticulation). The review emphasizes the importance of electron microscopy alone and also in conjunction with X-ray microanalysis and image analysis. Data obtained by structural studies facilitate understanding of sensory properties of the products and help to develop new foods with desired properties. The review is illustrated with 29 micrographs and supported by 165 references. Manuscript received March I, 1993 Direct inquiries to M. Kalab Telephone number: 613 993 6002 Fax number: 613 943 2353


This article tries to look into the question, to what extent have British universities become the new recruiting grounds of Islamism, if at all, making a shift from Mosques. It argues that both Islam (the religion itself) and Islamism (the political ideology) coexist at the university level. At universities both moderate thinkers and Islamists are invited to give their speeches, a small few of whom openly advocate terrorism or what Islamists would call "martyrdom." The article moves away from the traditional reactive explanations and tries to give both an active and reactive explanation as to what causes Islamism in Britain among British Muslim university students and analyzes the causes within the broader framework of identity issues and socioeconomic marginalization. It has been advised that social policy workers in Britain dealing with ethnic minorities collaborate with security officials while dealing with the problem of Islamism.


We, the Editor and Publisher of the International Journal of Computers and Applications, have retracted the following article which was part of the Special Issue on Advanced Security Techniques for Cloud Computing and Big Data - New Directions: Hongxiang Zhang, Shaojie Shi, Yongkai Wu & Tong Feng (2020) Development of computer-based agricultural remote intelligent information monitoring system, International Journal of Computers and Applications, DOI: 10.1080/1206212X.2020.1730567 Since publication, it came to our attention that the articles published in this Special Issue were not reviewed fully in line with the journal's peer review standards and policy. We did not find any evidence of misconduct by the authors. However, in order to ensure full assessment has been conducted, we sought expert advice on the validity and quality of the published articles from independent peer reviewers. Following this post publication peer review, the Editor has determined that the articles do not meet the required scholarly standards to remain published in the journal, and therefore has taken the decision to retract. The concerns raised have been shared with the authors and they have been given the opportunity to respond. The authors have been informed about the retraction of the article. We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions. The retracted articles will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but they will be digitally watermarked on each page as 'Retracted'.


Industrial software systems are often systems of systems (SoS) whose full behavior only emerges at runtime. The systems and their interactions thus need to be continuously monitored and checked during operation to determine compliance with requirements. Many requirements monitoring approaches have been proposed. However, only few of these come with tools that present and visualize monitoring results and details on requirements violations to end users such as industrial engineers. In this tool demo paper we present visualization capabilities we have been developing motivated by industrial scenarios. Our tool complements ReMinds, an existing requirements monitoring framework, which supports collecting, aggregating, and analyzing events and event data in architecturally heterogeneous SoS. Our visualizations support a 'drill-down' scenario for monitoring and diagnosis: starting from a graphical status overview of the monitored systems and their relations, engineers can view trends and statistics about performed analyses and diagnose the root cause of problems by inspecting the events and event data that led to a specific violation. Initial industry feedback we received confirms the usefulness of our tool support. Demo video: https://youtu.be/iv7kWzeNkdk.


Composites of zirconium carbide matrix material reinforced with carbon fibers can be fabricated relatively rapidly in a process that includes a melt infiltration step. Heretofore, these and other ceramic matrix composites have been made in a chemical vapor infiltration (CVI) process that takes months. The finished products of the CVI process are highly porous and cannot withstand temperatures above 3,000 F (approx.1,600 C). In contrast, the melt-infiltration-based process takes only a few days, and the composite products are more nearly fully dense and have withstood temperatures as high as 4,350 F (approx.2,400 C) in a highly oxidizing thrust chamber environment. Moreover, because the melt- infiltration-based process takes much less time, the finished products are expected to cost much less. Fabrication begins with the preparation of a carbon fiber preform that, typically, is of the size and shape of a part to be fabricated. By use of low-temperature ultraviolet-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, the carbon fibers in the preform are coated with one or more interfacial material(s), which could include oxides. The interfacial material helps to protect the fibers against chemical attack during the remainder of the fabrication process and against oxidation during subsequent use; it also enables slippage between the fibers and the matrix material, thereby helping to deflect cracks and distribute loads. Once the fibers have been coated with the interfacial material, the fiber preform is further infiltrated with a controlled amount of additional carbon, which serves as a reactant for the formation of the carbide matrix material. The next step is melt infiltration. The preform is exposed to molten zirconium, which wicks into the preform, drawn by capillary action. The molten metal fills most of the interstices of the preform and reacts with the added carbon to form the zirconium carbide matrix material. The zirconium does not react with the underlying fibers because they are protected by the interfacial material(s). The success of the melt-infiltration step depends on interface material selection and uniform coating of the fibers, infiltration with the correct amount of carbon, and careful control of temperature and rate of heating.


Conventional simulation of fractured carbonate reservoirs is computationally expensive because of the multiscale heterogeneities and fracture–matrix transfer mechanisms that must be taken into account using numerical transfer functions and/or detailed models with a large number of simulation grid cells. The computational requirement increases significantly when multiple simulation runs are required for sensitivity analysis, uncertainty quantification and optimization. This can be prohibitive, especially for giant carbonate reservoirs. Yet, sensitivity analysis, uncertainty quantification and optimization are particularly important to analyse, determine and rank the impact of geological and engineering parameters on the economics and sustainability of different Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) techniques. We use experimental design to set up multiple simulations of a high-resolution model of a Jurassic carbonate ramp, which is an analogue for the highly prolific reservoirs of the Arab D Formation in Qatar. We consider CO2 water-alternating-gas (WAG) injection, which is a successful EOR method for carbonate reservoirs. The simulations are employed as a basis for generating data-driven surrogate models using polynomial regression and polynomial chaos expansion. Furthermore, the surrogates are validated by comparing surrogate predictions with results from numerical simulation and estimating goodness-of-fit measures. In the current work, parameter uncertainties affecting WAG modelling in fractured carbonates are evaluated, including fracture network properties, wettability and fault transmissibility. The results enable us to adequately explore the parameter space, and to quantify and rank the interrelated effect of uncertain model parameters on CO2 WAG efficiency. The results highlight the first-order impact of the fracture network properties and wettability on hydrocarbon recovery and CO2 utilization during WAG injection. In addition, the surrogate models enable us to calculate quick estimates of probabilistic uncertainty and to rapidly optimize WAG injection, while achieving significant computational speed-up compared with the conventional simulation framework.


Reducing accidental complexity in planning problems is a well-established method for increasing efficiency of classical planning. Removal of superfluous facts and actions, and problem transformation by recursive macro actions are representatives of such methods working directly on input planning problems. Despite of its general applicability and thorough theoretical analysis, there is only a sparse amount of experimental results. In this paper, we adopt selected reduction methods from literature and amend them with a generalization-based reduction scheme and auxiliary reductions. We show that all presented reductions are polynomial in time to the size of an input problem. All reductions applied in a recursive manner produce only safe (solution preserving) abstractions of the problem, and they can implicitly represent exponentially long plans in a compact form. Experimentally, we validate efficiency of the presented reductions on the IPC benchmark set and show average 24% reduction over all problems. Additionally, we experimentally analyze the trade-off between increase of coverage and decrease of the plan quality.


ln-planl control measures in the different manufacturing units in an Oil and Soap Company were carried out. The hot spent lye at 105°C can be saponified again with a predetermined free fatty acid produced in the plant in order to recover soap and to avoid excessive foams. Also, recovery of residual soap resulting from steam blowing during shutdown periods was achieved by using a Jacketed storage tank heated with steam. The techno-economic study for this proposal revealed that the total saving per year is 237,000 L.E. and the percentage return on investment is almost 86%, while the payout period is 0.2 month. Also, the implementation of any possible housekeeping was taken into consideration.


We define a back-and-forth translation between Hole Semantics and dominance constraints, two formalisms used in underspecified semantics. There are fundamental differences between the two, but we show that they disappear on practically useful descriptions. Our encoding bridges a gap between two underspecification formalisms, and speeds up the processing of Hole Semantics.


In December 2004, Congress adopted an important change to the statutory framework authorizing domestic surveillance of foreign powers and their agents, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The change, directly prompted by the events of September 11, 2001, makes it easier for the government to conduct surveillance of so-called lone wolf terrorists - that is, terrorists who act in sympathy with the aims of an international terrorist group but not on its behalf, or terrorists whose link to an international terrorist group cannot be demonstrated. Although the logic of the lone wolf amendment at first seems quite compelling, the amendment offers a fascinating lens through which to examine the current state of foreign intelligence surveillance law and highlights some of the critical questions facing Congress as the December 31, 2005, sunset date for many of the post-9/11 changes to surveillance law (including the lone wolf amendment itself) approaches. As a substantive matter, the lone wolf change goes to the heart of the constitutional issues that the foreign intelligence surveillance framework presents. More important, the lone wolf amendment underscores the critical need for Congress to rethink not only FISA's scope and substantive standards, but also its information structure - the institutional mechanisms designed to generate the information necessary for evaluation of how FISA is being implemented. This Article argues that maintaining a well-functioning - and publicly acceptable - framework for foreign intelligence gathering in the United States requires a careful focus on the framework's information structure. At the time of FISA's passage, Congress recognized that fact. As the foreign intelligence surveillance framework has shifted and expanded over nearly three decades, however, Congress's attention to FISA's information structure has been haphazard and episodic. This Article presents specific reforms to FISA's information structure that Congress should consider as the sunset date approaches.


Two competing models exist for the formation of the Pennsylvania salient, a widely studied area of pronounced curvature in the Appalachian mountain belt. The viability of these models can be tested by compiling and analyzing the patterns of structures within the general hinge zone of the Pennsylvania salient. One end-member model suggests a NW-directed maximum shortening direction and no rotation through time in the culmination. An alternative model requires a two-phase development of the culmination involving NNW-directed maximum shortening overprinted by WNW-directed maximum shortening. Structural analysis at 22 locations throughout the Valley and Ridge and southern Appalachian Plateau Provinces of Pennsylvania are used to constrain orientations of the maximum shortening direction and establish whether these orientations have rotated during progressive deformation in the Pennsylvania salient's hinge. Outcrops of Paleozoic sedimentary rocks contain several orders of folds, conjugate faults, steeply dipping strike-slip faults, joints, conjugate en echelon gash vein arrays, spaced cleavage, and grain-scale finite strain indicators. This suite of structures records a complex deformation history similar to the Bear Valley sequence of progressive deformation. The available structural data from the Juniata culmination do not show a consistent temporal rotation of shortening directions and generally indicate uniform, parallel shortening directions consistent with the single-phase model for development of the Pennsylvania salient.


ABSTRACT There is broad agreement that precarious work is a growing problem, and that it is highly prevalent among young employees. The financial crisis in 2008 has reinforced the need for knowledge about how precarious work affects young employees. This paper explores how the concept of precarious work may apply differentially to different groups of young people at work and whether this challenges the term 'transition', which until now has been one of the core elements within contemporary youth research. We examine discursive representations of precarious work, vulnerability and risks among young Danish employees aged 18–24 in the healthcare sector, the metal industry and retail trade captured in 46 interviews involving 74 participants. Results are discussed taking into consideration the Nordic welfare model with an active labour marked policy. We conclude that precarious work is not, in fact, simply a characteristic of young employees' work as such, but rather it is related to their position in the labour market and the type of jobs in which they are employed. While some are in transition, others are at risk of being trapped in precarious and risky working conditions.


Background Children and young people (CYP) with learning disability (LD) have more hospital admissions and greater lengths of hospital stay than children without disabilities. Yet, few researchers have sought to understand the hospital experience from the perspective of these patients, which means we have little evidence of how to improve hospital services in order to meet their needs. Limited research has been conducted with parents of CYP with LD to ascertain what it is like for them and their child to recieve hospital services, which largely reveals parental concerns about staff members lack of confidence and knowledge to care for their child with LD. Aims Our study sought to understand the hospital related needs and experiences of CYP with LD, their families and hospital staff. Reported here is data collected through observation, interaction and communication with CYP. Methods An ethnographic approach was used to observe, in detail, the everyday life of 9 CYP with LD and their families during one or more episodes of hospitalisation, over a 12 month period. The use of arts based methods facilitated 4 of these CYP to share what was important to them. 135 staff consented to be observed during this time frame. Interviews with 27 staff, not reported here, were also conducted. Data were analysed using the Framework Approach. Results Data revealed that despite sharing a label of LD, this population of patients are not all the same and can want different things from hospital services. The key to getting it right is ensuring that their non-medical needs are identified, understood and prioritised by hospital staff and the "little things" that are extremely important to these patients are not overlooked. Their need for routine, familiarity and sensory and play facilities was evident. Without their care and treatment being individualised to meet their very specific needs, CYP with LD can experience unnecessary emotional distress and physical harm.


How gasoline consumption responds to changes in its own price is of interest to many different groups. States fund a large portion of their road construction and maintenance by a direct tax on gasoline. The federal government also receives revenue by directly taxing gasoline. Automobile manufacturers are interested in how consumers' demand for fuel efficiency changes with changes in the price of gasoline. For these reasons, and more, it is important to understand how gasoline consumption will respond to changes in price. Other researchers have already attempted to measure gasoline demand at the national level. However, very little work has been done at a state level. This thesis attempts to apply a model similar to the previously developed national models at a state level. The state examined here is Montana. This state is of particular interest because it differs from the national average in several key characteristics, including more vehicles per capita, less fuel efficient vehicles, and few alternatives to driving such as public transportation. The model employed simultaneously estimates the demands for vehicle miles traveled and fuel efficiency. By estimating the demands for both of these variables, it is possible to indirectly determine the demand for gasoline. When estimated, it appears that Montana's consumption of gasoline is less responsive to changes in gasoline prices, and more responsive to income changes, than the nation as a whole. The estimated model is used to project future gasoline consumption. The projections were developed using potential future levels of income, population, and gasoline prices. These projections indicate that it would require gasoline prices rising considerably before per capita consumption would decline.


This study concerns the Quantitative Phase Analysis (QPA) of historical bricks coming from the complex of the Great Palace of the Byzantine Emperors in Istanbul. The studied samples are characterised by different chemical compositions (low and high calcium content), variable firing temperatures and different amounts of soluble salts as damage products. In the low-Ca samples, the decrease of the phyllosilicate content (from 23.4 to 6.9 wt%) is associated to the increase of the amorphous fraction (from 24 to 48%). This clear negative correlation between the phyllosilicate content and the amorphous fraction indicates that in low-Ca systems vitrification processes are overwhelming with respect to nucleation and recrystallisation processes. By contrast, high-Ca samples present newly formed Ca(Mg) silicates (diopside from 5.7 to 27.2%; anorthite from 1.4 to 8.7%) and aluminium silicates (gehlenite only in two samples, 6.2 and 7.7%) associated to the decrease of quartz (from 27.7 to 11.5%), phyllosilicate (from 6.5% until complete break down) and amorphous (from 30 to 14%) phase fractions. These findings support the role played by the CaO(MgO) content deriving from carbonates decomposition which reacts with Al2O3 and SiO2 oxides from dehydroxylated clay minerals and quartz grains. The above results have been obtained by X-ray powder diffraction data using the combined Rietveld refinement - internal standard method in order to estimate both the crystalline and the amorphous phase fractions. In addition, the coexistence of two distinct plagioclases in high-Ca samples was modelled as follows: a primary albite, which tends to incorporate Ca during the firing process as demonstrated by the increasing of gamma crystallographic angle, and a newly formed anorthite. Finally, by difference between the X-ray fluorescence data and the chemical compositions inferred by QPA, it proved possible to roughly estimate the residual chemical composition attributable to the amorphous fraction. On the basis of our data, we believe that Rietveld refinement combined with the internal standard method represent a powerful tool to better characterise complex polycrystalline and amorphous mixture as in the case of historical bricks


In this paper, we provide specific examples of the educational promises and problems that arise as multiliteracies pedagogical initiatives encounter conventional institutional beliefs and practices in mainstream schooling. This paper documents and characterizes the ways in which two specific digital learning initiatives were played out in two distinctive traditional schooling contexts, as experienced by two different student groups: one comprising an elite mainstream and the other an excluded minority. By learning from the instructive complications that arose out of attempts by innovative and well-meaning educators to provide students with more relevant learning experiences than currently exist in mainstream schooling, this paper contributes fresh perspectives and more nuanced understandings of how diverse learners and their teachers negotiate the opportunities and challenges of the New London Group's vision of a multiliteracies approach to literacy and learning. We conclude by arguing that, where multiliteracies are understood as "garnish" to the "pedagogical roast" of traditional code-based and print-based academic literacies, they will continue to work on the sidelines of mainstream schooling and be seen only as either useful extensions or helpful interventions for high-performing and at-risk students respectively.


Silver orthophosphate nanoparticles have been synthesised by precipitation of AgNO3 and H3PO4 in presence of oleylamine and other solvents like toluene, and ethanol at room temperature. Particle sizes of silver orthophosphate nanocrystals can be controlled by adjusting the amount of water. The products were characterised by XRD, UV–Vis, FESEM and EDX. The characterisation results showed that the crystal sizes of products were 5–20 nm depending on the content of water. UV–Vis result revealed a strong light absorbance in the visible light region at 465–470 nm. Photocatalytic activities of titania and silver orthophosphate nanocrystals were tested in photocatalytic degradation of Methylene Blue (MB) in liquid phase under visible light irradiation. Samples showed very high photocatalytic activity in the degradation of Methylene Blue. After 2h of reaction, the conversion reached the value of 97%.


One of the more frustrating aspects of buying a new digital video camera for consumers is trying to discover not only how it works, but how to shoot good movies with it right away. For most of us, we just want to turn on the camera and go, without spending too much time sorting through dense jargon and video editing software manuals. Here to guide the troubled newcomer to the exciting world of digital video is The Little Digital Video Book, 2e. This friendly, approachable guide will teach users the basics of shooting, organizing, and editing their own footage, with short examples so they can practice the techniques as they read through the book. This revised edition of the bestselling book on digital video is now in full color and completely updated for the modern beginning videographer. Users get a thorough grounding in the basics of digital video, but without all the jargon. Michael Rubin explains in under 200 pages all users need to know to get great shots, add sound, organize the footage, and use basic editing techniques. They will learn how to start and actually finish that video project they had in mind--in less than a day.


This paper undertakes to examine and criticize one or two analytical categories which have acquired currency among historians and social scientists working within a paradigm that derives, broadly speaking, from Marx. Specifically. I shall be concerned with questions of consciousness, agency, and determination: with the extent to which a "popular" culture can be distinguished from a "dominant" one; with the kinds of intercourse that may or may not occur between the two; and with the more general interplay between cultural processes and political and economic ones, out of which, it will be argued, emerge such quotidian facts as the price of bread. Still more specifically, I wish to consider the pertinence of the notions of "hegemony" and "the moral economy of the poor," as elaborated in the work of Antonio Gramsci and Edward Thompson, respectively, in investigating these matters.


There are two cultural narratives often purported within the American sports cultures of basketball and football. First, those participating within these sports are African American athletes from poor communities lacking educational and economic opportunities. Second, the meritocratic myth perpetuating American society feeds the notion no matter where an individual is from their talent will elevate them to the next level. There have already been a few studies who have challenged these myths. This study seeks to continue the conversation by collecting community data on 7,670 high school football recruits for the years 2000 to 2016. This study seeks to provide a broad overview of the interscholastic football landscape as well as determine production levels of schools. This study finds that while players are recruited from a diverse range of communities and school types, as a school becomes more productive they tend to be located within wealthier urban communities, have a diverse student body, and have a higher likelihood of being a private school.


The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of what contextual factors influence the service bundling process in an organizational setting. Although previous literature contains insights into the mechanisms underlying bundling and the artefacts for performing the bundling task itself, the body of knowledge seems to lack a comprehensive framework for analysing the actual scenario in which the bundling process is performed. This is required as the scenario will influence the bundling method and the IT support. We address this need by designing a morphological box for analysing bundling scenarios in different organizational settings. The factors featured in the box are systematised into a set of four categories of bundling layers which we identify from reviewing literature. The two core layers in the framework are the service bundling on a type level and on an instance level (i.e. configuration). To demonstrate the applicability and utility of the proposed morphological box, we apply it to assess the underlying differences and commonalities of two different bundling scenarios from the B2B and G2C sectors which stress the differences between bundling on a type and instance level. In addition, we identify several prospects for future research that can benefit from the proposed morphological box.


Most existing corpus-based analyses focusing on the contrasts between source texts and translations are either purely lexical or are constrained by sentence boundaries (e.g. Johansson and Hofland 2000, Schmied and Fink 2000, Frankenberg-Garcia 2005, Johansson 2007, Perez Blanco 2009 and Saldanha 2011). Probably the main reason underlying this limitation is the fact that, in parallel corpora, texts are usually segmented at the level of the sentence due to the relative ease with which sentence boundaries can be identified automatically. The alignment of source texts and translations is then usually carried out such that whenever there is not a one-to-one correspondence between source-text and translation segments, they are aligned either on a one-to-many or on a many-to-one basis, blurring out the details of what happens when source-text sentence boundaries are changed in translation. The aim of the present exploratory study is to take a closer look at sentences that translators split apart and join together. Using COMPARA, a parallel, bidirectional corpus of Portuguese and English fiction of 3 million words whose alignment was manually post-edited so as to differentiate between one-to-one, one-to-many, one-to-part and one-to-zero alignment, it was possible to analyse from a quantitative perspective over 90 thousand source-text sentences and their corresponding text in translation. The idea was to find out more about the extent to which sentences are split apart and joined together, whether sentence splitting is more common than sentence joining, and whether translation direction can affect this. A closer look was also taken at a sample of over one thousand segments involving sentence joining and splitting, so as to find out more about how translators in both language directions go about splitting and joining sentences. From a theoretical perspective, the analysis supports the ideas of explicitation and normalization in both Portuguese to English and English to Portuguese translation. From a practical perspective, there are implications for translator education and the development of CAT tools. References Frankenberg-Garcia, A. (2005) 'A corpus-based study of loan words in original and translated texts'. In P. Danielsson & M. Wagenmakers (eds.) Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics 2005 conference, Birmingham, UK, 14-17 July. Available online at http://www.corpus.bham.ac.uk/ pclc/index.shtml. Johansson, S. 2007. Seeing through Multilingual Corpora: On the use of corpora in contrastive studies. Amsterdam & Philadelphia. John Benjamins. Johansson, S. and Hofland, K. 2000. "The English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus: current work and new directions". In In P. Botley, T. McEnery and A. Wilson (Eds.), 134-147. Perez Blanco, M. (2009) 'Translating stance adverbials from English into Spanish: a corpus- based study'. International Journal of Translation, 21, 41-55. Saldanha, G. 2011. "Translator style. Methodological considerations". The Translator, 17(1), 25-50. Schmied, J. and Fink, B. 2000. "Corpus-based contrastive lexicology: the case of with and its German equivalents". In P. Botley, T. McEnery and A. Wilson (Eds.), 157-176.


In the semi-analytical work presented here the feedback from supermassive
black holes on galaxy clusters is investigated. In particular we aim at providing
simple diagnostics tools to constrain the characteristic velocities
and spatial scales of the hot Intra Cluster Medium (ICM) motions. In
the so-called "cold core'' clusters these motions are believed to be
driven by the activity of a central black hole. The methods
developed here, together with present-day and future observations, are designed to help to solve the puzzle of cooling flow clusters (see section $1.3$)
and understand better the AGN/gas interaction in smaller systems (down
to individual galaxies).\\

Clusters of galaxies are the largest gravitationally bound systems in
the Universe: they are composed of hundreds to thousands of galaxies,
moving in a deep potential well set by the dominating dark matter. The
whole volume of clusters is filled with hot (temperature $\sim
10^7-10^8$~K) and rarefied (electron density $10^{-4}-10^{-1} {\rm
cm^{-3}}$) gas. In such a high-temperature regime even heavy elements
(e.g. silicon, sulfur, iron etc.) are highly ionized up to [H]- or
[He]-like ions and they emit in bright lines with energies from $\sim
0.7$ to $\sim 8$ keV. Using X-ray observations one can reliable
measure all the major gas properties: the temperature, density and abundance
of heavy elements.\\

A significant fraction of clusters (called "cool core'' clusters)
show distinct signatures in the central region: the gas temperature
drops inward, while the gas density increases. The central gas
radiative cooling time in such clusters is much shorter than the age
of the cluster and without any external source of energy the gas would cool
well below X-ray temperatures. However observations suggest that the
gas temperature drops only to 1-2 keV. One plausible explanation of
this problem is that the activity of a central supermassive black hole
deposits large amounts of mechanical energy into the cluster gas and that this
balances the gas radiative losses. A direct implication of this
hypothesis is that the hot gas is not at rest, but it is continuously stirred
by the AGN activity.\\

The same class of cool core clusters is characterized by a centrally
peaked distribution of the heavy elements abundance (usually measured
using the He-like iron 6.7 keV line). The peaked abundance profiles are
likely associated with the metals ejection by the stars of very massive
elliptical galaxies, that are always present at the centers of these clusters.
However the observed abundance distributions are significantly broader
than the central galaxy light profiles, suggesting that some gas motions
are spreading the metals ejected from the galaxy. We treat this
process in a diffusion approximation to derive, from the X-ray
observations, constraints on the characteristic velocities and
spatial scales of the gas motions for a sample of cool core clusters and
groups (Chapters $2$ and $3$). The parameters derived from a simple
semi-analytic model are then compared with the results of numerical
simulations of the AGN/gas interaction in the cluster core (Chapter $4$).\\
In Chapter $5$ we discuss the impact of the gas motions on the width of
the strongest X-ray emission lines. Since the characteristic thermal
velocities of heavy ions (e.g. iron) are much smaller than the sound speed
of the gas, the width of the lines sensitively depends on the presence
of gas motions. We show that both the absolute value of the linewidth
and its dependence on the projected distance from the cluster center
provide valuable diagnostics of the gas motions. Such measurements
will soon become possible with the launch of X-ray micro-calorimeters
in space.\\

This work has been done in collaboration with E.Churazov, R.Sunyaev,
H.B\"ohringer, M.Br\"uggen, W.Forman and E.Roediger.


Since the Renaissance, books and drawings have been a primary means of communication among architects and their colleagues and clients. In this volume, 12 historians explore the use of books by architects in America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a period when the profession of architecture was first emerging in the United States. As architects separated themselves from amateur and gentlemen designers on the one hand and masons and carpenters on the other, members of the profession were distinguished by their ability to draw and their possession of a common body of learning gleaned from printed sources. Clients and patrons expected architects to derive their designs from precedents communicated in books. These publications reproduced the work of European masters and, eventually, Anglo-American examples as well. The essays in the volume range from studies of architectural publications available in the colonies, to the appearance of American architectural incunabula, to the revolution in architectural publishing that occurred in the 1830s and 1840s. In addition to the editors, contributors include Sarah Allaback, Bennie Brown, Jeffrey A. Cohen, Abbott Lowell Cummings, Robert F. Dalzell, Jr., Michael J. Lewis, Martha J. McNamara, Damie Stillman, Richard Guy Wilson and Charles B. Wood III.


Abstract The spatial mismatch hypothesis postulates that employment deconcentration within U.S. metropolitan areas goes some way toward explaining higher unemployment and lower wages among ethnic minority groups, since these groups are more likely to reside in central-city areas. However, little consensus has emerged on the importance of spatial mismatch in explaining disadvantage in the labor market. This article argues that conflicting evidence is the result of the variety of methods that have been used to test the spatial mismatch hypothesis. Moreover, it draws attention to a number of hitherto uncovered flaws in some of these methods that introduce systematic biases against finding evidence in support of the hypothesis. In light of these flaws, favored methods for future research are highlighted. Drawing on evidence from British conurbations that display similar spatial inequalities to U.S. metropolitan areas despite much smaller ethnic minority populations, the article contends that race does not lie at the heart of the spatial mismatch problem. Three areas in which the spatial mismatch hypothesis should be reconceptualized are identified: first, its emphasis should be on spatial, not racial, inequalities; second, it needs to differentiate between residential immobility and residential segregation, which are quite different; and third, it needs to recognize that the extent and the effect of spatial mismatch are distinct and should be measured separately.


Objectives: To directly compare the effects of agility exergaming (EXE) and stationary cycling (CYC) exercise training on Parkinson's disease (PD) patients' mobility and clinical symptoms. Design: Randomized clinical trial. Setting: Outpatient physiotherapy clinic in a hospital. Participants: Seventy-four stage 2–3, nondemented PD patients were included in this study. Intervention: The groups were as follows: EXE (n = 25), CYC (n = 25), and a wait-listed control group (CON; n = 24). The EXE and CYC groups exercised 5×/week for 5 weeks, matched at 80% of the age-predicted maximal heart rate. Main Outcomes: The primary outcome was the Movement Disorders Society Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS-II) score. Secondary outcomes were Parkinson's Disease Quastionnaire-39 (PDQ-39), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Schwab and England Activities of Daily Living (SE-ADL) scale, Euro-Quality of Life-5 Dimensions (EQ-5D) questionnaire, the Berg Balance Scale (BBS), the Balance Evaluation Systems Test (BESTest), the Tinetti Assessment Tool (TAT), the Dynamic Gait Index, the 6-min walk test (6MWT), and standing posturography. Results: After treatment, UPDRS-II scores improved (mean change: EXE, –4.5 points; CYC, –3.2 points). The results for the other outcomes (EXE and CYC, respectively) were: PDQ, 13 and 17%; BDI, –2.5 and –2.1 points; 6MWT, 129.6 and 141.6 m; and EQ-5D, 12 and 9% (all p < 0.05, but there was no difference between groups). EXE vs. CYC resulted in improved SE-ADL (8.4 and 4.0 points, effect size [ES]: 0.12), BBS (8.8 and 4.2 points, ES: 0.44), and 2 measures of posturography (ES: 0.11 and 0.21) (p < 0.05). BESTtest, TAT, the Dynamic Gait Index, and 4 out of 6 posturography measures did not change (p > 0.05). Conclusion: Two highly different exercise programs resulted in similar improvement of most motor and clinical symptoms in PD patients.


Background: StaphylococcuS. aureus is the most important agent, which is known to cause a wide range of diseases in both human and animals. Extended use and misuse of antibiotics in agriculture, stock farming and in the treatment of human diseases, has contributed to the rapid increase of the number of bacteria that are resistant to antimicrobial agents. Objective: To determine the occurrence of S. aureus in foods of animal origin and their reactions to commonly used antibiotic. Design: A descriptive, cross-sectional, quantitative study. Setting: Central Business District of Nairobi (CBDN) and its environment. Subject: Samples of meat (n=280) and dairy products (n=140) were randomly purchased from various butcheries and supermarkets. Additional 251 samples of various pork products were also collected randomly from a nearby pig processing plant for comparison purposes. Baird-Parker agar with 2% egg yolk tellurite emulsion was used as growth medium for isolation of S. aureus . The typical culture confirmed positive of S. aureus were tested for antibiotic susceptibility to eight commonly used antibiotics using the disc diffusion method. Result: Occurrence of S. aureus was 36.2% (152/420) and 39.4% (99/251) from the food outlets and meat processing factory respectively. Proportions of contamination from the two sources were not significantly different (p=0.400). Significantly, more contamination was observed in meat products (40.7%) compared to dairy products (25.0%) (p=0.001). Penicilin G (246; 99.6%) was the most resisted antibiotic followed by Ampicillin (230; 93.1). Conclusion: The results of this study confirms that multi antibiotics resistant S. aureus strains are present not only in hospital setups, but also widespread in foods of animal origin.


Despite abundant literature on human behaviour in the face of danger, much remains to be discovered. Some descriptive models of behaviour in the face of danger are reviewed in order to identify areas where documentation is lacking. It is argued that little is known about recognition and assessment of danger and yet, these are important aspects of cognitive processes. Speculative arguments about hazard assessment are reviewed and tested against the results of previous studies. Once hypotheses are formulated, the reason for retaining the reportory grid as the main research instrument are outlined, and the choice of data analysis techniques is described. Whilst all samples used repertory grids, the rating scales were different between samples; therefore, an analysis is performed of the way in which rating scales were used in the various samples and of some reasons why the scales were used differently. Then, individual grids are looked into and compared between respondents within each sample; consensus grids are also discussed. the major results from all samples are then contrasted and compared. It was hypothesized that hazard assessment would encompass three main dimensions, i.e. 'controllability', 'severity of consequences' and 'likelihood of occurrence', which would emerge in that order. the results suggest that these dimensions are but facets of two broader dimensions labelled 'scope of human intervention' and 'dangerousness'. It seems that these two dimensions encompass a number of more specific dimensions some of which can be further fragmented. Thus, hazard assessment appears to be a more complex process about which much remains to be discovered. Some of the ways in which further discovery might proceed are discussed.


The Internet of Things (IoT) is a key component for the next disruptive technologies. However, IoT merges together several diverse software layers: embedded, enterprise, and cloud programs interact with each other. In addition, security and privacy vulnerabilities of IoT software might be particularly dangerous due to the pervasiveness and physical nature of these systems. During the last decades, static analysis, and in particular taint analysis, has been widely applied to detect software vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, these analyses assume that software is entirely written in a single programming language, and they are not immediately suitable to detect IoT vulnerabilities where many different software components, written in different programming languages, interact. This paper discusses how to leverage existing static taint analyses to a cross-programming language scenario.


When the risks are high and the outcomes uncertain, how can investors in start-up enterprises increase the odds of success? Many rely heavily on their management teams to master the competitive environment and motivate workers—but how best to select the managers? Researchers in clinical psychology have developed powerful tools to assess executives' ability to function in stressful situations. By measuring the depth and consistency of an individual's coping style, psychologists can help investors and board members identify those candidates most likely to succeed in leading their ventures.


This paper proposes a new fault tolerant cache organization capable of dynamically mapping the in-use defective locations in a processor cache to an auxiliary parallel memory, creating a defect-free view of the cache for the processor. While voltage scaling has a super-linear effect on reducing power, it exponentially increases the defect rate in memory. The ability of the proposed cache organization to tolerate a large number of defects makes it a perfect candidate for voltage-scalable architectures, especially in smaller geometries where manufacturing induced process variation (MIPV) is expected to rapidly increase. The introduced fault tolerant architecture consumes little energy and area overhead, but enables the system to operate correctly and boosts the system performance close to a defect-free system. Power savings of over 40% is reported on standard benchmarks while the performance degradation is maintained below 1%.


As medical technology has advanced, outcomes for high-risk newborns have greatly improved. With advanced technology such as assisted ventilation, it is now possible to keep some terminal, severely ill, or extremely premature infants alive for long periods of time. The result of such treatment is that dying may be prolonged or that the infant will survive with profound neurologic or other debilitating problems.1 The medical treatment of infants should be based on what is in their best interest. However, because the infant's "best interest" is not always clear, parents and health care givers are often faced with difficult treatment decisions when faced with the situation of a severely ill, extremely premature, or terminally ill infant.
 The Treatment Dilemma
 If intensive treatment uniformly resulted in saving infants at risk, it would be the obvious choice for all severely ill infants. This outcome, of course, does not always occur. If intensive treatment is not provided to very ill infants, most of them will die, but some may survive with significant neurodevelopmental disability, in part because specific treatments were withheld. The following dilemma therefore exists: intensive treatment of all severely ill infants sometimes results in prolongation of dying or occasionally iatrogenic illness; nonintensive treatment results in increased mortality and unnecessary morbidity. The overall outcomes of either approach are disappointing.
 Strategy for Care
 A reasonably acceptable approach to this dilemma is an individualized prognostic strategy.2,3 In this setting, care is provided for the individual infant at the appropriate level based on the expected outcome at the time care is initiated.


The total power generation of a wind farm is significantly affected by the adverse wake generation of upstream wind turbines on the aerodynamic performance of the downstream wind turbines. This paper aims to provide a novel hybrid wake control strategy to improve the power generation of horizontal-axis wind turbines in a wind-farm layout. A numerical simulation based on the actuator line method with large eddy simulation (ALM-LES) is performed to investigate the airflow around three-dimensional NREL 5MW turbines in a three-by-one layout. The yaw angle and tilt angle of the wind turbines are in the range of (-30 < yaw < 30) and ( 0 < titl < 35), respectively. Firstly, the combined effects of yaw-control and tilt-control methods on the velocity profile, vorticity generation and turbulent kinetic energy in the wake region of the multiscale wind farm are investigated. Afterwards, the total power generation of the wind farm is compared with previous wake control methods of wind turbines. It was observed that the proposed hybrid wake control method could improve the total power generation by 9.94% compared to the previous wind turbine wake control techniques. The hybrid control strategy can deviate the wake much better than typical single-control methods. An optimization analysis is also provided to find the most appropriate yaw angles and tilt angles of the wind turbines subject to varying wind speeds.


Especially on wet or contaminated ground, there is a risk of traction loss for mobile working machines. When attempting to increase driving safety under unfavorable surface conditions, HighEfficiency Traction Control (HET) is gaining in importance. On compact vehicles, this hydrostatic drive solution provides traction on demand at any time, regardless of the ground surface, ensuring an optimal grip and maximum energy efficiency. HET is designed using standard drive components and requires no electronics to control the slip-activated all-wheel drive. A plug-and-play system for individual wheel drives makes it possible to activate all-wheel drive in certain conditions to reduce risk in hazardous driving situations. In contrast, during normal operation, HET drives a single axle to help reduce fuel consumption. Tobias Wille Sales and Industry Sector Management On-Highway and Commercial Vehicles Heinz-Gerhard Essig Sales and Industry Sector Management On-Highway and Commercial Vehicles 32 High-Efficiency Traction Control for Compact Vehicles Bosch Rexroth AG One of the most common causes of critical driving situations is the loss of traction on one or both wheels caused by surface water, ice or contaminated ground. A technical solution to this problem is a permanent or electronically controlled all-wheel drive system. However, this entails considerable extra manufacturing costs and, in the case of permanent all-wheel drive, also leads to substantially higher levels of fuel consumption. The result is a higher Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The users of compact vehicles with hydrostatic single wheel drive systems such as municipal vehicles, farm loaders and dumpers (Fig. 1) are in many cases extremely sensitive to the purchasing price and operating costs. Fuel consumption contributes greatly to the running costs of such equipment. From the manufacturer's perspective, the High-Efficiency Traction Control (HET) system makes it possible to design and produce a hydrostatic four-wheel drive system with low effort. It is a purely hydraulic system with a simple, compact design that requires no control electronics and is based on proven standard components from the Rexroth mobile hydraulics range. Back pressure on hydraulic motors destroys energy A common drive concept for compact vehicles is the installation of two radial piston motors in series on either side of the vehicle. When the wheel motors are connected in this way, the hydraulic oil flows through one after the other. The first motor is under load pressure or the maximum pump pressure defined by pressure cut-off. In normal driving operation, the distribution of the pressure drop across motors connected in series is more or less balanced. As soon as a wheel transmit torque, there exist slip, because the rubber of the tires is always being deformed to some extent under normal driving conditions. Even by itself, this relatively low level of slip causes a higher level of oil flow through the driving radial piston motors. When driving on hilly ground or on difficult terrain, torque increases and results in further increases in oil flow. Larger amounts of oil are trapped in the hydraulics between the driving and following radial piston motors, which leads to a significant loss of efficiency in the overall drive system. The result is higher fuel consumption when compared to normal driving situations. Fig. 1: Mini dumper, farm loader and sweeper shown in glass look High-Efficiency Traction Control for Compact Vehicles 33 Bosch Rexroth AG On demand all-wheel drive saves energy It is precisely this loss of efficiency that High-Efficiency Traction Control (HET) eliminates. A specially developed valve block for slip-activated all-wheel drive systems prevents the "surplus" of hydraulic oil that results from the natural level of slip from becoming hydraulically trapped. Instead, the valve block channels the flow of oil to the low-pressure side of the circuit to save energy. Since the HET valve block is not connected to the main oil flow, losses are reduced even further. For the patented all-wheel drive activation system, the HET control block with integrated flow control valves creates a bypass with a constant flow from the connection between the first and second wheel motor to the low-pressure side of the pump. The amount of flow regulated by the control valve is determined by the level of slip that would occur with maximum possible torque. Since the oil flow is channeled through the bypass, the second wheel motor in the series is no longer able to build up torque. This means that the first wheel motor in the circuit transfers almost the entire torque to the axle and thus the largest possible tractive force. There is only a very small drop in pressure at the next wheel motor in the series. In normal conditions, the drive ratio between the two axles is around 90:10. This boosts efficiency in comparison to the usual 50:50 distribution. In the first approximation, HET reduces loss to one motor. Additionally, the system solution lowers the high pressure of a series circuit at the output of the first connected motor to a level similar to the supply pressure. If the first wheel comes into contact with a smooth surface and rotates slightly faster, the flow rate through the first motor increases without proportional movement of the vehicle. The flow through the bypass block can no longer prevent the build-up of pressure and thus torque on the next wheel motor. At this point, the second wheel, which is still gripping the ground, takes over the drive. When the first wheel applies torque to the surface below again, HET resets the pressure for the second wheel back to a level close to supply pressure. The entire control mechanism is hydraulic. The operator does not need to take any action because HET automatically improves driver safety. Fig. 2: How HET works: animation stills 34 High-Efficiency Traction Control for Compact Vehicles Bosch Rexroth AG A less complex and more compact system design HET operates without sensors and control electronics. It consists of a newly developed valve block that is available in both mediumand high-pressure versions, a broad range of A4VG and A10VG variable axial piston pumps and MCR radial piston motors with fixed or shiftable displacement. The solution thus offers a high degree of flexibility for use in a variety of applications, for example municipal vehicles, dumpers and farm loaders. As a result, a large number of requirements are met in terms of driving speed and installation space. The HET control block: integration of all functions The newly developed, compact HET control block for closed circuits (Fig. 3) integrates all functions such as a secondary supply and pressure protection. This design simplifies the pipework of the HET control block, which is not in the main oil flow, and reduces system costs. The integrated flushing valve creates a high level of flexibility as regards selection of the travel pump, and an individually adjustable flushing flow makes it possible to manage the hydraulic oil temperature for a specific type of vehicle. The two versions of the control block cover the pressure ranges of 350 and 420 bar. Rexroth makes all the settings in line with the customer's specification ex works. HET is thus truly a plug-and-play solution that entails minimum effort on the part of the OEM. Transmission pump: proven variety The comprehensive range of reversible A4VG and A10VG axial piston variable pumps covers all vehicle concepts. Fig. 3: HET control block Fig. 4: Variable axial piston pumps A4VG and A10VG High-Efficiency Traction Control for Compact Vehicles 35 Bosch Rexroth AG All the components for the closed circuit are integrated in both series: a boost pump acts as a feed pump and control pressure supply, combined make up and highpressure relief valves, and a boost pressure relief valve. All pumps can be optimized for specific applications thanks to a large number of individual control devices, while through drive options enable additional pumps to be fitted with up to the same nominal size. The A10VG covers the 300 bar nominal pressure range with a maximum pressure of 350 bar, while the A4VG highpressure pump works at a nominal pressure of 400 bar and a maximum pressure of 450 bar. Compact motors for individual wheel drive The MCR radial piston motors (Fig. 5) are especially suitable for compact vehicle concepts. Operating with fixed or shiftable displacement, they provide smooth running motion at low speeds as well as high speeds for fast transfer travel. Whatever mode they are in, they generate a low level of noise. The design also allows high radial forces to the output shaft. An optional speed sensor, parking brake and dynamic operating brake create a high level of variance for the development of tailored concepts. Summary High-Efficiency Traction Control is a plug-and-play solution for all-wheel drive activation on compact work vehicles with hydrostatic single wheel drive without the need for electronics or sensors. The benefits for customers using a HET system can be reduced to the following important points: ▶ HET improves safety on off-road terrain and on icy or contaminated ground surfaces. ▶ Thanks to on demand activation of the all-wheel drive, HET enables users to achieve considerable fuel savings. ▶ The system design is kept simple with a HET control block connected to proven pumps and motors from the standard product range. This ensures reduced system costs as well as a high degree of flexibility for individual vehicle concepts. Fig. 5: Radial piston motors MCR: dynamic drum brake – unbraked – parking brake


Accurate estimation of glottal closure instants (GCIs) in voiced speech is important for speech analysis applications which benefit from glottal-synchronous processing. Electroglottograph (EGG) recordings give a measure of the electrical conductance of the glottis, providing a signal which is proportional to its contact area. EGG signals contain little noise or distortion, providing a good reference from which GCIs can be extracted to evaluate GCI estimation from speech recordings. Many approaches impose a threshold on the differentiated EGG signal which provide accurate results during voiced speech but are prone to errors at the onset and end of voicing; modern algorithms use a similar approach across multiple dyadic scales using the stationary wavelet transform. This paper describes a new method for EGG-based GCI estimation named SIGMA, which is based upon the stationary wavelet transform, peak detection with a group delay function and Gaussian Mixture Modelling for discrimination between true and false GCI candidates. In most real-world environments, it is necessary to estimate GCIs from a speech signal recorded with a microphone placed at some distance from the talker. The presence of reverberation, noise and filtering by the vocal tract render GCI detection from real speech signals relatively difficult to achieve compared with the EGG, so EGG-based references have often been used to evaluate GCI detection from speech signals. Evaluation against 500 hand-labelled sentences has shown an accuracy of 99.35%, a 4.7% improvement over a popular existing method.


Abduction is inference to the best explanation. In the TACITUS project at SRI we have developed an approach to abductive inference, called "weighted abduction", that has resulted in a significant simplification of how the problem of interpreting texts is conceptualized. The interpretation of a text is the minimal explanation of why the text would be true. More precisely, to interpret a text, one must prove the logical form of the text from what is already mutually known, allowing for coercions, merging redundancies where possible, and making assumptions where necessary. It is shown how such "local pragmatics" problems as reference resolution, the interpretation of compound nominals, the resolution of syntactic ambiguity and metonymy, and schema recognition can be solved in this manner. Moreover, this approach of "interpretation as abduction" can be combined with the older view of "parsing as deduction" to produce an elegant and thorough integration of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, one that spans the range of linguistic phenomena from phonology to discourse structure. Finally, we discuss means for making the abduction process efficient, possibilities for extending the approach to other pragmatics phenomena, and the semantics of the weights and costs in the abduction scheme.


This study described and analyzed the perceptions of teachers who participated in a unique professional development experience. The research framework that guided the study included components of professional development, collaboration, authentic instruction, and teacher perceptions. The study population was initially 192 STARR Teachers. From that sample, 21 former Missouri STARR Teachers contributed a retrospective view of participation. The qualitative study was undertaken as a descriptive case study in the tradition of phenomenography. Data collection included surveys, interviews, and a previously written research brief. Data analysis was made through an iterative process of modifying the descriptive categories. Study findings revealed that these teachers were positively impacted by participation in this professional development experience. Impact continued beyond the time of participation. Teachers benefited both personally and professionally from the experience. Implications of this research were identified in the areas of professional development, teacher education and teacher leadership.


Two fundamental changes in attitude are required before efforts to develop sustainable agricultural systems will be successful. Firstly, the deeply held and often unexamined views we have of our relationship with the natural world, particularly the view of nature as a commodity, must be challenged. Secondly, we must question our continuing faith in a knowledge-based world view as the best way to solve problems that are a consequence of that view. The history of agricultural settlement in Western Australia is an example of the view of nature as a commodity that led to failed agricultural schemes at great social and environmental costs.
We need to change the way we view nature if we are going to correct the mistakes of the past and develop sustainable agricultural systems. As explained by A. R. Main (1999, 2003), sustainable systems require not only an understanding of how nature works and has evolved, but agriculture and nature conservation need to be integrated into a single management system. In response to global problems of land degradation, some ecologists are attempting to incorporate the functional attributes of native ecosystems in the development of alternative agriculture; not by attempting to understand the functional processes in detail, but by mimicking the vegetative structure of native ecosystems (e.g., Ewel et al. 1991; Jackson 1992). This approach may serve as a useful model for research and development of sustainable agriculture in Australia.


The discovery in 2004 by Mars exploration rover Opportunity of sedimentary rocks with centimeter-scale trough cross-bedding is one of the compelling lines of evidence for flowing water on the Martian surface. The rocks contain a significant evaporite component mixed with weathered mafic
silicates, suggesting that the aqueous fluid in contact with the sediments must have been of very high ionic strength because dissolution features are not observed. Recent thermodynamic modeling indicates that these brines could have had higher densities (by up to a factor of 1.3) and significantly higher viscosities (by up to a factor of 40) than pure water. Because fluid density and viscosity can significantly affect sediment transport mechanics, herein we analyze whether ripples could have been stable bed forms under flowing Martian brines. To this end, we compiled bed form stability diagrams with an emphasis on those studies that have considered high-viscosity fluids. For the case of viscous Martian brines, we find that ripples are stable under modest Shields numbers and low particle Reynolds numbers. These conditions translate into sediment sizes ranging from sand to gravel, and they are
substantially coarser than sediment sizes for equivalent ripple-forming flows in freshwater. It is likely that ripples might also form in silt sizes under viscous brines, but these conditions (i.e., particle Reynolds numbers <0.1) have not yet been explored in flume experiments, motivating future work. Using flow-resistance equations and assuming steady uniform flow, we calculate that Marian brines must have had flow depths ranging from 0.01 to 1 m
and flow velocities of 0.01 to 1 m/s, and been driven by gravity on slopes of 10^(-4) to 10^(-2) in order to generate the bed stresses necessary to produce
ripples. These conditions seem reasonable given the interdune environment that has been proposed for the Burns formation. In addition to the potential for ripples in much coarser sediments, ripples formed by viscous brines also might be larger in height and wavelength than their freshwater counterparts by as much as a factor of 12. Thus, large (>.10 cm heights) and fine-grained (<1 mm particle diameter) cross strata would be compelling physical
evidence for flowing brines in the Martian past, provided that independent evidence could be provided for a subaqueous (i.e., not eolian) origin of the
cross-stratification. Smaller centimeter-scale ripples can also be formed by brines due to flow-depth limitations or lower-viscosity fluids, and therefore
the physical sedimentological evidence in support of brines versus freshwater flows may be ambiguous in these cases.


ABSTRACT It is believed children stand to benefit from a greater male teacher presence in early childhood education (ECE) where, internationally, the vast majority of ECE teachers are female. This study (N = 180) examines the relationship between children's social adaptation and the educational practices of 53 ECE teachers, 23 (44%) of which were male. Third-party observers assessed practices using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) in the natural classroom setting. Parents evaluated social adaptation using the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation. Observational data reveal no intersex differences in educational practices. Multilevel model analyses show that children in ECE centers with male and female teachers exhibit less internalized behavior compared with those in centers with female teachers only. A relationship is observed between good classroom organization and instructional support, respectively, and improved children's social adaptation, regardless of teacher gender. The authors discuss the potential impact of the results on future educational interventions.


Prior research on marriage has tended to focus on cross-sectional differences between the married and unmarried, with little attention to selectivity, change over time, or the substantive implications of statistically different means. This paper addresses these issues and provides a perspective for thinking about the relative benefits of marriage. It examines how transitions into marriage and cohabitation are associated with change over time in multiple measures of well-being and social relationships. Change score methods are used to control for differences in unmeasured variables that may affect the link between union status and various individual and couple-level outcomes. The analysis shifts emphasis to trajectories as opposed to snapshots, and it draws attention to the variability in outcomes within and across union statuses. Results show no difference between the effects of moving into marriage compared to cohabitation on happiness, depression, contact with parents, or time spent with friends; they show some difference in health, self esteem, intergenerational relationships, and couple relationships. Nonetheless, when mean differences are statistically significant, they tend to be small and appear to dissipate over time. The authors conclude that similarities between marriage and cohabitation are more striking than differences.


Tuberculosis (TB) is a chronic specific granulomatous disease and a major cause of death in developing countries. The clinical presentation of TB lesions of the oral cavity varies widely and can manifest as ulcerations, diffuse inflammatory lesions, granulomas and fissures. Oral lesions generally appear secondary to primary TB infection elsewhere, although primary infection of the oral mucosa by Mycobacterium tuberculosis has also been described. We hereby report a case of primary TB of the gingiva manifesting as gingival enlargement. Diagnosis was based on histopathological examination, complete blood count, X-ray chest and immunological investigations with detection of antibodies against M. tuberculosis. Anti-tuberculous therapy was carried out for over 6 months and was followed by surgical excision of the residual enlargement under local anesthesia. After 1-year follow-up, there was no recurrence of the disease. This case report emphasizes the need for dentists to include TB in the differential diagnosis of various types of gingival enlargements.


It's time we got to know a little more about the Chinese. Did you know they don't eat soup, they drink it? That their surnames come before their first names? That their good sense is to be found not in their heads but in their hearts? Or that white is their colour of mourning? This guide to avoiding the numerous pitfalls of Chinese etiquette is both amusing and informative. The writer and journalist Kai Strittmatter lived and worked in China for ten years. This amusing, affectionate and perceptive book provides a fascinating guide to this lively, sociable and friendly people and their complex and often contradictory society. As the author says: 'Be prepared for everything when you come to Beijing. It really is unbelievable what can happen here'. The new material in this edition takes a critical look at the challenges posed by this, the next global superpower.


Essentials of Surgical Specialties, Third Edition provides students with exactly what they need to learn and retain the clinical foundations in surgical specialties. Organized by specialty, the book explains the basic skills needed in nine core rotations and prepares students for their clerkship. More than 200 illustrations demonstrate relevant anatomy and common surgical approaches. This edition provides updated information on treatment options, imaging modalities, operative techniques, laparoscopic and robotic surgery, surgical devices and products, and postoperative care. Multiple-choice questions have been expanded and rewritten to NMBE format. A multiple-choice question bank will be available online at thePoint.


Mobile devices allow constant access to the World Wide Web without time and location barriers and present new challenges for marketers and an array of research questions for marketing researchers. The topic of mobile advertising is of special interest for companies as it enables communication with customers in unprecedented ways. As mobile technologies are being increasingly adopted on a worldwide basis, international m-advertising becomes an issue of growing importance. This paper therefore presents first cross-cultural evidence of individuals' perceptions of mobile advertising. The analysis is based on a survey of business students in two respective markets, Japan and Austria. Findings of this study show that people are still skeptical about mobile advertising. However, there are slight differences in perceptions between Japan and Austria. Japanese respondents perceive madvertising as more entertaining and valuable. Despite the fact that they are more frequently exposed to mobile advertising messages, they also show a more positive attitude toward it. Implications for practitioners as well as for future research are suggested based on these findings.


Neuroinflammation and pro-inflammatory mediators play key roles in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer disease (AD). Studies have suggested that oestrogen has anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective activities. However, risks of tumour development, heart disease, stroke and blood clots associated with oestrogen replacement therapy limit its application in neurodegenerative disorders. This has switched interest to the use of alternatives such as the selective oestrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) and phytoestrogens which retain the neuroprotective effects of oestrogen with fewer side effects. Formononentin (FMN) is a phytoestrogen which showed significant anti-inflammatory activity through inhibition of nitric oxide (NO) released from lipopolysaccharide-stimulated mouse macrophage RAW cells. However, the ability of formononetin to produce anti-neuroinflammatory activityin LPS-activated microglia is unknown. In addition, the molecular mechanisms involved in the action of the compound in neuroinflammation is unknown. It is also not clear if the anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects of formononetin are mediated through estrogen receptors. This study has evaluated the effects of formononetin on neuroinflammation in BV2 microglia. Also the roles of ERβ activation in the anti-inflammatory activity of formononetin in the microglia was investigated.

BV2 microglia were activated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) with or without formononetin (2.5, 5 and 10μM), followed by measurement of TNFα, IL-6, nitrite and PGE2 levels in culture supernatants. Also, protein levels of iNOS, COX-2, total IkBα, phospho-IkBα, phospho-p65 subunit, phospho-IKKα, phospho-p38,phospho-JNK, phospho-ERK 1/2, phospho-MLK3, phospho-TAK1 and ERβ were detected with immunoblotting. A reporter gene assay was used to evaluate NF-kB and ERβ transcriptional activation in HEK293. Electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) and DNA binding assays were used to examine the effect of formononetin on DNA binding of NF-kB. HT22 neuronal cells were used to study the neuroprotective activity of formononetin. The role of estrogen receptor in the anti-inflammatory activity of formononetin was investigated with western blotting for ERαand ERβexpression in BV2 microglia The effect of formononetin on transcriptional activity of oestrogen-response element (ERE) was also investigated. Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) targeted at ERβ were used to silence ERβ geneand levels of TNFα, nitrite and PGE2 were detected in ERβ-silenced BV2 microglia, while immunofluorescence was used to detect NF-κB p65 subunit.

Results show that formononetin significantly suppressed TNFα, IL-6 and IL-1β without affecting viability of BV2 microglia cells. Furthermore, formononetin inhibited the production of nitrite and PGE2, and reduced protein levels of COX-2 and iNOS in LPS-activated microglia. In addition, formononetin prevented HTT22 neuronal toxicity produced by microglia-conditioned medium. Formononetin targeted NF-kB activity by inhibiting the phosphorylation of IKKα, IkBα and nuclear translocation of the p65 subunit. The compound also suppressed NF-kB/DNA binding activity in LPS stimulated BV2 microglia. Further results showed that formononetin inhibited p-38, JNK and ERK1/2 MAPKs activation by targeting upstream proteins TAK-1 and MLK3. The study revealed that BV2 microglia express ERβ, but not ERα. The study also demonstrated that formononetin increased transcriptional activity of ERE in HEK293 cells. Results further showed that this compound increased protein levels of ERβin BV2 microglia. RNA interference experiments revealed that NF-kB-mediated anti-inflammatory activity of formononetin was abolished following transfection of BV2 microglia with ERβ siRNA. Taken together, this study has demonstrated for the first time, that formononetin inhibits neuroinflammationin BV2 microglia, and neuroinflammation-mediated neurotoxicityin HT22 mouse hippocampal neurons by targeting upstream convergence proteins in both the NF-kB and MAPK signalling pathways. This study also established that the ability of the compound to interact with microglial ERβ possibly contributes to the anti-inflammatory action of formononetin.


Abstract. Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) are obligate piscivores and their nesting success depends on sufficient amounts of fish delivered to the nests during the breeding season. Nests are considered successful when pairs raise a minimum of one young to fledging or near-fledging age. Through web cameras and online broadcasts of Osprey nests, citizen scientists quantified daily number of fish deliveries, nest survival, and nest success. We received and analyzed curated data (one to seven seasons, 2014–2020) from citizen scientist groups representing 19 Osprey web cameras from four countries in North America and Europe. We compared the average and the coefficient of variation of the number of fish delivered per day within the early breeding season between the failed and successful nests using a Wilcoxon rank-sum test. We also analyzed the effects of the average and the coefficient of variation of the number of fish delivered per day on the number of days of nest survival and whether a nest was successful or not using generalized linear mixed models. Successful and failed nests had significant differences in the average number of fish delivered per day and the failed nests had a higher variation in the number of fish deliveries. Moreover, the variation and average number of fish delivered per day had strong associations with whether a nest would fail or succeed. The global effort and manner in which these data were collected are novel and can further our understanding of this charismatic species. The combination of citizen science and technology is a powerful modern tool that can provide insights and has the potential to advance raptor research worldwide.


We demonstrate that a single fiber Bragg grating (FBG)-based optical add-drop multiplexer can be used to improve the optical spectral efficiency in a mm-wave WDM-fiber wireless network. The technique employs wavelength interleaving in conjunction with optical single-sideband modulation, together with a single multiphase-shifted fiber Bragg grating. Wavelength optical add-drop features are also demonstrated using the grating, and our results show the performance of the novel grating in terms of channel isolation and add-drop functionality. We perform simulations to optimize placement of the phase shifts when an apodization profile is applied to the grating, in an attempt to minimize in-band and out-of-band transmission-amplitude ripples. Experiments are performed using cascade configurations both with the apodized gratings with optimal phase-shift positions and with the original unoptimized gratings. The experimental results demonstrate how these novel gratings can be used in fiber-radio networks incorporating multiple optical add-drop multiplexers.