Cosmic structure formation is characterized by the complex interplay between gravity, turbulence, and magnetic fields. The processes by which gravitational energy is converted into turbulent and magnetic energies, however, remain poorly understood. Here, we show with high-resolution, adaptive-mesh simulations that MHD turbulence is efficiently driven by extracting energy from the gravitational potential during the collapse of a dense gas cloud. Compressible motions generated during the contraction are converted into solenoidal, turbulent motions, leading to a natural energy ratio of Esol/Etot ≈ 2/3. We find that the energy injection scale of gravity-driven turbulence is close to the local Jeans scale. If small seeds of the magnetic field are present, they are amplified exponentially fast via the small-scale dynamo process. The magnetic field grows most efficiently on the smallest scales, for which the stretching, twisting, and folding of field lines, and the turbulent vortices are sufficiently resolved. We find that this scale corresponds to about 30 grid cells in the simulations. We thus suggest a new minimum resolution criterion of 30 cells per Jeans length in (magneto)hydrodynamical simulations of self-gravitating gas, in order to resolve turbulence on the Jeans scale, and to capture minimum dynamo amplification of the magnetic field. Due to numerical diffusion, however, any existing simulation today can at best provide lower limits on the physical growth rates. We conclude that a small, initial magnetic field can grow to dynamically important strength on timescales significantly shorter than the free-fall time of the cloud.


In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of adaptation methods for context-dependent deep-neural-network hidden Markov models (CD-DNN-HMMs) for automatic speech recognition. We investigate the affine transformation and several of its variants for adapting the top hidden layer. We compare the affine transformations against direct adaptation of the softmax layer weights. The feature-space discriminative linear regression (fDLR) method with the affine transformations on the input layer is also evaluated. On a large vocabulary speech recognition task, a stochastic gradient ascent implementation of the fDLR and the top hidden layer adaptation is shown to reduce word error rates (WERs) by 17% and 14%, respectively, compared to the baseline DNN performances. With a batch update implementation, the softmax layer adaptation technique reduces WERs by 10%. We observe that using bias shift performs as well as doing scaling plus bias shift.


Loss of life and property from earthquakes is extensive and continues to grow in developing societies. On the other hand culture and social change have become key concepts in studies of mitigation of both natural and human-made disasters. The primary aim of this study is to demonstrate the impact of knowledge in terms of risk information on what people have thought and done to be prepared for the next probable earthquakes in both the USA and Turkey. In this cross-cultural comparative study, similar data to those from the Mileti's Bay Area study (1995) have been collected and analyzed. The present study revealed that for risks, knowledge alone is not sufficient and societal factors - along with the urgent need for cultural change in accordance with sustainable development - should be taken into consideration.


A novel soilless technique for the production of lettuce was developed and evaluated for its viability for ornamental greenhouse growers adapting their ebb-and-flood irrigation benching systems to diversify into growing lettuce, without having to purchase the conventional nutrient film technique (NFT) or deep flow technique (DFT) hydroponic systems. The experimental design was a three by four factorial, with three treatments for aggregate depth (19, 38, and 57 mm) and four treatments for irrigation frequency (once every 1, 2, 4, or 8 hours), for a total of twelve treatment combinations. Each treatment was replicated three times in a randomized complete block treatment design. Prior to each replication, seeds of 'Rex' lettuce were planted in phenolic foam sheets and grown until the emergence of four true leaves on each seedling was noted. Sixteen seedlings were then transplanted into each shallow-aggregate ebb-and-flood (SAEF) system. After 42 days, shoot diameters and chlorophyll content were measured and shoots were harvested, weighed fresh, and then dried to acquire their dry weights. Aggregate depth and irrigation frequency were demonstrated to significantly affect lettuce shoot diameter, chlorophyll content, as well as fresh and dry weight. The treatment with 38 mm of aggregate and irrigated every 2 hours resulted in significantly higher average fresh and dry shoot weights than all other treatments. The treatment with 57 mm of aggregate and irrigated every 8 hours resulted in significantly lower average fresh and dry shoot weights than all other treatments as well as the lowest average shoot diameters. Chlorophyll content was significantly higher in the 57 mm treatment irrigated every 8 hours than in all other treatments, and the 19 mm treatments irrigated every 1 and 2 hours produced the lowest average chlorophyll content. There were no significant differences in shoot fresh weight, dry weight, chlorophyll, or diameter among the plants grown in optimal SAEF, DFT, or NFT treatments. Therefore, the SAEF system can be considered a viable alternative to produce uniformly marketable lettuce shoots reliably.


A robust medical image processing system depends upon a variety of aspects, including a proper image enhancement, and an optimal segmentation. An algorithm was proposed in this paper to facilitate the implementation of these two steps. First a Magnetic Resonance (MR) image is enhanced via spatial domain filtering and its contrast is improved, next, the image is segmented using fuzzy C-mean clustering, then the region of interest which might be the tumor or edema, is detected and delineated. The key advantage of this image processing pipeline is the simultaneous use of features computed from the intensity properties of the image in a cascading pattern which makes the computation self-contained. Performance evaluation of the proposed algorithm was carried out on brain images from different MRI's and the algorithm proved to be successful, comparing it with other dedicated applications.


Popular and scholarly treatments of meaning in life often focus on this aspect of experience when it is missing, searched for, or in need of creation. In this article, I propose that if, as many believe, meaning in life is essential for human adaptation, it must be commonplace, just as other necessities are commonplace. I assert that, at least in terms of its cognitive component, meaning in life is, in fact, the default of human existence: Like oxygen, our bodies are wired to procure it from an environment that is filled with it. I review research that shows the sensitivity of meaning in life ratings to manipulations of variables that are themselves potentially trivial (such as positive mood) or quite common (the presence of pattern and coherence in stimuli). I review, as well, evidence for the notion that meaning in life levels, as endorsed by participants in a range of studies, is not horrifically low, but rather moderately high. I close by considering the implications of this approach for the apparently insatiable human need for meaning in life.


The ventrolateral medulla contains presympathetic and vagal preganglionic neurons that control vasomotor and cardiac vagal tone, respectively. G protein-coupled receptors influence the activity of these neurons. Gαs activates adenylyl cyclases, which drive cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP)–dependent targets: protein kinase A (PKA), the exchange protein activated by cAMP (EPAC), and hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide–gated (HCN) channels. The aim was to determine the cardiovascular effects of activating and inhibiting these targets at presympathetic and cardiac vagal preganglionic neurons. Urethane-anesthetized rats were instrumented to measure splanchnic sympathetic nerve activity (sSNA), arterial pressure (AP), heart rate (HR), as well as baroreceptor and somatosympathetic reflex function, or were spinally transected and instrumented to measure HR, AP, and cardiac baroreflex function. All drugs were injected bilaterally. In the rostral ventrolateral medulla (RVLM), Sp-cAMPs and 8-Br-cAMP, which activate PKA, as well as 8-pCPT, which activates EPAC, increased sSNA, AP, and HR. Sp-cAMPs also facilitated the reflexes tested. Sp-cAMPs also increased cardiac vagal drive and facilitated cardiac baroreflex sensitivity. Blockade of PKA, using Rp-cAMPs or H-89 in the RVLM, increased sSNA, AP, and HR and increased HR when cardiac vagal preganglionic neurons were targeted. Brefeldin A, which inhibits EPAC, and ZD7288, which inhibits HCN channels, each alone had no effect. Cumulative, sequential blockade of all three inhibitors resulted in sympathoinhibition. The major findings indicate that Gαs-linked receptors in the ventral medulla can be recruited to drive both sympathetic and parasympathetic outflows and that tonically active PKA-dependent signaling contributes to the maintenance of both sympathetic vasomotor and cardiac vagal tone.


Flow is a psychological state that is often described as everything coming together or an effortless performance. A variety of studies have examined the flow state to better understand how to measure flow, to gauge athlete's experiences with flow, and even to gauge new methods to promote flow. However, few studies look at flow within sportspecific setting. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether differences exist between the flow experiences of team athletes and the flow experiences of individual athletes. Sixty-four NCAA Division I athletes participated in the study. All athletes completed the Flow State Scale, as well as six open-ended follow-up questions about their flow experience. An independent t-test was calculated to compare total flow within team athletes and total flow within individual athletes. Mean flow scores for team and individual were not significantly different (p = .422). Results of this study are beneficial for sport psychologists and other researchers to better understand the flow state and how it is experienced within specific sport settings.


Conventional histories of the Constitution largely omit Natives. This Article challenges this absence and argues that Indian affairs played a key role in the Constitution's creation, drafting, and ratification. It traces two constitutional narratives about Indians: a Madisonian and a Hamiltonian perspective. Both views arose from the failure of Indian policy under the Articles of Confederation, when explicit national authority could not constrain states, squatters, or Native nations. Nationalists agreed that this failure underscored the need for a stronger federal state, but disagreed about the explanation. Madisonians blamed interference with federal treaties, whereas the Hamiltonians argued the federal military was too weak to overawe the "savages."Both accounts resulted in constitutional remedies. More important than the Indian Commerce Clause, new provisions secured by the Madisonians declared federal treaties supreme law, barred state treatymaking, and provided exclusive federal power over western territories. But expansionist states won concessions guaranteeing federal protection and western land claims, while other provisions created a fiscal-military state committed to western expansion.The two narratives fared differently during ratification. While few embraced centralization, many Federalists repeatedly invoked "savages" to justify a stronger federal state and a standing army. This argument swayed Georgia, which ratified to secure federal aid in its ongoing war with the Creek Indians. But it also elevated the dispossession of Natives into a constitutional principle. The Article concludes by exploring this history's interpretive implications. It suggests the Indian affairs context unsettles conventional understandings of the Constitution as intended to restrain the power of the state, and challenges both originalist and progressive assumptions about constitutional history.


In February 2000, a 7-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide-protein conjugate vaccine (Prevnar, marketed by Wyeth Lederle Vaccines) was licensed for use among infants and young children. CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommends that the vaccine be used for all children aged 2-23 months and for children aged 24-59 months who are at increased risk for pneumococcal disease (e.g., children with sickle cell disease, human immunodeficiency virus infection, and other immunocompromising or chronic medical conditions). ACIP also recommends that the vaccine be considered for all other children aged 24-59 months, with priority given to a) children aged 24-35 months, b) children who are of Alaska Native, American Indian, and African-American descent, and c) children who attend group day care centers. This report includes ACIP's recommended vaccination schedule for infants at ages 2, 4, 6, and 12-15 months. This report also includes a pneumococcal vaccination schedule for infants and young children who are beginning their vaccination series at an older age and for those who missed doses. In addition, this report updates earlier recommendations for use of 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine among children aged > or =2 years. Among children aged 24-59 months for whom polysaccharide vaccine is already recommended, ACIP recommends vaccination with the new conjugate vaccine followed, > or =2 months later, by 23-valent polysaccharide vaccine. Conjugate vaccine has not been studied sufficiently among older children or adults to make recommendations for its use among persons aged > or =5 years. Persons aged > or =5 years who are at increased risk for serious pneumococcal disease should continue to receive 23-valent polysaccharide vaccine in accordance with previous ACIP recommendations.


We present an unsupervised and unrestricted approach to discovering an infobox like ontology by exploiting the inter-article links within Wikipedia. It discovers new slots and fillers that may not be available in the Wikipedia infoboxes. Our results demonstrate that there are certain types of properties that are evident in the link structure of resources like Wikipedia that can be predicted with high accuracy using little or no linguistic analysis. The discovered properties can be further used to discover a class hierarchy. Our experiments have focused on analyzing people in Wikipedia, but the techniques can be directly applied to other types of entities in text resources that are rich with hyperlinks.


A major group of murine NK T (NKT) cells express an invariant Vα14Jα18 TCR α-chain specific for glycolipid Ags presented by CD1d. Murine Vα14Jα18+ account for 30–50% of hepatic T cells and have potent antitumor activities. We have enumerated and characterized their human counterparts, Vα24Vβ11+ NKT cells, freshly isolated from histologically normal and tumor-bearing livers. In contrast to mice, human NKT cells are found in small numbers in healthy liver (0.5% of CD3+ cells) and blood (0.02%). In contrast to those in blood, most hepatic Vα24+ NKT cells express the Vβ11 chain. They include CD4+, CD8+, and CD4−CD8− cells, and many express the NK cell markers CD56, CD161, and/or CD69. Importantly, human hepatic Vα24+ T cells are potent producers of IFN-γ and TNF-α, but not IL-2 or IL-4, when stimulated pharmacologically or with the NKT cell ligand, α-galactosylceramide. Vα24+Vβ11+ cell numbers are reduced in tumor-bearing compared with healthy liver (0.1 vs 0.5%; p < 0.04). However, hepatic cells from cancer patients and healthy donors release similar amounts of IFN-γ in response to α-galactosylceramide. These data indicate that hepatic NKT cell repertoires are phenotypically and functionally distinct in humans and mice. Depletions of hepatic NKT cell subpopulations may underlie the susceptibility to metastatic liver disease.


Quarterly occupation tax receipt given to P. B. Bundick of Matagorda County, Texas for his occupation of Ferryman. Mr. Bundick appears have paid a total of $2.62 on this particular quarter. The transaction was confirmed by the comptroller of public accounts, Jno. D. McCall, whose signature can be seen on the bottom right corner.


Analyzing tall braced frame buildings with thousands of degrees of freedom in three dimensions subject to
strong earthquake ground motion requires an efficient brace element that can capture the overall features of
its elastic and inelastic response under axial cyclic loading without unduly heavy discretization. This report
details the theory of a modified elastofiber (MEF) element developed to model braces and buckling-sensitive
slender columns in such structures. The MEF element consists of three fiber segments, two at the member
ends and one at mid-span, with two elastic segments sandwiched in between. The segments are demarcated
by two exterior nodes and four interior nodes. The fiber segments are divided into 20 fibers in the crosssection
that run the length of the segment. The fibers exhibit nonlinear axial stress-strain behavior akin to
that observed in a standard tension test in the laboratory, with a linear elastic portion, a yield plateau, and a
strain hardening portion consisting of a segment of an ellipse. All the control points on the stress-strain law
are user-defined. The elastic buckling of a member is tracked by updating both exterior and interior nodal
coordinates at each iteration of a time step, and checking force equilibrium in the updated configuration.
Inelastic post-buckling response is captured by fiber yielding in the nonlinear segments. A user-defined
probability distribution for the fracture strain of a fiber in a nonlinear segment enables the modeling of
premature fracture, observed routinely in cyclic tests of braces. If the probabilistically determined fracture
strain of a fiber exceeds the rupture strain, then the fiber will rupture rather than fracturing. While a fractured
fiber can take compression, it is assumed that a ruptured fiber cannot. Handling geometric and material nonlinearity
in such a manner allows the accurate simulation of member-end yielding, mid-span elastic buckling
and inelastic post-buckling behavior, with fracture or rupture of fibers leading to complete severing of the
brace. The element is integrated into the nonlinear analysis framework for the 3-D analysis of steel buildings,
FRAME3D. A series of simple example problems with analytical solutions, in conjunction with data
from a variety of cyclic load tests, is used to calibrate and validate the element. Using a fiber segment length
of 2% of the element length ensures that the elastic critical buckling load predicted by the MEF element is
within 5% of the Euler buckling load for box and I-sections with a wide range of slenderness ratios (L/r =
40, 80, 120, 160, and 200) and support conditions (pinned-pinned, pinned-fixed, and fixed-fixed). Elastic
post-buckling of the Koiter-Roorda L-frame (tubes and I-sections) with various member slenderness ratios
(L/r = 40, 80, 120, 160, and 200) is simulated and shown to compare well against second-order analytical
approximations to the solution. The inelastic behavior of struts under cyclic loading observed in the Black
et al. and the Fell et al. experiments is numerically simulated using MEF elements. Certain parameters of
the model (e.g., fracture strain, initial imperfection, support conditions, etc.) that are not controllable and/or
unmeasured during the tests are tuned to realize the best possible fit between the numerical results and the
experimental data. A similar comparison is made between numerical results using the MEF element and the
experimental data by Tremblay et al. collected from cyclic testing of single-bay braced frames. Finally, a
FRAME3D model of a full-scale 6-story braced frame structure that was pseudodynamically tested by the
Building Research Institute of Japan subjected to the 1978 Miyagi-Ken-Oki earthquake record, is analyzed
iv
and shown to closely mimic the experimentally observed behavior. To summarize, the MEF element is able
to incorporate all the characteristic features of slender columns and braces that significantly affect their elastic
and inelastic, critical and post-buckling behavior, and is remarkably effective in capturing the essence of
said behavior, even with the vast uncertainty associated with the buckling phenomenon.
To aid in the evaluation of the collapse-prediction capability of competing methodologies, a benchmark
problem of a water-tank subjected to the Takatori near-source record from the 1995 Kobe earthquake, scaled
down by a factor of 0.32, is proposed. The water-tank is so configured as to have a unique collapse mechanism
(under all forms of ground motion), of overturning due to P - instability resulting from column and
brace buckling at the base. A FRAME3D model of the tank reveals severe buckling in the bottom megacolumns
on the west face of the tower, followed almost instantaneously by compression brace buckling on
the north and south faces, when the structure is hit by the Takatori near-source pulse, resulting a tilt in the
structure. Subsequent shaking induces P - instability resulting in complete collapse of the tank.


Ocean warming drives latitudinal shifts in the distribution of ectotherm species. The rate and magnitude of such shifts are constrained by physiology and behavioural thermoregulation. Here, we investigated the thermal preference and lower critical temperature (CTmin) in female edible crab Cancer pagurus, a decapod crustacean with an ongoing northward dispersal along the Norwegian coast. The temperature selected by individual crabs from a northern (latitude ~69°N) and southern (latitude ~62°N) location was examined in a horizontal gradient (5.5-14.5°C) under a simulated day and night light regime. Irrespective of origin, crabs showed pronounced responses to the light cycle – during the day crabs stayed inactive in the warm end of the gradient but during night they actively explored the entire gradient. A preferred temperature of ~13 °C (measured as mode of loggings) was identified for crabs at both locations. Righting reflex experiments of crabs exposed to a rapid temperature drop (7 - 1 °C at -0.1 °C/min) identified a CTmin of ~1.3 °C (i.e., the temperature at which 50% of crabs failed to right from an up-side-down position), and with no significant difference between locations (p > 0.05). Our results provide important information about the functional characteristics of edible crab, and are discussed in context of the biology and ongoing northward dispersal of the species.


Traditionally the Australian system of higher education has evaluated and rewarded universities on the basis of their research output. In recent years, however, there has been a Significant move to evaluate and acknowledge excellence in teaching. Consequently many institutions have established policies and programs for the improvement of teaching. Centres for staff development, graduate award courses and research programs for research on teaching and learning have appeared in universities across the country (Martin & Ramsden, 1994). In this context several interesting developments have occurred at the University of Wollongong. First, several initiatives were designed to identify and reward good teaching. These include the creation of the ViceChancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, the use of teaching performance as a criterion for the annual review process and for tenure and promo~on decisions, and a compulsory program of student evaluations of teaching. Second, a new Centre for Research on Teaching and Learning was established. Third, the course Introduction. to Tertiary Teaching (ITT) was designed and offered to all academic and suitably qualified nonacademic staff. This course is articulated into a set of "nested" courses offered by the Faculty of Education, including a Graduate Certificate of Higher Education and a Master of Education degree. Fourth, in 1994 a policy was implemented requiring all new academic staff to complete the ITT course within one year of appointment.


Aim Treatment practices and effectiveness in cirrhotic patients with hyponatremia (HN) in the HN Registry were assessed. Methods Characteristics, treatments, and outcomes were compared between patients with HN at admission and during hospitalization. For HN at admission, serum sodium concentration [Na] response was analyzed until correction to > 130 mmol/L, switch to secondary therapy, or discharge or death with sodium ≤ 130 mmol/L. Results Patients with HN at admission had a lower [Na] and shorter length of stay (LOS) than those who developed HN (P < 0.001). Most common initial treatments were isotonic saline (NS, 36%), fluid restriction (FR, 33%), and no specific therapy (NST, 20%). Baseline [Na] was higher in patients treated with NST, FR, or NS versus hypertonic saline (HS) and tolvaptan (Tol) (P < 0.05). Treatment success occurred in 39%, 39%, 52%, 78%, and 81% of patients with NST, FR, NS, HS, and Tol, respectively. Relapse occurred in 55% after correction and was associated with increased LOS (9 versus 6 days, P < 0.001). 34% admitted with HN were discharged with HN corrected. Conclusions Treatment approaches for HN were variable and frequently ineffective. Success was greatest with HS and Tol. Relapse of HN is associated with increased LOS.


Introduction: Iron supplements, is the most cost effective and common strategy used in developed countries for the control of iron deficiency. Weekly iron supplementation programs in high schools and middle schools for girls in 2006, has been carried out. This study aimed to determine the status and practice of female students about iron deficiency and iron supplementation and its relation to personal and social factors. Methods: In this cross-sectional study in 2012, 920 pupils from 10 schools were questioned. The questionnaire included demographic information and questions about knowledge and practice. School choice as a quota of five school districts in Tabriz took place. Collected data was analysed by SPSS 13, using inferential statistics methods. Results: The mean (SD) scores of students was 52.4 (13) and practice score was 63.4 (11.3), respectively. 61.6 of the students stated that they qoften or alwaysq use tablet distribution. 8 of the sample stated that they had qneverq iron distribution in their schools. The most common reason for not taking the tablets was expressed color and taste of the tablets. Conclusion: For better and more effective implementation of iron supplementation programs in schools, iron supplementation and nutrition education classes for students or their mothers and distribution of quality iron tablets are required.


[1] We have used the SLIMCAT three-dimensional chemical transport model together with observations from the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE III) Ozone Loss and Validation Experiment (SOLVE) and the Third European Stratospheric Experiment on Ozone (THESEO 2000) to quantify the effect of denitrification on Arctic ozone loss. We have used two different denitrification schemes in the model: one based on the sedimentation of ice particles containing cocondensed nitric acid trihydrate (NAT) and the other based on large NAT particles. The model was forced using both UK Meteorological Office (UKMO) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) analyses. In the Arctic lower stratosphere the UKMO analyzed temperatures are similar to the ECMWF, except at temperatures near the ice point where the UKMO analyses are colder by over 2 K. Consequently, the UKMO analyses predicted large regions of ice clouds, in contrast to the ECMWF. The denitrification scheme based on large NAT particles gives the best agreement with ER-2 NOy observations for both sets of meteorological analyses. Although the ice scheme and UKMO analyses also produce denitrification, the vertical extent of denitrification and renitrification does not agree as well with the observed NOy. Uncertainties in the budget of ClOy observations from the ER-2 prevent an indirect validation of the best model denitrification scheme based on these data. The denitrified model runs give the best agreement with the observed HCl and ClONO2 reservoirs in mid March. However, UKMO-forced runs generally overestimate the observed ClOx during the same period. The denitrified model runs indicate that by late March 56–74% O3 loss had occurred at 460 K and that denitrification contributed 21–30% of this loss. The model runs showing the largest O3 depletion (forced by UKMO analyses) agree well with ER-2 and ozone sonde data, although these runs overestimated ClOx.


We propose a simple theory suggesting that basic employment protection can improve economy-wide welfare as it mitigates a time inconsistency problem that makes a firm's promise to workers less credible. By tilting the bargaining power in renegotiations on contract terms towards workers, basic employment protection can incentivize workers to invest in firm-specific human capital and allow firms to keep operating. This contrasts to the case of rigid labor protection, which forces firms to go bankrupt too often with economic costs. We test for the effects using a quasi-natural experiment: US workers gained basic protections between the early-1970s and the mid-1990s, but in years varying by state. We find employment protection to benefit the growth of knowledge-intensive industries. We corroborate another prediction that stronger bargaining powers of workers vis-a-vis other stakeholders since contemporaneous bank branch deregulations (i.e., reduction in banks' monopoly powers) also benefit knowledge-intensive industries. Although labor and financial reforms are rarely jointly investigated, we confirm that the direct positive effect of basic employment protection prevails when correcting for (changes in) creditors' powers and vice versa. Since the findings do not maintain for R&D-intensive industries, we interpret the firm-specific human capital in our theory broadly, e.g., as for white-collar jobs.


This essay reviews three recently published books that stand at the intersection of queer/trans studies and critical prison studies. These books show the multiple and complex ways that queerness pervades the US prison system and the devastating effects of criminalization and incarceration on queer, gender- and sexual-nonconforming, and LGBT people. The author argues that this scholarship also demonstrates the need for queer and trans studies to engage with the US prison system and for critical prison studies to use queer analytics and examine the incarceration of queer and LGBT people.


In honor of the silver jubilee anniversary of ASPA's Section on International and Comparative Administration (SICA), I was asked to write an introspective essay on my own work and that of SICA. My main point in this essay is: the comparative study of public administration ought to include the United States as well as other countries. I believe that SICA can help us understand our own country better by encouraging the study of our system in comparison with others. We often hear that because our system of governance is unique it cannot be compared with any other. Is that not paradoxical? How can we know it is unique except by comparisons? If we only knew about our own system, we might think it was not exceptional and that all systems of governance work like ours--or ought to. Indeed, that is the implied premise of works by our colleagues that describe public administration in America as though it reflected universal principles, applicable anywhere. And was that not the premise of Americans who went abroad to teach and advise other governments, especially in the new states that emerged when the industrial empires collapsed? During the 1960s I chaired ASPA's Comparative Administration Group--or CAG as we called it--which was primarily oriented to the problems of development administration that confronted Americans working overseas. Although CAG came to be identified with work on the administrative problems of developing countries, our original focus was more broadly on the comparative study of all systems of government. CAG grew out of an earlier ASPA Committee on Comparative Administration that was created to promote comparativism as a framework relevant to all administrative systems, including our own. Had we followed up on our original mandate, we might have discovered how truly exceptional our system is, why that is so, and what important differences it makes both in our overseas work and, more fundamentally, in our understandings about the problems we face here at home The focus of our work was radically changed and our status was also transformed (from a "committee" to a "group") after the Ford Foundation, in 1960, offered a grant to ASPA to support our work, provided we would use their funds to work only on development administration, by which they meant the use of American experience to help newly independent countries enhance their administrative capabilities. The grant narrowed the Scope of our inquiries. I have not followed the contemporary work of SICA closely enough to say anything useful about its important continuing contributions to the field of development management. However, I think my own recent work on the comparative analysis of American public administration can be helpful to the mainstream of ASPA members. It may also be used by SICA if its members want to return to the original concept of comparative administration as a universally relevant inquiry (Riggs, 1991a). The Comparative Study of American Public Administration The mandate to promote "comparative administration," expressed in the ride of SICA, needs to include the United States. The Socratic injunction, "know thyself," applies not only to our personal fives but to our system of government. During the 1960s CAG was sometimes accused of ethnocentrism, usually in the sense that we said to ourselves, rather arrogantly, that "we are better than they are." However, I think we were also ethnocentric in a deeper sense because we failed to understand ourselves. We cannot truly understand the limitations and relevance of our own situation until we compare it with the experience of others. Research and consulting assignments overseas give us an opportunity to do that. After the Second World War, when former colonies formed new states, Americans began to go abroad to help Third World countries improve their administrative performance as a means to help them accomplish their development goals. …


Studies have shown that skeletal muscle and adipose tissue are linked to overall survival (OS) and progression‐free survival (PFS). Because targeted therapies have improved the outcome in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC), new prognostic parameters are required. The objective of the current study was to analyze whether body composition parameters play a prognostic role in patients with mRCC.


Abstract. Recent decades have seen significant developments in climate prediction capabilities at seasonal-to-interannual timescales. However, until recently the potential of such systems to predict Arctic climate had rarely been assessed. This paper describes a multi-model predictability experiment which was run as part of the Arctic Predictability and Prediction On Seasonal to Interannual Timescales (APPOSITE) project. The main goal of APPOSITE was to quantify the timescales on which Arctic climate is predictable. In order to achieve this, a coordinated set of idealised initial-value predictability experiments, with seven general circulation models, was conducted. This was the first model intercomparison project designed to quantify the predictability of Arctic climate on seasonal to interannual timescales. Here we present a description of the archived data set (which is available at the British Atmospheric Data Centre), an assessment of Arctic sea ice extent and volume predictability estimates in these models, and an investigation into to what extent predictability is dependent on the initial state. The inclusion of additional models expands the range of sea ice volume and extent predictability estimates, demonstrating that there is model diversity in the potential to make seasonal-to-interannual timescale predictions. We also investigate whether sea ice forecasts started from extreme high and low sea ice initial states exhibit higher levels of potential predictability than forecasts started from close to the models' mean state, and find that the result depends on the metric. Although designed to address Arctic predictability, we describe the archived data here so that others can use this data set to assess the predictability of other regions and modes of climate variability on these timescales, such as the El Nino–Southern Oscillation.


The Santa Barbara County Oak Restoration Program was funded as alternative mitigation for the loss of more than 2000 oaks during installation of the All American Pipeline (AAPL). As described in the original request for proposals, this program was intended to promote the regeneration of oak habitats within Santa Barbara County through fencing and cattle grazing management. Initiated in 1995 by investigators at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Oak Restoration Program was designed as a program of research and restoration that would give practical guidance to resource managers and land owners concerned with management and restoration of local oak woodlands. This report provides a summary of the research findings and work completed within the initial 10-year contract period.


The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between internet addiction and depression, anxiety, and stress. Participants were 300 university students who were enrolled in mid-size state University, in Turkey. In this study, the Online Cognition Scale and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale were used. In correlation analysis, internet addiction was found positively related to depression, anxiety, and stress. According to path analysis results, depression, anxiety, and stress were predicted positively by internet addiction. This research shows that internet addiction has a direct impact on depression, anxiety, and stress.


Equations are derived for estimating the size distribution of particles from measurements of components of the Stokes vector of radiation backscattered from an optically thick, plane-parallel aerosol. A two-step inversion procedure is needed. The inverse (Fredholm) size-distribution procedure utilizes the lowest-order angular moment of the element S44 of the normalized scattering matrix at different wavelengths obtained from an inverse radiative-transfer procedure. This procedure requires time-dependent, backscattered polarized radiance measurements at long and short times after radiation pulses at different wavelengths illuminate the aerosol; the procedure is based on the assumption of azimuthal symmetry in order to obtain an uncoupling of the components of the polarized radiance. If the radiation wavelengths are between 0.3 and 10.6 μm, the procedure will work best if the radii of spherical particles are between 0.04 μm and a few micrometers.


Hydrograph variability and channel morphology influence rates of fluvial bedrock incision, but little data exist on these controls in natural channels. Through field monitoring we demonstrate that (1) short-term bedrock channel incision can be rapid, (2) sustained floods with smaller peak discharges can be more erosive than flash floods with higher peak discharges, due to changes in bed alluviation, and (3) bedrock channel morphology varies with local bed slope and controls the spatial distribution of erosion. We present a three-year record of flow depths and bedrock erosion for a human-perturbed channel reach that drains the Henry Mountains of Utah, USA. Starting from a small and steep (∼30% slope), engineered knickpoint in Navajo sandstone, erosion has cut a narrow, deep, and tortuous inner channel in ∼35–40 years. Along the inner channel, we measured up to 1/2 m of vertical incision into Navajo sandstone over ∼23 days, caused by the 2005 season of exceptional snowmelt flow. In contrast, flash floods caused little bedrock incision even when peak discharges were much higher than the peak snowmelt flow. Flash floods were net depositors of coarse sediment while snowmelt flow cleared alluvial cover. We document the formation of a pothole and interpret that it was abraded by bedload rather than fine suspended sediment. Finally, several slot canyons (Peek-a-boo, Spooky, and Coyote Gulch narrows) in the nearby Escalante River drainage basin have erosional morphologies similar to the monitored channel reach. Feedbacks between flow, sediment transport, and transient erosion provide a plausible explanation for the evolution of channel slope, width, and bed roughness of these natural bedrock channels.


The concept of aromaticity/antiaromaticity was recently extended to polynuclear transition metal compounds. In the current report we review recent advances made in the field of aromaticity and antiaromaticity in bare transition-metal clusters, clusters of transition metal suboxides and transition-metal clusters embedded in metalloorganic and inorganic compounds. We analyzed aromaticity in reported aromatic/antiaromatic species through the recently developed Adaptive Natural Density Partitioning method. We confirmed aromaticity in most cases though there are a few cases where no aromaticity or a different type of aromaticty was revealed by the AdNDP method. The peculiarity of aromaticity in polynuclear transition metal compounds is frequently its multifold (σ-, π-, and δ-) nature. Moreover, the presence of simultaneous multifold aromaticity/antiaromaticity leads to conflicting aromaticity which complicates assignment of aromaticity/antiaromaticity in such compounds.


Teesid : Parallelism on rahvaluules vaga levinud nahtus ning ka regilauludes regulaarselt ja mitmekesiselt kasutatav tekstiloome printsiip. Olgugi et varasemad uurijad on kirjeldanud ja analuusinud regilaulu parallelismi mitmeid aspekte, ei tule senises kirjanduses esile vajadus eristada regilaulu mitmekesise parallelismikasutuse seast kanoonilist, kogu teksti labivalt kujundavat parallelismituupi. Mitmesugustele varasematele analuusidele tuginedes on artiklis valja pakutud laanemeresoome regilaulu kanoonilise parallelismituubi maaratlus. S U M M A R Y The article proposes the definition of the type of parallelism, which is canonical in the common Finnic poetic tradition (runosong). Parallelism is very common in the oral poetry, and it is represented in various level of poetical text in the runosong tradition as well. Although the parallelism of runosong has been described and analysed from many aspects, the previous researchers have not perceived or expressed the need to discern and define the type of parallelism canonical to the runosong among all the variants of parallelism represented in the runosong texts. Canonical poetical feature should occur with high regularity in the texts of respective tradition and fit in the whole poetical system. Relying on her own previous research on runosongs and proverbs demonstrating the mutual dependency of alliteration and parallelism typical to runosong (Sarv 1999, 2000, 2003), the results of syntactic analysis of runosong texts in H. Metslang's dissertation (1978), Juhan Peegel's definition of poetical synonyms in runosong (Peegel 2004), and Ewald Lang's concept of quasisynonymy (Lang 1987), the author proposes the definition of the canonical parallelism of runosong as follows: it is a grammatical verse parallelism where all or some of the syntactic elements of the main verse have corresponding parallels in the successive lines representing the same general notion, and interpreted in the context of the parallelism as semantically equivalent, irrespective of their semantic relations in the colloquial language (equivalence, synonymy, metonymy, metaphor, analogy, antonymy, hyponymy etc.). Because of this semantical equivalence, the parallel words can be selected and combined into the parallel verses according to their formal features enabling the metrical alignment and alliteration. The article also points to the problems with the classification of runosong parallelism to the analogous and synonymous by Wolfgang Steinitz (1934), widely used in the runosong discourse: although analogy and synonymy probably represent the most remarkable semantic relations between the parallel lines, it is not easy to make clear distinction between synonymous and analogous lines (or concepts)—even in the colloquial non-poetic language the synonyms are usually not equivalent in all aspects of meaning; the regular use of poetical synonyms in runosongs makes it impossible at all—the geese, ducks, and grouses as different birds are analogous in the colloquial language, but synonymous in the runosong all denoting the group of maidens.


Therapeutic communities (TC's) are consciously designed, living-learning environments designed to evoke social, psychological and behavioural change. The success of the residential TC model saw these community-led, self-help environments for addicts move into custodial settings and early evidence suggests this transition was effective. The purpose of this paper is to examine the evidence relevant to the effectiveness of prison based, drug-free TCs.,In order to establish their true efficiency, particular focus has been placed on studies conducted over the last ten years (2007-2017).,To date, the TC remains superior to other forms of drug treatment in reducing recidivism and drug relapse amongst addicts who offend.,Outcomes of this review highlighted the importance of aftercare in providing transitional support; a fundamental aspect of treatment necessary for success and for maintaining long-term recovery post release.


In the past generation, colour in art photography has moved from being a novelty to being a default, a standard. But in actuality, colour has changed a great deal in recent years, partly through the capabilities of digital cameras, and partly through the leaps made in printing and colour publishing. Walker Evans once described colour photography as vulgar, and therefore valid "when the point of a picture is precisely its vulgarity, or its color-accident through man's hands, not God's." Evans was writing in 1969, when color reproduction was still quite crude. He would change his mind if he saw how sensitive it has become The aim of this Platform series, organized by David Campany, writer, curator and artist, is to bring together younger practitioners who are at the forefront of using colour in innovative ways, older photographers whose work in colour continues to be influential.


Chromosome translocations have long been known to be causative events in cancer. First observed as recurrent translocations in lymphomas and leukaemias, translocations are also found in solid tumours. One of the key hallmarks of cancer is genome instability, and chromosome translocations represent a critical form of genome instability that reflects mis-repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). DSBs are repaired by two main pathways, non-homologous end joining and homologous recombination, and chromosome translocations can be created by both of these pathways. Many translocations associated with specific cancers are recurrent, reflecting selective pressure for inactivated tumour suppressor genes or activated oncogenes, which are early drivers of cancer phenotypes. Cancer therapeutics, including DNA reactive chemicals, topoisomerase inhibitors and radiation, are effective cancer treatments, but they can induce translocation-mediated secondary malignancies at significant frequencies. Reducing the risk of these sequelae is an important goal in cancer research.

Key Concepts

Chromosome translocations are critical genomic rearrangements that are frequently found in lymphoid and solid tumours and other diseases.
Translocations arise when DNA double-strand breaks arise simultaneously on two separate chromosomes and are mis-rejoined.
Translocations observed in cancer may inactivate tumour suppressor genes or activate oncogenes by gene fusion or juxtaposition of a strong promoter with a proto-oncogene.
Translocations are formed primarily through alternative non-homologous end joining, but other double-strand break repair mechanisms can contribute to translocation spectra, including classical non-homologous end joining, homologous recombination and single-strand annealing.
Cancer therapeutics may cause translocations that generate secondary, therapy-induced cancers.
Translocation efficiency and junction positions are regulated by many factors including programmed DNA double-strand breaks, spontaneous and induced DNA damage, DNA repair pathways, structural elements in DNA sequences such as repeated sequences and palindromes, relative locations chromosomes within nuclei and epigenetic factors.

Keywords:

genome instability;
DNA repair;
chromatin;
cancer therapy;
oncogenes;
tumour suppressor genes;
epigenetics;
non-homologous end joining;
homologous recombination


This paper presents an abstract general model for representing the belief systems of resource-bounded reasoning agents. The intuition which underlies this new model is that it is possible to capture the key properties of many different types of belief system in a structure called a belief extension relation. The paper shows how such a relation may be derived for any system that satisfies some basic properties. The resulting formalism is simple, and yet suf-ficiently rich that it generalises many other frameworks for representing belief. A logic is defined, using the new model to give a semantics to belief modalities. The properties of the model and logic are discussed in detail. The paper closes with a discussion and remarks on future work.


In this article, Facebook, as a communicative space, is treated as a public sphere in order to identify processes of colonization and emancipation. The analysis focuses on Facebook's communicative-structural contexts, in particular from the viewpoint of user terms, user manoeuvre, privacy/data use policy, and ownership and use of uploaded material. The analysis is also based on qualitative data from Danish Facebook users, where the focus was on the users' motivation and use, their perceptions of ownership and consumerism, as well as their views on the public/private distinction that Facebook allows for/commands for. Theoretically, the article is grounded in Jurgen Habermas' various writings on the public sphere, as well as 'digital adaptations' to his theory. When looked upon from the communicative-structural contexts, processes of colonization are apparent, particularly in the various grey zones identified in Facebook's privacy/data use policy, its state-ments of rights and responsibilities and in the fashion in which users are treated as consumers. Even though the Danish Facebook users identified with this, they still conceive of Facebook as being an emancipative communicative space, as they prioritize different features of Facebook, namely networking, practical organisation, maintaining friendships, and leisure.


It is widely accepted within Jewish historiography that the 'Six Day War' (1967) had a profound effect on the British Jewish community's relationship with Israel and Zionism. While this scholarship touches on the affective nature of this relationship, it rarely gives this aspect sustained consideration. Instead of seeing Zionism as an ideology or a political movement, this article argues that the hegemonic way that Zionism has existed within British Jewry since 1967 is as an affective disposition primarily lived out on the planes of popular culture and the British Jewish everyday. As such, it can be more accurately labelled Popular Zionism. In order to make this argument, this article uses a theoretical framework developed by Lawrence Grossberg that brings the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to bear on British cultural studies and supports it by drawing on 12 semi-structured interviews with British Jews and original archival material.


Most existing tag-based social image search engines present search results as a ranked list of images, which cannot be consumed by users in a natural and intuitive manner. In this paper, we present a novel concept-preserving image search results summarization algorithm named Prism. Prism exploits both visual features and tags of the search results to generate high quality summary, which not only breaks the results into visually and semantically coherent clusters but it also maximizes the coverage of the summary w.r.t the original search results. It first constructs a visual similarity graph where the nodes are images in the search results and the edges represent visual similarities between pairs of images. This graph is optimally decomposed and compressed into a set of concept-preserving subgraphs based on a set of summarization objectives. Images in a concept-preserving subgraph are visually and semantically cohesive and are described by a minimal set of tags or concepts. Lastly, one or more exemplar images from each subgraph is selected to form the exemplar summary of the result set. Through empirical study, we demonstrate the effectiveness of Prism against state-of-the-art image summarization and clustering algorithms.


Approximately 10% of humans with anophthalmia (absent eye) or severe microphthalmia (small eye) show haploid insufficiency due to mutations in SOX2, a SOXB1-HMG box transcription factor. However, at present, the molecular or cellular mechanisms responsible for these conditions are poorly understood. Here, we directly assessed the requirement for SOX2 during eye development by generating a gene-dosage allelic series of Sox2 mutations in the mouse. The Sox2 mutant mice display a range of eye phenotypes consistent with human syndromes and the severity of these phenotypes directly relates to the levels of SOX2 expression found in progenitor cells of the neural retina. Retinal progenitor cells with conditionally ablated Sox2 lose competence to both proliferate and terminally differentiate. In contrast, in Sox2 hypomorphic/null mice, a reduction of SOX2 expression to <40% of normal causes variable microphthalmia as a result of aberrant neural progenitor differentiation. Furthermore, we provide genetic and molecular evidence that SOX2 activity, in a concentration-dependent manner, plays a key role in the regulation of the NOTCH1 signaling pathway in retinal progenitor cells. Collectively, these results show that precise regulation of SOX2 dosage is critical for temporal and spatial regulation of retinal progenitor cell differentiation and provide a cellular and molecular model for understanding how hypomorphic levels of SOX2 cause retinal defects in humans.


The purpose of the paper is to explore the connection between multivariate homogeneity tests and AUC optimization. The latter problem has recently received much attention in the statistical learning literature. From the elementary observation that, in the two-sample problem setup, the null assumption corresponds to the situation where the area under the optimal ROC curve is equal to 1/2, we propose a two-stage testing method based on data splitting. A nearly optimal scoring function in the AUC sense is first learnt from one of the two half-samples. Data from the remaining half-sample are then projected onto the real line and eventually ranked according to the scoring function computed at the first stage. The last step amounts to performing a standard Mann-Whitney Wilcoxon test in the one-dimensional framework. We show that the learning step of the procedure does not affect the consistency of the test as well as its properties in terms of power, provided the ranking produced is accurate enough in the AUC sense. The results of a numerical experiment are eventually displayed in order to show the efficiency of the method.


Indologist Ronald Inden has in the past raised questions about the images of a "traditional" or "medieval" India deployed by colonial scholars and rulers - "Orientalists" - and has also argued that a history of "early medieval" India very different from both the colonial and nationalist accounts could be written. This volume is designed as an important first step towards that goal. The authors look closely at three genres of texts that have been crucial to the representations of precolonial India. All three essays challenge not only colonialist scholarship but the attempts by religious nationalists to identify Hinduism as the essence of national identity in Idia and Buddhism as the essence of nationality in Sri Lanka.


Arts speech therapy (AST) is a therapeutic method within complementary medicine and has been practiced for decades for various medical conditions. It comprises listening and the recitation of different forms of speech exercises under the guidance of a licensed speech therapist. The aim of our study was to noninvasively investigate whether different types of recitation influence hemodynamics and oxygenation in the brain and skeletal leg muscle using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Seventeen healthy volunteers (eight men and nine women, mean age ± standard deviation 35.6 ± 12.7 years) were enrolled in the study. Each subject was measured three times on different days with the different types of recitation: hexameter, alliteration, and prose verse. Before, during, and after recitation, relative concentration changes of oxyhemoglobin (Δ[O2Hb]), deoxyhemoglobin (Δ[HHb]), total hemoglobin (Δ[tHb]), and tissue oxygenation saturation (StO2) were measured in the brain and skeletal leg muscle using a NIRS device. The study was performed with a randomized crossover design. Significant concentration changes were found during recitation of all verses, with mainly a decrease in Δ[O2Hb] and ΔStO2 in the brain, and an increase in Δ[O2Hb] and Δ[tHb] in the leg muscle during recitation. After the recitations, significant changes were mainly increases of Δ[HHb] and Δ[tHb] in the calf muscle. The Mayer wave spectral power (MWP) was also significantly affected, i.e., mainly the MWP of the Δ[O2Hb] and Δ[tHb] increased in the brain during recitation of hexameter and prose verse. The changes in MWP were also significantly different between hexameter and alliteration, and hexameter and prose. Possible physiological explanations for these changes are discussed. A probable reason is a different effect of recitations on the sympathetic nervous system. In conclusion, these changes show that AST has relevant effects on the hemodynamics and oxygenation of the brain and muscle.


This thesis investigates how mobile and social technologies are influencing informal learning in the context of online community membership. The development of mobile technologies that use Global Positioning System (GPS) data to pinpoint geographical location together with the rapidly evolving Web 2.0 applications supporting the creation and consumption of content suggest a potential for cooperative informal learning linked to location. This research explores whether this potential has been realised.

Two pilot studies were conducted, a technology-enhanced Birdwatch (16 participants) and a GPS-guided Nature Trail (11 participants) to evaluate the effects of connected, location aware technology on informal learning and community building. The main study focused on the Geocaching community, a geographically dispersed group who use mobile and Web 2.0 technologies to link the virtual social spaces of the internet with the physical spaces that surround them. This research built on insights from the Mobilearn project that mobile learning is connected to the mobility of the learner moving between different sources of technological and social resources, rather than the technology (Attewell and Savill-Smith, 2004).

Online survey participants were recruited from the Geocaching forums. From the 659 responses, five linked case studies were selected for interviews. This data was supplemented by information collected from the Geocaching website and forums and analysed using qualitative techniques.

The work reported in this thesis reinforces the Preece and Shneiderman (2009) four stage communities model, illustrating that learning opportunities are built into the community membership trajectory. It uncovered novel ways of using mobile and Web 2.0 technologies to create learning activities connected to location. It also revealed a growing undercurrent of cooperative informal learning through distributed networks of connected individuals who made innovative use of both mobile and social technologies to create a persistent digital narrative of location which served as a community resource.


Abstract
 Seven mosses, Erpodium biseriatum, Floribundaria pseudofloribunda, Leptodictyum riparium, Macromitrium serpens, Rhodobryum aubertii, Sematophyllum phoeniceum, Trichostomum brachydontium, and one liverwort Lepidozia flexuosa, are new for the New Caledonian flora following identification of some gatherings made in 2008 and herbarium specimens at PC and REN. In addition, new localities have been found for three species of mosses recently discovered in the Territory, Anomodon pseudotristis, Calymperes motlei, Euptychium piliferum and two new synonyms are given for Paris nomina nuda, the moss Vesicularia compienei (= V. subfuscescens) and the liverwort Lepidozia etesseana (= Telaranea kogiana). Moreover two doubtful names of the recent checklist of liverworts are rejected after examination of specimens cited from New Caledonia, Lepidozia supradecomposita and Telaranea lawesii and the data of Zoopsis liukiuensis in New Caledonia earlier than its first publication is reported. In spite of the relatively numerous data dealing with it, the knowledge of bryophyte flora in New Caledonia will increase and be clarified by sampling many widely overlooked areas (for example dry forests) and biotopes and re-examination of herbarium collections.


Abstract This study presents the first documented observations of a brachyuran crab's proactive fishing behaviour in conjunction with mangrove pneumatophores which are employed as prey-localization devices. All ecological data were recorded in situ using simple behavioural observations, visual census and field experiments. Field experiments were based on stimulus-response and ecological surveys on random displacement. Assemblages of Metopograpsus messor were observed daily performing a foraging/predatory tide-related cyclic behaviour pattern in an arid mangrove ecosystem which experiences challenging environmental conditions. Prey-localizing behaviour was observed during the flood tide when pneumatophore-borne vibrations were used to identify potential prey. The prey simulation field experiment (where a single pneumatophore was stimulated by knocking) showed that in >93% of instances a crab approached the exact pneumatophore being stimulated. As water levels increased during the tidal cycle M. messor was observed climbing pneumatophores. The crabs anchored themselves to the pneumatophore just above the water level with their pereiopods. The chelipeds were positioned in a pincher-like trap, and remained in a 'capture-position' waiting for prey to move within striking range. This characteristic fishing behaviour was performed daily by a population of M. messor. Ecological observations suggest that both these predatory behaviours are associated with the fish Aphanius dispar dispar in a direct prey–predator relation. Evidence suggests that these fishing behaviours evolved due to characteristics within the M. messor phylogeny (foraging in intertidal zones; daily displacement following tidal levels; high sensitivity to vibrations; and an opportunist diet) and its associated environment (presence of pneumatophores and high availability of a fish resource).


Anthologies, in the broadest sense of collections of independent texts, have always played an important role in preserving and spreading the written word, and collections of short forms, such as proverbs, wise sayings, and epigraphs, have a long history. The literary anthology, however, is of comparatively recent provenance, having come to prominence only during the long 18th century, when the modern concept of "literature" itself emerged. Since that time, it has been a fundamental part of literary culture: not only have literary texts been published in anthologies, but also the genre of the anthology has done much to shape their form and content, and to influence the ways in which they are read and taught, particularly as literary criticism has developed in tandem with the rise of the anthology. The anthology has also stimulated innovation in many periods and places by providing a model for writers of different genres of literature to emulate, and it has been argued that the form of the novel is much indebted to the anthology. This is connected to its close association with the figure of the reader. Furthermore, anthologies have helped to define what literature is, and been crucial to the canonization of texts, authors, and genres, and the consolidation of literary traditions. It is therefore not surprising that they were at the heart of the theoretical and pedagogical debates within literary studies known as the canon wars, which raged during the 1980s and 1990s. In this role, they contributed much to discussions concerning the theories and politics of identity, and to such approaches as feminism and race studies. The connection between the anthology and literary theory extends beyond this, however: theory itself has been subject to widespread anthologization, which has affected its practice and reception; the form of theoretical writing can in certain respects be understood as anthological; and the anthology is an important object of theoretical attention. For instance, given the potential which the digital age holds to transform how texts are disseminated and consumed, and the importance of finding ways to classify and navigate the digital archive, anthology studies is likely to figure largely in the Digital Humanities.


Abstract Coastal landscapes in the northern Gulf of Mexico, specifically the Mississippi coast, have undergone rapid urbanization that may impact the suitability of salt-marsh ecosystems for maintaining and regulating estuarine faunal communities. We used a landscape ecology approach to quantify the composition and configuration of salt-marsh habitats and developed surfaces at multiple spatial scales surrounding three small, first-order salt-marsh tidal creeks arrayed along a gradient of urbanization in two river-dominated estuaries. From May 3 to June 4, 2010, nekton and macroinfauna were collected weekly at all six sites. Due to the greater abundance of grass shrimp Palaemonetes spp., brown shrimp Farfantepenaeus aztecus, blue crab Callinectes sapidus, Gulf Menhaden Brevoortia patronus, and Spot Leiostomus xanthurus, tidal creeks in intact natural (IN) salt-marsh landscapes supported a nekton assemblage that was significantly different from those in partially urbanized (PU) or completely urbanized (CU) salt-marsh landscapes. However, PU landscapes still supported an abundant nekton assemblage. In addition, the results illustrated a linkage between life history traits and landscape characteristics. Resident and transient nekton species that have specific habitat requirements are more likely to be impacted in urbanized landscapes than more mobile species that are able to exploit multiple habitats. Patterns were less clear for macroinfaunal assemblages, although they were comparatively less abundant in CU salt-marsh landscapes than in either IN or PU landscapes. The low abundance or absence of several macroinfaunal taxa in CU landscapes may be viewed as an additional indicator of poor habitat quality for nekton. The observed patterns also suggested that benthic sediments in the CU salt-marsh landscapes were altered in comparison with IN or PU landscapes. The amount of developed shoreline and various metrics related to salt marsh fragmentation were important drivers of observed patterns in nekton and macroinfaunal assemblages.


String Theory is nowadays the best candidate to describe gravity at the quantum level together with the other interactions and matter fields. Therefore, it should be able to describe physics at the most fundamental level. In order to describe many phenomena consistently it is often necessary to provide some mechanism creating hierarchies between the different scales in the physical system. These kind of hierarchies admit a natural explanation in terms of warping on the internal space, which leads to suppression factors on the 4 dimensional field theories. In String Theory these warp suppressions can be obtained by the use of the so-called warped throats. In this thesis I will use toric Calabi-Yau singularities in order to build up warped throats where different physical phenomena happen. Most phenomena I focus on are related to dark energy, the source of accelerate expansion of the Universe on its very early stages and nowadays. I also present some new techniques in order to guess which throats admit orientifold actions, and use them to describe UV completions of stringy instantons in terms of gauge instantons in such geometries.


Although women constitute a major part of the farm labour force they often do not have formal employment status. As a result, the value of their work is often not fully recognised. This is particularly true on family farms, but is also often the case in non-family farm situations. Frequently, the man is the legal "sole holder" of the family farm and the woman, as "spouse" does not have full entitlement to social welfare, healthcare, insurance, pensions etc. Part time and/or seasonal agricultural work off the family farm, which may be necessary to supplement the family farm income, or may be the only source of income for landless, divorced and/or elderly women, or women from ethnic minorities, is commonly undertaken without an employment contract. More equitable ownership and inheritance rights can improve the economic status of farm women and social services, such as childcare, and reduce their workload. Implementation of such solutions may be constrained by the lack of legal awareness amongst both men and women or cultural, or even religious, attitudes. This paper reviews some of the issues and attempts to identify methods for increasing the visibility of the work of farm women.


Abstract Deformation bands are common subseismic structures in porous sandstones that vary with respect to deformation mechanisms, geometries and distribution. The amount of cataclasis involved largely determines how they impact fluid flow, and cataclasis is generally promoted by coarse grain size, good sorting, high porosity and overburden (usually >500–1000 m). Most bands involve a combination of shear and compaction, and a distinction can be made between those where shear displacement greatly exceeds compaction (compactional shear bands or CSB), where the two are of similar magnitude (shear-enhanced compaction bands or SECB), and pure compaction bands (PCB). The latter two only occur in the contractional regime, are characterized by high (70–100°) dihedral angles (SECB) or perpendicularity (PCB) to σ1 (the maximum principal stress) and are restricted to layers with very high porosity. Contraction generally tends to produce populations of well-distributed deformation bands, whereas in the extensional regime the majority of bands are clustered around faults. Deformation bands also favour highly porous parts of a reservoir, which may result in a homogenization of the overall reservoir permeability and enhance sweep during hydrocarbon production. A number of intrinsic and external variables must therefore be considered when assessing the influence of deformation bands on reservoir performance.


People often talk about musical pitch in terms of spatial metaphors. In English, for instance, pitches can be high or low, whereas in other languages pitches are described as thick or thin. According to psychophysical studies, metaphors in language can also shape people's nonlinguistic space-pitch representations. But does language establish mappings between space and pitch in the first place or does it modify preexisting associations? Here we tested 4-month-old Dutch infants' sensitivity to height-pitch and thickness-pitch mappings in two preferential looking tasks. Dutch infants looked significantly longer at cross-modally congruent stimuli in both experiments, indicating that infants are sensitive to space-pitch associations prior to language. This early presence of space-pitch mappings suggests that these associations do not originate from language. Rather, language may build upon pre-existing mappings and change them gradually via some form of competitive associative learning.


Raster clip-art images, which consist of distinctly colored regions separated by sharp boundaries typically allow for a clear mental vector interpretation. Converting these images into vector format can facilitate compact lossless storage and enable numerous processing operations. Despite recent progress, existing vectorization methods that target such data frequently produce vectorizations that fail to meet viewer expectations. We present PolyFit, a new clip-art vectorization method that produces vectorizations well aligned with human preferences. Since segmentation of such inputs into regions had been addressed successfully, we specifically focus on fitting piecewise smooth vector curves to the raster input region boundaries, a task prior methods are particularly prone to fail on. While perceptual studies suggest the criteria humans are likely to use during mental boundary vectorization, they provide no guidance as to the exact interaction between them; learning these interactions directly is problematic due to the large size of the solution space. To obtain the desired solution, we first approximate the raster region boundaries with coarse intermediate polygons leveraging a combination of perceptual cues with observations from studies of human preferences. We then use these intermediate polygons as auxiliary inputs for computing piecewise smooth vectorizations of raster inputs. We define a finite set of potential polygon to curve primitive maps, and learn the mapping from the polygons to their best fitting primitive configurations from human annotations, arriving at a compact set of local raster and polygon properties whose combinations reliably predict human-expected primitive choices. We use these primitives to obtain a final globally consistent spline vectorization. Extensive comparative user studies show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art approaches on a wide range of data, where our results are preferred three times as often as those of the closest competitor across multiple types of inputs with various resolutions.


Climate stabilization requires greenhouse gas reductions (GHG) in excess of 60 percent. Ground source heat pumps (GSHPs) hold the promise of meeting heating and cooling loads much more efficiently than conventional technologies. The economic viability of their widespread adoption depends on the costs of energy. Their impact on GHG reduction depends on fuel choices both in electricity generation and on customers' premises. In this paper, we provide a systematic assessment of the GHG reduction potential across Canada of GSHPs and the economic cost of achieving this reduction. Using province-level data on household fuel choices and energy use, we find that GSHP systems offer significant GHG reductions, as well as savings in operation and maintenance costs. However, high capital costs continue to limit market diffusion. We conclude with a review of the geological suitability of the five largest urban centers in Canada for GSHP installation. This analysis shows GSHPs to hold significant potential for substantial GHG reductions in Canada at a cost savings relative to conventional alternatives, with time horizons as short as seven years.


Historically, based on the premise that trademark protection is about consumer welfare, trademark law has allowed trademark licensing only as long as licensors control the quality of the products bearing the licensed marks. Ever since its adoption, however, this rule has been difficult to enforce because it hinges on a concept that is ambiguous and difficult to frame in a legal context: quality control. Unsurprisingly, the consequence has been inconsistent case law and much uncertainty as to what represents valid licensing. In addition, in the past decades, courts have proven increasingly reticent to strictly apply this rule and have declared agreements with minimal or no control valid as long as the public was not misled. The rise of recent practices such as, inter alia, promotional trademark licensing has contributed to this trend and highlighted the growing unsustainability of the current requirement in today's economy. This Article argues against this uncertainty and advocates for an amendment to the current rule that would allow licensing with or without control. In support of this change, this Article offers evidence that, contrary to the original intention of the law, this rule is negatively affecting competition in the marketplace and allowing unfair competitors to initiate frivolous legal actions. This Article therefore proposes that, rather than focusing on an increasingly sterile and confusing requirement - quality control - the courts should assess the validity of licensing by focusing directly on the result of the agreements - whether the use of the licensed marks will deceive consumers.


Since 2006 a survey on Citrus tristeza virus (CTV) has been carried out in Calabria , southern Italy , to determine the occurrence of the virus, to evaluate its incidence, to identify and characterize the virus strains, and to monitor the aphid vector populations. Citrus samples were collected from nurseries and orchards located in the five provinces of the region. The virus was not detected in the citrus-growing areas of Catanzaro (CZ) or Crotone (KR), whereas it was found in three orchards in Cosenza (CS), three in Vibo Valentia (VV) and twelve citrus plantings in Reggio Calabria (RC). The highest infection percentages occurred in citrus orchards close to fields already infected with CTV. Infections were detected not only in foreign cultivars, but also in local cultivars such as 'Comune' clementine, 'Moro', 'Ovale' and 'Tarocco' sweet orange, suggesting that CTV was transmitted by aphids. CTV occurred in only a few plantlets sampled in two citrus nurseries located near the main areas already infected. Serological differentiation of several CTV field isolates revealed that the mild strains were prevalent. Aphis gossypii (Glover) and A. spiraecola Patch (= A. citricola Van der Goot) were the most frequent aphids in the orchards, whereas Toxoptera aurantii (Boyer de Foscoulombe) and Myzus persicae (Sulzer) occurred with low incidence. The absence of T. citricidus (Kirkaldy) was confirmed.


Pre-training by language modeling has become a popular and successful approach to NLP tasks, but we have yet to understand exactly what linguistic capacities these pre-training processes confer upon models. In this paper we introduce a suite of diagnostics drawn from human language experiments, which allow us to ask targeted questions about information used by language models for generating predictions in context. As a case study, we apply these diagnostics to the popular BERT model, finding that it can generally distinguish good from bad completions involving shared category or role reversal, albeit with less sensitivity than humans, and it robustly retrieves noun hypernyms, but it struggles with challenging inference and role-based event prediction— and, in particular, it shows clear insensitivity to the contextual impacts of negation.


We propose a change-point approach for testing the constancy of regression parameters in a linear profile data set (panel data in econometrics). Each sample collected over time in the historical data set consists of several multivariate observations for which a linear regression model is appropriate. The question now is whether all of the profiles follow a linear regression model with the same parameter vector or whether a change occurred in one or more model parameters after a special sample. We use the partial sum operator in several dimensions to test the null hypothesis "H0: no change-point occurred" and propose a non-parametric size ?-test. In Bischoff and Gegg (2010) we compared our proposed method with the likelihood-ratio-test by Mahmoud et al. (2007) in a simulation study. By these simulations we could show that our procedure can, in contrast to the likelihood-ratio-test, even be applied to the non-normal case. In this paper, however, we show how to compute our proposed test statistic step-by-step by considering an artificial data set.


Children born in lower socioeconomic strata are more likely to engage in consumption habits that are deleterious to adult health, less likely to attain higher levels of education, and more likely to have lower income and wealth as adults. More recent epidemiological studies suggest a perhaps more profound idea, that an adult's ailments may depend importantly on his physical condition on the day of his birth. Owing to conditions that characterize their prenatal period and early infancy, children born to families of lower socioeconomic strata carry a permanent marker for higher rates of adult heart disease, and perhaps other ailments as well. In this paper, I report results from the Health and Retirement Survey that are consistent with this hypothesis. Accounting for adult consumption habits, adult socioeconomic status, and numerous other potentially confounding variables, the results show that men who are shorter and born to fathers with less education are more likely to develop various manifestations of heart disease in middle age. The data suggest that adult health effects from childhood are disease and gender specific. While the data leave open the pathway by which lifetime health effects are coded early on, the results suggest a potentially high return on resources devoted to ensuring health-conscious behavior during pregnancy and healthy diets during infancy.


To make oneself employable – instrumental identity positions and gendered marketability The article takes up the question of the negotiation of expert discourses in career advice and constructing the self in the practice of CV writing. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with 19 students (11 women and 8 men) the stories about job search are analyzed. The concept of discursive positioning is used in order to analyze how the students position themselves in relation to career advice and position the self in CV writing. The results show that the female students had difficulties embodying the position as a marketing self as they described it as conflicting with feelings of 'who they were'. 'Being you' in CVs and job interviews is, further, an ideal that is negotiated in relation to what to display as a job-seeking subject. CV writing involves a process of identifying suitable characteristics in an instrumental manner, but it is also combined with an introspective reasoning and identification to find 'authentic' strengths and characteristics in 'who you are'.


FLUXNET is a global network of micrometeorological flux measurement sites that measure the exchanges of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and energy between the biosphere and atmosphere. At present over 140 sites are operating on a long-term and continuous basis. Vegetation under study includes temperate conifer and broadleaved (deciduous and evergreen) forests, tropical and boreal forests, crops, grasslands, chaparral, wetlands, and tundra. Sites exist on five continents and their latitudinal distribution ranges from 70°N to 30°S. FLUXNET has several primary functions. First, it provides infrastructure for compiling, archiving, and distributing carbon, water, and energy flux measurement, and meteorological, plant, and soil data to the science community. (Data and site information are available online at the FLUXNET Web site, http://www-eosdis.ornl.gov/FLUXNET/.) Second, the project supports calibration and flux intercomparison activities. This activity ensures that data from the regional networks are intercomparable. And third, FLUXNET supports the synthesis, discussion, and communication of ideas and data by supporting project scientists, workshops, and visiting scientists. The overarching goal is to provide information for validating computations of net primary productivity, evaporation, and energy absorption that are being generated by sensors mounted on the NASA Terra satellite. Data being compiled by FLUXNET are being used to quantify and compare magnitudes and dynamics of annual ecosystem carbon and water balances, to quantify the response of stand-scale carbon dioxide and water vapor flux densities to controlling biotic and abiotic factors, and to validate a hierarchy of soil–plant–atmosphere trace gas exchange models. Findings so far include 1) net CO 2 exchange of temperate broadleaved forests increases by about 5.7 g C m −2 day −1 for each additional day that the growing season is extended; 2) the sensitivity of net ecosystem CO 2 exchange to sunlight doubles if the sky is cloudy rather than clear; 3) the spectrum of CO 2 flux density exhibits peaks at timescales of days, weeks, and years, and a spectral gap exists at the month timescale; 4) the optimal temperature of net CO 2 exchange varies with mean summer temperature; and 5) stand age affects carbon dioxide and water vapor flux densities.


Robotic manipulators are usually driven by means of minimum-time trajectories. Unfortunately, such trajectories strongly solicit the actuators whose dynamic limits could be easily exceeded. Therefore, kinematic and/or dynamic constraints are commonly considered for offline planning. Nevertheless, during actual operations, dynamic limits could be violated because of model uncertainties and measurement noise, thus causing performance losses. In order to fulfill the given bounds with certainty, planned trajectories are typically online scaled, by accounting for generalized force (GF) constraints. The resulting command signal is typically discontinuous; therefore, the system mechanics are unnecessarily solicited, and nonmodeled dynamics are excited. Moreover, in the case of systems that admit limited derivatives for GFs, tracking accuracy worsens. To prevent possible problems that derive from GF discontinuities, this paper proposes an online trajectory scaling approach that accounts for the simultaneous existence of joint constraints on GFs and their derivatives. At the same time, it is able to manage bounds on joint velocities, accelerations, and jerks.


Abstract. A growing body of research shows the importance of land use/cover change (LULCC) on modifying the Earth system. Land surface models are used to stimulate land–atmosphere dynamics at the macroscale, but model bias and uncertainty remain that need to be addressed before the importance of LULCC is fully realized. In this study, we propose a method of improving LULCC estimates for land surface modeling exercises. The method is driven by projectable socio-ecological geospatial predictors available seamlessly across sub-Saharan Africa and yielded continuous (annual) estimates of LULCC at 5 km  ×  5 km spatial resolution. The method was developed with 2252 sample area frames of 5 km  ×  5 km consisting of the proportion of several land cover types in Kenya over multiple years. Forty-three socio-ecological predictors were evaluated for model development. Machine learning was used for data reduction, and simple (functional) relationships defined by generalized additive models were constructed on a subset of the highest-ranked predictors (p ≤ 10) to estimate LULCC. The predictors explained 62 and 65 % of the variance in the proportion of agriculture and natural vegetation, respectively, but were less successful at estimating more descriptive land cover types. In each case, population density on an annual basis was the highest-ranked predictor. The approach was compared to a commonly used remote sensing classification procedure, given the wide use of such techniques for macroscale LULCC detection, and outperformed it for each land cover type. The approach was used to demonstrate significant trends in expanding (declining) agricultural (natural vegetation) land cover in Kenya from 1983 to 2012, with the largest increases (declines) occurring in densely populated high agricultural production zones. Future work should address the improvement (development) of existing (new) geospatial predictors and issues of model scalability and transferability.


That there are links between effective supervision and effective counselling practice tends to be taken for granted. As a contribution to documenting the professional knowledges and experiences that might stand behind the profession's claims for the benefits of supervision, this study interviewed experienced supervisors, seeking their perspectives on the links between effective supervision and effective counselling practice. Taking a social constructionist approach and showing the processes of knowledge production, researchers then engaged with these supervisors' perspectives, in a series of reflections. These reflections show how the research interviews contribute to shaping the researchers' ongoing supervision practice. Areas of interest include the power relation between supervisor and practitioner; responsibilities for monitoring practice; taping; supervisor responsibility for evaluating the effectiveness of supervision, and generativity of practice through storying a practitioner's values and principles. Questions are offered for readers, too, to engage in a shaping of practice through their own responses to the article.


Present-day EU is facing strong internal and external centrifugal pulls, clearly exacerbated by Brexit. A key question is what ties the EU together and whether EU member states will continue on the same integrationist track. A change from different speeds of integration to a more open-ended situation with forces driving disintegration (in a uniform or a differentiated manner) raises questions not only of cohesion and governing ability, but of social support, not the least since some forms of post-crises differentiation are associated with dominance. At the same time, there is no doubt that differentiation (in policy, legal and institutional terms) has been an important means for managing conflict and for containing (and localising) disagreement. In this circumstance, it is not clear if differentiation is part of the problem or part of the solution. EU3D's main purpose is to clarify the conditions under which differentiation is supportive of democracy and the conditions under which differentiation is associated with dominance. To address that, EU3D undertakes conceptual clarification, causal analysis and normative evaluation. Conceptual clarification specifies the three core terms – differentiation, dominance and democracy – and how they are related, and spells out criteria and mechanisms for guiding the empirical analysis. EU3D provides an overview assessment of EU polity differentiation and discusses the implications for dominance and democracy. That is complemented with a causal analysis of the specific mechanisms that we may associate with post-crises differentiation-engendered dominance and the mechanisms that we may associate with forms of democratic push-back. In the last section, the focus is on normative evaluation. We outline and assess a range of constitutional models that we consider in relation to our assessment of the EU and proposals for EU reform and assess their empirical veracity and normative viability. These assessments are summed up in a theory of democratic differentiation.


A large body of research has shown that human adults are fast and accurate at enumerating arrays of ~1-4 items. This phenomenon has been called subitizing. Above this range, enumeration is slower and less accurate. The subitizing range has been related to individual differences in variables such as mathematical abilities, working memory, etc. The two most common methods for calculating subitizing range today – bilinear fit and sigmoid fit – have their strengths and weaknesses. By combining these two methods, we overcome their biggest limitations and come up with a novel way for calculating Individual Subitizing Range (ISR). This paper introduces this new method as well as empirical studies designed to test the new method. We replicated classic effects from the literature and obtain a high correlation with the sigmoid fit method. This paper includes a Matlab code for easy calculation of ISR as well as a ready-to-use experimental file for testing ISR. We hope that these tools would be of use to researchers studying individual differences in the subitizing range.


PURPOSE
The Fourier transform (FT) method by Boyer for seed implant dose calculation (Med Phys 1986; 13:525-29) requires that seeds be placed at calculation grid points. This abstract proposes an additional interpolation step enabling arbitrary seed placement while preserving the computational efficiency of the original method.

METHODS
The TG-43 dose kernel for an Iodine-125 seed was sampled on a 3-D grid with 1 mm spacing. For each seed, the kernel was shifted to the nearest grid point via a unit impulse convolution. For the remaining fractional shift, the proposed method added a piece-wise 3rd order Lagrange interpolating filter. An additional least-square filter optimized interpolation accuracy for the clinically relevant dose range below 300 Gy at the expense of higher doses. The convolution operations were implemented in the Fourier domain. Results for the proposed interpolating FT method were compared to the original FT method and to TG-43 calculations. Interpolation accuracy for a single seed was evaluated by up-sampling and interpolating the dose kernel. Pre-and post-treatment plans were calculated for 10 patients.

RESULTS
The interpolation error for the single seed kernel was 1 % at 5 mm distance (original method error was 20 %). Treatment plan point dose error was within 2 % for doses under 300 Gy. The dose-volume histogram error was negligible. Computation times for the original and interpolating FT methods were independent of the number of seeds. The addition of the interpolation step did not affect the computation time.

CONCLUSION
The FT method of Boyer was expanded to include an interpolation step, thereby relaxing the original restriction that seeds be placed at calculation grid points. The proposed interpolating method calculated treatment plans within 2 % accuracy for a clinically relevant dose range. The computational efficiency of the original method was preserved with negligible increase in computation time. This work was supported by a Canada Graduate Scholarships doctoral award provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (#226291).


Many real-world sequential decision making problems are partially observable by nature, and the environment model is typically unknown. Consequently, there is great need for reinforcement learning methods that can tackle such problems given only a stream of incomplete and noisy observations. In this paper, we propose deep variational reinforcement learning (DVRL), which introduces an inductive bias that allows an agent to learn a generative model of the environment and perform inference in that model to effectively aggregate the available information. We develop an n-step approximation to the evidence lower bound (ELBO), allowing the model to be trained jointly with the policy. This ensures that the latent state representation is suitable for the control task. In experiments on Mountain Hike and flickering Atari we show that our method outperforms previous approaches relying on recurrent neural networks to encode the past.


. We present an ethnographic study of the organizational aspects of the use of an electronic whiteboard (EW) system implemented in a Danish hospital located in Nykøbing Falster (NFH). The EW system had originally been developed for the emergency department (ED), but had later been extended to the entire hospital, and the study was conducted about 10 months after that time. The study focuses on coordination regarding inter-departmental ordering of surgical operations via the EW system. The research question asked whether clinicians experienced impacts or consequences, and the challenges in this respect. The results of the study show that the EW system had been configured and use of it organized in a manner that facilitates support of inter-departmental coordination. We identify, describe and discuss the challenges related to the difficulty of accommodating the heterogeneous practices and demonstrate the complexity of organizing cooperative work using artifacts and technology across organizational units.


Economic growth and forward-looking indicators of default risk inferred from equity markets, two variables that together predict business bankruptcies in advanced economies, show bankruptcies rising significantly by the end of 2021. Projections of real GDP growth embedded in the consensus forecast account for the bulk of this projected increase. Unlike in previous downturns, the stock market-based default indicators contribute very little. As these findings underscore, the pandemic and unprecedented government support for the business sector have driven a sizeable wedge between financial market perceptions of default risk and projections for economic activity.