During the last few decades an unprecedented technological growth has been at the center of the embedded systems design paramount, with Moore's Law being the leading factor of this trend. Today in fact an ever increasing number of cores can be integrated on the same die, marking the transition from state-of-the-art multi-core chips to the new many-core design paradigm. Despite the extraordinarily high computing power, the complexity of many-core chips opens the door to several challenges. As a result of the increased silicon density of modern Systems-on-a-Chip (SoC), the design space exploration needed to find the best design has exploded and hardware designers are in fact facing the problem of a huge design space. Virtual Platforms have always been used to enable hardware-software co-design, but today they are facing with the huge complexity of both hardware and software systems. In this thesis two different research works on Virtual Platforms are presented: the first one is intended for the hardware developer, to easily allow complex cycle accurate simulations of many-core SoCs. The second work exploits the parallel computing power of off-the-shelf General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs), with the goal of an increased simulation speed. The term Virtualization can be used in the context of many-core systems not only to refer to the aforementioned hardware emulation tools (Virtual Platforms), but also for two other main purposes: 1) to help the programmer to achieve the maximum possible performance of an application, by hiding the complexity of the underlying hardware. 2) to efficiently exploit the high parallel hardware of many-core chips in environments with multiple active Virtual Machines. This thesis is focused on virtualization techniques with the goal to mitigate, and overtake when possible, some of the challenges introduced by the many-core design paradigm.


In corporate law scholarship, two basic models have long competed: managerialism and shareholder primacy. Managerialist theories treat the corporation as a bureaucratic hierarchy dominated by professional managers. Shareholder primacy theory formerly argued that shareholders own the corporation and, accordingly, directors and officers are mere stewards of the shareholders' interests. A more recent variant, which arguably is the dominant model in today's scholarship, rejects the idea of ownership as irrelevant to the firm as a nexus of contracts. Yet, shareholders retain a privileged position among the corporation's constituencies, because their contract with the firm has ownership-like features, including the right to vote and the fiduciary obligations of directors and officers. The chief criteria for any model of the corporation must be the model's ability to predict the separation of ownership and control, the institutional governance structures following from their separation, and the legal rules responsive to their separation. Shareholders, who are said to own the firm, have virtually no power to control either its day-to-day operation or its long-term policies. Instead, the firm is controlled by its board of directors and subordinate managers, whose equity stake is often small. On close examination, neither managerialism nor shareholder primacy adequately explains the corporate governance features that follow from the separation of ownership and control. This article develops an alternative model-director primacy. In this model, the corporation is a vehicle by which the board of directors hires various factors of production. Hence, the board of directors is not a mere agent of the shareholders, but rather is a sui generis body - a sort of Platonic guardian - serving as the nexus for the various contracts making up the corporation. The board's powers flow from that set of contracts in its totality and not just from shareholders. In developing this analysis, the Article uses as its principal foil the so-called "connected contracts" model recently put forward by UCLA law professors Gulati, Klein, and Zolt.


Remote sensing classification has the potential to provide important information, such as tree species distribution maps, to ecologists, at a range of spatial and temporal scales. However, standard classification procedures often fail to provide the high accuracies required for many ecological applications. Previously, a modified remote sensing classification technique was used to provide very high classification accuracies for one or two classes (e.g. species) of interest. The aim of this paper was to demonstrate that the output from the method can be suitable for spatial ecological analyses, and to provide a generic simulation framework for assessing the adequacy of any given remote sensing classification for such analyses. Marked point pattern analysis (MPPA) was applied to tree species distribution data obtained for sycamore Acer pseudoplatanus and ash Fraxinus excelsior from a 400 ha ancient semi-natural woodland in southern England using the modified remote sensing classification method to test several hypotheses of ecological interest relating to the spatial distribution and interaction of these species. Monte Carlo simulation methods were then used to evaluate the data and data quality requirements of the MPPA to check that the classified tree species maps for sycamore and ash were adequate. Using the combined method the spatial distributions for sycamore and ash were found to be aggregated and inter-dependent at a range of spatial scales. Together, the remote sensing classification and simulation approaches provide the basis for exploiting more fully the potential of remote sensing to provide information of value to ecologists.


Diagnosis and treatment of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) is important to reduce risk of progression to active tuberculosis (TB) disease. For the past century the tuberculin skin test (TST) has been used as a measure of exposure to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), but this test has limitations in test performance, sensitivity and specificity. Interferon γ release assays (IGRA), like TST, measure host immune response to MTB. IGRA are designed to be more specific for the diagnosis of LTBI than TST in patients with previous BCG or exposure to non-tuberculous mycobacteria, detecting interferon γ generated by T cells in response to antigens more specific to MTB. Although developed as an alternative to TST, recent data, particularly in children, suggest IGRA have their own limitations. Superiority to TST as a diagnostic test in children has not been demonstrated. Neither test discriminates between current or past MTB infection, or between latent infection and active disease. This article reviews the current literature on sensitivity and specificity of IGRA in the diagnosis of LTBI, and summarises current NICE recommendations for the use of IGRA in combination with TST. Although not developed for this purpose, in clinical practice IGRA have also been used as a diagnostic test for active TB. The gold standard for diagnosis of active TB disease is microbiological confirmation by culture of MTB. This article discusses the utility of IGRA as an adjunct to diagnosis of active TB disease, but emphasises that IGRA do not have sufficient sensitivity or specificity to exclude or confirm active TB disease.


Anger and resentment appear to be playing an increasingly important role in politics, as evidenced by the vociferous opposition to welfare, abortion, and immigrants, and by the rise of the radical Religious Right. The Politics of Denial presents a compelling explanation of these phenomena, providing solid empirical evidence for the role of rigid, harsh childrearing practices in the creation of punitive, authoritarian adult political attitudes. The authors show how political processes in the United States are distorted by the unresolved negative emotions (such as fear, anger, and helplessness) that remain from punitive parenting, and by the politicians and conservative religious leaders who exploit those emotions. Among the many public figures discussed are Patrick Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, and Billy Graham.


Large-scale monitoring endeavours generate a suite of informatics challenges ranging from data acquisition and handling to analysis and synthesis. In this complex space, there is a need to ensure meaningful communication between both human and machine agents which must be addressed early on in the design of a monitoring system in order to ensure accuracy and efficiency. Ontology offers a means to address this need and provide semantic clarity in service of a wide range of stakeholders.


Abstract We analyse the effects of predation in a vertical differentiation model, where the high-quality incumbent is able to price discriminate while the low-quality entrant sets a uniform price. The incumbent may act as a predator, that is, it may price below its marginal costs on a subset of consumers to induce the rival's exit. We show that the entrant may adopt an aggressive attitude to make predation unprofitable for the incumbent. In this case predation does not occur and the equilibrium prices are lower than the equilibrium prices which would emerge in a contest of explicitly forbidden predation. Moreover, we show that when the incumbent may choose whether to price discriminate or not before the game starts, if the quality cost function is sufficiently convex, there always exists a parameter space on which the incumbent prefers to commit not to price discriminate.


"Presents the cream of Nye's funny creations from his seven Wyoming years, 1876-1883. The eighty-three short selections are from Laramie, Cheyenne, and Denver newspapers, and from six of Nye's books, which were compiled from previous newspaper columns. The columns give insight to the color, politics, Indian questions, agriculture, and human nature of the times."--Arizona and the West. Takes an important place among the volumes of western humor now in print."--Western American Literature. "Nye's technique is precisely the same as Ring Lardner's or Irving Cobb's or today's Art Buchwald's--the clear brief statement of a situation in the opening paragraph and then the outrageous, dead-pan utterly unexpected process of poking wry fun at it...We could certainly use Bill Nye these days."--Marshall Sprague, Colorado Magazine. "Nye's clever use of words and tone will appeal to students who enjoy all sorts of humor and to those who wish to understand the flavor of a historical era through its writings. The editor's helpful introduction and selective bibliography and the inclusion of original illustrations ...Make this an attractive book, especially for students of western cultural history." --Richard W. Etulain, Pacific Northwest Quarterly. T. A. Larson is head of the Department of History and director of the School of American Studies at the University of Wyoming. His History of Wyoming is also published by the University of Nebraska Press.


Resonant field enhancement by groups of 16 nm thin gold nanostrip antennas consisting of four strips (widths of 70, 100, and 130 nm) and fixed gap (50, 100, 150, or 200 nm) between them and positioned on a quartz substrate is investigated by reflection spectroscopy and two-photon photoluminescence scanning optical microscopy. We obtain good agreement with theoretical calculated reflection spectra and the investigated two-photon intensity dependence on the nanoantenna configurations and parameters of the illumination showed field enhancements increasing with increasing gaps in each group for the p-polarized (resonant) excitation, whereas these enhancement effects were not observed for the s-polarization (nonresonant) excitation.


This policy contribution was prepared for the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament (ECON) as an input for the Monetary Dialogue of 20 November 2017 between ECON and the President of the ECB. Copyright remains with the European Parliament at all times As the global financial crisis unfolded, the European Central Bank (ECB) and other central banks greatly extended their monetary policy toolboxes and adjusted their operational frameworks. These unconventional monetary policies have left central banks with large balance sheets. As growth picks up in the euro area, there are discussions about how to normalise monetary policy, but it is unclear if normalisation means returning to monetary policy as it was prior to the crisis, or whether there is a 'new normal' that would justify different monetary policies. The debate on the optimal size of the central bank's balance sheet has not yet been settled. We discuss the benefits and drawbacks of central banks having permanently large balance sheets. It might be difficult to reduce them quickly without negatively affecting financial markets. In order to avoid market volatility, this process needs to be done gradually and preferably passively, by holding to maturity assets purchased during the crisis. The interest rate – the central banks' main conventional tool – might stay at a much lower level than historical standards and closer to the zero-lower bound because of a fall in the neutral rate, implying that in the future monetary policy would have to rely more on balance sheet policies and less on interest rate cuts to provide accommodation during recessions. The combination of these two issues implies that the normalisation of monetary policy will be very slow and entail a long period with a large balance sheet. In the meantime, the ECB will not be able to go back to its pre-crisis operational framework. In terms of the sequencing of the normalisation process, the experience of the US Federal Reserve, which was one of the first central banks to use unconventional tools during the crisis, could provide useful pointers to the ECB. Following the Fed's example would involve tapering (ie gradually reducing asset purchases), then increasing key policy rates slowly before reducing passively the size of the balance sheet. The Fed's experience shows that the normalisation process needs to be communicated early in order to reduce uncertainty for market participants and avoid any disruption of financial markets. So far, the ECB has been quite successful in smoothly scaling back its asset purchases, but it has not yet provided a clear vision of what its monetary policy or operational framework will look like at the end of the normalisation process.


This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the psychiatry and neuroscience of Cannabis sativa (marijuana), with particular emphasis on psychotic disorders. It outlines the very latest developments in our understanding of the human cannabinoid system, and links this knowledge to clinical and epidemiological facts about the impact of cannabis on mental health. Clinically focused chapters review not only the direct psychomimetic properties of cannabis, but also the impact consumption has on the courses of evolving or established mental illness such as schizophrenia. A number of controversial issues are critically explored, including whether a discrete 'cannabis psychosis' exists, and whether cannabis can actually cause schizophrenia. Effects of cannabis on mood, notably depression, are reviewed, as are its effects on cognition. This bookwill be of interest to all members of the mental health team, aswell as to neuroscientists and those involved in drug and alcohol research.


Background: Some members of the genus Hypericum have been shown to demonstrate antidepressant-like effects. In Colombia, approximately 54 species of Hypericum have been reported, and only a few have been investigated chemical and pharmacologically. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the antidepressant-like effects of a methanol extract, as well as ethyl acetate and butanol fractions, obtained from aerial parts of Hypericum juniperinum K. Materials and Methods: Behavioral and locomotor activities were evaluated in the open field test (OFT). Antidepressant-like activity was measured in the forced swimming test (FST) in male Swiss albino mice. Preliminary phytochemical screening as well as a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) profile of the active fractions of H. juniperinum was performed. Results: Treatment with the methanol extract at 500 mg/kg and the ethyl acetate and butanol fractions at 150 and 300 mg/kg resulted in a decrease in the immobility times in FST. In the OFT, none of the treatments presented altered behavior or locomotor activity of mice. Preliminary phytochemical screening identified terpenes/steroids, flavonoids, phenol derivatives, tannins, and saponins. In the HPLC analysis of the fractions, rutin, quercitrin, and quercetin were identified with the help of coinjection of standards. Conclusion: This is the first report of the antidepressant-like activity of extracts and fractions obtained from H. juniperinum in the FST model of depression. Flavonoids may be responsible for the antidepressant-like action of H. juniperinum. Abbreviations used: FST: Forced swimming test; HJE: Methanol extract of Hypericum juniperinum; HJEAF: Ethyl acetate fraction obtained from the methanol extract of Hypericum juniperinum; HJEBF: Butanol fraction obtained from the methanol extract of Hypericum juniperinum; HPE: Methanol extract of Hypericum perforatum; HPLC: High-performance liquid chromatography; IMI: Imipramine; MeOH: Methanol; OFT: Open field test; tR: Retention time; UV: Ultra violet; VEH: Vehicle.


For applications of porous materials where mean pressure drop is a concern, packaging the material into a corrugated structure is better compared to other geometries such as block or wedge shapes. The goal of this study is to integrate noise reduction functionality within that material, which requires an understanding of the sound propagation through corrugated porous structures, including flow effects. The corrugated porous structure involves porous partitions separating inlet and outlet fluid channels. The porous materials considered are periodic octet-truss and body-centered cubic unit cells, and sound propagation across these porous partitions is modeled using the Johnson-Champoux-Allard model. The predicted transmission loss (TL) is benchmarked using designed additively manufactured corrugated structures measured using a flow duct. The laminar flow regime is maintained across the porous structure to reduce flow-noise effects. It is shown that the TL for a given corrugated structure increases with a decrease in porosity, and the impact of flow becomes significant as the porosity decreases. The influence of flow on TL also depends on the unit cell configuration. Furthermore, the model provides insights on pressure and acoustic particle velocity distributions within the corrugated structure and reveals regions of the porous material that effectively participate in noise reduction.


Transportation of sweet cherry fruits to distant markets and further marketing processes often takes approximately 2-3 weeks. The present study investigates the quality changes during this time period at three stages for three sweet cherry cultivars: 'Early Burlat', 'Napoleon', and '0900 Ziraat'. Following pre-cooling, the sweet cherries were placed in modified atmosphere packages and exposed to the following stages for the indicated durations: transportation (T) [8 days at 2 °C and 85% relative humidity (RH)]; distribution center (DC) (4 days at 6.5 °C and 80% RH), and shelf-life (SL) (2 days at 19 °C and 70% RH). Weight losses at the end of the SL stage were 3.11, 3.18, and 2.74%, respectively in 'Early Burlat', 'Napoleon' and '0900 Ziraat'.Fruit firmness decreased after SL as compared to that at other stages and was more remarkable in '0900 Ziraat'. Decreased Chroma values which indicates, the intensity or color saturation were observed in all cultivars, whereas decreased hue angle values colours expressed in degrees were observed in the 'Early Burlat' and '0900 Ziraat'. In addition, a decrease was noted in the titratable acidity of all cultivars at the end of SL. The total soluble solids, total phenolic content, and antioxidant activities were similar for all cultivars at all stages. The visual appearance scores of 'Early Burlat' cherries decreased at the end of SL, because of development of pitting on the fruit surface. The fruit quality changes were limited at T and DC stages; however, these changes became more distinctive during the SL period. It was thus concluded that the SL duration and conditions were of the highest significance with regard to maintenance of the sweet cherry fruit quality.


We introduce and study the group square-root lasso (GSRL) method for estimation in high dimensional sparse regression models with group structure. The new estimator minimizes the square root of the residual sum of squares plus a penalty term proportional to the sum of the Euclidean norms of groups of the regression parameter vector. The net advantage of the method over the existing group lasso-type procedures consists in the form of the proportionality factor used in the penalty term, which for GSRL is independent of the variance of the error terms. This is of crucial importance in models with more parameters than the sample size, when estimating the variance of the noise becomes as difficult as the original problem. We show that the GSRL estimator adapts to the unknown sparsity of the regression vector, and has the same optimal estimation and prediction accuracy as the GL estimators, under the same minimal conditions on the model. This extends the results recently established for the square-root lasso, for sparse regression without group structure. Moreover, as a new type of result for square-root lasso methods, with or without groups, we study correct pattern recovery, and show that it can be achieved under conditions similar to those needed by the lasso or group-lasso-type methods, but with a simplified tuning strategy. We implement our method via a new algorithm, with proved convergence properties, which, unlike existing methods, scales well with the dimension of the problem. Our simulation studies support strongly our theoretical findings.


The empirical developments made by Phillips are at the origin of theoretical orientations highlighting the capacity utilization rate in relation to inflation. It is in this innovative framework that our research whose focus seems to be varied but we tried to concentrate on the comparison between inflation-unemployment relationships through the NAIRU on the one hand, and the inflation-capacity utilization relationship through the NAIRCU on the other hand. Therefore, the degree of asymmetry between NAIRU and NAIRCU becomes particularly important when the economy operates at an unemployment rate far away from the NAIRU or a capacity utilization rate much higher than the NAIRCU.


In general, recommendation can be viewed as a matching problem, i.e., match proper items for proper users. However, due to the huge semantic gap between users and items, it's almost impossible to directly match users and items in their initial representation spaces. To solve this problem, many methods have been studied, which can be generally categorized into two types, i.e., representation learning-based CF methods and matching function learning-based CF methods. Representation learning-based CF methods try to map users and items into a common representation space. In this case, the higher similarity between a user and an item in that space implies they match better. Matching function learning-based CF methods try to directly learn the complex matching function that maps user-item pairs to matching scores. Although both methods are well developed, they suffer from two fundamental flaws, i.e., the limited expressiveness of dot product and the weakness in capturing low-rank relations respectively. To this end, we propose a general framework named DeepCF, short for Deep Collaborative Filtering, to combine the strengths of the two types of methods and overcome such flaws. Extensive experiments on four publicly available datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DeepCF framework.


One method of discriminating between the many Type Ia progenitor scenarios is by searching for contaminating hydrogen and helium stripped from the companion star. However, this requires an understanding of the effect of the impact of the supernova shell on different companion stars to predict the amount of mass stripped and its distribution in velocity and solid angle for the types of binary scenarios that have been proposed as Type Ia progenitor models. We present several high-resolution two-dimensional numerical simulations of the impact of a Type Ia supernova explosion with hydrogen-rich main-sequence, subgiant, and red giant companions. The binary parameters were chosen to represent several classes of single-degenerate Type Ia progenitor models that have been suggested in the literature. We use realistic stellar models and supernova debris profiles to represent each binary system. For each scenario, we explore the hydrodynamics of the supernova-secondary interaction, calculate the amount of stellar material stripped from the secondary and the kick delivered by the impact, and construct the velocity and solid angle distributions of the stripped material. We find that the main-sequence and subgiant companions lose 0.15-0.17 M⊙ as a result of the impact of the supernova shell, 15% of their mass. The red giant companions lose 0.53-0.54 M⊙, 96%-98% of their envelopes. The characteristic velocity of the stripped hydrogen is less than 103 km s-1 for all the scenarios: 420-590 km s-1 for the red giant companions, 820 km s-1 for the main-sequence companion, and 890 km s-1 for the subgiant companion. The stripped hydrogen and helium contaminate a wide solid angle behind the companion: 115° from the downstream axis for the red giant, 66° for the main-sequence star, and 72° for the subgiant. With such low velocities, the bulk of the stripped hydrogen and helium is embedded within the low-velocity iron of the supernova ejecta. The hydrogen and helium may be visible in the late-time spectra as narrow emission lines. Although most of the stripped material is ejected at low velocities, all the numerical simulations yield a small high-velocity tail. The main-sequence, subgiant, and red giant companions are just under the upper limit determined by Della Valle et al. in 1996 from observations of SN 1990M taken near maximum light. The main-sequence companion receives a kick of 86 km s-1, and the subgiant receives a kick of 49 km s-1. In all cases, the kick to the remnant is smaller than the original orbital velocity. Because it is too small to intercept more than a negligible amount of momentum, the red giant core will not receive an appreciable kick. The impact of the supernova ejecta with the secondary star creates a hole in the supernova debris with an angular size of ∼30° in the high-velocity ejecta and with an angular size of ∼40° in the low-velocity ejecta. This corresponds to 7%-12% of the ejecta's surface. Because we explore binary scenarios that are close enough, or almost close enough, to be in Roche lobe overflow, the degree of asymmetry is similar for all the models. The asymmetry in the supernova debris could have observational consequences beyond the change in morphology of the supernova remnant. The asymmetry in the supernova atmosphere will result in distorted P Cygni profiles that might indicate the presence of the companion star, but it will be difficult to use the degree of asymmetry alone to discriminate between a main-sequence, subgiant, or red giant companion. The impact of the supernova shell will have consequences for the future evolution of the secondary star. After the impact, the main-sequence star is puffed up, much like a pre-main-sequence star. The luminosity will rise dramatically, to as high as ∼5000 L⊙, as the extended envelope relaxes back into thermal equilibrium. The subgiant companion will follow a similar sequence of events. The star will not be contaminated by much supernova debris from the initial impact, but it may accrete low-velocity iron-group elements (or oxygen and silicon if the ejecta is radially mixed) at late times. A He pre-white dwarf will be left behind after a supernova explosion with a red giant companion. Almost all of the envelope will be ejected by the impact, but a residual amount of material (∼0.02 M⊙) will form an extended, hydrogen-rich envelope around the degenerate core. The star will evolve away from the red giant branch on a timescale of 105-106 yr. On its post-red giant track, it may appear as an underluminous O or B star before passing through an sdO or sdB phase on its way to a standard He white dwarf cooling track. This binary scenario could be a possible pathway for the formation of a subset of single, low-mass He white dwarfs.


The book presents a collection of chapters dealing with a wide selection of topics concerning different applications of modeling. It includes modeling, simulation and optimization applications in the areas of medical care systems, genetics, business, ethics and linguistics, applying very sophisticated methods. Algorithms, 3-D modeling, virtual reality, multi objective optimization, finite element methods, multi agent model simulation, system dynamics simulation, hierarchical Petri Net model and two level formalism modeling are tools and methods employed in these papers.


Although the total volume of aggregate used for filters is relatively small, filters nevertheless play important and diverse roles in many projects. Table 13.1 shows some of the main uses of filter aggregates and the first four parts of this chapter discuss some of the requirements and properties of these materials. The final three parts of the chapter describe the functions and specification of filter aggregates in their three main applications, namely water filtration, effluent treatment and as drainage filters for earthworks and other civil engineering structures. These will normally be subject to different design criteria and may also call for filter materials with distinct sets of physical and mechanical properties. Filter aggregates generally consist of sand, gravel or crushed rock. Manufactured aggregates are also occasionally used and these often include blastfurnace slags. Although filter materials for water and effluent treatment works are often used in relatively small quantities, the high quality of aggregate normally required is not always readily available from commercial production processing, which may be designed to yield a satisfactory general purpose aggregate at least cost. On the other hand, drainage layers in major civil engineering works, such as embankment dams, are usually designed to make the best use of the available natural materials with the minimum of processing.


Nest-site selection in ectothermic animals influences hatching success and offspring phenotype, and it is predicted that females should choose nesting sites that maximise their reproductive fitness, ultimately through the reproductive success of their offspring. We completed nest-site choice experiments on a nocturnal lizard, the egg-laying skink ( Oligosoma suteri ), to determine whether eggs (and subsequent hatchlings) from cooler nests do better at cooler incubation temperatures, and conversely if those laid in warmer nests perform better at warmer incubation temperatures. We provided a simple nest-choice experiment, with oviposition-retreat sites available in either a hot or a cool sector of the enclosure; in the wild females nest under objects. Female O. suteri laid eggs both during the day and night, and nested more in the hot than cool sector. Eggs from each clutch were split across three egg incubation temperatures (18°C, 22°C, 26°C) to decouple the impact of initial nest-site choice from the subsequent incubation temperature regime. Whether eggs were initially laid in the hot or cool sector was not related to hatching success, offspring phenotype or offspring locomotor performance. We conclude that offspring phenotype and performance is primarily influenced by the temperature during incubation, rather than the initial thermal environment of the nest location. Thus, female O. suteri may select warmer nesting sites to ensure higher incubation temperature and enhanced offspring fitness.


As a nation that values and guarantees religious freedom, the United States is often faced with questions regarding the public display of religious symbols. Such questions have arisen in a number of Supreme Court cases, involving both Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause issues. Since 1984, the Court has considered the constitutionality of the display of religious symbols such as a creche, a menorah, and a cross in public areas. The Court has also considered the constitutionality of Air Force regulations that prohibited a clinical psychologist from wearing a yarmulke. Parallel to the Supreme Court cases, a number of federal and state courts have been faced with cases involving the display of religious symbols in the courtroom. These cases also include Establishment Clause issues, relating to a court's display of symbols such as the Ten Commandments, as well as Free Exercise Clause issues, involving the rights of parties, witnesses, and attorneys to dress in religious garb in the courtroom. At the same time, these courts have often considered the potential for juror prejudice that may result from the display of religious symbols in the courtroom. Levine surveys and analyzes the decisions courts have reached in addressing these issues. Part I of the Article discusses the rights of parties to wear religious garb in the courtroom. Despite some notable exceptions, most courts have protected this right, finding that it would not unduly interfere with courtroom decorum or improperly prejudice a jury. Part II observes that, in contrast, courts have not been as willing to protect the rights of witnesses and attorneys to dress in religious garb in the courtroom. Part III discusses the display of religious symbols in courtrooms, and the different approaches courts have employed in considering this issue, in light of Establishment Clause questions as well as potential juror prejudice. This Article concludes with the hope that courts will have the wisdom to issue judgments that carefully balance the competing interests in a way that protects both the value of religious freedom and the values of fairness and equality.


The traditional division of Southeast Asian legal systems into anglophone common law jurisdictions and non-anglophone civil law systems has lost some of its validity in recent decades. On the one hand, postcolonial language planning has brought a much greater role for local languages in several common law systems. On the other hand, English is becoming an important part of legal drafting and professional training in several civil law systems as the influence of economic globalisation and cross-border legislation increases. Using evidence from courtroom observations and interviews with lawyers, this article considers the extent to which English is becoming an instrument of legal harmonisation around the region and how attitudes to the language reflect tensions between convergent legal practices and divergent legal cultures.


Bayesian filtering of stochastic stimuli has received a great deal of attention recently. It has been applied to describe the way in which biological systems dynamically represent and make decisions about the environment. There have been no exact results for the error in the biologically plausible setting of inference on point process, however. We present an exact analysis of the evolution of the mean-squared error in a state estimation task using Gaussian-tuned point processes as sensors. This allows us to study the dynamics of the error of an optimal Bayesian decoder, providing insights into the limits obtainable in this task. This is done for Markovian and a class of non-Markovian Gaussian processes. We find that there is an optimal tuning width for which the error is minimized. This leads to a characterization of the optimal encoding for the setting as a function of the statistics of the stimulus, providing a mathematically sound primer for an ecological theory of sensory processing.


The author's laboratory has many joint projects on analysis and visualization of temporal daily life data, such as transactions of credit cards, Web access logs, walking paths at public spaces, and measurements for building management (including population, temperature, and electric power). We often discover interesting behavior from such visualization results, and feel several results demonstrate Japanese specific behavior and mentality. This talk introduces some of our visual analytics results which denote such Japanese specific behavior and mentality. Due to the space limitation, this manuscript just introduces two of the examples, though the talk may introduce more examples.


This paper focuses on the development of national identity and the formation of political organizations in the Turkish minority in the early years of the formation of the Bulgarian state from 1878 to the 1940s. It studies transnational aspects of nationalism, which is usually considered territorially bounded, by studying the impact of connections between the Turkish minority and the Ottoman Empire and later with Turkey. In addition to studying inter-state relations and their reflection in the legal and political sphere, this paper studies the flow of ideas across borders, transnational networks among political activists, and the resulting cleavage formation. Findings show that transnational connections and actors played dual roles. The circulation of political activists, contributed to the formation of national organizations which played a crucial role in (re)formulating national identity. Transnational connections increased political activity in the name of the Turkish minority. Through these organizations the community was able to make collective demands from the Bulgarian state. However, transnational connections carried debates and divisions in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey to the Turkish minority in Bulgaria. By dividing the community, they decreased the capacity for collective action.


The Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) level-2 (L2) cloud product (earth science data set names MOD06 and MYD06 for Terra and Aqua MODIS, respectively) provides pixel-level retrievals of cloud top properties (day and night pressure, temperature, and height) and cloud optical properties (optical thickness, effective particle radius, and water path for both liquid water and ice cloud thermodynamic phases-daytime only). Collection 6 (C6) reprocessing of the product was completed in May 2014 and March 2015 for MODIS Aqua and Terra, respectively. Here we provide an overview of major C6 optical property algorithm changes relative to the previous Collection 5 (C5) product. Notable C6 optical and microphysical algorithm changes include: 1) new ice cloud optical property models and a more extensive cloud radiative transfer code lookup table (LUT) approach; 2) improvement in the skill of the shortwave-derived cloud thermodynamic phase; 3) separate cloud effective radius retrieval data sets for each spectral combination used in previous collections; 4) separate retrievals for partly cloudy pixels and those associated with cloud edges; 5) failure metrics that provide diagnostic information for pixels having observations that fall outside the LUT solution space; and 6) enhanced pixel-level retrieval uncertainty calculations. The C6 algorithm changes can collectively result in significant changes relative to C5, though the magnitude depends on the data set and the pixel's retrieval location in the cloud parameter space. Example L2 granule and level-3 gridded data set differences between the two collections are shown. While the emphasis is on the suite of cloud optical property data sets, other MODIS cloud data sets are discussed when relevant.


In the United States, renewable portfolio standards ("RPSs") dominate as the renewable energy policy tool of choice. Feed-in tariffs ("FITs"), common in Europe and other parts of the world, thus have come to be seen by many policymakers as a binary alternative -- to promote renewable energy, they assume they must choose either RPSs or FITs, not both. This article challenges that presumption. It outlines how RPSs and FITs can be used in tandem, laying out the ways using these policy tools together may be synergistic. RPSs and FITs have different strengths. RPSs offer greater policy clarity, whereas there is some evidence that FITs are more effective and efficient. RPSs and FITs also target different segments of industry: RPSs utilities, FITs energy producers. Thus, using RPSs and FITs together may produce a number of benefits: (1) a stronger signal of governmental support for renewable energy, (2) a broader scope of applicability, (3) greater policy clarity, (4) better policy planning, (5) greater effectiveness, (6) simpler compliance, and, potentially, (7) lower implementation costs.


Long ago, only the gods had chocolate. Chocolate made them wise and strong. The gods kept the chocolate for themselves and did not share it with the people. But when one generous god decides to bring chocolate to the people, it makes the other gods very angry. Will they take chocolate away from the people?


Plants that reduce water loss by transpiration present less agricultural stress to the environment. Transpiration is limited by the size of pores, or stomata, on the surfaces of leaves. Stomatal aperture is related to the ion concentration in surrounding guard cells, which varies in response to fluctuating concentrations of potassium ions, the principle counter-ion chloride, and the organic counter-ion malate. Levels of malate in guard cells may be altered by increased activity of NADP-Malic Enzyme (NADP-ME) expression. The goal of our research is to create transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana plants with increased NADP-ME expression in the guard cells, limiting transpiration through decreased stomatal aperture size. Such plants are expected to have less open stomata, be sufficient in yield, and retain the ability to respond to changing environmental conditions. Expression of NADP-ME in Arabidopsis thaliana required the isolation of a strong, guard-cell specific promoter. A promoter of a potassium channel gene, KAT1, is strongly expressed in guard cells. Analysis of the Arabidopsis genome was done to locate KAT1. The KAT1 promoter was amplified and isolated through Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). Sequence analysis confirmed isolation of KAT1 with minor mutations. Visualization of KAT1 expression was confirmed through the analysis of transgenic plants with the KAT1 promoter fused to the GUS reporter gene. Significant expression of KAT1 was detected exclusively in guard cells of 9-day-old seedlings. The KAT1 promoter will be inserted into a binary vector and then Agrobacterium to transform Arabidopsis thaliana and create transgenic plants. Expression of KAT1 with NADP-ME in Arabidopsis thaliana should result in lower concentrations of malate in guard cells, decreased aperture size of stomata, and a decrease in transpiration rate during gas exchange. Degree Type Open Access Senior Honors Thesis


This is the draft of a chapter from a forthcoming book related to the conference Sensing Change: Mapping the Climatic Imaginary through Art, Science and History, held at the Chemical Heritage Foundation November 7-9, 2013. The artwork shown in the exhibit Sensing Change is part of a thriving environmental art movement. There is a long history of art influencing environmental attitudes and to some extent behavior. Historically such art has used what photography critic Vicki Goldberg calls the "pastoral eulogy" approach but there is also a more critical approach that emphasizes the environmental damage and risk associated with human behavior. Ecological artist Ruth Wallen says, "Ecological art work can help engender an intuitive appreciation of the environment, address core values, advocate political action, and broaden intellectual understanding." But there is little evidence about whether people change their behavior in response to this sort of art. This chapter uses a contingent choice survey (a kind of choice experiment) to investigate whether exposure to such artwork influences environmental behavior, in particular the purchase of carbon offsets. (Purchasing offsets provides funding for activities that reduce net greenhouse gas emissions.) Contingent choice surveys are often used to analyze respondents' environmental behavior and/or the underlying preferences for environmental goods and resources driving that behavior. In these surveys, respondents choose among a selection of hypothetical or real scenarios comprised of varying levels of different variables. Based on the choices they make, the relative importance of the different variables can be estimated. In the survey upon which this chapter is based, respondents chose from alternative carbon offset purchase options, including the option to buy no offsets. The central questions are as follows: what would make respondents more or less likely to choose to buy no offsets, and did respondents who saw artwork as part of the survey differ systematically from those who didn't? Subsets of respondents in a choice experiment investigating willingness to buy carbon offsets were shown artistic images related to climate change. One subset was shown photographs from The Canary Project (Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris); another subset was shown images from the Wind Map: Poetry in Motion project (Fernanda ViA©gas and Martin Wattenberg); a control group was not shown any artistic images. The survey responses were analyzed to explore whether the artistic images affected respondents' willingness to buy carbon offsets. Another issue investigated was whether the images affect the ways in which the willingness to buy carbon offsets is influenced by other factors. These other factors include the types of mitigation efforts being funded by offsets and also personal characteristics of the respondents such as age, income, and adherence to social norms. The results of the split-sample contingent choice survey indicate that respondents who were shown photographs by the Canary Project that illustrate the impacts of climate change were more likely to purchase carbon offsets than were respondents in a control group. This is even though the respondents viewed the images only briefly: typically for less than a minute. Not all artistic images had this effect, though: respondents who saw animated images from the Wind Map Project that illustrate wind speeds and patterns for extreme weather events were actually less willing to buy offsets than the control group. Results indicate that preferences about buying carbon offsets are very heterogeneous, but in all cases the pattern remains that respondents in the treatment group that saw the Canary Project photos are more likely to buy offsets and respondents in the treatment group that saw the Wind Map Project images are less likely to buy offsets. The heterogeneity was driven largely by variables related to social norms and expectations. But the differences across treatment groups were not driven by differences in individual characteristics. The chapter continues with some thoughts about why the responses to the Canary Project and Wind Map Project art differed. The chapter concludes with some ideas for future survey-based research exploring the impact of art on environmental attitudes and behavior.


In 2003, the Swedish Parliament adopted a national public health policy that included the domain - "A more health-promoting health service". Strategies and tools are needed in the work to reorient health services. Personal health documents are documents concerning a person's health, and are owned by the individual. Several studies that have evaluated such documents indicate that they could be of interest in health-promotion work. However, there is insufficient knowledge concerning personal health documents that target adolescents, and little is known about the feasibility of such documents in a Swedish cultural context. The concept of empowerment is gaining increased interest for health services, but the associations between empowerment, self-rated health and health behaviour are sparsely studied. The overall aim of the thesis is to explore a strategy - empowerment - and a tool - personal health documents - that might facilitate the work of the public health goal of a health-promoting health service. Specific aims are to examine the feasibility of using personal health documents in health promotion; to examine professionals' experiences of working with health promotion and personal health documents; to examine the association between personal health documents and self-reported health behaviour change; and to examine the perception of empowerment in relation to self-rated health and health behaviour among adolescents. Two personal health documents that targeted adults and adolescents were developed and evaluated. Distribution to adults in different settings was compared in a cross-sectional study (n = 1 306). Adolescents received the document in school, and surveys were performed at baseline and after one year (n = 339). Practical use and attitudes by document owners were studied by questionnaires. Teachers (n = 69) answered a questionnaire, and community health nurses were interviewed (n = 12). The interviews also explored nurses' experiences of working with health promotion in general, and were analysed by qualitative methodology. Adolescents' empowerment was examined by a questionnaire (n = 1 046). Most participants reported reading in the documents; writing in the documents varied between 16% (distribution in occupational health) and 87% (adolescents). The health document was perceived as useful by 35% of the adolescents. Factors significantly related to personal usefulness were being born outside Sweden, experiencing fair treatment by teachers, being a non-smoker and having a positive school experience. Community health nurses were striving for a balance of being a doer of practical, disease-oriented tasks and a health-promotion communicator. The structural organisation in health care centres was important for their work with health promotion and the health document. Teachers were generally in favour of continued work with the document. In different settings, between 10% and 26% of adults reported changes in their health situations as a result of reading the booklet. Self-reported changes in health situations were less likely using postal distribution, and there were no significant differences between the other types of distribution. Adolescents with low empowerment scores reported poorer self-rated health and more risk-taking behaviours such as smoking and binge drinking. To conclude, personal health documents are feasible to use in different settings. Health promotion in health services needs active support from leaders as well as adequate support systems. Findings suggest that personal health documents can be tools for promoting self-reported lifestyle changes among adults in different settings. There is a close relation among adolescents between low empowerment in the domain of health, low self-rated health and health behaviours such as binge drinking and smoking.


This article documents the conflict between peri-urban and urban water users in Mallampet, a peri-urban village adjacent to Hyderabad City. In Mallampet and adjoining villages, 15–20 tanker companies are operating, most of which are owned by the local residents of the area. The number of tanker companies fluctuates depending on the business conditions. Most of them operate without legal permission from authorities. Pumping groundwater and selling it to urban consumers requires minimal hard work and yields maximum returns. Some villagers have been able to seize this opportunity, more so because agriculture is no longer profitable. Based on the data collected from individual pumps and selected tanker companies operating in the village, estimates were made for the amount of water extracted and the revenue earned by a few wealthy and powerful people in the village who are ignorant of the dire consequences of rapid aquifer discharge. The conflict is latent at the moment because the water sellers and buyers are more powerful socially and economically, while the people who are at the receiving end do not have a voice. They are unable to prevent the extraction and sale of groundwater in order to help reduce their insecurity. Even though there are strong laws like the 2002 Andhra Pradesh Water, Land and Trees Act (APWALTA) which prevents the mining of aquifers, the strong nexus between local authorities, politicians and water sellers helps bypass the law.


Abstract There is growing evidence that biodiversity is important for ecosystem functions. Thus, identification of habitat requirements essential for current species richness and abundance to persist is crucial. Hollow oaks (Quercus spp.) are biodiversity hot spots for deadwood‐dependent insect species, and the main objective of this paper was to test the effect of habitat history and current habitat distribution at various spatial scales on the associated beetle community. We used a gradient spanning 40 km from the coast to inland areas reflecting historical logging intensity (later and lower intensities inland) through 500 years in Southern Norway, to investigate whether the historical variation in oak density is influencing the structure of beetle communities in hollow oaks today. We trapped beetles in 32 hollow oaks along this gradient in forested and seminatural landscapes over two summers. We found higher species richness and total abundance inland consistent with our expectation based on historic logging intensity. Scale‐specific environmental variables also affected the response; beetle abundances were controlled by local conditions, whereas beetle species richness responded to habitat on the landscape scale. This indicates that long time continuity as well as large areas of favorable habitat is necessary to maintain beetle species richness through time in these highly long‐lasting structures.


This paper predicts that the study of second language acquisition, as a young discipline of scientific inquiry in its own right, faces a bright future, but only if its scholarly community critically re-examines some notions and assumptions that have too long been taken for granted. First, it is time to reconsider familiar dichotomies, such as second versus foreign language and natural versus instructed language learning. Furthermore, it is worth checking whether and to what extent the puzzling phenomena to be explained by language acquisition theories do really exist (such as uniformity and success and fast acquisition rates in first language acquisition and universal developmental sequences in second language acquisition). The paper furthermore pleas for a multidisciplinary approach to the explanation of the fundamental puzzles of first and second language acquisition and bilingualism, including bridging the divide between psycholinguistic and socio-cultural theories.


In this paper a wavelet-based logo watermarking scheme is presented. The logo watermark is embedded into all sub-blocks of the LLn sub-band of the transformed host image, using quantization technique. Extracted logos from all sub-blocks are merged to make the extracted watermark from distorted watermarked image. Knowing the quantization step-size, dimensions of logo and the level of wavelet transform, the watermark is extracted, without any need to have access to the original image.Robustness of the proposed algorithm was tested against the following attacks: JPEG2000 and old JPEG compression, adding salt and pepper noise, median filtering, rotating, cropping and scaling. The promising experimental results are reported and discussed.


The complex, "wicked" problems that afflict contemporary societies pose a significant challenge to those making policy decisions. The work of social scientists can be crucial to understanding the human and social consequences of such decisions, yet little guidance exists to help them bring their influence to bear. Nadine Marshall and Chris Cvitanovic have compiled ten top tips for social scientists seeking to increase their influence in the policy arena; emphasising the the importance of process, engagement, empathy and acumen.


We estimate production functions for cognition and health for children aged 1–12 in India, based on the Young Lives Survey. India has over 70 million children aged 0–5 who are at risk of developmental deficits. The inputs into the production functions include parental background, prior child cognition and health, and child investments, which are taken as endogenous. Estimation is based on a nonlinear factor model, based on multiple measurements for both inputs and child outcomes. Our results show an important effect of early health on child cognitive development, which then becomes persistent. Parental investments affect cognitive development at all ages, but more so for younger children. Investments also have an impact on health at early ages only.


Advances in materials science have led to physical instantiations of self-assembled networks of memristive devices and demonstrations of their computational capability through reservoir computing. Reservoir computing is an approach that takes advantage of collective system dynamics for real-time computing. A dynamical system, called a reservoir, is excited with a time-varying signal and observations of its states are used to reconstruct a desired output signal. However, such a monolithic assembly limits the computational power due to signal interdependency and the resulting correlated readouts. Here, we introduce an approach that hierarchically composes a set of interconnected memristive networks into a larger reservoir. We use signal amplification and restoration to reduce reservoir state correlation, which improves the feature extraction from the input signals. Using the same number of output signals, such a hierarchical composition of heterogeneous small networks outperforms monolithic memristive networks by at least 20% on waveform generation tasks. On the NARMA-10 task, we reduce the error by up to a factor of 2 compared to homogeneous reservoirs with sigmoidal neurons, whereas single memristive networks are unable to produce the correct result. Hierarchical composition is key for solving more complex tasks with such novel nano-scale hardware.


In spite of emphasizing on a market by economic liberalism, most experts believe that market failure caused the deepest global crisis after Great Depression (1929) to happen. Although we cannot ignore the importance to the role of attendance of government to the economy, we believe that sometimes governments are the reason behind the problems in economic situation. Factors like the lack of political integration between European governments and cooperation of national government, the absence of mighty government to make decision and policy and undisciplined financial plans, as well as, loss of proper rules and low, which are occasions of bad government.


Introduction: The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of L-carnitine supplementation on carbohydrate (CHO) and fat metabolism after resistance exercise. Materials and Methods: In this investigation, using a double blind, randomized, crossover, repeated measure design (1 wk washout), 10 healthy resistance-trained men (Mean±SD: age, 24.03±2.00 yr; mass, 72.26±5.31 kg; height, 173.90±5.02 cm) consumed 2 g placebo or LC supplement daily for one week and then performed 6 exercises of a resistance exercise protocol. Each workout was performed for 3 sets of 12 repetitions with 55% 1RM and rest periods were kept to 60 s between all sets and workout. Expired gases were measured for calculating CHO and fat oxidation. Venous blood samples were obtained before and after supplementation, immediately after resistance exercise and after the 1 st and 24 th hour after resistance exercise. Samples were analyzed for markers of glucose, NEFA, glycerol and insulin. Also L-carnitine plasma concentrations were measured, before and after supplementation. Results: The results of this study suggest that plasma carnitine concentrations increased 14% (p≤0.05) with L-carnitine supplementation, with no change in the placebo trial. Compared to the placebo trial, CHO oxidation was reduced significantly (p≤0.05) with L-carnitine supplementation immediately after resistance exercise. However there were no statistically significant differences between the L-carnitine and the placebo conditions for any of the other variables examined (p>0.05). Conclusions: Increased plasma insulin concentrations with L-carnitine and placebo after resistance exercise attenuated result in attenuate fat oxidation in this study.


Structurally stable heteroclinic cycles (SSHCs) are proposed as the mathematical structures that are responsible for the reversals of dipolar magnetic fields in spherical dynamos. The existence of SSHCs involving dipolar magnetic fields generated by convection in a spherical shell for a non–rotating sphere is rigorously proven. The possibility of SSHCs in a rotating shell is proposed, and their existence in a lowdimensional model of the magnetohydrodynamic equations is numerically confirmed. The resulting magnetic time–series shows a dipolar magnetic field, aligned with the rotation axis that intermittently becomes unstable, changes the polar axis, starts rotating, disappears completely and eventually re–establishes itself in its original or opposite direction, chosen randomly.


Toumeyella lignumvitae, a new species of soft scale insect known only from lignumvitae, Guaiacum sanctum Linnaeus, trees in the Florida Keys, is described and illustrated. Lignumvitae scale feeding is seriously affecting growth of lignum-vitae trees on Lignumvitae Key. Three species of insects are often found associated with lignumvitae scale. Two species of ants, the Florida carpenter ant, Camponotus abdominalis floridanus (Buckley) and the little fire ant, Wasmannia auropunctata (Roger), tend the scale insects for the honeydew they produce, and a predaceous pyralid caterpillar, Laetilia coccidivora (Comstock), is occasionally found feeding on colonies of lignumvitae scale.


Growth of the Internet, Lead to Cloud Computing, Mobile Network and Internet of Things increasing rapidly, big data is becoming a hot-spot in recent years. Data generated from many sources made huge demand for storing, managing, processing and querying on various stream. This gives rise to data processing in our daily life such as mobile devices, RFID and Wireless sensors, which aims at dealing with billions of users interactive data. At real time processing is intently needed integrated system. An entire system is built on one such application Storm, associated with Sql Stream. In this survey use this static data stream and some logs stream and also click stream to show some basic result. To ensure the practical applicability and high efficiency, A Simulation System is established and shown acceptable performance in various expressions using data sheet. It proved that data analysis system for stream and real time processing based on storm can be used in various computing environment.


Modern options theory assumes that securities markets are complete and processes are known. But how should options be priced when markets are not complete and price processes are not known? The maximum-entropy framework, which formalizes the efficient market hypothesis, offers process-free option valuation in incomplete markets. This article reviews the gamma model for pricing stock options and the beta model for pricing bond options, both obtained in the maximum-entropy framework. Both models are as convenient as the Black–Scholes model, but unlike the Black–Scholes model they are valid in incomplete markets and do not restrict prices, interest rates, or volatilities to any specific paths. The gamma and beta models are both less restrictive and more accurate than alternative option valuation models.


The digitalization of the economy is one of the drivers of the fourth industrial revolution. This
trend is already heavily permeating biology laboratories and rapidly moving into chemistry as
well. Notably, automated laboratories enhance process quality and intensification while freeing
researchers from repetitive tasks. With these societal changes in place, students need to be
prepared for the advanced digitization of chemistry and science by teaching fundamental
chemistry concepts in combination with emerging Industry 4.0 technologies, including
programming and automation. We describe an undergraduate classroom exercise at the
interface of chemistry, computer science and engineering based on the development of an
autonomous titration platform. Following an inquiry learning ansatz, the exercise focuses on
standard titration experiments which are first executed manually, then automatically and finally
in full autonomy by a student-designed robotic platform. We demonstrate that the exercise
introduced in this work enables students to learn fundamental concepts in analytical chemistry,
naturally integrates basic aspects of programming and automation, and as a consequence
promotes and reinforces the detailed understanding of experimental processes and
measurements. The exercise is designed in a collaborative active learning framework to
encourage complex critical thinking and creative problem solving and thus prepares students for
the next-generation chemistry laboratories.


Background: The ac vity concentra ons of 226 Ra, 232 Th and 40 K in sand used as building material in Weifang of China were inves gated for evalua ng the radia on hazard. Materials and Methods: Sand samples were collected from Weifang and their radioac vity levels were measured using gamma-ray spectrometry. The radia on hazard for residents was assessed by radium equivalent ac vity (Raeq), indoor air absorbed dose rate (D), annual effec ve dose (AED) and excess life me cancer risk (ELCR). Results: The ac vity concentra ons of 226 Ra, 232 Th and 40 K ranged from 11.7 to 23.0, 33.6 to 126.1 and 353.2 to 924.8 Bq kg −1 with averages of 15.5, 70.3 and 802.9 Bq kg -1 , respec vely. All Raeq values were lower than the limit of 370 Bq kg -1 . The mean value of D was higher than the world popula on-weighted average of 84 nGy h -1 , while the mean AED and ELCR values were below the interna onally accepted values. Conclusions: The use of sand in construc on of dwellings is considered to be safe for inhabitants.


We present a standard trade model and show that terrorism can be trade inducing, starting from autarky. In addition, terrorism can be shown to be welfare augmenting for a group of nations. Finally, we present some qualitative conditions that identify when a nation's trade volume may rise (or fall) in response to a greater incidence of terrorism. Our trade and welfare results point to potential difficulties in international coordination of counterterrorism policy because of terrorism's differential impact across nations.


This is a chapter (in Hebrew) in an anthology on Israel's recent comprehensive copyright statute revision, the Copyright Law-2007. The chapter focuses on Section 19 of the new law, which closely tracks Section 107, the fair use provision, of the U.S. Copyright Act. In codifying U.S. fair use doctrine, Israel's legislature has replaced the narrower "fair dealing" doctrine found in Israel's prior copyright statute, the Copyright Law-1911, making Israel only the second country, after the Philippines, to adopt U.S. fair use law in its copyright statute. Moreover, Israel's new copyright statute essentially completes the move from fair dealing to fair use that the Israeli Supreme Court had already initiated in 1993 in its ruling in Geva v. Walt Disney Co. Of great significance for how fair use will be applied in Israel, American case law and commentary features two distinct, mutually opposing understandings of the fair use doctrine. The "market approach" views fair use as a narrow, anomalous exception to the copyright holder's exclusive and broad proprietary rights, an exception available only in instances where voluntary licensing is prevented by insurmountable market failure. In contrast, the "expressive diversity approach" views fair use as a central component, not an anomalous exception, to the copyright regime. It places great weight on whether the defendant's use is "transformative," in other words whether the use serves a fundamentally different purpose than that for which the plaintiff's copyrighted work was created and whether that purpose serves copyright law's overall goal of promoting the dissemination of knowledge and a diversity of expression. In recent years, the expressive diversity approach appears to be in the ascendancy over the market approach in U.S. case law, as evident in cases such as Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley Ltd. and Perfect 10 v. Amazon. It remains to be seen whether this trend will continue. In any event, given the Israeli Supreme Court's analysis in Geva v. Walt Disney Co., which approvingly cited U.S. case law favoring transformative uses, and Interlego A/S v. Exin Line Bros., which held that copyright's purpose is to promote expressive diversity and that copyrights must be appropriately tailored to serve that end, Israeli courts should be considerably more receptive to the expressive diversity approach to fair use than to the market approach.


With the D.C. Circuit's recent ruling in Comcast v. FCC, the court has thrown the Federal Communications Commission's efforts to promote an "Open Internet" into legal limbo. In response, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has announced that he intends to seek to impose a "Third Way", whereby the Commission would reclassify broadband transport as a "telecommunications service" under Title II of the Communications Act, coupled however with aggressive use of the FCC's forbearance authority under Section 10 of the Communications Act to eliminate many of the more burdensome requirements of Title II regulation. In so doing, the Commission would ostensibly create some sort of "Title II Lite" regulation for broadband Internet services. To explore this important topic, we first provide a simple game theoretic analysis that exposes the underlying issue surrounding regulatory classification. We demonstrate that a "light touch" toward regulating broadband in not a credible commitment. Moreover, we use the current Commission's own actions to demonstrate it lacks the necessary self-discipline or mindset for "light touch" regulation. Next, we consider the investment effects of reclassification using a theoretical model of investment. In this model, a model firm faces either "weak" or "strong" regulation. This model shows that an increase in the ex ante probability of "strong" regulation -- that is, reclassification -- weakens investment incentives. Third, we provide evidence from the financial markets supporting the negative investment effects implied by the theory. This same evidence also reveals that investors have no confidence that the Commission possesses the self-discipline required to successfully implement "light touch" regulation. Finally, we show that the Comcast decision is not a threat to ancillary authority for broadband; the Commission merely has to make better arguments to tie the proposed regulation to the Commission's express statutory objectives under Title II, III, or VI of the Act. Although the Chairman's "Third Way" may provide the Commission with a perceived blanket of legal comfort, that legal certainty comes at the expense of financial uncertainty. The Comcast court makes clear that Title I continues to provide sound legal footing to protect consumers from harm -- at least until Congress decides to update and amend existing Communications law with a cleaner framework.


At the start of the 18th century, the richest regions in the Americas lay south of New England and the mid-Atlantic colonies of North America. By the end of the 20th century, this economic geography has been definitively, perhaps irrevocably, reversed. The formerly poor colonies of Europe have become the core of the United States, a global economic colossus and regional overlord, while the once rich former colonies to the south, are among the poorest regions in the world. The dramatic reversal of fortunes lies at the heart of this work on political economy. In a study on economic development and ideological formation in the Americas, the book shows how the much-vaunted achievement of US democracy has been secured by the political stunting of Latin America, and how US historians have systematically ignored the intertwining of Latin America and US history. The final chapters address popular culture, from Donald Duck through to "Dallas", as well as contemporary political issues, such as NAFTA. Charles Bergquist is the author of "Labor in Latin America".


Our view of certain gait disorders has changed with the development of new interventions for gait training. Recent gait research has suggested that humans do not walk with metronomic patterns, but with fractal patterns. Fractal patterns which are a common characteristic across nearly every human sub-system when healthy (e.g., gait, balance, heart rate, breathing rate, ect.). The patterns suggest that variability within a system is adaptive and healthy as opposed to the once held position that variability within a system was maladaptive. However, with the discovery of gait variability comes new questions about how to best help those who suffer from abnormal gait. One new area of research proposes that metronomes providing a variable stimulus, called fractal metronomes, could be used to redevelop adaptive patterns in clinical populations with abnormal gait. While immediate retention of these newly developed patterns has been shown immediately after and 5 minutes after a single session of training, the patterns revert back to pre-training levels after 24 hours, suggesting that there is a dosage effect associated with this type of training. Longer-term retention is needed to ensure that these interventions have promise in helping patients with a pathology. Therefore, the goal of this thesis was to explore how seven days of training to a fractal metronome would impact the retention of new fractal gait characteristics. It was hypothesized that: (1) participants would exhibit a stronger coupling of their gait to the fractal stimulus with increased practice (i.e., assessed via cross correlations across days) and (2) immediate retention (i.e., directly after training) and longer-term retention (i.e., 24 hours after training) would increase as a function of increased practice. Hypothesis 1 was supported with the observation that the cross-correlation between and with subjects increased across the seven days of training. However, that did not translate to immediate or longer-term retention, thus hypothesis 2 was not supported. It is important to note that embedded within the testing for hypothesis 2 was the observation that participants' fractal patterns got stronger during the training phase across the seven days, it was just not transferred to the overground walking that was used to examine immediate and longer-term retention. The results of this study suggest that fractal gait patterns can be strengthened with multiple days of training. However, future work should provide fractal gait training overground and then test retention overground to remove the confound of training on a treadmill and then retention testing overground.


Sustainable environment trend of future directions is toward Low Energy Office (LEO) buildings. There are some shortcomings observed in LEO building practices in most developing countries. Preliminary researches indicated that LEO problematic areas have not been thoroughly investigated. Moreover, many researchers have confirmed on the lack of comprehensive Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) in LEO buildings. The focus of this study is on LEO buildings, accordingly, it was conducted in two phases, during the first phase, is to identify the comprehensive POE criteria and parameters. At this phase a qualitative and quantitative survey data was analyzed using content analysis. A discussion group with the expert comprised of five professionals has been convened to validate the results of the analysis. At the second phase, Ministry of Energy, Water and Communication (MEWC) has been selected as sources of data in which information were gathered through thirty percent of their technical staff involved in this study. The data was analyzed using Average Index and Frequency Analysis methods. From this study there are three main findings that have been conducted. Firstly, the building performance criteria, economic and cultural were significant in terms of performance problem. Secondly, the most critical building cost performance criteria were functionality and flexibility. Thirdly, the overall satisfaction of the building performance criteria was in the range of high level.


The current study investigated the value of using immersive virtual environment technology as a tool for assessing eyewitness identification. Participants witnessed a staged crime and then examined sequential lineups within immersive virtual environments that contained 3D virtual busts of the suspect and six distractors. Participants either had unlimited viewpoints of the busts in terms of angle and distance, or a unitary view at only a single angle and distance. Furthermore, participants either were allowed to choose the angle and distance of the viewpoints they received, or were given viewpoints without choice. Results demonstrated that unlimited viewpoints improved accuracy in suspect-present lineups but not in suspect-absent lineups. Furthermore, across conditions, post-hoc measurements demonstrated that when the chosen view of the suspect during the lineup was similar to the view during the staged crime in terms of distance, accuracy improved. Finally, participants were more accurate in suspect-absent lineups than in suspect-present lineups. Implications of the findings in terms of theories of eyewitness testimony are discussed, as well as the value of using virtual lineups that elicit high levels of presence in the field. We conclude that digital avatars of higher fidelity may be necessary before actually implementing virtual lineups.


Studying brain functional activities is an area that is experiencing rapid interest in the field of neuroimaging. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has provided vision science researchers a powerful and noninvasive tool to understand eye function and correlate it with brain activities. In this chapter, we focus on the physiological aspects followed by a literature review. More specifically, to motivate and appreciate the complexity of the visual system, we will begin with a description of specific stages the visual pathway, beginning from the distal stimulus and ending in the visual cortex. More importantly, the development of ascending visual pathway will be discussed in order to help in understanding various disorders associated with it such as monochromacy, albinism, amblyopia (refractive, strabismic). In doing so we will divide the first half into two main sections, the visual pathway and the development of the ascending pathway. The first of these sections will be mostly an anatomy review and the latter will discuss the development of this anatomy with specific examples of disorders as a result of abnormal development. We will then discuss fMRI studies with focus on vision science applications. The remaining sections of this chapter will be highlighting the work done on mainly oculomotor function, some perception and visual dysfunction with fMRI and investigate the differences and similarities in their findings. We will then conclude with a discussion on how this relates to neurologists, neuroscientists, ophthalmologists and other specialists.


I. TRANSITIONS IN JUDICIAL SELECTION METHODS A. From Appointment to Election B. From Partisan to Non-Partisan Elections C. From Non-Partisan Elections to Merit Selection D. Alternatives to Merit Section II. THE CHALLENGE TO JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE FROM JUDICIAL ELECTION CHANGES A. The Explosion of Large Campaign Contributions B. The Emergence of Special Interest Group Participation C. The Retreat of State Regulation of Judicial Campaign Speech 1. The Holding of Republican Party of Minnesota v. White 2. State Codes of Judicial Conduct 3. The Post-White World a. Promises and Commitments by Judicial Candidates b. Commit Clause c. Partisan Activity by Judicial Candidates d. Solicitation Clause e. Recusal D. The Cumulative Effect of New Developments III. AN OLD ANSWER SOLVES NEW PROBLEMS: ADVANTAGES OF MERIT SELECTION OVER CONTESTED JUDICIAL ELECTIONS A. Turnover and Recruitment B. Campaign Contributions C. Enhanced Accountability D. Merit Selection's Proven Record of Success E. Failure of Less Ambitious Reforms F. Philosophical Objections to the Popular Election of Judges America has almost as many different ways of selecting state judges as it has states. (1) Over the past two centuries, most states have coalesced around fairly uniform requirements, term lengths, and election dates for executive and legislative officials. (2) But no "consensus" method of choosing judges has developed; indeed, each decade of the last century has brought more disparity between the States, not less. (3) In many states, the debate rages as fiercely as ever over whether judges should be "appointed" or "elected," identified by party affiliation or prohibited from any partisan activity, subject to a contested race for re-election or merely an up-or-down "retention" referendum, bound by the same ethical and electoral rules as other public officials, or treated as wholly distinct from the political branches. Even at the federal level, proposals for fixed judicial terms are periodically suggested, especially for the Supreme Court, (4) and popular election of the federal judiciary has been mooted on occasion since Jefferson. (5) Because an equal and independent judiciary was not merely the great original contribution of American government, but also has been that aspect of our system most frequently emulated around the world, (6) one would think that in America, if anywhere, a consensus on how to choose judges would have emerged. Why has it not? One possibility is that, although the American people and the American States all support an overarching commitment to an equal and independent judiciary, they disagree on what that commitment really means. No doubt, because of the power judges hold to change public policy through both constitutional and common-law rulings, their actions have periodically provoked marked controversy. In current parlance, this debate centers around whether justice is best served when courts seek a "just" result regardless of literal text or controlling precedent, or when judges merely apply the law as they find it, regardless of their personal preferences or their intuition regarding contemporary popular sentiment. For example, in the final national television debate between John McCain and Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, Senator McCain pledged to appoint judges with "a history of strict adherence to the Constitution" and "not legislating from the bench," while then-Senator Obama responded that "the most important thing in any judge is their capacity to provide fairness and justice to the American people." By way of example, he explained that "the kind of judge I want" is "that if a woman is out there . …


Clozapine binds and has significant effects on multiple neurotransmitter receptors, notably including some dopamine receptors. Downstream of these receptors, clozapine affects the balance of Gi− and Gq-dependent second-messenger signaling. We used Caenorhabiditis elegans as a genetic model to study further how clozapine affects both dopamine receptors and downstream Gq mediated signaling. Four of six worm dopamine receptor orthologs, dop-1, dop-2, dop-4, and dop-5 produced resistance to clozapine induced developmental delay when mutated, suggesting that both type I and type II dopamine receptors mediate the behavioral effects of clozapine in C. elegans. Beyond these receptors, reduction of function of one of the G proteins, egl-30 (Gαq), produced greatly increased susceptibility to clozapine. Gαq has multiple known downstream effects. Among these is the control of acetylcholine release, which is in balance with monoamines in the human brain and is another target of clozapine and other antipsychotic drugs. We tested for downstream effects on acetylcholine at the neuromuscular junction upon clozapine treatment but found no evidence for effects of clozapine. In contrast, modulation of Gαq upstream leads to worms that are either more resistant or more susceptible to clozapine, emphasizing the importance of Gαq proteins in mediating effects of clozapine. A genetic screen for suppressors of egl-30 recovered eight mutants. By characterizing the behavioral effects of these mutants, we found that clozapine exerts its function on development by affecting Gαq signaling through control of the pharyngeal pumping rate. A whole-genome sequencing technique was utilized and identified a list of candidate genes for these suppressor mutations. Further characterization of these mutants promises the discovery of novel components participating in Gαq signaling and a better understanding of the mechanisms of action of clozapine.


Effective methods for the detection of species are highly needed in biodiversity research. The assessment of richness is especially difficult for short‐lived aquatic organisms, like plankton. Because of the high degree of spatial and temporal variation in plankton community composition, the compilation of complete plankton species lists requires intensive sampling programs. Many large‐scale studies on planktonic organisms are based on single occasion samplings and inevitably fail to detect a substantial fraction of the species. In the present study, we assessed species richness of Cladocera (Branchiopoda, Crustacea) in 88 European lakes by repeated sampling of the active communities and by an alternative method based on the hatching of diapausing eggs from the lake sediments. Identification of hatchlings obtained from egg bank samples enabled the detection of about twice as many cladoceran species than identification of an equal number of individuals retrieved from active community samples. Loglinear analyses revealed a strong species by method interaction, suggesting that both methods are highly complementary and should preferably be applied in combination. Some species were underrepresented in the active community samples, probably because of the lack of spatial and temporal integration in these samples. Other species were underrepresented in the hatching assemblages as a result of species‐specific propensities to produce diapausing eggs or hatch from such eggs.


An experiment was conducted during 1993-95 to investigate the effect of honeybee (Apis cerana indica) on seed set and yield of buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum L.). Buckwheat spike/plant, seeds/spike. Percentage of filled seed and weight of grain were found to be higher in bee pollinated treatment over open and self pollination. There was signigicant difference in yield in bee pollinated treatment over open and without bee pollinated treatments. The foraging activity  of A. indica showed maximum number was recorded during 15.00 to 16.00 pm having 0.8 forager on the crop.


Buildings that are used as residential areas by humans, mines they work in, vehicles they travel by or snowy mountains they go for sports can turn into deadly traps within seconds due to earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, floods, bombings, traffic accidents or avalanches. Main survival factors in the post-disaster period are prevention injuries as well as detecting the location of the survivors and the rescued. The reality of the situation of persons who lost their lives in such traps, the severely injured, and the ones who survived must be analyzed. Rational prevention methods against possible crush injuries due to collapsing buildings have been considered in the light of the field and simulation experience we gained and suggestions have been presented to reduce mortality and morbidity. Our work has been conducted with the aid of medicine based on proof, appropriate observation as well as sampling and experimental methods. Developed countries with higher building standards and existence have their action plans to construct buildings with, so that those buildings would not collapse in case of earthquakes and similar disasters. Underdeveloped and developing countries on the other hand, usually adopt these plans exactly the same, without questioning against what and why these should be applied. As there are unlimited possibilities of travelling in todays world, it is not possible to estimate place, country or circumstances under which a person could experience a disaster. Therefore a global approach concerning worst case scenario led by earthquakes has been proposed considering different models of behavior in different countries and societies to increase the chance of survival to a maximum and to reduce injuries to a minimum level.


An automated search apparatus is disclosed for detecting leaks in liquid impoundments usually defined by a geomembrane layer. A voltage gradient is created within the impoundment by means of a source electrode. The search apparatus contains pairs of electrodes coupled to differential amplifiers which allow plotting of the voltage gradient within the impoundment. The search vessel is controlled via radio telemetry, and its position may be tracked using optical theodolites. A distortion in the equipotential lines associated with the voltage gradient indicates the presence of a leak.


Building upon their earlier analysis of therapeutic culture, the authors consider whether the increasing mediatisation of everyday life may be a source of and support for what they see as core elements to the therapeutic: emotional expressivity, reflexivity and concern for the other. Do some areas of contemporary media consumption increase our awareness of and tolerance for the anxieties and conflicts of the ordinary inner world, and how we might answer this question? Theorists differ in their opinions as to whether a therapeutic trend in popular culture is positive or negative, but there is nevertheless agreement about the emergence of a therapeutic culture. In this paper the authors argue that the television series Mad Men dramatises the first signs of the therapeutic trend taking root in the 'affluent society', and they highlight the role of advertising in that process. They point to the wide and still growing popularity, across different broadcast genres, of narratives of interiority which might provide an audience space in which some autobiographical interpretive work can be done. The normalisation of psychic damage and repair amongst celebrities and public figures on the media stage may also contribute to this resource. While acknowledging that the mediatisation of everyday life does not always represent therapeutic values, or facilitate the development of them, the authors also ask whether the 'compressed' world of multi-media can offer the potential for increased contact with different parts of one's own and another's mind, without which increasing self-knowledge or improved capacities for relating would be hard to achieve.


Little has been written about nursing in the period 1870-1960 within the geographical boundaries and surrounding areas of Halifax and Huddersfield.

This thesis aims to explore the development of nursing within these towns.

The focus is on general nurses in hospital and community roles.

Rosenberg's eight areas of importance were used allowing the construction of an historical analysis of both nursing and nurses locally.

Archival sources were found in twenty-five main archives and twelve of these were investigated further. Primary documents belonging to local retired nurses such as personal documents, photographs and memorabilia were included. In total 1493 individual items were subjected to documentary analysis.

The second stage of data collection involved conducting oral history interviews to capture memories and experiences of local retired nurses. A total of 373 named nurses were identified, sixty-eight contacted, forty-four agreed to participate and twenty-one were interviewed. A life story approach recorded their personal lives and nursing careers. This approach required the ethical issues of biographical research methods and interviewing to be addressed. Interviews were recorded on audio tape and transcribed ready to be deposited in the University of Huddersfield archives.

Data was subjected to analysis using NVivo computer software and Rosenberg's eight areas of importance used as a priori themes.

Nursing in these two provincial towns changed during the ninety years under study often in response to local or national issues such as professional registration. Nurse education occurred in all but the early years and developed alongside the increasing specialization of nurses and as each nursing branch emerged. Nurses in West Yorkshire were subject to particular local issues such as its geography, environment and industrial heritage.

The merits of this research are it provides a unique account of the local development of nursing adding to the professions history and presenting implications for present day practice.


This paper puts a special accent on the Roma female reproductive population and its behaviour concerning the formation and size of the family. A survey was conducted in the area of Shuto Orizari, the only Roma governed community in Europe, on respondents from the female reproductive population divided into three age groups. For the analysis of the variance of the means of the three chosen groups were used the standard statistical tests and the one-way ANOVA test was used for testing the eight hypotheses for the equality of the means of the three independent specimens. A chi-squared test of independence between the two variables was made on the whole sample. The research and the gained results about the factors that determine the demographic behaviour of the Roma female reproductive population are expected to nd a way to improve the overall situation and to use it in creating demographic policies.


A popular way of obtaining essential inputs requires the establishment of an input production joint venture (IPJV) in the upstream (U) section of the vertical chain of production by firms competing and selling final goods in the downstream (D) section of the vertical chain. In spite of the apparently simple arrangement there are many possible governances for the management of the IPJV according to the ownership structure and to the degree of delegation granted to the IPJV by parent firms. We explore the best sustainable governance arrangement for the IPJV. We address this question in a duopoly framwork and we find a large area of impossible vertical arrangements associated with technological asymmtery. The most likely governance of the vertical arrangment associated to the IPJV is total independence.


Flood hazard assessment is at the core of flood risk management. In order to develop an efficient flood hazard assessment, it is of primary importance to have a well‐defined flood scenario encompassing all processes that could occur during an event. Understanding and assessing these processes requires meteorological, topographical and land‐use data as well as historical observations. Nowadays, flood delineation is based upon hydrological and hydraulic modelling, ground data collection, and remote sensing. Despite the advantages of these tools, they also present some specific limitations, either intrinsic to the approaches or linked with constraints of the local context. With the rapid advancement of web 2.0 technologies (e.g., Flickr and Wikimapia) and the increase of the use of participatory research, citizen science has the potential to provide valuable and complementary information at all levels of flood risk management and in particular for flood hazard assessment. After reviewing the capabilities and limitations of the current tools used in flood hazard assessment, this paper demonstrates the role that citizen science can play in providing key information on factors leading to flooding and on flood hazard parameters.


Universities are using private recruitment agencies to fast-track internationalization initiatives and realize tuition-based revenue increases. Colorado State University (CSU), with this dual aim of increasing the proportion of international students on campus and generating income via out-of-state tuition, signed a contract with INTO, a British organization that works to recruit international students to attend partner institutions from countries across five continents. International students, although not a homogenous population, as a whole do bring unique challenges. Our study examined how both campus and the library could prepare for the expected large influx of international students. Seeking to understand the INTO model and the effect it would have on campus, particularly in terms of resource planning, we conducted a series of interviews with INTO staff, librarians at other U.S. INTO institutions, and CSU faculty and staff who would interact most substantially with the INTO population. Various campus departments have made significant preparations to prepare for the growing INTO population, and we identified several steps that the CSU Libraries could take to better serve these students, including enhancing existing services and fostering new campus collaborations.