In order to understand potential applications of collaborative problem-solving (CPS) assessment tasks, it is necessary to examine empirically the multifaceted student performance that may be distributed across collaboration methods and purposes of the assessment. Ideally, each student should be matched with various types of group members and must apply the skills in varied contexts and tasks. One solution to these assessment demands is to use computer-based (virtual) agents to serve as the collaborators in the interactions with students. This article proposes a human-to-agent (H-A) approach for formative CPS assessment and describes an international pilot study aimed to provide preliminary empirical findings on the use of H-A CPS assessment to inform collaborative learning. Overall, the findings showed promise in terms of using a H-A CPS assessment task as a formative tool for structuring effective groups in the context of CPS online learning.


Human fingerprints are rich in details called the minutiae, which can be used as identification marks for fingerprint verification. To get the details, the fingerprint capturing techniques are to be improved. Since when we the fingerprint is captured, the noise from outside adds to it. The goal of this thesis is to remove the noise present in the fingerprint image. To achieve a good quality fingerprint image, this noise has to be removed or suppressed and here it is done by using an algorithm or technique called 'Spectral Subtraction', where the algorithm is based on subtraction of estimated noise spectrum from noisy signal spectrum. The performance of the algorithm is assessed by comparing the original fingerprint image and image obtained after spectral subtraction on several parameters like PSNR, SSIM and also for different fingerprints on the database. Finally, performance matching was done using NIST matching software, and the obtained results were presented in the form of Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) graphs, using MATLAB, and the experimental results were presented.


Author(s): Vossos, E; Pantano, S; Heard, R; Brown, RE | Abstract: An increasing fraction of residential end-use loads operates on direct current (DC), allowing the direct use of DC from onsite DC sources (Photovoltaics, battery storage), thus avoiding the energy losses from converting DC power to alternating current (AC) and back to DC. Earlier research has shown that essentially all residential electricity end uses can be DC-compatible and are more efficient than their AC counterparts. Direct-DC power systems can provide energy and cost savings in the residential built environment (including net zero energy homes), in which electricity is generated, distributed, and consumed in DC. However, one of the main barriers to the adoption of DC distribution in buildings is the immaturity of the DC-ready appliance market. We conduct a comprehensive market and cost assessment of the current DC-ready appliance market for the dominant residential end-use applications. We then examine the growing market for DC appliances in off-grid applications to extract relevant product and market trends that may influence grid-connected environments. We also analyze the energy efficiency potential of DC-ready appliances taking into account power supply losses and their coincidence of usage with DC generation from PV or battery storage. Based on these analyses, we offer recommendations on the next steps towards the development of a DC-ready appliance market.


Summary
There is general agreement among investigators as to the way in which mosquitoes feed, but a divergence of opinion as to whether the distribution of a liquid in the alimentary canal depends on the manner of feeding, the kind of liquid ingested, or on a combination of both.
Experiments were performed on four species of Anopheles, four Aedes, and on Culex pipiens, to more thoroughly investigate this controversial subject.
Whole blood was fed by allowing the mosquitoes to bite, and to imbibe from saturated cellucotton; glucose solutions were fed from cellucotton and through membranes; and mixtures of whole blood and sugary solutions were fed through membranes.
Under all conditions, blood was dispatched primarily to the stomach, and with few exceptions, in smaller amounts to the diverticula. The proportion of mosquitoes showing blood in the diverticula appeared to be a distinguishing physiological characteristic of the species, and ranged from less than 11 per cent in Aedes albopictus to over 70 per cent in Anopheles quadrimaculatus.
Glucose solutions, regardless of species or manner of feeding, were found primarily but not exclusively in the diverticula. When mixtures of blood and honey were fed through membranes to Aedes aegypti, they went primarily to the stomachs, with traces found occasionally in the diverticula.


Although child labor was a widespread phenomenon in the pre-industrial Dutch economy, we do not know very much about it. This article aims to expand our knowledge by looking at children's work in several urban industries in the Dutch Republic. By investigating the kind of economic activities children performed, their starting age, working and living conditions and the amount of training they received, we want to typify pre-industrial child labour more specifically. Did children's work serve as a necessary source of wage income, or rather as a vocational training for their later participation in the labour market? It will appear that this characterization as 'work' or 'training' depended largely on the child's age, sex and social background. These distinctions may help further research on the performance of preindustrial economies, in which a demand for flexible labor played a crucial role.


Kate Gleason College of Engineering Rochester Institute of Technology Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Program: Microsystems Engineering Authors Name: Jirachai Getpreecharsawas Advisors Name: David A. Borkholder Dissertation Title: Low-Power, Low-Voltage Electroosmotic Actuator for an Implantable Micropumping System Intended for Drug Delivery Applications An electroosmotic (EO) actuator offers a low-power, low-voltage alternative in a diaphragm-based periodic displacement micropump intended for an implantable drug delivery system. The actuator utilizes an electroosmosis mechanism to transport liquid across a membrane to deflect the pumping diaphragms in a reciprocating manner. In the study, the membrane made of porous nanocrystalline silicon (pnc-Si) tens of nanometers in thickness was used as the promising EO generator with low power consumption and small package size. This ultrathin membrane provides the opportunity for electrode integration such that the very high electric field can be generated across the membrane with the applied potential under 1 volt for low flow rate applications like drug delivery. Due to such a low applied voltage, the challenge, however, imposes on the capability of generating the pumping pressure high enough to deflect the pumping diaphragms and overcome the back pressure normally encountered in the biological tissue and organ. This research identified the cause of weak pumping pressure that the electric field inside the orifice-like nanopores of the ultrathin membrane is weaker than conventional theory would predict. It no longer scales uniformly with the thickness of membrane, but with the pore length-to-diameter aspect ratio for each nanopore. To enhance the pumping performance, the pnc-Si membrane was coated with an ultrathin Nafion film. As a result, the induced concentration difference across the Nafion film generates the osmotic pressure against the back pressure allowing the EO actuator to maintain the target pumping flow rate under 1 volt.


Abstract In recent decades, higher education institutions worldwide have been moving from knowledge-based to competence-based curricula. One of the greatest challenges in this transition is the difficulty in changing the knowledge-oriented practices of teachers. This study evaluates the consistency between syllabus design and the requirements imposed by a competence-based learning environment. To make this comparison, the study sets four criteria (C1: explicit relationship between syllabus and graduate profile; C2: precision of the learning outcomes and assessment criteria; C3: contents that mobilise the learning outcomes; and C4: learning and assessment activities) derived from the literature and a thematic analysis of competence-based learning in higher education. Afterwards, a sample of 150 syllabi from different disciplines of five Chilean public universities were analysed, all of which stated the use of learning outcomes and competences in their learning models. Using a three-point Likert scale derived from the aforementioned criteria and their indicators, a comparison was made between the actual practices reflected in the syllabus design and the previously established criteria. Results show a gap between the declaration of a competency-based curriculum and actual syllabus outlines. Moreover, there are important differences among disciplines. Although all disciplines present high levels of accomplishment for Criteria 1 and 3, only the discipline of health sciences presents an acceptable level for Criteria 2 and 4. It is recommended that further research be undertaken towards identifying effective competency-based syllabus design.


At the end of last year the BMJ published two studies by Barker and colleagues, on the relation between growth in utero and serum cholesterol concentration in adult life1 and mortality from cardiovascular disease.2 The first study used records from a hospital in Sheffield from 1939-40 on weight, length, and the circumference of the head, chest, and abdomen at birth. The second used midwives' and health visitors' records from Hertfordshire from 1911 onwards on birth weight, infant feeding, and weight at 1 year. Both sets of records included enough personal identification to enable the researchers to trace the subjects' deaths or addresses four to eight decades later. Most people would agree that these studies are valuable and have major public health implications. Nevertheless, record linkage studies like these are potentially under threat from a proposed European Union directive on confidential data.

The draft directive was first proposed in 1990 and is now in its second version,3 with amendments being negotiated …


The development of novel therapeutics is urgently required for diseases where existing treatments are failing due to the emergence of resistance. This is particularly pertinent for parasitic infections of the tropics and sub-tropics, referred to collectively as neglected tropical diseases, where the commercial incentives to develop new drugs are weak. One such disease is schistosomiasis, a highly prevalent acute and chronic condition caused by a parasitic helminth infection, with three species of the genus Schistosoma infecting humans. Currently, a single 40-year old drug, praziquantel, is available to treat all infective species, but its use in mass drug administration is leading to signs of drug-resistance emerging. To meet the challenge of developing new therapeutics against this disease, we developed an innovative computational drug repurposing pipeline supported by phenotypic screening. The approach highlighted several protein kinases as interesting new biological targets for schistosomiasis as they play an essential role in many parasite's biological processes. Focusing on this target class, we also report the first elucidation of the kinome of Schistosoma japonicum, as well as updated kinomes of S. mansoni and S. haematobium. In comparison with the human kinome, we explored these kinomes to identify potential targets of existing inhibitors which are unique to Schistosoma species, allowing us to identify novel targets and suggest approved drugs that might inhibit them. These include previously suggested schistosomicidal agents such as bosutinib, dasatinib, and imatinib as well as new inhibitors such as vandetanib, saracatinib, tideglusib, alvocidib, dinaciclib, and 22 newly identified targets such as CHK1, CDC2, WEE, PAKA, MEK1. Additionally, the primary and secondary targets in Schistosoma of those approved drugs are also suggested, allowing for the development of novel therapeutics against this important yet neglected disease.


Introduction: The aim of the present research work was to develop asenapine maleate (AM)-loaded solid lipid nanoparticles (AM-SLN) for the enhancement of oral bioavailability of drug and delivery to the brain. Materials and Methods: A 32 factorial design was used for the development and optimization of AM-SLN. Two independent variables, drug:lipid ratio (X1) and number of homogenization cycles (X2), were selected, while particle size and entrapment efficiency were selected as response variables. The optimized batch was evaluated by various in vitro characterizations and in vivo pharmacokinetic and brain distribution studies. Results: The particle size, polydispersity index, entrapment efficiency, and zeta potential of optimized AM-SLN were found to be 113 ± 4 nm, 0.34 ± 0.05, 72.4 ± 1.73%, and −41.4 ± 2.25 mV, respectively. Pharmacokinetic study indicated significantly higher (P < 0.05) peak drug concentration (142.41 ± 8.14 ng/mL), area under the drug concentrationtime curve (1561.81 ± 36.34 h ng/mL), and mean residence time (15.31 ± 3.21 h) of AM-SLN compared to AM-suspension (77.02 ± 5.74 ng/mL, 299.76 ± 39.42 ng/mL, and 2.73 ± 0.16 h, respectively) through oral route. Brain distribution study showed higher drug permeation across the blood–brain barriers and accumulation in the brain. Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that SLNs could be a new promising drug delivery system for oral delivery of AM in the treatment of schizophrenia.


An emerging area of digital data processing is the computer-based intelligent analysis and synthesis of information flows/streams. These include in particular processing of audio, hypertext, image, text, video, mixed, etc. data that travel over the Internet. The final goal of most current research efforts is to build the Semantic Web in the sense defined by the World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. One of the main problems for success of this project is how to automatically extract (and then interpret) semantic components from unordered data flows/streams. This problem was already stated by Gestalt school in early 1920s in case of the human visual perception. Note that an efficient human-machine interaction is the stumbling block of modern computer technologies. In this chapter, we are going to discuss the foundations of semantic associative data analysis and synthesis to approach the solution of these fundamental problems, whose solutions are indispensable for the Semantic Web development. Data semantic associative analysis and synthesis consists of two main components – semantic-mind data analysis and object-oriented data integration (synthesis). They will be described in this chapter. Think about meaning... The words are becoming themselves. (Carroll, L.)


As a unique feature, the Third Edition includes generous excerpts from Thoreau's journal, reprinted by special arrangements with Princeton University Press from the definitive edition of his writings. Spanning the years 1845-54, these selections vividly display Thoreau's intensive exploration of his local landscape; the fusion of literary and natural history field work that informs Walden, "Walking," and "Wild Apples"; and the growth of his environmental imagination. "Reviews and Posthumous Assessments" for this edition collects eight new reviews of Thoreau's antislavery and late environmental essays as well as of Walden. To the influential portraits of Thoreau by Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Russell Lowell, the Third Edition adds John Burroughs's "Another Word on Thoreau," his response to them and to his great predecessor. "Recent Criticism" includes eighteen selections of the best historical, political, philosophical, poststructuralist, and environmental criticism of Thoreau's writing since the mid-twentieth century. To classic pieces by E. B. White, Leo Marx, Barbara Johnson, and Stanley Cavell, the Third Edition adds essays by nine new contributors, among them Laurence Buell, Laura Dassow Walls, Evan Carton, Robert A. Gross, Albert J. von Frank, Steven Fink, and William Rossi. A Chronology of Thoreau's life and work, new to the Third Edition, and an expanded and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.


Communications aided by low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as an effective solution to provide large coverage and dynamic capacity for both military and civilian applications, especially in unexpected scenarios. However, because of their broad coverage, UAV communications are prone to passive eavesdropping attacks. This paper analyzes the secrecy performance of UAVs networks at the millimeter wave band and takes into account unique features of air-to-ground channels and practical constraints of UAV deployment. To be specific, it explores the 3-D antenna gain in the air-to-ground links and uses the Matérn hardcore point process to guarantee the safety distance between the randomly deployed UAV base stations. In addition, we propose the transmit jamming strategy to improve the secrecy performance in which part of UAVs send jamming signals to confound the eavesdroppers. Simulation results verify our analysis and demonstrate the impact of different system parameters on the achievable secrecy rate. It is also revealed that optimizing the density of jamming UAVs will significantly improve security of UAV-enabled networks.


Electrodes can provide information on neural function and stimulate neural activity. These neural electrodes can provide remarkable benefit to people suffering physical trauma or neural disease. Traditional metal electrodes have shortcomings related to poor biostability, cytocompatibility, and a rigid structure that maps poorly to tissue. Organic conductors can be formed with various chemical and physical properties to create improved electrode‐neural interfaces. The processability of organic conductors enables their use in advanced fabrication methods. This review details the use of graphene, carbon nanotubes, and conducting polymers for neural interfacing. Construction of novel neural electrode architectures via advanced fabrication processes is also addressed.


What are you reading? What books have been important to you? Whether you are interviewing for a job, chatting with a friend or colleague, or making small talk, these questions arise almost unfailingly. Some of us have stock responses, which may or may not be a fiction of our own making. Others gauge their answers according to who is asking the question. Either way, the replies that we give are thoughtfully crafted to suggest the intelligence, worldliness, political agenda, or good humor that we are hoping to convey. We form our answers carefully because we know that our responses say a lot. But what exactly do our answers say? In "BookMarks", Karla FC Holloway explores the public side of reading, and specifically how books and booklists form a public image of African Americans. Revealing her own love of books and her quirky passion for their locations in libraries and on bookshelves, Holloway reflects on the ways that her parents guided her reading when she was young and her bittersweet memories of reading to her children. She takes us on a personal and candid journey that considers the histories of reading in children's rooms, prison libraries, and "Negro" libraries of the early twentieth century, and that finally reveals how her identity as a scholar, a parent, and an African American woman has been subject to judgments that public cultures make about race and our habits of reading. Holloway is the first to call our attention to a remarkable trend of many prominent African American writers - including Maya Angelou, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry Louis Gates, Malcolm X, and Zora Neale Hurston. Their autobiographies and memoirs are consistently marked with booklists - records of their own habits of reading. She examines these lists, along with the trends of selection in Oprah Winfrey's popular book club, raising the questions: What does it mean for prominent African Americans to associate themselves with European learning and culture? How do books by black authors fare in the inevitable hierarchy of a booklist? "BookMarks" provides a unique window into the ways that African Americans negotiate between black and white cultures. This compelling rumination on reading is a book that everyone should add to their personal collections and proudly carry "cover out."


In diseases with unknown molecular etiologies, defining a high-throughput screen for drug development is particularly challenging. Gunther et al. describe a screen based on gene expression profiling by microarray analysis to classify and identify drugs used to treat depression or psychosis and those that interact with opioid receptors, which are relevant for pain management and addiction. They used two supervised classification methods (both of which classify unknowns based on existing classification of known samples): the classification tree (CT) and random forest (RF) schemes. Primary cultures of human neuronal cells were treated with antidepressants belonging to each of the four known classes, atypical, tricyclic, monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and serotonin selective reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs); classical or atypical antipsychotic agents; or opioid receptor agonists for the δ-, κ, or μ opioid receptors. Gene expression was analyzed by microarray technology and only those genes that were stimulated at least 3 times over background were included in the subsequent analysis. CT was effective in classifying the drugs into their clinically relevant uses 89% of the time and RF was effective 83% of the time. Furthermore, RF analysis also correctly categorized SSRIs and tricyclic antidepressants into their subclasses when these were handled as unknowns in the model. Their results and methods raise several interesting issues: (i) the genes identified as representative for each drug class may provide novel targets and insights into the molecular mechanism underlying the disease; (ii) the misclassified drugs may be candidates for therapies previously unknown, for example the δ-opioid receptor agonists were misclassified as antidepressants by both CT and RF, which suggests that these receptors may be relevant targets for antidepression treatment; and (iii) novel classes of drugs may be discovered, in particular, new drugs for complex disease phenotypes where multiple convergent pathways may contribute to the disease state. E. C. Gunther, D. J. Stone, R. W. Gerwien, P. Bento, M. P. Heyes, Prediction of clinical drug efficacy by classification of drug-induced genomic expression profiles in vitro. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 100, 9608-9613 (2003). [Abstract] [Full Text]


For decades, Sharon Steuer and her international WOW! team have been showcasing the worlds best artists and designers working in Illustrator. In this expanded edition of the best-selling and award-winning Illustrator WOW! Book, youll find hundreds of tips, tricks, and techniques derived from actual projects from top Illustrator artists. Youll learn to use new features, discover exciting ways to create complex effects, and find fresh ways to use venerable old tools andspeed up your workflow. This edition includes coverage of the 2014 release and is loaded with and lessons with stunning new artwork that feature: Painting and generating objects with raster brushes Harnessing Live Corners, Live Rectangles, and new ways to reshape paths Manipulating live type characters with the Touch Type tool Creating airbrush and neon effects with gradients on strokes Building complex styles with multiple lines, fills, and effects Composing complex repeating patterns Auto-generating corners for pattern brushes Incorporating transparency into mesh and gradients Building and modifying scenes in perspective and 3D Transforming raster art to Illustrator vectors Preparing artwork for animation and the web Integrating Illustrator with Photoshop and other apps Creating photorealism in Illustrator WOW! ONLINE Register the book at peachpit.com/register to access artwork to pick apart and special PDFs from artists to you. Keep up with tips on the latest Illustrator features at WOWartist.com.


The paper presents a detailed review of the state-of-the-art research activities on structural reliability analysis of wind turbines between the 1990s and 2017. We describe the reliability methods including the first- and second-order reliability methods and the simulation reliability methods and show the procedure for and application areas of structural reliability analysis of wind turbines. Further, we critically review the various structural reliability studies on rotor blades, bottom-fixed support structures, floating systems and mechanical and electrical components. Finally, future applications of structural reliability methods to wind turbine designs are discussed.


The need for multiple plans has been established by various planning applications. In some, solution quality has the predominant role, while in others diversity is the key factor. Most recent work takes both plan quality and solution diversity into account under the generic umbrella of diverse planning. There is no common agreement, however, on a collection of computational problems that fall under that generic umbrella. This in particular might lead to a comparison between planners that have different solution guarantees or optimization criteria in mind. In this work we revisit diverse planning literature in search of such a collection of computational problems, classifying the existing planners to these problems. We formally define a taxonomy of computational problems with respect to both plan quality and solution diversity, extending the existing work. We propose a novel approach to diverse planning, exploiting existing classical planners via planning task reformulation and choosing a subset of plans of required size in post-processing. Based on that, we present planners for two computational problems, that most existing planners solve. Our experiments show that the proposed approach significantly improves over the best performing existing planners in terms of coverage, the overall solution quality, and the overall diversity according to various diversity metrics.


Certification as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) is often the entry point for firefighting careers and is a pre-requisite to enter Advanced EMT or paramedic programs. EMT candidates in most of the United States must pass the National Registry of EMTs cognitive examination (NREMT-C) to be eligible for state licensure. Many candidates who fail their first NREMT-C attempt never take even one of the five additional possible attempts within the specified two-year time frame. Using binary logistic regression with de-identified existing NREMT test data from 2007 though 2012, this research attempted to develop a model to show the relative contribution of previous NREMT-C score, demographic factors, pay status, employment status, and school accreditation to predict candidates' likelihood of retesting. A literature review suggested that these factors influence candidates' success on their first exam attempt, however no literature has examined if these factors predict a candidate's decision to take at least one additional examination attempt. Results showed that the theta score from the prior attempt was a strong predictor of reattempting examinations two through six. Female gender was negatively associated with attempting examinations two through five. Younger candidates were more likely to attempt examinations two through four, whereas at attempt five the odds an older candidate would try again were slightly higher. Military candidates were much more likely to persist through examination attempt three, however this trend reversed at attempts four and five when they were less likely to reattempt. Having someone pay for the prior exam enhanced candidates' odds of taking the second and third examination. All race and ethnic categories (except Hispanic) were weakly associated with the odds of taking a second examination but not in any subsequent FACTORS THAT AFFECT EMT COGNITIVE EXAM REATTEMPTS iii attempts. Students who attended schools associated with accredited paramedic programs were slightly more likely to persist through exams two through four as were individuals having more education. While this analysis identified some factors related to examination persistence, it produced weak models, suggesting that many more individual variables are associated with the decision to persist after failing the NREMT-C EMT examination than those examined.


Diel fluctuations can comprise a significant portion of summer discharge in small to medium catchments. The source of these signals and the manner in which they are propagated to stream gauging sites is poorly understood. In this work, we analysed stream discharge from 15 subcatchments in Dry Creek, Idaho, Reynolds Creek, Idaho, and HJ Andrews, Oregon. We identified diel signals in summer low flow, determined the lag between diel signals and evapotranspiration demand and identified seasonal trends in the evolution of the lag at each site. The lag between vegetation water use and streamflow response increases throughout summer at each subcatchment, with the rate of increase as a function of catchment stream length and other catchment characteristics such as geology, vegetation and stream geomorphology. These findings support the hypothesis that variations in stream velocity are the key control on the seasonal evolution of the observed lags. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Utilizing the intersecting cortical model (ICM) to enhance degraded images under poor illumination is presented. As the key point, the general mapping function (MF) for image enhancement is deduced firstly on the basis of the nature-firing ICM (NF-ICM), which restrains the traditional autowave effect of blurring details and contrast. Then, the sigmoid MF is especially proposed to map the input gray-level to a more proper range for visual looking, and it solves over-enhancement and artifact by the classical logarithm one. For image enhancement application, the optimized parameters, initial threshold, and stopping condition in NF-ICM are all analyzed in detail. Simulation results prove that the proposed method has more contrasted, colorful, and good-visual performance.


Ontology is the tool for representing knowledge in the fields of knowledge organization and artificial intelligence, and in the past decade, has gained attention in the semantic web as well. The main necessity in developing an ontology is generating a hierarchical structure of the concepts and the next requirement is creating and determining the type of the semantic relations among concepts. The present article introduces a semiautomated method for enriching semantic relations in the basic sciences ontology, which was developed based on domain-specific thesauri. In the proposed method, first the hierarchical relations in the ontology are reviewed and refined in order to distinguish their different types. In the next step, the concepts in the ontology are classified and the semantic relations among the concepts, based on the associative relationships in the thesaurus and semantic relation patterns extracted from a top-level ontology, are distinguished and added to the ontology. Using this method, semantic relations in the area of chemistry in the basic sciences ontology were refined and enriched. Almost seventy percent of the associative relationships were directly converted to semantic relations in the ontology. The remaining thirty percent are the inter-concept relations that can be concluded from other relations if the other associative relationships are correctly converted to semantic relations. Received 26 October 2016; Revised 26 May 2017; Accepted 24 June 2017


In this thesis, we review the Receiver Function (RF) method, conceived many years ago in earthquake seismology, to see whether it can also be used in reflection seismology, and more specifically to see whether it can be applied to ocean-bottom-cable (OBC) data. The conventional RF method is used to determine the local PS wave response of a target zone below a multi-component 3C receiver and has been originally designed to process individual earthquake data of constant ray parameter p, acquired at the free surface. The target is illuminated from below. The converted PS wavefield generated at the receiver side is isolated from the global earth response by deconvolving the horizontal Ux component with the vertical Uz component, where Uz is assumed to contain only the impinging P waves (i. E. The unpredictable effective source function). Simultaneously to the source signature removal, the effect of the deconvolution can be subdivided into two steps: (1) P-PS wave separation and (2) multiples removal. The keyword is combination between components (by adaptive subtraction) or equivalently ratio between components. Our motivation is to reproduce these two steps with OBC data, in order to determine the (separated) primary PP and PS responses generated in the sub-seafloor area. However, there are several issues that require special attention when we implement the RF technique to OBC acquisition geometry. Firstly, the target (i. E. The sub-seafloor) is illuminated from above. Therefore there exist three types of incident waves at the receiver level: the upgoing P and PS wavefields (Pup and Sup as for land data) but also the additional downgoing P wavefield (Pdown). Secondly these wavefields are mixed between the components with time varying ray parameters, which precludes the possibility of applying the RF approach in the conventional time-offset domain. These problems can be addressed by taking into account the additional measurement of the pressure wavefield by the hydrophone Uh and by transforming the data in the ? -p domain (requiring fine receiver spacing usually afforded by OBCs). This transformation reorders the data by incidence angle at the receiver level, such that the pure upgoing PP and PS wavefields can be separated, based on polarization angle discrimination. This first step partially addresses the problem of multiples in the data by removing the downgoing (receiver side) water multiples, but it requires the knowledge of the seafloor properties as inputs. The other advantage of the ? i p domain is that the water multiple reverberation becomes periodic. Remaining pure upgoing (source-side) water multiples are fully predictable (in contrast to overlapping source-side and receiver-side multiples) and can therefore be removed using predictive deconvolution (this is the required second step). Our adapted version of the RF technique uses the various ratios between components to estimate the elastic properties at the seafloor, as well as calibration operators, required for the decomposition. Our data-driven method can be automatically applied with a minimum of user-defined inputs, by taking advantages of the coherency between adjacent p traces and the redundancy of informations within the multiples. The strategy has been successfully applied to field data. Our results suggest several avenues for further processing


This paper introduces a method to address the theoretical and practical question of whether speech accommodation aids compliance in bilingual healthcare settings. It describes a method to measure bilingual speech accommodation in interviews between pharmacists and patients about the use of regularly prescribed medication. The method involves calculating the relative proportion of Welsh and English words in segments of the transcripts and using a formula which we devised to measure how much the speaker changes his or her proportion of Welsh versus English words over time in relation to the proportion being used by the interlocutor. Positive scores indicate convergence, negative scores divergence, and a score of zero indicates neither convergence nor divergence. The findings suggest that speech accommodation is widespread within bilingual clinical encounters and there are complex factors at work that influence the dynamics of the bilingual healthcare consultation. Refining methods for measuring accommodation will shed further light on this phenomenon and offer opportunities for enhancing communication skills training for healthcare professionals.


"It is inconceivable even to imagine, let alone hope for, a dominant conservative movement in America without Kirk's labor." - WILLIAM F BUCKLEY "A profound critique of contemporary mass society, and a vivid and poetic image - not a program, an image - of how that society might better itself. [ The Conservative Mind ] is, in important respects, the twentieth century's own version of the Reflections on the Revolution in France... [Kirk] was an artist, a vsionary, almost a prophet." - DAVID FRUM, author of Dead Right "I have been one of your fans since the time many years ago when I read The Conservative Mind." - RICHARD NIXON "Dr. Russell Kirk's impact on conservative thought and policy in America has been decisive. It was his writings, and in particular his seminal work, The Conservative Mind, that laid the foundation for many of the ideas that continue to shape public discourse and debate to this day." - JOHN ENGLER, former Governer of Michigan "Kirk is assured a place of prominence in the intellectual histories for helping to define the ethical basis of conservatism. He has tried to pull conservatism away from the utilitarian premises of libertarianism, toward which conservatism often veers, toward a philosophy rooted in ethics and culture." - THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind is one of the greatest contributions to twentieth-century American conservatism. Brilliant in every respect, from its conception to its choice of significant figures representing the history of intellectual conservatism, The Conservative Mind launched the modern American Conservative Movement when it was first published in 1953 and has become an enduring classic of political thought. The seventh revised edition features the complete text and an introduction by publisher Henry Regnery. A must-read.


Samples of adult Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda and Tachypleus gigas caught from Pulau Lumut, Selangor, were conditioned in the Hatchery Unit, Universiti Putra Malaysia and used for all the experiments.
Haematological study of the C. rotundicauda and T. gigas was carried out by blood extraction through cardiac puncture. Light microscopy of blood from both species showed the existence of only one type of blood cell, granulocyte, circulating in their circulatory system. Blood cell count for C. rotundicauda and T. gigas were not significantly different (27,000 and 33,000 cells/mm3, respectively), but it was otherwise for the two sexes of C. rotundicauda. Blood cell measurements of both species revealed that the size of T. gigas blood cells were significantly larger than C. rotundicauda. Transmission electron microscopy of blood cells was carried out for normal and clotted blood of both species. Granulocytes contained of all the necessary organelles: a nucleus, Golgi apparatus, mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, ribosome particles, vacuoles, and microtubles. Moreover two types of granules filled the cytoplasmic space, they were large and small granules. Intermediate stages of granules were observed in the cytoplasmic region especially near the Golgi apparatus. Light microscope photography of the degranulation process of granulocytes with one minute interval in both species exhibited similar pattern. Blood cells under un-sterile condition released their granules which are the main source of the immunologic material. Vacuoles with different sizes then filled the cytoplasmic space and at the same time cytoplasmic projections were formed.

Antibacterial effect of horseshoe crabs (C. rotundicauda and T. gigas) fresh blood against Gram negative (E. coli and V. parahaemolyticus) and Gram positive bacteria (S. aureus, B. subtilis and B. cereus) were examined. Freshly extracted blood from both species was observed to inhibit the growth of E. coli, V. parahaemolyticus and B. cereus, while partial inhibition for S. aureus. On the other hand, B. subtilis growth was inhibited by C. rotunicauda fresh blood but only partial inhibition by T. gigas blood. These results showed that granular blood cells contained antibacterial compounds.
Total RNA was extracted from the blood cells of these two species and complementary DNA was synthesized from it. Amplification of target antibacterial genes were carried out by using cDNA as template for both species. The purified PCR amplified DNA fragments of tachyplesin and tachycitin of C. rotundicauda and T. gigas were sequenced. The similarity of the putative genes of both species were analyzed and compared with the Genbank database using the BLAST program of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). The amplified PCR fragments from C. rotundicauda and T. gigas analyzed by the program indicate 92% and 95% similarity to the tachycitin gene of T. tridentatus, respectively. While the similarity of the amplified PCR product from the BLAST program of NCBI for C. rotundicauda and T. gigas exhibit 91% and 93% similarity to the tachyplesin gene of T. tridentatus, respectively.


Synopsis Nevil Maskelyne's 1774 experiment on the Scottish mountain Schiehallion set out to derive the mean density of the Earth, from astronomical observations of the deflection of the vertical and calculation of the mountain's relative gravitational attraction. Using Maskelyne's results and lithological survey results, John Playfair estimated mean Earth specific gravity to be 4.56–4.87, while Charles Hutton argued in 1821 that the Earth was 'very near five times the density of water; but not higher'. Hutton challenged future workers to identify any areas in which his analysis could be improved. The geometry of the 1774 experiment has therefore been recomputed within a digital elevation model extending 120 km from the mountain. Three contributions to the deflection of the vertical have been included: topography, and local and regional subsurface density variations. Local subsurface densities have been modelled using geological maps, cross-sections and laboratory measurements. Regional subsurface effects have been included from analysis of the Bouguer gravity anomaly. The outcome of the new modelling is to credit Maskelyne for his accurate astronomical observations, as together with the new density structure model, they yield a mean Earth density of 5480 ± 250 kgm−3, in agreement with the modern value of 5515 kg m−3.


Among the many concerns currently facing America's healthcare system, few are more significant, both medically and fiscally, than long-term care (LTC). Broadly defined as a range of services that support individuals who are limited in their ability to care for themselves, long-term care stands to become one of America's foremost healthcare challenges in the years ahead. With the continuing rise of U.S citizens 65 and over — statistically, the demographic most in need of LTC — states need to begin preparing for the growing pressures that will be placed on their budgets by the nation's aging population. This SLC Special Series Report explores the challenges long-term care poses for states in the SLC region. Subsequent reports will examine possibilities for managing long-term care and highlight actions that states in the SLC region have taken to tackle this important issue.


Since its emergence, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-CRISPR-associated (Cas) 9 system has been increasingly used to generate animals for economically important traits. However, most CRISPR/Cas9 applications have been focused on non-homologous end joining, which results in base deletions and insertions, leading to a functional knockout of the targeted gene. The Booroola fecundity gene (FecBB) mutation (p.Q249R) in bone morphogenetic protein receptor type 1B (BMPR1B) has been demonstrated to exert a profound effect on fecundity in many breeds of sheep. In the present study, we successfully obtained lambs with defined point mutations resulting in a p.249Q>R substitution through the coinjection of Cas9 mRNA, a single guide RNA and single-stranded DNA oligonucleotides into Tan sheep zygotes. In the newborn lambs, the observed efficiency of the single nucleotide exchange was as high as 23.8%. We believe that our findings will contribute to improved reproduction traits in sheep, as well as to the generation of defined point mutations in other large animals.


Many engineering systems are affected by uncertainty in future demands or inputs. Decisions regarding their design, however, typically must be made in the present. Two-stage stochastic programming can consider this type of problem but, in the past, procedures to fully incorporate the uncertainty have come with a high computational cost. New algorithmic developments, such as Regularized Stochastic Decomposition (RSD), now allow more complex systems to be considered. This paper provides an overview of the RSD method and its extensions and demonstrates the application of two-stage stochastic programming to two water resources problems with different problem structures and types of uncertainty.


A self-organizing framework for object recognition is described. We describe a hierarchical database structure for image retrieval. The self-organizing hierarchical optimal subspace learning and inference framework (SHOSLIF) system uses the theories of optimal linear projection for optimal feature derivation and a hierarchical structure to achieve logarithmic retrieval complexity. A space-tessellation tree is generated using the most expressive features (MEF) and most discriminating features (MDF) at each level of the tree. The major characteristics of the analysis include: (1) avoiding the limitation of global linear features by deriving a recursively better-fitted set of features for each of the recursively subdivided sets of training samples; (2) generating a smaller tree whose cell boundaries separate the samples along the class boundaries better than the principal component analysis, thereby giving a better generalization capability (i.e., better recognition rate in a disjoint test); (3) accelerating the retrieval using a tree structure for data pruning, utilizing a different set of discriminant features at each level of the tree. We allow for perturbations in the size and position of objects in the images through learning. We demonstrate the technique on a large image database of widely varying real-world objects taken in natural settings, and show the applicability of the approach for variability in position, size, and 3D orientation. This paper concentrates on the hierarchical partitioning of the feature spaces.


This study includes determining the climatic conditions and the nature of the reservoirs in the region with the determination of the flow direction of the aquifer. The meteorological data for the Karbala station for the period 1976-2016 showed that the values of the monthly rates of temperature, precipitation, evaporation, relative humidity, wind speed and Sunshine duration are (24.19 C?), (95.5 mm), (2828.6mm), (46.75%), (2.76 m/sec), and (8.61 h/day) respectively. Thorenthwait method was used to calculate the values of Potential Evapotranspiration (PE) then determine the annual value of WS and WD which equal 28.11mm and 941.94mm respectively. Mean monthly water surplus for the period (1976-2016) was recorded about (9.36mm) in December, (13.11mm) in January and (5.64mm) in February of the whole amount of Rainfall and Equal to 29.34 of the total rainfall. The study showed the existence of a shallow aquifer unconfined in the Quaternary deposits. The flow net map is shown by mainly that the groundwater flow in the area, it is from the northwestern parts towards the Eastern and southestern parts.


A number of legal philosophers claim that legal positivism is the leading theory of law today. Nonetheless, there are many complaints that legal positivism is excessively abstract and irrelevant to real life concerns. The traditional inspiration underlying legal positivism was the timeless reminder that laws and legal systems can be bad or immoral. This article will argue that this core idea, known as the separation thesis, is now obscured by legal positivist theory (to its disservice), and must be dusted off and revived. The article begins with a brief history of the often acrimonious engagement between legal positivism and natural law. It argues that much of the disagreement has been a pseudo debate, and that legal positivists and natural lawyers have much in common. Specifically, both approaches are concerned about immoral laws and legal systems. The article shows, moreover, that natural lawyers espouse a version of the separation thesis in their own criticisms of legal systems. The article then describes the two main positivist schools of thought: inclusive legal positivism and exclusive legal positivism. Both schools are built on conceptual arguments about the nature of law. Neither approach preserves the traditional thrust of the separation thesis. Inclusive positivists have transformed the thesis into a pure abstraction (operative only in the imagination), while exclusive positivists adopt a strict version of the thesis that has limited significance when applied to actual legal systems. In contrast to these approaches, this article articulates a common sense version of the separation thesis that is relevant and applicable to all legal systems of any kind. The separation thesis proposed here even applies to fused systems of law and morality - to religious legal systems, to human rights law, and to legal provisions that incorporate moral standards like justice, fairness, and reasonableness. Dworkin and other critics have argued that these common types of legal provisions refute the legal positivist insistence that law is separate from morality because moral standards are utilized to determine what the law is. This article demonstrates, however, that even under such circumstances the separation thesis applies in the sense that we must nonetheless scrutinize whether the law or legal system at issue is good or right. Applying the separation thesis in this fashion is especially important today because legal systems increasingly incorporate or refer to moral or religious standards. The article proposes a broad way of understanding legal positivism that falls outside of the two main schools of analytical jurisprudence. It argues that they should be seen as narrowly specialized sub-approaches to legal positivism which do not monopolize or exhaust this perspective on law. The understanding proposed here is consistent with the views of many who are concerned with law, and it should also be congenial to natural lawyers who wish to criticize bad or immoral legal systems.


One of the most important tasks in structural health monitoring corresponds to damage detection. In this task, the existence of damage should be determined. In the literature, several potentially useful techniques for damage detection can be found, and their applicability to a particular situation depends on the size of the critical damages that are admissible in the structure. Almost all of these techniques follow the same general procedure: the structure is excited using actuators, and the dynamical response is sensed at different locations throughout the structure. Any damage will change this vibrational response. The state of the structure is diagnosed by means of the processing of these data. Several studies have shown that the detection of changes in a structure depends on the distance from the damage to the actuator as well as the configuration of the sensor network. In this article, the authors considered the advantage of using an active piezoelectric system, where the lead zirconate titanate transducers are used as actuator and sensors in different actuation phases. In each actuation phase of the diagnosis procedure, one lead zirconate titanate transducer is used as actuator (a known electrical signal is applied), and the others are used as sensors (collecting the wave propagated through the structure at different points). An initial baseline model for undamaged structure is built applying principal component analysis to the data collected by several experiments and after the current structure (damaged or not) is subjected to the same experiments, and the collected data are projected into the principal component analysis models. Two of these projections and four damage indices (T 2-statistic, Q-statistic, combined index, and I 2 index) by each actuation phase are used to determine the presence of damages and to distinguish between them. These indices are calculated based on the analysis of the residual data matrix to represent the variability of the data projected within the residual subspace and the new space of the principal components. To validate the approach, data from two aeronautical structures—an aircraft skin panel and an aircraft turbine blade—are used.


Ionic homeostasis in the brain involves redistribution of ionic fluxes in several cell types and compartments, including neurons, astrocytes and the extracellular space. How the major ionic activity-dependent fluxes of potassium and sodium are individually regulated remains difficult to dissociate and to track experimentally. We here review recent progress in modeling the ionic fluxes evoked by neuronal activity based on mass conservation. Excitability of neurons indeed relies on inward sodium and outward potassium fluxes during action potential firing. Recently, we have developed a tri-compartment model based on mass-action kinetics equations that account for potassium dynamics between neurons, astrocytes and the extracellular space. This review describes how such type of model can be used to spatially and temporally predict potassium fluxes during various regimes of neuronal activity. In particular, the model initially showed that it takes several seconds for astrocytes to buffer the majority of the potassium rapidly released by neurons in both basal and high regime of activity. Such model can also probe the selective contribution of ionic channels, and revealed for instance that disruption of the main astroglial potassium Kir4.1 channels not only favors the emergence of epileptiform activity, but also dysregulates neuronal excitability specifically during slow rhythmic activities. We here also extend the predictions of the model by assessing the selective contribution of the astroglial and neuronal Na/K ATPase, or volume of the extracellular space on potassium dynamics. We discuss these findings and their implications for neuronal information processing in the healthy and diseased brain.


The formation of ore deposits of the platinum-group elements (PGE) requires that their concentrations be raised about four orders of magnitude above typical continental crustal abundances. Such extreme enrichment relies principally on the extraction capacity of sulfide liquid, which sequesters the PGE from silicate magmas. Specific aspects of PGE ore formation are still highly controversial, however, including the role of hydrothermal fluids. The majority of the world's PGE reserves are held in a handful of deposits, most of which occur within the unique Bushveld Complex of South Africa.


The large increase in the goods transport demands, the growing congestion problem and the environmental concerns over transportation emissions and fuel consumption, make High Capacity Transport (HCT) vehicles an attractive alternative to the conventional heavy vehicle combinations on the roads in Sweden; an alternative which would also result in significant economic benefits. In order to introduce HCT vehicles in Sweden, the existing regulations should be modified and a proper way of regulating HCT vehicles and their access to the road network should be developed to ensure that a certified HCT vehicle would not have negative effects on traffic safety, infrastructure and environment. One possible solution is application of performance based standards (PBS); this paper presents a project called "Performance Based Standards for High Capacity Transports in Sweden" which investigates applicability of PBS to Swedish conditions. The project started in November 2013 and is planned to be completed by the end of 2016.


Abstract Phylogenetics has a central role in the biological sciences. We suggest a hands-on exercise to demonstrate the task of character coding and its importance in phylogenetic systematics. This exercise is appropriate for undergraduate students in life sciences and related courses. The teacher must provide a single group of masks in which color patterns, textures, and formats provide the characters to fill the data matrix. (The mask could be replaced by a set of other complex objects.) In this case, because there is no actual phylogeny, students will not be concerned with recovering the correct topology. Character coding is the aim of the exercise. After the character matrix is completed, a phylogenetic tree is drawn and the students interpret the evolution of a single character, starting from the common ancestor, based on the topological pattern of the tree and on the data matrix. In sequence, the students name and provide a full diagnosis for the group of masks as revealed by the topological pattern. The comparison between group results is also educational: there will be some common patterns between trees, but others will differ as in biological systematics.


As an experienced face-to-face teacher, working in a small Crown Dependency with no Higher Education Institute (HEI) to call its own, the subsequent geographical and professional isolation in the context of Networked Learning (NL), as a sub-set of eLearning, calls for innovative ways in which to develop self-reliant methods of professional development. Jones and De Laat (2016, p.43) claim that NL is different from other eLearning sub-sets, for example, Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) and Computer-Supported-Collaborative-Learning (CSCL) because of its "focus on pedagogy and understanding how social relationships (and networked practices) influence learning rather than having a predominantly technical agenda for change in education". NL, rather than TEL or CSL, therefore, locates the context for this paper. My intent was to develop a bespoke professional development framework to facilitate independent and self-directed NL teaching development. To scaffold my professional development autonetnography (ANG) was chosen to facilitate my learning. The concept of ANG was introduced by Kozinets & Kedzior (2009) as an autobiographical extension to the ethnographic genre Netnography defined by Kozinets (2006) as an interpretive research methodology to examine online observations and interactions. Whilst recent researchers of digital learning claim that has potential to add to a growing body of knowledge that accepts the post-modern use of self as an insider researcher (Ferreira, 2012; Persdotter, 2013; Mkono, Ruhanen & Markwell, 2015) none have explained how to undertake ANG. There appears here, to be a theorypractice gap (Kessels and Korthagen, 1996) and the problem lies within the argument that there is no current theory upon which to practice ANG. This opportunity to examine more closely the subjective and reflexive insider researcher perspective of being an online scholar (as a learner or teacher) would respond to this gap in current eResearch knowledge. This paper uses meta-ethnography (Noblit & Hare, 1988) as a method to systematically examine methodology relating to autoethnography, with the purpose of working towards developing a framework for undertaking ANG as an emerging eResearch methodology. Seven phases of meta-ethnography formed the method for synthesising autoethnographic methodological data and translating these into ANG methodological data. Findings from this synthesis are reported through the autoethnographic tripartite scheme of mimesis, poiesis and kinesis (Holman-Jones, Adams, & Ellis, 2013a). From this synthesis, the autonetnographic "I" framework was developed and forms a methodological basis for future ANG studies to examine teaching and/or learning scholarship in NL and the potential for considering adaptation of ANG for use in eLearning more generally.


Robust matrix factorization (RMF), which uses the `1-loss, often outperforms standard matrix factorization using the `2loss, particularly when outliers are present. The state-of-theart RMF solver is the RMF-MM algorithm, which, however, cannot utilize data sparsity. Moreover, sometimes even the (convex) `1-loss is not robust enough. In this paper, we propose the use of nonconvex loss to enhance robustness. To address the resultant difficult optimization problem, we use majorization-minimization (MM) optimization and propose a new MM surrogate. To improve scalability, we exploit data sparsity and optimize the surrogate via its dual with the accelerated proximal gradient algorithm. The resultant algorithm has low time and space complexities and is guaranteed to converge to a critical point. Extensive experiments demonstrate its superiority over the state-of-theart in terms of both accuracy and scalability.


Retrospective estimates of historic abundances and distributions of marine organisms are crucial to understanding the anthropogenic impacts on the structure and species of coastal ecosystems, especially in the case of vulnerable species such as the Dugong (Dugong dugon). The Persian/Arabian Gulf is home to the second largest Dugong population in the world, yet little is known about their current or past abundance, distribution, and ecological role. Here, we examine historical changes in dugong distribution and estimate perceived changes in their abundance. We create a 'dugong discovery curve' and compile global density estimates as proxies for the overall health of the population in the Gulf. We find that since 1950 dugong range may have contracted by one quarter, and despite their large population, their overall densities in the Gulf are far lower than in other areas within their range. Basic understanding of historical trajectories for Dugongs is needed in order to develop appropriate management plans and conservation targets, particularly in light of large and wide-spread coastal development projects in the region.


Abstract Fossil samples almost always accumulate on timescales much longer than the life spans of individual organisms. This time-averaging has the potential to inflate the variability of fossil samples because phenotypic changes may occur during the interval of sample accumulation. Although many have realized that this effect may increase the variance of fossil samples, only qualitative predictions have been possible thus far. In this paper, I assume a simple but general Markovian model of evolution to derive expressions that predict the effects of time-averaging on trait variance and covariance. For lineages evolving as an unbiased random walk, phenotypic variance in samples increases linearly with the duration of time-averaging, at a slope that is proportional to the evolutionary rate. Although based on a very simple model of specimen input into time-averaged samples, the expressions relating variance, time-averaging, and evolutionary rate prove to be robust or adaptable to more realistic assumptions. The theoretical findings are applied to analyze variation in a set of samples of the deep-sea ostracode Poseidonamicus miocenicus that vary greatly in temporal acuity. The relationship between duration of time-averaging and morphological variance is used to estimate evolutionary rates of two morphological traits in these ostracodes. These rate estimates are similar to those calculated independently from differences between presumed ancestor-descendant pairs of populations. Consistent with other studies of variability and time-averaging, these data suggest that phenotypic variance tends to increase rather slowly with the duration of time-averaging, indicating that greatly inflated variance is expected only in samples that have accumulated over many tens of thousands of years.


Bellemare: Département d'économique, Université Laval, CRREP, email@example.com Sebald: Department of economics, University of Copenhagen email@example.com Suetens: Tilburg University, CentER, and TILEC firstname.lastname@example.com Psychological games of guilt aversion assume that preferences depend on (beliefs about) beliefs and on the guilt sensitivity of the decision-maker. We present an experiment designed to measure guilt sensitivities at the individual level for various stake sizes. We use the data to estimate a structural choice model that allows for heterogeneity, and permits that guilt sensitivities depend on stake size. We find substantial heterogeneity of guilt sensitivities in our population, with 60% of decision makers displaying stake-dependent guilt sensitivity. For these decision makers, we find that average guilt sensitivities are significantly different from zero for all stakes considered, while significantly decreasing with the level of stakes. JEL Codes: A13, C91


We quantify the effects of financial regulation in an equilibrium model with delegated portfolio management. Fund managers trade stocks and bonds in an order-driven market, subject to transaction taxes and constraints on short-selling and leverage. Results are obtained on the equilibrium properties of portfolio choice, trading activity, market quality and price dynamics under the different regulations. We find that short- sale restrictions reduce short-term volatility and long swings in asset prices, while transaction taxes do more harm than good.


The impact force on an elbow induced by traveling isolated li quid slugs in a horizontal pipeline is studied. A literature review reveals that the force on the el bow is mainly due to momentum transfer in changing the fluid flow direction around the elbow. Therefore , to accurately calculate the magnitude and duration of the impact force, the slug arrival velocity a t the elbow needs to be well predicted. The hydrodynamic behavior of the slug passing through the elbow needs to be properly modeled too. A combination of 1D and 2D models is used in this paper to analyz e this problem. The 1D model is used to predict the slug motion in the horizontal pipeline. With t he obtained slug arrival velocity, slug length and driving air pressure as initial conditions, the 2D Euler equations are solved by the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method to analyze the slug dynamics at t he elbow. The 2D SPH solution matches experimental data and clearly demonstrates the occurrence of flow separation at the elbow, which is a typical effect of high Reynolds flows. Using the obtained flow c ntraction coefficient, an improved 1D model with nonlinear elbow resistance is proposed and solve d by SPH. The 1D SPH results show the best fit with experimental data obtained so far. NOMENCLATURE A cross-sectional area (m 2) c0 speed of sound in liquid (m/s) ca speed of sound in air (m/s) Cc contraction coefficient d diameter of orifice (m) d0 initial particle spacing (m) D pipe diameter (m)


The Wishart autoregressive (WAR) process is a powerful tool to model multivariate stochastic volatility (MSV) with correlation risk and derive closed-form solutions in various asset pricing models. However, making inferences of the WAR stochastic volatility (WAR-SV) model is challenging because the latent volatility series does not have a closed-form transition density. Based on an alternative representation of the WAR process with lag order p=1 and integer degrees of freedom, we develop an effective two-step procedure to estimate parameters and the latent volatility series. The procedure can be applied to study other varying-dimension problems. We show the effectiveness of this procedure with a simulated example. Then this method is used to study the time-varying correlation of US and China stock market returns.


Purpose: CYP2D6 is the key enzyme responsible for the generation of the potent active metabolite of tamoxifen, "endoxifen." There are still controversial reports questioning the association between CYP2D6 genotype and tamoxifen efficacy. Hence, we performed a prospective multicenter study to evaluate the clinical effect of CYP2D6 genotype on tamoxifen therapy. Experimental Design: We enrolled 279 patients with hormone receptor–positive and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative, invasive breast cancer receiving preoperative tamoxifen monotherapy for 14 to 28 days. Ki-67 response in breast cancer tissues after tamoxifen therapy was used as a surrogate marker for response to tamoxifen. We prospectively investigated the effects of allelic variants of CYP2D6 on Ki-67 response, pathological response, and hot flushes. Results: Ki-67 labeling index in breast cancer tissues significantly decreased after preoperative tamoxifen monotherapy (P = 0.0000000000000013). Moreover, proportion and Allred scores of estrogen receptor–positive cells in breast cancer tissues were significantly associated with Ki-67 response (P = 0.0076 and 0.0023, respectively). Although CYP2D6 variants were not associated with pathologic response nor hot flushes, they showed significant association with Ki-67 response after preoperative tamoxifen therapy (P = 0.018; between two groups, one with at least one wild-type allele and the other without a wild-type allele). Conclusions: This is the first prospective study evaluating the relationship between CYP2D6 variants and Ki-67 response after tamoxifen therapy. Our results suggest that genetic variation in CYP2D6 is a key predictor for the response to tamoxifen in patients with breast cancer. Clin Cancer Res; 23(8); 2019–26. ©2016 AACR.


This work is concerned with local buckling and lateral distortional buckling, two
aspects of instability that govern the design of composite beams in hogging regions.
Local buckling in hogging regions of a continuous composite beam was modelled
by moment curvature characteristics of a cantilever, modified by two curvature
ratios, K1 and K2. Test based expressions for K1 and K2,
in terms of a combined
slenderness λc, were developed, and subsequently used in numerical analyses
of 50 two-span composite beams to assess moment redistribution allowed for Class
2 beams by draft Eurocode 4. The analyses include effects of non-linear material
properties, residual stresses and local buckling. The parametrical studies include
adverse values, in relation to practice, of relative length of adjacent spans, span-to-depth
ratio, and ratio of hogging to sagging moment of resistances. It is concluded
that the redistribution of elastic bending moments allowed by the draft Eurocode 4
is safe and economical.
Distortional lateral buckling of composite beams with both continuous and discrete
U-frame actions was studied experimentally. Distortional lateral buckling was
found in the tests of two composite beams with inverted U-frame actions. Web
distortion was effectively reduced by vertical web stiffeners, which form a part of
discrete U-frames together with the slab and the connection of U-frame. The work
provides background to assess lateral buckling strength for composite beams with
both continuous and discrete U-frame actions. A further theoretical approach on
the topic of discrete inverted U-frame action was presented.
Strength and stiffness of discrete U-frame connections were also studied. The
strength of a discrete U-frame connection was found to be influenced by both the
shear failure of concrete, and the yielding of steel top flange in the connection. A
simple rule to assure strength of U-frame connections is proposed by checking these
two failures separately. The prediction of shear failure of a U-frame connection is
based on a truss model, and the prediction of failure in the steel top flange is based
on a rigid plastic mechanism. A semi-empirical formula for flexibility of a U-frame
connection was derived. They were all checked against test results. Interactive U-frame
force and U-frame stiffness were also studied. A tentative design method for
discrete U-frame composite beams was proposed.


Keeping track of the position and orientation over time using sensor data, i.e., pose tracking, is a central component in many mobile robot systems. In this paper, we present a Kalman filter-based approach utilizing a minimalistic environmental model. By continuously updating the pose, matching the sensor data to the model is straightforward and outliers can be filtered out effectively by validation gates. The minimalistic model paves the way for a low-complexity algorithm with a high degree of robustness and accuracy. Robustness here refers both to being able to track the pose for a long time, but also handling changes and clutter in the environment. This robustness is gained by the minimalistic model only capturing the stable and large scale features of the environment. The effectiveness of the pose tracking is demonstrated through a number of experiments, including a run of 90 min., which clearly establishes the robustness of the method.


The search for high performance is one of the leading themes in management science with a number of frameworks developed over the decades. The purpose of the paper is to investigate if the effect of high performance organization (HPO) characteristics has a direct effect on actual organizational performance or if the effect is mediated by organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Previous research states that the framework of HPO characteristics answers the question of 'what' high performers do, but does not answer the question of 'how' they do it, suggesting a mediating effect. The study attempts to establish which of the pair of OCB and EO (if any) has a stronger mediating effect. The hypotheses were tested using a cross-sectional research design with a random and representative sample of 406 enterprises. The research was carried out using the technique of personal interview (CAPI). Established scales were used to measure high performance indicators, organizational citizenship behavior, entrepreneurial orientation, and organizational performance. The conceptual framework with mediated effects was tested using a structural equations modeling approach. Research results indicate that there is a strong direct positive relationship between high performance indicators and organizational effectiveness. Moreover, there is a strong positive effect of high performance indicators on entrepreneurial orientation and organizational citizenship behavior. However, the effect of those two constructs on organizational effectiveness is rather weak, and, in the case of OCB, negative. That leads to the conclusion that the direct effect of high performance indicators is stronger, although the positive mediation by entrepreneurial orientation is statistically significant. The study contributes to the scientific debate in at least three ways. First, it confirms that high performance characteristics have a strong effect on actual performance. Second, it points to entrepreneurial orientation as a partial mediator in that relationship. Finally, it uncovers the very strong effect of high performance characteristics on organizational citizenship behavior. The research results also allow one to formulate practical recommendations. They mainly consider enhancing OCB, EO, and performance by skillful use of high performance factors. The study is novel in its approach to use OCB and entrepreneurial orientation as mediators in the effect of high performance characteristics on organizational performance, as no such attempts were made in the past.


Every now and again, we get a look, usually no more than a glimpse, at how the justice system really works. What we see — before the sanitizing curtain is drawn abruptly down — is a process full of human fallibility and error, sometimes noble, more often unfair, rarely evil but frequently unequal.The central question, vital to our adjudicative model, is: How well can we expect a jury to determine credibility through the ordinary adversary processes of live testimony and vigorous impeachment? The answer, from all I have been able to see is: not very well.


We examine the abundance and distribution of Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae) and nine prey species in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park on Sumatra, Indonesia. Our study is the first to demonstrate that the relative abundance of tigers and their prey, as measured by camera traps, is directly related to independently derived estimates of densities for these species. The tiger population in the park is estimated at 40–43 individuals. Results indicate that illegal hunting of prey and tigers, measured as a function of human density within 10 km of the park, is primarily responsible for observed patterns of abundance, and that habitat loss is an increasingly serious problem. Abundance of tigers, two mouse deer (Tragulus spp.), pigs (Sus scrofa) and Sambar deer (Cervus unicolor) was more than four times higher in areas with low human population density, while densities of red muntjac (Muntiacus muntjac) and pigtail macaques (Macaca nemestrina) were twice as high. Malay tapir (Tapirus indicus) and argus pheasant (Argusianus argus), species infrequently hunted, had higher indices of relative abundance in areas with high human density. Edge effects associated with park boundaries were not a significant factor in abundance of tigers or prey once human density was considered. Tigers in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, and probably other protected areas throughout Sumatra, are in imminent danger of extinction unless trends in hunting and deforestation are reversed.


Patients with diabetes mellitus often have several medical problems and carry a burden imposed by their illness and treatment. Health care often ignores the values, preferences and context of patients, leading to treatments that do not fit into patients' overwhelmed lives. Shared Decision Making (SDM) emerges as a way to answer the question: "What's best for the patient?". SDM promotes an empathic conversation between patients and clinicians that integrates the best evidence available with their values, preferences and context. We discuss three SDM approaches for patients with diabetes: one focused on sharing information, another on making choices, and a third one on helping patients and clinicians to talk about how to address the problems of living with diabetes and its comorbidities. Despite the benefits demonstrated in studies conducted in the U.S. and Europe, the implementation of SDM continues to be a challenge. In Latin America, healthcare and socio-economic conditions render the implementation of SDM more challenging. Research aimed to respond to this challenge is necessary. Meanwhile, clinicians can practice SDM by sharing evidence-based information, giving voice to patients' values and preferences in making choices, and creating empathic conversations aimed at decisions aligned with patients' context, dreams, goals, and life expectations.


Corporate takeover defenses have long been a focal point of academic and popular attention. However, no consensus exists on such fundamental questions as why different corporations adopt varying levels of defenses and whether defenses benefit or harm target corporations' shareholders or society generally. Much of the disagreement surrounding takeover defenses stems from the lack of a fully developed formal analytical framework for considering their effects. Our Article presents several formal models built upon a common core of assumptions that together create such a theoretical framework. These models incorporate the reality that target corporate insiders have superior information about the target but are imperfect agents of its shareholders. They suggest that modern defenses enable target shareholders to extract value from acquirers by empowering corporate insiders, but that takeover defenses do not benefit society as a whole. They also suggest why corporations with different characteristics may choose to adopt varying levels of takeover defenses. Our findings have implications for the longstanding debate about who is best served by state-level control of corporate law and the desirability of increased federal involvement in corporate law.


When looking at drawings of graphs, questions about graph density, community structures, local clustering and other graph properties may be of critical importance for analysis. While graph layout algorithms have focused on minimizing edge crossing, symmetry, and other such layout properties, there is not much known about how these algorithms relate to a user's ability to perceive graph properties for a given graph layout. In this study, we apply previously established methodologies for perceptual analysis to identify which graph drawing layout will help the user best perceive a particular graph property. We conduct a large scale (n = 588) crowdsourced experiment to investigate whether the perception of two graph properties (graph density and average local clustering coefficient) can be modeled using Weber's law. We study three graph layout algorithms from three representative classes (Force Directed ‐ FD, Circular, and Multi‐Dimensional Scaling ‐ MDS), and the results of this experiment establish the precision of judgment for these graph layouts and properties. Our findings demonstrate that the perception of graph density can be modeled with Weber's law. Furthermore, the perception of the average clustering coefficient can be modeled as an inverse of Weber's law, and the MDS layout showed a significantly different precision of judgment than the FD layout.


The following is a book of poems based on the lives of several classic and contemporary painters, including Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Goya, Monet, Renoir, Magritte and many others. While the poems participate in the tradition of ekphrastic poetry, they also engage with each painters' biography, as a lens through which to see each work. In the poems, many of the painters are reacting to a dramatic loss, transforming the pain of personal tragedy into art.


In light of the current decline in French enrollment in Newfoundland high schools, the purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between a student's attitudes and his decision to take French or to drop it when given a choice. The variables of sex, achievement and parental encouragement were also examined in relationship to a student's decision. -- The study took the form of a survey conducted through a written questionnaire. From the Grade 10 population of 636 students in the Avalon North Integrated School District a random sample of 200 students was selected. One hundred of the students were currently enrolled in a French course and the remaining 100 students had chosen not to take French in Grade 10. -- The responses of the two groups of students on the questionnaire were analyzed and compared to determine whether a significant relationship existed between a student's decision to take French and the variables of sex, achievement, parental encouragement, motivational orientation, attitude towards French people, attitude toward the French course, and attitude toward learning French as a second language. -- The data collected from the questionnaire were analyzed by means of both descriptive and inferential statistics. The t-test for differences between means and the chi-square test of independence were used to compare the responses of the two groups. -- The major findings of the study revealed that there was not a significant relationship between the variables of attitudes toward the French people or motivational orientation and a student's decision to take French. However, significant relationships were found to exist between the variables of sex, achievement, parental encouragement and attitudes toward learning French. A descriptive analysis also suggested that a student's attitude toward the French course and French class may affect his decision as to whether or not he takes French. -- The findings suggested that the problem of declining enrollments in French courses is related more to academic problems rather than to social or political factors. Thus, attempts to curb the decline should be focused on the improvement of student attitudes in the area of the French course, the class, the teacher and toward learning French in general.


We use four waves of panel data from Northern Ethiopia to investigate the link between Food for Work (FFW) participation and the diversity of food consumption and production. Food-based transfer programs have become a standard tool for addressing the problem of chronic food insecurity in developing countries. Such programs have the potential to expand diet diversity if food items provided under FFW are not part of the beneficiaries' staple diet. By raising effective incomes, cash payments also have the potential to "crowd in" purchases of nutritionally important foods. On the other hand, FFW programs have the potential to undermine dietary diversity by altering the basic crop mix if participation requires households to divert labor away from on-farm production. The net effect is unclear, which we empirically investigate in this study. By employing random effects, fixed effects and difference-indifference estimations, we find that FFW participants had greater dietary diversity compared to non-participants, with an average effect magnitude equivalent to onefifth of a standard deviation in the food variety score. When items directly provided by the FFW program are excluded from the variety score, the overall effect is statistically weaker, but similar in sign and magnitude, suggesting modest "crowding in" of diet diversity from FFW participation. Findings also reveal that higher intensity of participation in FFW is linked with diversified food consumption. We find no evidence that FFW participation led to changes in production diversity, suggesting that FFW programs may not be competing for labor with on farm production. Findings have relevance for interventions that aim to improve food security and promote dietary quality in low-income populations.


Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are widely used antidepressants. As endocrine disruptive contaminants in the environment, SSRIs affect reproduction in aquatic organisms. In the water flea Daphnia magna, SSRIs increase offspring production in a food ration-dependent manner. At limiting food conditions, females exposed to SSRIs produce more but smaller offspring, which is a maladaptive life-history strategy. We asked whether increased serotonin levels in newly identified serotonin-neurons in the Daphnia brain mediate these effects. We provide strong evidence that exogenous SSRI fluoxetine selectively increases serotonin-immunoreactivity in identified brain neurons under limiting food conditions thereby leading to maladaptive offspring production. Fluoxetine increases serotonin-immunoreactivity at low food conditions to similar maximal levels as observed under high food conditions and concomitantly enhances offspring production. Sublethal amounts of the neurotoxin 5,7-dihydroxytryptamine known to specifically ablate serotonin-neurons markedly decrease serotonin-immunoreactivity and offspring production, strongly supporting the effect to be serotonin-specific by reversing the reproductive phenotype attained under fluoxetine. Thus, SSRIs impair serotonin-regulation of reproductive investment in a planktonic key organism causing inappropriately increased reproduction with potentially severe ecological impact.


This prototype profile provides a snapshot of child health in this area. It is designed to help the Local Authority and the Primary Care Trust improve the health of children and to tackle health inequalities in their area.


The GTPase Ran has recently been shown to stimulate microtubule polymerization in mitotic extracts, but its mode of action is not understood. Here we show that the mitotic role of Ran is largely mediated by the nuclear transport factor importin beta. Importin beta inhibits spindle formation in vitro and in vivo and sequesters an aster promoting activity (APA) that consists of multiple, independent factors. One component of APA is the microtubule-associated protein NuMA. NuMA and other APA components are discharged from importin beta by RanGTP and induce spindle-like structures in the absence of centrosomes, chromatin, or Ran. We propose that RanGTP functions in mitosis as in interphase by locally releasing cargoes from transport factors. In mitosis, this promotes spindle assembly by organizing microtubules in the vicinity of chromosomes.


Abstract This paper presents the development of visual oriented tools for the dynamic performance simulation of a turbojet engine using a cross-application approach. In particular, the study focuses on the feasibility of developing simulation models using different programming environments and linking them together using a popular spreadsheet program. As a result of this effort, a low fidelity cycle program has been created, capable of being integrated with other performance models. The amount of laboratory sessions required for student training during an educational procedure, for example for a course in gas turbine performance simulation, is greatly reduced due to the familiarity of most students with the spreadsheet software. The model results have been validated using commercially available gas turbine simulation software and experimental data from open literature. The most important finding of this study is the capability of the program to link to aircraft performance models and predict the transient working line of the engine for various initial conditions in order to dynamically simulate flight phases including take-off and landing.


Background Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis is a three-dimensional curvature of the spine of unknown cause that occurs in often otherwise fit young people. A complex surgical procedure is required for the most severe curves. Quantitative literature suggests scoliosis surgery improves patients' lives, while qualitative literature focuses on patients' concerns rather than their experience. Aims To explore how adolescents interpret their perioperative experience. Method Six participants, aged 15-18, were interviewed and transcripts were analysed. Findings Four themes were identified: shock, fears and worries; parental interaction; coping; and motivation and positivity. Conclusion Participants were reluctant to share concerns, however those they shared related more to fear of the unknown and lack of control than specific issues such as pain. Participants depended on their parents, especially their mothers, during the perioperative period, and they recognised their parents' stress. Participants coped well, were motivated and had a positive outlook.


To examine the natural colonisation of native mangrove species into remediated exotic mangrove stands in Leizhou Bay, South China, we compared soil physical–chemical properties, community structure and recruitments of barren mangrove areas, native mangrove species plantations, and exotic mangrove species— Sonneratia apetala Buch.Ham—between plantations and natural forest. We found that severely degraded mangrove stands could not regenerate naturally without human intervention due to severely altered local environments, whereas some native species had been recruited into the 4–10 year S. apetala plantations. In the first 10 years, the exotic species S. apetala grew better than native species such as Rhizophora stylosa Griff and Kandelia candel (Linn.) Druce. The mangrove plantation gradually affected soil physical and chemical properties during its recovery. The exotic S. apetala was more competitive than native species and its plantation was able to restore soil organic matter in about 14 years. Thus, S. apetala can be considered as a pioneer species to improve degraded habitats to facilitate recolonisation by native mangrove species. However, removal to con-trol proliferation may be needed at late stages to facilitate growth of native species. To ensure sustainability of mangroves in South China, the existing mangrove wetlands must be managed as an ecosystem, with long-term scientific monitoring program in place.


Caring for a relative or friend with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) may negatively impact the quality of life (QoL) of carers. However, in the existing literature, there are no adequate scales available to measure MS carers' QoL due to the lack of satisfactory conceptualisation and operationalisation of QoL in MS caregiving. This has limited the ability to have a consistent body of evidence to guide further MS carer QoL research and practice. Therefore, this research aimed to systematically investigate the factors that enhance or compromise the lives of MS carers by utilising the theoretical construct of QoL. In so doing, the research sought to develop and validate an MS-specific QoL measure for informal carers (MSQoL-C). A sequential mixed-methods approach was utilised to explore QoL among MS carers and to inform the development of the MSQoL-C. First, a meta-synthesis of 17 qualitative studies on MS informal caregiving was conducted (Study 1) to improve the conceptual understanding of the experiences of MS carers. The synthesis resulted in 9 inter-linking themes: Changes and losses; MS and patient-related challenges; caregiving demands; burden of care; future concerns; external stressors; support; coping and motivating factors. This synthesis presented a model for MS caregiving and a preliminary list of operationalisations of QoL that needed further exploration. Second, in order to explore the QoL of MS carers and investigate the factors that enhance or compromise their QoL, a photovoice study (Study 2) was conducted with 12 MS carers. Study 2 established that MS carers often experience MS caregiving-related challenges, personal losses and changes, negative emotions, an urge to escape and a unique sense of anxiousness over the unpredictability of their MS carer role. However there were also some positive elements that emerged, such as the happy moments and the supporting role of loved ones, that helped ameliorate these negative events and enhance QoL. Study 3 was an online interview study conducted with six MS carers in order to triangulate the findings from Studies 1 and 2, and to derive a more comprehensive understanding of the QoL issues in MS caregiving. Interview data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and findings yielded three super-ordinate themes: Difficulties of MS caregiving, Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction with life and Consequences of MS caregiving. Study 3 provided further support that QoL of MS carers is substantially compromised and that they experience a number of unique MS-specific obstacles within their caregiving role. Finally, the findings from these three studies informed the development of the MSQoL-C, and a pilot study (Study 4) was conducted to test its psychometric properties. The MSQoL-C was found to have good congruent validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability. It is envisaged that the MSQoL-C will provide an understanding of the factors that impact upon MS carers' QoL, and will be useful to implement and evaluate therapeutic interventions.