Introduction Cells that simultaneously secrete and sense the same signaling molecule are ubiquitous. Bacteria sense a quorum by secreting and sensing an autoinducer; T cells induce a monoclonal immune response by secreting and sensing a cytokine; and epithelial cells can become cancerous through misregulated secreting and sensing of a growth factor. Many of these cells use the same core signaling-circuit motif to realize a diverse repertoire of biological functions. The full range of functions that the "secrete-and-sense" circuit motif can achieve, and the design principles underlying its functional flexibility, remain poorly understood. From circuits to multicellular behaviors: a bottom-up synthesis of hierarchy. The secrete-and-sense circuit controls how each cell (yellow circle) communicates through a signaling molecule (orange circle), which in turn controls the cell-to-cell communication. The collection of cell-to-cell communication in all pairs of cells yields population-level behaviors such as an isogenic population of secrete-and-sense cells bifurcating into two functionally distinct subpopulations (yellow and green circles). Methods We constructed a synthetic secrete-and-sense circuit motif in budding yeast that enabled the yeast to secrete and sense the mating pheromone. We systematically altered key parameters of the circuit—secretion rate, receptor abundance, positive feedback linking sensing with secretion, and signal degradation—to reveal how they enabled various cellular behaviors. Through single-cell measurements, we assessed the degree to which a secrete-and-sense cell responded to its own secreted signal (self-communication) versus the signal secreted by its neighbors (neighbor communication) to achieve diverse cellular behaviors. Results We show that the core secrete-and-sense circuit motif can precisely tune the cell's "sociability"—the cell's degree of self- versus neighbor communication—using one molecule and receptor pair. At the extremes, the circuit enables purely social behaviors (e.g., quorum sensing) in which cells mainly use neighbor communication, or purely asocial behaviors (e.g., epidermal growth factor signaling in epithelial cells) in which cells mainly use self-communication, commonly referred to as "autocrine signaling." Crucially, we uncover rich behaviors that rely on simultaneous self- and neighbor communication, including some that have been observed in nature but whose mechanistic origins have been unclear. For example, positive feedback that links sensing with secretion can yield a bistable behavior in which all cells in the population act as an ensemble to be either quiescent or maximally activated. Incorporation of an active signal degradation enables bimodal activation, in which the different proportions of the population bifurcate into distinct activation states, with the ratio of the two states determined by simultaneous self- and neighbor communication. This behavior explains how isogenic cells can differentiate into distinct states with defined ratios. Discussion We integrate simple models, single-cell measurements, and a bottom-up synthetic biology approach to reveal a range of population-level behaviors that arise from the core secrete-and-sense circuit motif. We determine how the intracellular circuit elements result in distinct classes of self- and neighbor communication, and in turn leads to various population-level behaviors. Our work reveals "phase diagrams" that summarize the relationship between the circuit architecture and different phases of population-level behaviors for the secrete-and-sense circuit. Our first-principles approach may be generalized to reveal relationships between the structures of other fundamental cell-signaling circuits and the multicellular behaviors that they enable. The Message in the Medium What is the point of autocrine signaling in which a cell produces a signal that activates receptors on its own cell surface? An internal signal seems simpler, unless there is value to allowing neighboring cells to know what other cells are up to. Youk and Lim (p. 10.1126/science.1242782; see the Perspective by Lee and You) explored the broad range of signaling outcomes that can result in a system in which some yeast cells could secrete and sense a signal whereas others could only sense signals from their neighbors. The cells were engineered so that the response of the two cell types could be distinguished from one another. Experiments and mathematical modeling showed that depending on how circuits were constructed—for example, how much receptor was present, how the signal molecule was degraded, the presence of feedback, the density of the cell culture, and so on—a range of behaviors was possible: Some conditions favored activation of one type of cell over another. Others altered the timing or consistency of the response within a population. The principles revealed could also be used in other biological contexts or in the design of synthetic biological cell systems with desired regulatory properties. The etiquette of yeast cells that secrete signals that influence themselves and their neighbors is explored. [Also see Perspective by Lee and You] Cells that secrete and sense the same signaling molecule are ubiquitous. To uncover the functional capabilities of the core "secrete-and-sense" circuit motif shared by these cells, we engineered yeast to secrete and sense the mating pheromone. Perturbing each circuit element revealed parameters that control the degree to which the cell communicated with itself versus with its neighbors. This tunable interplay of self-communication and neighbor communication enables cells to span a diverse repertoire of cellular behaviors. These include a cell being asocial by responding only to itself and social through quorum sensing, and an isogenic population of cells splitting into social and asocial subpopulations. A mathematical model explained these behaviors. The versatility of the secrete-and-sense circuit motif may explain its recurrence across species.


Hyperspectral imagery offers unique benefits for detection of land and water features due to the information contained in reflectance signatures such as the bi-directional reflectance distribution function or BRDF. The reflectance signature directly shows the relative absorption and backscattering features of targets. These features can be very useful in shoreline monitoring or surveillance applications, for example to detect weathered oil. In real-time detection applications, processing of hyperspectral data can be an important tool and Optimal band selection is thus important in real time applications in order to select the essential bands using the absorption and backscatter information. In the present paper, band selection is based upon the optimization of target detection using contrast algorithms. The common definition of the contrast (using only one band out of all possible combinations available within a hyperspectral image) is generalized in order to consider all the possible combinations of wavelength dependent contrasts using hyperspectral images. The inflection (defined here as an approximation of the second derivative) is also used in order to enhance the variations in the reflectance spectra as well as in the contrast spectrua in order to assist in optimal band selection. The results of the selection in term of target detection (false alarms and missed detection) are also compared with a previous method to perform feature detection, namely the matched filter. In this paper, imagery is acquired using a pushbroom hyperspectral sensor mounted at the bow of a small vessel. The sensor is mechanically rotated using an optical rotation stage. This opto-mechanical scanning system produces hyperspectral images with pixel sizes on the order of mm to cm scales, depending upon the distance between the sensor and the shoreline being monitored. The motion of the platform during the acquisition induces distortions in the collected HSI imagery. It is therefore necessary to apply a motion correction to the imagery. In this paper, imagery is corrected for the pitching motion of a vessel, which causes most of the deformation when the vessel is anchored at 2 points (bow and stern) during the acquisition of the hyperspectral imagry.


During the formation of large impact structures, layers of melted and crushed rock (ejecta) are deposited over large areas of the Earth9s surface. Ejecta thrown farther than 2.5 crater diameters are called distal ejecta. At distances greater than ~10 crater diameters, the distal ejecta layers consist primarily of millimeter-scale glassy bodies (impact spherules) that form from melt and vapor-condensate droplets. At least 28 distal ejecta layers have been identified. Distal ejecta layers can be used to place constraints on cratering models, help fill gaps in the cratering record, and provide direct correlation between impacts and other terrestrial events.


Optimization is a key component for training machine learning models and has a strong impact on their generalization. In this paper, we consider a particular optimization method—the stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (SGLD) algorithm—and investigate the generalization of models trained by SGLD. We derive a new generalization bound by connecting SGLD with Gaussian channels found in information and communication theory. Our bound can be computed from the training data and incorporates the variance of gradients for quantifying a particular kind of "sharpness" of the loss landscape. We also consider a closely related algorithm with SGLD, namely differentially private SGD (DP-SGD). We prove that the generalization capability of DP-SGD can be amplified by iteration. Specifically, our bound can be sharpened by including a time-decaying factor if the DP-SGD algorithm outputs the last iterate while keeping other iterates hidden. This decay factor enables the contribution of early iterations to our bound to reduce with time and is established by strong data processing inequalities—a fundamental tool in information theory. We demonstrate our bound through numerical experiments, showing that it can predict the behavior of the true generalization gap.


With the continuous of national strength, more and more large cities in China have participated in and held international sports events, it is obvious that the holding of sports events has advantages to the development of a city. Since the 2000 Olympic Games, the competitiveness of cities has gradually been highlighted, and the holding of sports events is significant to improve the urban image and enhance urban competitiveness. An index system is established and fuzzy mathematics are used to research the influence of sports events on the urban development and quantize the role of sports events to the urban development. It is concluded that the holding of sports events has a short and long-term comprehensive promotion role for the development of cities.


In Mapp v. Ohio (1961), the Warren Court held that the so-called exclusionary rule was applicable to the states. Subsequent Supreme Courts have shown their disenchantment with the rule by seeking to curb its applicability. Most recently, the Court has characterized the exclusionary rule as a "massive remedy" to be applied only as a "last resort." The Courts' analytical framework for the last thirty-five years for cutting back the exclusionary rule was a balancing test which weighed the costs of suppressing reliable evidence with the benefits of deterring future police violations. This balancing has been used most recently in two Supreme Court cases, Michigan v. Hudson (2006) and Herring v. United States (2009). In Herring, Justice Ginsberg's dissent pointed out that there was a "more majestic conception" for the exclusionary rule due to its important role in preserving judicial integrity. Judicial integrity was the original reason for adopting the exclusionary rule in the Supreme Court case of Weeks v. United States (1914). The Court in Weeks saw the exclusionary rule as a remedy that would give meaning to the Fourth Amendment as well as prevent the Court from participating in an illegality by utilizing unlawfully obtained evidence. Through balancing, the Court has eviscerated the relevance of judicial integrity as the original justification for the exclusionary rule. This article will demonstrate that the exclusionary rule is the only viable remedy to give meaning to the Fourth Amendment, and argues that the exclusionary rule be returned to its previous prominence by reinstating judicial integrity as its primary purpose.


The efficacy and complication rate of menstrual regulation with the hand-held Karman cannula was tested on 223 women with amenorrhea up to 56 days in the Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Nairobi, Kenya from October 1982-January 1983. 195 women had positive pregnancy tests, while menstrual regulation was done on the others because of concern over late menses. the procedures were done without anesthesia with a 50 ml vacuum syringe fitted with a self-locking plunger, a rubber adaptor and stop cock, 5-8 mm flexible plastic Karman cannula and a toothless volsellum, using hibitane solution and savlon antiseptic. The average procedure time was 7 minutes. Bleeding lasted over 1 week in 4%, total blood loss was over 50 ml in 3.1%, and immediate side effects were syncope in 1.3%, nausea and vomiting in 1.8% and pain in 5.4%. There were 2 (0.8%) cases of endometritis. In Kenya where 60% of all gynecological hospital admissions are for septic abortions, it is essential to provide safe termination as a backup for family planning method failures.


In this paper, by conditioning on the matrix variate normal distribution (MVND) the construction of the matrix t-type family is con- sidered, thus providing a new perspective of this family. Some important statistical characteristics are given. The presented t-type family is an extension to the work of Dickey (8). A Bayes estimator for the column covariance matrix Σ of MVND is derived under Kullback Leibler diver- gence loss (KLDL). Further an application of the proposed result is given in the Bayesian context of the multivariate linear model. It is illustrated that the Bayes estimators of coefficient matrix under both SEL and KLDL are identical.


katharine worth, who died on 28 January 2015, was a key member of the editorial team of Theatre Notebook from 1987 to 1997, ten years during which editors and contributors alike benefitted from her astute critical and scholarly gifts, her love of the theatre and her generous, collegial support. (She was made an honorary Life Member of the Society for theatre Research in 1997.) Her service on other editorial boards – the Yeats Annual, and Modern Drama reflected the range of her engagement with theatre and drama, and her work on irish drama – in particular wilde, yeats and Beckett – had international significance, reorienting and enriching the field. Her long career in London's institutions of Higher education began in 1948, and the development of drama and theatre Studies as a distinct discipline is reflected in her progress, by way of a lectureship and readership in english Literature, to the chair of drama and theatre Studies in the University of London at Royal Holloway and Bedford new college (from 1985 to 1987) and a visiting professorship (from 1987 to 1996) at king's college London. Active in theatre as well as scholarship, engaging and kind as a colleague and teacher, katharine was a vital force to be reckoned with and a colleague to be valued, and her achievements will be celebrated by all who had the privilege of working with her.


Sex, Religion, Media Dane S. Claussen, ed. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002. 295 pp. $72.50 hbk. This nation is profoundly and simultaneously influenced by three distinct but powerful sets of interacting institutions and practices: religion, media, and sex. As editor Dane Claussen points out, the United States is one of the most religious nations on earth, media (most of which is privately owned) pervade virtually every aspect on life here, and sex is an omnipresent preoccupation for most who live in this country. Claussen, associate professor and graduate program director in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Point Park College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has compiled a collection of essays that set as their common locus the intersection of these three areas-- religion, media, and sex. Claussen structures the essays in four categories: engagement and avoidance of sex and religion in media production; media content, conservatives, sex, and the "liberal" establishment; media content, liberals, sex, and the "conservative" establishment; and media agenda setting and the cultivations of religion and sex. The structure proves an effective taxonomy in connecting the chapters as well as guiding the reader through a fairly broad range of topics. Lisa Grunberger contributes to the first section with her chapter, "Bernarr Macfadden's 'Physical Culture.'" Grunberger employs a cultural studies approach to studying an early twentieth century figure as the leader of a religious-- like health movement. The author examines the apparent contradictions between the stated messages on morality and health with the emphasis on sexuality and commercialism implicit in Macfadden's publications and other enterprises. Grunberger concludes this is simply one more example of the ways in which religion and culture have always coexisted, engaged in dialectic interplay. Part 11 includes, among others, two essays on the conservative Christian critic of popular culture, Donald Wildmon. In one, Robert Mendenhall conducts an historical analysis of Wildmon's crusade against popular television, branding it obscene. Framing the chapter with Niebuhr's theories on Christ and culture, Mendenhall demonstrates the high level of subjectivity present in the techniques used by organization members doing the coding. Natalie Jo Brackett Vinyard presents a different perspective through an interesting and well-written content analysis. Vinyard applies the theories of Anthony Weston to examine magazine articles written about Wildmon, concluding that the facts presented or the ways in which they were presented showed evidence of fallacious rhetoric the majority of the time. …


This paper presents a novel solution for flow-based tracking and 3D reconstruction of deforming objects in monocular image sequences. A non-rigid 3D object undergoing rotation and deformation can be effectively approximated using a linear combination of 3D basis shapes. This puts a bound on the rank of the tracking matrix. The rank constraint is used to achieve robust and precise low-level optical flow estimation without prior knowledge of the 3D shape of the object. The bound on the rank is also exploited to handle occlusion at the tracking level leading to the possibility of recovering the complete trajectories of occluded/disoccluded points. Following the same low-rank principle, the resulting flow matrix can be factored to get the 3D pose, configuration coefficients, and 3D basis shapes. The flow matrix is factored in an iterative manner, looping between solving for pose, configuration, and basis shapes. The flow-based tracking is applied to several video sequences and provides the input to the 3D non-rigid reconstruction task. Additional results on synthetic data and comparisons to ground truth complete the experiments.


Digital enterprise technology (DET) is a theoretical framework for collaborative design and production development in the context of a product's lifecycle. The DET framework can be used to configure digital product and process development technologies which assimilate design data, at various levels of completeness, with a high degree of real-time measurement feedback from the production environment in order to validate the product's tolerance specification and the selected production and assembly processes. This paper describes research focused on the integration of two major facets of DET; process planning and large volume metrology (LMV). The challenges encountered include the representation of early designs of complex products, the definition of high risk areas in the process plan and the generation of accurate, dynamic measurement data from large-scale laser metrology in the production environment. The methods employed demonstrate how DET-based strategies for design, manufacture and integration can utilize recent technology advances in aggregate modelling and planning, tolerance analysis tools and 3D coordinate metrology. Early testing using aerospace products has been very promising and the research findings will benefit manufacturers of high-value, high-complexity products within distributed production networks.


In early 1992 the Government of the State of Qatar decided to construct a new squash ·and tennis centre. Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Agriculture (MMAA) staff made an assessment of the centre's probable traffic generation and parking demand. When the first international tournaments began at the end of the year, the MMAA had the opportunity of surveying the actual generation and demand. This study explains how staff made the initial assessment and compares the observed with the predicted traffic figures. The paper illustrates the pattern of traffic behaviqur during the tournaments and discusses aspects of the design and traffic analysis which assessors of similar major facilities could consider in the future. The forecast data for the Tennis Tournament Centre are similar to the observed values although the distribution of arrivals between accesses was different. Traffic flows at the Squash Tournament were lower than expected.


ABSTRACT  Changes in landscape spatial structure—specifically, reductions in habitat area and connectivity—are thought to be a primary cause of pollinator declines across North America. However, the mechanisms by which landscape structure influences pollinator diversity are not well understood. Because flowering plants and pollinators are generally mutualistic, the impact of landscape structure on one can influence the diversity of the other directly or indirectly. Here, we examine the direct and indirect effects of landscape structure on plant and pollinator communities in the naturally patchy, dolomite glade grasslands of the Missouri Ozarks. We quantified landscape spatial structure and the richness of plants and flying invertebrate pollinators in 30 glades. Higher pollinator diversity was not directly related to greater landscape area and connectivity. However, we found evidence for an indirect relationship where better-connected landscapes support higher plant richness, which in turn supports greater pollinator diversity. Our findings highlight the importance of conserving extensive, well-connected natural habitat in order to maintain the plant diversity needed to support diverse pollinator communities.


Traditionally the machine-learning community has viewed the No Free Lunch (NFL) theorems for search and optimization as a limitation. We review, analyze, and unify the NFL theorem with the perspectives of "blind" search and meta-learning to arrive at necessary conditions for improving black-box optimization. We survey meta-learning literature to determine when and how meta-learning can benefit machine learning. Then, we generalize meta-learning in the context of the NFL theorems, to arrive at a novel technique called anti-training with sacrificial data (ATSD). Our technique applies at the meta level to arrive at domain specific algorithms. We also show how to generate sacrificial data. An extensive case study is presented along with simulated annealing results to demonstrate the efficacy of the ATSD method.


There are two problematic solid residues from agriculture and agro‐industry, produced in vast amounts in rural areas: those from coffee bean production and processing and those deriving from the extraction process of olive oil. Notwithstanding these residues originat‐ ing in different geographical areas, they have striking similarities. They both derive from traditional, conventional and organic agriculture; they have a high content in lignins, cel‐ luloses and (poly)phenols; they are produced in million tonnes annually; they pose rel‐ evant environmental problems for disposal; they contain bioactive compounds; and the approach for their re‐use is often similar, sometimes overlapping. The most promising re‐uses in rural areas are for agriculture, as animal feed and for energy production. There are also minor uses, suitable for the production of added‐value commodities. The re‐use will be dependent on a variety of factors according to the diversity of (a) pedoclimatic areas that include altitude and latitude, soil texture and organic matter content, water regime and availability, (b) level of expertise of the small farmers, (c) social environment that includes training opportunities and availability to create associative forms among producers, (d) access to trade and communication networks and (e) easy access to com ‐ munity‐level processing installations. The perspectives of agronomic management and valorization are compatible with the objectives of a regenerative, sustainable agriculture.


Attempting to re-engineer a telemedicine application, this report sets out to make a cheap yet robust solution that is portable and easy to use. It will be a Inera compliant system using Android that authenticates in a secure way with a .NET server behind F5 full proxy. The report begins with a background to telemedicine, and a technical specification that might fulfill the demands of privacy laws regarding health care records. The focus of the report moves on to inspects the choices for authentication. The results consists of formulating a possible solution for authentication by self signed client certificate between Android and a Windows server. En mobil gateway för medicinsk auskultation


The Thames A-Rater fleet is a unique class both in appearance and in its combination of historic and modern technologies. With high aspect ratio, carbon fibre rigs fitted onto wooden hulls, many of which have survived two World Wars, the class is a demonstration of the evolution of sailing technology. In more recent decades, various attempts have been made to expand the class with new composite boats. However, due to the strict rules issued by the class association, new hulls must be exact replicas of existing A-Raters, with a 1.5 inch tolerance. Furthermore, as only one linesplan exists in the public domain, the expansion of the fleet is extremely limited. Consequently, in order to ensure the conservation of some of these historic designs, the lines of several vessels were taken off and used to create accurate linesplan and 3D models. The comparative performance of the various crafts was then assessed through a Velocity Prediction Programme, focused on the specific environmental conditions of the vessels' main operating area, eventually ascertaining the hull with the best racing potential by design.


The Post Graduate Teachers who teach English as a second language to Higher  Secondary Classes that is 11th and 12th grades  need to cultivate a good sense of appreciation for poetry. They must have an inherent thirst for reading poetry aloud and competence to elucidate the essential characteristics of poetry. A study was launched to understand the level of appreciation of poetry of the Post Graduate Teachers by giving a test with 25 items for testing their skill of understanding of alliteration, metaphor, simile, personification, repetition, sound–patterning, stress-patterning, imagery, unpatterned rhyme, connotative words and suggestive words. A sample of 90 post graduate teachers of both sex working in State Government Higher Secondary Schools, Private Matriculation Schools and Private CBSE schools in Chennai city answered the test in fifty minutes time. The 't' test was applied. The Post graduate teachers  in CBSE schools in Chennai City  had the highest mean scores in their competency in appreciating the elements of English poetry. Those in Government Schools and Matriculation Schools came next in the order. But there was no significant difference in their competencies between any two types of schools. They have a high level of appreciation of poetry but with slight difference in mean scores.

 Key words: Alliteration, imagery, metaphor, personification, repetition, sound patterning, stress-patterning, symbol, tone.


Influence of a research journal is usually assessed in contemporary academia by Journal Impact Factor (JIF) given by Journal Citation Reports (JCR) published annually by Clarivate Analytics. JCR also provides Journal Immediacy Index (JII), an additional citation parameter which indicates current impact of journals. These citation based measures are simple arithmetic mean of raw citation counts to source publications. It is opined and empirically tested that three major extraneous citation optimizing factors i.e., Author self-citation (ASC), Journal self-citation (JSC) and Recitation (RC) can inflate these popular citation based metrics. This study examines nineteen Scopus index Library and Information Science (LIS) journals to understand individual as well as unified effects of these three optimizing factors on three popular impact indicators i.e., 2-year JIF, 3-year JIF and JII. It is found that ASC and JSC have noticeable effects on these impact indicators. Further, it is observed that these impact indicators exhibit very poor correlation among them when their values are deduced from raw citation counts, though all of them express simple arithmetic mean values. However, modified impact indicators calculated after excluding citations due to these optimizing factors, exhibit moderate to strong correlation among them. It is therefore concluded that more refined method that can automatically exclude the effect of these optimizing factors in their derivation may be needed for fair assessment of a journal's relative impact in scholarly communication.


The assessment of a person's ability to consistently perform the fundamental activities of daily living is essential in monitoring the patient's progress and measuring the success of treatment. Therefore, many researchers have been interested in this issue and have proposed various monitoring systems based on accelerometer sensors. However, few systems focus on energy consumption of sensor devices. In this paper, we introduce an energy-efficient physical activity monitoring system using a wearable wireless sensor. The proposed system is capable of monitoring most daily activities of the human body: standing, sitting, walking, lying, running, and so on. To reduce energy consumption and prolong the lifetime of the system, we have focused on minimizing the total energy spent for wireless data exchange by manipulating real-time acceleration data on the sensor platform. Furthermore, one of our key contributions is that all functionalities including data processing, activity classification, wireless communication, and storing classified activities were achieved in a single sensor node without compromising the accuracy of activity classification. Our experimental results show that the accuracy of our classification system is over 95%.


With the growth of alternative investment vehicles such as hedge funds and the resulting search for "new" asset classes, the interest in the commodity market has been growing within the financial sector. The commodity futures markets have been successfully providing a platform for investors and industrial participants as an alternative investment vehicle and a tool for risk management. The storable commodity futures markets are characterised by two distinct market conditions: backwardation and contango, which are directly linked to market fundamentals such as inventory levels and thus influence the price dynamics and functioning of the commodity futures market. While there exists a large body of research in the area of commodity derivatives, research on the linkage between market dynamics and the market conditions as determined by fundamentals is very limited. Accordingly, this thesis aims to investigate the different market dynamics of metal futures markets under these two conditions. The issues under examination include the futures price discovery function, the forecasting performance of the futures price, the long-run cost-of-carry equilibrium and short-run time-varying adjustment, and the price volatility and its relationship with inventory levels and trading volume. The empirical findings suggest, for the first time, that the price discovery function depends on the state of the storable commodity markets: futures prices are found to be upward biased predictors of the future spot prices when the market is in contango and are downward biased when the market is in backwardation. Nonparametric bootstrap simulations confirm that the forecast errors are negative in a backwardation market and are positive in a contango market, and moreover the forecast errors are larger under the former market condition than the latter. The empirical results also show that the price volatility is higher in a backwardation market than in a contango market as indicated by the negative relationship between price volatility and inventory levels. We also show that the spot volatility is generally higher than the futures price volatility and the difference is greater when the inventory level is low. Moreover, the impact of trading volume on the futures price volatility is found to be stronger when the market is in backwardation in some of the markets. In short, the empirical findings in this thesis suggest that the functioning of the metal spot and futures market is dependent on market conditions of which the inventory level is an important indictor as implied by the theory of storage. The empirical findings have strong implications for practitioners (particularly, trading houses, funds and banks) who could potentially form different trading strategies based on the distinct market behaviour under the two market conditions.


During the spring of 1849, Captain Randolph B. Marcy and a contingent of soldiers from Fort Smith led a large wagon train of gold-seeking, California-bound emigrants across Indian Territory along a route parallel to the southern bank of the Canadian River. In January, 1941—ninety-two years after Marcy's expedition and only two years after the publication of Foreman's Marcy and the Gold Seekers, the Arkansas Gazette Sunday Magazine began publishing a series of articles entitled "Trip to the Gold Fields." "Trip to the Gold Fields" presents a daily account of the activities of the Clarksville (Arkansas) and California Mining Association from April 1 through December 22, 1849. In the story the narrator claims to develop a close and friendly relationship with Marcy and other soldiers and he provides an array of information about the flora, fauna, geography, and geology of the regions traversed. "Trip to the Gold Fields" is an intriguing story which is a lot of fun to read. But is it real history? Can it be trusted to be a true transcription of an "old journal kept by A.D. King and others during a wagon trip to California in 1849?"


The aim of this article is to show how the penal estate inherited from the Soviet Union has reproduced specific penal experiences in the Russian Federation. The first part describes the evolution and current geographical structure of the penal estate showing how in the years immediately after Joseph Stalin's death distinctive carceral regions became embedded in the Russian landscape. The second part discusses how this distinctive geography has become associated with a specific punishment form, "in exile imprisonment," that merges incarceration with expulsion to the peripheries. In the final section it explores various ways that sending prisoners long distances to serve their sentences may be understood as punitive, adding to the familiar pains of imprisonment discussed by penal sociologists. The research on which this article is based emerges from two research projects conducted by the author among prisoners and their families during the past ten years. In English, extended summary in Russian .


For many years, African Americans were excluded from participation as voters and as candidates in the American political system. With the Civil Rights movement and the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, African-American political participation has increased substantially. Now students, researchers, journalists, and policymakers can turn to the Encyclopedia of African-American Politics for a wealth of objective, accessible information concerning the events, people, organizations, and policies that have figured in the political history of African Americans. This A-to-Z volume examines the role of African Americans in the political process from the early days of the American evolution to the present. Focusing on basic political ideas, court cases, laws, concepts, ideologies, institutions, and political processes, this book covers all facets of African Americans in American government. Written by a nationally renowned scholar in the field, the Encyclopedia of African-American Politics will enlighten readers to the struggles and triumphs of African Americans in the American political system.


Learning to predict scene depth from RGB inputs is a challenging task both for indoor and outdoor robot navigation. In this work we address unsupervised learning of scene depth and robot ego-motion where supervision is provided by monocular videos, as cameras are the cheapest, least restrictive and most ubiquitous sensor for robotics.
Previous work in unsupervised image-to-depth learning has established strong baselines in the domain. We propose a novel approach which produces higher quality results, is able to model moving objects and is shown to transfer across data domains, e.g. from outdoors to indoor scenes. The main idea is to introduce geometric structure in the learning process, by modeling the scene and the individual objects; camera ego-motion and object motions are learned from monocular videos as input. Furthermore an online refinement method is introduced to adapt learning on the fly to unknown domains.
The proposed approach outperforms all state-of-the-art approaches, including those that handle motion e.g. through learned flow. Our results are comparable in quality to the ones which used stereo as supervision and significantly improve depth prediction on scenes and datasets which contain a lot of object motion. The approach is of practical relevance, as it allows transfer across environments, by transferring models trained on data collected for robot navigation in urban scenes to indoor navigation settings. The code associated with this paper can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/struct2depth.


Middleware has become an essential component for almost every distributed database system. It uses wrappers when integration is achieved for heterogeneity. Different middleware systems have been produced aiming for a better performance. In this paper a new middleware system for heterogeneous distributed databases (HDDBs) called Open-Gate is proposed. Its main objective is to provide an efficient system with the characteristics of autonomy, scalability, reliability, and high performance. In addition, it can handle a huge number of users overcoming the bottleneck problem or loss of user's queries. Experimental results show that, the proposed system achieved high performance compared to other systems.


At the physical limits of the city, its artificial illumination begins to lose some of its hold against the firmament of night. Streetlight punctuations bend away from the built aggregation, chasing down roads to the next amber-white network. Out here, in the hinterlands of the urban landscape, the ragged edges and interstitial zones between city and rural may be found. These places err around their own identity. The patchwork ecotones at the edge of urban development resist easy classification, a situation even more opaque at night. For during nocturnal hours, these areas are the true black box of the city, holding its secrets, economies, demands and distribution networks together. The body is absorbed within the rhythms of these different materials and the movements they allow or prohibit. In this manner, the very land itself no longer appears as a distinct interface but as a loosely designated geography of admixture and intermingling. Ideas are free to roam around and wander out here. At the urban edge, the possibilities are far-reaching and seemingly limitless. It is precisely by connecting to the edges of what is thinkable parallel to being amongst the liminal zones of the urban that it is possible to truly go in. That is, to escape the day-to-day and be within the overlapping thresholds of identity, place and ideation. This paper will draw on two case studies, firstly my ongoing experimental auto-ethnography of experiences in and around the city of Manchester, UK, to explore the potential of dark landscapes for creativity. Secondly, the collective nightwalking programme run by Expodium in Utrecht in the Netherlands.


Over the past decade, the Lao government has developed the policy of 'Turning Land into Capital' (TLIC), a strategy for generating revenue and economic value from 'state land'. The 450 Year Road Project built along the periphery of the Laotian capital, Vientiane, linking the national highway with the Thai border, was financed using a TLIC model. Additional land to the side of the road was acquired to be resold at rates significantly higher than the compensation provided to landowners. Prior to construction, however, most of the land had already been purchased by external buyers, who impeded the project's development by refusing to concede their newly purchased plots. This article contributes to the literature on political reactions 'from below' to land grabbing by arguing that in order to understand the operational success or failure of land development projects, it is imperative to analyse the politics that pervade such investments 'all the way down' — the interrelated roles, interests and relations of involved actors and groups in all positions of power within society. The 450 Year Road project stalled due to its failure to take into account the interests and politics of seemingly compliant actors, particularly landowning farm households and speculative land buyers.


Knockout: The Boxer and Boxing in American Cinema is the first book-length study of the Hollywood boxing film, a popular movie entertainment since the 1930s, that includes such classics as Million Dollar Baby, Rocky, and Raging Bull. The boxer stands alongside the cowboy, the gangster, and the detective as a character that shaped America's ideas of manhood. Leger Grindon relates the Hollywood boxing film to the literature of Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, and Clifford Odets; the influence of ring champions, particularly Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali; and controversies surrounding masculinity, race, and sports. Knockout breaks new ground in film genre study by focusing on the fundamental dramatic conflicts uniting both documentary and fictional films with compelling social concerns. The boxing film portrays more than the rise and fall of a champion; it exposes the body in order to reveal the spirit. Not simply a brute, the screen boxer dramatizes conflicts and aspirations central to an American audience's experience. This book features chapters on the conventions of the boxing film, the history of the genre and its relationship to famous ring champions, and self-contained treatments of thirty-two individual films including a chapter devoted to Raging Bull.


Legacy documents, such as requirements documents or manuals of business procedures, can sometimes offer an important resource for informing what features of legacy software are redundant, need to be retained or can be reused. This situation is particularly acute where business change has resulted in the dissipation of human knowledge through staff turnover or redeployment. Exploiting legacy documents poses formidable problems, however, since they are often incomplete, poorly structured, poorly maintained and voluminous. This report proposes that language engineering using tools that exploit probabilistic natural language processing (NLP) techniques offer the potential to ease these problems. Such tools are available, mature and have been proven in other domains. The document provides a review of NLP and a discussion of the components of probabilistic NLP techniques and their potential for requirements recovery from legacy documents. The report concludes with a summary of the preliminary results of the adaptation and application of these techniques in the REVERE project.


With global climate change ocean warming and acidification occur concomitantly. The survival and distribution of species will depend on their existing ability to exploit their physiological plasticity. pH regulation and the energetically costly processes involved appear crucial to sustain the performance of marine organisms and shaping their sensitivity to ocean acidification. Especially under rising temperatures, small pH disturbances in body fluids might already exert critical impact on physiological processes. We therefore studied the effects of ocean acidification on thermal tolerance and acid-base regulation capacity of a sub-Arctic population of Mytilus edulis. Mussels were acclimated for 4 weeks at 10°C and incubated under normocapnia (390µatm) and hypercapnia (1120μatm) for further 2 weeks, before being subjected to an acute warming protocol (10-28°C; 3°C/night). The temperature induced increase in oxygen consumption led to Q10-values of 2.4 (normocapnia) and 2.2 (hypercapnia) indicating a mild limitation of aerobic metabolism in hypercapnic animals. Anaerobic metabolites accumulated above 25°C indicating an upper critical temperature independent of CO2 albeit anaerobic metabolism was lower under hypercapnia. The decrease in haemolymph pH during warming followed the alphastat pattern, with animals under hypercapnia consistently displaying an acidosis when compared to controls. Mantle intracellular pH was initially maintained during warming before a sudden acidification set in. The intracellular acidosis occurred earlier under hypercapnia indicating reduced energy allocation to intracellular pH regulation. The earlier reduction of energy-dependent processes under combined hypercapnia and warming may enhance passive tolerance to temperature extremes in this intertidal specie. However, permanent hypercapnia may only be sustained at the expense of organismic performance, especially at the limits of the thermal performance window.


The self-reflexivity of anthropologists entails engaging with the forceful critiques emanating from within the discipline with regard to its relationship to the colonial project. However, the question remains as to what a postcolonial ethnographic project might look like. That is, while anthropologists engage with critiques from postcolonial studies in theory, how might they do so in practice? I address this question in my article by examining contemporary performances of Indian classical and Contemporary South Asian dance in Britain. An historical analysis of the trajectory of Indian classical dance reveals an intimate relationship between colonial, Orientalist and Indian nationalist discourses. Investigating contemporary performances in the U.K. can thus provide a fascinating glimpse into how discourses of coloniality are reiterated in the present. Focusing on performative narrativisations of the dance's history and its constructions of an idealised femininity, I show how ethnographic research can usefully excavate contemporary practices to better understand the capacity of coloniality both to endure and transform in its contemporary articulations.


ABSTRACT In the Sahara-Sahel, artisanal gold mining is booming. Fragile Sahelian states arguably provide a most likely case for the 'resource conflict' theory to hold, yet 'resource capture' can also underpin informal governance schemes through which the co-optation of non-state actors ushers in (hybrid) state-building. While the diversity of empirical cases lends credibility to both theories, the dialectic of proximity and distance – both social and spatial – helps make sense of the different modalities of artisanal gold mining governance in the region. In the Sahelian core of regional states, artisanal gold mining has supported regime empowerment; in the Sahara, it has helped assuage pre-existing tensions; in the Tibesti, it has led to militarisation and conflict.


Finding opportunities for innovation on the path between farmer and table.Even if we think we know a lot about good and healthy food?even if we buy organic, believe in slow food, and read Eater?we probably don't know much about how food gets to the table. What happens between the farm and the kitchen? Why are all avocados from Mexico? Why does a restaurant in Maine order lamb from New Zealand? In Food Routes, Robyn Metcalfe explores an often-overlooked aspect of the global food system: how food moves from producer to consumer. She finds that the food supply chain is adapting to our increasingly complex demands for both personalization and convenience?but, she says, it won't be an easy ride. Networked, digital tools will improve the food system but will also challenge our relationship to food in anxiety-provoking ways. It might not be easy to transfer our affections from verdant fields of organic tomatoes to high-rise greenhouses tended by robots. And yet, argues Metcalfe?a cautious technology optimist?technological advances offer opportunities for innovations that can get better food to more people in an increasingly urbanized world. Metcalfe follows a slice of New York pizza and a club sandwich through the food supply chain; considers local foods, global foods, and food deserts; investigates the processing, packaging, and storage of food; explores the transportation networks that connect farm to plate; and explains how food can be tracked using sensors and the Internet of Things. Future food may be engineered, networked, and nearly independent of crops grown in fields. New technologies can make the food system more efficient?but at what cost to our traditionally close relationship with food?


We have fabricated a light emitting diode using a p-type conducting polyaniline layer deposited on a n-type porous silicon (PS) layer. The contact formed between a p-type conducting polyaniline layer and a n-type PS wafer has rectified behaviour demonstrated clearly by the I-V curves. The series resistance Rs in the p-type conducting polyaniline/n-PS diode is reduced greatly and has a lower onset voltage compared with ITO/n-PS diode. The PS has an orange photoluminescence (PL) band after coating with polyaniline. Visible electroluminescence (EL) has been obtained from this junction when a forward bias is applied. The emission band is very broad extending from 600 - 803 nm with a peak at 690 nm.


This theoretically practical thesis relates to the field of subset selection routing problems, in which there are a set of customers available to be serviced and deci sions of which customers to service and how to carry out the service are required. We develop models for problems of this kind, particularly accounting for customer service in decision making. We consider possibilities that relate to not servicing customers, or servicing them poorly with respect to their desired service, and we model some possible implications of these decisions. We consider different con straints that may appear within these problems and exploit these within an overall model for a problem which we term the Maximum Collection Problem. We develop effective, generic solution methods for these problems and tailor specific routines to certain types of problem. We devise new methods for generating problems with specific characteristics and we use these to test the effectiveness of our methods. We extensively test our methods, identify shortcomings of existing methods and develop new methods for overcoming the identified weaknesses of the methods. We introduce a new version of subset selection routing problems, involving deci sion making in dynamic situations. We create models involving next day and same day service and develop fast, practical methods for obtaining effective solutions to these problems and test their effectiveness and robustness on a number of varied test problems.


Incomplete knowledge of the structure of mechanisms is an important fact of life in reasoning, commonsense or expert, about the physical world. Qualitative simulation captures an important kind of incomplete, ordinal, knowledge, and predicts the set of qualitatively possible behaviors of a mechanism, given a qualitative description of its structure and initial state. However, one frequently has quantitative knowledge as well as qualitative, though seldom enough to specify a numerical simulation.

We present a method for incrementally exploiting incomplete quantitative knowledge, by using it to refine the predictions of a qualitative rea-soner. Incomplete quantitative descriptions (currently ranges within which unknown values are assumed to lie) are asserted about some landmark values in the quantity spaces of qualitative parameters. Unknown monotonic function constraints may be bounded by numerically computable envelope functions. Implications are derived by local propagation across the constraints in the model.

When this refinement process produces a contradiction, a qualitatively plausible behavior is shown to conflict with the quantitative knowledge. When all predicted behaviors of a given model are contradicted, the model is refuted. If a behavior is not refuted, propagation of quantitative information results in a mixed quantitative/qualitative description of behavior that can be compared with other surviving predictions for differential diagnosis.


Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is often seen to be constraining and focused on specific skill development for specific occupations. This goal is at odds with the demands of a knowledge economy that requires more general educational outcomes for an uncertain and unpredictable labour market. For this reason, Hui (2012) has adopted a broader definition of student learning outcomes and assessed the extent to which 'cultural literacy' might be a preferred goal for TVET to supplement the skills training element. Cultural literacy refers to an individual's world view, ways to interact with people, character, personal ethics, values and style. Hui's study highlighted the need for TVET to emphasise the development of these generic outcomes, students' comprehensive attitudes and personal qualities in particular. To achieve greater control over the quality of outcomes, this study aims to investigate the influence of students' participation in institutional activities on their growth. Through modifying the well-known National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), this study examines the relationship between the five benchmarks of effective educational practice and students' cultural literacy and their self-reported academic performance. Results of a survey study of 238 Hong Kong TVET students indicated that some of the benchmarks could predict to a strong and moderate degree these two important outcomes. It is argued that proper planning and facilitation of educationally purposive activities could enhance both their learning and development. This article will contribute to the discussion on how to advance TVET students' learning performance.


Following the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 of the European Parliament and of the Council on novel foods, the European Commission requested EFSA to update and develop scientific and technical guidance for the preparation and presentation of applications for authorisation of novel foods. This guidance presents a common format for the organisation of the information to be presented in order to assist the applicant in preparing a well-structured application to demonstrate the safety of the novel food. The application should be comprehensive and complete. This guidance outlined the data needed for the safety assessments of novel foods. Requirements which should be covered in all applications relate to the description of the novel food, production process, compositional data, specification, proposed uses and use levels, and anticipated intake of the novel food. Further sections on the history of use of the novel food and/or its source, absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, nutritional information, toxicological information and allergenicity should be considered by the applicant by default. If not covered in the application, this should be justified. The applicant should integrate the data presented in the different sections to provide their overall considerations on how the information supports the safety of the novel food under the proposed conditions of use. Where potential health hazards have been identified, they should be discussed in relation to the anticipated intakes of the novel food and the proposed target populations. On the basis of the information provided, EFSA will assess the safety of the novel food under the proposed conditions of use.


Background: Iron deficiency (ID) and anaemia are frequent in Heart Failure (HF) patients, but there are few data about its prevalence and prognosis in elderly HF patients with preserved ejection fraction (HF-PEF).
 Aim: The aim of this study is to ascertain if ID alone or associated with anaemia is related to negative clinical outcomes in elderly patients with HF-PEF.
Design/Methods: 139 consecutive patients discharged from our Internal Medicine Department with a diagnosis of HF-PEF from June 2011 to June 2014 were followed up until June 2015. All demographic and clinical data, echocardiography, biochemical parameters, treatment at discharge, new hospital admissions and death were registered in a specific database.
Results: Mean age was 79.1 years (SD 8.3 years), and 94 (67.6%) were women. Anaemia was present in 85 (61%), any iron deficiency in 92 (67%) and absolute iron deficiency in 67 (48%) of these patients. 33 patients (23%) died during a mean follow-up of 649 days. Increased mortality was related to age, previous hospital admissions, lower albumin level, lower Barthel score, and higher ferritin level. Using a composite endpoint of HF readmission or death during first year after index admission, 54 patients (38.8%) had this negative outcome. Lower Barthel Score and albumin values, higher NT pro-BNP and ferritin level, and absence of iron deficiency, were related to this negative outcome.
 Conclusion: Anaemia and Iron Deficiency are usual findings in our elderly HF-PEF patients, but only a high level of serum ferritin was associated with worse outcomes in this setting.


Stochastic decoding is a recently proposed method for decoding Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes. Stochastic decoding is, however, sensitive to the switching activity of stochastic bits, which can result in a latching problem. Using Edge Memories (EMs) has been proposed as a method to counter the latching problem in stochastic decoding. In this paper, we introduce a Markov chain model for EMs and study state transitions over decoding cycles. The proposed method can be used to determine the convergence and the required number of decoding cycles in stochastic decoding. Moreover, it can help to study the behavior of decoding process and to estimate the decoding time.


The Container Museum is a place for many kinds of delicate containers located in Arendalsgata, Oslo. The design process begins with a space prototype directed by philosophy and intuition. Through the discussion of time, distance, movement, materiality, as well as the program and site, the final project is proposed. Paradox is the main topic during my postgraduate stage. Everything in our world could be distinguished. But the paradox is that nothing could exist independently. Things always exist in relationships. In the museum, Rooms rely on each other, long for each other, but they are, at the same time, isolated, searching for light individually. Walking up and down, through the endless path, visitors meet the openings of each room and encounter the objects, daily life, history and time.


A protective coating is often used on the cladding of wooden facades to limit the absorption of moisture. Low wood moisture content (MC) is essential to obtain satisfactory durability performance. Wood density is known to influence the water sorption and crack formation of uncoated wood. However, the effect of density on the aforementioned behaviors of coated spruce is not yet fully understood. Six-years of data on the crack formation and the MC variation of outdoor exposed panels are analyzed in this article. The outdoor test was complemented by a subsequent laboratory experiment, wherein the MC variation was monitored at different depths on the board during artificial water spraying. The aim of this research was to increase the knowledge about how wood density and aging affect the water sorption of coated spruce through the crack formation. The results indicated that wood density had an impact on the overall sorption behavior of coated spruce. Low-density spruce contributed to faster water absorption and desorption processes than coated samples with higher density. However, the observed correlation to density was limited to a condition with an intact coating. High-density characteristics contributed to more crack formation, and the density–sorption relationship reversed with a cracked coating. A cracked coating caused a strong local increase in the MC of the wood at the location of the cracks. Weather-exposed replicates without cracks had a higher MC in the core of the board compared with the value beneath the coating. The higher MC is probably due to the water sorption of the uncoated backside of the panel. Such an occurrence raised awareness for future studies to account for multidimensional sorption behavior from all sides of the panel. The local difference in MC also raises awareness for future studies to investigate local MC variations (as opposed to the global average of the panel) in research on the durability of coated wood.


Negative perceptions of Russia as "the Other" in societies belonging to the Western political tradition have been shaped in a long historical perspective and have their own cultural and geopolitical matrix. These stereotypes mostly perceive Russia and its population through collectivism, authoritarianism and impulsiveness. Media and information policies play an indispensable role in shaping stereotypes in the modern and postmodern era. Therefore, the aim of this research is to point at the role of media discourse in supporting and forming negative stereotypes about contemporary Russia. In the introductory part of the Paper, the problem of stereotyping the notions of Russia and the Russians in the Western political space is contextualized, and then the case study on the empirical basis describes the role of the so-called Western media in supporting the established stereotypes in modern times. The main narratives of the information war between the European Union and the Russian Federation were used for media mediation and interpretation of events on the international scene in which the Russian Federation was the main actor during the year of sanctions (2014) and immediately afterwards (2015). We conclude that in the observed period there was a mutual deterioration of the images among the citizens of the EU and RF, while the leading media sacrificed the principle of impartiality of reporting.


This paper presents the results of a quantitative analysis of writing style for the entire corpus of U.S. Supreme Court decisions. The basis for this analysis is frequency of function words, which has been found to be a useful "stylistic fingerprint" and which we use as a general proxy for the stylistic features of a text or group of texts. Based on this stylistic fingerprint measure, we examine temporal trends on the Court, verifying that there is a "style of the time" and that contemporaneous Justices are more stylistically similar to their peers than to temporally remote Justices. We examine potential "internal" causes of stylistic changes, and conduct an in-depth analysis of the role of the modern institution of the judicial clerk in influencing writing style on the Court. Using two different measures of stylistic consistency, one measuring intra-year consistency on the Court and the other examining inter-year consistency for individual Justices, we find evidence that clerks have increased the institutional consistency of the Court, but have reduced the individual consistency of the Justices.


A technically & economically sound technology for water detritiation is mandatory for the future of fusion. This technology is expected to be based on water electrolysis and Liquid Phase Catalytic Exchange (LPCE). LPCE requires an efficient hydrophobic catalyst. SCK·CEN invented and developed such a catalyst in the past, which is prepared by depositing platinum on an activated charcoal carrier and mixing it with polytetrafluorethylene as a hydrophobic material. In combination with an appropriate wettable packing, different batches of this catalyst performed very well during years of extensive testing, allowing us to develop the ELEX process for water detritiation at inland reprocessing plants. Recently we succeeded in reproducing this catalyst and preparing a slightly different but clearly ameliorated type. By extrapolation these new results would allow us to obtain, at 40°C and under typical but conservative operating conditions, a decontamination factor of 10000 with a column of less than 3 meters long. Such performances would make this catalyst an excellent candidate for application at JET or ITER. To confirm the performances of our improved catalyst for a longer period of time and in a longer column, we are now starting experiments in a newly built installation and we are collaborating with ICSI, Romania.


Aquaponics is the combined culture of fish and plants in recirculating aquaculture systems, an ecologically sustainable horticultural production technique with long traditions.
The objective of this study is to compare flood-and- drain, and the water crossflow system and examine the differences in the water quality, fish yield and plant growth parameters for Common carp (Cyprinus carpio) and basil (Ocimum basilicum). During the study, water quality parameters of two treatments were compared in temperatures, pH, EC and NO3¯N were significantly different (p <0.05). Leaf area of the basil plants grew to an average of 20.37 cm2 (± 9.02 cm2). The plants' biomass production was significantly different (p< 0.05) in the two systems. The biomass production showed lower yield, 458.22 g (± 214.59 g) in the constant flow system that in the flood- and- drain system 692.9 g (± 175.82 g). Fish Growth parameters were better in constant flow system (FCR 5.48 g/g ± 0.19). However, the specific growth rate (SGR) demonstrated that fish grew faster in flood- and- drain system 1.38 %/day (± 0.29).


Our understanding of the crystallization process of hybrid halide perovskites has propelled the efficiency of state-of-the-art photovoltaic devices to over 22%. Further improvements to the performance will likely arise from reducing the number of grain boundaries. Here, current methods lead to grain sizes in the 1 micrometer range and the resulting optoelectronic properties suffer as compared to single-crystal materials. In this work, we introduce a new synthesis procedure with MAPbI3 leading to crystal sizes in the tens of microns range. This approach is based on the pre-crystallization of an intermediate phase (IP) based on the solid-state reaction of a lead-acetate trihydrate precursor mixture in a highly polar solvent. Beyond large grain sizes, the crystal orientation is also tightly controlled, leading to perovskite crystallites which remain perfectly aligned with the c-axis of the tetragonal structure parallel to the substrate as evidenced by grazing incidence wide angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS). Furthermore, we demonstrate the high crystallinity and large grain size of the developed films via high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The charge carrier mobilities are significantly improved with larger grain size and approach mobility values of about 40 cm2 V−1 s−1, moving toward the values observed for single crystals. We capitalize on the enhanced optoelectronic properties of the developed films by incorporating them into planar heterojunction solar cells which reach power conversion efficiencies of 18.5%, higher than MAPbI3-based device prepared from standard methods in a like-to-like comparison.


It is noted that computer graphics has introduced a variety of phenomena and problems that tend to constitute not only serious constraints to its widespread applications, but also curriculum-related challenges to the engineering schools and departments associated with finding ways of teaching the same old course (engineering graphics). The author describes some of these constraints, with particular emphasis on economically less buoyant schools in developing countries and relates how some of them are facing up to the challenges through pedagogical approaches. He shows that computer graphics can be taught in nonconventional ways and with minimum outlay of instructional facilities and personnel. The approach described is based on experience at the Department of Electronic Engineering, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria.<<ETX>>


It is universally accepted that renewable energy is an important contributing factor towards the promotion of sustainable development. The implementation of renewable energy needs to be regulated in an effective manner which in turn necessitates the formulation of law and policy geared towards sustainable development. Recent policy developments in South Africa propose to facilitate the promotion of sustainable development through the implementation of renewable energy, among others. In terms of existing energy policy in South-Africa, the interconnectivity of renewable energy and sustainable development is evident. Most notably, the White Paper on Renewable Energy of 2003 promotes increased access to affordable renewable energy in order to contribute to sustainable development. Moreover, the 2008 first review of the National Energy Efficiency Strategy of the Republic of South-Africa of 2005 states that in order for the country's renewable energy policy to be considered sustainable, it needs to facilitate development in the social, economic and environmental spheres. Notwithstanding, attaining the goal of sustainable development depends on whether all its effecting principles are catered for in the policy developments. Accordingly, in order to ascertain whether South-African law and policy can successfully facilitate/enable sustainable development via the implementation of renewable energy, a specific methodology is proposed. In terms of the New Delhi Declaration of 2002 there are 7 principles of international law effecting sustainable development. These principles will be used as criteria in a principled assessment of South-African renewable energy law and policy in order to establish whether the goal of promoting sustainable development would be effected through the national policy developments.


This paper presents the SmartRotuaari service system, which motivated by business and customer surveys provides a diverse set of consumer applications ranging from rapid and highly personalized mobile direct marketing to information, communication and payment services. We present results from the first field trial to show that SmartRotuaari provides a functional framework for large-scale field trials for the purpose of empirical evaluation of technology, new services, customer behavior and business models in real end user environment. Our work is based on a seamless cooperation between the various players in the R&D and business networks. To stimulate this cooperation we also extend our work to management research of value creating networks.


A polyneuropathy of varying severity has been observed in association with sepsis and critical illness in 15 patients. Since clinical evaluation is often difficult, electrophysiological studies provided definitive evidence for polyneuropathy. These revealed reductions in the amplitudes of compound muscle and sensory nerve action potentials, the most marked abnormality. Near-nerve recordings confirmed such reductions for sensory fibres. Needle electromyography revealed signs of denervation of limb muscles. Phrenic nerve conduction and needle electromyographic studies of chest wall muscles suggested that the polyneuropathy partially explained difficulties in weaning patients from the ventilator, an early clinical sign. No defect in neuromuscular transmission was demonstrated, despite the use of aminoglycoside antibiotics in some patients. In those who survived the critical illness, clinical and electrophysiological improvement occurred. The 15 critically ill polyneuropathy patients were compared with 16 Guillain-Barré syndrome patients observed during the same period. The analysis showed that the two polyneuropathies are likely to be separate entities that can be distinguished in most instances by the predisposing illness, electrophysiological features and cerebrospinal fluid results.


Raman spectra of 4-methyl isochroman and its aromatic ring substituted derivatives indicate the presence of two conformers in the liquid state and only one in the solid, while the 1- and 3-methyl analog assume one conformation only in both states. The presence of a methyl group adjacent to the ring oxygen atom sterically prevents adoption of one of the two possible conformations due to 1,3-interaction. No such restriction is imposed on the 4-methyl compounds.


The standard deviation of investment returns is widely accepted as the best, and perhaps only commonly used indicator of portfolio risk in the investment management business. However, its usefulness is actually quite limited. In fact, relying on it can often produce misleading and inaccurate conclusions, particularly when applied to fixed-income portfolios. Though he demonstrates a number of flaws associated with relying on the standard deviation of returns as a risk measure, the author states that standard deviation does provide some insight, and in many circumstances is in fact meaningful. As always, the key is to understand what goes on behind the numbers.


Circumscription is the minimization of predicates subject to restrictions expressed by predicate formulas. We propose a modified notion of circumscription so that, instead of being a single minimality condition, it becomes an "infinite conjunction" of "local" minimality conditions; each of these conditions expresses the impossibility of changing the value of a predicate from true to false at one point. We argue that this "pointwise" circumscription is conceptually simpler than the traditional "global" approach and, at the same time, leads to generalizations with the additional flexibility needed in applications to the theory of commonsense reasoning.


Program Summary and Situation Statement A prominent veterinary researcher from Cornell University estimates that the most costly diseases of dairy cattle are displacement of the abomasum and lameness resulting in the $489 and $478 per case, respectively. However, when economic losses are computed on a herd basis, none rival lameness as the most costly disease of dairy cattle. Reasons for this are largely related to its insidious nature and the relatively high incidence of this disease compared to abomasal displacement, mastitis and other common health disorders. Although variable, it is not uncommon to find herds with annual incidence rates of 30% or higher. Lameness disorders are often neglected because early symptoms are subtle causing a failure of owners to observe or recognize them in timely manner. Detection is also complicated by the cow's natural instinct to disguise her discomfort which results in only mild alterations of gait and posture. Ultimately, this leads to treatment delays and the development of more serious conditions that increase animal suffering and reduce welfare. Despite its impact on performance, profit and animal well-being, attention to this health problem by the dairy industry is lacking. For example, dairy record-keeping systems are designed to capture multiple bits of information on most health disorders in dairy cattle with exception of lameness events. Data that is recorded is usually provided by trimmers, but much of it cannot be conveniently transferred to the farm's record-keeping system. Furthermore, terms used by trimmers and data captured is not consistent or easily interpreted since there is no standard nomenclature used amongst trimmers. As a consequence, there is little or no data available for regular evaluation of foot care information on farms by veterinarians or others. Another issue of growing concern for the Iowa dairy industry is that promulgated by activist organizations charging that the welfare of animals in production agriculture is compromised for the benefit of profit. These organizations are well organized and support their arguments with video footage taken by persons working undercover in packing plants, livestock markets and on farms. For the most radical of these organizations the primary objective is to end animal agriculture. Unless the dairy industry can develop an effective pro-active approach to assuring consumers of its commitment to humane care of its animals, it faces a greater likelihood of increased regulation by outside agencies. Implications to the Iowa Dairy Industry Assuming a conservative rate of lameness at 30% and a cost of $478/case, economic loss to the Iowa dairy industry (215,000 cows) is nearly $103 million dollars annually. This loss represents more than that caused by any other disease and by a disorder that is believed to be one of the most painful for the cow. Failure to properly address this problem results in tremendous financial loss and needless animal suffering. Throughout recent history, the dairy industry has enjoyed the benefit of strong consumer trust in the safety and wholesomeness of its products. Today its image is threatened by consumer concerns for the welfare of its animals. If confidence erodes so will demand and prices paid to farmers for milk. The future success of our industry requires that the dairy industry maintain consumer confidence in the safety and wholesomeness of its product, and the welfare of its animals.


This chapter explores the role that sovereignty plays in the jus post bellum context. Noting the generally negative perceptions of the concept of "sovereignty" in a number of academic and activist circles, this chapter argues that sovereignty should be on the contrary a important consideration in any post conflict discussion. In order words, while the State is often seen as the target, i.e an obstacle to effective post conflict policies, it, and its sovereignty, should become a target, i.e. an objective of jus post bellum. The Chapter first explains how issues relating to statehood and sovereignty are often central in post conflict situations, such as in claims to self-determination or the international prosecution of crimes. The chapter then proposes a theoretical framework to conceptualize the relationship between the international and domestic spheres through a revisiting of Georges Scelle's Role Splitting theory (dedoublement fonctionnel). Ultimately, the chapter calls for a rethinking, rather than a discarding, of the notion of sovereignty in today's globalized and interconnected legal orders.


Secure authentication on situated displays (e.g., to access sensitive information or to make purchases) is becoming increasingly important. A promising approach to resist shoulder surfing attacks is to employ cues that users respond to while authenticating; this overwhelms observers by requiring them to observe both the cue itself as well as users' response to the cue. Although previous work proposed a variety of modalities, such as gaze and mid-air gestures, to further improve security, an understanding of how they compare with regard to usability and security is still missing as of today. In this paper, we rigorously compare modalities for cue-based authentication on situated displays. In particular, we provide the first comparison between touch, mid-air gestures, and calibration-free gaze using a state-of-the-art authentication concept. In two in-depth user studies (N=20, N=17) we found that the choice of touch or gaze presents a clear tradeoff between usability and security. For example, while gaze input is more secure, it is also more demanding and requires longer authentication times. Mid-air gestures are slightly slower and more secure than touch but users hesitate to use them in public. We conclude with three significant design implications for authentication using touch, mid-air gestures, and gaze and discuss how the choice of modality creates opportunities and challenges for improved authentication in public.


Abstract. The urban area should be imaged in three-dimensional (3D) for planning, inspection and management. In addition fast urbanisation requires detection the urban area changes which have been occurred with new buildings, additional floor to current buildings and excavations. 3D surface model of urban area enables to extracting high information from them. On the other hand high density spatial data should be measured to creating 3D digital terrain surface model. The dense image matching method makes 3D measurement with high density from the images in a short time. The aim of this study is detection the urban area changes via comparison of time series point cloud data from historical stereoscopic aerial images. The changes were detected with the difference of these digital elevation models. The study area was selected from Konya city in Turkey, and it has a large number of new buildings and changes in topography. Dense point cloud data were created from historical aerial images belong to years of 1951, 1975 and 2010. Every threedimensional point cloud data were registered to global georeferenced coordinate system with ground control points created from the imaged objects such as building corner, fence, wall and etc. Then urban changes were detected with comparing the dense point cloud data by exploiting the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm. Consequently, the urban changes were detected from point to surface distances between image based point clouds.


Abstract. Aridity indices have been widely used in climate
classification. However, there is
not enough evidence for their ability in identifying the multiple climate
types in areas with
complex topography and landscape, especially in those areas with a
transition climate. This
study compares a traditional meteorological aridity index (AI), defined as the
ratio of precipitation (P) to potential evapotranspiration (PET), with a
hydrological aridity index, the
evaporative stress index (ESI) defined as the ratio of actual
evapotranspiration (AET) to PET
in the Heihe River Basin (HRB) of arid northwestern China. PET was estimated
using the
Penman–Monteith and Hamon methods. The aridity indices were calculated using
the high-resolution climate data simulated with a regional climate model for the
period of 1980–2010.
The climate classified by AI shows a climate type for the upper basin and a
second type for the middle and lower basin, while three different climate
types are found using ESI, each for one
river basin, indicating that only ESI is able to identify a transition climate
zone in the middle
basin. The difference between the two indices is also seen in the
interannual variability and
extreme dry/wet events. The magnitude of variability in the middle basin
is close to that in
the lower basin for AI, but different for ESI. AI had a larger magnitude of the
relative interannual
variability and a greater decreasing rate from 1980 to 2010 than ESI, suggesting the
role of local
hydrological processes in moderating extreme climate events. Thus, the
hydrological aridity
index is better than the meteorological aridity index for climate
classification in the arid Heihe
River Basin.


Many real-world applications are complex, dynamic, and uncertain. Human operators play an important role in ensuring the safety and in achieving operational effectiveness in such systems. Humans work with computerized processes in monitoring the system state and are often involved in re-planning, troubleshooting, and supervisory control tasks. During task performance, both humans and computerized processes bring in varying strengths and limitations. Research on human-centered automation in aviation, satellite ground control, and nuclear power plant control has resulted in broad guidelines on system design involving human and computerized processes in supervisory control. However, problems such as increased human error, lack of situational awareness, and opacity from poorly automated systems remain, particularly in scenarios where human operators must make decisions in time-pressured planning. While anecdotal evidence does exist that interactive systems are better than completely manual or completely automated systems, there is a lack of systematic studies of human-centered modeling in joint cognitive systems.
This research addresses the issue of joint cognitive problem solving for a class of problems related to supervisory control of vehicle routing. The key research question addressed by this study is whether a human integrated approach helps in better generation of alternatives and better evaluation of alternatives that would potentially lead to better solutions to problems. This research aims to develop a systematic approach to couple humans and machines to include effective task partitioning. The hypotheses related to the research questions are empirically evaluated, using human subjects, in prototypical realistic scenarios.
Empirical results from a simulated military mission indicate that the human integrated approach resulted in better overall performance when compared to purely automated solutions for vehicle routing problems considered in this research study. Specifically, significantly more high priority targets were covered in the human integrated approach compared to the automated solution without any significant degradation with respect to all the other dependent measures including percentage of total targets covered, low priority targets covered, total targets covered in threat zone, high priority targets covered in threat zone, and low priority targets covered in threat zone. Results also indicated that the graphical representation of the alternatives leads to quicker evaluation time than tabular representation.
One of the primary contributions of this research is a framework to demonstrate the rationale of using joint cognitive systems in time-pressured decision making. Some of the other contributions include a methodology for the evaluation of alternatives in a cognitively effective manner, and a baseline to compare results of future studies in interactive modeling.


Governments are adopting various measures to address cybersecurity-related concerns. Some of these measures restrict cross-border flows of digital services/data, and thus inconsistent with obligations in trade agreements such as General Agreement on Trade in Services ('GATS'). However, certain governments might argue that such measures are justified under the GATS security exception (Art. XIVbis) as they protect national security. This article investigates whether GATS Art. XIVbis is relevant in justifying cybersecurity measures and its potential impact on cybersecurity governance. It argues that GATS Art. XIVbis has limited relevance, and is potentially problematic, when used in justifying majority of cybersecurity measures. First, a large majority of cybersecurity measures do not fall within the limited set of exceptional circumstances listed in GATS Art. XIVbis. Further, in applying this exception to cybersecurity measures, WTO Panels will be unfairly forced to balance trade and security interests in an environment of political, technological and policy uncertainty. Given these practical limitations and the normative boundaries of GATS Art. XIVbis, countries must avoid casually relying upon security exceptions as a basis for adopting/implementing unilateral measures on cybersecurity, but rather engage in meaningful cyber-diplomacy and regulatory cooperation mechanisms to resolve their differences on cybersecurity governance.
cybersecurity, GATS, WTO law, security exception, digital trade, internet governance,national security, cyberspace


Introduction Jejunal adenomas (JA) are exceedingly rare lesions with potential for malignant transformation and resultant poor prognosis. Management is usually surgical. Double balloon enteroscopy (DBE) allows minimally invasive diagnosis and curative management. This case highlights the usefulness of DBE facilitated widefield endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR) of a large sessile JA presenting with intermittent subacute small bowel obstruction caused by intussusception. Method A 46 year old woman with a 4 year history of intermittent cramping abdominal pain underwent a CT enterography demonstrating a 10 cm jejunal intussusception (15 cm distal to the ligament of Treitz) with a suspicious leadpoint at the intussusceptum (Figures1,2).At diagnostic anterograde DBE (under conscious sedation), a large (6 cm) sessile jejunal polyp was identified as the culprit lesion (Figure 3)ć it's location was marked by a submucosal tattoo of sterile India ink and histopathology of biopsies confirmed this to be a JA with low grade dysplasia (LGD). Results At a second preplanned therapeutic anterograde DBE, performed under general anaesthesia, the intussusception was reduced using the doubleballoon technique and the JA was successfully resected by widefield EMR without complications (Figures 4,5). Histopathology of the resected JA only showed LGD and confirmed complete resection. A 3rd followup anterograde DBE performed two months later did not reveal any evidence of recurrence. Abstract PTU-134 Figure 1 Conclusion Our report describes the definitive role of DBE as a minimally invasive approach for the diagnosis, curative management and follow up of a very rare and premalignant cause of jejunal intussusception. Disclosure of Interest None Declared


Obesity is associated with risk factors for cardiovascular disease, including insulin resistance, and can lead to cardiac hypertrophy and congestive heart failure. Here, we used the insulin-sensitizing agent rosiglitazone to investigate the cellular mechanisms linking insulin resistance in the obese Zucker rat heart with increased susceptibility to ischemic injury. Rats were treated for 7 or 14 days with 3 mg/kg per os rosiglitazone. Hearts were isolated and perfused before and during insulin stimulation or during 32 min low-flow ischemia at 0.3 ml small middle dot min(-1) small middle dot grams wet wt(-1) and reperfusion. D[2-(3)H]glucose was used as a tracer of glucose uptake, and phosphorus-31 nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy was used to follow energetics during ischemia. At 12 months of age, obese rat hearts were insulin resistant with decreased GLUT4 protein expression. During ischemia, glucose uptake was lower and depletion of ATP was greater in obese rat hearts, thereby significantly impairing recovery of contractile function during reperfusion. Rosiglitazone treatment normalized the insulin resistance and restored GLUT4 protein levels in obese rat hearts. Glucose uptake during ischemia was also normalized by rosiglitazone treatment, thereby preventing the greater loss of ATP and restoring recovery of contractile function to that of lean rat hearts. We conclude that rosiglitazone treatment, by normalizing glucose uptake, protected obese rat hearts from ischemic injury.


End-to-end models for raw audio generation are a challenge, specially if they have to work with non-parallel data, which is a desirable setup in many situations. Voice conversion, in which a model has to impersonate a speaker in a recording, is one of those situations. In this paper, we propose Blow, a single-scale normalizing flow using hypernetwork conditioning to perform many-to-many voice conversion between raw audio. Blow is trained end-to-end, with non-parallel data, on a frame-by-frame basis using a single speaker identifier. We show that Blow compares favorably to existing flow-based architectures and other competitive baselines, obtaining equal or better performance in both objective and subjective evaluations. We further assess the impact of its main components with an ablation study, and quantify a number of properties such as the necessary amount of training data or the preference for source or target speakers.


The incorrect alignments are a severe problem in variant calling, and remain as a challenge computational issue in Bioinformatics field. Although there have been some methods utilizing the re-alignment approach to tackle the misalignments, a standalone re-alignment tool for long sequencing reads is lacking. Hence, we present a standalone tool to correct the misalignments, called ProbAlign. It can be integrated into the pipelines of not only variant calling but also other genomic applications. We demonstrate the use of re-alignment in two diverse and important genomics fields: variant calling and viral quasispecies reconstruction. First, variant calling results in the Pacific Biosciences SMRT re-sequencing data of NA12878 show that false positives can be reduced by 43.5%, and true positives can be increased by 24.8% averagely, after re-alignment. Second, results in reconstructing a 5-virus-mix show that the viral population can be completely unraveled, and also the estimation of quasispecies frequencies has been improved, after re-alignment. ProbAlign is freely available in the PyroTools toolkit (https://github.com/homopolymer/PyroTools).


Abstract Analyses of limb joint morphology in nonmammalian therapsid "mammal-like reptiles" have suggested that among many lineages, individual animals were capable of shifting between sprawling and upright hindlimb postures, much like modern crocodilians. The ability to use multiple limb postures thus might have been ancestral to the generally more upright posture that evolved during the transition from "mammal-like reptiles" to mammals. Here I derive a biomechanical model to test this hypothesis through calculations of expected posture-related changes in femoral stress for therapsid taxa using different limb postures. The model incorporates morphological data from fossil specimens and experimental data from force platform experiments on iguanas and alligators. Experimental data suggest that the evolutionary transition from sprawling to nonsprawling posture was accompanied by a change in the predominant loading regime of the limb bones, from torsion to bending. Changes in the cross-sectional morphology of the hindlimb bones between sphenacodontid "pelycosaurs" and gorgonopsid therapsids are consistent with the hypothesis that bending loads increased in importance early in therapsid evolution; thus, bending stresses are an appropriate model for the maximal loads experienced by the limb bones of theriodont therapsids. Results from the model used to estimate stresses in these taxa do not refute the use of both sprawling and more upright stance among basal theriodont therapsids. Thus, the hypothesis that the use of multiple postures was ancestral to the more upright posture typical of most mammals is biomechanically plausible. Model calculations also indicate that the axial rotation of the femur typical in sprawling locomotion can reduce peak bending stresses. Therefore, as experimental data from alligators and iguanas suggest, the evolution of nonsprawling limb posture and kinematics in therapsids might have been accompanied by increased limb bone bending stress.


At the Southern Medical University in China, 600 medical students study macroscopic anatomy (briefly, anatomy), whereas at Ajou University in Korea, only 50 medical students study anatomy. Because of the significant difference in student n umbers, the educational situations are quite dissimilar. The purpose of this study was to suggest desirable anatomy education in the la rge and small classes. For that purpose, the teaching of anatomy in the participating Chinese and Korean universities was compared. Sub sequently, best practices and recommendations for the large and small classes were gathered from questionnaire surveys from the medical st udents (30 Chineses and 48 Koreans) and anatomists (12 Chinese and 2 Korean). Best practices noted were encouraging one another, while each group's recommendations were instructive to its counterpart. Considering these findings can help to guide the progress of stude nt ' learning and the corresponding anatomists' activity. This report provides useful information to other anatomists who instruct l arge or small numbers of students.