Microphytobenthos are important mediators of nutrient and carbon fluxes in coastal environments. However, quantifying production rates by microphytobenthos is difficult, and existing methods necessitate perhaps erroneous assumptions that dark respiration equals light respiration. Here we present a new method for quantifying photosynthetic rates of microphytobenthos, i.e., gross primary production, by using the triple isotope composition of dissolved oxygen in benthic flux chambers. Because the triple oxygen isotope signature is sensitive to photosynthesis, but not to respiration, this method allows quantification of gross photosynthetic oxygen fluxes by microphytobenthos without assumptions about respiration. We present results from field experiments in Waquoit Bay, Massachusetts, that illustrate the method.


Pulmonary hypertension (PHT) is a serious cardiac complication and highly prevalent in end-stage renal disease (ESRD).The aim of this study is to evaluation the PHT in ESRD and its relation with left and right side echocardiographic cardiac indices. Fifty patients with ESRD were included in the study. Echocardiography was used to evaluate systolic pulmonary artery pressure (sPAP),Tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion (TAPSE), cardiac output (CO),left ventricular mass(LVM). Cardiac index (CI) and left ventricular mass index(LVMI) were obtained by dividing CO and LVM onbody surface area (BSA).The results are : Percentage of PHT in ESRD is about 50% . Percentage of abnormal LVM , LVMI ,and TAPSE are: 76% (167-498 g), 78.9% (109-287g/m),and 18.4% (1.1-1.8 cm) respectively. Correlation study between PHT and TAPSE showed statistically significant negative correlation (r = -0.38, p < 0.05). Correlation studies of PHT with LVM and LVMI were weak correlation and statically non-significant, but technically showed a positive correlation (r = 0.109, 0.094) respectively. The conclusion: pulmonary hypertension is extraordinary common Among hemodialysis patients and volume overload have played an important role in the mechanism of pulmonary hypertension in end stage renal disease .


In this paper I explore the underlying mechanisms of the changes in public discourse with respect to the issue of racial equality that have been observed in the United States over the course of its history, with a particular focus on the changes that occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century. Specifically, I provide a formal model of social interactions in which agents are assigned to non-homophilic networks, are heterogeneous with respect to preferences for equality between the races, and have preferences both to express their true preferences and to not appear deviant from the group. In a series of numerical experiments, results indicate that the probability of a transition in norms from an equilibrium around inequality to an equilibrium around equality is increasing in the size of the minority population and decreasing in the size of groups to which individuals are assigned. ∗Prepared for delivery at the 4th Annual Political Networks Conference, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, June 17–18, 2011. †Ph.D. student, Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. firstname.lastname@example.com; https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/hendry2/www/.


In recent years, a lot of analysis was carried out to investigate data on chemical compositions of (non-)alcoholic beverages (whiskey, wine, beer, etc.) and food. However, no study has ever considered the compositional pitfalls inherent in such studies, which may lead to arbitrary results. Two approaches were compared, compositional data analysis (CoDa) and classical statistical analyses. The outcome of compositional data analysis methods provided very well-interpretable results. The method we are proposing is novel in the field of food chemistry, with demonstrated ability to analyse the chemical composition of drinks and food.


Abstract:Background: Sweden is one of the biggest coffee consuming countries in Europe with the average annual coffee consumption per capita as high as 8.2kg. This mass consumption of coffee therefore creates high level of competition amongst coffee providers in the Swedish coffee market. There are numerous coffee shops and even some food chains and retail stores selling their own brand of coffee. This study will focus on Generation Y, as they will soon be the majority of consumers.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and analyze what factors affect Generation Y's loyalty to coffee shops and examine what forms the basis of Generation Y's loyalty for coffee shops.Methodology: In this thesis, the research method is based on a quantitative approach using a questionnaire to collect data. The findings are established by using both existing literature and primary data. The questionnaire consists of 432 respondents and 400 respondents' data was used to answer the research question. The respondents consist only of Generation Y who has lived in Sweden for longer than six months.Conclusion: This study has shown that the most important factor that affects people of Swedish Generation Y to become loyal customers to coffee shops is being provided a comfortable and suitable environment. The second important factor is product quality. The third factor is service. However, for those who are students and unemployed Swedish Generation Y, price is also a factor that could influence their loyalty. Moreover, Coffee shops can use loyalty programs to get their customers' higher customer loyalty.Key words: Coffee shops, Generation Y, Customer loyalty, Customer satisfaction


The purpose of this research is to build a model for estimating the relative premium in mergers and acquisitions involving electric power companies. This evaluation is based on four groups of factors: the company's operating and financial results, the country in which the company operates, the industry the company belongs to, and the debt market conjuncture. This paper is based on a comparative business valuation method. The empirical base of this research includes data on 6504 deals that have occurred throughout the world from 1997 to 2018. This data is sourced from the Zephyr database (https://www.bvdinfo.com), which includes data on both public and non-public companies for which the amount paid in a deal is known, as well as the value of total assets. The results of this research demonstrates that this categorisation of industries, (achieved via a mathematical algorithm) corresponds almost identically to the existing industry structure of the electric power industry. The coefficient of determination of the final econometric model is more than 20 percent, which indicates a high-quality assessment. This is because the relative premium is predicted (and not the amount paid in the deal), which is in close correlation with the value of the company's assets. The scientific novelty of this paper consists in our clarifying of the conceptual apparatus (the relative premium term introduced in a deal), the selection and grouping of factors which affect the size of the relative premium, and the identification and quantifying of the influence of variables included in each group of factors. This article proposes the author's approach to the categorisation of countries and industries based on the equality of premium coefficients in the regression, as well as categorisation by groups of countries and industries with equal premiums. This composition outlines a methodology that may be used to predict the value of a business, as well as determining the value paid in a deal, in cases where such information is not available publicly. This will be of obvious interest to anyone involved in business or research in several fields. Further, as concerns further development of these results, various interesting features are highlighted which are beyond the scope of this research to investigate further. For example, the relative premium seems to be determined by variables related to the quality of the institutional environment. The correlation of political stability and premium value arises, providing fresh ground for future study.


How does tradition, a transmission of body and language, disclose a form of life? This article takes as its point of departure Talal Asad's methodological pivot away from the modern concept of "belief" to Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of "form of life." It elaborates the philosophical and anthropological implications of a rigorous notion of form of life through Asad's concept of tradition and Martin Heidegger's rereading of Aristotle's physis. Interrupting this theoretical argument, a scene from the author's ethnographic fieldwork with Orthodox Christian ascetics in Lebanon exemplifies the challenge (and insistence) of form of life. The article then turns to consider a powerful reading of form of life grounded in Baruch Spinoza's theory of emanation and vitalist univocity. While echoing the concerns of this article, Spinoza's philosophical ethic defers the central question posed by "form of life" by making the latter a world-producing apparatus. That approach to form of life foregrounds the possibility of being other than what one is, rather than the crucial question of "still experience" and its dynamic repose. The article concludes by reading this still experience alongside C. Nadia Seremetakis's work in Greece, which details the work of stillness and memory, the deathly pain of history, as sites where the cultivation of noncontemporaneous forms of life are brought into relief.


This paper introduces, a new intelligent hardware module suitable for the computation of an adaptive median filter is presented for the first time. The function of the proposed circuit is to detect the existence of impulse noise in an image neighborhood and apply the operator of the median filter only when it is necessary. The noise detection procedure can be controlled so that a range of pixel values is considered as impulse noise. In this way, the blurring of the image in process is avoided, and the integrity of edge and detail information is preserved. Experimental results with real images demonstrate the improved performance. The proposed digital hardware structure is capable to process gray-scale images of 8-bit resolution and is fully pipelined, whereas parallel processing is used in order to minimize computational time. In the presented design, a 3x3 or 5x5 pixel image neighborhood can be selected for the computation of the filter output. However, the system can be easily expanded to accommodate windows of larger sizes. The proposed digital structure was designed, compiled and simulated using the Modelsim and Synthesized in Xilinx VERTEX-11. For the implementation of the system the PF10K200SRC240-1 fieldprogrammable gate array device of the FLEX10KE device family is utilized, and it can be used in industrial imaging applications where fast processing is required. The typical clock frequency is 65 MHz. Indexterms: Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), impulse noise, median filter, real-time filtering.


In Oceania, particularly in Vanuatu, gardens are the evidence of an ancestral rural tradition in which food plants are at one and the same time an indispensable resource, the symbols of a community and the objects of barter or trade. The ni-Vanuatu devote themselves with true passion to their gradens, whitin which they collect, select and diversify a rich botanical heritage.Perusing this abundantly illustrated work, the reader will discover the full diversity of Oceanian food plants as well as the many exotic species introduced by the great explorers of the 16th century. Each species is the subject of a detailed dossier that describes amongst other things the variability, morphology, mode of cultivation and production of the plant as well as its different uses. The CD-ROM that accompanies the book provides information in greater detail for the specialist : bibliographic references, details and descriptors of yams and taros, photos illustrating the morphological variability, and much more. With the aim of preserving this exceptional plant heritage to the greatest possible extent, this work will draw the attention of a wide public to the gardens of Vanuatu, and to this Oceanian agriculture that combines a variety of multicultural contributions with great originality.


Trivia is any fact about an entity which is interesting due to its unusualness, uniqueness, unexpectedness or weirdness. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for mining entity trivia from their Wikipedia pages. Given an entity, our system extracts relevant sentences from its Wikipedia page and produces a list of sentences ranked based on their interestingness as trivia. At the heart of our system lies an interestingness ranker which learns the notion of interestingness, through a rich set of domain-independent linguistic and entity based features. Our ranking model is trained by leveraging existing user-generated trivia data available on the Web instead of creating new labeled data. We evaluated our system on movies domain and observed that the system performs significantly better than the defined baselines. A thorough qualitative analysis of the results revealed that our rich set of features indeed help in surfacing interesting trivia in the top ranks.


Medicare is vital to the health and well-being of many American seniors. However, due to its complexity, beneficiaries often need assistance navigating the federal health insurance system. GeorgiaCares, Georgia's State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP), provides free and unbiased Medicare information and counseling. The aims of this thesis were to evaluate GeorgiaCares outreach events to discern the social and demographic characteristics of participants and decipher how to best market the events. Participants of nine GeorgiaCares outreach events (n=81) completed anonymous surveys; mixed-methods data analysis revealed the typical participant to be a 71-year-old African American female. Findings suggest an effective way to assist beneficiaries in Medicare-related decisions is through the formation of community partnerships. Suggestions to market outreach events include partnering with churches and grocery stores to disseminate information and enlisting the support of community leaders to overcome barriers of distrust. INDEX WORDS: Gerontology, Minorities, Medicare, Seniors, Insurance, SHIP, GeorgiaCares, Community outreach, Program evaluation, Senior citizens, Older adults GEORGIACARES COMMUNITY OUTREACH EVENTS: AN EVALUATION


Abstract Dynamic oscillatory and creep tests are two common rheological methods used to determine viscoelastic properties. In the food industry, these tests are generally performed in the linear viscoelastic region, providing information on food structure and behavior over a range of timescales. However, this small-strain testing gives an incomplete picture of structural deformation and breakdown. Nonlinear oscillatory and creep testing, on the other hand, may yield a more complete fingerprint of food structural behavior. In this study, whey protein isolate (WPI)/κ-carrageenan gels with different structures were studied under large amplitude oscillatory shear (LAOS) and creep tests to determine the impact of structure on nonlinear oscillatory and creep behavior, and to examine correlations between nonlinear oscillatory and creep parameters. Evaluated structural types comprised a homogeneous protein gel, a bicontinuous gel, in which both WPI and κ-carrageenan exhibited a continuous network, and a carrageenan continuous gel. Creep data were fit to 4-element Burgers models for further analysis, and the predicted compliance values were found to be in agreement with experimental data (R2 ≥ 0.90). Carrageenan continuous gels showed the greatest degree of nonlinearity under LAOS (25 % strain), while homogeneous gels displayed the least. Nonlinear oscillatory data was found to correlate (R2 > 0.7, p < 0.05) with parameters used in the 4-element Burgers model. Hence, nonlinear viscoelastic behavior among materials may be evaluated by both creep data and nonlinear oscillatory data. However, nonlinear oscillatory data gives a quantitative measure of the type and extent of nonlinear behavior, while creep data indicates only the presence of nonlinear behavior. By combining information on structural behavior derived from nonlinear oscillatory and creep data, it is possible to determine nonlinear behavior over a wide range of timescales, yielding insight into structural deformation and breakdown under application of stress or strain at different rates.


LUTHER AND THE DEADLY BE'S: HIS CHRIST-CENTERED PREACHING IN CONTRAST TO REDEMPTIVE-HISTORICAL EXCLUSIVISM Michael Hopson James Boutot, Ph.D. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015 Chair: Dr. Robert A. Vogel Redemptive-historical preaching has incredible value to strengthen the preacher's arsenal, but its more radical proponents often resort to unyielding exclusivism, labeling non-conformist sermons as sub-Christian or worse. These exclusivistic leanings inevitably result in an unintended castigation of many faithful preachers throughout church history. Even a preacher like Martin Luther, with a near-universal reputation for Christ-centeredness, is unable to survive this redemptive-historical gauntlet unscathed. This dissertation contends that Martin Luther's preaching fails to satisfy redemptivehistorical standards for Christ-centered preaching, thereby suggesting those standards may be too narrow. The law-gospel paradigm in Luther's Christ-centered homiletic may function as a corrective to the potential overreach among redemptive-historical exclusivists. Certain criteria suggest Luther's preaching fails to satisfy redemptive-historical standards. Bryan Chapell offers a succinct and well-tested litmus test for redemptivehistorical sermons in his important work, Christ-Centered Preaching. Chapell outlines three types of non-redemptive sermons, aptly labeled "Deadly Be's:" (1) "Be Like" messages, which urge hearers to follow a Bible character's example, (2) "Be Good" sermons, which call hearers to obedience, and (3) "Be Disciplined" messages, which compel hearers towards greater diligence. Chapell's "Deadly Be's" will be used to measure Luther's redemptive-historical compliance. Chapter 1 introduces the main research problem and the thesis. Chapter 2 further introduces redemptive-historical preaching and its potential for exclusivism. Chapter 3 establishes Martin Luther as a potential corrective to the exclusivistic leanings of redemptive-historical preaching. Chapter 4 explores Luther's homiletical distinctives, with particular attention given to his law-gospel paradigm. Chapter 5 analyzes four sermons of the early Luther. Chapter 6 analyzes six sermons from Luther's preaching in mid-career. Chapter 7 investigates six sermons from Luther's preaching in his final years. Chapter 8 summarizes the basic principles gleaned from Luther's practices in an attempt to present a homiletical methodology for preaching Christ more effectively. Chapter 9 summarizes the main research problem and the effectiveness of Luther's preaching as a potential corrective. In many ways, his preaching both spawned and saved the Reformation. Those who desire to preach Christ more effectively should seriously reckon with his unique contribution to homiletics.


Introduction. Part I: Travelling Back in Time. Chapter 1: When, Where, What, Who? Meeting the Ancient Greeks. Chapter 2: Encountering Prehistoric Civilisations: The Minoans and Mycenaeans. Chapter 3: Shedding Light on Ancient Greece's Dark Ages. Chapter 4: Governing by Kings, Tyrants, and (Eventually) Democrats. Chapter 5: Fighting and Warring: Greece Gets Heavy. Chapter 6: East versus West: The Persian Wars. Part II: Athens to Alexander: The Rise and Fall of Empires. Chapter 7: Athens and Empire Building. Chapter 8: Dealing with the Neighbours from Hell: The Peloponnesian War. Chapter 9: Losing Their Way: The End of Classical Greece. Chapter 10: Rising Quickly to the Top: Macedonia. Chapter 11: Crowning the Undefeated Champion of the World: Alexander the Great. Chapter 12: What Happened Next? Part III: Living a Greek Life. Chapter 13: Out in the Fields: Farming, Herding, and Travelling. Chapter 14: Home and Family. Chapter 15: Going About Daily Life in Ancient Greece. Chapter 16: Plays and Pugilism: Enjoying Ancient Greek Entertainment. Chapter 17: Depicting Men, Women, and Gods in Art. Chapter 18: Building Beautiful Greek Architecture. Part IV: Mythology, Religion, and Belief. Chapter 19: Going Back to the Beginning: Myths and Gods. Chapter 20: Blending Myth and History: Troy, Homer, and Heroes. Chapter 21: Practising Everyday Religion: 'A God Put It in My Heart to Say'. Chapter 22: Trying to Figure Everything Out: Greek Philosophy. Part V: The Part of Tens. Chapter 23: Ten Great Greek Inventions. Chapter 24: Ten Things to Read Next. Chapter 25: Ten Dodgy Ancient Greek Characters. Chapter 26: Ten Great Places to Visit. Index.


Undergraduate students enrolled in the introductory pomology course at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, from 2007 to 2010, participated in a service-learning project. Students helped the community organi zation, the California Rare Fruit Growers (CRFG), teach grafting skills to San Louis Obispo County high school students and community members. At the end of each quarter, pomology students completed evaluations of their experience. Results of these evaluations were used to improve teaching methodology and the experience in which the students participated. Self-reported and instructor evaluations of the service-learning project demonstrated that students increased their grafting knowledge and skills, their confidence in learning new skills, and their interest in fruit science and community involvement. The service-learning project enabled students to meet course learning objectives of understanding and becoming experienced in horticultural techniques, such as grafting, and to meet university learning objectives of developing critical thinking and communication skills and increasing community involvement.


Can well-being be taught at a large scale, and should it be taught in schools? Does teaching well-being improve academic performance? In Study 1, 18 secondary schools (n=8,385 students) in Bhutan were randomly assigned to a treatment group (k=11) or a control group (k=7). The treatment schools received an intervention targeting ten non-academic well-being skills. Study 2 was a replication study at a larger scale in 70 secondary schools (m = 68,762 students) in Mexico. The schools were randomly assigned to a treatment group (j = 35) or a control group (j = 35). Study 3 was the last replication study at a larger scale in 694 secondary schools (q = 694,153 students) in Peru. The schools were randomly assigned to a treatment group (h = 347) or a control group (h = 347). In all three studies, students in the intervention schools reported significantly higher well-being and they performed significantly better on standardized national exams at the end of a 15-month intervention. In Study 1, the results for both well-being and academic performance remained significant 12 months after the intervention ended. For Studies 2 and 3, time will tell if our results endure 12 months after the end of the intervention. In all three studies, perseverance, engagement, and quality of relationships emerged as the strongest mechanisms underlying increases in well-being and enhanced academic performance. Our results suggest that, independent of social, economic, or cultural contexts, teaching well-being in schools on a large scale is both feasible and desirable. Recommended Citation Adler, Alejandro, "Teaching Well-Being increases Academic Performance: Evidence From Bhutan, Mexico, and Peru" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1572. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1572


With the rapid growth of smart devices and technological advancements in tracking geospatial data, the demand for Location-Based Services (LBS) is facing a constant rise in several domains, including military, healthcare and transportation. It is a natural step to migrate LBS to a cloud environment to achieve on-demand scalability and increased resiliency. Nonetheless, outsourcing sensitive location data to a third-party cloud provider raises a host of privacy concerns as the data owners have reduced visibility and control over the outsourced data. In this paper, we consider outsourced LBS where users want to retrieve map directions without disclosing their location information. Specifically, our paper aims to address the following problem: Given a user's location s, a target destination t, and a graph G stored in a cloud, can users retrieve the shortest path route from s to t in a privacy-preserving manner? Although there exist a few solutions to this problem, they are either inefficient or insecure. For example, existing solutions either leak intermediate results to untrusted cloud providers or incur significant costs on the end-user. To address this gap, we propose an efficient and secure solution based on homomorphic encryption properties combined with a novel data aggregation technique. We formally show that our solution achieves semantic security guarantees under the semi-honest model. Additionally, we provide complexity analysis and experimental results to demonstrate that the proposed protocol is significantly more efficient than the current state-of-the-art techniques.


Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) is a pedagogy that is based on research on how people learn and has been shown to lead to better student outcomes in many contexts and in a variety of academic disciplines. Beyond facilitating students' mastery of a discipline, it promotes vital educational outcomes such as communication skills and critical thinking. Its active international community of practitioners provides accessible educational development and support for anyone developing related courses. Having started as a process developed by a group of chemistry professors focused on helping their students better grasp the concepts of general chemistry, The POGIL Project has grown into a dynamic organization of committed instructors who help each other transform classrooms and improve student success, develop curricular materials to assist this process, conduct research expanding what is known about learning and teaching, and provide professional development and collegiality from elementary teachers to college professors. As a pedagogy it has been shown to be effective in a variety of content areas and at different educational levels. This is an introduction to the process and the community. Every POGIL classroom is different and is a reflection of the uniqueness of the particular context – the institution, department, physical space, student body, and instructor – but follows a common structure in which students work cooperatively in self-managed small groups of three or four. The group work is focused on activities that are carefully designed and scaffolded to enable students to develop important concepts or to deepen and refine their understanding of those ideas or concepts for themselves, based entirely on data provided in class, not on prior reading of the textbook or other introduction to the topic. The learning environment is structured to support the development of process skills –– such as teamwork, effective communication, information processing, problem solving, and critical thinking. The instructor's role is to facilitate the development of student concepts and process skills, not to simply deliver content to the students. The first part of this book introduces the theoretical and philosophical foundations of POGIL pedagogy and summarizes the literature demonstrating its efficacy. The second part of the book focusses on implementing POGIL, covering the formation and effective management of student teams, offering guidance on the selection and writing of POGIL activities, as well as on facilitation, teaching large classes, and assessment. The book concludes with examples of implementation in STEM and non-STEM disciplines as well as guidance on how to get started. Appendices provide additional resources and information about The POGIL Project.


Nowadays the issues of sufficiency and maintenance of company capital are becoming more relevant in the company law. Company capital maintenance theory incorporates requirements for the company's initial capital, the amount of equity capital, capital sufficiency, rules for the restoration of reduced equity capital, and rules for the distribution of company funds to the shareholders. At the European Community level, the rules for maintaining the capital of public limited liability companies are regulated by the Second Council Directive of 13 December 1976. In Lithuania, the majority of the Second Directive provisions have been integrated into the Law on Companies. However, not a single Lithuanian law scholar has ever analysed the main rules of the capital maintenance concept or its implementation in Lithuanian law. The article provides a structural analysis of the capital sufficiency concept and examines the implementation of this concept in Lithuania.


Present analytical methods and computer programs offer capabilities of optimizing the traffic signal coordination for a series of signalized intersections. Recently, transportation research has been directed toward the alternative development of short range, low capital improvement for the safe and efficient movement of people and goods. However, the proper procedures and methods for analyzing the effects of coordinating isolated signalized intersections are insufficient. This paper summarizes the research sponsored cooperatively by the Texas Department of Highways and Public Transportation (SDHPT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), U. S. DOT. under HP&R Study Number 2-18-80-293. The paper describes the study approach and background for designing good coordination of traffic signals using simulation analysis. These methods can provide better signal interconnection, efficient utilization of the street system, and smooth traffic operations.


In Boom and Bust, the authors draw on the natural history of Australia's charismatic birds to explore the relations between fauna, people and environment in a continent where variability is 'normal' and rainfall patterns not always seasonal. They consider changing ideas about deserts and how these have helped us understand birds and their behaviour in this driest of continents.

The book describes the responses of animals and plants to environmental variability and stress. It is also a cultural concept, when it is used to capture the patterns of change wrought by humans in Australia, where landscapes began to become cultural about 55,000 years ago as ecosystems responded to Aboriginal management. In 1788, the British settlement brought, almost simultaneously, both agricultural and industrial revolutions to a land previously managed by fire for hunting. How have birds responded to this second dramatic invasion?

Boom and Bust is also a tool for understanding global change. How can Australians in the 21st century better understand how to continue to live in this land as its conditions are still dynamically unfolding in response to the major anthropogenic changes to the whole Earth system?

This interdisciplinary collection is written in a straightforward and accessible style. Many of the writers are practising field specialists, and have woven their personal field work into the stories they tell about the birds.


– Micro aerial vehicles design, due to their low Reynolds number aerodynamics, motivated the aerospace engineering community a lot the last year, and especially the flapping wing operated MAVs. The simulation of the mechanical equations of motion for a flapping wing MAV is presented in this work to have an approximate the behavior and the condition of flight of the vehicle and to present a control model that can be implemented to auto control the vehicle. The spherical coordinates system is used to develop the equations in this work , and Mathcad software is mainly used for the solution ,simulation and graphing of the results, constants related to the size of the vehicle are changed to match different a range of existing flying insects or birds. Upstroke and down stroke of the flapping wing were modeled using two different drag coefficient. The study resulted in excluding the smaller sizes and higher flapping frequency from use of this model without any rectifications that account for the accentuated mow Reynolds unsteady effect, but bigger vehicles (bird sized) were modeled with a good accuracy and the model can be used as well for auto-control by predefined flying path.


The immense growth of mobile technologies permitted user to capture and store the multimedia files on mobile devices. It has become the hectic work for user to find a particular file of interest from huge file system of low end mobile device. In this paper we have introduced semantic file annotation technique for automatic annotation of files in mobile device. The searching and retrieval of a file from low end mobile device is based on annotation. Semantic file annotations are the meaningful comments we may apply to describe, illuminate, and remark about any multimedia file in our mobile device. Annotation are metadata, added to the files such as image, audio and video, which makes us easier to search and retrieve files quickly from our mobile phone or from PAN (Personal Area Network) with the help of Bluetooth.


ABSTRACT The April 2016 four-day "war" in the area of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, as well as the developments that followed, have unveiled a whole stratum of serious problems in "stable" Armenia, including ones relating to defence issues. The aftermath of these events will continue to strongly influence internal processes in all three state entities: Armenia, the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, and Azerbaijan. This article aims to analyse some long-term consequences of the 2–5 April 2016 events in terms of their influence on Armenian internal political and social developments. The political transformations ongoing currently in Armenia can be best described as a "palace coup d'état": they have been initiated by a ruling elite which benefited from general population's low levels of public participation and social mobilization. In the absence of a charismatic leader and strong leadership in general, a tangible programme of action, or unity among the different components of civil society, the ruling elite retains the capacity to influence the varying reconstitution of groups and to alleviate, through small-scale concessions, tensions in Armenian society.


The availability of oil resources in Nigeria has had a profound impact on the economy, particularly the economy's sectoral structure. Although the oil sector itself never did put pressure on the other sectors directly, since its labour requirements were negligible, the policy response by the authorities towards the oil revenue inflicted adverse effects on the agricultural sector. Exchange rates appreciated both in nominal and real terms, the latter considered to be a spending effect of the oil boom. Consequently, labour costs increased in terms of the exogenously determined agricultural product prices. The oil resource, undoubtedly, contributed to Nigerian agricultural deterioration.


For the past two decades many countries started transforming their economies from traditional protected ones to those of more liberalized, globalized and market driven. This period has also seen the economies becoming more knowledge oriented and Human Resources started assuming more prominence in the growth of the economies and businesses posing a greater challenge for companies to acquire and retain talented workforce (especially at the strategic & managerial levels). The knowledge economy also started witnessing the rapid rise of the agency problem- conflict of interest between managers and owners. So it is very essential to align the interests of the mangers and shareholders or at least reduce the difference between them. In this regard Economic Value Added has been seen as better alternative to the stock price and traditional performance measures. While successful EVA stories in the west are quite encouraging, Corporate India is slowly catching up the EVA adoption. Although not a panacea, EVA based compensation plans will drive managers employ a firm's assets more productively and EVA should help reduce the difference in the interests of the managers and shareholders, if not perfectly align them.


We suggest a new loss for learning deep embeddings. The key characteristics of the new loss is the absence of tunable parameters and very good results obtained across a range of datasets and problems. The loss is computed by estimating two distribution of similarities for positive (matching) and negative (non-matching) point pairs, and then computing the probability of a positive pair to have a lower similarity score than a negative pair based on these probability estimates. We show that these operations can be performed in a simple and piecewise-differentiable manner using 1D histograms with soft assignment operations. This makes the proposed loss suitable for learning deep embeddings using stochastic optimization. The experiments reveal favourable results compared to recently proposed loss functions.


This study estimates the trade potential for India using an augmented Gravity model and then attempts to determine the importance of trade remedies. Based on the panel data, this Gravity model is the first-ever attempt to estimate India's trade potential in the pre- and post- global economic and financial crisis period. The estimates of India's global trade potential reveal that the magnitude of India's trade potential is at its maximum in the Asia-Pacific region, followed by Africa and Latin America. Potential for expansion of trade in the post-crisis period is highest for countries such as China. However, in a large part of the world, India's trade has remained unrealized, which provides further opportunities to expand despite the slowdown in global demand. Nonetheless, there is a strong complementary role, as this study indicates; i.e., tariff liberalization and trade facilitation, which taken together can help build export momentum in the crisis period.


Genetic variants located within the 12p13.33/RAD52 locus have been associated with lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC). Here, within 5,947 UADT cancers and 7,789 controls from 9 different studies, we found rs10849605, a common intronic variant inRAD52, to be also associated with upper aerodigestive tract (UADT) squamous cell carcinoma cases (OR = 1.09, 95% CI: 1.04–1.15, p = 6x10). We additionally identified rs10849605 as a RAD52 cis-eQTL inUADT(p = 1x10) and LUSC (p = 9x10) tumours, with the UADT/LUSC risk allele correlated with increased RAD52 expression levels. The 12p13.33 locus, encompassing rs10849605/RAD52, was identified as a significant somatic focal copy number amplification in UADT(n = 374, q-value = 0.075) and LUSC (n = 464, q-value = 0.007) tumors and correlated with higher RAD52 tumor expression levels (p = 6x10 and p = 3x10 in UADT and LUSC, respectively). In combination, these results implicate increased RAD52 expression in both genetic susceptibility and tumorigenesis of UADT and LUSC tumors.


This report highlights lessons regarding impacts, costs and acceptance from the implementation of environmental tax reform (ETR) in industrialised countries that are most transferable to the developing country context. The report draws together the experience of the authors in selected developing countries in connection with these lessons learned and relates them to the more general developing country context. At the centre of the report are lessons learned relating to ETR design, taking into account trade-offs that policymakers in developing countries may have to consider between environmental effectiveness, fiscal objectives, private investment, social equity issues, and political considerations to ensure that ETR measures are politically feasible and sustainable.


Among the numerous agents tested on melanoma, cytokines have attracted much attention over recent decades, in particular interferon-alpha (IFN-alpha). However, in a small number of experimental assays, homeopathic products have also been used. This study aimed to analyze the effects of INF-alpha and Lymphomyosot, administered individually or in combination, on the growth of B16F10 melanoma transplanted in C57BL/6J mice. Two experiments were performed using 72 young male mice, treated with 1 x 10(6) B16F10 cells and treated with phosphate-buffered saline (I), INF-alpha (II), Lymphomyosot (III), and both INF-alpha and Lymphomyosot (IV). Subsequent morphological and immunohistochemical studies were performed. All treatments produced a reduction in tumor weight with significant differences in those treated with INF-alpha and Lymphomyosot. INF-alpha reduced the cell proliferation index and the spread of inflammatory infiltrates and produced an increase in the extent of intratumoral necrosis. An antitumour effect was displayed by both agents, as was the cytotoxicity of INF-alpha and the immune response-stimulating effect of Lymphomyosot.


The Department of Energy is developing an estimate of the hydropower development potential in this country. The Hydropower Evaluation Software (HES) is a computer model that was developed by the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory for this purpose. The HES measures the potential hydropower resources available in the United States, using uniform criteria for measurement. The software was developed and tested using hydropower information and data provided by the Southwestern Power Administration. It is a dBASE menu-driven software application that allows the personal computer user to assign environmental attributes to potential hydropower sites, calculate development suitability factors for each site based on the environmental attributes present, and generate reports based on these suitability factors. This report details the resource assessment results for the state of Texas.


This paper presents two clustering methods: the first one uses a density-based approach (DGC) and the second one uses a frequent itemset mining approach (FINN). DGC uses regulation information as well as order preserving ranking for identifying relevant clusters in gene expression data. FINN exploits the frequent itemsets and uses a nearest neighbour approach for clustering gene sets. Both the methods use a novel dissimilarity measure discussed in the paper. The clustering methods were experimented in light of reallife datasets and the methods have been established to perform satisfactorily. The methods were also compared with some wellknown clustering algorithms and found to perform well in terms of homogeneity, silhouette and the z-score cluster validity measure.


There are times when due to a lack of data or the impossibility of random assignment of cases, a researcher is limited in the use of the usual statistical and experimental methods to assess a particular intervention or "treatment" given to subjects or to a target group or region. An assessment technique often used is quasi-experimental design, whereby although random assignment does not occur, threats to validity are reduced by comparing cases which are as similar as possible. One group becomes a quasi-experimental group which has received some form of "treatment" whereas another is a comparison group which has not received the treatment. Such a research design is necessary when certain economic events occur or when economic development projects or new policies are undertaken in urban and regional economies, and there exist no two sub-regions which are exactly the same for the purposes of evaluating the effect of the events, projects or policies. Quasi-experimental design offers a solution for assessing the impacts of different urban and regional phenomena.


Lar National Park, one of the most beautiful plains, 70 km east of Tehran on Haraz Road, is one of the protected areas of Iran which is located on the border of Tehran and Mazandaran provinces. Since Lar National Park is protected by the Environment Organization and for this reason, any harvesting of plants or entry of some areas is prohibited, so this study was conducted to prepare a list and vegetative form of some of its plants for the knowledge of botanists which relates to a small part of Lar National Park. For the floristic study of this part of the region, samples were collected from June to September in 2017-2018, which 30 family were identified. The floristic study of plants in the Lar region shows that 3 families have the highest frequency. Also, our result is compared with the Poloor region in which two areas were close to each other in terms of the dry season. In terms of plant species identification, it shows that the Lar plain region as Poloor region is one of the largest families of the region Astraceae, Poaceae and Lamiaceae, study of biological form and chorology, and frequency of three families in Lar region and compares it with the adjacent area which is Poloor.


Background : The basal ganglia and cerebellum traditionally constitute motor-dedicated neural systems that facilitate movement via basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical and cerebellar-ponto-thalamo-cortical pathways. Lesions of the basal ganglia typically result in poverty of movement (e.g., akinesia) or excessive movement (e.g., hyperkinesia), and lesions of the cerebellum result in incoordination of movement (e.g., ataxia). However, recent research has revealed that in addition to the primary motor cortex, the basal ganglia and cerebellum also demonstrate projection zones to the premotor cortex, frontal eye field, and prefrontal, inferotemporal, and posterior parietal cortices, suggesting a supplementary role for these structures (i.e., basal ganglia and cerebellum) in the regulation of cognitive processes. Subcortical cognitive deficits paralleling motor impairments such as difficulty in shifting attentional set and difficulty in coordinating mental activity have been described in the neuropsychological literature. However, correlates relative to "hypolinguistic" or dysmetric language processes are yet to be adequately defined. Aims : The aim of the current research, therefore, was to compare and contrast the language profiles of individuals with thalamic versus cerebellar lesions. Methods & Procedures : Two cases with surgically induced lesions of the left ventral intermediate thalamus, and two cases with spontaneous vascular infarcts in the left cerebellar hemisphere, served as experimental subjects in this research. General and high-level language profiles were compiled for each subject and performance compared to a group of 16 non-neurologically impaired controls (NC). The criterion for anomalous performance was established as ≥ 2 SD below the NC group mean. Outcomes & Results : Evident deficits were largely restricted to complex language functions, irrespective of lesion type. Of note, however, was that thalamic lesions were associated with a higher overall proportion of significantly reduced test scores, as well as greater magnitudes of decline from normal when compared to cerebellar lesions. Conclusions : These results lend support to working theories of subcortical participation in language that promote a superordinate role for the thalamus in the regulation of higher-level lexical-semantic processes. Furthermore, the present findings also highlight the need to consider a novel role for the left cerebellar hemisphere in coordinating cognitive-linguistic systems.


The present invention proposes a dot pattern on which code information and x and y coordinate information can be defined even if the dot pattern is extremely small, and proposes an information reproducing method and an information reproducing device based on the dot pattern. More specifically, a medium such as a printed material on which is formed a dot pattern portion by arranging in accordance with a given rule dots generated by a dot code generating algorithm in order to recognize various kinds of multimedia information is scanned as image data by scanning means. Then, the image data is converted into code data. Multimedia information corresponding to the code data is read out of storing means to be reproduced.


This work aimed to detect Campylobacter species from naturally contaminated turbid pond water by PCR. A total of 16 water samples were collected from a turbid village pond. Four methods of DNA extraction were applied to centrifuge pellets from eight 100 ml pond water samples prior to attempted detection of Campylobacter by PCR without an enrichment step. These methods were (1) Tris-HCl and sodium dodecyl sulfate followed by phenol:chloroform:isoamylalcohol extraction followed by treatment with DNA clean up kit, (2) proteinase K, (3) Chelex® 100, and (4) boiling. The other eight pond water samples (10 ml and 100 ml) were filtered and filters were incubated overnight in Preston enrichment broth. The centrifuge pellets obtained from enrichment cultures were treated by proteinase K for DNA extraction. Primers CF03 and CF04 for the flagellin genes (flaA and flaB) of Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli were used for amplifying the extracted DNA. The DNA extracted from eight-100 ml pond water samples that were not subject to selective enrichment was never amplified with primers CF03 and CF04, hence Campylobacter was not detected. In contrast, the DNA that was from samples that were subjected to a selective enrichment step in Preston broth prior to PCR assay always gave amplified bands of 340-380 bp, therefore the presence of Campylobacter was confirmed. Detection of campylobacters from naturally contaminated, turbid, environmental water may not be feasible by direct PCR assay because of low numbers and the presence of high concentration of humic matter and other PCR inhibitors. The enrichment of water samples in selective broth, however, facilitated PCR detection of Campylobacter probably by increasing cell number and by diluting PCR inhibitors.


Mesozoic mafic rocks in the Dabie-Sulu orogen (DSO) are enriched in large-ion lithophile elements (LILE, e.g., Rb, K, Sr, Ba), relatively depleted in high-field strength elements (HFSE, e.g., Nb, Ta, P, Ti), and have strongly fractionated rare-earth elements (REE) and highly "enriched" Sr-Nd isotope ratios. These "arc-type" geochemical signatures have been generally ascribed to mantle source enrichment beneath the DSO by fluids/melts released from deeply subducted Triassic continental crust, i.e., part of the South China block (SCB). However, contemporaneous mafic rocks are widespread in the North China block (NCB) and possess similar elemental and Sr-Nd isotopic characteristics. Given that most of the NCB mafic rocks were emplaced at a considerable distance from the DSO, their arc-type geochemical features are unlikely to have been caused by Triassic continental subduction. Therefore, we argue that subduction of the SCB is a potential, but not necessarily the only, mechanism responsible for mantle enrichment beneath the DSO. We propose instead that the lithospheric mantle beneath the DSO and NCB was enriched prior to Triassic subduction, and that generation of the mafic rocks in both regions was due to a shared, regional-scale geological event, which we attribute to post-collisional delamination of the mantle lithosphere.


We consider a Josephson junction system installed with a finite length inhomogeneity, either of micro-resistor or micro-resonator type. The system can be modelled by a sine-Gordon equation with a piecewise-constant function to represent the varying Josephson tunneling critical current. The existence of pinned fluxons depends on the length of the inhomogeneity, the variation in the Josephson tunneling critical current and the applied bias current. We establish that a system may either not be able to sustain a pinned fluxon, or – for instance by varying the length of the inhomogeneity – may exhibit various different types of pinned fluxons. Our stability analysis shows that changes of stability can only occur at critical points of the length of the inhomogeneity as a function of the (Hamiltonian) energy density inside the inhomogeneity – a relation we determine explicitly. In combination with continuation arguments and Sturm–Liouville theory, we determine the stability of all constructed pinned fluxons. It follows that if a given system is able to sustain at least one pinned fluxon, a microresistor has exactly one pinned fluxon, i.e. the system selects one unique pinned stable pinned configuration, and a microresonator has at least one stable pinned configuration. Moreover, it is shown that both for micro-resistors and micro-resonators this stable pinned configuration may be non-monotonic – something which is not possible in the homogeneous case. Finally, it is shown that results in the literature on localised inhomogeneities can be recovered as limits of our results on micro-resonators.


This monograph presents a new model of the internal syntax of nominal phrases. The model is mainly based on Scandinavian, since with the wide range of variation that Scandinavian displays in the nominal domain, despite the close genetic relationship between the different varieties, Scandinavian is particularly well-suited for explorations into nominal syntax. Among the topics covered are the basic syntactic structure of nominal phrases, definiteness, adjective phrases, possessors, relative clauses, and nominal predicates. The model is however meant to be a tool for analysing the nominal phrases of any language. While the base-generated structure is taken to be universally uniform, the model allows for variation in the feature makeup of individual elements, in the phonological realisation of the features, and in the movements that may or may not apply. Hence, as shown in the final chapter, patterns found in languages outside of Scandinavian can also be accounted for within the model.


This thesis provides an in-depth and detailed examination of China-EU relations between 2001 and 2013. Specifically, it investigates the collaboration on Climate Change and Renewable Energy between China and the European Union. It departs from the conventional
academic literature in the field, which has treated Sino-European relations as bilateral ties between Beijing and Brussels, as well as between China and the national capitals of the EU member states. Instead, it studies Sino-European relations by focusing on individual institutions and corporate organisations. To achieve this, this thesis investigates the foreign policy formation and execution process in Beijing. It offers a detailed examination of the relations between elements of the Chinese Communist Party, as the ultimate decision maker, the Chinese governmental institutions and the Chinese companies involved in renewable and climate sectors. It analyses the extent to which changes in foreign policy priorities and the growing numbers of players involved in Beijing's foreign policy making process have altered China's EU policy. It also investigates individual actors on the European side. In particular, it focuses on whether the European actors recognise changes in China's foreign policy agenda as well as whether they have responded effectively to shifts in the institutional balance of power in Beijing. It uses Sino-European collaborations on Climate Change and Renewable Energy as case studies to answer the key research question "To what extent are China-EU relations pre-dominantly determined by the interests of a diverse range of foreign policy actors?" It thus identifies who shapes the bargaining process; on which policy each actor bargains with, and the outcomes of the relevant bargaining process. The thesis was conducted
using qualitative research methods, especially a large number of in-depth interviews, many of them with members of the commercial and political elite, and drawing the secondary sources to corroborate the interview results.


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate public online consumer complaint responses from three different perspectives: the complainer, the company and third party consumers. Consumer complaint behaviour and management has been studied in various streams of literature, yet the subsequent processes triggered by a company complaint response have not been studied so far. In particular, this paper seeks to divert from examining complaint participants in isolation by recognising interrelated communication effects of complaint dialogue and public media.

Design/methodology/approach – Looking at credibility perceptions as a theoretical construct for measuring the utility of a complaint as well as attitude-orientation as an evaluative moderator, the paper highlights the ambiguity of meaning transfer in an online complaint forum.

Findings – It is hypothesised that credibility and congruence in attitude orientation positively enhance complaint utility perceptions and strongly bias complaint dialogue evaluations.

Originality/value – The paper highlights that expected relevant results for online complaint managers and marketers alike are the inclusion of post-complaint communication into corporate image and relationship management as well as using credibility perceptions as a benchmark for online customer satisfaction and potential positive electronic word-of-mouth.


Some constitutional questions simultaneously implicate multiple, overlapping provisions of the Constitution's text. In resolving these questions, the Supreme Court typically addresses each of the relevant clauses in separate and sequential fashion, taking care not to let its analysis of one such clause affect its analysis of any other. But every so often the Court takes a different approach, looking to the clauses in combination rather than in isolation. The Court has sometimes suggested, for instance, that two or more rights-based provisions might require the invalidation of government action, even where no one of the provisions would do so on its own. The Court has also suggested that a federal law might fall too far outside the scope of Article I and too far within the scope of a rights-based provision to withstand constitutional attack. And the Court has very occasionally suggested that a congressional enactment might qualify as a "necessary and proper" means of enforcing multiple enumerated powers at once. In all of these cases, the Court has embraced (or at least tinkered with) forms of what I call "combination analysis" — justifying judicial outcomes by reference to multiple clauses acting together, as opposed to individual clauses acting alone.This Article presents a systematic examination of combination analysis in U.S. constitutional law. In so doing, it seeks to make four contributions to the burgeoning scholarly literature on the subject. First, the Article collects and taxonomizes existing examples of combination analysis in U.S. Supreme Court doctrine, demonstrating that "combination arguments" have enjoyed a wider range of application than has thus far been supposed. Second, the Article examines the conceptual structure of combination analysis, revealing in particular some underappreciated functional similarities between combination-based constitutional reasoning and other more commonly accepted tools of public law adjudication (including, for instance, arguments based on "constitutional structure" and arguments based on the "constitutional avoidance" canon). Third, the Article sorts through the practical "pros" and "cons" of combination analysis, shedding light on the questions of whether and if so when courts should advance combination arguments in the course of resolving a particular case. Finally, the Article offers some preliminary guidance regarding the implementation of combination analysis, identifying in particular four different types of "combination errors" that courts should strive to avoid. What ultimately emerges from the discussion is the conclusion that combination analysis represents a real and conceptually valid method of constitutional reasoning, which, at least under some circumstances, stands to benefit the development of constitutional law.


ABSTRACT:This study investigates the ways in which the Temple Scroll (11QT) transmits material shared with the Pentateuch in light of the particular models by which knowledge is preserved in the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman scholarly milieu. It investigates the special role epitomes, commentaries, summaries, and other "derivative" text forms have in repackaging and preserving knowledge for changing settings. It illustrates the methods and motivations for scribal transmission and interpretation of material that already appears in other texts by focusing on the discussions provided in prefaces of contemporary scholarly texts. The Temple Scroll is best understood as performing much the same function of preserving knowledge as we can observe within the context of Hellenistic/Graeco-Roman literature, and may well have been used for the purposes of education in community or broader Judean settings. The argument is facilitated by concentration on the methods and attitudes reflected in a few specific examples of Hellenistic/Graeco-Roman scholarly texts (e.g. Galen's De pulsibus, Justinus' Epitoma of Pompeius Trogus), placing them alongside the Temple Scroll for comparison. The benefit of such a comparison is that in the case of the Graeco-Roman material we have empirical evidence for the relationship between such "derivative" texts and those that they preserve.


A. Einsele: The Gap between Science and Perception: The Case of Plantbiotechnology in Europe.- A. Schrell, H. Bauser, H. Brunner: Biotechnology Patenting Policy in the European Union - as Exemplified by the Development in Germany.- M. Leisola: Bioscience, bio-innovations and bioethics.- M.P. Oeschger, C.E. Silvia: Genetically Modified Organisms in the United States: Implementation, Concerns and Public Perception.- P. Aerni: Agricultural biotechnology and its contribution to the Global Knowledge Economy.- T. Schlaich, B. Urbaniak, M.L. Plissonnier, N. Malgras, C. Sautter: Exploration and Swiss field testing of a viral gene for specific quantitative resistance against smuts and bunts in wheat.- C. Gessler, A. Patocchi: Recombinant DNA technology in apple.- J.B. Van Beilen, Y. Poirer: Prospects for biopolymer production in plants.- P.A. Vidi, F. Kessler: Plastogobule lipid bodies: their funktions in chloroplasts and their potential for applications.- F. Felber, G. Kozlowski, N. Arrigo, R. Guadagnuolo: Genetic and Ecological Consequences of Transgene Flow to the Wild Flora.- F. Widmer: Assessing Effects of Transgenic Crops on soil Microbial Communities.- O. Sanvido, J. Romeis, F. Bigler: Ecological Impacts of Genetically Modiefied Crops: Ten Years of Field Research and Commercial Cultivation


There are several types of negative markers in Komi. Negation of verbal predicates is based on negative auxiliaries in the present, future and 1st past tense of the indicative as well as in the imperative and optative moods. In the 2nd past tense and in the negation of non-verbal predicates a marker appears that can be considered a particle, although in the negation of existence and possession it has nominal features. Borrowed negative particles are used in constituent negation and as negative prefixes of indefinite pronouns and adverbs. Finally, two negative suffixes can be attached to both verbs and nouns. One of them forms negative converbs and is an abessive case suffix, whereas the other forms negative participles and is a derivational ending of adjectives.


Both targeted and standard chemotherapy drugs are subject to various intratumoral barriers that impede their effectiveness. The tortuous vasculature, dense and fibrous extracellular matrix, irregular cellular architecture, and nonuniform expression of cell membrane receptors hinder drug molecule transport and perturb its cellular uptake. In addition, tumor microenvironments undergo dynamic spatio-temporal changes during tumor progression and treatment, which can also obstruct drug efficacy. To examine these aspects of drug delivery on a cell-to-tissue scale (single-cell pharmacology), we developed the microPKPD models and coupled them with patient-specific data to test personalized treatments.


Owing to the loss of most 15th-century music manuscripts from France and Burgundy, chansonniers of Italian origin are of special significance for our knowledge of the French song repertory and its dissemination during the second half of the century. Florence appears to have been a particularly important center of collecting, judging from a group of nine chansonniers copied there between the 1440s and the early 1490s. In recent decades the Berlin Chansonnier (Berlin, Staatliche Museen der Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78.C.28) has held a special place among these Florentine sources, partly because it is the only one from before the 1490s for which there is external evidence that seemed to provide a precise dating, and partly because that evidence indicated that it was our only surviving Florentine music manuscript from the 1460s. More than 30 years ago Peter Reidemeister identified the two Florentine families whose impaled arms decorate the first chanson in the collection. These arms led him to propose that the manuscript was made in connection with a wedding involving these two families, which he claimed took place in 1465 or 1466, a dating that has been accepted as a terminus ad quem in subsequent scholarship. The manuscript thus appeared to pre-date by 15 or more years the next earliest sources in the Florentine group, and the significant repertorial differences between the Berlin manuscript and those of the early 1480s seemed to reflect this time gap. Documents in the Archivio di Stato in Florence change this picture considerably. New evidence calls for a series of crucial adjustments to the theories proposed by Reidermeister that together force a reassessment of the dating of the Berlin Chansonnier. This reassessment affects in turn its relation to several other manuscripts, both from Florence and elsewhere in Italy, and provides new insight into the repertory of songs (in particular those of Busnoys) that was circulating in Florence between the 1460s and the early 1480s.


Palladium is an attractive material for hydrogen and hydrogen-isotope storage applications due to its properties of large storage density and high diffusion of lattice hydrogen. When considering tritium storage, the material's structural and mechanical integrity is threatened by both the embrittlement effect of hydrogen and the creation and evolution of additional crystal defects (e.g., dislocations, stacking faults) caused by the formation and growth of helium-3 bubbles. Using recently developed inter-atomic potentials for the palladium-silver-hydrogen system, we perform large-scale atomistic simulations to examine the defect-mediated mechanisms that govern helium bubble growth. Our simulations show the evolution of a distribution of material defects, and we compare the material behavior displayed with expectations from experiment and theory. We also present density functional theory calculations to characterize ideal tensile and shear strengths for these materials, which enable the understanding of how and why our developed potentials either meet or confound these expectations.


The western honey bee, Apis mellifera, provides critical pollination services to agricultural crops worldwide. However, despite substantial interest and prior investigation, the early evolution and subsequent diversification of this important pollinator remain uncertain. The primary hypotheses place the origin of A. mellifera in either Asia or Africa, with subsequent radiations proceeding from one of these regions. Here, we use two publicly available whole-genome data sets plus newly sequenced genomes and apply multiple population genetic analysis methods to investigate the patterns of ancestry and admixture in native honey bee populations from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The combination of these data sets is critical to the analyses, as each contributes samples from geographic locations lacking in the other, thereby producing the most complete set of honey bee populations available to date. We find evidence supporting an origin of A. mellifera in the Middle East or North Eastern Africa, with the A and Y lineages representing the earliest branching lineages. This finding has similarities with multiple contradictory hypotheses and represents a disentangling of genetic relationships, geographic proximity, and secondary contact to produce a more accurate picture of the origins of A. mellifera. We also investigate how previous studies came to their various conclusions based on incomplete sampling of populations, and illustrate the importance of complete sampling in understanding evolutionary processes. These results provide fundamental knowledge about genetic diversity within Old World honey bee populations and offer insight into the complex history of an important pollinator.


SOMMARIO: 1. Unilateralita e/o bilateralita dei provvedimenti Covid-19 e liberta della Chiesa - 2. L'esercizio della liberta religiosa di fronte alla pandemia - 3. Gli atti rituali nell'era del Covid-19 - 4. La dimensione territoriale della religione.
The Pope and the challenge of the pandemic
ABSTRACT: The measures taken to tackle the pandemic, although taken unilaterally by the State, were shared by the ecclesiastical authority without giving rise to disputes. Pope Francis unilaterally adopted ways of celebrating the rites and administering the sacraments in order to protect life. His innovative use of the media has updated the language, the forms of celebration of the rites and collective participation of the Catholic faithful, arousing perplexity in some faithful who complain about violations of religious freedom and the principle of bilaterality in Church-State relations.


Respect for the individual is a fundamental ethical principle of human subjects research. While informed consent is an essential component of clinical research, it remains unclear how to ensure that consent for study participation is truly informed. Many studies have reported poor comprehension about research information among patients following informed consent discussions. The ethics of informed consent are even more complex in paediatric clinical research, where parents must make proxy informed consent decisions for their children.

Informed consent forms supplement informed consent discussions as an additional source of information for patients who are considering research participation. An informed consent form should contain sufficient and accurate information to ensure potential participants (or their proxies) are equipped to make a valid decision about a given research study. However, these documents have become progressively longer over time,1 largely in response to increasing regulatory requirements. As a result, key study information can be hard to find, and current informed consent forms often fail to achieve their primary purpose: to inform.

Many proposed interventions to improve informed consent forms have focused on either increasing or condensing the information presented. To date, these strategies have been largely unsuccessful at enhancing participant understanding. While multiple studies have demonstrated that shorter informed consent forms are as effective as longer forms for participant understanding, …


We have analyzed the characteristics of hydrogenated amorphous silicon source gated transistors (SGTs) by using numerical simulations and we found that the original SGT characteristics can be reproduced without introducing barrier lowering mechanisms at the Schottky contact. Output characteristics show reduced current increase when pinch-off of the source end of the channel is triggered by increasing Vds, while perfect saturation of the drain current is achieved when pinch-off at the drain occurs. According to our simulations, even in the saturation regime the current at metal-semiconductor interface does not reach the thermionic emission limit and remains diffusion limited. Gate bias dependence of the saturation current can be simply explained as a combination of increased saturation voltage and reduced output conductance, without invoking barrier lowering mechanisms. SGT contact effects were modeled by introducing a distributed diode equivalent circuit for the source contact, which reproduces very well ...


Due to its expressivity, natural language is paramount for explicit and implicit affective state communication among humans. The same linguistic inquiry (e.g., How are you?) might induce responses with different affects depending on the affective state of the conversational partner(s) and the context of the conversation. Yet, most dialog systems do not consider affect as constitutive aspect of response generation. In this article, we introduce AffectON, an approach for generating affective responses during inference. For generating language in a targeted affect, our approach leverages a probabilistic language model and an affective space. AffectON is language model agnostic, since it can work with probabilities generated by any language model (e.g., sequence-to-sequence models, neural language models, n-grams). Hence, it can be employed for both affective dialog and affective language generation. We experimented with affective dialog generation and evaluated the generated text objectively and subjectively. For the subjective part of the evaluation, we designed a custom user interface for rating and provided recommendations for the design of such interfaces. The results, both subjective and objective demonstrate that our approach is successful in pulling the generated language toward the targeted affect, with little sacrifice in syntactic coherence.


In the present era of rapid urbanization, the prime concern is how to regulate development in our cities considering the present growth dynamics. FSI, (Floor space index-the ratio of built-up space on a plot to the area of the plot) is one such regulation predominant in the development control norms, which primarily dictates the overall urban form. In this article, the author investigates the current FSI norms in codes, guidelines and development controls across cities that are classified as large cities. Author takes the secondary data of six cities to find out how FSI is varying in cities with respect to the available land and densities through an empirical analysis. Sample study area building byelaws are taken to make a comparative study on FSI. The result shows FSI in study area are not based on densities or available land but road widths and setbacks and in other cities it varies based on nature of the building activity. Finally, it is found that the FSI is independent of the land availability and density in India and there is no standard model for assigning FSI. To increase or decrease the FSI in a city, shall depend upon some key parameters and an investigation of those parameters shall indicate the FSI control in the cities. Keywords: Floor space index, cities, development controls, density, land.


The coherence characteristics of the interactions between colored solitons are explored employing a novel perturbation model. The model broadens the existing particlelike models for colored solitons and identifies a phase-sensitive force (similar to same-color soliton interaction) and a novel damping coefficient; both are important for describing the soliton capture phenomenon. A soliton-soliton parametric energy exchange is identified and analyzed as the source for capture, escape, and intermediate processes. As the solitons assimilate colorwise, the coupling is enhanced. For low carrier-frequency difference, capture occurs and a complete (periodical) energy exchange between the solitons takes place. The capture process of equal-amplitude solitons with a similar initial phase exhibits an instability that tends to break the captured pair.


Tarhana is popular traditional Turkish fermented wheat and yoghurt based product. In the study, survival of Escherichia coli O157:H7 was investigated during the fermentation of tarhana produced with different spices. Additionally, lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and yeast population were enumerated during the four days of fermentation. The pH values of the samples gradually decreased from 5.75 to 3.75-3.84 at fourth day. Escherichia coli O157:H7 could not be detected at the end of the second day of fermentation in none of the samples. The decrease in the pH might be responsible for the antibacterial effect at the end of the second day of fermentation. LAB counts and yeast population were ranged between 10 6 and 10 7 CFU/g. The tarhana fermentation for the survival of E. coli O157:H7 proves microbiological safety in the products because of the low pH and high LAB counts, and the other pathogenic bacteria may also be inhibited during the fermentation. The inhibitory effects of the spices in tarhana samples were almost the same with the control group.


Thoroughly revised and expanded to reflect current developments in the field, this text is designed to provide the beginning student of library and information science with an overview of the most important tools for general reference work and the concepts and theory behind today's reference services. The 21 chapters are divided into two parts. The first 11 chapters deal with concepts and theory and are topical. They cover such areas as ethical aspects of reference services, reference interview, the principles and goals of library instruction, bibliographic control and search strategies, training and continuing education for reference staff, the evaluation of reference services, and the management of these services. In many cases, specific applications in different types of libraries are pointed out. Expanded coverage of electronic reference service is provided by two full chapters devoted to basic principles and current trends in this area. A separate chapter covers unique approaches to reference service for special groups. Part 2 describes the general principles and sources for selecting and evaluating reference tools and the principles for building a reference collection. The remaining chapters discuss the characteristics and uses of particular types of reference tools. This new edition describes a greater number of titles of each type as well as the formulation of strategies for the effective use of specific sources or groups of sources. Scenarios in particular library settings conclude each chapter, offering realistic reference questions and appropriate search strategies. Throughout the text, boxes are used to highlight specific issues, concepts and search strategies that underlie contemporary reference services. Selected important sources for further reading are listed at the end of each chapter. This text presents the essential theory and practical knowledge necessary for an initial reference course. Its broad scope and organisational clarity should benefit students and practitioners alike.


In this paper we explore the use of a mobile video-conferencing tool (MVCT) in advanced home care of children. We present the results from a qualitative study where we have evaluated mobile video communication between the patient's home and the hospital unit. Our results show that mobile video enhances communication between home care teams and medical staff at the unit, makes more effective use of practitioners' time and that the equipment have additional values for staff that extend beyond video communication. Challenges identified are related to technical problems, limitations in the MVCT's design and the concern that the inability to handle problems may affect health care professionals' role as an authority. The benefits of the MVCT rely to a great extent on individual users' creativity and the willingness of key actors in the organization's management to find ways of improving the present home care format.


In this dissertation, high-linearity sampling circuits are presented for wideband (multi-GS/s) electrical and optical sampling, millimeter-wave circuits are discussed for wideband communication, and injection-locking is presented for nonlinear sampling and spectrum analysis. A 2GS/s sampling receiver with 4.5 measured effective-number-of-bits is presented for spectrally efficient optical communication in a 45nm SOI CMOS process. Next, jitter limitations for broadband sampling circuits are discussed as sampling rates and input bandwidths are increased. An integrate-and-dump optical receiver is introduced for high dynamic range photonic analog-to-digital conversion at a sample rate of 2GS/s. Next, a novel rate-scalable photonic analog-to-digital converter is described that enables very-low-jitter, high linearity, and low-noise photonic sampling and subsequent analog-to-digital conversion of wideband signals up to 10GHz and beyond. A special emphasis is placed on achieving high system linearity. Integrate-and-sample receivers will be discussed within this context, as they bring both signal-to-noise ratio benefits due their approximation of a matched filter, and because they reduce the subsequent electronic analog-to-digital converter bandwidth, linearity, and jitter requirements. In addition, an alternative complementary photonic sampling architecture is presented for novel emph{pseudo-differential} photonic analog-to-digital conversion, and measurement results will be provided for the photonic sub-sampling front-end and the integrate-and-sample receiver with input frequencies up to 50GHz at a 2GS/s rate. The jitter benefits of optical sampling are demonstrated with a measurement of 36.4dB of SNR with a 49.8GHz input at a 2GS/s rate. Following this discussion of high-linearity receivers for photonic analog-to-digital conversion, electronic sampling circuits in SiGe BiCMOS and InP BiCMOS are described for sampling with high dynamic range. First, the design and measurement results for a track-and-hold 120nm SiGe BiCMOS are provided with 9-bit linearity at 2GS/s with an electrical input of 1Vpp. Next, very high-speed track-and-hold and time-interleaved sampling architectures are described in an InP BiCMOS technology for sampling at 40GS/s and beyond. In the second part of this dissertation, traveling-wave techniques for millimeter-wave wide-band communication circuits and nonlinear techniques for spectrum analysis are discussed. A Ka-band high-pass distributed amplifier is implemented in a 120nm SiGe BiCMOS process with a gain of 8.5 dB, sharp rejection below the low-frequency cutoff, a bandwidth of 21.5GHz, and a power consumption of 28mW from a 1.7V supply. Following, a constructive-wave deterministic quadrature oscillator and N-push modulator in 120nm SiGe BiCMOS is presented for operation at 92GHz in W-band. Operating at 32mW from a 2V supply, the oscillator contains an integrated quadrature modulator suitable for BPSK and QPSK modulation and a measured phase noise of -78.6dBc/Hz at an offset of 1MHz. Both of these millimeter-wave designs support wideband communication and could be used in receiver designs in conjunction with multi-GS/s analog-to-digital converters. Injection-locking as a means of spectral sampling is presented for chip-scale, low-power spectrum analysis suitable for cognitive radio and adaptive radio architectures. In comparison to state-of-the-art optical and electrical sampling techniques described in the first part of the dissertation, this all-analog injection-locked sampling technique has significant advantages in terms of power dissipation and integration on-chip. Two architectures will be presented for injection-locked spectrum analysis. First, an injection-locked oscillator array with measurement results from two injection-locked oscillators is implemented in 120nm SiGe BiCMOS with oscillation frequencies close to 5.5GHz. Second, an improved architecture is presented with balanced injection-locked phase-locked loops in which detection of the input signal's frequency and power is orthogonal


A long-standing question in palaeoecology has been to determine the importance of climate driving vegetation change since the last deglaciation. Here, we investigate the local-to-regional dynamics of vegetation change during the Lateglacial and the Holocene in Northern Europe. We extracted sites from the European Pollen Database and used the squared-chord distance (SCD) dissimilarity metric to identify time periods of high pollen assemblage turnover representing periods of abrupt vegetation change. In addition, a set of generalized additive mixed models were applied to investigate the underlying dynamics of two periods of higher rates of turnover: the Younger Dryas–early Holocene transition (YD-EH; 11.6–9.0 kyr) and early–middle Holocene (EMH; 9.0–6.0 kyr). Results revealed a high frequency of turnover events between 12.75–11.5, 10.75–11, 10.25–10, 7.75–7.25, 3.25–3.0 and 1.75–.25 kyr. Furthermore, there was a strong linear relationship between pollen assemblage turnover and large directional temperature changes during the abrupt climate changes of the Lateglacial–early Holocene transition. In contrast, patterns of turnover during the Holocene were generally site-specific and during the EMH, we found evidence that the vegetation response was non-linear and highly variable across and between regions. Our results have implications for understanding the relationship between threshold dynamics and the amplitude of an extrinsic forcing. Across the Lateglacial–early Holocene boundary, the rate and magnitude of temperature change were large enough to override any site-specific thresholds, resulting in large assemblage turnovers. In contrast, during the Holocene, the vegetation response was mediated by intrinsic factors, which resulted in varying turnover rates between regions. The next research challenge is to attempt to determine whether it is possible to appreciate the velocity and rate of change that is necessary to result in these different responses and whether this rate is the same across biomes.


Bayesian methods provide a powerful way to estimate species divergence times by combining information from molecular sequences with information from the fossil record. With the explosive increase of genomic data, divergence time estimation increasingly uses data of multiple loci (genes or site partitions). Widely used computer programs to estimate divergence times use independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) priors on the substitution rates for different loci. The i.i.d. prior is problematic. As the number of loci (L) increases, the prior variance of the average rate across all loci goes to zero at the rate 1/L. As a consequence, the rate prior dominates posterior time estimates when many loci are analyzed, and if the rate prior is misspecified, the estimated divergence times will converge to wrong values with very narrow credibility intervals. Here we develop a new prior on the locus rates based on the Dirichlet distribution that corrects the problematic behavior of the i.i.d. prior. We use computer simulation and real data analysis to highlight the differences between the old and new priors. For a dataset for six primate species, we show that with the old i.i.d. prior, if the prior rate is too high (or too low), the estimated divergence times are too young (or too old), outside the bounds imposed by the fossil calibrations. In contrast, with the new Dirichlet prior, posterior time estimates are insensitive to the rate prior and are compatible with the fossil calibrations. We re-analyzed a phylogenomic data set of 36 mammal species and show that using many fossil calibrations can alleviate the adverse impact of a misspecified rate prior to some extent. We recommend the use of the new Dirichlet prior in Bayesian divergence time estimation. [Bayesian inference, divergence time, relaxed clock, rate prior, partition analysis.]


Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is widely used to sensitively detect molecules or markers in pharmacology, biology, etc. We study numerically the possibility to realize SERS detections directly on a photonic chip. It is presented that a SERS sensor created by combining a gold slot waveguide and a Si3N4 strip waveguide can be designed to excite enhanced Raman effects and extract their scattering signals on a chip. Using 3D finite-difference time-domain simulations, the SERS processes, excitation of surface plasmon in slots and radiation of induced Raman dipoles, are analyzed to simulate SERS detections in reality. It demonstrates the influence of the geometrical parameters on the electromagnetic fields in slots and therefore the local enhancements, based on the |E|4-approximation. The results show that a SERS nanosensor can be achieved based on the hybrid waveguide. The integration of this sensor with a micro-laser and a micro-demultiplexer, could achieve an on-a-chip and fully integrated system for portable and fast SERS detections.


What makes the Vietnam War so complex is the fact that it could have been prosecuted in a number of ways that might have achieved greater success--a guerrilla war using only the South Vietnamese forces, a guerrilla war using the South Vietnamese and American forces, or as a guerrilla and main force war--but it was not. One of the overarching conclusions of this review essay is the fact that the American military never received a set of clear political objectives from its civilian leadership on how to conduct the war. President Lyndon B. Johnson was a dreadful Commander-in-Chief who lacked any semblance of a political strategy for winning the war. This fact, along with Johnson's perceived need to dominate the military leadership, made failure in Vietnam almost a certainty. The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, by Dr. Arthur J. Dommen, is impressive and thorough. Dommen is an expert on Indochina and was Bureau Chief for United Press International and the Los Angeles Times from 1959 to 1971. This well-documented book takes the reader from 1625, when the French first arrived in Indochina, through 1975. It includes 4,090 footnotes. This is at times a difficult book to read, but it is loaded with information and insight about Indochina, including events in Cambodia and Laos that affected the war in Vietnam. Dr. Dommen makes it clear that the Viet Minh seized power in North Vietnam in August 1945 by using their preferred strategy of brutality and deceit. The author goes on to point out that according to one estimate, the Viet Minh may have massacred as many as 15,000 nationalists. He concludes that the French failed in their efforts in Vietnam because they did not understand how to foster the growth of noncommunist nationalism or how to protect the people under their care. According to the author, US interest in Vietnam during the 1950s was characterized by President Truman not questioning France's sovereignty over Indochina, as the Roosevelt Administration had. Truman wanted the support of the French in Europe and was therefore willing to support them financially in Indochina, and in fact did so as early as 1950. The Truman Administration provided the majority of this support without the approval of Congress. The precedent set by President Truman of acting without the consent of Congress would later influence both the Johnson and Nixon administrations and would cost the nation dearly. Dommen writes extensively, if not favorably, about how the French handled the 1954 Geneva Conference. There is also a great deal of thoughtful reflection about the US role in the assassination of President Diem. Major players in the United States' initial development of policy related to South Vietnam, such as Lodge, Harriman, Ball, Hilsman, Mendenhall, and Michael Forrestal, do not come out favorably in this assessment. The book also devotes considerable coverage to President Johnson's decision to Americanize the war in 1965, the events leading up to the 1968 Tet Offensive, and the Paris Peace Talks that began on 13 May 1968 and lasted for over four years. On the battlefield, Vietnamization of the war had its problems, but it appeared to be going well under the new leadership of General Creighton Abrams, William Colby of the CIA, and Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker. By 1972 the war of pacification was essentially won--and the South Vietnamese army was becoming increasingly professional. When Richard Nixon took office he continued the Johnson Administration's decision to temporarily halt the bombing of the North, and would later exacerbate this mistake by refusing to mine the harbors of industrial North Vietnam, thereby losing the advantage of recent tactical and political successes. This is an interesting history of Indochina containing more than a thousand pages of fact, insight, and references. It is not an easy read. …


Christine Nystrom's provocative work offers up a fresh approach to ongoing—and increasingly urgent—questions about the role of symbols and technology in shaping human experience. In lucid, lively, and always-accessible prose, she examines an eclectic range of topics—from Hopi grammar to the etiquette of beach-going to the primal allure of the horror film—to uncover the principles that structure the way we make meaning of our world. A cross-disciplinary tour-de-force, The Genes of Culture integrates insights from philosophy, the physical sciences, social psychology, and cultural criticism to pose challenging questions for today's students of media. This book is an exemplary foundation reader for graduates or undergraduates in communication and media studies.


Focusing on the U.S. and the E.U., this essay seeks to advance four main propositions. First, the incidence of the short-run costs of programs to subsidize the generation of electricity from renewable sources varies with the organization of the electric power industry, and this variation is may be a significant contributor to their political attractiveness in U.S. states. Second, despite the greater popularity of feed-in-tariff schemes worldwide, renewable portfolio standard (RPS) programs may involve less long-run social risk under plausible conditions. Third, in contrast to the E.U.'s approach to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, its renewables program is almost certain not to minimize the cost of achieving its goals. Fourth, the array of state RPS programs in the U.S. are also almost certain to cost more than necessary, even though most employ market mechanisms. To support this last point I provide a fairly detailed description of actual markets for renewable energy credits (RECs) and their shortcomings.


This study aims to examine the trajectory of sex offenders through the Lebanese criminal justice system while highlighting various human rights violations. It attempts to fill in the gaps within the literature through building on the existing research and by examining the processes and experiences of arrest, detention, court, prison and release. Recently, numerous scholars have argued that most criminal justice systems are following a popular punitive trend rather than focusing on rehabilitation. This study through its focus on human rights violations, participants attitudes and beliefs as well as issues of rehabilitation and treatment of prisoners firmly places Lebanon within the global trend of popular punitiveness.

Seventy-three interviews were carried out with sex offenders, police officers, prison guards, judges and lawyers within Lebanon. These qualitative interviews captured criminal justice professionals and offenders experiences, attitudes and perceptions surrounding sex offending and the criminal justice system. The thematic analysis of the interviews specifically focused on uncovering how sex offenders moved through and were dealt with by the Lebanese criminal justice system. Human rights violations were found to be abundant at the various stages of the criminal justice system. Participants highlighted events such as the excessive use of torture within police stations as well as prisons, the use of forced confessions, and the lack of legal representation.

Numerous factors were found to play a role in conceding the copious violations of sex offenders rights occurring at the various stages of the criminal justice system. These factors included corruption, the lack of accountability, police culture, the commonly held belief that offenders are undeserving of human rights, the lack of training, and religion. In investigating the structure and the functioning of the criminal justice system, it became evident that religion played a vital role. Religion dictated professionals positions within the criminal justice system and influenced participants beliefs and attitudes surrounding sex offenders. Because of its influence, religion played a vital role in paving the way for the re-occurrence of human right violations. For example, religion granted the criminalisation of homosexuality and the act of de-virginizing as well as legalising marital rape, all of which result in human rights violations. In order to move Lebanon, and other punitive countries, towards a more rehabilitative criminal justice approach, this study highlights the importance of training, change in legislation, as well as the separation of religion from law.


One of the problems that arises from the continuously growing amount of data is that it slows down and limits the uses of large graphs in real world situations. Because of this, studies are being done to investigate the possibility of compressing data in large graphs. This report presents an investigation on the usefulness of compressing sparse graphs and then applying Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm. A minimal spanning tree algorithm was used to compress a graph and compared with a self-implemented compression algorithm. The minimal distances and how long time it takes for Dijkstra's algorithm to find the shortest path between nodes are investigated.The results show that it is not worth compressing the type of sparse graphs used in this study. It is hard to compress the graph without losing too much of the edges that preserve the shortest paths. The time gained when running Dijkstra's algorithm on the compressed graphs is not enough to compensate for the lack of getting a good shortest path solution.