Strict liability for environmental contamination has become a fact of life in the past twenty years since the 1980 enactment of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), and similar state laws imposing strict liability for the release of hazardous substances. Since that time, awareness of the widespread nature and risks of environmental contamination and the need for strong tools to remedy those conditions has permeated the public consciousness, the business community, and the courts. As a result, our society has come to live with the existence of widespread strict liability for environmental contamination under various federal and state statutes, even if many believe the current statutory liability scheme is misguided or ineffective. Over the same period of time, however, some scholars have argued that courts have grown reluctant to apply common law strict liability in general under either the doctrine of Rylands v. Fletcher or Sections 519 and 520 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which impose strict liability for abnormally dangerous activities. These commentators conclude that, apart from cases involving blasting and a few other historic applications, the current trend is for courts to reject the expansion of strict liability in favor of negligence as the dominant tort theory. The existence of these two seemingly divergent trends raises the question of whether CERCLA's enactment and implementation have influenced courts' willingness to impose common law strict liability in environmental contamination cases, even if the doctrine is not otherwise expanding. That CERCLA may be impacting common law strict liability is significant and somewhat unexpected because the Restatement (Second) of Torts does not identify the existence of a federal or state statute governing the conduct at issue as a factor to consider in determining whether the activity is abnormally dangerous. In other words, if courts are being influenced by the existence of CERCLA and state strict liability statutes when considering application of the common law strict liability doctrine to environmental contamination cases, they are doing so for policy reasons beyond the black letter law of Rylands or the Restatement. A review of post-CERCLA court decisions involving environmental contamination and claims for common law strict liability reveals that even though the existence of a state or federal strict liability statute is not one of the factors a court is directed to consider under the Restatement, courts consistently refer to the existence of such a statute or the general importance of addressing hazardous waste problems as a justification for applying strict liability. These cases show that while the prevailing trend among courts may be to reduce the reach of common law strict liability, the trend in environmental contamination cases appears to be the opposite. This Article argues that it is both appropriate and desirable for courts to consider state and federal statutes and other indications of public policy when determining whether an activity is abnormally dangerous. This can be best accomplished by revising the current draft of the Restatement (Third) of Torts to include the existence of a state or federal statute imposing strict liability for the activity as a factor in determining whether or not the activity is abnormally dangerous under the common law.


Remote observations of comets (spacecraft fly-bys and telescopes) reveal a vast reservoir of volatile organic species, along with the water ice, other volatiles and silicate dust fractions that make up these very primitive bodies. Understanding the nature of cometary materials, in order to unravel their origin and history, is particularly challenging. Remote observation is only possible for the coma, the constituents of which are likely fractionated and modified compared to the primordial material within the comet. A number of opportunities exist for very detailed study of cometary material with ground-based laboratory instrumentation. How-ever, dissipation of energy during capture (e.g. NASA Stardust samples) or atmospheric entry (stratospheric interplanetary dust particles) has the potential to extensively modify, or even obliterate, detailed information about the nature and origin of the more volatile, biologically important organic species present. Collecting and returning pristine material from the surface of a comet remains very challenging and therefore direct study of the volatile portions can only readily be performed on the comet itself by remote instruments. The ESA Rosetta mission, that will make long-term measurements of a comet as it approaches the sun from 3.5 AU to 1.4 AU over a period of at least six months, includes the Philae lander as well as the orbiter spacecraft. Ptolemy, on board Philae, is a GC-MS instrument designed for the analysis of cometary volatiles, organic materials and silicates. The objectives of Ptolemy are to provide a complete description of the nature and distribution of light elements (H, C, N and O) present in the nucleus of the comet, as well as determining their stable isotopic compositions. Ptolemy also aims to provide ground-truth measurements of those volatiles that are subsequently detected further out from the nucleus in the coma. Samples from the surface and sub-surface, collected by the lander drilling system (SD2), are heated in an oven and can be injected into one of three gas chromatography columns (GC) for analysis by the mass spectrometer. Accurate isotopic analysis is achieved by chemical processing before and/or after the GC columns and by direct comparison with reference materials of known isotopic composition. Recent operations of the Ptolemy mass spectrometer during recent spacecraft checkouts have shown that the Ptolemy instrument is operational and should be capable of meeting its science aims.


An intercomparison has been performed in the visible and near infrared between two radiometric standards: the electron storage ring BESSY and a cryogenic absolute radiometer. The spectral irradiance of the continuum source BESSY can currently be predicted with a relative systematic uncertainty of 3 × 10−3, whereas the radiant power of monochromatic laser radiation can be measured by the cryogenic radiometer with a relative systematic uncertainty of 10−4. In this intercomparison the responsivity S of a specially designed transfer radiometer was measured using synchrotron radiation (SSR) and the cryogenic radiometer (SRAD). The mean of the ratios SRAD/SSR for different measurement conditions was 1.0013 with a standard error of the mean of 0.0006 for a wavelength of 676 nm and 0.9990 with a standard error of 0.0007 for a wavelength of 799 nm. The systematic uncertainty of the ratio is 3.8 × 10−3 caused by the uncertainty of SRAD of 1.5 × 10−3 and by the uncertainty of SSR of 3.5 × 10−3. Both radiometric standards agree well within the combined systematic uncertainties of the two methods. The result confirms the 3 × 10−3 uncertainty of BESSY. This source standard has therefore a smaller uncertainty than present source standards based on high temperature blackbody radiators. The work also demonstrates how detector- and source-based radiometric standards can be intercompared or transferred between laboratories with a relative uncertainty of <3 × 10−3.


Background: The nursing students should acquire practical and theoretical competence required for the patients' care during their 4 years of education. This involves proper use of time. The purpose of this study was to investigate how nursing students manage their time despite the academic difficulties and obstacles. Methods: This qualitative study was carried out through grounded theory method. The study population consisted of nursing students. Twenty-one nursing students studying at undergraduate level were selected purposefully for participation in this study. The data were collected with semi-structured interview and analyzed through Strauss and Corbin method (2008). MAXQDA 10 software was employed to organize and process the data. Results: Core variable of this study was "directing activities toward personal goals," representing in 3 behavioral patterns. The behavioral pattern of "retaliation from field" was one of the 3 patterns applied by nursing students. The properties of this pattern included "unknowingly entrance to nursing field," "stress and dissatisfaction with spending time," "nonacceptance of field," "attempt to decrease stress and obtain satisfaction," and "ignoring academic responsibilities". According to this pattern, the students spent most of their time on non-academic responsibilities while trying to overcome the stress. Conclusion: The findings of this study recommend the necessity for revising the admission method of nursing students and informed choice of nursing field by these students. A B S T R A C T


The medical profession has changed dramatically in the past decade due to the advances in engineering innovations. Traditionally, medical doctors relied solely on their training and experience for diagnosis and interpretation of medical conditions captured through a variety of imaging techniques. Typically, these images are produced from CAT scan machines, MRI, or X-rays.

Today, computer aided techniques are designed to enhance the visual quality of biomedical images to better help humans discriminate regions of interest, such as the presence of cancer. Since these enhanced images are intended to assist the medical professional in making a diagnosis or to track the progress of a treatment, it is important that abnormalities presented in the images are actual objects and not artifacts resulting from the enhancement process that could lead to an inaccurate diagnosis.

Too much information presented can be distracting for the viewer and too little information presented could be disastrous for the patient, should a life-threatening abnormality be missed or filtered out. Therefore, the dilemma lies in answering the question: "What is the best image to use?"

The answer has always been subjective due to the perspective of the human observer and what constitutes the desired target object to be detected. For instance, some doctors looking at a scan may be interested in masses; another doctor may want to focus on calcifications or, even perhaps, the blood vessels.

In this special issue, articles are presented that address this question for several different biomedical image processing applications. Several novel quantifiable evaluation methods that can rank the quality of a processed image in accordance with human visual perception are introduced. These metrics are rigorously compared to evaluations obtained from human evaluators using the "Mean Opinion Score" (MOS), along with other standard benchmarking techniques.

The innovative approaches presented in this issue are sure to lead the biomedical image processing field beyond one of an "assistive technology" to one that creates a reliable, accurate autonomous technology for use in distance and robot vision applications. Achieving these goals will forge new groundbreaking paths that will reach into and serve remote populations of the world.


In this exploratory social network study, we examined how student relationships evolved during three month-long Reacting to the Past (RTTP) role-playing games in a lower division honors course at a large US public university. Our purpose was to explore how RTTP games—and collaborative learning approaches more generally—impact classroom community in college courses. We found that both acquaintance and friendship ties between students increased dramatically during the game, eliminating student isolation without tending to create new cliques. These added ties made acquaintance and friendship networks simultaneously denser and more inclusive than they were before the game. We conclude by advancing a hypothesis about the network effects of intensive peer interaction. Collaborative learning approaches like RTTP, we suggest, produce high-density networks with limited clustering because structured peer interactions cut across existing or naturally occurring clique boundaries.


From its earliest beginnings, the women's movement has evolved into a complex enterprise combining social, political, economic and academic organizations around the globe. The move into the academic scene (women's studies, gender studies, etc.), in the past forty or so years, has given rise to debate about the purpose of feminism: what is feminism's raison d'etre ? Should feminism primarily be an advocate for political and social change, as it was in its early days, or should it focus on theoretical questions about women and their place in the world? The debate asks about method: what is the best way forward? How should we proceed? In response, my article explores Bernard Lonergan's idea of Functional Specialization as a method that offers the potential to unify the global enterprise of feminism with the concrete and practical intent of improving women's rights around the globe.


In January 2016, Netflix launched its streaming service globally into more than 130 new countries. It also announced its plan to ban the subscribers' use of proxies, unblockers and virtual private networks (VPN) to view movies and TV programs unavailable in the subscribers' countries. With this ban in place, Australian subscribers will no longer be able to watch U.S. shows until they become available Down Under. Likewise, U.S. subscribers who are addicted to British shows will have to wait for those shows to come stateside.The content providers' desire for this geocircumvention ban is easy to understand. If Australian fans have already watched a U.S. show via Netflix, who will tune in when the show finally arrives in Australia? Thus far, movie studios and TV producers have repeatedly criticized Netflix for turning a blind eye to unlicensed viewing. Had the company continued to ignore geographical licensing restrictions, many of these content providers might eventually have pulled their material from the streaming service. Nevertheless, the recently announced VPN ban is unlikely to provide a long-term cure to the content providers' chronic headaches. The problem lies not with Netflix, but with the unmet consumer demand in foreign markets.This chapter begins by describing six types of access barriers that have been slowly broken in the digital environment. Although it is not unusual for new technology to break access barriers, the breakage of virtually all of these barriers at the same time does underscore the immense challenge the internet and new communication technologies have posed to the copyright system and the entertainment industry's copyright-based distribution model. To address these challenges, this chapter calls for the establishment of "a seamless global digital marketplace" of entertainment content, a proposal advanced a few years ago by Francis Gurry, the director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization. The chapter then explores five paths that can be taken to establish this much-needed marketplace.


Defensins are small cysteine-rich, cationic peptides that play an essential role in the innate immune system of virtually all life forms, from insects and plants to amphibians and mammals. Defensins are mainly an innate immunity element, exhibiting antibacterial activities by disrupting the cell membrane of a wide range of organisms (Cole et al. 2002). Defensins also affect certain adaptive immune responses, including enhancing phagocytosis, promoting neutrophil recruitment, and enhancing the production of proinflammatory cytokines. The aim of this thesis is to make a comprehensive and accurate subfamily classification of the defensin gene family, primarily by using a library of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). In this project the subfamily classification of the defensin gene family is primarily based on a constructed library of HMMs. Results: Sets of known defensins were organized in placed in 84 clusters using the clustering and alignment tool, FlowerPower. The clusters were further classified as mammalian alpha- or beta-defensins, plant defensin, insect defensin and defensin MGD. This classification was based on significant cluster hits against the Structural Classification of Proteins (SCOP) database and species distribution. Based on the relative positions of disulfide bonds and constructed Multiple Sequence Alignments (MSAs) some sequences were classified as belonging to the sperm– and theta-defensin subfamilies. Compared to PFAM's classification of defensins, the subfamily classification presented here is more informative. The library of HMMs has been made public via a web server that was used to automatically score and analyze input sequences against the created database of HMMs. This database and web server are expected to be useful to researchers working on various aspects of defensin action.


The integration of problem-solving methods have attracted increasing research interest. We present a hybrid system, ELEM2-CBR, that integrates rule induction and case-based reasoning. ELEM2-CBR has the following characteristics. First, it applies a novel feature weighting function for assessing similarities between cases. By using this weighting function, optimal case retrieval is achieved in that the most relevant cases can be retrieved from the case base. Second, the method handles both classification and numeric prediction tasks under a mixed paradigm of rule-based and ease-based reasoning. Before problem solving, rule induction is performed to induce a set of decision rules from a set of training data. The rules are then employed to determine some parameters in the new weighting function. For classification tasks, rules are applied to make decisions; if there is a conflict between matched rules, case-based reasoning is performed. In this paper, the new weighting function is presented. ELEM2-CBR's multimodal reasoning strategies are described. We demonstrate the performance of ELEM2-CBR by comparing its experimental results with the ones from other methods on a number of designed and real-world problems.


Pension fund assets have increased markedly during recent decades, and there are signs that this trend will continue, particularly given demographic changes and the current pattern of pension reform towards funded systems. However, research on the extent to which growth in pension assets contributes directly to economic growth is quite scarce. This is surprising since superiority of funding to pay-as-you-go links notably to the question whether funding improves economic performance sufficiently to generate the resources required to meet the needs of an ageing population. In this paper, we design a modified Cobb-Douglas production function with pension assets as a shift factor. We then employ a dataset covering 38 countries to investigate the direct link between pension assets and economic growth, using a variety of appropriate econometric methods. We find positive results for both OECD countries and Emerging Market Economies (EMEs), with some evidence for a larger effect for EMEs than OECD countries.


The extracted features from the QRS complex in the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal are considered mainly in the heart rate evaluation and cardiac disease diagnosis. In this paper, high speed approach named "Rising Falling Transition Method (RFTM)" is proposed to detect the characteristics of QRS complex in single lead ECG signal. The proposed approach applies single straight forward algorithm with two stages. The first stage takes the advantage of the transition from rising to falling edge inside each QRS complex as a base to determine the time locations of the vertices in a triangle that composes from the Q-wave end, R-wave peak, and S-wave onset. The second stage determines the time location of Q-wave onset and S-wave end (J-point) using a linear scan along short period which starts from Q-wave end and S-wave onset towards the target end points at Q-wave onset and S-wave end, respectively. The detector approach is able to detect QRS complex of different morphologies (wide/small interval, high/low amplitude, and negative polarities). The detection performance of the proposed approach is evaluated on a single channel of some annotated records from the QT database which collected from seven ECG categories and 48 annotated records from MIT-BIH database. Simulation results show that the average detection rates of sensitivity (Se) and specificity (Sp) are 99.84% and 99.94%, respectively for MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database. The validation results prove the reliability and accuracy of proposed RFTM approach.


This thesis develops a new methodological approach to the archaeology of Australian Colonial
maritime landscapes and communities, based on a critical reading and evaluation of international
advances in cultural landscape theory and research. It explores the full range of possible maritime
sites situated both above and below the waterline, and characterizes the archaeological signatures of
many previously unrecognized maritime and other non- shipwreck related sites associated with
maritime societies. A key aspect of the thesis are the methods of collection, analysis and integration
of archaeological, oral and documentary sources, and the complex interplay between the data sets.

The community of Queenscliff (Victoria, Australia), established in 1855, provides a case study by
which to examine the problem of how to understand the archaeology of non-indigenous
communities living and working across the land/sea divide. Three maritime themes of defence,
fishing, and shipping mishaps are explored intensively to investigate the maritime utilization of the
study area and the differing visibility of these activity types within the diverse data sets, especially
the archaeological record. They also provide a backdrop for further consideration of the intricate
web of relationships on land and sea that comprise a maritime community.

Observations of social and practical behaviors are linked to relict material cultural remains through
the innovative use of GIS technology that facilitates thematic comparative analyses of multiple
incongruent data sets and provides insights into overlapping landscapes. In particular, the
availability of a surprising depth of previously unrecognized and unexplored traditional community
knowledge facilitated striking ethno-archaeological observations that connected maritime culture
with new types of archaeological sites. The dissertation establishes that understanding of each
maritime landscape is made accessible only by using highly varied combinations of data sets.

This study clearly shows that in the Australian Colonial setting, non-indigenous maritime
communities equally access both the terrestrial and nautical environments, and manipulate and
experience their maritime surroundings in the same way as their terrestrial landscapes. The effects
of social interaction between terrestrial and maritime groups are demonstrated to be strong
contributing factors for landscape generation for all sectors of the community, where many crosscutting
relationships formulate multiple overlapping landscapes and subsequent archaeological
signatures. These complex and far-reaching social relationships highlight the complexity of
studying maritime societies, and the strong interrelationship between land and sea areas. The
cognitive driving mechanisms of several common types of maritime thematic landscapes in
Colonial Australia are now better understood, as are their potential data sources and archaeological
characterizations. Overall, the methodology was highly successful in accessing cultural meanings
imbued in landscape, leading to a better understanding of the practices and social behaviours of
maritime communities and providing challenging new research directions for Australian maritime
archaeology.


In this paper, we compare the performance of local detectors and descriptors in the context of object class recognition. Recently, many detectors/descriptors have been evaluated in the context of matching as well as invariance to viewpoint changes (Mikolajczyk and Schmid, 2004). However, it is unclear if these results can be generalized to categorization problems, which require different properties of features. We evaluate 5 state-of-the-art scale invariant region detectors and 5 descriptors. Local features are computed for 20 object classes and clustered using hierarchical agglomerative clustering. We measure the quality of appearance clusters and location distributions using entropy as well as precision. We also measure how the clusters generalize from training set to novel test data. Our results indicate that attended SIFT descriptors (Mikolajczyk and Schmid, 2005) computed on Hessian-Laplace regions perform best. Second score is obtained by salient regions (Kadir and Brady, 2001). The results also show that these two detectors provide complementary features. The new detectors/descriptors significantly improve the performance of a state-of-the art recognition approach (Leibe, et al., 2005) in pedestrian detection task


To introduce the special issue this paper reviews the use of protists as bioindicators. Seven key advantages of protist bioindicators are highlighted, namely: environmental sensitivity, functional importance, distribution, size and numbers, response times, ease of analysis and preservation potential. Protist bioindicators have been used in a wide range of contexts from monitoring ecosystem restoration to fire history, and particularly environmental pollution. Most major protist groups have been used as bioindicators with diatoms, foraminifera and testate amoebae particularly widely studied. To increase uptake of protist bioindication methods in routine environmental monitoring technique development should consider the needs of stakeholders from an early stage. Papers in this special issue reflect the diversity of both protist life and possible bioindicator applications.


The study of gene essentiality in human cells is crucial for elucidating gene function and holds great potential for finding therapeutic targets for diseases such as cancer. Technological advances in genome editing using clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas9 systems have set the stage for identifying human cell line core and context-dependent essential genes. However, first generation negative selection screens using CRISPR technology demonstrate extreme variability across different cell lines. To advance the development of the catalogue of human core and context-dependent essential genes, we have developed an optimized, ultracomplex, genome-scale gRNA library of 176,500 guide RNAs targeting 17,661 genes and have applied it to negative and positive selection screens in a human cell line. Using an improved Bayesian analytical approach, we find CRISPR-based screens yield double to triple the number of essential genes than were previously observed using systematic RNA interference, including many genes at moderate expression levels that are largely refractory to RNAi methods. We further characterized four essential genes of unknown significance and found that they all likely exist in protein complexes with other essential genes. For example, RBM48 and ARMC7 are both essential nuclear proteins, strongly interact and are commonly amplified across major cancers. Our findings suggest the CRISPR-Cas9 system fundamentally alters the landscape for systematic reverse genetics in human cells for elucidating gene function, identifying disease genes, and uncovering therapeutic targets.


In this paper we propose and analyze a new, fast method for the numerical solution of time domain boundary integral formulations of the wave equation. We employ Lubich's convolution quadrature method for the time discretization and a Galerkin boundary element method for the spatial discretization. The coefficient matrix of the arising system of linear equations is a triangular block Toeplitz matrix. Possible choices for solving the linear system arising from the above discretization include the use of fast Fourier transform (FFT) techniques and the use of data-sparse approximations. By using FFT techniques, the computational complexity can be reduced substantially while the storage cost remains unchanged and is, typically, high. Using data-sparse approximations, the gain is reversed; i.e., the computational cost is (approximately) unchanged while the storage cost is substantially reduced. The method proposed in this paper combines the advantages of these two approaches. First, the discrete convolution (related to the block Toeplitz system) is transformed into the (discrete) Fourier image, thereby arriving at a decoupled system of discretized Helmholtz equations with complex wave numbers. A fast data-sparse (e.g., fast multipole or panel-clustering) method can then be applied to the transformed system. Additionally, significant savings can be achieved if the boundary data are smooth and time-limited. In this case the right-hand sides of many of the Helmholtz problems are almost zero, and hence can be disregarded. Finally, the proposed method is inherently parallel. We analyze the stability and convergence of these methods, thereby deriving the choice of parameters that preserves the convergence rates of the unperturbed convolution quadrature. We also present numerical results which illustrate the predicted convergence behavior.


Virus discovery from high throughput sequencing data often follows a bottom-up approach where taxonomic annotation takes place prior to association to disease. Albeit effective in some cases, the approach fails to detect novel pathogens and remote variants not present in reference databases. We have developed a species independent pipeline that utilises sequence clustering for the identification of nucleotide sequences that co-occur across multiple sequencing data instances. We applied the workflow to 686 sequencing libraries from 252 cancer samples of different cancer and tissue types, 32 non-template controls, and 24 test samples. Recurrent sequences were statistically associated to biological, methodological or technical features with the aim to identify novel pathogens or plausible contaminants that may associate to a particular kit or method. We provide examples of identified inhabitants of the healthy tissue flora as well as experimental contaminants. Unmapped sequences that co-occur with high statistical significance potentially represent the unknown sequence space where novel pathogens can be identified.


Engineered SpCas9s and AsCas12a cleave fewer off-target genomic sites than wild-type (wt) Cas9. However, understanding their fidelity, mechanisms and cleavage outcomes requires systematic profiling across mispaired target DNAs. Here we describe NucleaSeq—nuclease digestion and deep sequencing—a massively parallel platform that measures the cleavage kinetics and time-resolved cleavage products for over 10,000 targets containing mismatches, insertions and deletions relative to the guide RNA. Combining cleavage rates and binding specificities on the same target libraries, we benchmarked five SpCas9 variants and AsCas12a. A biophysical model built from these data sets revealed mechanistic insights into off-target cleavage. Engineered Cas9s, especially Cas9-HF1, dramatically increased cleavage specificity but not binding specificity compared to wtCas9. Surprisingly, AsCas12a cleavage specificity differed little from that of wtCas9. Initial DNA cleavage sites and end trimming varied by nuclease, guide RNA and the positions of mispaired nucleotides. More broadly, NucleaSeq enables rapid, quantitative and systematic comparisons of specificity and cleavage outcomes across engineered and natural nucleases. The enzymatic properties of RNA-guided nucleases are revealed through massively parallel analysis.


The state of humanities today
The debate about the role of the humanities continues. How can they be justified? Do they only continue to exist if they have entertainment value, or are they necessary to compensate for shortcomings or damages of modernity? Both questions have given rise to very controversial answers. One thing is certain, that the hypothesis of the two cultures (Ch. P. Snow) has resolved itself. The humanities can perhaps survive if they (again) become the "fundamental ressort for all sciences", as Francis Bacon wrote in 1605. And if they can answer the "fundamental question": "What does it mean to be human?" - as posed by the "Commission on the Humanities" of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1980. The humanities also have to speak out on the conditio humana - as in the times of Lessing and Herder, and if they do the opposite of Schopenhauer's proposition "And yet nothing is easier than to write in such a way that nobody understands it." The humanities more than ever must be understandable. Then they can even become a key to their own understanding.


The shape of two-dimensional solitary beams propagating in photorefractive media with an externally applied field is studied. The analytical results indicate that, for both focusing and defocusing nonlinearities, radially symmetric self-channeled beams do not exist. Some recent experiments are interpreted in light of the present results.


Despite the availability of mortality data, a lack of annually accessible morbidity information for small geographical areas in England and Wales means that health studies are often restricted to using decennial, self-reported Census measures. Whilst the dissemination of census information has enabled much research, the self-assessment of health can be affected by subjective factors. Administrative data on health related benefit claims, in the form of Incapacity Benefit (IB) data, are more regularly available and claimants are professionally diagnosed. This source may have potential to be an annual small area indicator of population health.

In this paper, we examine IB as an indicator of population health at local government district and sub-district levels by investigating distributions and relationships between IB and other health measures from the census and from mortality statistics. We found that relationships in 2001 between IB, census measures and mortality suggest that using IB as an indicator of population health will give similar results, especially with those reporting themselves 'permanently sick or disabled' and especially in more urban areas. Time series analysis also suggested that IB was a useful and updateable source of data on population health.

However, although IB should be an objective measure as it is professionally diagnosed, willingness to take time off work due to sickness, to consult a doctor or to claim benefits may be affected by cultural and socio-economic factors. On the other hand, IB may be an incomplete count of ill people because some may be unable to claim benefits. Furthermore, strong relationships exist between poor health, mortality and unemployment. We recognise that IB may be hiding unemployment and have inferred an estimate using census data on economic activity to explore the relationship between IB and those reporting themselves to be permanently sick or disabled. This estimate suggests that previous assertions about the relationship between IB and unemployment may have been over zealous.

On balance, IB is a useful indicator of relative health for small areas. However, the utility of Incapacity Benefit as an ongoing updatable indicator of population health depends on the future of the benefit system in view of pending reforms.


The use of continuous carbon fiber composites in load bearing automotive applications can potentially offer significant benefits in weight reduction provided that the key issues regarding the prediction of energy absorption and crash energy management are thoroughly addressed. In this paper, the development of a framework to address the challenges in modeling the crush of non-crimp carbon fiber composites (NCF) is presented. Material models for intra and inter-laminar damage mechanisms were first developed and validated with tensile, bending, and impact experiments. Furthermore, these models were extended to dynamic axial crush of flat specimens and the predicted results were correlated with the experimental results for samples with and without delamination suppression. Good correlations were observed for the crush load and crush morphology, allowing one to unambiguously assess the accuracy of the developed models.


Evolving database management systems (DBMS) towards more flexibility in functionality, adaptation to changing requirements, and extensions with new or different components, is a challenging task. Although many approaches have tried to come up with a flexible architecture, there is no architectural framework that is generally applicable to provide tailor-made data management and can directly integrate existing application functionality. We discuss an alternative database architecture that enables more lightweight systems by decomposing the functionality into services and have the service granularity drive the functionality. We propose a service-oriented DBMS architecture which provides the necessary flexibility and extensibility for general-purpose usage scenarios. For that we present a generic storage service system to illustrate our approach.


Ultra-low power optimization is a challenging research topic in the de- sign of the sensor front-ends, especially in the area of Wireless Body Sensor Nodes (WBSN), where a limited amount of power and hardware resources are available. In this talk, I analyze the potential of the emerging compressed sensing (CS) paradigm for low-complexity and energy-efficient ECG sensing and data compression for storage or transmission, considering both software and hardware aspects. First, I discuss the power efficiency of digital CS, when implemented as a compression technique on a WBSN, illustrating novel optimization techniques to enhance the performance of reconstruction algorithms. These new techniques fully leverage the prior information (beyond simple sparsity) from the underlying signal, improving the compression results for both single lead and joint multi-lead ECG compression. Then, I present novel hardware optimization approaches targeting the design of ultra-low power CS-based analog front-ends in order to make them suitable for WBSN applications. Furthermore, I propose a new hybrid front- end design based on CS that can effectively reduce the power consumption by merging the sensing and compression phases as a single step. Finally, I overview the effects of technology scaling in the design of low- cost processing integrated circuits for CS compression in WBSNs; and ad- vocate the use of a novel robust CS technique to successfully recover the compressed data in presence of unbounded error levels in ultra-low power memories due to aggressive voltage scaling. Moreover, this proposed tech- nique achieves significant energy savings on WBSNs with respect to state-of- the-art designs in nano-scale technologies.


The Roman Republic was the most remarkable state in history. What began as a small community of peasants camped among marshes and hills ended up ruling the known world. "Rubicon" paints a vivid portrait of the Republic at the climax of its greatness - the same greatness which would herald the catastrophe of its fall. This was the century of Julius Caesar, the gambler whose addiction to glory led him to the banks of the Rubicon, and beyond; of Cicero, whose defence of freedom would make him a byword for eloquence; of Spartacus, the slave who dared to challenge a superpower; of Cleopatra, the queen who did the same. Tom Holland brings to life this strange and unsettling civilization, with its extremes of ambition and self-sacrifice, bloodshed and desire. Yet alien as it was, the Republic still holds up a mirror to us. Its citizens were obsessed by celebrity chefs, all-night dancing and exotic pets; they fought elections in law courts and were addicted to spin; they toppled foreign tyrants in the name of self-defence. Two thousand years may have passed, but we remain the Romans' heirs.


This paper is based on assessment of resilience in four domains viz. technical, economic, social and organisational; and its relation with self-organisation of communities leading to a paradigm shift in disaster research. The tendency for the development of different modes for self-organisation of the communities is a much sought after virtue, after an event of disruption. How much disaster policies contribute for the development of these modes of self-organisation is the subject of the present research? This paper aims to suggest new models of institutional resilience based on flexibility, inclusiveness, communication, and information flow for the achievement of self-organisation instead of command and control-based system of governance. The paper brings forth a model design and validation of framework for Institutional Resilience for Self-Organizations (IRSO) through the empirical study of an ISO 2000 certified city Greater Noida in Gautam Buddha Nagar District, India. The key findings of the research have implication in understanding cities and its prioritised components in a system approach, achievement of resilience and self-organisation in development planning or management in general and particularly in event of disasters.


The aim of this study was to explore any changes in perceptions and/or practice of a group of infant and toddler teachers as a result of their participation in a facilitated professional development programme. This professional development programme and a teaching team which was committed to implementing an Attachment Based Leaming programme (ABL) already imbedded in another section of their centre, held the potential for identifying changes in teachers' practices in response to their increased understandings of the theories, philosophies and beliefs underpinning the A BL programme. The experiences of two focus teachers, two professional development facilitators and five infant and toddler teachers' involvement in a centre specific co-constructed professional development programme along with two parent users of the centre are documented in this report using a qualitative mixed-method approach. Data were generated with participants for the duration of the professional development programme spanning a seven month time frame. The teachers were interviewed twice; once at the beginning of the programme and then at the completion of the programme. The parents were interviewed once on the completion of the professional development programme. Data from the interviews as well as teachers' reflective journals, meeting minutes and centre policies were analysed qualitatively using Rogoff s (2003) three planes of analysis; the personal, the interpersonal and the institutional planes. From these planes three thematic categories were revealed in which teachers' understandings were concentrated. These themes were the teachers ' view of the child as informant to their practice; how they perceived their role as a teacher; and the importance of team cohesion. Changes in teachers' practice within these three areas were examined, as were the professional development processes that influenced the teachers' perception and pedagogy. The study showed that there needs to be alignment of these concepts across and within the three planes to ensure optimal outcomes for all participants in the learning community. This study has emphasized how professional development can shape teachers' views, understandings and pedagogy. The study contributes to an understanding of the importance of teachers having opportunities to theorise practice, and undertaking authentic and contextual professional development within safe and trusting environments.


This paper presents a new approach to child poverty measurement that reflects the breadth and components of child poverty. The Alkire and Foster method presented in this paper seeks to answer the question 'who is poor' by considering the intensity of each child's poverty. Once children are identified as poor, the measures aggregate information on poor children's deprivations in a way that can be broken down to see where and how children are poor. The resulting measures go beyond the headcount by taking into account the breadth, depth or severity of dimensions of child poverty. The paper illustrates one way to apply this method to child poverty measurement, using Bangladeshi data from four rounds of the Demographic Health Survey covering the period 1997–2007. Results for Bangladesh show that the AF adjusted headcount ratio adds value because it produces a different ranking than the simple headcount, because it also reflects the simultaneous deprivations children experience (intensity). Given this, we argue that child poverty should not be assessed only according to the incidence of poverty but also by the intensity of deprivations that batter poor children's lives at the same time. The Bangladesh example is used to illustrate how to compute and interpret the child poverty figures, how the final measure can be broken down by groups and by dimensions in order to analyse child poverty, how to interpret changes over time, and how to undertake robustness checks concerning the poverty cut-off.


Cases of induced malaria have been notified in S. Paulo State, Brazil, in recent years. At the same time the number of cases imported from endemic regions of Brazil has been increasing. One case of induced malaria by Plasmodium vivax was registered in Presidente Prudente, located in the west of the State, in 1988 and a further eleven cases in 1989. This city is considered to be one of the main transit ports for people who come into the State from the Amazonian region. The patients declared that they had not been to any possible transmission area of malaria. All of them had, however, taken cocaine, sharing the same contaminated needle and syringe. Previously, one person with imported malaria was detected, who had transmitted the disease to the first case in 1988 and also to a further group of 3 people in 1989. One of these three latter cases then transmitted the disease to two other people. As the group of people continued to use the drug among themselves, 2 new cases arose. Afterwards, they re-infected themselves again (one of the was re-infected twice). The test for Human Immunodeficiency Virus was positive for 5 individuals, of whom one had a negative result and 2 others did not undergo the test. This information is discussed within the present context.


We present a microscopic theoretical analysis of time and spatially resolved photoluminescence of naturally occurring quantum dots induced by monolayer fluctuations in the thickness of semiconductor quantum wells. The analysis is based on a recently developed theoretical tool for spatially‐resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy in semiconductor quantum structures. The theoretical framework here presented allows to study the influence of temperature and spatial resolution on the detected images. We find that the carrier recombination dynamics is significantly affected by thermal populations in optically inactive or poorly active exciton states. The presence of these states slows‐down radiative recombination, determining an increase of the photoluminescence decay time as a function of temperature in a wide temperature range, in agreement with recent experimental results. We investigate these effects in symmetric dots displaying dark excited states. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)


What limits the ability to attend several locations simultaneously? There are two possibilities: Either attention cannot be divided without incurring a cost, or spatial memory is limited and observers forget which locations to monitor. We compared motion discrimination when attention was directed to one or multiple locations by briefly presented central cues. The cues were matched for the amount of spatial information they provided. Several random dot kinematograms (RDKs) followed the spatial cues; one of them contained task-relevant, coherent motion. When four RDKs were presented, discrimination accuracy was identical when one and two locations were indicated by equally informative cues. However, when six RDKs were presented, discrimination accuracy was higher following one rather than multiple location cues. We examined whether memory of the cued locations was diminished under these conditions. Recall of the cued locations was tested when participants attended the cued locations and when they did not attend the cued locations. Recall was inaccurate only when the cued locations were attended. Finally, visually marking the cued locations, following one and multiple location cues, equalized discrimination performance, suggesting that participants could attend multiple locations when they did not have to remember which ones to attend. We conclude that endogenously dividing attention between multiple locations is limited by inaccurate recall of the attended locations and that attention poses separate demands on the same central processes used to remember spatial information, even when the locations attended and those held in memory are the same.


Herbal medicine is gaining acceptance worldwide for their effective pharmacological effects and relative safety. Plants have metabolic pathways that lead to the production and accumulation of secondary metabolites such as alkaloids, glycosides, and terpenoids that exhibit various biological activities. Plant secondary metabolites have been the major foci of investigation for several years and have been successfully used against a num - ber of communicable and noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and viral infections. This chapter will explore Malaysian plants, their secondary metabolites, and their biological/medicinal properties with a particular focus on some selected species under a national project. Other aspects such as plant tissue culture to produce secondary metabolites and a case study on the use of secondary metabolites in the prevention and treatment of dengue fever are also described. While a lot of effort has been put in, further research and development into plant secondary metabolites are needed including using the plant tissue culture approach toward reaching high-value herbal industry.


Abstract The emigration of Jews from Morocco to Israel, in particular, is the subject of intense debate among historians, signaling the difficulty of telling a unified story of this moment. I want to contribute to this debate by showing that the combining and often opposing forces of Colonialism and Zionism were the main factors that triggered these migrations, in a period of rising Moroccan nationalism. But those forces were also seen as opportunities by some migrants to seize the moment to better their fate and realize their dreams. If we cannot assess every migrant story, I want here to suggest through my family's experience and memory and other collected oral histories, how we could intertwine those memories to a larger narrative to shed more light on this history. The push and pull forces that led to Moroccan Jewry's migrations and post-colonial circulations between the 1940s and 1960s were the result of a reordering of the complex relationships between the different ethnic and religious communities well before the migration took place. The departures of the people interviewed for this study are inscribed in both the collective and family dynamics, but were organized in secret, away from the gaze of the others, particularly that of non-Jewish neighbors. Their belonging to a sector of the colonial world, while still prevalent in their narratives, is blurred by another aspect of post-colonial life in Morocco, that is the cultural/education nexus. Depending on where one has been educated and socialized, the combined effects of Colonialism and Zionism strongly impacted the time of their departures and the places they went to.


This study contributes to international news flow literature methodologically, by significantly expanding its scope, and theoretically, by incorporating intermedia agenda-setting theory, through which we reveal how news media in different countries influence each other in covering international news. With a big data analysis of 4,708 online news sources from 67 countries in 2015, the study shows that wealthier countries not only continue to attract most of the world news attention, they are also more likely to decide how other countries perceive the world. However, international news flow is not as hierarchical and U.S.-centric as found earlier. Online-only, emerging media in core countries are not necessarily more impactful in setting the world news agenda than those in (semi)peripheral countries.


The vision of CUT is to transform itself into a sustainable university, by incorporating sustainable development in its teaching, research and learning environment, and by maximizing and mainstreaming environmental, economic and social sustainability in all its operations and educational activities. For this reason it launched a sustainable development (SD) project in February 2011. This process is being managed by the Office of Technology and Innovation and executed according to a project plan, which is continually rolled-out as progress is being made with the project. This article is a brief summary of progress that has been made during the first year of implementation of the plan.


Distribution system operation is becoming increasingly complex with installation of active components such as distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) generation, battery storage, and inverters. So far, specialized tools have been developed to capture a portion of the overall impact of distributed energy resources (DERs) to the distribution system. However, Distribution System Operators (DSOs) still lack visibility into the overall system conditions and capabilities. Furthermore, the impacts of increasing amount of DERs is not be limited at the distribution level but also influence the transmission grid. In this paper, we propose a co-simulation platform that enables simulation modules to interact in a plug-and-play fashion regardless of the platform they were developed in. Cyber-Physical Co-simulation Platform for Distributed Energy Resources in Smart Grids (CyDER) is a modular and scalable tool for power system planning and operation, focused on high penetration of DERs. The CyDER platform is based on the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) standard and provides several applications for power systems planning and analysis. A case study with a large amount of PV and electric vehicles loads on feeders is shown to demonstrate a successful interlink between the transmission and distribution system simulations.


To the Editor: Since the first identifications of avian influenza (H5N1) in Europe in late 2005 and early 2006, Eurobarometer survey data obtained during April–May 2006 have provided a unique opportunity to examine the knowledge of respondents across the European Union, Croatia, and Turkey about the risks and transmission of avian influenza. The H5N1 strain of avian influenza virus has caused >240 human deaths in central and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa (1). Four of these deaths occurred in Turkey in 2006. Understanding gaps in the public's knowledge about avian influenza risks and transmission provides guidance on which issues future public health information campaigns may wish to focus. From a public health perspective, a more informed general public will be less likely to unnecessarily alter their travel and food consumption behavior and more likely to take appropriate preventive actions.

A 2006 Eurobarometer survey asked 29,170 residents of the 27 countries in the European Union, Croatia, and Turkey about their knowledge of avian influenza risks (2). Eurobarometer surveys are undertaken by the European Commission to monitor the EU public's social and political opinions. The survey was conducted on a multistage random sampling basis. Therefore, the sample is representative of the whole territory surveyed. Each country's population was randomly sampled according to rural, metropolitan, and urban population densities. A cluster of addresses was selected from each primary sampling unit by using country-dependent resources such as electoral registers. Addresses were chosen systematically by using standard random route procedures, beginning with a randomly selected initial address. The survey was conducted by face-to-face interviews in respondents' homes.

Data were collected from March 27 through May 1, 2006. This period is especially interesting when looking at Europeans' knowledge about avian influenza risk because the first European cases of avian influenza (H5N1) were found in October 2005 in Turkey; additional cases were found later that month in Romania, Croatia, and the United Kingdom. Therefore, the period would have included media coverage about avian influenza as well as any targeted public health efforts to inform residents about avian influenza risks. By the end of this survey's fieldwork period, 17 of the 29 countries surveyed had reported influenza virus (H5N1) in birds, 3 in mammals, and 1 in humans (3).

Respondents were asked 7 questions about their knowledge of the risks humans face regarding avian influenza (Table). When we looked at these results with the aim of setting future public health information campaign objectives, we considered incorrect or "don't know" responses to indicate public health information campaign failures. Uncertainty regarding avian influenza risks appeared to involve consumption of eggs and vaccinated, cooked poultry and whether the virus can be transmitted between humans. However, for all questions asked, more than half of the respondents answered correctly except when asked about eating poultry that had been vaccinated against avian influenza. This question also had the highest number of "don't know" responses. Respondents are most knowledgeable about the preventive measure of culling chickens, perhaps because of the media attention these events attract. The large percentage of correct answers for some questions points to successes of previous information campaigns and media coverage, but the 40% of respondents answering incorrectly or "don't know" to questions about poultry and egg consumption and human-to-human virus transmission leaves areas for further work.

Table

Knowledge of human risks associated with avian influenza, European region, 2006*

These results support previous findings that knowledge about avian influenza, especially about prevention and human-to-human transmission, has scope for improvement (4,5). Persons in Europe reported that they have little ability to prevent themselves from getting avian influenza (6). Previous research in the Lao People's Democratic Republic examined how consumers' knowledge of avian influenza risk reduced the likelihood that consumers will substitute poultry for other foods during an avian influenza crisis. This research indicates the importance of informing persons about consumption and transmission-related risks to reduce the likelihood of unnecessary behavioral changes that can cause larger macrolevel market effects (7).

The state of knowledge about avian influenza in Europe during the outbreak in the spring of 2006 leaves room for further public health information campaign efforts, especially those that increase consumers' understanding of consumption-related avian influenza risks. Persons in Europe appear to be aware of culling procedures and the risks of touching infected birds but have a more limited understanding of how avian influenza in their region should influence their consumption patterns.


We study data corruption attacks on stochastic multi arm bandit algorithms. Existing attack methodologies assume that the attacker can observe the multi arm bandit algorithm's realized behavior which is in contrast to the adversaries modeled in the robust multi arm bandit algorithms literature. To the best of our knowledge, we develop the first data corruption attack on stochastic multi arm bandit algorithms which works without observing the algorithm's realized behavior. Through this attack, we also discover a sufficient condition for a stochastic multi arm bandit algorithm to be susceptible to adversarial data corruptions. We show that any bandit algorithm that makes decisions just using the empirical mean reward, and the number of times that arm has been pulled in the past can suffer from linear regret under data corruption attacks. We further show that various popular stochastic multi arm bandit algorithms such UCB, -greedy and Thompson Sampling satisfy this sufficient condition and are thus prone to data corruption attacks. We further analyse the behaviour of our attack for these algorithms and show that using only o(T ) corruptions, our attack can force these algorithms to select a potentially non-optimal target arm preferred by the attacker for all but o(T ) rounds.


textabstractHigh-tech capital goods enable the production of many services and articles that have become a part of our daily lives. Examples include the refineries that produce the gasoline we put in our cars, the photolithography systems that enable the production of the chips in our cell phones and laptops, the trains and railway infrastructure that facilitate public transport and the aircraft that permit us to travel long distances. To prevent costly production disruptions of such systems when failures occur, it is crucial that service parts are readily available to replace any failed parts. However, service parts represent significant investments and failures are unpredictable, so it is unclear which parts should be stocked and in what quantity.

In this thesis, analytical models and solution methods are developed to aid companies in making this decision. Amongst other things, we analyze systems in which multiple parts need replacement after a failure, a situation that is frequently encountered in practice. This affects the ability to complete repairs in a timely fashion. We develop new modeling techniques in order to successfully apply scalable deterministic approaches, such as column generation techniques and sample average approximation methods, to this stochastic problem. This leads to solution techniques that, unlike traditional methods, can ensure that all parts needed to complete maintenance are readily available. The approach is capable of meeting the challenging requirements of a real-life repair shop.


This article extends the analysis of table mixes for restaurants, on the principle that table mix helps drive revenue. The article presents the results of a simulation experiment of more than forty-six thousand restaurant contexts to evaluate the accuracy of "naïve table mix" calculations. An earlier study presented a simple method of calculating a recommended mix of tables in a restaurant, and another found that those calculations provided table mixes yielding within about 1 percent of the revenue provided by the optimal table mix. While the earlier simulation studies assumed that the space required by a table was directly proportional to the number of seats it contained, that is not always the case. Thus, this article presents space-oriented versions of the existing naïve table mix methods. The article also presents the results of a test of two other forms of the naïve table mix calculations, which include party revenue (or contribution). The simplest of the naïve table mix models proved to be the best, on balance. It yielded table mixes that generated more than 98 percent of the revenue achievable by near-optimal table mixes. As a caveat, however, in more than 5 percent of the simulated scenarios, the best naïve table mix model yielded less than 95 percent of the revenue achievable by a near-optimal table mix. These findings suggest that the naïve table mix calculations be used with caution.


In this presentation, we discuss a recent publication on our course on model checking. The course has been shifted from a classical lecture-based format to inquiry and research-based teaching. In the article to be presented, we documented course development, presented some didactic methods used and evaluated the course based on peer review and student feedback. Furthermore, we tried to assert student engagement empirically.


Background: People with diabetes and peripheral neuropathy have been reported to show alterations in lower limb joint function compared to healthy non-diabetic people. Specifically the maximum angular movement available at certain joints can be reduced during static, non-weight bearing tasks. Limited joint range of motion has the potential to compromise balance and stability thereby increasing the risk of falling. It is unclear whether a reduction in the extent of movement available at the joints is reflected by a reduction in the amount of angular movement actually utilised during a functional task such as stair negotiation. The aim of this study was to determine if people with diabetes show reduced dynamic range of motion at the ankle, knee and hip joints during stair ascent and descent in comparison to controls. Falls risk during stair negotiation was calculated by measuring the degree of variability in dynamic joint range of motion. Methods: Data were generated from three groups: subjects with diabetes and peripheral neuropathy (DPN), diabetes without peripheral neuropathy (DM), and healthy controls (Ctl). The study was conducted in a gait laboratory using motion capture and related 3D software for analysis. Joint range of motion for the ankle, knee, and hip were captured during level walking, stair ascent, and descent. A seven step, bespoke staircase was fabricated for this purpose. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Newman-Keuls tests were used to analyse the data. Results: Significantly reduced ankle range of motion, in the sagittal plane, was observed in the DPN group during stair ascent when compared to the controls. For stair descent, the DPN group demonstrated a significant increase in knee and hip ROM in the frontal plane, and also hip ROM in the transverse plane. No significant differences between the groups were identified for joint variability. Conclusions: People with DPN demonstrate alterations in dynamic range of motion at the lower limb joints during stair ascent and descent. The degree of angular movement utilised for both stair tasks was decreased at the ankle joint and this has the potential to undermine balance and stability. In contrast, angular movement at the knee and hip joints was increased in the frontal and transverse planes. This may compensate for impaired balance and stability by increasing the base of support to maintain balance and assist in foot clearance and placement. The specific combination of increased angular movement at the knee and hip may represent a compensatory stair gait strategy in response to reduced angular movement at the ankle joint.


Two of the most important issues concerning public sector organisations (PSO) all over the
world today is the need to reduce their operating cost whilst at the same time they are
required to improve their services. Most countries of the world are looking at quality
management, competition and performance measurement as elements that they could
explore to achieve the objective of reducing cost and increasing public satisfaction with the
services offered.
The local authority in Britain is one of the most heavily targeted public sector organisations
to be subjected to competition. Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) was introduced
by law to ensure local authorities embrace competition. In response to this regulation, the
majority of the local authorities adopted a quality management system in order to cope with
competition. Associated with the quality initiatives and competition is the legal requirement
for local government in Britain to publish in the local newspapers their performance on a set
of indicators determined by the central government. The aim of this research was to explore
and describe the link between quality management and performance in a PSO . A case study
investigating two departments consisting of engineers, surveyors and architects at Salford
City Council, Manchester was conducted to determine the effect of quality management
system (QMS) and competition and the nature of performance measurement undertaken in
a P SO.
The research findings indicate that there was no structured system that monitors
performance of the organisation. The research also highlights that the performance of a city
council in general was determined by a simple set of indicators. It was also found that the
implementations of QMS in a PSO needs to incorporate features that can detect how well
the departments are improving due to practising the system.


The paper develops a simple theoretical model of inventory control in global supply chains. It identifies a role for intermediaries in managing inventory, and shows that inserting an intermediary as an additional link in a supply chain is profitable when demand volatility is high. It also provides conditions under which the intermediary handling inventory is located in the exporting versus the importing country. Trade liberalization in the form of less lumpy trade is shown to expand the role of export and import intermediaries but to have potentially negative effects on the volume of international trade and social welfare in the importing country.


To reduce the bad effect of electrode shifts on myoelectric pattern recognition, this paper presents an adaptive electrode calibration method based on core activation regions of muscles. In the proposed method, the high-density surface electromyography (HD-sEMG) matrix collected during hand gesture execution is decomposed into source signal matrix and mixed coefficient matrix by fast independent component analysis algorithm firstly. The mixed coefficient vector whose source signal has the largest two-norm energy is selected as the major pattern, and core activation region of muscles is extracted by traversing the major pattern periodically using a sliding window. The electrode calibration is realized by aligning the core activation regions in unsupervised way. Gestural HD-sEMG data collection experiments with known and unknown electrode shifts are carried out on 9 gestures and 11 participants. A CNN+LSTM-based network is constructed and two network training strategies are adopted for the recognition task. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in mitigating the bad effect of electrode shifts on gesture recognition accuracy and the potentials in reducing user training burden of myoelectric control systems. With the proposed electrode calibration method, the overall gesture recognition accuracies increase about (5.72~7.69)%. In specific, the average recognition accuracy increases (13.32~17.30)% when using only one batch of data in data diversity strategy, and increases (12.01~13.75)% when using only one repetition of each gesture in model update strategy. The proposed electrode calibration algorithm can be extended and applied to improve the robustness of myoelectric control system.


Abstract. Efficient decision-making regarding flood risk reduction has become a priority for authorities and stakeholders in many European countries. Risk analysis methods and techniques are a useful tool for evaluating costs and benefits of possible interventions. Within this context, a methodology to estimate flood consequences was developed in this paper that is based on GIS, and integrated with a model that estimates the degree of accessibility and operability of strategic emergency response structures in an urban area. The majority of the currently available approaches do not properly analyse road network connections and dependencies within systems, and as such a loss of roads could cause significant damages and problems to emergency services in cases of flooding. The proposed model is unique in that it provides a maximum-impact estimation of flood consequences on the basis of the operability of the strategic emergency structures in an urban area, their accessibility, and connection within the urban system of a city (i.e. connection between aid centres and buildings at risk), in the emergency phase. The results of a case study in the Puglia region in southern Italy are described to illustrate the practical applications of this newly proposed approach. The main advantage of the proposed approach is that it allows for defining a hierarchy between different infrastructure in the urban area through the identification of particular components whose operation and efficiency are critical for emergency management. This information can be used by decision-makers to prioritize risk reduction interventions in flood emergencies in urban areas, given limited financial resources.


Background: Congenital talipes equinovarus is one of the commonest congenital anomaly of the foot with an incidence of 1 to 2 per 1000 live births. Most of the Clubfoot deformities are not recognized at birth and when recognized, there is no treatment available due to lack of awareness among the people. Nonoperative correction of the Clubfoot by Ponseti is an effective modality of treatment with excellent results. Methods: 38 feet of Idiopathic Congenital Talipes Equinus Varus Deformity were treated in children between the age group of 1 month- 1.8 months. The severity of foot deformity was assessed as per the Pirani scoring system. Results: 16 Males (66.66 %) and 8 Females (33.33 %) patients were included in the study with 10 (41.7%) Unilateral and 14 (58.3 %) bilateral cases. The mean of Pirani scores after the final cast was 3.02 and at 1,2 and 6 months are 0, 0 and 0.08 respectively. Standard deviation and Standard error were 0.070 and 0.014 respectively. Therefore p = 0.01, that is highly significant Conclusion: Treatment of Idiopathic clubfoot by Ponseti technique is an effective, time tested, simple technique with a low learning curve and minimizing the need for extensive surgeries.


The structure and dynamics of polymer melts in the proximity of a solid substrate was investigated. This issue is relevant due to its basic scientific aspects as well as for technological applications in the field of interfaces and composite materials. For this, polystyrene of various molecular weights (in the entangled and non-entangled regime) were spin coated on gold surfaces which were created by thermal evaporation. Polystyrene was chosen due to its vast technological application range and for being a well characterized
material. The polymer films were characterized using resonance enhanced dynamic light scattering (REDLS) and kinetic surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy (SPR). For this an appropriate REDLS setup adapted for the problem was built. The film thickness ranged from about 4 nm to 440 nm. For different molecular weights, the glass transition temperatures (Tg) were measured by kinetic SPR and compared to the value of Tg of bulk polymer measured by DSC at corresponding heating or cooling rates. Within the experimental errors, no differences in Tg were observed for the entangled and non-entangled polystyrenes samples (350 000 g/mol and 1821 g/mol respectively) measured down to 4 nm for the entangled polymer and 8 nm for the non-entangled molecular weight. The behavior of the dynamics investigated by REDLS revealed two main processes, a slow- and a fast-mode. The slow-mode was shown to be attributed to the free-surface dynamics, specifically the dynamics of thermally activated capillary waves. The signal of the fast-mode originated throughout the entire film thickness and was correlated to the presence of solvent (toluene) residues. Thoroughly annealed films did not show a fast-mode. From the theory of thermally activated capillary waves it is possible to infer physical properties of these supported polymer films, such as e.g. viscosity (eta) and shear modulus (G). The results obtained by REDLS of thin films at a given temperature and capillary wave frequency were compared with rheological measurements of bulk polystyrene at the same temperature and frequency. No differences of eta and G were observed between thin films and the bulk polymer. It was also possible to state that the dynamics of the freesurface is described by a Vogel-Fulcher-Tamman like behavior (VFT) instead of fitting to the Arrhenius equation as proposed by some authors. However, the solid surface with a no-slip boundary condition at the polymer-solid contact leads to the dynamics of the free-surface to slow down while decreasing the film thickness. This should not be confused with a chain confinement effect, but it is simply a hydrodynamic effect governed by the film thickness and the no-slip boundary condition. Even though the film thickness has an impact on the measured capillary wave frequency, it was possible to show that the temperature and frequency dependence of eta and G remain unaltered with film thickness. The relevant factor changing the dynamics is in fact the film thickness itself.


Under the prior appropriation doctrine, water rights are better defined and specified than under the riparian doctrine, but diversion requirements left instream flows unprotected. Primarily in the 1970s and 80s, states sought to extend water rights to include instream flow (henceforth ISF) uses, allowing for new appropriations and market-based transactions to establish ISF rights within the private property system rather than using eminent domain or the public trust doctrine to bolster ISFs. Due to cumbersome administrative processes and other transaction costs, relatively few transfers or appropriations have occurred. Those that have often have rights subordinate (through legal qualifications) or at least junior to earlier diversion rights, leading critics to question the right-based preservation. This article rigorously analyzes the case of Colorado, one of the most active programs in the US within the most regimented water right systems. Despite relatively few acquisitions, the junior ISF appropriations have protected numerous miles of streams by 1) deflecting future diversionary rights, 2) requiring protection of any upstream transfers, and 3) reducing upstream withdrawals from existing diversion rights despite ISF's junior status. The shift to diverting more downstream stems from additional investment in monitoring and enforcement which provides informational externalities to existing water right holders.


Introduction The great inconsistency in the use of terms relating to faults, and especially the lack of uniformity when dealing with faults in which there is a component of displacement parallel with the fault strike, 2 led to the appointment by the Council of the Geological Society of America at the Baltimore meeting, December, 1908, of a Committee on the Nomenclature of Faults. This Committee was charged with recommending a proper nomenclature. A preliminary report was made at the Washington meeting, December 30, 1911, and was printed as a special brochure by order of the Council, under the title "Proposed Nomenclature of Faults." Copies were sent to all Fellows of the Society and a few other geologists with the request that it be freely criticised. The Committee received a number of letters containing apt criticisms and making useful suggestions. As a result of these letters and the discussion at the New . . .


Theatre in the Dark: Shadow, Gloom and Blackout in Contemporary Theatre responds to a rising tide of experimentation in theatre practice that eliminates or obscures light. It brings together leading and emerging practitioners and researchers in a volume dedicated to exploring the phenomenon and showcasing a range of possible critical and theoretical approaches.

This book considers the aesthetics and phenomenology of dark, gloomy and shadow-strewn theatre performances, as well as the historical and cultural significances of darkness, shadow and the night in theatre and performance contexts. It is concerned as much with the experiences elicited by darkness and obscured or diminished lighting as it is with the conditions that define, frame and at times re-shape what each might 'mean' and 'do'.

Contributors provide surveys of relevant practice, interviews with practitioners, theoretical reflections and close critical analyses of work by key innovators in the aesthetics of light, shadow and darkness. The book has a particular focus on the work of contemporary theatre makers – including Sound&Fury, David Rosenberg and Glen Neath, Lundahl & Seitl, Extant, and Analogue – and seeks to deepen the engagement of theatre and performance studies with what might be called 'the sensory turn'. Theatre in the Dark explores ground-breaking areas that will appeal to researchers, practitioners and audiences alike.


Copper deficiency has been linked to the incidence of a number of wheat diseases. Canadian research on mineral soils has suggested that low Cu availability, as indicated in a DTPA extraction soil test, combined with low soil organic C and coarse textures may also result in Cu deficiency of cereals. The objective of this study was to determine the yield responses of spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and durum [T. turgidum subsp. durum (Desf.) Husn.] to Cu fertilization, and to determine whether wheat leaf rust (Puccinia triticina Roberge ex Desmaz f. sp. tritica), tan spot [Pyrenophora tritica-repentis (Died.) Dreschler], and Fusarium head blight (Fusarium graminearum Schwabe) incidence and severity would be reduced with these treatments. Experiments were established from 1998-2000 on 17 spring wheat sites and three durum wheat sites throughout North Dakota. Disease ratings were recorded at 10 sites.


Surface irrigation is the term used to describe the range of application techniques by which water is delivered to one or more points or edges of a field, and distributes over the field area under the influence of gravity. Surface irrigation is often referred to as flood irrigation, implying that the water distribution is uncontrolled, and, therefore, inherently inefficient. The term encompasses a large range of systems with varying degrees of complexity and performance. It is true that a significant proportion of surface irrigation systems do perform poorly, but, for the most part, much of this is due to design issues or incorrect management of the system rather than an inherent problem of the system itself.

Surface irrigation is the oldest form of irrigation and still remains the most common application technique across the globe. Irrigation was a necessary part of many of the world's ancient civilizations and evidence of various forms of surface irrigation has been found across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and South America. Approximately 6000 years ago flood and furrow irrigation was practiced in the area surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern day Iraq (Postel, 1999). The Egyptians and Indians pioneered a system of 'inundation canals' that are dug parallel to the river and rely on regular seasonal flooding (Cantor, 1970). In Egypt, these canals were used to supply water to basin irrigation layouts which resemble those still used in the region to this day. Evidence for similar primitive irrigation systems has also been found in other regions, such as China and Mexico.

Other forms of irrigation have only become a reality in the last 150 years with the development of pressurized sprinklers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the invention of drip irrigation in the mid-twentieth century. Pressurized irrigation, particularly large mobile machines and drip irrigation, is seen as a superior application technique. For millennia, farmers were reliant on a system which offered limited flexibility in terms of timeliness and rate of application. Now they have an engineered solution where perfect application is at least theoretically possible. Despite the perceived advantages of pressurized irrigation, much of the world's food and fiber is still grown using surface irrigation, and for good reason, as it has a number of advantages. Possibly the most significant of these is capital cost. Pressurized irrigation systems involve a higher capital investment. The highest cost option, drip irrigation, is typically restricted to higher-value horticultural and orchard crops, or in circumstances where great precision of irrigation applications is required. The major capital costs associated with surface irrigation is the grading of the land. This should be performed regardless of the choice of system to ensure adequate drainage of the field during rainfall events. In water-limited circumstances, farmers will only irrigate a portion of the total cropping area and then rotate to other fields in subsequent seasons. This practice, common in parts of Australia, is not compatible with high-cost infrastructure, as it will take much longer to recoup these costs if the field is only utilized every second or third season.

The energy requirements of irrigation are often neglected during farm planning, but as energy prices increase it is becoming an important concern. In many circumstances, surface irrigation requires no on-farm pumping, water flows from the scheme channels or on-farm reservoirs to the fields under the influence of gravity alone. Where pumping is required, pressurized sprinkler and drip systems will always involve considerably higher energy costs than the equivalent surface irrigation layouts. The requirement for reliable and consistent electrical power or petroleum supplies has proven to be a challenge in developing nations. Sprinkler and drip systems are designed to operate at a specific supply pressure and are reliant on access to this electrical power supply 24 hours per day. While not an issue in most developed nations, unreliable power supplies have forced designers to adopt high-system capacities with higher flowrates requiring higher capital costs. Many irrigation distribution schemes have been designed to supply high flow rates for short periods of time instead of lowering the continuing flow rates required for pressurized systems. Adoption of new systems either require on-farm storage or changes at the scheme level.

Surface irrigation can be managed with a low-skilled workforce, while other forms of irrigation require higher skill levels or specialist knowledge. Other forms of irrigation may also require more frequent maintenance and access to technical support. Neglect of these facts has resulted in many pressurized systems failing to achieve anticipated levels of performance (Burney and Naylor, 2012, Kulecho and Weatherhead, 2005, Maisiri et al., 2005).

As previously stated, most of the irrigated area worldwide is under some form of surface irrigation, which, in most cases, is performing at a substandard level of efficiency. It is true that this performance can be increased through adoption of appropriate pressurized systems, but the truth is somewhat more complex. For example, promoters of drip irrigation would suggest that this single technology can save water and help save the water crisis, but as recent research has shown, there is little conclusive evidence that this is true (van der Kooij et al., 2013). Regardless of whether alternate systems offer any benefit, considering the cost and difficulty of the conversion, it is important to first ensure that the existing system is functioning optimally.

The proportion of irrigated land under surface irrigation has declined significantly over the past few decades in countries such as the United States (Koech et al., 2015), but this is likely due to labor savings rather than water efficiency savings. Traditional surface irrigation is more labor-intensive than most other types of irrigation system; therefore, as wages rise in developing nations, it is reasonable to expect that the adoption of pressurized irrigation will increase. Rising labor costs are also the main driver behind the adoption of automation systems, as is described in Section 10.7.

This chapter draws from material written by the author which has been previously presented in a range of articles and theses (e.g. Gillies, 2008, Gillies and Smith, 2015, Koech et al., 2014, Koech, 2012, Smith et al., 2016).


The key instruments of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the Additional Protocols of 1977, divides armed conflict into two legal categories: international armed conflicts (IAC) or non-international armed conflicts (NIAC). While international armed conflicts are regulated by the whole range of the Geneva Conventions, there is only one single article, common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions that provides for non-international armed conflicts.  The same applies to the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions of 1977.  This is concerning, as the bulk of conflicts since 1945 has been non-international in nature.  The end of the 20th century saw an increase in internationalized armed conflicts: conflicts that may have started as internal conflicts but due to third state intervention or the scope and magnitude of the conflict, have become something that transcend categorization as internal armed conflicts.  These conflicts can either remain NIAC's or become IAC's.  Depending on the nature of the parties involved one can even have a situation where the rules to both types of conflicts apply simultaneously with dire legal effects for the parties involved.  The events of 11 September 2001 and the so-called "war on terror" brought transnational armed conflicts to the foreground: cross-border conflicts that often fall outside the scope of the classic IAC and also fail to meet the requirement for NIAC's that requires the conflict to take place "within the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties". After examining the historical background leading up to the classification of armed conflicts as either IAC or NIAC, the article takes a look at recent developments and ask whether the time has not arrived to do away with the Geneva Convention straightjacket for purposes of determining rules applicable to a particular conflict?


Salmonellosis is a common and economically important disease in animal such as in poultry and a public health hazard to human.The aetiological agent involved was a Salmonella species. A new Salmonella serovar isolated
in Malaysia, Salmonella potsdam (Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Potsdam) was isolated from a case of yolk sac infection in a young ostrich and believed to be pathogenic in young poultry chick and could be
zoonotic to human.This salmonella serovar was inoculated into day-old chicks and embryonated chicken eggs, to study its pathogenicity and the pathological effects on yolk membrane. Day-old chicks were inoculated with S. potsdam using different routes, namely intraperitoneal(Group 1), oral (Group 2), subcutaneous (Group 3) and navel (Group 4). The mortality was 100%, 30%, 70% and 0% in each group respectively. Death occurred 2 days post-inoculation in Group 1, 8-11 days post-inoculation in Group 2 and 2-6
days post-inoculation in Group 3. The rapid death especially in Group 1 and the pathological changes in chicks which died shortly following inoculation
with this pathogenic bacteria were considered to be indicative of shock and attributed to the action of endotoxin.The affected yolk membrane was mild to severely congested. The results from the bacteriological tests showed
pure growth of this bacteria from the organs sampled, especially in Group 1.Most organs sampled from chicks that were euthanised after 14 days postinoculation,
also revealed pure growth of S. potsdam. There was neither
clinical sign nor mortality in chicks of group 4 which remained healthy like those in the control group. There was no bacteria isolated from chicks infected via the navel swab, which indicated that yolk sac infection by S. potsdam cannot occur from completely healed navel. Embryonated chicken eggs were infected with S.potsdam using
different routes, namely through yolk sac (Group 1) and shell swab (Group 2).Salmonella potsdam appeared to be highly pathogenic to chick embryos in Group 1, with 100% mortality and 80% mortality in Group 2.The entire
affected embryo in Group 1 showed congested yolk sac. Salmonella potsdam was recovered from all the embryos that died during the observation periods.Hatched chicks in Group 2 revealed pure growth of S. potsdam isolated from vital organs which cultured on Brilliant Green agar after placing in selenite broth indicative that these chicks could be carrier chicks.Salmonella potsdam was observed in the lesion of the yolk membrane.Its isolation from characteristic yolk membrane lesion indicated that it was associated with yolk sac infection.Immunohistochemistry observations validated the relationship between lesion seen in yolk membrane and S. potsdam. Immunoperoxidase staining technique facilitated detection and localisation of S. potsdam for light microscopy.Specific reactions were labeled in the yolk membrane. Salmonella potsdam antigen was observed in endodermal cells, around and in the blood vessels of the yolk membrane.This is the first report where the immunoperoxidase staining technique has been used in the study of yolk membrane lesions in day old chicks and embryonated chicken eggs.This study has revealed the pathogenesis of S. potsdam in chicks and embryonated chicken eggs


AbstractThis paper reports a new kind of exergetic performance analysis for a general cogeneration system model. In the model considered, the irreversibilities due to finite rate heat transfer, internal dissipations and the possible heat leakage between heat source and heat sink are taken into account. A new exergetic performance criterion named the exergy density has been proposed as an objective function which can include the consideration of the system sizes in the analysis. The exergy density function is defined as the ratio of total exergy rate to the maximum volume in the cycle. The general and optimal performances based on the exergy density objective have been investigated. The effects of the design parameters such as the ratio of the generated power to the produced heat rate and consumer temperature ratio on the global and optimal performance have been discussed. The obtained results based on the exergy density criterion are compared with the total exergy rate in terms of the exergy efficiency an...


NEW APPROACHES TO SCALED-UP CARBON NANOTUBE SYNTHESIS AND NANOTUBE-BASED METAL COMPOSITES AND SENSORS by Amit Goyal The first phase of the work presented in this dissertation is the development of a scaleable process for the cost-effective synthesis of single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) by thermally-induced catalytic chemical vapor deposition (CVD). With the goal of understanding the growth mechanism and optimize the synthesis process, the effect of CVD and catalyst parameters on nanotube formation was investigated in detail. It was found that nucleation and growth of SWNTs occurred within a few seconds of the introduction of the carbon source, carbon monoxide, at temperatures above 675 °C over a Co-Mo/Mg0 catalyst/support system, resulting in the formation of high quality thinly bundled SWNTs with a narrow individual nanotube diameter distribution. A simple kinetic model is proposed to explain the observed growth and exit gas (CO2) concentration data. A scaled up run using fluidized bed reactor is performed to demonstrate large SWNTs production. In the second phase of the research performed some of the CVD parameters optimized for the synthesis of pure nanotubes were used to infiltrate SWNTs as well as multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) into catalyst precursor filled iron and aluminum matrices, respectively, to directly fabricate metal-nanotube composites. Two carbon sources, carbon monoxide and acetylene were used for the synthesis of SWNTs and MWNTs, respectively. The yield strength of iron-carbon nanotube composites showed substantial enhancement of up to 45% and 36 % with — 1 wt % of infiltrated SWNTs and MWNTs, respectively, relative to that of similarly treated pure iron samples of the same piece density without carbon nanotubes. Vickers hardness measurements showed an increase of 74% and 96% for iron composites filled with SWNTs and MWNTs, respectively. The use of a mixed feed of CO and acetylene resulted in carbide-free fabrication of the nanocomposites. A reaction mechanism supporting the observed carbide-free growth is also presented. In the third phase of the research performed, a SWNT fabrication protocol using CVD growth or electrophoretic deposition was employed for integrating nanotubes as biosensor and chemical gas sensor probes. For biosensor probes, vertically aligned SWNTs were grown or deposited on metal interconnects (Cr/Co), at precise locations, which were patterned on quartz substrates using photoand e-beam lithogrpahy to make electrical connections to each SWNT/bundle individually. Gas sensor probes were fabricated using individually suspended SWNTs contacted by Cr/Au pads as source and drain field effect transistor components for the monitoring of NO2 vapors. The adsorption of an electron donating gas such as NO2 on the SWNT sidewalls shifts the Fermi level of the p-type semiconducting nanotubes, consequently changing their electrical conductivity. Experimental results showed that sensor response to NO2 (at 10-300 ppm levels) was of the order of a few seconds at 100 ppm, and was reversible and reproducible. Recovery of the sensor response was achieved by heating the sensors at 120 °C for a period of 10-12 hours indicating physisorption of the NO2 molecules on the nanotube sidewalls. NEW APPROACHES TO SCALED-UP CARBON NANOTUBE SYNTHESIS AND NANOTUBE-BASED METAL COMPOSITES AND SENSORS


The current contribution is concerned with the disappearance of a number of dialect features from the English language in Ireland during the course of the 19th century. At the outset of this century there were many archaic and dialectal features from earlier input varieties of English as well as transfer features from Irish which had been carried over by bilinguals during the language shift to English. In the course of the 19th century a native middle class arose in Ireland due to the emancipation of, and general education for the Catholic population. This in turn led to the emergence of a supraregional variety of English in which many of the earlier features were removed and/or replaced by more mainstream ones, stemming from southern British usage. Developments were not always straightforward and many features were relegated to vernacular varieties or to positions of slighter salience, thus escaping censure by later generations. The consideration of just what paths was taken by what features forms the backbone of this contribution.