2135 Social influences are a primary factor in the adoption of health behaviors. Compliance with diet and nutrition programs, adherence to preventive screening recommendations, and maintenance of exercise routines all can depend on having contact with friends and family who also engage in these behaviors. In addition to a great deal of literature on peer effects, recent studies of large network data sets have made important advances in our understanding of how social networks influence the collective dynamics of health behavior. Research has shown that social influences can affect collective health outcomes ranging from epidemic obesity to smoking behaviors, which have important consequences both for theoretical models of social epidemiology and for the practical design of interventions and treatment strategies. These findings have direct implications for research aimed at understanding how social influences on dieting, exercising, medication use, and getting screenings can impact behavior change affecting cardiovascular disease. The large number of health domains affected by recent research on the spread of behaviors has made social diffusion a topic of growing interest for an increasing variety of researchers and practitioners who are concerned with understanding the social dimensions of health. This article discusses the development of new methods that use social media to study these health dynamics. Although there is widespread theoretical and practical interest in understanding how social influences affect healthrelated behaviors, empirical studies of the social dynamics of health face important methodological challenges. Large observational studies of population health have faced the limitation that they are unable to address problems of causal identification. Extant studies have been able to show conclusively that health-related traits such as smoking and weight gain correlate with social ties in a network, yet the data do not provide a clear assessment of the degree to which social network ties directly influence behaviors versus reveal shared exposure to common influences. Correlations of traits with social network ties can occur because people who are friends are exposed to the same media signals (ie, exogenous information), because connected individuals live in the same neighborhoods (ie, geographic constraints such as living near the same restaurants and gyms), because people who already have similar traits form social ties with one another (ie, choice homophily), or because connected individuals influence one another to adopt similar behaviors (ie, social influence). Although new techniques are being developed to discriminate between each of these causal mechanisms, determining the relative impact of these factors is very difficult and is made even more complicated by the lack of reliable data both on the timing of behavior change and on the actual social network structure of a given population. These difficulties motivate the need for new methods that can allow health researchers to identify the role of social networks in the real-time dynamics of behavior change. The goal of this article is to demonstrate that the rapid growth of peerto-peer social media presents an important new resource for addressing these empirical challenges. Increasing levels of public participation in a diverse range of health-related social media create a new population of subjects whose natural, everyday engagement with health behaviors can be monitored and scientifically explored with a rapidly expanding repertoire of social technologies. Building on these new capacities, recent research has begun to study how social media can be used to experimentally evaluate the effects of social influence on behavior change. This approach to using social media entails a shift in focus from the interpersonal dimensions of social interactions to the community-wide effects of social network structure on the spread of behaviors through online populations.


This study is set in Saudi Arabia within the context of increasing national and international emphasis on inclusive education of deaf students and where policy overtly supports increasingly inclusive schools. This research is important because it is one of the few qualitative Saudi Arabian studies that have been conducted within the interpretive paradigm with a view to understanding the complexity of inclusive education. It specifically explores the factors that have influenced its theory and practice at inclusive boys' primary schools for deaf students in the Saudi educational context. The empirical study which was set in the Local Educational Authority in Riyadh city focuses on the perceptions of schools' principals, teachers and parents of deaf students. It explores the knowledge, understanding, attitudes and experiences of these three groups of participants regarding the inclusive education of deaf students, in order to establish the factors that influence inclusive education and determine the kind of services that are needed for inclusive education of deaf students in the Saudi context.
The study had two stages: the first involved exploratory focus-group interviews with schools' staff including schools' principals, teachers and parents of deaf students; and, stage two was based upon individual interviews, observations and documentary data. I adopted a purposive sampling strategy in both cases and overall 61 participants were included. A key finding was that principals of inclusive schools lacked the knowledge and understanding of inclusive education necessary for effective education for deaf students. This arguably has affected their attitudes and unconstructively influenced their attitudes towards the inclusive education of deaf students in their schools. Whilst the majority of teachers of deaf children had more knowledge and the necessary positive views towards their inclusive education and have tried to adapt classroom materials and activities to accommodate deaf students, the lack of support from principals inhibited them. In addition parents appear to lack knowledge about inclusion and its possibilities for their children and they are as such excluded from influencing educational policy and mostly do not play the role in inclusive schools to support their children that Saudi Arabian policy suggests they should. Other inhibiting factors for inclusive education for deaf students included insufficient facilities and resources, lack of training courses and lack of collaboration among school staff and between staff and parents of deaf students.
My research indicates that these insufficiencies cannot be addressed without there being a symbiotic relationship between principals, teachers, parents, the Local Educational Authority, the Ministry of Education and the school environment. There is a strong need to create mechanisms to change the knowledge, attitudes and qualifications of principals, teachers and parents. Therefore in response to these findings I have developed and proposed a strategic model that focuses on the deaf student and their educational support, for the Saudi Education System.
There is considerable research needed if inclusive education for deaf students is to be more grounded in an understanding of the context. The study ended with utilising its findings and previous literature to develop recommendations for theories of inclusive education and made contributions to knowledge about the role of attitudes. It also provided a set of policy guidelines and made suggestions about pedagogy. In Saudi, organisationally the Local Educational Authority need to pay more attention to funding inclusive schools and providing facilities and specialised training to school staff and parents. With work this may lead to successful inclusive education for deaf students in Saudi Arabia.


Data clustering is a highly interdisciplinary field, the goal of which is to divide a set of objects into homogeneous groups such that objects in the same group are similar and objects in different groups are quite distinct. Thousands of theoretical papers and a number of books on data clustering have been published over the past 50 years. However, few books exist to teach people how to implement data clustering algorithms. This book was written for anyone who wants to implement or improve their data clustering algorithms. Using object-oriented design and programming techniques, Data Clustering in C++ exploits the commonalities of all data clustering algorithms to create a flexible set of reusable classes that simplifies the implementation of any data clustering algorithm. Readers can follow the development of the base data clustering classes and several popular data clustering algorithms. Additional topics such as data pre-processing, data visualization, cluster visualization, and cluster interpretation are briefly covered. This book is divided into three parts-- Data Clustering and C++ Preliminaries: A review of basic concepts of data clustering, the unified modeling language, object-oriented programming in C++, and design patterns A C++ Data Clustering Framework: The development of data clustering base classes Data Clustering Algorithms: The implementation of several popular data clustering algorithms A key to learning a clustering algorithm is to implement and experiment the clustering algorithm. Complete listings of classes, examples, unit test cases, and GNU configuration files are included in the appendices of this book as well as in the CD-ROM of the book. The only requirements to compile the code are a modern C++ compiler and the Boost C++ libraries.


Liquid fuels from biomass and up-conversion of biomass in advanced supercritical fluid are reviewed in this chapter. Lignin can be converted into heavy hydrocarbons in subcritical water extraction. Lipid, which is triglyceride, is catalytically converted into straight-chain hydrocarbons of free fatty acid (decarboxylation) formed by hydrolysis. Carbohydrate is also hydrothermally converted into furan ring compound and fatty acids. Protein is converted into amino acids in hydrothermal water and depolymerization of protein is favored with rapid heating and denaturation agency such as alkaline earth metals. Free amino acids are further decomposed into carboxylic acid through deamination and into amine through decarboxylation. To inhibit Maillard reactions, which result in polymerization, the deamination of amino acid at low temperature was favored and a solid catalyst was quite active for deamination of free amino acids at quite low temperature hydrothermal water. Cellulose was dissolved in some ionic liquids with high mass percentages (5 – 20 wt%) and converted into monomers and useful components such as furan ring compounds and supercritical fluid cosolvent such as hydrothermal water in ionic liquids supported improvement of reaction efficiency. For hydrogenation of biomass, it was confirmed that hydrogen solubility was enhanced with supercritical carbon dioxide and it must be helpful for hydrogen reaction with biomass molecule.


Version 6 of Sun Microsystems' Java HotSpot#8482; VM ships with a redesigned version of the client just-in-time compiler that includes several research results of the last years. The client compiler is at the heart of the VM configuration used by default for interactive desktop applications. For such applications, low startup and pause times are more important than peak performance. This paper outlines the new architecture of the client compiler and shows how it interacts with the VM. It presents the intermediate representation that now uses static single-assignment (SSA) form and the linear scan algorithm for global register allocation. Efficient support for exception handling and deoptimization fulfills the demands that are imposed by the dynamic features of the Java programming language. The evaluation shows that the new client compiler generates better code in less time. The popular SPECjvm98 benchmark suite is executed 45% faster, while the compilation speed is also up to 40% better. This indicates that a carefully selected set of global optimizations can also be integrated in just-in-time compilers that focus on compilation speed and not on peak performance. In addition, the paper presents the impact of several optimizations on execution and compilation speed. As the source code is freely available, the Java HotSpot#8482; VM and the client compiler are the ideal basis for experiments with new feedback-directed optimizations in a production-level Java just-in-time compiler. The paper outlines research projects that add fast algorithms for escape analysis, automatic object inlining, and array bounds check elimination.


In this paper, we investigate the detection of long-term evolution (LTE) single carrier-frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) signals, with application to cognitive radio systems. We explore the second-order cyclostationarity of the LTE SC-FDMA signals and apply results obtained for the cyclic autocorrelation function to signal detection. The proposed detection algorithm provides a very good performance under various channel conditions, with a short observation time and at low signal-to-noise ratios, with reduced complexity. The validity of the proposed algorithm is verified using signals generated and acquired by laboratory instrumentation, and the experimental results show a good match with computer simulation results.


This thesis looks at the condition under which sympathetic neurons (SCG) develop in order to understand the causes of selective vulnerability during ageing and therefore shows how pre-treatment in vivo with NGF at a specific point during development affects SCG neurons. In summary, results show that following pre-treatment in vivo there is an increase in neuronal number, with differential effect on different subpopulations of neurons (MCA versus iris projecting neurons). MCA-projecting neurons (a vulnerable subpopulation of SCG neurons) increase in growth and innervation of specific target tissues following NGF pre-treatment in vivo, showing a maintained plasticity after termination of development and therefore a potential target site for future therapeutics. NGF pre-treatment in vivo also increases neuronal survival time throughout life, showing that the limited supply of NGF in real life prime neurons to a reduced potential. The results on survival also show a difference in the mode of action between the two major survival pathways (PI3-K and ERK), with PI3-K being the predominant in adult life and ERK acting mainly in early life. This shows a double survival mechanism which is plastic and capable of shifting predominance according to factors such as NGF stimuli and/or ageing. Furthermore if the NGF pre-treatment in vivo is applied after termination of development, neurons show plasticity by developing an 'addiction' or dependance to NGF pre-treatment termination results in death of the neurons. Preliminary results show increase in Akt activity which is downstream of PT3-K, and is activated in NGF-dependent survival of SCG neurons (Pierchala et aL, 2004). Biological consequences of Akt activation are survival, increase in cell number and growth, which are all characteristics relevant also to cancer-cell growth. Further preliminary results show an inhibition of GSK-3p pathways, which is downstream of Akt and is determinant for cytoskeletal rearrangement, glucose metabolism and cell survival regulation of GSK-3p has been widely studied in relation to Alzheimer's disease. In conclusions this research shows that sympathetic neurons are plastic and by priming mem with NGF, at a critical point during development, their survivability is increased. These results support the existence of a sensitive mechanism for adjusting neuronal capacity to resist cell death in response to neurotrophic factor deprivation.


The speed in obtaining responses characterizes our use of the information and communication technologies (ICT). The feeling of immediacy comes along with the occultation of the intermediate processes and the agents that mediate those uses. In this sense, McKenzie Wark came up with the term "third nature", which refers to the separation between the ICT and the natural resources with which they interact. Likewise, Michael Cronin (2013) described the "3T paradigm" (trade, technology and translation) to address the issue of the invisibilization of the entailments between trade, technology and translation in the digital age. These thoughts emphasize the need of raising awareness about the ICT infrastructure in order to understand the political, economic, social and environmental consequences of the use of digital tools. By taking all this into account, the goal of this paper is to bring to light the interaction between the 3T paradigm and its linkage to environmental issues by analysing Eugenio Tisselli's digital art project El 27 || The 27th (2014 - nowadays).


OBJECTIVE
We examined the relationship between handwriting and keyboarding performance and between these writing modes and underlying performance skills.

METHOD
Sixty-three young, healthy adults who used the computer daily were recruited for this study by means of a convenience sample (mean = 25.3, standard deviation = 3.0); 15 were slow keyboarders and 17 were fast keyboarders. Participants were administered handwriting and keyboarding assessments, as well as measures of finger function, kinesthetic processing, and eye movement.

RESULTS
Although handwriting and keyboarding speed were moderately correlated, these activities did not share underlying performance skills. In addition, different correlation patterns between written communication modes and performance skills were found among slow and fast keyboarders.

CONCLUSION
Results suggest that occupational therapists and educators should consider a variety of factors before recommending keyboarding as an alternative written communication method for people with handwriting difficulties. Moreover, different recommendations appear to be warranted for slow and fast keyboarders.


Abstract This paper presents MVOCC-MDA-2PV (multiversion optimistic concurrency control with multiversion dynamic adjustment using two-phase validation) protocol for processing mobile real-time transaction in mobile broadcast environments. Transaction validation is performed at two phases: pre-validation and final validation. At the mobile herts (MHs), all mobile transactions (MT) perform pre-validation of transactions by using backward validation mechanism. The pre-validation process is carried out against committed transactions at the server in the last broadcast cycle. Such an early data conflict detection feature can save processing and communication resources. Transactions that survive in pre-validation must be submitted to the server for final validation. The MHs do not need to synchronize with each other and servers for data conflict detection. The protocol can eliminate conflicts between mobile read-only and mobile update transactions, and resolve data conflicts flexibly using multiversion dynamic adjustment of serialization order to avoid unnecessary restarts of transactions. For a mobile ready-only transaction, it can be committed locally in the MH if it passes all the pre-validation in the course of it execution. Respond time of mobile read-only transactions (MROT) is greatly improved. The results of experiment show that the new protocol proposed offers better performance in terms of miss rate and commit rate.


Mining polymetallic nodules on abyssal plains will have adverse impacts on deep‐sea ecosystems, but it is largely unknown whether the impacted ecosystem will recover, and if so at what rate. In 1989 the "DISturbance and reCOLonization" (DISCOL) experiment was conducted in the Peru Basin where the seafloor was disturbed with a plough harrow construction to explore the effect of small‐scale sediment disturbance from deep‐sea mining. Densities of Holothuroidea in the region were last investigated 7 yr post‐disturbance, before 19 yr later, the DISCOL site was re‐visited in 2015. An "ocean floor observatory system" was used to photograph the seabed across ploughed and unploughed seafloor and at reference sites. The images were analyzed to determine the Holothuroidea population density and community composition, which were combined with in situ respiration measurements of individual Holothuroidea to generate a respiration budget of the study area. For the first time since the experimental disturbance, similar Holothuroidea densities were observed at the DISCOL site and at reference sites. The Holothuroidea assemblage was dominated by Amperima sp., Mesothuria sp., and Benthodytes typica, together contributing 46% to the Holothuroidea population density. Biomass and respiration were similar among sites, with a Holothuroidea community respiration of 5.84 × 10−4 ± 8.74 × 10−5 mmol C m−2 d−1 at reference sites. Although these results indicate recovery of Holothuroidea, extrapolations regarding recovery from deep‐sea mining activities must be made with caution: results presented here are based on a relatively small‐scale disturbance experiment as compared to industrial‐scale nodule mining, and also only represent one taxonomic class of the megafauna.


ABSTRACT.The paper is focused on the identification of dominant leadership styles of the managers from Romanian public institutions and their correlations with employees' behaviors in order to achieve superior performances. The research is performed on a sample of Romanian managers from different public institutions. The empirical study analyzes by means of statistical methods, facilitated by the use of SPSS software, the main correlations between the dominant leadership styles of the managers from these institutions and the employees' behaviors, reflected on their loyalty degree, their motivation degree and their professional performances level. The research results outline several managerial implications, based on relevant information about the opportunities to enhance the performances of the public institutions by adopting the most appropriate leadership style.Keywords: leadership style, organizational culture, public management, human resources, professional performance1. IntroductionLeadership is the ability of a person to organize and focus the human efforts on the accomplishment of a goal. In its pure state, leadership leads to performance, by generating a high level of motivation to all the employees from an organization. One of the most outstanding personalities in management science, Peter Drucker, famously stated that "management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things" (Hesselbein and Godsmith, 2006). Organizational performance may be influenced by a number of factors, such as, the employees' high satisfaction with their jobs, high commitment to their organization, high motivation to serve the public and strong intentions to work for the organization willingly and devotedly (Kim, 2005). In the context of public institutions, effective leadership provides higher quality relationships among managers and employees, a sense of cohesiveness, personal development and higher levels of satisfaction among those conducting the work (Wart, 2003). The exercise of authority, whether formal or informal, in directing and coordinating the work of others reflects the approach of leadership in public administration (Schafritz, 2004). The main peculiarities of leadership in public institutions are oriented towards the control that limit risk-taking and accountability to the public; a leader in such an organization checks and balances on authority and focuses on principles of fairness (Cropf, 2008). Public managers have come under increasing pressure to find more efficient and effective methods of delivering services and implementing managerial reforms adopted by elected officials. Change oriented leadership behavior has also been linked to improved performance in public organizations (Fernandez, 2008). The results of a survey conducted in public administration sector suggest that relationships between charismatic leadership and inspirational vision themes, and contingent reward leadership and instrumental vision themes were more positive for managers with a high need for social power than for managers with a low need for social power (Sosik and Dinger, 2007). A recent study conducted in public administration (Fernandez et al., 2010) emphasizes the concept of integrated leadership in the public sector. Integrated leadership is conceived of as the combined efforts of organizational members across multiple levels of the hierarchy to perform five leadership roles: task, relations, change, diversity and integrity-oriented leadership.Two recent surveys undertaken in the Romanian public sector reveal the following evidences: one of them emphasizes the fact that the transactional leadership style was positively associated with the general emotional intelligence and with the adaptability factor, and moderate with the interpersonal factor, suggesting the fact transactional leadership is in some extent associated with the ability to be conscious of the feelings, concerns and needs of the followers and slightly with the ability of adapting to the situational changes (Stanescu and Cicei, 2012), while the other one has highlighted issues such as the leadership influence and performance in public administration and exercising leadership in a public institution. …


In this report we present the more important research contributions made
in the Interactive Route Guidance (IRG) project* carried out at SICS
Knowledge Based Systems Laboratory. The emphasis has been to look at those
issues which affect acceptability of the IRG system both from the driver's
and society's point of view. These contributions include : - a
hierarchical representation of maps. - a heuristic search algorithm for
route-finding in a hierarchical space. - a description of navigator
stereotypes which may be implemented as user models in a navigational
system. - principles for description of routes to the resident-navigator. -
a methodology for the description of dynamic information that may affect
traffic and route planning. - an algorithm which tailors planned routes to
constraints and considers dynamic information in the planning. - a
methodology for the presentation of route changes. - a system architecture
for the integration of the route planning mechanism with the mechanisms for
planning and presenting routes suitable for human stereotypes. - a system
architecture for the integration of in-car information systems.


Abstract. Sulphuric acid and organic vapours have been identified as the key components in the ubiquitous secondary new particle formation in the atmosphere. In order to assess their relative contribution and spatial variability, we analysed altogether 36 new particle formation events observed at four European measurement sites during EUCAARI campaigns in 2007–2009. We tested models of several different nucleation mechanisms coupling the formation rate of neutral particles (J) with the concentration of sulphuric acid ([H2SO4]) or low-volatility organic vapours ([org]) condensing on sub-4 nm particles, or with a combination of both concentrations. Furthermore, we determined the related nucleation coefficients connecting the neutral nucleation rate J with the vapour concentrations in each mechanism. The main goal of the study was to identify the mechanism of new particle formation and subsequent growth that minimizes the difference between the modelled and measured nucleation rates. At three out of four measurement sites – Hyytiala (Finland), Melpitz (Germany) and San Pietro Capofiume (Italy) – the nucleation rate was closely connected to squared sulphuric acid concentration, whereas in Hohenpeissenberg (Germany) the low-volatility organic vapours were observed to be dominant. However, the nucleation rate at the sulphuric acid dominant sites could not be described with sulphuric acid concentration and a single value of the nucleation coefficient, as K in J=K [H2SO4]2, but the median coefficients for different sites varied over an order of magnitude. This inter-site variation was substantially smaller when the heteromolecular homogenous nucleation between H2SO4 and organic vapours was assumed to take place in addition to homogenous nucleation of H2SO4 alone, i.e., J=KSA1[H2SO4]2+KSA2[H2SO4][org]. By adding in this equation a term describing homomolecular organic vapour nucleation, Ks3[org]2, equally good results were achieved. In general, our results suggest that organic vapours do play a role, not only in the condensational growth of the particles, but also in the nucleation process, with a site-specific degree.


In this thesis, I examine variation in occurrence and performance of glabrous and trichome-producing plants of the perennial herb Arabidopsis lyrata. I combine field studies and genetic analysis to (1) examine the function of trichomes as a resistance character in natural populations, (2) compare the magnitude of population differentiation in trichome-production and at putatively neutral marker loci, (3) examine the molecular genetic basis of trichome-production, and (4) quantify the effects of herbivore removal on population growth and relative performance of glabrous and trichome-producing plants. In a survey of 30 populations of A. lyrata in Norway and Sweden, I documented spatiotemporal variation in damage from insect herbivores. With few exceptions, glabrous plants were more damaged by herbivorous insects than trichome-producing plants in polymorphic populations. Damage levels varied substantially among populations and among years. The intensity of herbivory quantified as mean leaf removal to glabrous plants was higher in polymorphic populations than in monomorphic glabrous populations. Within the Swedish range, populations were more strongly differentiated at the locus coding for glabrousness than at eight putatively neutral isozyme loci. This is consistent with the hypothesis that trichome production is subject to divergent selection. A study of the genetic basis of trichome production showed that glabrousness was associated with mutations in an orthologue to GLABROUS1, a regulatory gene known to cause glabrousness in A. thaliana. Comparative data indicate that the genetic basis of glabrousness varies among populations. Experimental removal of insect herbivores in a natural A. lyrata population increased population growth rate and the relative fitness of the glabrous morph. The results suggest that insect herbivory may influence both population dynamics and selection on trichome production in A. lyrata.


Pramaggiore claimed that Barry Lyndon is slow, similarly Ciment suggested that 2001: A Space Odyssey and Eyes Wide Shut are slow films, too. Moving from the debate on slowness, especially from Jaffe's discussion, from the data collected in Cinemetrics about Kubrick's films, from their comparison with data of other films elaborated by Bordwell, and from a stylistic analysis of Kubrickian films, I will show that, in Kubrick's oeuvre , only the three films mentioned by the French scholar can be considered slow. One of the features of slowness is the presence of numerous long takes characterised by a few dialogue or silence, by rare and slow movements of the camera that often do not follow the staged events, and that show in long shots the lengthy movements of characters and objects. During these takes, the associative narrative form substitutes the sequential one – as discussed by Grodal – and the expressed time – as defined by Yacavone – is emphasised. Beginning with Totaro's discussion of long takes, I will analyse them in 2001 , Barry Lyndon , and Eyes Wide Shut , and compare their features with those of long takes in slow cinema. When either the camera or the characters and objects in frame moves, I will draw conclusions about expressed time through a discussion of movement, adopting the Conceptual Metaphor Theory. My hypothesis is that Kubrick managed to extend expressed time, much like the directors of slow films do, although in his films the sequential narrative form is never completely abandoned in favour of the associative one, and coexists along with it.


Background In the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), mental health providers (MHPs) report the second highest level of burnout after primary care physicians. Burnout is defined as increased emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and decreased sense of personal accomplishment at work. Objective This study aims to characterize variation in MHP burnout by VHA facility over time, identifying workplace characteristics and practices of high-performing facilities. Methods Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, we will evaluate factors that influence MHP burnout and their effects on patient outcomes. We will compile annual survey data on workplace conditions and annual staffing as well as productivity data to assess same and subsequent year provider and patient outcomes reflecting provider and patient experiences. We will conduct interviews with mental health leadership at the facility level and with frontline MHPs sampled based on our quantitative findings. We will present our findings to an expert panel of operational partners, Veterans Affairs clinicians, administrators, policy leaders, and experts in burnout. We will reengage with facilities that participated in the earlier qualitative interviews and will hold focus groups that share results based on our quantitative and qualitative work combined with input from our expert panel. We will broadly disseminate these findings to support the development of actionable policies and approaches to addressing MHP burnout. Results This study will assist in developing and testing interventions to improve MHP burnout and employee engagement. Our work will contribute to improvements within VHA and will generate insights for health care delivery, informing efforts to address burnout. Conclusions This is the first comprehensive, longitudinal, national, mixed methods study that incorporates different types of MHPs. It will engage MHP leadership and frontline providers in understanding facilitators and barriers to effectively address burnout. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) PRR1-10.2196/18345


Introduction: Deep sternal wound infection is a rare but serious complication after cardiac surgery that can increase mortality and morbidity. The aim of this study was to investigate the incidence and causative germs of deep sternal wound infection following cardiac surgery. Methods: Data were collected retrospectively from patients who underwent different cardiac surgeries including coronary artery bypass gra ing and valvular heart surgeries between July 2010 and October 2012 at a teaching hospital in the north east of Iran. Patients with a deep sternal wound infection (DSWI) were defined based on clinical findings and culture results of the wound. The patients were tracked for the development of DSWI and causative germs and sensitivity were identified according to the microbiological studies. Results: 4621 paƟ ents underwent different cardiac surgeries during the study period. There were 82 cases (1.77%) of DSWI with mean age of 53.93 years and male to female ra o of 47:35 with mortality rate of 10.9%. The most common germs in order of decreasing frequency included Klebsiella, Pseudomonas, Staphylococus Coagulase Negative, Acinetobacter, Staphylocciaureus, Escherichia coli, methicillin resistant Staphylocciaureus, Providenciarettgeri, and Obligatory anaerobe Streptococus. Conclusions: We conclude that DSWI remains a rare but devastating complication and is associated with significant comorbidity, increased hospital mortality, and reduced long-term survival with gram negative rods as the most common pathogens.


There are two main tools for determining the stability of nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs): Lyapunov Theory and linearization. The former has the advantage of providing stability results for nonlinear equations directly, while the latter considers the stability of linear equations and then further justification is needed to show the linear stability implies local stability of the nonlinear equation. Linearization has the advantage of investigating stability on a simpler equation; however, the justification can be difficult to prove. Both Lyapunov Theory and linearization are applied to the Landau–Lifshitz equation, a nonlinear PDE that describes the behaviour of magnetization inside a magnetic object. It is known that the Landau-Lifshitz equation has an infinite number of stable equilibrium points. We present a control that forces the system from one equilibrium to another. This is proved using Lyapunov Theory. The linear Landau–Lifshitz equation is also investigated because it provides insight to the nonlinear equation. The linear model is shown to be well–posed and its eigenvalue problem is solved. The resulting eigenvalues suggest an appropriate control for the nonlinear Landau–Lifshitz equation. Mathematically, the control causes the initial equilibrium to no longer be an equilibrium and the second point to be an asymptotically stable equilibrium point. This implies the magnetization has moved to the second equilibrium and hence the control objective is successfully achieved. The existence of multiple stable equilibria is closely related to hysteresis. This is a phenomenon that is often characterized by a looping behaviour; however, the existence of a loop is not sufficient to identify hysteretic systems. A more precise definition is required, which is presented, and applied to the Landau–Lifshitz equation (both linear and nonlinear) to establish the presence of hysteresis.


The monitoring of common coot Fulica atra (Rallidae) ecology was done in Guerbes-Sanhadja wetlands. The results showed that this bird was abundant in these sites. In this study, it could be noted that at the level of these aquatic ecosystems, Common Coot due to its gregarious character have been concentrated in water far from the banks of the sites studied near the tufts of Typha angustifolia and Scirpus lacustris, and formed two distinct groups. The study of the diurnal activity rhythms throughout the wintering period has shown that feeding has dominated by far the total balance sheets, and this in all the wetlands which showed the role of daytime gaining ground of these bodies of water. This was observed in the water (by spout, immersion of the head in the water, by tilting of the front of the body in the water) and on the banks (grazing grass near the belts of water).


We propose a new approach for high resolution semantic image synthesis. It consists of one base image generator and multiple class-specific generators. The base generator generates high quality images based on a segmentation map. To further improve the quality of different objects, we create a bank of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) by separately training class-specific models. This has several benefits including – dedicated weights for each class; centrally aligned data for each model; additional training data from other sources, potential of higher resolution and quality; and easy manipulation of a specific object in the scene. Experiments show that our approach can generate high quality images in high resolution while having flexibility of object-level control by using class-specific generators.


This course focuses on the process and practice of personal and leadership development both for individuals and groups of people. Students will be exposed to mentoring in a variety of ministry contexts and distill the most important processes of mentoring


Metakaolin (MK), a calcined clay, was included as a partial cement replacement material, at up to 20% by weight of binder, in cement pastes and concrete, and its influence on the resistance to chloride ingress investigated. Reductions in effective chloride diffusion coefficients through hardened cement paste were obtained for binary blends and by combining OPC, MK and a second cement replacement material of pulverised fuel ash or ground granulated blast furnace slag. Steady state oxygen diffusion measurements through hardened cement pastes measured using an electrochemical cell showed that the interaction between charged species and the pore surfaces is a major factor in determining chloride diffusion rate. Rheology of the binder, particularly at high MK replacement levels, was found to have a dramatic influence on the diffusion performance of cement pastes. It was concluded that plasticising admixtures are essential for adequate dispersion of MK in cement pastes. Chloride concentration profile analysis of the concrete cylinders, exposed to sodium chloride solution for one year, was employed to obtain apparent chloride diffusion coefficients for concrete specimens. MK was found to reduce the depth of chloride penetration into concrete when compared with that of unblended mixes. Corrosion rate and corrosion potential measurements were taken on steel bars embedded in concrete exposed to a saline environment under conditions of cyclic wetting and drying. The initiation time for corrosion was found to be significantly longer for MK blended mixes than for plain OPC systems. The aggregate-paste interfacial zone of MK blended systems was investigated by steady state diffusion of chloride ions through mortar containing glass beads as model aggregate. For the model aggregate specimens tested the work confirmed the hypothesis that properties of the bulk paste are the controlling factors in ionic diffusion through mortar.


We consider four conjectures related to the largest eigenvalue of (the adjacency matrix of) a graph (i.e., to the index of the graph). Three of them have been formulated after some experiments with the programming system AutoGraphiX (AGX), designed for finding extremal graphs with respect to given properties by the use of variable neighborhood search. The conjectures are related to the maximal value of the irregularity and spectral spread in n-vertex graphs, to a Nordhaus-Gaddum type upper bound for the index, and to the maximal value of the index for graphs with given numbers of vertices and edges. None of the conjectures has been resolved so far. We present partial results and provide some indications that the conjectures are very hard.


We study the novel problem of efficiently computing the update distance for a pair of relational databases. In analogy to the edit distance of strings, we define the update distance of two databases as the minimal number of set-oriented insert, delete and modification operations necessary to transform one database into the other. We show how this distance can be computed by traversing a search space of database instances connected by update operations. This insight leads to a family of algorithms that compute the update distance or approximations of it. In our experiments we observed that a simple heuristic performs surprisingly well in most considered cases.Our motivation for studying distance measures for databases stems from the field of scientific databases. There, replicas of a single database are often maintained at different sites, which typically leads to (accidental or planned) divergence of their content. To re-create a consistent view, these differences must be resolved. Such an effort requires an understanding of the process that produced them. We found that minimal update sequences of set-oriented update operations are a proper and concise representation of systematic errors, thus giving valuable clues to domain experts responsible for conflict resolution.


The government procurement process demands the highest commitment to ethical and unbiased conduct. To ensure that the individuals involved in the procurement process adhere to these standards, government entities in nearly all jurisdictions around the world have enacted codes of conduct, ethical restrictions, and anti-corruption laws designed to protect the integrity of government and ensure that government officials act impartially and do not give preferential treatment to any private organization or individual. To further these goals, most jurisdictions have enacted restrictions on the gifts and hospitality that government officials may accept from individuals and organizations that sell goods and services to the government.While gifts and hospitality play an important role in facilitating and strengthening business relationships in the private sector, in the public sector, common business courtesies may appear as an attempt to influence a government official and the procurement process. This concern is not unfounded. Most public corruption cases involving government contractors include references to the offering of lavish gifts, meals, travel, or entertainment to government officials.Moreover, nearly all governmental bodies have enacted ethical restrictions that limit the gifts and hospitality that may be accepted by government officials — even in the absence of intent to influence a government official. Indeed, these restrictions are often even more stringent for government procurement officials.Ethics and anti-corruption laws vary dramatically depending on the jurisdiction. Consequently, determining the applicable rules for a particular government entity can be incredibly challenging. To assist contractors with this process, Part I of this Briefing Paper provides an overview of the laws and policies that restrict the offering or giving of gifts and hospitality to government officials. Part II addresses the severe consequences that may result when contractors offer or give gifts and hospitality to influence an official action. Part III offers practical suggestions regarding the policies and procedures that a government contractor may implement to reduce the risk of violating these laws.


This investigation aims at examining how the semiotic mediums of gesture and speech integrate into one another to make  gesticulations, so as to mediate meaning in oral reproduction. To this end, this study concentrates on Hodge and Kress's (1988) theoretical framework linking semiotics to TEFL contexts, and also analyzes the gesticulations in oral reproduction applying McNeill's (2005) scheme or Kendon's (2004) Continuum with four categories of iconic, metaphoric, deictic, and beat gesticulations. Results illuminated how the creation of gesticulation brings about a sort of mediation between what is in the mind of the speaker and what is expressed to the audience, and how this mediation of gesticulations facilitates and clarifies the meaning in the speaker's oral reproduction or summarization process, so that the audience can better understand the speaker's intentions or summaries. The findings have some implications for TEFL teachers and researchers to understand the dialectic relationship of oral speech, written language, and gesture in language during the oral reproduction process.


It is assumed that the rise of the defi nite article is due to changes in the aspectual system of a language. Defi niteness and perfective aspect are shown to be just two instantiations of the same grammatical function. So are indefi niteness and imperfective aspect. Defi nite nouns and perfective verbs share identical mereological features, the same being true for indefinite nouns and imperfective verbs. Thus, defi niteness/indefi niteness and perfectivity/imperfectivity can be viewed as equivalent techniques of nominal and verbal quantifi cation. The central claim is that the definiteness effects of verbal aspect upon their 'nouny syntactic neighbourhoods' suffice to create complex patterns of nominal determination. The complexity is the result of combining aspect with a paradigmatic case system. One further main claim is that paradigmatic or differential case systems are characteristic of aspect languages. Complex patterns of nominal determination which involve the 'support' of verbal aspect and of paradigmatic case systems are characteristic of Slavic languages. The same holds for older stages of the Germanic languages. No sooner than the verbal part of the pattern, aspect, was subject to erosion, the first occurrences of definite articles can be observed. There is converging evidence from linguistic typology that aspect languages tend to avoid article systems, and article languages tend to avoid aspect. The different stages of article development will be sketched, and it will finally be explained why demonstrative pronouns are the universal source of the overt marking of definiteness. This will be done in the light of Centering Theory as presented in Abraham (this volume).


'Oral tradition' has long been considered a defining characteristic of folk songs. Yet England has been a text-based society over the whole of the period from which ballads and folk songs are known (often through printed sources). In place of the emphasis on orality, therefore, a characteristic kind of textuality, described here as 'vernacular', unstable, or 'centrifugal', is identified in folk songs, irrespective of whether they are manifested in singing or in print. Unlike the 'literary' texts presented, for example, in Percy's Reliques, individual texts of this kind carry no special textual authority in themselves but rather an inherent reference outwards towards all their other actual and potential manifestations, regardless of format, embracing the possibility of variation as well as of continuity. This kind of vernacular textuality, it is argued, provides an important locus for the instantiation of 'tradition'. ********** Cecil Sharp, in English Folk-Song: Some Conclusions, summed up an attitude towards folk songs in cheap print which apparently grew out of his collecting experiences and which was shared by many of his contemporaries: 'A broadside version of a ballad is usually ... a very indifferent one, and vastly inferior to the genuine peasant song.' (1) Sharp's entire theory of folk-song transmission and communal re-creation, with its quasi-Darwinian triad of continuity, variation, and selection, is predicated upon oral transmission. (2) Yet it remains the case that vast numbers of songs, including classic ballads and items from the standard folksong repertoire, were printed and reprinted from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries and distributed throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, as broadsides and/or in garlands or songsters (small chapbooks containing several songs). (3) Between 1557 and 1709 more than three thousand broadside-ballad titles were registered with the Stationers' Company in London. (4) Tessa Watt estimates that somewhere between six hundred thousand and three to four million broadside ballads were printed in the second half of the sixteenth century. (5) In the nineteenth century, Henry Mayhew reported that over one-and-a-half million broadside copies were sold of 'The Murder of Maria Marten', a ballad subsequently collected from a number of different singers across England. (6) (Figure 1) It is difficult to imagine that these masses of printed items did not make a very substantial contribution to the dissemination and persistence of folk songs among singers--the 'continuity' of Sharp's triad. Of course, broadsides and songsters at large embraced a very disparate range of songs or verses, some of them topical and possibly only of restricted interest, some of them popular songs of their day. Most probably not all of the songs printed on broadsides ever actually became current with singers, or more than briefly so. Nevertheless, it is still the case that significant numbers of broadsides are readily identifiable with the folk songs and ballads that were later collected directly from singers. Estimates are that up to ninety-five per cent of what have come to be considered as the standard repertoire of English 'folk' songs, as noted from singers, have at some time also circulated in cheap printed form. (7) Dianne Dugaw has noted that virtually all of the female-warrior, cross-dressing ballads that have been collected from singing have also appeared in print, and nearly all that have appeared in print have been collected from singers. (8) There is no reason to think that in this regard such songs are in any way exceptional. And not only are the texts of folk songs printed on broadsides often not readily distinguishable from those taken down from singers, but different broadside printings of the same song (even by the same printer) can display just the same kinds of textual variants as arise between versions recorded from different singers. (9) [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] English folk songs, therefore, largely exist not just as the transient products of oral performance but simultaneously as the products of a process of 'textualization', whereby a work of verbal art becomes a written or printed 'text', and acquires characteristics associated with the condition of being a 'text'. …


The Geographical Indication (GI) is an intellectual property instrument that may allow the adoption of innovations through the appreciation and insertion of origin labeled products in the market. The purpose of this research is to elucidate the role of GI in the specific case of its concession in the Brazilian wine industry. Strategies embraced by producers and a national research institution (Embrapa Uva e Vinho) were aligned to international trends of technological patterns of wine production, noticing the GI as an instrument that could allow the entrance in the wine market as well as could increased the competition. The present analysis aims to prove the validation of this protection mechanism as an instrument that stimulates innovation (productive, organizational or marketing oriented), highlighting the role of support institutions and their possible impacts in the local scope, and also affecting institutional aspects that coordinate the concession of GI in a macro level.


We analyze a mobile wireless link comprising M transmitter and N receiver antennas operating in a Rayleigh flat-fading environment. The propagation coefficients between pairs of transmitter and receiver antennas are statistically independent and unknown; they remain constant for a coherence interval of T symbol periods, after which they change to new independent values which they maintain for another T symbol periods, and so on. Computing the link capacity, associated with channel coding over multiple fading intervals, requires an optimization over the joint density of T/spl middot/M complex transmitted signals. We prove that there is no point in making the number of transmitter antennas greater than the length of the coherence interval: the capacity for M>T is equal to the capacity for M=T. Capacity is achieved when the T/spl times/M transmitted signal matrix is equal to the product of two statistically independent matrices: a T/spl times/T isotropically distributed unitary matrix times a certain T/spl times/M random matrix that is diagonal, real, and nonnegative. This result enables us to determine capacity for many interesting cases. We conclude that, for a fixed number of antennas, as the length of the coherence interval increases, the capacity approaches the capacity obtained as if the receiver knew the propagation coefficients.


Recombinant Lyme disease vaccines based on purified preparations of outer surface protein A (OspA) have been shown to be effective in preventing transmission of Borrelia burgdorferi in experimental animal models and are now being tested in humans. Since the most widely used screening tests for Lyme disease are based on a whole-cell sonicate of B. burgdorferi, serologic false positivity in vaccinated persons could result from reactivity to OspA within the antigen preparation. In order to avoid serologic false positivity in vaccinated subjects, we developed an immunoassay based on a low-passage-number, naturally occurring variant of B. burgdorferi which lacks the plasmid encoding OspA and OspB. The use of an antigen preparation derived from this organism provided sensitive and specific detection of B. burgdorferi seropositivity in experimental animals and in human Lyme disease cases. The OspA-B-negative enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) also appeared to be capable of discriminating the vaccinated state from vaccine failure and natural infection in experimental animals. Sera from human subjects participating in a vaccine trial gave false-positive results with an ELISA based on an OspA-containing strain, but no such reactivity was observed when the OspA-negative ELISA was used. We conclude that low-passage-number OspA-B-negative isolates in immunoassays may become useful for the immunologic discrimination of the vaccinated state, natural infection, and vaccine failure.


Differentiating neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) from relapsing multiple sclerosis (MS) can be difficult in aquaporin-4 antibody (AQP4ab) negative cases. Additionally MS like lesions on brain MRI are not uncommon in NMOSD. We were interested to assess if quantitative MRI methods could identify more disease specific features and thus be useful in the diagnostic pathway. To this aim, 18 AQP4ab positive NMOSD patients, 15 age-matched relapsing MS patients and 17 age-matched healthy controls underwent multi-parametric brain MRI at 3 Tesla. MS patients had significantly lower thalamic and whole brain volumes than both NMOSD and controls (p<0.05), and had several other regions of grey matter atrophy identified with voxel-based morphometry. When compared to controls the NMOSD group had localised atrophy within the visual cortex only (p<0.05). This was associated with severe visual impairment and did not occur in NMOSD patients with good vision. Diffusion tensor imaging, which provides a measure of white matter integrity, revealed widespread abnormalities of the non-lesional white matter in MS patients, but only localised changes in the visual pathways and corticospinal tracts in NMOSD. Again the visual pathway changes did not occur in NMOSD patients with good vision. This work demonstrates important differences in regional brain atrophy and white matter damage between patients with NMOSD and relapsing MS, which could provide a means of diagnostic distinction.


Quantum Transport and Microwave Response in Modulated High-Mobility Two-Dimensional Electron Systems by Yanhua Dai Two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in microwave irradiation has been an intriguing system to study transport properties of electrons for a decade, during which extensive important phenomena have been discovered, such as microwave induced resistance oscillation (MIRO), zero resistance state(ZRS) and zero conductance state(ZCS). Along this direction, this thesis is devoted to new phenomena recently discovered in such systems, 1) microwave induced cyclotron harmonic peak (2wc spike) in ultraclean 2DEG without antidots inducing electric modulation potential 2) AharonovBohm(AB) oscillations in microwave irradiated 2DEG with modulation potential. Those phenomena originate from quantum interference, from either interplay between two different kinds of scattering or different electrons transition paths. In addition to microwave induced phenomena, other nonlinear effects such as Zener tunneling and geometric resonance(GR) have been investigated further in the past few years and collected in this thesis. Zener tunneling has been found in two-dimensional hole gas(2DHG) with a large damping factor, which inspires more questions on the unique band structures of holes. GR has been studied in ultra-clean modulated 2DEG , in which more oscillation peaks show up. In the GR regime with an inplane magnetic field applied, the antisymmetric hall oscillations lead us to propose the existence of a magnetic lattice along with an artificial antidots lattice and a current lattice in such systems.


9 a.m. before and after the administration of B17-V showed no change. The responses to physiological and pharmacological doses of ACTH were within the normal range. After insulin-induced hypoglycaemia, 7 of the 9 subjects studied had a normal maximum level. A total of 53 severely asthmatic children from our clinic have been treated with B17-V by aerosol. There appears to be no suppression of their hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenal axis, as judged by morning plasma cortisol levels, response to insulin-induced hypoglycaemia, and response to pharmacological doses of ACTH. The growth velocity of 24 children treated with B17-V aerosol for longer than a year was found to be normal. Growth hormone secretion after insulin-induced hypoglycaemia was normal in 14 children who had received therapy for longer than 6 months. These findings indicate that there is no significant suppression of the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal axis after shortor long-term administration of B17-V under the conditions described, and no observed effect on growth.


The aim of the study was to develop new laparoscopic technique for repeated recovery of sheep oocytes. Oocytes were aspirated with specifically designed catheter. It allowed to recover oocytes without ovary damage and to preserve very good quality of recovered oocytes. Fifteen ewes were oocytes donors. Oocytes were collected: one time (group I, n=15), two times (group II, n=15), three times (group III, n=10), four times (group IV, n=5). The endoscope was inserted into the abdominal cavity. Two trockars for putting the manipulators were inserted 15 cm cranial from the udder. Oocytes were collected by aspiration of the follicular fluid from the ovarian follicles. The observed clinical complications were: ovary bleeding and cicatrix at place of needle insertion, the fragmentary adhesion of infundibulum and ovary, adhesions of omentum and peri- toneum near the place where the grasping forceps were inserted and adhesion of ovary and uterus. Ovarian follicles (n=204) were aspirated, 130 (63.8%) oocytes were obtained. Out of 130 obtained oocytes, 112 were qualified for in vitro maturation. The remaining 18 oocytes (13.8%) were rejected due to cytoplasmic changes. The proposed technique allows for the collecting oocytes of good quality that can be used for IMV/IVF techniques and cloning.


This thesis presents a linear phase finite impulse response filter implementation developed on a custom computing platform called WILDFORCE. The work has been motivated by ways to off-load intensive computing tasks to hardware for indoor communications channel modeling. The design entails complex convolution filters with customized lengths that can support channel impulse response profiles generated by SIRCIM. The paper details the partitioning for a fully pipelined convolution algorithm onto field programmable gate arrays through VHDL synthesis. Using WILDFORCE, the filter can achieve calculations at 160 MFLOPs/s.


With the increased interest of MRI guided interventional procedures in modern medical treatments, image distortion and artifact formation based on material selection and orientation within the MRI scanner are central concerns for precise object localization. The goal of this study was to illustrate the artifact behavior of materials with various magnetic susceptibilities and radio frequency conductivity values corresponding to object orientation relative to the primary magnetic field. To test the effects of orientation on image distortion and image artifacts, 0.125 inch cylindrical test samples of various materials were imaged using a clinical Siemens 3 Tesla MR scanner. Modern medical instrumentation and surgical utensils are typically made from highly paramagnetic materials (e.g., titanium, nitinol, or stainless steel) which also have high RF conductivities. The combination of these two material properties cause both primary magnetic field (B0) and RF field (B1) inhomogeneities which lead to local image distortions. A change in the local magnetic field induces errors within the slice selection gradient, as the precessional frequency of the proton nuclei in the desired region of interest will not correspond to the exact spatial location on the object and will excite a broader region due to the RF conductivity of the material. Conversely to more traditional surgical materials, diamagnetic materials (e.g., bismuth, pyrolytic carbon, water, most plastics) are free from the susceptibility artifacts due to B0 inhomogeneities and thus offer a level of MR compatibility that traditional materials cannot. A specific testing phantom was built to fit a clinical wrist coil. The phantom consisted of an aqueous solution of gadolinium and copper sulfate to increase image contrast and a rotatable turret post for sample positioning. The particular materials studied were chosen to demonstrate the wide variation in both magnetic susceptibility values and RF conductivities (e.g., 6A1-4V titanium, 316L stainless steel, carbon fiber, 6061 T6 aluminum, brass, copper, beryllium copper). ImageJ software measured the overall pixel area and major dimension of each MR image artifact at 0, 45, and 90 degree orientations of each test sample relative to B0. The results of the measurements indicated measurable increases in signal are of the paramagnetic and highly conductive test specimens orientated orthogonal to the primary magnetic field. For instance, two common medical grade materials such as 316L stainless steel and 6Al-4V titanium resulted in artifact area increases of 770±10% and 234±10%, respectively, relative to the actual cross sectional area of the sample. Conversely, the more diamagnetic materials, carbon fiber and beryllium copper demonstrated increased artifact areas of 8±10% and 12±10%, respectively. Errors in artifact area percentage growth measurement are primarily attributed to manual image segmentation and variation in coil positioning within the MRI bore. The results indicate that MR image artifact size and object distortion characteristics can be influenced by both material selection and object orientation relative to the primary magnetic field. In the interest of accurate navigation of image guided equipment and devices, interventional devices should be tested for image distortion in multiple orientations. This work is supported by MIMTeC, a National Science Foundation Industry University Collaborative Research Center and by NIH Grant P30 NS057091.


Once neglected, racial minorities are now the focus of intense interest among historians of the American West, who have come to recognise the roles of African American, Chinese, and Mexican people in shaping the frontier. Racial Frontiers is both a highly original work, particularly in its emphasis on racial minority women, and a masterful synthesis of the literature in this young field. De Leon depicts a US West populated by settlers anticipating opportunities for upward mobility, jockeying for position as they adapted to new surroundings, and adjusting to new political and economic systems. Minority groups discarded unworkable political traditions that had followed them from their homelands and sought to participate in a democracy that they trusted would see to their well-being. Many embraced capitalism in preference to the economic systems they had left behind but refused to give up their cultural traditions. The result was a US West of many colours. Known as a skilled writer, De Leon tells countless stories of the lives of men and women to guide the readers through his narrative. Personal histories and revealing quotations illustrate the struggles and victories of the newcomers, enriching our understanding of the settlement of the trans-Mississippi West since the middle of the nineteenth century.


From its foundation as a private corporation in 1694 the Bank of England extended large amounts of credit to support the British private economy and to support an increasingly centralized British state. The Bank helped the British state reach a position of geopolitical and economic hegemony in the international economic order. In this paper we deploy recalibrated financial data to analyse an evolving trajectory of connexions between the British economy, the state, and the Bank of England. We show how these connections contributed to form an effective and efficient fiscal-naval state and promoted the development of a system of financial intermediation for the economy. This symbiotic relationship became stronger after 1793. The evidence that we consider here shows that although the Bank was nominally a private institution and profits were paid to its shareholders, it was playing a public role well before Bagehot's doctrine.


The Queensland Government Environmental Offsets Policy provides an overarching framework for environmental offsets in Queensland. The policy provides a consistent and transparent approach to the use of offsets. It contains principles and guidelines for developing and applying more detailed 'specific-issue' policies for offsetting important environmental values such as vegetation or fish habitats. Currently, offsets use in Queensland can be characterised as a compliance mechanism as they are required to meet development conditions. Developers will face higher costs if they need an offset and this provides a greater incentive to avoid and minimise impacts on areas with significant environmental values. The paper canvasses opportunities to now move to develop efficient offset markets in Queensland.


Throughout American literature, the figure of the child is often represented in opposition to the adult. In Cradle of Liberty Caroline F. Levander proposes that this opposition is crucial to American political thought and the literary cultures that surround and help produce it. Levander argues that from the late eighteenth century through the early twentieth, American literary and political texts did more than include child subjects: they depended on them to represent, naturalize, and, at times, attempt to reconfigure the ground rules of U.S. national belonging. She demonstrates how, as the modern nation-state and the modern concept of the child (as someone fundamentally different from the adult) emerged in tandem from the late eighteenth century forward, the child and the nation-state became intertwined. The child came to represent nationalism, nation-building, and the intrinsic connection between nationalism and race that was instrumental in creating a culture of white supremacy in the United States.

Reading texts by John Adams, Thomas Paine, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Augusta J. Evans, Mark Twain, Pauline Hopkins, William James, Jose Marti, W. E. B. Du Bois, and others, Levander traces the child as it figures in writing about several defining events for the United States. Among these are the Revolutionary War, the U.S.-Mexican War, the Civil War, and the U.S. expulsion of Spain from the Caribbean and Cuba. She charts how the child crystallized the concept of self—a self who could affiliate with the nation—in the early national period, and then follows the child through the rise of a school of American psychology and the period of imperialism. Demonstrating that textual representations of the child have been a potent force in shaping public opinion about race, slavery, exceptionalism, and imperialism, Cradle of Liberty shows how a powerful racial logic pervades structures of liberal democracy in the United States.


Alternative Approaches to Basic Education (AABE) were introduced in Kenya to promote access to basic education and to enhance Universal Primary Education (UPE.) However, in Samburu County, the levels of school enrolment and literacy have been chronically low currently at 44% and 12% respectively. In order to investigate the success of AABE in Samburu County, this study tested government policy, resource-input, perception, nomadic pastoralists' lifestyle, distance and AABE approaches applied in Samburu County. Primary data were collected using structured questionnaires for 400 learners' household heads, 56 teachers from 56 AABE Centres and 10 AABE providers, while secondary data was obtained from the Ministry of Education offices, AABE Centres, libraries and the internet. Stratified random sampling technique was used, while descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyze and present the data. The study found that 92.5% of the population regarded AABE as inferior to formal education, 69.1% viewed government policy as lacking, 91.1% viewed AABE approaches as inappropriate, 80% acknowledged that nomadic lifestyle affected success of AABE, 62.7% indicated that AABE Centres were beyond the ideal 2.5 km and 73.4% said that resource input was inadequate. The study recommended for policies with a multi-faceted approach to development in nomadic pastoralist areas, addressing the problems of water, medical facilities, infrastructure, livelihoods and conflicts as a way of mitigating low enrolment and literacy levels.


Abstract An accurate method of determining source locations for detrital sediment is presented using the chemical composition of Fe-oxide minerals like a fingerprint. This method is an improvement in the use of Fe-oxide minerals for provenance determinations because it requires less time and fewer source samples. A rigorous test of the method uses a database of more than 38,000 grains from known locations. The average error of matching grains back to 45 source locations designated for this database is less than 2%. The method allows for proportional matching of a grain to multiple sources if other grains in the source database meet the compositional match criteria, which helps reduce the error of incorrect matches. Most provenance studies do not involve source basins as large as the entire Arctic Ocean, where sediment can be ice-rafted several thousand kilometers. For most studies, only a few samples (∼ 100 grain analyses/sample) would be required to characterize a source if strategically placed, such as near a river mouth. Deposits more than 40 million years old can be traced to specific sources using this method because Fe-oxide grains are relatively stable in most deposits.


Solid State Devices (SSDs) are becoming ubiquitous in many embedded devices due to their features such as no moving parts, shock/temperature resistance and low power consumption. The reliability, performance, lifespan, and verification of these devices is an increasing issue in many application domains. Redundant Array of Independent Disk (RAID) architectures have previously been used to increase reliability of magnetic disk devices. Recent works have proposed re-use of RAID architectures to address these issues in SSDs, however these have an inherent problem as all flash memory chips wear out at the same rate due to even distribution of write operations. Existing solutions partly solve this problem using uneven parity distribution across the array, but suffer age-variation problems under random and sequential writes thereby decreasing the reliability of the array as well as increasing the cost. The aim of this thesis is to enhance the use of RAID mechanisms in SSD storage systems, and to do so in a reliable, and efficient manner. In this thesis the two novel mechanisms are explored that enhance data reliability in a SSD array regardless of I/O workload characteristics. The first mechanism solves the age convergence problem in RAID systems and quickly achieves steady-state age convergence. The second mechanism reduces page writes, thereby increasing the lifespan of each element in the array. The SSD controller ( A NFS ) architecture and the associated RAID architecture (flash-RAID) are presented. The embedded Flash Translation Layer (FTL), RAID controller, SSD low level controller, and specialized host interface are developed on an FPGA in synthesizable Verilog. In these architectures the concept of a forced random write is introduced which is used to solving the age distribution problem of pure sequential writes. It further employs a log-structured approach to control on-chip wear-levelling, and a power-fail reliability mechanism. In addition to this a new flash management framework is presented that increases the performance of SSD storage systems in the exploitation of both multi-chip parallelism and out-of-order execution. The contribution of this thesis can be summarised as follows: the presentation of new algorithms that successfully enable the efficient and reliable RAID techniques in SSD devices, the development of a number of techniques that enhance the performance and reliability of flash-based file systems, the implementation of a controller in synthesizable Verilog that employs these techniques, and the provision of a complete test bed supporting the experiments.


We have investigated passive mode-locking of Tm,Ho:YAG lasers with GaInAs- and GaSb-based semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs). With a GaInAs-based SESAM, stable dual-wavelength mode-locking operation was achieved at 2091 nm and 2097 nm, generating pulses with duration of 56.9 ps and a maximum output power of 285 mW. By using the GaSb-based SESAMs, we could generate mode-locked pulses as short as 21.3 ps at 2091 nm with a maximum output power of 63 mW. We attribute the shorter pulse duration obtained with the GaSb SESAMs to the ultrafast recovery time of the absorption and higher nonlinearity compared to standard GaInAs SESAMs.


The economic reform in China, launched in the late 1970s, gradually promotes the free mobility of capital and labour between rural and urban areas, and between cities. The following housing market reform in the late 1990s thoroughly terminates the socialist allocation of housing and introduces market forces into the housing sector. Such institutional shifts have profound effects on the evolution of the Chinese interurban housing market. Yet, little is known about the spatial behaviour of house prices across cities in the post-reform era. How do the housing markets of different cities organise across space? What is the relationship between the house price dynamics of different cities? To answer these questions, this research performs economic and econometric analysis of the spatial dimension of the Chinese interurban housing market. In addition, this research also concerns the construction of a reliable house price index in the presence of spatial heterogeneity and dependence in the urban housing market of China. A reliable house price index is essential to the analysis of house price dynamic behaviour. However, owing to the data problem, this part is conducted based on the housing market of a Dutch city.
This research discovers the spatial regularities of house prices across Chinese prefecture cities in an economic common area and investigates the underlying formation process. It reveals an uneven distribution of house prices across cities, with those large and/or higher-tier cities and their neighbours having significantly higher house prices. Such an uneven pattern of house prices demonstrates the agglomeration spillovers in the interurban housing market. Two forms of spillovers are empirically examined. The first is the urban hierarchy distance effect, which is related to the position of a city in a hierarchical urban system. In general, the distance penalty of higher-tier urban centres is confirmed, that is, all else being equal, the further away a city is from the higher-tier city, the lower the house price. The second form of spillovers relates to a city's position in a city network system, in which no hierarchical structure is imposed. In such a situation, the spillovers arise from the interaction with neighbouring cities and it is found that a city that has larger neighbours tends to have higher house prices. These two forms of spillovers are somewhat correlated with each other because a higher-tier city is always associated with a larger urban size.
It is argued that the spillovers in the interurban housing market work through two channels: the productivity and amenity channel. First, because of the economies of agglomeration, a location that has good access to large urban concentrations is likely to enjoy some productivity advantages and thus can bear higher house prices. Second, a location that is surrounded by large urban concentrations can easily get access to some unique amenities that need a large market potential to survive; households value such access and thus bid up the house price there. However, it seems that the role that the productivity channel plays is much more important than the role of the amenity channel.
In addition to the static distribution of house prices across space, this research also concerns the time series behaviour of house price dynamics across Chinese cities. Geography plays an important role in explaining the cross-city differences of house price dynamics. For the housing markets of major cities across the whole of China, the cluster analysis generally uncovers two relatively homogeneous groups, within which the house price growth series share a similar dynamic pattern. One cluster contains mainly the cities in the undeveloped central, western and northeast China, whereas the other is composed of the most important economic centres in eastern China. However, the spatial segregation of housing markets is more likely to occur in the most recent period. In the early period before 2010, the house price dynamics of cities are much more homogeneous.
The similarities and/or dissimilarities among house price dynamics of different cities indicate the complicated interrelationships between each of the markets. This research further examines various spatial interrelationships between the housing markets of an economic common area in south China. The spatial causal relationships between housing markets are first tested by the Granger causality test. The results reveal a complicated pattern, but it can be tentatively confirmed that house price changes in the developed eastern-central markets 'cause' the house price dynamics in the
less-developed western markets. Then a spatial-temporal model is built to depict the diffusion pattern of house prices between markets. In general, a shock given to the house price of a certain market gradually spreads to its neighbouring cities. However, the interurban housing market can hardly remain an equilibrium relationship in the long-run, that is, it tends to be divergent.
The last part of this research concerns the treatment of spatial effects in the hedonic house price model as well as its influence on the construction of hedonic imputation indexes, which measure the pure house price changes over time. It is argued that the value of a dwelling can be split into the value of the land and the value of the structure, and that the value of the location characteristics of a dwelling is capitalised into the price of the land. Thus, land prices can be expected to vary significantly across space. Indeed, the mixed geographically weighted regression framework adopted in this research, which allows the shadow price of structure to be constant across space and the implicit price of land to be property-based, is found to be superior to, in terms of model prediction, those models that restrict the spatial variation of land prices. Nevertheless, the Fisher imputation house price index based on the most sophisticated model is almost identical to those based on the simple specifications. The land and structure price indexes, on the other hand, are sensitive to the treatment of location in land prices.
This research underlines market forces in the operation of Chinese interurban housing markets in the post-reform era, and contributes to the understanding of spatial dimension of house prices, not only in China, but also in other market-oriented economies.


In 1951, the Atomic Energy Commission, forerunner to the present-day U.S. Department of Energy, was looking for a place to test its newly developing arsenal of nuclear weapons. It selected a remote tract of the Mojave Desert in southern Nevada, 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas. For the next four decades, the Nevada Test Site would serve as the nations nuclear testing ground. The Nevada Test Site covers 1,350 square miles (3,500 square kilometers), which is roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island. Until 1962, when aboveground testing was banned, the Atomic Energy Commission conducted about 100 aboveground nuclear tests on the site. During the next three decades, until nuclear testing was banned altogether in 1994, more than 800 underground tests were conducted on the site. Today, the site is largely used for disposing of low-level DOE wastes. The Yucca Mountain site, which is being studied as a possible respository for high-level nuclear wastes from nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors throughout the United States, straddles the test site's western perimeter. The Nevada Test Site is one of 140 sites in DOE'S nuclear weapons complex--which includes such familiar names as Savannah River, Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Idaho Falls--that are remnants of the Cold War legacy. Now that the Cold War is over, DOE has begun cleaning up the Nevada Test Site. The Nevada Test Site contains more contaminated surface rock, soil, and groundwater than any other site in the DOE weapons complex. The amount of radioactivity in the environment from weapons testing is estimated at 300 million curies, spread over about 300 square miles (800 square kilometers). DOE's goal is to remove enough of the contamination from the soil and groundwater to make the environment safe for future use. Cleanup began in 1997 and will extend to 2007, at a cost of $1.3 billion. (1) Future uses being considered include developing the site for producing clean-burning fuels, decontaminating low-level nuclear wastes, or training emergency workers who deal with highly destructive weapons. Ecosystem Management As part of the restoration of the Nevada Test Site, DOE developed a resource management plan to ensure the long-term sustainability of the site. (2) The main goals of the plan are to * Manage and sustain natural resources. * Maintain native ecosystems, biota, and habitats. * Protect undisturbed areas. * Develop baseline environmental information needed for cleanup, land use planning, and ecosystem management. * Site new facilities only on environmentally suitable, previously disturbed lands. * Foster sustainable economic development. Traditional resource management focuses on managing a single resource such as water, livestock, or timber. Wildlife management and operating reservoirs for navigation and flood control are traditional resource management approaches. Ecosystem management, which is at the heart of DOE's resource management plan, focuses instead on managing the ecosystem as a whole, including its fauna, flora, soils, groundwater, and air. Ecosystem management recognizes that humans are a fundamental component of ecosystems; it appreciates the importance of the diversity and complexity of ecosystems; and it strives to maintain the processes that tie the physical, chemical, and biological components of the ecosystem together. (3) As a resource tool, ecosystem management has been applied successfully in a variety of other settings. (4) In the Pacific Northwest, for example, where logging has abused forests and streams for decades, ecosystem management is being used to identify sensitive areas that should be restored, areas where logging should be banned, and areas where logging can occur, provided it balances environmental and economic objectives. Similarly, ecosystem management has been successfully applied to livestock grazing in arid lands to help restore abused sensitive habitats and to avoid further damage. …


Down syndrome is a naturally occurring chromosomal disarrangement that has always been a part of the human condition, common across all races, genders or socio-economic lines, and affects approximately one in every 800 births worldwide, resulting in intellectual and physical disability and associated medical issues. Around 50% of children with Down syndrome also have congenital heart disease which may be associated with pulmonary hypertension. Visual disorders like cataracts and near or far sightedness is seen in 60% of children with Down syndrome. Intestinal malformations requiring surgical interventions are seen in approximately 10% of children. Typical characters of Down syndrome are slightly small head which is flattened in the back, extra skin folds at the inner corners of the eyes, up-slanted eyes, small ears, nose and mouth, short stature, small hands and feet and some degree of intellectual disability.


This study explores the causes of the sharp disparity that emerged in assessments of two rulers of the early modern Transylvanian state, Zsigmond Báthory and Gábor Bethlen, in nineteenthand twentieth-century Hungarian historiography. The author compares two aspects of the images of the princes—their childhood and youth and their courts. Bethlen, born in 1580, grew up in Báthory's princely court and stood in his service between the years 1593 and 1602. The life paths of the princes of Transylvania were thus interconnected, though biographical constructions originating over subsequent generations symbolically separated them. These constructions highlighted the malleable character and weakness of the disdained Báthory in connection with his youth and court. The fi ction-laced development history of the venerated Bethlen, contrarily, depicts the antecedents of exemplary rule, while illustrations of his princely court also serve to emphasize the prince's virtues. The examined contrasts in the established images of Báthory and Bethlen are a product of a polarizing approach to history by which the tarnishing of Báthory has enhanced the brilliance of Bethlen.


This article examines the place given to the part of rhetoric known as "invention" in the Rhetorique francoise faicte particulierement pour le roy Henry III , a treatise which has been attributed to the jurist Germain Forget. First, this study underlines the relative importance, in Forget's treatise, of this category which traditionally occupies the first place in the ordered disposition of ancient rhetorical treatises. In comparison, reference is made to two other contemporary treatises. Then, second, the analysis shows that the author favours a general idea of invention setting it apart from the technical considerations pertaining to specific theories of "causes". Finally, the third part of the study proposes the hypothesis that this general idea of invention, inspired by Quintilian, bears the stamp of contemporary Humanism, in particular that of the adherents, in the tradition of Erasmus and Politian, to the theory commonly known as "innutrition". At a time when the last of the Valois kings ardently wished to become a father, even commanding that public prayers be recited to this effect, the theory of rhetorical invention rests, perhaps appropriately, on humanist ideas concerning pedagogy.


The article argues that empirical research on Human Resource Management creates a one-sided, distorted image of the reality of work and thus generates ideology. Such an ideology legitimises HR practices and favours the interests of entrepreneurs and managers. This assertion is illustrated and discussed using the case of empirical research in HRM in German-speaking countries, although the ideology assertion should also be valid for Anglo-Saxon countries. It is shown that HRM research mainly follows employer objectives; it primarily analyses performance-related variables. The surveyed HR practices focus on "High Performance Works Systems", while other HR practices are largely ignored. Mainly organisational elites (managers, experts and other highly qualified employees) are surveyed as personnel and provide information about the situation in companies. Empirical research paints a unitaristic picture; depicting the employer and the role of HR management positively. Deviations from an employee-friendly HR strategy are overlooked or seen as relatively rare anomalies.


Summary
Clinical and biochemical findings on 921 persons harboring Opisthorchis viverrini were compared with similar data from 191 persons free of infection, all examinees being from northeastern Thailand. Edema, anemia, diarrhea, dysentery, nausea, flatulence, malaise, anorexia and hepatomegaly were found no more frequently in the infected than in the non-infected group. No significant differences were noted in WBC (neutrophil or lymphocyte) counts, or in hematocrit or hemoglobin. There were no significant differences in any of the following liver function tests: total protein, albumin, globulin, zinc turbidity, bilirubin, cholesterol and esters, thymol turbidity, alkaline phosphatase or the transaminases (SGOT and SGPT). Statistically significant higher abnormal results were correlated with infection by O. viverrini only in the cases of dizziness, slight jaundice and eosinophilia in the central-count range. These data indicate that infection with O. viverrini in northeastern Thailand does not elicit specific symptoms or conditions by which infected individuals may be differentiated from non-infected controls living under identical conditions.


Object-based image analysis (OBIA) approaches are often superior to the pixel-based classifications at very high resolution (VHR) remotely sensed images. Due to the similar spectral signatures of land-cover classes especially in urban areas, spatial information must be exploited to produce improved classification maps at finer resolutions. Segmentation and rule-based classification are the main two steps of the powerful OBIA approach which is widespread in pattern recognition and classification applications. Selecting the best values for segmentation parameters has an important effect on the segmentation results. Once the image objects are derived, topological relations between them, statistical summaries of spectral and textural features and shape features can all be employed in the rule-based classification. Optimum feature selection also has an essential role for rule set generation. Thus, optimal parameter/feature selection may be an important process in both steps of the OBIA approach. Among other optimization techniques, metaheuristic optimization algorithms such as swarm-intelligence-based methods are very capable of solving feature selection problems. So, they can be used inboth steps of OBIA approaches. In segmentation, the capabilities of swarm intelligence may optimize the parameters. Moreover, ant colony optimization (ACO) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are successfully utilized for optimum feature selection in forming rule-based classification. In the first two sections of this chapter, the necessity of performing OBIA in object recognition based on VHR images is explained. Then, the basis of optimum feature selection and optimization algorithms is mentioned. After a comprehensive review on the concepts of ACO, PSO and firefly algorithm (FA) as the powerful swarm intelligence algorithms, the capabilities of these algorithms are investigated in the field of optimum feature selection. Finally, the experimental results of performing the FA and PSO for optimum feature selection are investigated and generalized for improving the capabilities of the OBIA approaches.


Given the ever-increasing computational costs of modern machine learning models, we need to find new ways to reuse such expert models and thus tap into the resources that have been invested in their creation. Recent work suggests that the power of these massive models is captured by the representations they learn. Therefore, we seek a model that can relate between different existing representations and propose to solve this task with a conditionally invertible network. This network demonstrates its capability by (i) providing generic transfer between diverse domains, (ii) enabling controlled content synthesis by allowing modification in other domains, and (iii) facilitating diagnosis of existing representations by translating them into interpretable domains such as images. Our domain transfer network can translate between fixed representations without having to learn or finetune them. This allows users to utilize various existing domain-specific expert models from the literature that had been trained with extensive computational resources. Experiments on diverse conditional image synthesis tasks, competitive image modification results and experiments on image-to-image and text-to-image generation demonstrate the generic applicability of our approach. For example, we translate between BERT and BigGAN, state-of-the-art text and image models to provide text-to-image generation, which neither of both experts can perform on their own.


Professor Robert Lopez provides an incisive analysis of the economic structure of the Middle Ages. He makes use of modern economic concepts to explain how an underdeveloped economic system gave birth to the commercial revolution through which Europe succeeded in developing itself. The book goes far beyond the familiar picture of medieval European society, with its magnificent cathedrals and imposing castles, to concentrate instead on the walled cities and open countryside, for it was here that the revolution was born. Deftly and concisely, Professor Lopez traces the history of this remarkable economic upheaval which saw the rise of merchants and craftsmen and the decline of agricultural dependence by the society.


High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Dolby Pro Logic is a surround sound processing technology developed by Dolby Laboratories, designed to decode soundtracks encoded with Dolby Surround. Dolby Surround Stereo was originally developed by Dolby in 1976 for analog cinema sound systems. The format was adapted for home use in 1982 as Dolby Surround when HiFi capable consumer VCRs were introduced; it was then replaced by the newer and improved Pro Logic system in 1987. However, the term "Dolby Surround" is still used to describe the encoding technology or matrix-encoded soundtrack, whereas Pro Logic refers to the decoding technology processor. It is the domestic equivalent of the theatrical Dolby Stereo technology used in movie cinemas in the 1970s and '80s. The two technologies are mostly identical but a change in marketing was needed so as not to confuse cinema stereo which is at least four channels of audio with home stereo which is only two. Thus Dolby Pro-Logic is the consumer version of theatrical Dolby stereo.


Ultralow jitter pulse trains are produced from a passively mode-locked, erbium/ytterbium co-doped, planar waveguide laser by use of high-bandwidth feedback control acting on the physical cavity length and optical pump power. Synchronization of a 750-MHz, fundamentally mode-locked laser to an external clock signal yields an ultralow, root-mean-square relative timing jitter of 14.4 fs integrated from 10 Hz to the Nyquist frequency of 375 MHz.