Make microcontrollers, PCs, servers, and smartphones talk to each other.Building electronic projects that interact with the physical world is good fun. But when the devices you've built start to talk to each other, things really get interesting. With 33 easy-to-build projects, Making Things Talk shows you how to get your gadgets to communicate with you and your environment. Its perfect for people with little technical training but a lot of interest.Maybe you're a science teacher who wants to show students how to monitor the weather in several locations at once. Or a sculptor looking to stage a room of choreographed mechanical sculptures. In this expanded edition, youll learn how to form networks of smart devices that share data and respond to commands.Call your home thermostat with a smartphone and change the temperature. Create your own game controllers that communicate over a network. Use ZigBee, Bluetooth, Infrared, and plain old radio to transmit sensor data wirelessly. Work with Arduino 1.0, Processing, and PHPthree easy-to-use, open source environments. Write programs to send data across the Internet, based on physical activity in your home, office, or backyard. Whether you want to connect simple home sensors to the Internet, or create a device that can interact wirelessly with other gadgets, this book explains exactly what you need.


Abstract. This study compares ERS scatterometer top soil moisture observations with simulations of a dual layer conceptual hydrologic model. The comparison is performed for 148 Austrian catchments in the period 1991–2000. On average, about 5 to 7 scatterometer images per month with a mean spatial coverage of about 37% are available. The results indicate that the agreement between the two top soil moisture estimates changes with the season and the weight given to the scatterometer in hydrologic model calibration. The hydrologic model generally simulates larger top soil moisture values than are observed by the scatterometer. The differences tend to be smaller for lower altitudes and the winter season. The average correlation between the two estimates is more than 0.5 in the period from July to October, and about 0.2 in the winter months, depending on the period and calibration setting. Using both ERS scatterometer based soil moisture and runoff for model calibration provides more robust model parameters than using either of these two sources of information.


The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union introduced a new admissibility test to determine when economic operators are able to challenge the validity of EU acts of general application, such as EU customs-related measures, 'directly' before the Court of Justice of the EU ('action for annulment'). Prior to the introduction of this new test, the position in practice was that economic operators had to challenge EU measures of general application 'indirectly'. An 'indirect challenge' was made by bringing an appeal against national measures applying the EU act, before the court of an EU Member State, which could then refer a question on the validity of the underlying EU measure to the Court of Justice of the EU ('request for a preliminary ruling'). This article examines the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU concerning the application of the new admissibility test to EU customs-related measures between 2011 and the first half of 2017. The author takes the view that the new test has unfortunately been interpreted in an overly restrictive manner, thus continuing to deny economic operators direct access to the Court of Justice in customs-related cases. The author also examines how economic operators will need to proceed in order to challenge the validity of EU customs measures.


In many developing tropical countries, rapid urban growth leads to several problems, including increased thermal stress. This has negative consequences for people's health and well-being, and affects social and commercial outdoor activities negatively. Consequently, the creation of thermally comfortable microclimates in urban environments is highly important.

The main aim of this thesis is to deepen our knowledge regarding the relationship between urban design, microclimate and outdoor thermal comfort through studies conducted in the hot dry climate of Fez, Morocco, and the hot humid climate of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Both cities have highly uncomfortable climates and are experiencing problems of rapid population growth, leading to considerable horizontal expansion of urban development, characterised by inefficient land-use.

The research methodology in this study included a combination of microclimate measurements, numerical microclimate simulations and studies of the urban planning process. Field measurements were conducted in areas with significantly differing characteristics, including variations in urban geometry and distance to the sea, to map variations in microclimate and outdoor thermal comfort within each city. To cover a wider range of urban design, to test the impact of different design parameters on outdoor thermal comfort and to achieve optimum design solutions, microclimate simulations using the ENVI-met software were conducted. The urban codes were analysed to determine whether they favour or hinder climate-conscious urban design, while the interviews with urban planners and designers aimed at investigating the extent to which climate aspects are included in urban design.

Microclimate conditions and thermal comfort at street level were found to vary considerably within both Fez and Colombo. Apart from its old city, Fez is a dispersed city dominated by street canyons with low height-to-width ratios. This study shows that new urban areas would need to be far more compact than today's to improve the microclimatic conditions during the warm season. However, deep canyons should be blended with shallower, east-west oriented canyons, as well as shallow open spaces to allow solar access in the winter. In Colombo, the urban form is also dispersed and a more compact form with deeper canyons is needed to improve microclimatic conditions. However, spacing between buildings is necessary to allow air flow. Shallow, east-west oriented canyons are needed near the coastal strip to enable the westerly sea breeze to penetrate the city. In both cities, design details, such as colonnades and shading trees, are important to improve pedestrians? thermal comfort.

The dispersed urban form in both Fez and Colombo is the result of regulations regarding building heights, street widths, plot coverage and setbacks. The current urban codes do not favour a comfortable microclimate in either of the cities and would need to be changed to allow deeper street canyons and to promote the horizontal shading of pedestrians. Such a change would lead to higher building and population densities, which is in line with the aims of the national authorities in both countries. The consideration of climate aspects is limited at all planning levels in both cities. There is a need to educate professionals in climate-conscious urban planning and to develop detailed urban design guidelines and easy-to-use design tools.


A new method for error detection using mode information of macroblocks (MBs) is proposed. For decodable inter MBs, inter residues are calculated by adding up absolute values of received residual pixels and intra complexities are estimated by that of motion compensated reference blocks. If inter residues are larger than intra complexities by a predefined quantity, MBs are considered to be erroneous. For decodable intra MBs, the connective smoothness of the current MB with correctly decoded neighboring MBs is tested to find erroneous MBs. Combined with error concealment, the new method improves the quality of reconstructed images by about 0.5-1 dB in peak signal-noise ratio (PSNR).


This article focuses on two critical and intersecting issues on the global urban agenda: the growing importance of secondary cities in urban development policies, and the proliferation of digital technologies and data to support smart urban governance. This article contends that smart governance is a critical factor in urban technological transformation processes. Smart governance aims at improving urban management through enhanced data-informed decision-making and the commensurate inclusion and participation of civic actors in this process. Drawing on interviews with administrators in three South African secondary cities, the analysis highlights the complex challenges that limit the effective inculcation of smart governance practices in these cities. It focuses specifically on the strategic, organisational and political challenges of municipal administrations, and the obstacles to effective interaction between key actors in developing an effective municipal data-technology ecosystem. In doing so, this article contributes new insights into enhanced governance practices in smartening secondary cities; it initiates a critical inquiry on the uneven ways these small, less resourced and socio-economically contentious cities negotiate complex social, administrative and political dynamics in incipient processes of urban smartening.


The conventional wisdom that public employees enjoy greater rights by virtue of the Constitution may no longer hold true. In recent cases, the Supreme Court has analogized public and private employment, with the effect of eroding the speech and privacy rights of government employees. This essay critically examines this trend, arguing that reliance on an analogy to the private sector is mistaken, because the arguments for giving private employers broad managerial discretion do not apply with the same force, or at all, to government employers. Rights-based arguments do not apply to government agencies, which are publicly-funded to achieve publicly-defined purposes and cannot assert independent rights to property or autonomy to avoid compliance with constitutional norms. Similarly, the claim that market pressures will control overreaching by the private firm has little application. In the private sector, compensation structures and competition for corporate control help to align the incentives of managers with the interests of the firm; however, those mechanisms are largely unavailable in the public sector. Instead, public accountability is key to ensuring that government managers act within the bounds set by the public's interest. Because public employees stand in a unique position to observe improper government conduct, their constitutional speech and privacy rights should be interpreted, not by reference to market norms, but with an eye to protecting the mechanisms of public accountability.


Habitat destruction and degradation represent the most significant contemporary threats to populations of American crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus) and Morelet's crocodiles (Crocodylus moreletii) throughout their respective ranges. In addition to destroying nesting sites, escalating inter- and intra-specific competition, and increasing instances of human-crocodile conflict, it has been suggested that habitat decline may also be contributing to recent hybridization that could threaten each species' genetic integrity. In this paper, we use the Placencia Peninsula in southern Belize as a case study, synthesizing remote-sensing based quantification of historical land use / land cover (LULC) change in the study area with insights from literature to demonstrate the potential role of LULC change as a driver of crocodile hybridization in the area. Using visual interpretation and supervised classification of satellite imagery, we found that, between 1976 and 2017, built-up land, agriculture, and aquaculture expanded dramatically in the study area at the expense of mangrove and littoral forests, evergreen broadleaf forests, and savanna. The widespread conversion of traditional crocodile habitat to anthropogenic land uses likely increased the concentration of suitable American and Morelet's crocodile habitat within a diminished sympatric zone, making Placencia's increasingly human-modified landscape more conducive to crocodile hybridization in 2017 than it was four decades prior. With similar landscape conversions taking place throughout the crocodiles' overlapping zones in North and Central America, hybridization may soon represent an increasingly substantial threat to both species' conservation statuses.


The protection of civil rights in the United States encompasses remedies for at least five separate groups. Native Americans have suffered extermination, removal, denial of sovereignty, and destruction of culture; Latinos, conquest and the indignities of a racially discriminatory immigration system. Asian Americans suffered exclusion, wartime internment, and discriminatory labor laws. Middle Eastern people suffer from suspicion that they are terrorists. Blacks suffered slavery and Jim Crow. Yet our system of civil rights derives, in large part, from the experience of only Blacks, and aims to redress a single, momentous harm, namely slavery and its lingering effects. This is particularly true of the Thirteenth Amendment, which aims to abolish slavery and other conditions reminiscent of it.American case law, particularly in connection with matters of race, proceeds largely through a process of analogy in which courts compare the case before them to a previous decision or statute. Nonblack groups sometimes have been able to analogize their predicaments to ones that Blacks suffer, but often this has proven difficult. Thus, afflictions that visit few Blacks, such as wartime internment and language discrimination, can easily go unremedied under American law.This Essay discusses a number of obstacles that lie in the way of protecting Latinos and other nonblack minority groups under the current framework of statutory and constitutional civil rights, including the Thirteenth Amendment. After discussing drawbacks associated with a system of civil rights protection still inflected with the rhetoric and norms of the 1960s civil rights movement, the Essay closes by arguing that an increasingly multiracial society such as this one needs to develop a broader, more inclusive framework and -- with Latinos in mind -- sketches one.


Two main transformations occur in water environments -- one due to the effect of microorganisms and the other due to chemical reactions. Both transformations are very closely interwoven. Of the transformation processes in the water environment, nitrogen transformation is perhaps the most interesting because nitrogen and its compounds (both organic and mineral), affect the development of practically all aquatic microorganisms and therefore determine the trophic state and the quality of a water environment. Nitrogen compounds are present in sewage and other waste water discharged into water bodies. Therefore, it is quite understandable why during the last few years nitrogen transformation is the subject of study at descriptive and experimental levels, as well as by mathematical modeling techniques. This paper reports on the results of a collaborative study between IIASA and the Institute of Experimental Biology and Ecology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, on nitrogen transformations. The data of twelve experiments covering a broad set of initial conditions in nitrogen concentrations and at two temperatures (180 degrees Celsius and 120 degrees Celsius) are presented in this report. These experimental data were analyzed with the help of the mathematical model developed at IIASA (WP-80-86) and intended for understanding processes of nitrogen transformation in water environments. The results of model description of nitrogen compound dynamics are evaluated by statistics to find a quantitative criteria in model assessment. In the discussion of simulation results, attention was focused on the analysis of bacterial activities in the conversion of organic as well as mineral nitrogen forms. The results reported here are considered to be the basis for the simulation of nitrogen dynamics in water bodies and for studying various aspects of ecology and aquatic ecosystem behavior.


Life course trajectories of refugee populations in European countries highly depend on the various statuses and residence permits that are assigned to them. Taking the case study of Switzerland, this article aims at showing the impact of the legal framework on refugees' chances of labour market integration. The term «refugee» here refers to all the individuals who came to Switzerland seeking asylum, no matter the outcome of the asylum procedure – and not only to those who obtained the status as defined by the 1951 Geneva Convention. In this study, the longitudinal follow‐up of the individuals is made possible by the matching of data from several population registers. From a descriptive point of view, sequence analysis allows the visualization of refugees' trajectories from their arrival in the country – in terms of both residence permits and of labour market participation. Survival analysis models then show the concordance between the administrative status and the economic status, the access to more stable permits increasing significantly the chances of labour market integration. As a consequence, those who remain for many years with the most precarious permits (asylum seekers and provisionally admitted persons) go through a process of cumulative disadvantage. Although the economic vulnerability of refugees has been highlighted previously, this paper shows that within the refugee population, the host countries' legislation creates an additional hierarchy, based on the residence permits, that further widens inequalities.


Background: Forensic odontology plays a pivotal role in the identification of victims in mass disasters utilizing "preserved dental records" or "ante-mortem records" available with the general dental practitioners. Identification of a deceased individual by comparing antemortem and postmortem records is more reliable and easier as compared to other methods. However, in India, the practice of maintaining dental case record requires additional emphasis. Aim: The aim of the present study is to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practices of dental practitioners in South India regarding awareness and importance of maintaining patient's dental records. Settings and Design: A descriptive questionnaire study was conducted among the alumni of the dental institution over a period of 3 months. The alumni who passed out from 2000 to 2015 were included in the study. Materials and Methods: A structured questionnaire containing 24 questions regarding the knowledge, attitude, and practice of maintaining clinical case records was prepared and validated. Data were collected from 543 dental practitioners from various parts of South India who were the alumni of the dental institution. Statistical Analysis: The data were summarized and analyzed using the statistical software Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. The descriptive analysis was done in percentages, and the results were tabulated. Results: Overall, 58.39% of dentists were found to be maintaining records promptly, and 84.6% dentists have knowledge about forensic odontology, but only 8.4% of dentists have helped the government agencies during mass disasters. Conclusion: This study reveals that the need of the hour is to change the attitude and to cultivate interest among practicing dentists regarding dental record maintenance which can tremendously help in the deceased individual identification process.


Using sentence comprehension as a case study for all of cognitive science, David Townsend and Thomas Bever offer an integration of two major approaches, the symbolic-computational and the associative-connectionist. The symbolic-computational approach emphasizes the formal manipulation of symbols that underlies creative aspects of language behavior. The associative-connectionist approach captures the intuition that most behaviors consist of accumulated habits. The authors argue that the sentence is the natural level at which associative and symbolic information merge during comprehension. The authors develop and support an analysis-by-synthesis model that integrates associative and symbolic information in sentence comprehension. This integration resolves problems each approach faces when considered independently. The authors review classic and contemporary symbolic and associative theories of sentence comprehension, and show how recent developments in syntactic theory fit well with the integrated analysis-by-synthesis model. They offer analytic, experimental, and neurological evidence for their model and discuss its implications for broader issues in cognitive science, including the logical necessity of an integration of symbolic and connectionist approaches in the field.


Choosing spouse and entering into marriage is a turning point in the growth and character development. Certainly, the choice of partner is one of the most important decisions in life. The aim of this study was to determine the predictive value of marital adjustment through study of variables of attachment and determinism as predictors of marital adjustment. The study used a correlation method and conducted on a sample of 50 student couples from Kermanshah Branch, Islamic Azad University that was selected by convenience sampling. To collect data, the marital adjustment scale, attachment scale for adults, and deterministic thinking scale were used. Except for variables of avoidant attachment and overall deterministic thinking, which were not correlated with marital adjustment, other variables (secure attachment, ambivalent attachment, determinism in interaction with others, philosophical determinism, determinism in future anticipation, and determinism in tragic events) had significant relationships with marital adjustment. All the variables were also able to predict marital adjustment. Based on significant correlation of the components of this research, the findings can be used to improve the compatibility of couples.


We present an interpretation of subdivision surface evaluation in the language of linear algebra. Specifically, the vector of surface points can be computed by left-multiplying the vector of control points by a sparse subdivision matrix. This "matrix-driven" interpretation applies to any level of subdivision, holds for many common subdivision schemes (including Catmull-Clark and Loop), supports limit surface evaluation, allows semi-sharp creases, and complements feature-adaptive optimizations. It is primarily applicable to static meshes undergoing deformation (i.e. animation), in which case the subdivision matrix is invariant over time and the surface can be evaluated at each frame with a single sparse matrix-vector multiplication (SpMV). We describe techniques for building subdivision matrices on-the-fly using the recursive definition of the subdivision scheme and sparse matrix-matrix multiplication (SpMM) routines. The performance of our approach thus reduces to that of SpMV and SpMM, both of which have been studied extensively and are available in common packages for numerical linear algebra. We implemented our approach as an extension to Pixar's OpenSubdiv library using routines from Intel's Math Kernel Library and Nvidia's CUSPARSE library to target multicore CPUs and GPUs, respectively. We present performance results from off-the-shelf routines and our own "SpMV-like" routines that achieve 1.7-4.8x better performance than existing techniques on both platforms.We conclude by describing two major limitations of matrix-driven evaluation, namely difficulty computing vertex normals and complications in the presence of hierarchical edits, and suggest workarounds for both.


Abstract Carbonate reefal margin and foreslope settings are characteristically heterogeneous and difficult to predict due to a spectrum of sediment source factories, resedimentation processes, resultant deposit types, and controlling parameters. In particular, the effects of changes in long-term accommodation on the composition, architecture, and sediment distribution patterns of carbonate margin–foreslope–basin systems are poorly understood. Upper Devonian (Frasnian) outcrop exposures along the Lennard Shelf, northeast Canning Basin, Western Australia, were investigated to assess the development of reefal margin and foreslope settings during long-term 1) platform backstepping with aggradational pulses, and 2) across the transition from platform aggradation to progradation. Measured sections tied to interpreted photomosaics and detailed mapping using aerial photographs were collected from the South Lawford Range and Windjana Gorge areas. The exposures reveal distinctive differences in foreslope grain composition, deposit characteristics and proportions, margin morphology, and stratigraphic expression 1) during platform evolution between backstepping events, and 2) depending on position within the long-term accommodation setting. Between backstepping events, aggradational margins can be classified as "growth escarpments" with associated grain-dominated, onlapping foreslope deposits. Margins across the long-term transition from aggradation to progradation evolved from erosional escarpments with onlapping debris deposits to accretionary, interfingering configurations. Development of growth escarpments between backstepping events was a function of vertical reefal growth from sustained high accommodation conditions during the long-term transgressive systems tract, coupled with a Frasnian reefal assemblage that responded to light and tracked relative sea level. This net vertical reefal growth also resulted in relative margin stability and the deposition of grain-dominated foreslopes. Conversely, margins were highly unstable and underwent repeated failure across the long-term aggradation-to-progradation transition, reflecting a lack of underlying substrate to support basinward advance, and resulting in debris-dominated foreslopes. These observations provide relationships that predict margin and foreslope associations of facies-scale heterogeneity and seismic-scale geometry within a low-frequency sequence stratigraphic framework.


On 9 May 1950, France launched a revolutionary plan for supranational cooperation in Western Europe. The Netherlands was taken completely by surprise. In the decades that followed, European integration moved forward at an unprecedented pace, taking the Netherlands with it. Geography and the post-war world seemed to leave the country no other choice. European integration forced — and is still forcing — the Netherlands on a far-reaching 'journey to the continent'. For the Netherlands, European integration represents a difficult journey to a new old world that often seems far off. How has that journey progressed so far? Why did the Netherlands join the common European market and currency from the very beginning? Was this course inevitable? And where has it brought the country? Using new, international source material, The Netherlands and European Integration, 1950 to Present digs deeply into the history of the Netherlands in Europe — a subject that is today more topical than ever.


The research for this thesis has been concerned with defining and demonstrating the existence of certain semantic elements in English natural language science text which can be called metainformation. Meta-information is described as being the organisational-, rather than the conceptual properties of an author's 'message' in text. Conceptual information is that subject-related output from a document which readers assimilate or synthesise with their current state-of-knowledge. Meta-information reflects the organisation or structural format used by an author to present conceptual information for transfer from text to readers. The example used here to demonstrate the existence of meta-information, is a format for the presentation of empirical argument in science text. At its most simplep a meta-informational element could be a report section-heading like, INTRODUCTION, which describes (we assume), the contents of the subsequent text. At a lower level of analysis the phrase, 'This paper describes contains some semantic inference that the complete statement is one of an introductory nature; thereforep such a statement could be labelled as one of INTRODUCTION for meta-informational purposes. A 'grammar' or set of meta-informational elements, has been developed as a means of identifying certain semantic aspects of text. This grammar is based on some experimental evidence and the consensus view of readers and writers of science text who produced what has been called a conventional format for empirical argument presentation. An initial set of rules for implementing this grammar have also been developed. The rules have been tested for replicability with positive results. Although analysis of full text hasshown deviation from a 'conventional argument structure readers' summaries of the same text conform to this structure. Thus, a model of the phenomenQn of information transfer from text to readers, which includes a structural transformation process based on the experimental results, has been built. A computer simulation is given to demonstrate the model in an inter-active program-user system designed to produce summaries of whole text. The thesis is that evidence exists for the presence of meta-information in science text and that if a grammar appropriate to the kind of output information required by users is built, highly structured text could be produced so that the process of information transfer is optimised.


This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (Intervention). The objectives are as follows:

To compare individual active drugs (antidepressants, benzodiazepines and azapirones) and placebo in terms of efficacy and acceptability in the acute treatment of panic disorder, with or without agoraphobia.

To rank treatments for panic disorder (antidepressants, benzodiazepines, azapirones and placebo) according to their effectiveness and acceptability.


The objective of this lesson on composite structure sizing is to present the principles that allow the sizing of composite laminates widely used in composite structures. After a brief presentation of the primary material used in aircraft structures, the basic theory of laminated plates under membrane and bending loading as well as their associated fracture criteria, are touched on. The fracture of a UD ply is then explained in detail, in order to demonstrate its inherent complexity and the limits of the criteria in use. Next, these criteria of the base ply are used to size a complete composite laminate. Lastly, two fundamental cases of structure calculations are presented: sizing holes and multi-bolt joints, as well as study of buckling.
The criteria that are specific to aviation, with in particular the notion of limit loads and ultimate loads, are addressed. The notion of damage tolerance, specific to aviation is then presented, and in particular the notion of impact damage tolerance. These notions are fundamental to understanding the specificities of sizing aircraft composite structures.
Corrected exercises then allow curious readers to test their understanding of the different subjects. These corrected exercises are typical for sizing aircraft composite structures. Engineers will also find exercises that resemble their case-studies. Lastly, an Excel spreadsheet allows presents the calculations in the book in detail for review.
The originality of this particular title is that it places itself very clearly in the field of aviation, where the sizing criteria are very specific. Take the calculation of holed plates and multi-bolt joint that are typical for composite aircraft structures and yet are not often touched on in the literature. Nonetheless the notions in this book remain valid for most industrial purposes.
Another originality of this book is that it shows a number of typical calculations for aeronautics. These examples illustrate the many complexities of sizing for composite laminates. Readers can also easily perform these calculations using the Excel spreadsheet provided.
Lastly, this book groups a big part of the notions required to understanding sizing for aircraft composite structures, and it should interest engineers that work in that field.
We will also note that the field of aeronautics is not the only one interested in using composite structures, and other areas, such as automotive, railway or civil engineering (bridges etc.) increasingly use composite structures. While the field of aviation has precedence when it comes to composite structure sizing, it should be noted that these methods will be widely used in other fields in the years to come.


Public interest litigation (PIL) is a form of socio-legal activism. PIL originated in the United States, and spread, through the aggressive promotion of U.S.-centric rule of law, to China, where it has had a significant impact on socio-legal activism since the 1990s. This Article explores both the process through which human rights discourse is translated into practice by activist lawyers and human rights defenders, as well as the circumstances that cause socio-legal mobilization to fail or succeed. This Article examines the collective and sustained endeavour by human rights lawyers and other activists to advocate for the rights of specific communities through a rights complex, composed of activist lawyers, NGO leaders, and citizen journalists, as well as supporters within state institutions, Chinese society, and the international community. This Article looks at the institutionalized manner through which legal cases facilitate socio-legal mobilization to serve the broader objectives of educating citizens, enhancing the capacity of civil society, and making the government more accountable and responsive. The principal argument is that once citizens are endowed with legal rights and institutions are put in place for their implementation, the remaining issue is raising rights-awareness among rights-bearing citizens and generate demand for rights in society and channel those rights to institutions. Lawyers and other rights defenders play an indispensable bridging function in translating rhetoric to practice.


Crowdfunding has gained widespread popularity in recent years. By funding entrepreneurs with creative minds, it is gradually taking over the role of venture capitalists who provide the much needed seed capital to jump start business ventures. Despite the huge success of the crowdfunding platforms, not every project is successful in reaching its funding goal. Therefore, in this paper, we intend to answer the following question "what set of features determine a project's success?". We begin by studying the dynamics of Kickstarter, a popular reward-based crowdfunding platform, and the impact of social networks on this platform. Contrary to previous studies, our analysis is not restricted to project-based features alone; instead, we expand the features into four different categories: temporal traits, personal traits, geo-location traits, and network traits. Using a comprehensive dataset of 18K projects and 116K tweets, we provide several unique insights about these features and their effects on the success of Kickstarter projects. Based on these insights, we build a supervised learning framework to learn a model that can recommend a set of investors to Kickstarter projects. By utilizing features from the first three days of project duration alone, we show that our results are significantly better than the previous studies.


The use of woodfuel to meet the demand for energy has regularly reappeared on both European and African political agendas over the last 50 years. In the 1980s, it no longer seemed necessary or even desirable to use wood to meet energy demand. But in the last decade, energy specialists, economists, industrialists, and politicians have begun to (re)consider woodfuel as a sector worthy of interest given the rising fuel prices, fuel scarcity, and increasing awareness of climatic change. At present, the hopes, the debates, and the progresses surrounding uses of woodfuel are very different in northern and southern countries, but the trends and challenges appear to converge. In this paper, we argue that woodfuel has the potential to fulfill the increased energy demand and to play a sustainable role in the energy sector. But anxieties and lock‐ins remain. Many forestry specialists and environmentalists are putting up ideological resistance. Others question the capacity of existing forests to meet this increased demand in a sustainable way. At the very least, a trend toward industrialization and privatization of the woodfuel sector would have major implications for ownership and forest management. However, despite concerns surrounding woodfuel, we argue that the extent of the energy demand to be met and the pressure from new private industrial players will oblige the forestry sector to broaden its position. It will have to consider the possibility of entering a new transformative era that not only includes woodfuel but also has implications for forest management, rights of access, justice, and sustainability. WIREs Energy Environ 2015, 4:156–170. doi: 10.1002/wene.115


Digital games are a significant element in the digital media and information society. They influence the development of media technologies as well as interface design, online social interaction and new evaluation approaches.
The Fourth Symposium for Information Design focused on the question of how game based learning environments can motivate and stimulate learners in different situations, and improve learning. It presented didactical and pedagogical issues, as well as actual examples and concrete applications.


Deconvolution from wave-front sensing is a powerful and low-cost high-resolution imaging technique designed to compensate for the image degradation due to atmospheric turbulence. It is based on a simultaneous recording of short-exposure images and wave-front sensor (WFS) data. Conventional data processing consists of a sequential estimation of the wave fronts given the WFS data and then of the object given the reconstructed wave fronts and the images. However, the object estimation does not take into account the wave-front reconstruction errors. A joint estimation of the object and the respective wave fronts has therefore been proposed to overcome this limitation. The aim of our study is to derive and validate a robust joint estimation approach, called myopic deconvolution from wave-front sensing. Our estimator uses all data simultaneously in a coherent Bayesian framework. It takes into account the noise in the images and in the WFS measurements and the available a priori information on the object to be restored as well as on the wave fronts. Regarding the a priori information on the object, an edge-preserving prior is implemented and validated. This method is validated on simulations and on experimental astronomical data.


The purpose of the paper is to investigate charge transfer modes in upward lightning flashes by means of numerical simulation constrained by concurrent observations of electromagnetic fields and currents. In particular, we focus on different types of pulses occurring in upward negative flashes. The MTLE return stroke model is used to compute the electric fields associated with return strokes and mixed-mode pulses, while the M-component model of Rakov et al. (1995) is used to compute electric fields associated with M-components and M-component-type ICC pulses. The simulation results are constrained by experimental data consisting of simultaneous records of lightning currents and electric fields associated with upward flashes at the Säntis tower. The inferred velocities for M-component and M-component-type ICC pulses range from 2.0×107 m/s to 9.0×107 m/s, and the corresponding junction point heights range from 1.0 km to 2.0 km. The inferred pulse velocities for return strokes and mixed-mode pulses range from 1.3×108 m/s to 1.65×108 m/s. The inferred current attenuation constants of the MTLE model obtained in this study range from 0.3 km to 0.8 km, lower than the value of 2.0 km suggested in previous studies. The obtained results confirm the similarity of mixed-mode charge transfer to ground with return strokes on the one hand, and of the M-component-type ICC with classical M-components mode of charge transfer on the other hand.


A demographic study was carried out on Bertholletia excelsa, the Brazil nut tree, in two primary forest sites in Northern Bolivia where Brazil nuts have been harvested for several decades. In spite of the large proportion (93%) of seeds that are harvested, reasonable densities of recently emerged seedlings were found. Seeds of Bertholletia are contained in woody fruits that are primarily opened by agoutis. Most fruits are left untouched on the forest floor for 1–2 y before they are opened, possibly due to high energetic costs of fruit opening just after fruit fall. However, the proportion of viable seeds is strongly reduced in older fruits. Growth in diameter at breast height (dbh) was low for pole-sized trees (< 15 cm dbh) and adult trees (> 100 cm dbh) and peaked for intermediate-sized trees (30–60 cm). These trees often attained a growth rate of > 1.5 cm y−1, which is high compared with other non-pioneer tropical trees. This, and the strong growth response to increased light availability found for seedlings and saplings, suggest that Bertholletia excelsa can be classified as a gap-dependent species. Matrix population models were constructed for both study populations. Population growth rates (λ) were close to one, and were most sensitive to persistence in one size category. Age estimates revealed that age at first reproduction (at dbh > 60 cm) amounts to over 120 y, and age in the last category (dbh > 160 cm) to almost 300 y. Given the continuous rejuvenation of the population, the stable population size, the high age at maturity and the long reproductive period, it is concluded that current levels of Brazil nut extraction may be sustained at least for several decades and perhaps for even longer periods.


Secular changes in the mineralogies of marine nonskeletal limestones and potash evaporites occur in phase on a 100–200 m.y. time scale such that periods of "aragonite seas" are synchronized with MgSO4 evaporites and periods of "calcite seas" with KCl evaporites. It is proposed that these coupled changes are the result of secular variation in seawater chemistry controlled primarily by fluctuations in the mid-ocean ridge hydrothermal brine flux, which in turn have been driven by fluctuations in the rate of ocean crust production. Quantitative predictions based on this hypothesis yield secular variation in limestone and potash evaporite mineralogies that closely match the observed variation over the past 600 m.y., providing strong support for the thesis that seawater chemistry, rather than remaining constant, has oscillated significantly over geologic time.


PURPOSE OF REVIEW
The field of osteoporosis research has been active for the past 20 years and has allowed significant advancement in the management of osteoporosis. This review will give an overview of the latest data from international cohorts that relate to current and recent osteoporosis research.

RECENT FINDINGS
The clinical diagnosis of osteoporosis relies heavily on bone mineral density (BMD) measured at femoral neck or spine and although BMD has excellent predictive value for future fractures, fracture risk assessment has evolved over the years, resulting in the birth of fracture prediction tools. Fracture risk factors not currently featured in these tools are being considered for inclusion, including imminent risk fracture following a sentinel fracture, number of falls, and previous vertebral fractures. Data from groups with comorbidities such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are helping us understand how to best manage patients with multiple comorbidities. Finally, the prevalence of vertebral fracture in the older general population and other selected populations has been explored, alongside the global burden of osteoporosis and its consequences.

SUMMARY
Our understanding of osteoporosis continues to expand, but knowledge gaps remain.


This report analyses the small to full-scale prediction of the combustion behaviour of a series of Nordtest furniture specimens. This prediction analysis is based on Model I from the Combustion Behaviour of Upholstered Furniture (CBUF) study. The Nordtest furniture specimens ranged from 1 to 3 seaters and used two different types of foam and fabrics. Both types of foam and fabric were representative of the two extremes typically found on the market. The foams used were High Resilience Polyurethane and Standard Polyurethane. The fabrics used were 100% polypropylene and 100% cotton/linen blend. A total of 141 full-scale furniture tests in the Furniture Calorimeter and 33 small-scale tests in the Cone Calorimeter were conducted at the fire-testing laboratory at CSIRO in Melbourne. In addition to this a further 22 small-scale tests in the Cone Calorimeter were conducted in the fire-testing laboratory in Christchurch at the University of Canterbury. The outcomes from this study showed that Model I is a good predictor of the full-scale results for the Standard Polyurethane foam with both fabric combinations. The High Resilience Polyurethane foam burnt more readily with its cotton/linen fabric cover than with the polypropylene fabric, demonstrating that fabric effects can be quite pronounced in determining the burning behaviour of upholstered furniture. The High Resilience Polyurethane was a better performer than the Standard Polyurethane foam, in terms of producing a lower heat release rate, and was generally over predicted, confitming that for these particular furniture specimens, Model I' s results range from good to conservative.


This study explored the socio-economic and psychological effects of terrorist bomb blasts on the lives of survivors, using a qualitative research method. Results have shown that, although several years may have elapsed since the event, respondents were yet to recover from its effects. Those who survived still carry the scars to constantly remind them of the horrific ordeal. They are tormented by psychological issues which, for them, are often more difficult to deal with compared to the trouble and pain caused by physical injuries sustained. Most of the participants have experienced frequent stress related psychological symptoms, as well as other associated symptoms such as sadness, depression, anxiety, irritability, lack of concentration in daily activities, nightmares and flashbacks of events. Additionally, there has been serious long term socio-economic effects of terrorist bomb blasts on the survivors, such as unemployment, uncertainty over the education of their children and declining health status. Furthermore, as well as dwindling social-economic status, inadequate government support and lack of follow-up in terms of rehabilitation are among the most pressing problems faced by this group of survivors, which needs to be urgently and properly addressed.


This paper presents the residual eff ects of Manilkara zapota (L.) P. Royen plant against the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum (Herbst). Four doses, i.e., 1238.5, 619.25, 309.6 and 154.8 μg/cm2 of ethyl acetate extract of stem bark of Manilkara zapota were applied on larvae and adult beetles. The effectiveness of the plant extract was increased with the increase of exposure time and after 72 hrs of exposure, the maximum residual toxicity was observed with LD50 of 228.8, 281.1, 413.4, 423.7, 455.2, 498.7 and 526.5 μg/cm2 for first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth instar larvae and adults, respectively. The results of this study also demonstrated that the earlier instars were more sensitive to the extracts than those of late instars as well as adults.


Two field experiments were conducted on sugar beet crop (Beta vulgaris) to increase the quality of yield in sugar beet by applying mixtures of preand post-emergence herbicides and non-chemical strategies. Triflusulfuron-methyl, phenemedipham7.5+ desmedipham 1.5+ ethofumesate 11.5, S-metolachlor, propaquizafop, and clethodim, in addition, Triflusulfuron-methyl +hand hoeing, phenmedipham 7.5+ desmedipham 1.5+ ethofumesate 11.5 +hand hoeing, first hand hoeing, second hand hoeing and untreated check were evaluated. All combinations were repeated twice. Percentage of weed reduction, total of all weeds, yield, yield components, percentages of total soluble solids (TSS), total yield of sugar beet ton per feddan and the percentages of weed density were calculated. Results revealed that, triflusulfuron-methyl + hand hoeing followed by phenmedipham7.5+ desmedipham 1.5+ ethofumesate 11.5+ hand hoeing and twice hand hoeing recorded equally the same effect followed by triflusulfuron-methyl followed by first hand hoeing when compared with untreated check. The reduction (weed control) percentages were 98, 96, 96, 84 and 81, respectively compared with untreated (check) in the first season. However, in the second season, the reduction percentages were 98, 96, 96, 86 and 80, respectively. The highest value of fresh weight and the most two abundant species weeds were Beta vulgaris and Medicago hispida. Also, the results revealed that, there were significant effects between weed control treatments on crop yield (ton/fed) and untreated check during the two seasons, where the lowest yield was 9.38 ton/fed. while, the highest yield was 32.2 ton/fed. in the twice hand hoeing treatment. On the other hand, the effect of tested herbicides on fresh weight of grassy weeds (g/m) in two seasons, in the first season, twice hand hoeing was found to be more effective followed by clethodim, propaquizafop and then S-metolachlor, where the percentages of reduction were 99, 93, 86 and 85, respectively compared with untreated check. However, in the second season, the reduction percentages were 100, 98, 95 and 95, respectively. The highest value of fresh weight and the most abundant weed was Phalaris sp. Also, the results showed significant effects between weed control treatments on crop yield (ton/fed), during the first season with low crop yield (2.22 ton/fed.) in untreated check and the high crop yield (33.525 ton/fed.) in propaquizafop treatment. The highest value of crop yield was 24 ton/fed. in twice hand hoeing and the lowest was 9.3 ton/fed. in untreated check in the second season. In two seasons, data showed that weed control treatments increased the tested yield parameters as a following: triflusulfuron-methyl +hand hoeing > phenmedipham 7.5+ desmedipham 1.5+ ethofumesate 11.5 > twice hand hoeing > first hand hoeing and Pop-S. In addition, the data showed that clethodim was found to be the most effective in weed control, highest value of yield component followed by S-metolachlor, propaquizafop and then twice hand hoeing. However, clethodim was the most effective in weed control with the highest value of yield components wheras twice hand hoeing was the lowest one. It can be concluded that, triflusulfuron-methyl +hand hoeing was highly effective in weed control with highest value of yield components, while hand hoeing is the lowest one.


Performance prediction is an important engineering tool that provides valuable feedback on design choices in program synthesis and machine architecture development. We present an analytic performance modeling approach aimed to minimize prediction cost, while providing a prediction accuracy that is sufficient to enable major code and data mapping decisions. Our approach is based on a performance simulation language called PAMELA. Apart from simulation, PAMELA features a symbolic analysis technique that enables PAMELA models to be compiled into symbolic performance models that trade prediction accuracy for the lowest possible solution cost. We demonstrate our approach through a large number of theoretical and practical modeling case studies, including six parallel programs and two distributed-memory machines. The average prediction error of our approach is less than 10 percent, while the average worst-case error is limited to 50 percent. It is shown that this accuracy is sufficient to correctly select the best coding or partitioning strategy. For programs expressed in a high-level, structured programming model, such as data-parallel programs, symbolic performance modeling can be entirely automated. We report on experiments with a PAMELA model generator built within a dataparallel compiler for distributed-memory machines. Our results show that with negligible program annotation, symbolic performance models are automatically compiled in seconds, while their solution cost is in the order of milliseconds.


This study examines the relationship between library instruction and graduating students' four-year cumulative grade point averages for the classes of 2012-2015. After normalizing the GPAs by departments to account for differences in departmental grading, a two-tailed t-test indicated a statistically significant increase in GPA among graduating students who were enrolled in classes in which at least one library instruction session was held (n=1,265) over students who were enrolled in no classes with library instruction (n=115). Librarians are using the results to demonstrate the relationship between the library and student success, and to promote library instruction on campus.


The reprogramming of metabolism is one of cancer hallmarks. Glucose's metabolism, as one of the main fuels of cancer cells, has been the focus of several research studies in the oncology field. However, because cancer is a heterogeneous disease, the disruptions in glucose metabolism are highly variable depending of the cancer. In fact, Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC) and Prostate Cancer (PCa), the most lethal and common urological neoplasia, respectively, show different disruptions in the main pathways of glucose catabolism: glycolysis, lactate fermentation and Krebs Cycle. Oxidoreductases are a class of enzymes that catalyze electrons transfer from one molecule to another and are present in these three pathways, posing as an opportunity to better understand these catabolic deregulations. Furthermore, nowadays it is recognized that their expression is modulated by microRNAs (miRNAs), in this book chapter, we selected the known miRNAs that directly target these oxidoreductases and analyzed their deregulation in both cancers. The characterization of these miRNAs opens a new door that could be applied in patients' stratification and therapy monitorization because of their potential as cancer biomarkers. Additionally, their delivery to cancer cells, using glucose capped NPs could help establish new therapeutic strategies that would improve RCC and PCa management.


Abstract. We integrate 130 globally distributed proxy time series to refine the understanding of climate variability during the Holocene. Cyclic anomalies and temporal trends in periodicity from the Lower to the Upper Holocene are extracted by combining Lomb-Scargle Fourier-transformed spectra with bootstrapping. Results were cross-checked by counting events in the time series. Main outcomes are: First, the propensity of the climate system to fluctuations is a region specific property. Many records of adjacent sites reveal a similar change in variability although they belong to different proxy types (e.g., δ18O, lithic composition). Secondly, at most sites, irreversible change occured in the Mid-Holocene. We suggest that altered ocean circulation together with slightly modified coupling intensity between regional climate subsystems around the 5.5 kyr BP event (termination of the African Humid Period) were responsible for the shift. Fluctuations especially intensified along a pan-American corridor. This may have led to an unequal crisis probability for early human civilizations in the Old and New World. Our study did not produce evidence for millennial scale cyclicity in some solar activity proxies for the Upper Holocene, nor for a privileged role of the prominent 250, 550, 900 and 1450 yr cycles. This lack of global periodicities corroborates the regional character of climate variability.


Tree biomass plays a key role in sustainable forest management since it is the basis for estimating stocks and fluxes of several biogeochemical elements, the amount of energy stored in biomass, and other conventional goods and services. The most common mathematical model takes the form of the logarithmic equation where biomass is estimated as a function of diameter at breast height with the scaling coefficients a and B . In this study, I answered the following questions related with the allometric model: a) Is it important to develop biomass equations at the species scale or at the site-specific scale?; b) What is the least number of data required for fitting an allometric equation?; and c) Is it possible to develop allometric equations with few or null biomass data without loosing accuracy in biomass estimation? I employed a biomass data source collected in northwestern Mexico for nine different forest species, collected in six different sites from southern Chihuahua to southern Durango, Mexico to answer these questions. Results showed that by fitting site-specific biomass equations there is a net gain of 5% and close to 20% in the coefficient of determination and the standard error, respectively in contrast to fitting an equation at the species level. The minimum number of observations needed is 60 harvested trees to calculate parameters with the least variance and with high consistency. I present two alternate restrictive methods of biomass estimation: a) restricting the number of harvested trees to three to fit equations available in the scientific literature and b) a non-destructive model to fit equations with the same level of accuracy that display conventional allometric models. Both methods estimate biomass within the confidence bounds imposed on the B coefficient of the conventional allometric model.


A new approach suitable for solving inverse problems in multiangle light scattering is presented. The method takes advantage of multidimensional function approximation capability of radial basis function neural networks. An algorithm for training the networks is described in detail. It is shown that the radius and refractive index of homogeneous spheres can be recovered accurately and quickly, with maximum relative errors of the order of 10(-3) and mean errors as low as 10(-5). The influence of the angular range of available scattering data on the loss of information and inversion accuracy is investigated, and it is shown that more than two thirds of input data can be removed before substantial degradation of accuracy occurs.


ABSTRACT Previous studies have suggested that levels of transcripts for dsrA, a gene encoding a subunit of the dissimilatory sulfite reductase, are not directly related to the rates of sulfate reduction in sediments under all conditions. This phenomenon was further investigated with chemostat-grown Desulfovibrio vulgaris. Under sulfate-limiting conditions, dsrA transcript levels increased as the bulk rates of sulfate reduction in the chemostat increased, but transcript levels were similar at all sulfate reduction rates under electron donor-limiting conditions. When both electron donor- and electron acceptor-limiting conditions were considered, there was a direct correspondence between dsrA transcript levels and the rates of sulfate reduction per cell. These results suggest that dsrA transcript levels may provide important information on the metabolic state of sulfate reducers.


Unsupervised paraphrase acquisition has been an active research field in recent years, but its effective coverage and performance have rarely been evaluated. We propose a generic paraphrase-based approach for Relation Extraction (RE), aiming at a dual goal: obtaining an applicative evaluation scheme for paraphrase acquisition and obtaining a generic and largely unsupervised configuration for RE. We analyze the potential of our approach and evaluate an implemented prototype of it using an RE dataset. Our findings reveal a high potential for unsupervised paraphrase acquisition. We also identify the need for novel robust models for matching paraphrases in texts, which should address syntactic complexity and variability.


Beginning in 1999, a series of events generated speculation that the Chinese Party-state might be prepared to breathe new life into the country's long dormant constitution. In recent years, as the Party-state has strictly limited constitutional adjudication and moved aggressively to contain some citizen constitutional activism, this early speculation has turned to pessimism about China's constitutional trajectory. Such pessimism obscures recognition of alternative or hybrid pathways for resolving constitutional disputes in China. Despite recent developments, Chinese citizens have continued to constitutionalize a broad range of political-legal disputes and advance constitutional arguments in a variety of forums. This article argues that by shifting focus from the individual legal to the collective political dimension of constitutional law, a dimension dominant in China's transitional one-party state, we can better understand the significance of the constitution in China and identify patterns of bargaining, consultation, and mediation across a range of both intrastate and citizen-state constitutional disputes. Administrative reconciliation and "grand mediation," dispute resolution models at the core of recent political-legal shifts in China, emphasize such consultative practices. This zone of convergence reveals a potential transitional path for resolving constitutional disputes. Specifically, the Party-state could choose to adapt and apply the grand mediation model in the context of constitutional disputes. Grand mediation involves a multilevel, Party-state political consultation that preserves a limited but meaningful role for the judiciary. An adaptation of the grand mediation framework would provide an indigenous dispute resolution model for resolving constitutional disputes, regularize informal constitutional dispute resolution practices, and bring judges to the constitutional interpretation table. At the same time, it would take account of the realities of China's current political environment. Chinese reformers could use such a mechanism (or existing informal dispute resolution practices) to advance their long-term goals of facilitating citizen-state consultation, reform concessions, and the diffusion of constitutional norms through the Chinese polity.


Meiofaunal samples have been collected from 15 sites in intertidal beaches in Moorea, and analysed for higher taxa and nematode species. The composition of higher taxa is related to overall meiofaunal abundance and to the sediment grain-size; at most stations harpacticoid copepods are more abundant than nematodes. There is a significant negative correlation between nematode species diversity and density, but the species composition is not dependent on density as revealed by non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination (MDS). Nematode diversity is higher in coarser sediments and the species composition also correlates with grainsize, the coarser stations grouping separately from the others in the MDS. The trophic structure of the nematode assemblages is not affected by the coarseness of the sediments. Comparative data on meiofaunal and nematode diversity from other areas are discussed, and the pitfalls of making such comparisons are emphasized.


User opinions on websites like Amazon, Yelp, and TripAdvisor are a key input for consumers when figuring out what to purchase, or where and what to eat. This means that in order for such websites to provide a better service to their customers, they must guard against fake and targeted reviews. Detecting such users and reviews automatically is a very complex multi-step process, and there is no direct mechanism for solving the problem reliably. Multiple AI and Machine Learning algorithms are coupled together when examining user reviews in determining if a review is fake or not. In this project we propose one such mechanism, which examines past user reviews to detect abnormalities, if any, signaling that they should be looked at more thoroughly from more dimensions. We do so by combining existing sentiment analysis techniques and pattern matching. In order to gain more insight into a review, we break it down into sentences and produce a sentiment value for each one, allowing us to represent a review as a sentiment vector. The sentiment vector then allows us to match various sized tuples against other reviews from the user and compute abnormality scores.


The spectral albedo and directional reflectance of snow and sea ice were measured on sea ice of various types, including nilas, grey ice, pancake ice, multi-year pack ice, and land-fast ice in the Ross, Amundsen and Bellingshausen seas during a summer cruise in February through March 2000. Measurements were made using a spectroradiometer that has 512 channels in the visible and near-infrared (VNIR) region in which 16 of the 36 bands of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) are covered. Directional reflectance is also retrieved from the MODIS radiometrically calibrated data (Level 1B) concurrently acquired from the first National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Observing System (EOS) satellite, Terra. The locations of the ground ice stations are identified accurately on the MODIS images, and the spectral albedo and directional reflectance values at the 16 VNIR MODIS bands are extracted for those pixel locations. MODIS-derived reflectance is then corrected for the intervening atmosphere whose parameters are retrieved from the MODIS atmospheric profiles product (MOD07_L2) for the same granule. The corresponding spectral albedo and directional reflectance with the same viewing geometry as MODIS are derived from our ground-based spectroradiometer measurements. Because the footprint of the ground spectroradiometer is much smaller than the pixel sizes of MODIS images, the averaged spectral reflectance and albedo in the vicinity of each ice station are simulated for the corresponding MODIS pixel from the ground spectral measurements by weighting over different surface types (various ice types and open water). An accurate determination of ice concentration is important in deriving ground reflectance of a simulated pixel from in situ measurements. The best agreement between the in situ and MODIS measurements was found when the ground had 10/10 ice concentration (discrepancy range 0.2–11.69%, average 4.8%) or was oneice-type dominant (discrepancy range 0.8–16.9%, average 6.2%). The more homogeneous the ground surface and the less variable the ground topography, the more comparable between the in situ and satellite-derived reflectance is expected.


The lacertid lizard Podarcis hispanica atrata maintained remarkably con- stant body temperatures (Tb) throughout its daily activity period in early autumn, despite significant variability in available operative temperatures (Te). Lizard Tbs were substantially closer to the species' selected temperature range (the target Tbs for thermoregulation, es- timated by the central 80% of the temperatures selected in a laboratory photothermal gradient) than were a random sample of Tes, indicating that this population thermoregulates both accurately and effectively. We compared observed behaviors and Tbs to the predictions of two hypotheses. The "no thermoregulation" null hypothesis predicted that lizard activity and microsite use would be unaffected by thermal constraints. The "only thermoregulation" hypothesis predicted that lizards would be active only at those times and in those places where Tes fell within the selected temperature range. To evaluate the contributions of various behavioral adjustments (activity times, use of microhabitats and sun-shade patches, basking, and shuttling) to temperature regulation, we combined results from direct behavioral ob- servations with information on the Tes available at different times of day and in different microsites (combinations of structural microhabitats and sun-shade patches). Lizard activity patterns did not match the predictions of either hypothesis, but the observed pattern of activity produced Tbs that were, on average, 1.0?C closer to the selected temperature range than were Tbs predicted by the "no thermoregulation" hypothesis. The lizards' use of microsites (combinations of structural microhabitats and sun-shade patches) was more similar to predictions of the "no thermoregulation" hypothesis than to those of the "only thermoregulation" hypothesis. Nevertheless, the lizards' use of specific microsites produced Tbs that were, on average, 1.9?C closer to the selected temperature range than were randomly available Tes. The relative contributions of different behavioral mechanisms varied with time of day. In the early morning, low movement rates, selection of sunny microsites, and most notably, adoption of a basking posture contributed to temperature regulation. In the late morning and early afternoon, no thermoregulatory behaviors were necessary, as in- dicated by randomly positioned models that achieved mean Tes within the selected tem- perature range. At midday, frequent movements between sunny and shaded microsites probably reduced heat loads on lizards, preventing Tbs from exceeding the selected tem- perature range. In the late afternoon, nonrandom use of microsites and basking behavior appeared to contribute equally to the elevation of Tbs above randomly sampled Tes.


The minilateral approach of a climate club of countries has been suggested as an intermediate phase in a transition towards a global agreement that enforces national climate policies through harmonization. To garner critical mass, we propose an extended club configuration including sub-national states or provinces, resulting in a multi-level club. This would allow considerable contributions from important emitters like the US to be brought on board, relevant given its intended withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. We elaborate this idea and clarify potential roles of participants at distinct levels. The concept is operationalized by developing a method for identifying suitable entities at each level that uses a set of likelihood-of-involvement indicators capturing existing carbon dependence, public opinion, government policy and climate coalition membership. Application at the national level identifies a subset of seven of the highest emitting countries representing 21% of global emissions. This rises to 51% assuming that China, the dominant global emitter, could be enticed into the group. Given that US involvement remains unlikely for now, we illustrate selection at the sub-national level for US states. Here, an initial group of 21 states appear as potential members, jointly accounting for 36% of national emissions. An additional group, representing a further 34% of emissions, are potentially receptive to enticement via trade dependencies on four key countries identified within the group of national members. Accordingly, some 70% of US emissions, representing 11% of global totals, may be subject to climate club involvement via a combination of these pathways. While the implementation of such a club requires various political and legal hurdles to be overcome, the ongoing threat of climate change and inadequacies of the Paris Agreement suggest that novel solutions of this kind deserve serious attention from scientists and politicians.


Managing forests on the Cumberland Plateau escarpment for select desirable species can be particularly onerous due to the high diversity of dominant tree species. We implemented 5 treatments to alter species composition and structure in an effort to favor Quercus and maintain its dominance in the stands. Treatments were shelterwood prescriptions that in the first stage retained a percentage of the basal area (100, 75, 50, 25 and 0 percent retentions). After 9 growing seasons, the residual trees in all but the 0 percent retention treatment were removed. We installed permanent vegetation measurement plots and recorded species and diameter for all trees 1.5 inches dbh and greater in 2001 (pretreatment); 2002 (first growing season post stage one harvest); 2009 (8 years post stage one harvest), 2011 (first growing season post stage two harvest) and in 2014 (4 years post stage two harvest). None of the treatments increased Quercus stems. In the 0 percent retention, or clearcut, Quercus stems changed from 37 stems per acre (SPA), to 5 SPA immediately after harvest, to 24 SPA thirteen years post-harvest; while Liriodendron tulipifera stems increased from 16 SPA pretreatment to 523 SPA thirteen years later. In the 75 percent retention treatment (midstory herbicide in first stage; residual commercial harvest in final stage), for all species, SPA declined from 320 to 35; there were no Quercus, Acer saccharum or L. tulipifera stems found in 2014. The residual stems were Carya ovalis, Fagus grandifolia, Fraxinus americana and Cercis canadensis. Clearcutting and the 25 percent retention shelterwood showed the highest potential for recruiting Quercus.


The use of cutting-edge technologies such as wearable devices to control reactive audiovisual systems are rarely applied in more conventional stage performances, such as opera performances. This work reports a cross-disciplinary approach for the research and development of the WMTSensorGlove, a data-glove used in an opera performance to control audiovisual elements on stage through gestural movements. A system architecture of the interaction between the wireless wearable device and the different audiovisual systems is presented, taking advantage of the Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol. The developed wearable system was used as audiovisual controller in "As sete mulheres de Jeremias Epicentro", a portuguese opera by Quarteto Contratempus, which was premiered in September 2017.


Cirrus clouds have been probed at two locations in the midlatitudes of the southern (SH) and northern hemisphere (NH) with a Mobile Raman Aerosol Lidar (MARL) as part of the European INCA field experiments in 2000. MARL offers the opportunity to observe visible and subvisible clouds and to determine the optical depth τ in a range from below 10−3 up to 3. Despite different synoptic conditions we find at both locations similar macrophysical cloud properties, like mean base and top temperature among others. The frequencies of the optical depth show a characteristic distribution with a high share of subvisible clouds at both locations. While thin haze layers are frequently detected in the NH alone, we find highly depolarizing cirrus clouds only in the SH. These differences indicate that different cirrus properties and formation mechanisms are present at the two sites.


Mature oocytes can be parthenogenetically activated by a variety of methods and the resulting embryos are valuable for studies of the respective roles of paternal and maternal genomes in early mammalian development. In the present study, we report the first successful development of parthenogenetic canine embryos to the post-implantation stage. Nine out of ten embryo transfer recipients became pregnant and successful in utero development of canine parthenotes was confirmed. For further evaluation of these parthenotes, their fetal development was compared with artificially inseminated controls and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were compared using ACP RT-PCR, histological analysis and immunohistochemistry. We found formation of the limb-bud and no obvious differences in histological appearance of the canine parthenote recovered before degeneration occurred; however canine parthenotes were developmentally delayed with different cell cycle regulating-, mitochondria-related and apoptosis-related gene expression patterns compared with controls. In conclusion, our protocols were suitable for activating canine oocytes artificially and supported early fetal development. We demonstrated that the developmental abnormalities in canine parthenotes may result from defective regulation of apoptosis and aberrant gene expression patterns, and provided evidence that canine parthenotes can be a useful tool for screening and for comparative studies of imprinted genes.


The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is located at an elevation of 2,850 m on the 3,200 m thick polar plateau, a field of ice and snow that is moving toward the ocean at a rate of 10 m per year. Since the snow continuously accummlates and never melts, the elevated station must be jacked up during its lifetime to accommodate the increasing snow level around it. The foundation system used comprises a series of 710 mm high by 610 mm wide steel box girders acting as foundation-grade beams between the foundation columns from which the 910 mm diameter foundation columns are cantilevered. To keep the snow bearing pressures uniform, the footing is wider where the bearing load per meter is greater. The wider footing is made up of 90 by 140 mm timbers on edge with plywood top and bottom. As design developed, the long-term bearing pressure on the snow was determined to be 34 kPa as established by the grade beam with the least vertical loads. All of the foundation columns are outside of the building envelope to allow the addition of column extensions for jacking. At the beveled leading edge of each pod the foundation columns are outside of the first level but underneath the second level. The design was based on jacking twice, a full floor height of 3.7 m each time.


We present an approach for physics based simulation of the wrinkling of multi-layer skin with heterogeneous material properties. Each layer of skin is simulated with an adaptive mesh, with the different layers coupled via constraints that only permit wrinkle deformation at wavelengths that match the physical properties of the multi-layer model. We use texture maps to define varying elasticity and thickness of the skin layers, and design our constraints as continuous functions, which we discretize at run time to match the changing adaptive mesh topology. In our examples, we use blend shapes to drive the bottom layer, and we present a variety of examples of simulations that demonstrate small wrinkles on top of larger wrinkles, which is a typical pattern seen on human skin. Finally, we show that our physics-based wrinkles can be used in the automatic creation of wrinkle maps, allowing the visual details of our high resolution simulations to be produced at real time speeds.


Several members of the bacterial genus Brenneria are pathogenic on different tree species. Cell-free extracts from the bacterial phytopathogens Brenneria rubrifaciens, B. salicis, and B. nigrifluens induced production of the red pigment rubrifacine in the B. rubrifaciens bruI insertional mutant Br-212. Analysis of the bruI locus identified an adjacent open reading frame, designated bruR, with homology to luxR. High-performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry analysis of ethyl acetate extracts from wild-type B. rubrifaciens and Escherichia coli expressing the bruI gene identified two acyl homoserine lactone (AHL) peaks, N-(3-oxohexanoyl)-homoserine lactone (3OC6HSL) and N-hexanoyl-homoserine lactone (C6HSL). Addition of synthetic 3OC6HSL and C6HSL at 10 μM to the bruI mutant, strain Br-212, induced rubrifacine production and the ability to elicit a hypersensitive reaction (HR) in tobacco leaves. Synthetic C6HSL was less effective at inducing pigment production than 3OC6HSL at 10 μM. The bruI mutant Br-212 did not produce detectable AHLs, indicating that C6HSL and 3OC6HSL are the major AHLs produced by this species. The AHLs N-heptanoyl-DL-homoserine lactone (C7HSL), N-octanoyl-DL-homoserine lactone (C8HSL), and N-(3-oxooctanoyl)-DL-homoserine lactone (3OC8HSL) also induced pigment production in Br-212 and restored its ability to elicit an HR in tobacco, suggesting that cross-talk with other bacterial species may be possible.


In October of 1998 the category 5 storm, Hurricane Mitch, struck Nicaragua, leaving in its wake mass destruction and devastation. Numerous aid agencies and social organisations poured funds into the country to assist in emergency disaster relief efforts, and to rebuild the lives of those who lost their homes and livelihoods (damnificados). El Mirador in the city of Matagalpa is one example of the many communities built with aid monies after Hurricane Mitch. This thesis uses qualitative data constructed from in-depth interviews with participants (community members in El Mirador) to understand the level of successful community development that has been achieved, the ability for longer term sustainability as a result of community development strategies, and the areas in which community development has failed. Through an examination of the relationship the community has with the NGO the Communal Movement, the question of long term sustainability becomes important. The most telling indicator (that development practice is unsustainable) is the unproductive coping mechanisms of community members as aid and social organisations withdraw leaving members with ineffective social networks and at times uncooperative behaviour. Added into this is the arrival of new members into the community, and squatters, who have only added to the feelings of segregation already apparent, as a 'them and us' mentality develops. This study provides a detailed case specific analysis of community development through disaster relief efforts. It highlights some of the consistent, broad inefficiencies as well as more location and situation specific difficulties of community development. Moreover, it adds to the growing body of literature researching how disaster relief can become more effective and sustainable in the longer term.


Appraisal statutes providing minority shareholders a judicially-determined value for their shares may be the Model Business Corporation Act's most distinctive and creative corporate law product. This article, part of a discussion marking the MBCA's 60th anniversary, traces the somewhat tortured development of appraisal statutes from their traditional focus on providing dissenting shareholders liquidity in a broad variety of transactions to one focused on conflicted transactions initiated by majority shareholders. The historical liquidity function for appraisal, dating from the turn of the 20th century, simply no longer exists. Delaware, the other primary source for corporate statutes in the United States, continues to have an appraisal statute rooted in this now obsolete context; updating has been left mostly to the courts within ill-fitting statutory language. It took the Model Act drafters several iterations over a long period of years to fully transform their statute, but the result is a more coherent approach and an illustration of the relative advantages that can come from an iterative approach to statutory revision.


The therapeutic utility of the nitric oxide (NO)/soluble guanylyl cyclase (sGC)/cyclic guanosine 3'5'-monophosphate (cGMP) pathway is well-recognised, with NO donors used in the treatment of diseases such as heart failure, acute hypertensive crisis and pulmonary hypertension. However, traditional nitrovasodilator therapy is somewhat limited due to the development of tolerance following prolonged administration. Furthermore, in vascular disease states such as hypertension, the NO/sGC/cGMP pathway appears to be dysfunctional. Such dysfunction is thought to arise as a consequence of oxidative stress and the associated increase in vascular superoxide anion radical (•O2-) levels, leading to enhanced scavenging of NO to form the oxidant, peroxynitrite (ONOO-). Indeed, ONOO- is able to oxidise the reduced (Fe2+) heme group of sGC, converting it into its NO-insensitive ferric (Fe3+) or heme-free forms. Under such conditions, the efficacy of NO donors/nitrovasodilators are compromised, due to their inability to target these altered states of sGC, underlining the need for novel non-NO based compounds. As such, this thesis examines the vaso-protective actions and therapeutic potential of the redox sibling of NO, nitroxyl (HNO), as well as NO-independent sGC stimulators (BAY 41-2272) and activators (BAY 58-2667) in a number of cardiovascular disease states.
From a clinical perspective, NO-independent compounds such as HNO donors and/or stimulators and activators of sGC may offer considerable therapeutic advantages over traditional nitrovasodilator therapies due to their well-documented resistance to •O2- scavenging and vascular tolerance development, as well as the ability to target oxidised/heme-free sGC (i.e. BAY 58-2667) and the potential to mediate their effects via cGMP-independent mechanisms of action. Such compounds may also offer the basis from which future therapies, for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, are designed.


Research summary: Entrepreneurial start-ups suffer high rates of business failure. Previous research on entrepreneurial failure has focused on two kinds of explanations: statistical and psychological. Statistical explanations attribute excess entry to random errors made by boundedly rational entrepreneurs attempting to estimate business opportunities in risky markets. Psychological explanations focus on entrepreneurial overconfidence and competition neglect. These explanations emerged independently and have not been tested or compared in the same study. In this experimental study, we distinguish entrepreneurial markets from other types of markets and test statistical and psychological hypotheses for all market types. We find that excess entry is significantly greater in small, risky markets than in other market types, and that confidence levels account for excess entry, over and above the effects of unbiased statistical errors.

Managerial summary: How can we explain the fact that most entrepreneurial ventures fail within five years? Market risk, inadequate capital and inexperienced management certainly play a role. However, from an economic point of view, it seems odd that inexperienced, under-funded people continue to engage in risky behavior that is widely known to fail. We conducted experiments that tested two explanations of entrepreneurial failure. The first explanation – the statistical hypothesis – argues that entrepreneurship involves high uncertainty, so random errors are inevitable and can produce excess entry (or under-entry). The second explanation – the psychological hypothesis – says that entrepreneurs' mistakes are not random but skewed heavily toward excess entry; hence, their decisions are distorted by psychological factors such as overconfidence. Our experiments found support for both of these explanations. Random errors under uncertainty explained 60% of the excess entry in our experiments. However, the overconfidence hypothesis correctly predicted that excess entry exceeds under-entry, and our psychological measures of overconfidence found support in the data. We also found that the markets that most often attract entrepreneurial investment – emerging markets with high uncertainty – were the markets most conducive to excess entry, due to a combination of psychological and market factors. Hence, we conclude that potential entrepreneurs should pay less attention to their own abilities and aspirations, and more attention to the external realities of competition in the marketplace. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Some of the ideas/categories that resulted from this work suggest a common language should be built between different professionals that work together: i) consider the human side of technology; ii) important behaviours for team work are complementarity, cohesion and synchronization; iii) attention to details motivates students; iv) stimulate new experiences/new thoughts; v) master four different abilities: inform, educate, inspire and entertain; vi) the essential will always remain, although times are changing and new fields of science are coming; vii) the web changed the way we work and learn and thats more important than the way we interact with the contents of the web; viii) technology should improve teaching skills; ix) working together can be painful, so eliminating personnel barriers could result in a good cooperation/collaboration; x) team building; xi) create relevant contents; xii) build channels to reach all over the world; xiii) bridging programs can be very useful after a 1st graduation course where the main abilities from one area are already consolidated; xiv) Commitment to the team goals; xv) Psychologists are needed in teams and xv) dream university is the one that has pleasant and large spaces to be used by people and to inspire them.


The broad objective of this study was to analyse the challenges affecting the performance of utility regulators in Kenya, whereas the specific objectives of the study were, to find out the effects of regulatory framework on performance of Energy Regulatory Commission, to determine how segregation of policy formulation, policy implementation and regulatory roles affected the performance of Energy Regulatory Commission, to examine how resource allocation and utilization affected the performance of Energy Regulatory Commission, and to establish the effect of regulatory knowledge within the energy sector on the performance of Energy Regulatory Commission. The last decade has seen a worldwide shift towards greater private sector participation in the infrastructure industries. Most governments are reducing their roles as owners and operators of facilities, causing new emphasis to be placed on their ability to establish sustainable regulatory arrangements. A key factor influencing the implementation of reforms is the ability of utility regulators to effectively perform regulatory functions in the presence of pressures from government ministries, the private sector, consumers, and other interest groups (Jamison and Berg, 2008). Since the establishment of the various utility regulators in Kenya, concerns have been raised by the stakeholders on their performance, more so in so far as meeting their expectation is concerned. In trying to understand the basis of the problem, the study conducted a case study of the Energy Regulatory Commission to establish how it functions and carries out its daunting mandate. This was done through a census of all the staff of ERC and by use of semi-structured questionnaires to gather data on pertinent issues on sector regulations. Descriptive analysis of the data so gathered was conducted which led to the following conclusions and recommendations; Resource allocation to ERC has been insufficient hence hindering delivery of services to its stakeholders, the performance of the Commission has been challenged by the Energy Act which has failed to give the Commission enforcement powers thus for the energy regulator to perform to expectation, the policy makers should look into how to effectively fund its operations and overhaul the laws and regulations to give it more autonomy and enforcement powers in the sector it is regulating.


Audiovisual HIV prevention ads in a narrative format are an extensively used health communication strategy. However, if the ad is placed in the context of another narrative, it may create an unpleasant disruption and result in negative attitudes. We argue that the persuasive effects of narrative ads depend on the narrative properties of the context narrative and the narrative properties of the story used in the ad. To investigate this interaction effect, a 2 (context scene high versus low in narrativity) × 2 (HIV prevention ad high versus low in narrativity) experiment was conducted. Results demonstrate that interruptions in a scene that is high in narrativity are perceived as more disruptive and result in more negative attitudes toward the ad than interruptions in a scene that is low in narrativity. In a low-narrativity scene, a high-narrativity prevention ad increases narrative ad engagement, which in turn strengthens attitudes toward both the ad and HIV prevention.


Learning to learn has emerged as an important direction for achieving artificial intelligence. Two of the primary barriers to its adoption are an inability to scale to larger problems and a limited ability to generalize to new tasks. We introduce a learned gradient descent optimizer that generalizes well to new tasks, and which has significantly reduced memory and computation overhead. We achieve this by introducing a novel hierarchical RNN architecture, with minimal per-parameter overhead, augmented with additional architectural features that mirror the known structure of optimization tasks. We also develop a meta-training ensemble of small, diverse, optimization tasks capturing common properties of loss landscapes. The optimizer learns to outperform RMSProp/ADAM on problems in this corpus. More importantly, it performs comparably or better when applied to small convolutional neural networks, despite seeing no neural networks in its meta-training set. Finally, it generalizes to train Inception V3 and ResNet V2 architectures on the ImageNet dataset for thousands of steps, optimization problems that are of a vastly different scale than those it was trained on.


Integrate poetics into real-world spaces by bringing theory down to earth Practical Poetics in Architecture takes poetics out of the theory class and into the design studio, showing architects how the atmospheric and experiential qualities of built structures can be intentionally considered and planned. With an emphasis on analysing and explaining the sensibility of poetics at work in designing and constructing architecture, this book features projects from architects around the world that demonstrate the principles of poetics come to life. The rich illustration of two hundred colour images, including analytical diagrams, plans, sections, and photos, make this insightful guide a highly visual foray into a topic that has thus far remained more theoretical than practical. The text is matter-of-fact and concrete, yet remains richly connected to its forbears and the writings of William Lethaby, Gaston Bachelard, and Steen Eiler Rasmussen. The perspective is contemporary in its examples and its connections to the evolving science of perception. An established seminar topic in theory classes around the world, poetics tends to rely heavily on classic philosophic texts until now. Practical Poetics in Architecture brings theory down to earth to show architects how to invoke poetics when designing real projects. * Integrate poetics principles into real-world designs * Consider atmosphere in terms of form, space, and acoustics * Study actual projects that bring poetics into real spaces * Take cues from analytical diagrams of projects accounting for context Poetics the accumulated experience of place, space, and culture has become more critical in recent years as the atmospheric and experiential qualities of built spaces have become more elusive in the virtual age. Practical Poetics in Architecture provides real guidance for real projects, and brings poetics out of the mind and onto the plans.


Recently, there has been an increased interest in "lifelong" machine learning methods, that transfer knowledge across multiple learning tasks. Such methods have repeatedly been found to outperform conventional, single-task learning algorithms when the learning tasks are appropriately related. To increase robustness of such approaches, methods are desirable that can reason about the relatedness of individual learning tasks, in order to avoid the danger arising from tasks that are unrelated and thus potentially misleading. This paper describes the task-clustering (TC) algorithm. TC clusters learning tasks into classes of mutually related tasks. When facing a new learning task, TC first determines the most related task cluster, then exploits information selectively from this task cluster only. An empirical study carried out in a mobile robot domain shows that TC outperforms its non-selective counterpart in situations where only a small number of tasks is relevant.


The temperature lethal to 50% of the plants (LT 50 ) and phospholipase A 2 (PLA 2 ) activity levels were investigated in three wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) lines that had been cold acclimated 0 to 5 wks at 3°C. In the cold-tolerant winter wheat 'Eltan', the level of PLA 2 activity increased significantly during the first week of cold acclimation, but activity did not increase until the second week of acclimation in cold-sensitive winter wheat Oregon Feed Wheat #5 and spring wheat 'Louise'. The PLA 2 activity declined in all lines by the end of 4 wks of acclimation. The LT 50 decreased (greater freezing tolerance) during the time that PLA 2 levels were elevated and then increased concomitant with decreased PLA 2 activity. A chilling treatment of -5°C for 45 min resulted in elevated PLA 2 activity in nonacclimated Eltan, as well as in all three wheat lines that had been acclimated for 1 wk, but not in plants that had been acclimated for more than 1 wk. These results suggest that PLA 2 activity is involved in response to cold temperature in wheat, but the intrinsic level of freezing tolerance and the level of acclimation reached by the plants mediates its activity.


We describe a double-pulse electronic-speckle-interferometry system. Two separate speckle patterns of an object being tested are recorded within a few microseconds with a CCD camera. Their two images are stored in a frame grabber. The fringes obtained from subtraction are quantitatively analyzed by the spatial-carrier phase-shift method. Using three directions of illumination and one direction of observation, one can record at the same time all the information necessary for the reconstruction of the three-dimensional deformation vector. Applications of this system for measuring the rotating objects are discussed for the case for which a derotator needs to be used. Experimental results are presented.


Optical flow cannot be computed locally, since only one independent measurement is availabl e from the image sequence at a point, while the flow velocity has two components. A second constraint is needed. A method for finding the optical flow pattern is presented which assumes that the apparen t velocity of the brightness pattern varies smoothly almost everywhere in the image. An iterative implementation is shown which successfully computes the optical flow for a number of synthetic image sequences. 'l he algorithm is robust in that it can handle image sequences that are quantized rather coarsely in spac e and time. It is also insensitive to quantization of brightness levels and additive noise. Examples are included where the assumption of smoothness is violated at singular points or along lines in the image .