of a Thesis presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Agricultural Meteorology. CLIMATE VARIABILITY AND FOOD SECURITY A NEW ZEALAND PERSPECTIVE iii The objective of this Thesis was to develop a clearer understanding of inter-relationships between climate variability and food security in New Zealand. It was considered important to both clarify crop-climate relationships and possible response options available to regional planners and individuals. This is particularly relevant in the context of a probable global climate warming. An empirical-statistical analysis of crop-climate interactions was carried out This was followed by a more detailed agroclimate analysis of the Canterbury region, and an evaluation of one possible response option in the face of present, and possible future, climate variability and change. This involved a field based study of shelterbelt effects. The final part of the Thesis gives a tentative assessment of the possible impacts on agriculture in New Zealand of regional greenhouse warming scenarios. Monthly rainfall and mean temperature data were used for the crop-climate analyses. Adjustments for site changes were made where necessary and missing values estimated. Trend removal was performed on temperate grain and pipfruit yield time series. Quadratic, and in the case of pears linear, trend lines were fitted to the yield data. Analyses were performed on the residuals. No trend removal was carried out on stonefruit data. Principal component analysis, followed by stepwise multiple regression, showed the barley crop to be the most spatially responsive to climate of the three temperate grain crops examined. Wheat was intermediate in its response and oats the least spatially responsive. Autumn sown wheat showed a negative relationship with winter rainfall and spring temperature. The dominant result with oats and barley was a negative effect on yield of late spring to early summer temperatures. Analyses of national stonefruit data met with mixed success. Peaches and nectarines, although of the same species, gave different significant predictors. This was attributed to differences in weighting on the climate data, related to geographic distribution. The susceptibility of apricots to late frosts appeared to show through with this crop. Cherries showed a strongly negative relationship with rainfall at blossom and harvest time. The most significant predictor with plums was a positive relationship with May temperature. This was treated with scepticism. These results highlight the need for further detailed analysis of these crops at the district level. iv The limited district analyses of apple yields showed a graded response to rainfall. At the extremes, the wetter Auckland district showed predominantly negative responses and the drier Central Otago district showed positive responses. A negative relationship between apple yield and July temperature was found to be a climatic response from the Hawkes Bay district. This may be related to poor fruit set and flower quality, leading to low yields, as suggested by research in England. The dominant response apparent with pears, in earlier years, was a negative relationship with January temperature. This appears to have become less limiting and may be related to increased use of irrigation over this moisture sensitive period. As with stonefruit more detailed analyses, particularly at the district level are required. A spatial analysis of Canterbury plains climate confirmed that the climate of this region is relatively homogenous. However a general north/south division was apparent with the Rakaia river as a general 'dividing line. Closer analysis of rainfall data revealed that this north/south contrast is predominantly between the Christchurch area, influenced by Banks Peninsula, and South Canterbury, influenced by the narrow coastal strip and proximity to the foothills. Differences between these two areas are greater than similarities. Principal component analysis of Canterbury county wheat yields confirmed results from the weighted national and Canterbury district analyses. Waimate, in South Canterbury, proved to be anomalous in its yield response, which was consistent with the spatial analyses of rainfall and deficit day data. Drought in Canterbury was shown to become a regional phenomenon in the driest of the dry years, and to be persistent in these years. Correlation analysis between deficit day data and time series of detrended Canterbury district yield data, for temperate grains and pipfruit, showed a significant negative relationship between agriCUltural drought and yield. Analysis of shelter effects revealed a hierarchical classification of sites based on the site roughness parameter, z00 The most exposed, reference, site was well representative of open plains conditions. The least exposed, highly sheltered, orchard site showed a high degree of "decoupling" from the regional environment. Mean temperatures were significantly higher in the three, more sheltered, remote sites as compared to the reference site. Maximum temperatures were significantly higher in the most sheltered sites. In all remote sites there were significant reductions in wind speed in relation to the reference site. Evapotranspiration, based on Penman estimates, was significantly lower in the two orchard sites. Priestley-Taylor estimates proved to be more conservative, attributed to the use of a constant not calibrated for different site conditions. It is speculated that these significant differences in site microclimate could lead to yield benefits in Canterbury, through greater water use efficiency. This could contribute significantly to mitigating the effects of non-periodic, but recurrent and persistent droughts in this region. The tentative assessment of agricultural impacts of a greenhouse warming drew from past climate analogue scenarios. The temperate grains showed slight to moderate yield reductions. v It was suggested that Southland may increase in importance as a temperate grain growing district. Assessment of fruit crops was more speculative, as shown in the results. The east coast of the South Island and Central Otago could increase in importance for the growing of temperate fruit crops. From the Canterbury regional greenhouse scenario it would appear that in the future there will be greater potential for agricultural drought in this region. The results from the agroclimate analysis and field study of shelter effects are particularly relevant in this context. This Thesis highlights the considerable uncertainty that exists in the field of crop-climate analyses. Data bases need to be consolidated and more critical analyses made of possible response options, particularly in the face of a probable global climate warming.


The performance of machine learning methods is heavily dependent on the choice of data representation. In real world applications such as scene recognition problems, the widely used low-level input features can fail to explain the high-level semantic label concepts. In this work, we address this problem by proposing a novel patch-based latent variable model to integrate latent contextual representation learning and classification model training in one joint optimization framework. Within this framework, the latent layer of variables bridge the gap between inputs and outputs by providing discriminative explanations for the semantic output labels, while being predictable from the low-level input features. Experiments conducted on standard scene recognition tasks demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach, comparing to the state-of-the-art scene recognition methods.


Luminal acidification is important for the maturation of secretory granules, yet little is known regarding the regulation of pH within them. A pH-sensitive green fluorescent protein (EGFP) was targeted to secretory granules in RIN1046-38 insulinoma cells by using a construct in which the EGFP gene was preceded by the nucleotide sequence for human growth hormone. Stimulatory levels of glucose doubled EGFP secretion from cell cultures, and potentiators of glucose-induced insulin secretion enhanced EGFP release. Thus this targeted EGFP is useful for population measurements of secretion. However, less than ~4% of total cell EGFP was released after 1.5 h of stimulation. Consequently, when analyzed in single cells, fluorescence of the targeted EGFP acts as an indicator of pH within secretory granules. Glucose elicited a decrease in granule pH, whereas inhibitors of the V-type H(+)-ATPase increased pH and blocked the glucose effect. Granule pH also was modified by effectors of the protein kinase A pathway, with activation eliciting granule alkalinization, suggesting that potentiation of peptide release by cAMP may involve regulated changes in secretory granule pH.


"Disturbing Memoir Outsells Literary Comfort Food at Starbucks," The New York Times reported on March 10, 2007. Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone , a memoir of the author's experiences as a child soldier in the civil war in Sierra Leone that lasted from 1991 to 2002, and the second selection in Starbucks' book program, sold over 62,000 copies in its first three weeks there. Although child soldiering itself is not a new phenomenon, since the adoption of the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and the Organization of African Unity's African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990, 1999), UNICEF's publication of Gra ç a Machel's The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children , and the UN's adoption of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (2000), research in the social sciences and international humanitarian law on child soldiers has increased significantly.


This Article explores the relationship between private and public surveillance. Every year, companies spend millions of dollars developing new services that track, store, and share the words, movements, and even the thoughts of their customers. Millions now own sophisticated tracking devices (smart phones) studded with sensors and always connected to the Internet. They have been coaxed to use these devices to access fun and valuable services to share more information, more of the time. Our country is rapidly becoming a surveillance society.Meanwhile, the police can access the records that the surveillance society produces and stores with few impediments. Current Fourth Amendment doctrine — premised on the reasonable expectation of privacy test and elaborated through principles such as assumption of risk, knowing exposure, and general public use — places far fewer hurdles in front of the police when they use the fruits of somebody else's surveillance than when they do the surveillance themselves. As the surveillance society expands, the police will learn to rely more on the products of private surveillance, and will shift their time, energy, and money away from traditional self-help policing, becoming passive consumers rather than active producers of surveillance. Private industry is destined to become the unwitting research and development arm of the FBI. If we continue to interpret the Fourth Amendment as we always have, we will find ourselves not only in a surveillance society, but also in a surveillance state.If we believe that the Fourth Amendment can and should survive the coming reach of private surveillance, it is not enough to prescribe mild tweaks to the third-party doctrine. A more thorough reinvention of the Fourth Amendment is in order. We should rebuild the Fourth Amendment atop a foundation of something other than privacy, and this Article extends the work of other scholars who have convincingly suggested that the Fourth Amendment was originally intended and is better interpreted to ensure not privacy but liberty from undue government power.


This paper proposes an approach to proving nonparametric identification for distributions of bidders' values in asymmetric second-price auctions. I consider the case when bidders have independent private values and the only available data pertain to the winner's identity and the transaction price. My proof of identification is constructive and is based on establishing the existence and uniqueness of a solution to the system of non-linear differential equations that describes relationships between unknown distribution functions and observable functions. The proof is conducted in two logical steps. First, I prove the existence and uniqueness of a local solution. Then I describe a method that extends this local solution to the whole support. This paper delivers other interesting results. I show how this approach can be applied to obtain identification in more general auction settings, for instance, in auctions with stochastic number of bidders or weaker support conditions. Furthermore, I demonstrate that my results can be extended to generalized competing risks models. Moreover, contrary to results in classical competing risks (Roy model), I show that in this generalized class of models it is possible to obtain implications that can be used to check whether the risks in a model are dependent. Finally, I provide a sieve minimum distance estimator and show that it consistently estimates the underlying valuation distribution of interest.


All radiation processes described can take place in
the solar corona, depending on different physical characters of
the radiating electrons and the coronal plasma, such as
electron energy, electron pitch angle and the magnitude of the ratio f-2p/f-2H of the medium in the region where the radiators
reside. On the other hand, the observed spectral features of
a solar radio emission are determined by both the mechanism
responsible for the emission and the propagation conditions of
electromagnetic waves in the solar corona. Thus, the observed
dynamic spectra of the solar radio emissions reveal essentially
the physical conditions of the solar corona during the emission periods.
The emissions of narrow bandwidth type III bursts and
drift pair bursts have been proposed as the consequence of plasma
radiation caused by electron streams in the isotropic corona,
which is understood to refer to electromagnetic radiation
extracted from Cerenkov plasma waves through scattering or wave-mode
coupling (Ginzburg and Zheleznyakov, 1958; Roberts, 1958;
Wild et al., 1963; Zheleznyakov, 1965). However, many
observed spectral characteristics of the type III bursts and its
related U bursts, the drift pairs and the newly discovered hook
bursts clearly indicate that it is necessary that the sunspot
magnetic field be taken into account in the theories. So far
the conditions of plasma radiation by electron streams in a
magnetoactive plasma have not been investigated in detail
and consequently, many characteristics of these emission events
remain unexplained. In this thesis, we begin by formulating
the theory of plasma radiation in a magnetoactive plasma
(Chapter II and Chapter V). The theory is then applied to the
interpretation of the polarized type III burst and U burst
emission event and the drift pair and hook burst emission event
in Chapter VI and Chapter VII respectively.
The origins of various components of the complicated type
IV emission have been interpreted as the results of synchrotron
radiation by relativistic electrons trapped in the sunspot
magnetic field configurations (Boischot and Denisse, 1957;
Takakura and Kaip 1961; Kai, 1964; etc.). However, without
taking into account the effects of the medium on the radiation
process, previous theories encounter various difficulties and
fail to account for the outstanding polarization characters of
the type IV emission. In order to set up a satisfactory
theory of type IVA emission, we study, for the x-mode and the
o-mode, the power spectra from single electrons, the process of
amplification of cyclotron radiation in a stream-plasma system
and the escape conditions in detail in Chapter III and Chapter
VIII. Cyclotron radiation of electromagnetic waves in the
x-mode and the o-mode and the Cerenkov excitation of plasma
waves by helical electron streams moving at the base of the
solar corona is proposed as the origin of the type IVA
emission. It is found that most of the important characteristics
of the emission can be well accounted for by the theory.
In Chapter IX, coherent synchrotron radiation from a
system of relativistic electrons is studied taking into account
the effects of the ambient plasma. The origins of some broad
band solar continuum emissions are also discussed.
In the final chapter, a conclusion of the thesis is given
and further researches are suggested.


Clumps in hot star winds can originate from shock compression due to the line driven instability. One-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations reveal a radial wind structure consisting of highly compressed shells separated by voids, and colliding with fast clouds. Two-dimensional simulations are still largely missing, despite first attempts. Clumpiness dramatically affects the radiative transfer and thus all wind diagnostics in the UV, optical, and in X-rays. The microturbulence approximation applied hitherto is currently superseded by a more sophisticated radiative transfer in stochastic media. Besides clumps, i.e. jumps in the density stratification, so-called kinks in the velocity law, i.e. jumps in dv/dr, play an eminent role in hot star winds. Kinks are a new type of radiative-acoustic shock, and propagate at super-Abbottic speed.


A single-pass backward configuration superfluorescent fiber source (SFS) based on erbium-doped photonic crystal fiber (EDPCF) with a high mean wavelength stability was proposed. The EDPCF was used to improve the intrinsic temperature dependence of the SFS. Using the optimal EDPCF length of 24.2 m and pump power of 204 mW, a 20.7 ppm mean wavelength stability of a prototype SFS was demonstrated with increased temperature from -40 °C to 60 °C. The mean wavelength had an ultra stability of 10.3 ppm with increased temperature from -20 °C to 60 °C.


This paper discusses the role of men in redressing gender inequalities by exploring the meanings and uses of masculinity. Discussions on masculinity provide a place in which mens involvement in producing and challenging inequalities and inequities in gender and other social relations can be investigated. In this paper masculinity is defined in terms of biological determinism or essentialism cultural or social constructionism and masculinity as a discourse of power. The uses of masculinity are examined in the context of power and patriarchy; production and social reproduction; poverty; governance; violence and conflict; health; and workplace and organizations. Thinking about masculinities and mens role in working towards gender equality is relatively new in the development field. Therefore continued efforts should be made to publicize and advocate for the importance of mens responsibilities and roles in work towards gender equality in the international fora local and national policy debates and development programming. It is believed that making masculinities visible and men more conscious of gender as it affects their lives and those of women is a first step towards challenging gender inequalities.


Parental leave policies are often enacted based on the premise that children will bene.t from an extended period of time spent with their parent. A number of research studies have looked at the effect of maternal time investments on the early development of skills, behavioral well-being and health, but the results thus far are mixed and mainly based on multivariate analysis. This approach can often not eliminate selection bias and can rarely predict the sign and magnitude of the bias. In this paper, I evaluate the effect of extended maternal care on children's development at age 4 to 5 using observational data prior to and after the Canadian parental leave reform, which extended total paid leave from 25 to 50 weeks on December 31st, 2000. Previous research exploiting this labor supply shock found that mothers significantly increased their time at home in the first year, but generally found no significant effects on parent-reported measures of development between age 7 and 24 months. For the first time in this literature, children of mothers receiving maternity leave benefits are identified and compared with all other children. Using matching difference-in-differences, I find that the policy change had positive effects on cognitive development, measured using different standardized tests for children aged 4 and 5. Behavioral development effects are mixed and mainly not significant. Effects on the family environment and parent-reported health measures are positive and significant.


Abstract This paper presents a diagnostic tool for the rapid assessment of the housing market and housing policy in a given country, using a global comparative perspective. The aim of such an assessment is to ground proposed government interventions in the housing market in a broader housing market reform. The rapid assessment requires defining the critical components of housing policy and the key dimensions of housing market performance. The general methodology for the assessment was developed by the author in his recent book, Housing Policy Matters: A Global Analysis (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, Oxford, 2000). The book itself is based on two earlier foundations: (a) a conceptual framework for housing policy, developed by the author and the late Stephen Mayo in the 1993 World Bank housing policy paper, Housing: Enabling Markets to Work (World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1993); and (b) the comparative set of housing indicators for 53 countries, defined, tested, and assembled by the author and the late Stephen Mayo—together with independent consultants in each country—during 1990–1994 in the Housing Indicators Program, a joint program of the World Bank and the U.N. Centre for Human Settlements. In the past two years, the author has conducted eight housing policy assessments in Central and South America. In this article, he uses the study conducted in Panama to illustrate the usefulness of this diagnostic framework, and to demonstrate how to derive specific policy recommendations from a general comparative analysis.


Exercise is viewed as a satisfactory technique for enhancing and keeping up physical and enthusiastic health. A developing assortment of proof backings the conviction that yoga benefits physical and psychological wellness by means of down regulation of the hypothalamic– pituitary– adrenal (HPA) hub and the thoughtful sensory system (SNS). The reason for this article is to give an academic survey of the writing with respect to investigate thinks about looking at the impacts of yoga and exercise on an assortment of health results and health conditions. The motivation behind this investigation is to analyze and investigate Hatha Yoga and how it identifies with a work on comprising of artist well disposed yoga stances, how these stances may profit the vocalist's psychological and physical health, and how these techniques identify with assigned research. The examination additionally explores yogic breathing techniques and how these exercises identify with chosen investigate. ---------------------------♦-----------------------------


Industry 4.0 is the German vision for the future of manufacturing, where smart factories use information and communication technologies to digitise their processes to achieve improved quality, lower costs, and increased efficiency. It is likely to bring a massive change to the way control systems function today. Future distributed control systems are expected to have an increased connectivity to the Internet, in order to capitalize on new offers and research findings related to digitalization, such as cloud, big data, and machine learning. A key technology in the realization of distributed control systems is middleware, which is usually described as a reusable software layer between operating system and distributed applications. Various middleware technologies have been proposed to facilitate communication in industrial control systems and hide the heterogeneity amongst the subsystems, such as OPC UA, DDS, and RT-CORBA. These technologies can significantly simplify the system design and integration of devices despite their heterogeneity. However, each of these technologies has its own characteristics that may work better for particular applications. Selection of the best middleware for a specific application is a critical issue for system designers. In this paper, we conduct a survey on available standard middleware technologies, including OPC UA, DDS, and RT-CORBA, and show new trends for different industrial domains.


Background Evidence has shown that deep learning computer aided detection (CADe) system achieved high overall detection accuracy for polyp detection during colonoscopy. Aim The detection performance of CADe system on non-polypoid laterally spreading tumors (LSTs) and sessile serrated adenomas/polyps (SSA/Ps), with higher risk for malignancy transformation and miss rate, has not been exclusively investigated. Methods A previously validated deep learning CADe system for polyp detection was tested exclusively on LSTs and SSA/Ps. 1451 LST images from 184 patients were collected between July 2015 and January 2019, 82 SSA/Ps videos from 26 patients were collected between September 2018 and January 2019. The per-frame sensitivity and per-lesion sensitivity were calculated. Results (1) For LSTs image dataset, the system achieved an overall per-image sensitivity and per-lesion sensitivity of 94.07% (1365/1451) and 98.99% (197/199) respectively. The per-frame sensitivity for LST-G(H), LST-G(M), LST-NG(F), LST-NG(PD) was 93.97% (343/365), 98.72% (692/701), 85.71% (324/378) and 85.71% (6/7) respectively. The per-lesion sensitivity of each subgroup was 100.00% (71/71), 100.00% (64/64), 98.31% (58/59) and 80.00% (4/5). (2) For SSA/Ps video dataset, the system achieved an overall per-frame sensitivity and per-lesion sensitivity of 84.10% (15883/18885) and 100.00% (42/42), respectively. Conclusions This study demonstrated that a local-feature-prioritized automatic CADe system could detect LSTs and SSA/Ps with high sensitivity. The per-frame sensitivity for non-granular LSTs and small SSA/Ps should be further improved.


In 1941, after decades of struggling to hold on to the remainder of their aboriginal home, the Hualapai Indians finally took their case to the Supreme Court--and won. The Hualapai case was the culminating event in a legal and intellectual revolution that transformed Indian law and ushered in a new way of writing Indian history that provided legal grounds for native land claims. But Making Indian Law is about more than a legal decision. It's the story of Hualapai activists, and eventually sympathetic lawyers, who challenged both the Santa Fe Railroad and the U.S. government to a courtroom showdown over the meaning of Indian property rights--and the Indian past. At the heart of the Hualapai campaign to save the reservation was documenting the history of Hualapai land use. Making Indian Law showcases the central role that the Hualapai and their lawyers played in formulating new understandings of native people, their property, and their past. To this day, the impact of the Hualapai decision is felt wherever and whenever indigenous land claims are litigated throughout the world.


Criminal psychology, and its relationship to the practice of law, has become a topic of major significance over the last three decades. Psychologists play a key role in modern criminal investigation and are central to crime reduction measures such as offender profiling, delinquency prevention and tackling fear of crime. Contributors from North America, Europe and Australia examine this link, both adding to and drawing upon the pool of recent theory construction and empirical work in the following areas: * causes and prevention of offending * studies of crime and offenders * the victim's perspective * witnesses and testimony * studies of legal processes. These issues are studied from a 'local' perspective that recognises not only the need for cross-national comparative research, but also the generation of a corpus of scientific knowledge more representative of the complexity of criminal and legal investigation today.


Carbon has been synthesized from biowaste material of the plant Manihot esculenta and its activation was done by HNO3. Surface functionality of activated carbon was studied by Bohem titration and FT-IR (Fourier transform infrared Spectroscopy) techniques whereby different functional groups such as lactonic group, carboxylic group, hydroxyl group, carbonyl group etc. were observed. From the PXRD (Powder X-ray Diffraction) analysis, the phase and the crystallite size of the activated carbon was found to be 45.56 nm. Elemental analysis and the surface pores distribution were studied by EDX (Energy-Dispersive X-Ray) and SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope). Thermal study of the activated carbon reveals the fact that the synthesized carbon has thermal stability above 1000 o C. Other physical parameters such as apparent density, ash content, volatile matter, water soluble matter, acid soluble matter, fixed carbon, pH, iodine number and porosity were measured a analyzed in details in this paper.


Although immigrants have a right to be represented by counsel in immigration court, it has long been the case that the government has no obligation to provide an attorney for those who are unable to afford one. Recently, however, a broad coalition of public figures, scholars, advocates, courts, and philanthropic foundations have begun to push for the establishment of a public defender system for poor immigrants facing deportation. Yet the national debate about appointing defense counsel for immigrants has proceeded with limited information regarding how many immigrants currently obtain attorneys and the efficacy and efficiency of such representation. This Article presents the results of the first national study of access to counsel in United States immigration courts. Drawing on data from over 1.2 million deportation cases decided between 2007 and 2012, we find that only 37% of all immigrants, and a mere 14% of detained immigrants, secured representation. Only 2% of immigrants obtained pro bono representation from nonprofit organizations, law school clinics, or large law firm volunteer programs. Barriers to representation were particularly severe in immigration courts located in rural areas and small cities, where almost one-third of detained cases were adjudicated. Moreover, we find that immigrants with attorneys fared far better: among similarly situated removal respondents, the odds were fifteen times greater that immigrants with representation, as compared to those without, sought relief, and five-and-a-half times greater that they obtained relief from removal. In addition, we show that involvement of counsel was associated with certain gains in court efficiency: represented respondents brought fewer unmeritorious claims, were more likely to be released from custody, and, once released, were more likely to appear at their future deportation hearings. This research provides an essential data-driven understanding of immigration representation that should inform discussions of expanding access to counsel.


Aims To evaluate the characteristics of the posterior segments of eyes with high myopia and normal-tension glaucoma (NTG) and identify which ocular factors are most associated with scleral thickness and posterior staphyloma height. Methods The study included 45 patients with highly myopic NTG and 38 controls with highly myopic eyes (≤−6D or axial length ≥26.0 mm). The subfoveal retinal, choroidal, scleral thickness and the posterior staphyloma heights were examined from enhanced depth imaging spectral-domain optical coherence tomography and compared between two groups. Results Highly myopic NTG eyes had thinner subfoveal scleral thickness (473.03±43.75 vs 579.46±75.87 µm, p<0.001) and higher posterior staphyloma (97.80±70.10 vs 62.83±32.01 µm, p=0.027) than highly myopic, non-glaucomatous eyes. Subfoveal scleral thickness was significantly correlated with age, axial length, corneal hysteresis and the posterior staphyloma height of the superior quadrant, the nasal quadrant and the arithmetic mean of four quadrants in highly myopic NTG eyes. Corneal hysteresis (β=2.694, p=0.015), corneal resistance factor (β=−2.916, p=0.010) and the posterior staphyloma height of the nasal quadrant (β=−0.463, p=0.017) were significantly associated with the subfoveal scleral thickness in highly myopic NTG eyes. Conclusion Subfoveal scleral thinning and non-uniform posterior staphyloma were closely related in highly myopic NTG eyes. Corneal hysteresis, corneal resistance factor and the nasal posterior staphyloma height were associated with the scleral thickness.


Parthenium hysterophorus weeds are one of the major problems in almost all types of agricultural lands, forest lands, pastures, farmlands and disturbed land including roadsides. It is also responsible for health problems in human and animals besides loss to agriculture and ecosystems. It causes allergic respiratory problems, contact dermatitis and mutagenicity. The main strategy of Parthenium control is the use of chemical herbicides. The increasing side effects of chemical herbicide and growing resistance against them in weeds have attracted the attention of researchers to search for some novel herbicidal compounds from natural sources. A significant barrier in the mycoherbicide metabolites production is the development of an economically viable fermentation process. The production of these compounds is largely affected by certain parameters like pH, temperature, incubation days and media constituents etc. Adjustment of these parameters up to optimum level leads to maximum production of mycoherbicidal compounds. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to standardize physiochemical conditions (Nutrient media, pH, Temperature, and Incubation periods) for maximum production of mycoherbicidal metabolites from phytopathogenic fungi Fusarium sp. FGCCW#16 isolated from Parthenium hysterophorus weed. Fusarium sp FGCCW#16 grew well and produced optimum mycoherbicidal metabolites in Richard's broth medium at 25 to 28°C on the 21 studay of the incubation. The optimal growth, however, was obtained at pH 6. The results of this investigation indicated that cultural conditions like culture media as well as physical factors such as temperature, pH and incubation period greatly affected the growth and production of mycoherbicidal metabolites by Fusarium sp FGCCW#16.


A new type of malicious crowdsourcing (a.k.a., crowdturfing) clients, mobile apps with hidden crowdturfing user interface (UI), is increasingly being utilized by miscreants to coordinate crowdturfing workers and publish mobile based crowdturfing tasks (e.g., app ranking manipulation) even on the strictly controlled Apple App Store. These apps hide their crowdturfing content behind innocent-looking UIs to bypass app vetting and infiltrate the app store. To the best of our knowledge, little has been done so far to understand this new abusive service, in terms of its scope, impact and techniques, not to mention any effort to identify such stealthy crowdturfing apps on a large scale, particularly on the Apple platform. In this paper, we report the first measurement study on iOS apps with hidden crowdturfing UIs. Our findings bring to light the mobile-based crowdturfing ecosystem (e.g., app promotion for worker recruitment, campaign identification) and the underground developer's tricks (e.g., scheme, logic bomb) for evading app vetting.


Problem. The problem this study sought to address was the tendency of "ordinary readers" of Scripture to misuse the Bible on the one hand, or to give up reading it entirely, on the other hand. The purpose of this study was to develop a grounded theory that describes how seminary-educated pastors are successfully leading ordinary readers to informed, enthusiastic engagement with the Bible. The conceptual lenses through which research data were compared to literature in the field included teaching methodologies proposed by Wink, Blair, and Borsch. Method. The study used a qualitative research design. It was field focused, utilized the "self" as the research instrument, used interpretation, employed expressive and first- person language and voice, and paid attention to particulars. The study offers a grounded theory that describes how seminary-educated pastors are successfully leading ordinary readers to informed, enthusiastic engagement with the Bible. The grounded theory grew out of interviews with six pastors who were chosen purposively. Pastors were chosen who (a) regularly lead adult Bible studies in their congregations; (b) are consciously utilizing tools of biblical interpretation gleaned in seminary as they prepare for and teach adult Bible studies; (c) perceive that congregational members who participate in these Bible studies are enthusiastically engaged with Scripture; and (d) perceive that congregational members who participate in these Bible studies are making use of tools of biblical interpretation. In addition, the grounded theory reflects interviews with participants in the studies these pastors are leading. Results. Five major themes emerged from interviews with pastors: (a) their formative experiences with the Bible; (b) their passion for biblical formation; (c) their understanding of pastoral identity as it relates to Bible teaching; (d) their pedagogical approach; and (e) personal characteristics that support their Bible teaching. Although pastors came from diverse backgrounds and ministry settings, their experiences, perspectives and behaviors share a great deal in common. While pastors do not share a teaching technique in common, they do share an overall pedagogical approach in common, and they share much more in common than a pedagogical approach. This is particularly striking because the data were drawn through a "grounded theory" approach. Interview questions were open-ended and assumed no hypothesis regarding what kinds of experiences, perspectives and behaviors pastors might share. Nevertheless, remarkable consistency is present in the findings. Conclusion. The study concludes that pastors' passion for the Bible, understanding of pastoral identity, personal characteristics, pedagogical approach, and formative experiences combine to empower pastors to successfully create communities of engagement around the Bible. It further claims that forming pastors who successfully lead ordinary readers to informed, enthusiastic engagement with the Bible is the responsibility of many parts of the "ecology of ministry," including congregations, regional and national church bodies, colleges and universities, seminaries, agencies, retreat and conference centers, publishers, and other supporting organizations. As pastors are being formed as children, growing into young adults, being equipped for ministry, being called to particular ministry assignments, and carrying out their ministries in various congregations and communities, all parts of "the system" have major roles to play in lighting the fire of passion for Scripture and in nurturing habits of mind and heart that support the development of effective pastor-teachers.


In this paper we report the clinical utility of the diagnostic guidelines for ICD‐11 mental, behavioural and neurodevelopmental disorders as assessed by 339 clinicians in 1,806 patients in 28 mental health settings in 13 countries. Clinician raters applied the guidelines for schizophrenia and other primary psychotic disorders, mood disorders (depressive and bipolar disorders), anxiety and fear‐related disorders, and disorders specifically associated with stress. Clinician ratings of the clinical utility of the proposed ICD‐11 diagnostic guidelines were very positive overall. The guidelines were perceived as easy to use, corresponding accurately to patients' presentations (i.e., goodness of fit), clear and understandable, providing an appropriate level of detail, taking about the same or less time than clinicians' usual practice, and providing useful guidance about distinguishing disorder from normality and from other disorders. Clinicians evaluated the guidelines as less useful for treatment selection and assessing prognosis than for communicating with other health professionals, though the former ratings were still positive overall. Field studies that assess perceived clinical utility of the proposed ICD‐11 diagnostic guidelines among their intended users have very important implications. Classification is the interface between health encounters and health information; if clinicians do not find that a new diagnostic system provides clinically useful information, they are unlikely to apply it consistently and faithfully. This would have a major impact on the validity of aggregated health encounter data used for health policy and decision making. Overall, the results of this study provide considerable reason to be optimistic about the perceived clinical utility of the ICD‐11 among global clinicians.


Finland, a prosperous Nordic country with a population of 5.5 million and significant distances between towns, though quite short distances traveled by car, is aiming to be a carbon-neutral society by 2035. Due to the level of urgency, a technological pathway with decarbonization of fuels and innovation only, is unlikely to be sufficient. Instead, a more systemic change based on a transformative pathway with demand-side management, i.e., measures based on behavioral change, is vital. In this research we were interested in learning how life satisfaction relates to the behavioral intentions of Finnish citizens, regarding a sustainable modal shift. We focused on walking, cycling, public transport and reduction in car use, e.g., a transition from fossil fuels to active mobility, from ownership to usership. Data were collected via a questionnaire in April 2017. The respondents (n = 2052) provided 2335 comments as to why they considered a specific sustainable modality as being important to them. We applied both qualitative and quantitative methods in order to establish how the mobility behavior of citizens manifests nationwide and the types of arguments that citizens put forward concerning their mobility intentions. The results indicate that there is a strong relationship between the respondents' reduced use of private cars and their life satisfaction. There is a concern about sustainability and a willingness to change current mobility practices, as well as signs of altruism, while hedonic concerns such as health and personal finances dominate the responses. Furthermore, concerns about social injustice, such as a lack of public transport, are emerging themes, i.e., when enacting mobility transitions it is vital to focus on how to enable a meaningful life for all demographic groups using suitable mobility services.


This study is an attempt to consider the role of translation competence of medical experts who are self-translating medical research abstracts from English into Kurdish. To do so, it investigates a corpus of research abstracts terminologically, syntactically and textually in order to identify and establish the translation competence of the medical experts.

The study adopts the descriptive approach to translation for the purpose of its investigation within the frame of which it employs Toury's methodology in order to analyse 65 originally written abstracts and 65 translated Kurdish abstracts. The aim of the study is to identify the translation competence of medical experts who perform English-Kurdish specialised medical translation. It also aims to identify any potential recurrent translational behaviour that occurs in Kurdish specialised medical translation. Moreover, the study aims to provide an insight into the status of Kurdish specialised language through examining the translated abstracts.

The results of the data analysis reveal that medical experts have successfully demonstrated the translation of their research abstracts as far as terminology and conceptual knowledge are concerned. However, their translations show recurrent cases of linguistic and textual markedness which can be attributed to a lack of linguistic and textual competence. The results also revealed that Kurdish specialised medical language is not under-developed as the study hypothesised but it has a rich stock of specialised terminology as well as naturalised terms that the medical experts have largely used in their self-translated abstracts.

Based on the outcomes of the study, it is concluded that medical experts require linguistic and textual competence as much as subject competence. In addition, consistent and appropriate proofreading can have a profound impact on specialised medical translation in reducing the incidence of syntactic and textual calques as well as common typographical errors before publication.


This research is a field study on how tacit knowledge is construed by IT professionals through nominalisation in their language and how this knowledge may be explicated in grammar-based interviews. The study was conducted over four months of interviews with a team working on a Content Management System (CMS) redevelopment project in an Australian media organisation. The broad aim of the interviews was to elicit tacit knowledge from these technologists about their work on this project. This paper focuses on a specific aspect of this endeavour: unpacking knowledge about process that was embedded in the talk of the participants through the grammatical feature, nominalisation. We employ linguistic analysis techniques drawn from Systemic Functional Linguistics to achieve this end. While we adopt Polanyi's theory of tacit knowing, we depart from this theory by arguing that tacit knowledge is carried in language and that linguistic analysis techniques offer rich methods for understanding such knowledge.


It is shown how to incorporate prior knowledge into the restoration of an image from a finite number of its expansion coefficients in some basis. The significant image enhancement obtained for simple prior knowledge suggests an application to image-transform coding. A computer simulation is presented that demonstrates that compression ratios greater than 13:1 are possible.


Abstract This article examines the Turkish state's assimilationist policy towards the Kurds and the Kurdish language in Turkey. It studies how the Turkish nationalist elites, the Kemalists, have throughout the 20th century systematically suppressed the Kurdish language as part of their aim to construct a homogenous nation-state of Turkish speakers. It shows that this linguicidal policy was strongly informed by the traumatic collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the consequent Kemalist emphasis on complete ethno-linguistic homogeneity as criteria for being "Turkish", "Western" and "civilised". The article discusses the various "Turkification" strategies of the authorities, such as banning the Kurdish language, the denial of the existence of the Kurds, changing the names of towns and villages, the forced re-settlement of Kurds and the assimilation of Kurdish children. It critically analyses the recent developments in Turkey's Kurdish language policy and the reform efforts of the current government as part of the country's EU candidacy. The article reflects however, that whilst looking good on paper, these reforms have had little impact in reality and Kurdish speakers in Turkey are still systematically denied their basic human and linguistic rights.


Twitchell's essay examines Dave Eggers's What Is the What (2006) in the context of recent international interest in the morality of uncertainty, a stance which looks to self-erasure, not-knowing, and imaginative empathy as providing both the most humane response to trauma and a generative platform for cross-cultural understanding. Twitchell posits that this turn can be productively situated in relation to two seemingly unconnected "problem" genres of U.S. literature: representations of Africa and memoirs of suffering. By positioning What Is the What-the fictionalized autobiography of a real-life Sudanese Lost Boy written by a white American author-as the limit case for the imaginative representation of distant trauma, two distinct questions arise and converge: how did the fictionalizing of suffering become a means of rendering it usable, and what confluence of events has made it ethically possible for an American writer to offer a first-person account of African trauma? By sketching the recent critical histories of depictions of Africa and memoirs of trauma-each of which have been haunted by the specters of narcissism and fraudulence-Twitchell argues that two seemingly antagonistic cultural imperatives coincided at the moment of the novel's publication: the moral obligation to empathize with distant and dissimilar persons, and a skepticism about the morality of empathic identification itself. She suggests that Eggers's novel proposes a way out of this stalemate by offering a model for empathic response grounded in the ethical value of uncertainty and error, in which representations of Africa and memoirs of suffering function as privileged sites of cultural conversation not despite their inevitable inaccuracies but because of them.


The phase noise of the f-to-2f interferometer used for stabilizing the carrier-envelope phase of a femtosecond laser oscillator was studied by adding a He-Ne laser beam co-propagating with the short pulse laser beam. The noise was reduced to ~60 mrad by stabilizing the optical path length difference of the interferometer. This suppressed the fast jitter of the carrier-envelope phase of the amplified laser pulses from 79 to 48 mrad.


In this renowned volume, Hermann Weyl discusses the symmetric, full linear, orthogonal, and symplectic groups and determines their different invariants and representations. Using basic concepts from algebra, he examines the various properties of the groups. Analysis and topology are used wherever appropriate. The book also covers topics such as matrix algebras, semigroups, commutators, and spinors, which are of great importance in understanding the group-theoretic structure of quantum mechanics. Hermann Weyl was among the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century. He made fundamental contributions to most branches of mathematics, but he is best remembered as one of the major developers of group theory, a powerful formal method for analyzing abstract and physical systems in which symmetry is present. In The Classical Groups, his most important book, Weyl provided a detailed introduction to the development of group theory, and he did it in a way that motivated and entertained his readers. Departing from most theoretical mathematics books of the time, he introduced historical events and people as well as theorems and proofs. One learned not only about the theory of invariants but also when and where they were originated, and by whom. He once said of his writing, "My work always tried to unite the truth with the beautiful, but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful." Weyl believed in the overall unity of mathematics and that it should be integrated into other fields. He had serious interest in modern physics, especially quantum mechanics, a field to which The Classical Groups has proved important, as it has to quantum chemistry and other fields. Among the five books Weyl published with Princeton, Algebraic Theory of Numbers inaugurated the Annals of Mathematics Studies book series, a crucial and enduring foundation of Princeton's mathematics list and the most distinguished book series in mathematics.


Abstract. Observations of coastline retreat using contemporary very high resolution satellite and historical aerial imagery were compared to measurements of open water fraction, summer air temperature, and wind. We analysed seasonal and interannual variations of thawing-induced cliff top retreat (thermo-denudation) and marine abrasion (thermo-abrasion) on Muostakh Island in the southern central Laptev Sea. Geomorphometric analysis revealed that total ground ice content on Muostakh is made up of equal amounts of intrasedimentary and macro ground ice and sums up to 87%, rendering the island particularly susceptible to erosion along the coast, resulting in land loss. Based on topographic reference measurements during field campaigns, we generated digital elevation models using stereophotogrammetry, in order to block-adjust and orthorectify aerial photographs from 1951 and GeoEye, QuickBird, WorldView-1, and WorldView-2 imagery from 2010 to 2013 for change detection. Using sea ice concentration data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) and air temperature time series from nearby Tiksi, we calculated the seasonal duration available for thermo-abrasion, expressed as open water days, and for thermo-denudation, based on the number of days with positive mean daily temperatures. Seasonal dynamics of cliff top retreat revealed rapid thermo-denudation rates of −10.2 ± 4.5 m a−1 in mid-summer and thermo-abrasion rates along the coastline of −3.4 ± 2.7 m a−1 on average during the 2010–2013 observation period, currently almost twice as rapid as the mean rate of −1.8 ± 1.3 m a−1 since 1951. Our results showed a close relationship between mean summer air temperature and coastal thermo-erosion rates, in agreement with observations made for various permafrost coastlines different to the East Siberian Ice Complex coasts elsewhere in the Arctic. Seasonality of coastline retreat and interannual variations of environmental factors suggest that an increasing length of thermo-denudation and thermo-abrasion process simultaneity favours greater coastal erosion. Coastal thermo-erosion has reduced the island's area by 0.9 km2 (24%) over the past 62 years but shrank its volume by 28 x 106 m3 (40%), not least because of permafrost thaw subsidence, with the most pronounced with rates of g− 11 cm a−1 on yedoma uplands near the island's rapidly eroding northern cape. Recent acceleration in both will halve Muostakh Island's lifetime to less than a century.


A richly textured portrait of the famous Native leader Powhatan and his realm emerges in this revisionist study. For decades the English colonists at and around Jamestown lived in the shadow of a powerful confederation of Native American communities led by Powhatan. That realm encompassed the Tidewater area of Virginia from the James River to the Potomac River. For many years Powhatan skillfully staved off threats from other Native peoples and from European colonists. Despite the prominence of Powhatan during the early colonial years, our knowledge of him and life in his realm is filtered nearly completely through the eyewitness accounts of Europeans. In Powhatan Lords of Life and Death, an incisive structuralist perspective and an impressive synthesis and reinterpretation of available records by anthropologist Margaret Holmes Williamson provides a more complex and culturally appropriate view of the realm of Powhatan during the crucial early decades of the seventeenth century. Alternative conceptions of power and cosmology are set forth that force reconsideration of important components of Powhatan society, including the basis of leadership, the relationship between political leaders and religious specialists, the role of ritual, and the resonance of Powhatan cosmological beliefs with those of other southeastern Native peoples. Powhatan Lords of Life and Death revisits a pivotal figure in American history and enables us to appreciate more fully Powhatan and the fascinating world he helped to create.


The authors explain that although the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) does not refer to the environment in its list of rights and freedoms, the European Court of Human Rights (the body responsible for interpreting the convention) is creatively interpreting rights that are listed in it to counter environmental damage. The authors suggest that the extent of this creativity is of particular relevance at a time when the UK prepared to incorporate the convention into UK law. Article by Justine Thornton & Stephen Tromans of Simmons & Simmons solicitors, published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and its Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London.


Helen Vendler.TheArt of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997. xx + 672 pp. $35.00 cloth. CD included: the author reads 65 sonnets. As a stylized form of verbal construction and expression, the sonnet necessarily demands conscious artistic manipulation of words and their patterns of sound and meaning. Yet undeniably there are varying levels of achievement in the history of this long-popular form, and some writers have even found the sonnet devoid of meaning simply because it is redundant In Helen Vendler's close reading of the 154 Shakespeare sonnets, however, this magisterial critic reveals that in fact the Bard's consummate, unmatched art-his "impulse to aesthetic stylization" (630)-is based to a large extent on redundancy, not only of key words repeated in the three quatrains and couplets of a given sonnet, but within the two subsequences that make up the first 152 sonnets. Following the two subsequences as they develop the speaker's relationship first with the young man and then with the dark lady, Vendler observes connections between one sonnet and the next as well as among those with similar themes, images, or structural strategies. At times her method is to move backwards and forwards within the series to interrelate repetitive words or phrases that have appeared previously or reappear later and that indicate developing positions or conflicts vis-@-vis the two figures addressed by the Sonnets' speaker. In addition, Vendler detects repeated internal letters embedded in individual words that for the critic echo each sonnet's central idea. Whether one entirely agrees with Vendler on every word she analyzes, her study of the Sonnets can manifest with frequent brilliance the thoroughly conscious art of Shakespeare's handling of this classic form, even as her analyses suggest the notion that had the Bard written none of his plays he would still be the greatest writer in the English language. Two of many general assertions that Vendler makes about Shakespeare's style are that in the Sonnets he is "an astonishingly nonclassical poet" '(198), and that he likes to put "a grandly Latinate adjective with an Anglo-Saxon noun" (46 1). She notes that gods and goddesses "play almost no part in his sequence" and that the absence of classical references aids in giving the impression that Shakespeare's speech is "naked and immediate" (198). While Vendler finds that Shakespeare's sonnets often owe much to his "constant writing for oral delivery on the stage" (137), she also recognizes that the poet belonged "to the world of print"(95) and therefore employed the looks of words on the page in constructing his lines and quatrains. In considering Sonnet 118, Vendler points to wordplay involving "etymologically the French version of ma/" (500) in the word maladies as it reiterates the most repeated words in the poem:sick, sicken, sickness, and ill(s). She also discovers the poet playing with antonyms and homonyms, as well as the phonemesi that"haunt[s]" (501) such words as policy, anticipate, and medicine in place of the word sick. Likewise, in her explication of Sonnet 150, Vendler suggests that the word whore "flicker[s] through the poem" (634) in the form of worth, worst, abhor, worth, again, worthy, and worthiness. As she reveals in every case, the visual and sound patterns underscore each sonnet's basic problem-in number 150 the "transvaluation of moral values" (635). Readers of the Sonnets tend to encounter the same few examples from Shakespeare's sequence, and this fact points up another service rendered by a study like Vendler's, which, in conducting the reader through the entire sequence, discloses in the process its larger thematic developments as well as the pairings of Sonnets like numbers 50 and 51. Perhaps because such pairs should be read together, 50 and 51 are not included, for example, in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, which, in the Major Authors edition, prints 29 of the 154 Sonnets. …


This article examines the first wave of crowdfunding investment contracts that were offered in the U.S. during the first month after crowdfunding investment became legal in May 2016. Assessing the earliest possible data sample of crowdfunding investment contracts is particularly important because crowdfunding investment platforms create influential path dependencies that drive start-up companies to use the standardized contract templates that the platforms promote. This paper provides a basis, grounded in actual crowdfunding investment contracts, for recommending improvements to the agreements that govern the emerging field of crowdfunding investments while also establishing a baseline from which to measure future evolution of crowdfunding investment contracting practices.Initial crowdfunding investment offerings include contracts for six distinct types of investments: common stock, preferred stock, interest-bearing loans, revenue-sharing arrangements, convertible debt, and future equity. In addition, many of the initial crowdfunding investment offerings also include a rewards component, in the style of Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns.This article's analysis of each type of crowdfunding investment contract leads to four primary observations. First, crowdfunding investors may garner more practical protections from their collective leverage through social media than from formal contract rights. Second, crowdfunding investment intermediaries (i.e., websites known as funding portals) profoundly influence crowdfunding contracting practices by forging the standardized channels through which crowdfunding investments flow. Third, in the initial set of crowdfunding investment contracts, debt securities were significantly less likely to be offered than equity securities, and hybrid revenue-sharing securities were even less common, even though debt and revenue-sharing securities are well-suited for stable businesses with positive cash flows that seek investments from the crowd. Fourth, two new forms of simplified contracts — the "SAFE" and the "KISS", which are specially tailored for crowdfunding investment offerings with high-growth potential — hold great promise, though not without drawbacks, for efficiently providing crowdfunding investors with the types of protections that venture capitalists typically demand when investing in seed-stage start-up companies.


This paper examines the effects of government control structure on the allocation of bank credit to government-owned firms in China. It particularly examines the extent to which differences in institutional environments across the diverse regions of China affect the nexus between government control structure and levels of credit allocation. The analysis indicates that local governments pursue bank credit more aggressively for the firms they control than do higher ranked government units. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that government units are more disposed to pursue bank credits for firms which they control through state asset management bureaus than for firms which they control via state-owned entities. Importantly, these outcomes are less important in regions characterised by a good institutional environment than in those characterised by a poor institutional environment. Therefore, to minimise the need for government intervention in credit allocation to firms, regional governments should seek to establish quality institutional infrastructure.


Abstract Introduction. Access to the circulation is mandatory for adequate treatment in medical emergency situations. Intraosseous (IO) infusion is a safe, fast, and effective alternative for gaining access to the circulation, if intravenous access fails. In the last decade, the IO method gained renewed interest. New devices have been developed, such as the Bone Injection Gun (BIG) 15G/18G and the First Access for Shock and Trauma 1 (FAST1). Objective. To determine which IO needle is preferable for gaining IO access in patients requiring acute administration of fluids or medication in a prehospital setting. Methods. In this single-blind prospective randomized trial, the IO needles were added to the equipment of the helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) system. The HEMS nurses received training in proper use of all needles. Children (1–13 years) were randomized to the Jamshidi 15G or the BIG 18G, and adults (≥ 14 years) were randomized to the Jamshidi 15G, the BIG 15G, or the FAST1. All patients requiring acute administration of fluids or medication, without successful insertion of an intravenous (IV) catheter, were included. The IO needles were compared in terms of insertion time, success rate, bone marrow aspiration, adverse events during placement, and user satisfaction. Results. Sixty-five adult and 22 pediatric patients were included. The treatment groups were similar with respect to age, gender, mortality, and trauma mechanism (p ≥ 0.05). The median insertion times ranged from 38 seconds for the Jamshidi 15G to 49 seconds for the BIG 15G and 62 seconds for the FAST1 (p = 0.004). The devices did not differ with respect to success rates (adults overall 80% and children overall 86%), complication rates, and user satisfaction. Conclusions. The Jamshidi 15G needle could be placed significantly faster than the FAST1. The devices had similar success rates, complication rates, and user-friendliness. Intraosseous devices provide a safe, simple, and fast method for gaining access to the circulation in emergency situations.


Abstract: The notion of audience labour has been an important contribution to Marxist political economy of the media. It revised the traditional political economy analysis, which focused on media ownership, by suggesting that media was also a site of production, constituting particular relations of production. Such analysis highlighted the active role of audience in the creation of media value as both commodities and workers, thus pointing to audience exploitation. Recently, in light of paradigmatic transformations in the media environment – particularly the emergence of Web 2.0 and social network sites – there has been a renewed interest in such analysis, and a reexamination of audience exploitation. Focusing on Facebook as a case-study, this article examines audience labour on social network sites along two Marxist themes – exploitation and alienation. It argues for a historical shift in the link between exploitation and alienation of audience labour, concurrent with the shift from mass media to social media. In the mass media, the capacity for exploitation of audience labour was quite limited while the alienation that such work created was high. In contrast, social media allows for the expansion and intensification of exploitation. Simultaneously, audience labour on social media – because it involves communication and sociability – also ameliorates alienation by allowing self-expression, authenticity, and relations with others. Moreover, the article argues that the political economy of social network sites is founded on a dialectical link between exploitation and alienation: in order to be de-alienated, Facebook users must communicate and socialize, thus exacerbating their exploitation. And vice-versa, in order for Facebook to exploit the work of its users, it must contribute to their de-alienation.


In March 1638 Archibald "Archy" Armstrong, jester, was unceremoniously ejected from the court of King Charles I, as a result of a pointed jest he made to Archbishop William Laud regarding the trouble then occurring in Scotland over the archbishop's religious policies. !us ended Armstrong's long career at court, as jester first to James I/VI and then to his son, Charles. Evidence suggests that Armstrong was not acting out of character; by all accounts, his notoriety was built upon his propensity for making remarks. Armstrong's involvement in such high profile events as the Spanish marriage fiasco also garnered him public renown. Armstrong's career thus evidences the increasingly widespread knowledge about and discussion of state a#airs, the anxieties such issues raised, and the $uid boundaries of acceptable criticism.


Prediction of the chaotic time series generated by the complex parameter-varying systems is researched in this paper. The parameter-varying Logistic system is constructed firstly, and the properties of this kind of system are analyzed. These systems, whose parameter values change with time, do not have attractor shape invariable with time evolution because of their continually changing dynamical property. Combining the Takens' embedding theorem and the artificial neural networks (ANN) theory, we interprete the feasible reason that ANN method can be used to predict the chaos systems with the invariable attractor shape, and then discuss the potential problem that will be met when using ANN to predict the parameter-varying system. Experiments of forecasting the chaotic time series from parameter-varying Ikeda system using neural networks have been performed. The previous theoretical analyses are validated by the experiment results. The results also show that if only simply increasing the training data, the neural networks' predicting generalization ability may be reduced, the generalized predicting result on the parameter-varying system is especially seriously affected by the selected training data set. So prediction of the parameter-varying systems must be well resolved before the chaotic time series prediction can be made practical.


Ants have been suggested to prot ect forests against insect defoliators. Here, the association between colony size and foraging distances of two common Eurasian multinest-breeding, mound-building ant species, Formica aquilonia YARROW, 1955 and Formica exsecta NYLANDER, 1846, are compared, and the results are discussed in the context of the species' potential to protect trees from insect defoliators. The distance to the most distant foraging tree was over 100 m in a large nest of F. aquilonia, whereas always less than 10 m in F. exsecta. Foraging distance increased with an increase in colony size in F. aquilonia, but not in F. exsecta. Nest mounds were clearly larger in F. aquilonia, but the foraging distance differences were not due to nest size differences. Foraging distance was larger in F. aquilonia even when the effect of colony size was controlled for statistically. The smaller foraging range of F. exsecta could be compensated by its ability to form dense nest populations, but in Fennoscandian boreal forests it lives in temporarily open habitats and disappears before canopy closure. Therefore it may have a more limited use against insect defoliators than F. aquilonia. Formica aquilonia instead, like other polydomous members of the Formica rufa LINNAEUS, 1761 group, also lives inside older forests and has large foraging areas and wide-spread multi-nest colonies. Thus it may have greater potential to protect trees against defoliator insects during the lifespan of a forest.


The earlobe occupies a unique position among the structures of the face and is a very important region in aesthetic composition of the ear. The age alters the shape, width and length of the lobe due to sagging tissue and thus is at odds ratio with other aesthetic elements of the ear, requiring correction. Very little has been described to guide the surgeon in rejuvenating the ear. The correction aged lobe can be made alone or in combination with surgery of facial rejuvenation, as well as by secondary lobe rhytidoplasties inadequately secured to the face. The surgery is fairly simple, rapid recovery, with interesting results. The basic aim of the work is the description of the technique and its indications. The strategic positioning of the final scar in continuity with a depression anatomical ear that is escafa, and hidden by antitragus ensures a proper outcome, with little apparent scars. The technique described is a tactical option to reshape and rejuvenate the ear.


In ancient myths, Hubris and Incest appear as the two archetypes, and are largely mentioned as the primary human sins in various cultures. It is in fact reasonable to assume that these two taboos constitute an ideological foundation, ground rules or moral axioms for the entire human civilizations. The many notations provided in the stories of creation, myths, works of art and legends, only serve to strengthen this hypothesis. Despite their numerous joint appearances and reciprocity, while attempting to understand their essence and basic importance, it seems that the affinity existing between them has not been stressed strongly enough. A dream told by a 33 year old man, married and a father to one child, demonstrates the special relationship existing between incest and hubris. The man came to treatment because he couldn't hold on to a job and had a tendency to frequently change occupations. Having high ambitions of getting rich, he had the tendency to put enthusiastic efforts into dubious business schemes. They all eventually turned out to be totally unrealistic and caused him a great deal of disappointment, not to mention financial loss. He was in fact dependant on the support of his wife's affluent family who provided financial assistance. Coming from a low socioeconomic background, he aspired to fulfill the high expectations of his mother, who had already been disappointed by his gloomy, passive and unmotivated father


Background: Few studies investigated the teaching of Dental Trauma at undergraduate levels, and explored the effectiveness of some teaching interventions on students. The last decade has seen an increasing use of advanced technology within the arena of dental educational intervention. The trend certainly anticipates the overall improvement towards reaching a precise diagnosis and appropriate management of traumatic dental injuries. Some Smartphone Applications are just but examples of this educational technology.
Aim: This study firstly aims at evaluating the knowledge of final year undergraduate students about dental trauma. Secondly, the study assesses the ability of a selected group of the students to diagnose and propose treatment plan/s using a Smartphone Application 'Injured Tooth'. Design: dental undergraduate final year students, at Faculty of Dentistry, Egypt were invited to complete a Questionnaire on dental trauma after finishing all the lectures and relevant Case Studies' Sessions. The same questionnaire was used to measurechanges in the knowledge level of sixty students selected to use 'Injured Tooth'App during answering the Questionnaire.
Results:A total of 274 participated in the study. The mean percentage of correct answers was 77.8% (SD 17.3). The mean values for the total score were 8.4 (SD 1.4), with a range of 5–11. The mean percentage of correct answers of the selected students was 68.97(SD 20.2). The mean percentage of correct answers of the students using the Application was 95.8 (SD7.0).
Conclusions: Knowledge of the students regarding traumatic dental injuries is competent in some areas while considered inadequate in others. The use of the Application was effective in providing accessible knowledge to the students to guide them in proposing the possible management protocols for the different traumatic dental injuries presented in this Study.


Although much has been written about the indigenous irrigation systems of Tanzania, there has been no comprehensive historical study of state irrigation planning. This article fills this gap by analysing irrigation development policy in Tanzania between 1935 and 2017. Based on archival research, and using the Lower Moshi area in Kilimanjaro Region as a case study, it contains an analysis of 80 years of irrigation policy and state intervention. It distinguishes between four periods, based on changes in the perceived role of irrigation and the different actors that were considered important. It notes that the belief in the necessity of state intervention and formal engineering for proper irrigation development ran through all the time periods, and that these were the key factors defining the state's attitude towards irrigation development planning, regardless of the political situation. This article argues that, ultimately, the development narrative of 'modern' irrigation as a driver for agricultural transformation has been successful in depoliticising irrigation interventions and has succeeded in closing the debate on whether state-controlled irrigation development is really the best way to reduce poverty and stimulate economic growth. To provide space for reflection on the possible role of governments in promoting, supporting, and regulating farmer-led irrigation development, future debates on African irrigation should start by recognising the unique contributions that can be made by farmers in realising the continent's development targets.


Introduction In recent years Estonian archaeological sites have faced several cases of looting. Unfortunately only a very limited number of these cases have ended up in legal proceedings and yet, the solutions of these cases have not been helpful from the perspective of the protection of archaeological sites. For example, the illegal excavation of medieval coins in the surroundings of Keila in 2004 resulted in the payment of finding fees to the persons who actually had carried out a destruction of an archaeological monument and who, on that basis, should have paid fines to the state instead of receiving any fees. Such precedent allows concluding that laws which should have functioned and state authorities that should have implemented the laws, were at some point unsuccessful. Next to the legal side, it is important to consider ethical, social and economic aspects. The looters of Keila coin hoard have been the key players also in other cases, acting rather self-confidently with their clearly material focus and constantly testing the boundaries of legal and illegal behavior. The self-justification and effrontery of looters have been occasionally increased by the false images created in the media. Thus, general public does not often perceive the actual contents, extent and legal boundaries of the activity of looters (let us call them "treasure hunters"). All this facilitates looting and makes it more difficult to apply laws efficiently. This article addresses the protection of archaeological finds and the problems of "black archaeology" in Estonia, seeking to analyze, on the basis of three major looting cases (the hoards of Lauritsamae, Keila and Ubina), the problems deriving from legal regulation, ethical conflicts and economic interests with regard to the protection of archaeological heritage and its preservation on site. The three cases have been chosen for the analysis because these represent the only considerable case law with regard to "black archaeology" in Estonia. The issue is very topical because the failure in legal proceedings and the favorable attitude of media have contributed to the adventurous reputation of treasure hunters. The awareness of people about who can work on excavation sites, which technologies treasure hunters use and how adequately they operate, remains low. Also, the majority of people often think in material categories, without understanding why the objects in the surface are important in the first place. The article seeks to raise a discussion on whether the respective problems of "black archaeology" could have been avoided and develop ideas on whether and how it would be possible to enhance the protection of archaeological heritage in Estonia. Definition of a archeological heritage and "black archaeology" To analyze the issues related to the protection of archaeological heritage, it is important to start by defining "black archaeology". The activity of treasure hunters is usually called "black archaeology". Obviously, the term refers to the unlawful ("black") nature of the business of treasure hunters but this is just one element and does not explain the actual meaning of the activity called "black archaeology". Providing a suitable all-encompassing definition of "black archaeology" is not an easy task. The key to its definition seems to lie in the term "archaeology" itself. According to the Council of British Archaeology: Archaeology is the study of the material remains and environmental effects of human behaviour: evidence which can range from buried cities to microscopic organisms and covers all periods from the origins of humans millions of years ago to the remains of 20th and 21st century industry and warfare. It provides us with the only source of information about many aspects of our development. Milestones such as the beginning of agriculture, the origin of towns, or the discovery of metals, can only be understood through the examination of physical evidence. …


Injection moulding calculation is most important for the mould designing, according to the plastic Injection moulding machine specifications. It is required to determine number of cavities in mould during Injection mould designing. There are basically three methods we are used to determine the number of cavities. These methods are depending upon Shot Capacity, Clamping Force of machine and plasticizing rate of polymer which is used for a product. With the help of these calculations we designed a proper balanced mould and maximum utilize the machine.


Summary The only randomised controlled trial to test high-fidelity assertive community treatment (ACT) in the UK (the Randomised Evaluation of Assertive Community Treatment (REACT) study) found no advantage over usual care from community mental health teams in reducing the need for inpatient care and in other clinical outcomes, but participants found ACT more acceptable and engaged better with it. One possible reason for the lack of efficacy of ACT might be the short period of follow-up (18 months in the REACT study). This paper reports on participants' service contact, in-patient service use and adverse events 36 months after randomisation.


The theme of this series is given a human touch in "Mediaeval Masters". All of the contributors in this memorial volume are paying tribute to their mentor, former University of Toronto (St. Michael's College) professor, Rev. Edward A. Synan. These essays provide ample proof that Synan's legacy of excellence will continue to influence students of philosophy for decades to come. In addition to ten essays, the volume contains a Synan bibliography and a very heartfelt opening remembrance from M. Jean Kitchel. The essays are wide ranging, exploring Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, Averroes, and Albert the Great, as well as the Thomistic themes of essence and existence; creation, numbers and natures; and friendship and Christology. There is also a dicussion of the treatment of the problem of universals in Boethius, Porphyry and Abelard. Anyone who studies philosophy, whether a Thomist or not, should find this a valuable volume. That is as much a tribute to Father Synan as it is to the contributors, who were the grateful recipients of his generous and sage teaching.


This paper outlines the initial ideas and results surrounding the development of an accurate hand movement measurement tool. The system consists of a wearable glove measurement tool and a 3D interface. Real time data captured from each glove sensor will be displayed numerically and graphically. It will accurately quantify patients' flexion, extension, adduction and abduction of finger and thumb joint movements in degrees, maximum and minimum joint range and compare joint range with normal ROM values to determine the degree of deformity of the hand and stiffness of moving finger joints. The system can simultaneously record angles from multiple fingers to detect previously unidentifiable movement patterns. It measures a shift in the position of fingers in relation to the direction of the thumb by measuring web space and recording the minimum, maximum and average values during a number of tests to analyse joint movement and identify areas for joint protection benefit. Data is recorded and used for future com...


Abstract This paper presents the results of an economic analysis of the aquaculture of two species of grouper E. coloides (orange‐spotted grouper, green grouper, red‐spotted grouper) and E. malabaricus (malabar grouper, black‐spotted grouper) for small producers in the Philippines. The findings of the analysis indicate that, based on the assumptions, grouper culture is financially feasible. However, the capital requirements for the broodstock, hatchery/nursery, and integrated system may be beyond the financial means of many small producers. These stages of grouper culture may need to be developed as a larger project by private investors or government. The capital investment requirement for grow‐out (not including purchase of transport boxes) is within the financial means of small producers. Loans or other incentives will need to be made available for the small producer, but the cash flow indicates that these loans can be repaid in the first year of production.


The article presents an inquiry into the methodological concerns of art market research from a cultural studies perspective. It focuses on the liminal operating space of data between pictures, writing, numbers, and language. While representing data, art market visualizations also reproduce big data's epistemological grounds and strategic alignment. Therefore, it seems useful to conceive of big data as a dominant transdisciplinary factor of knowledge production. The arguments provided in this article are based on the assumption that mediality and interdisciplinarity are only partially a matter of choice. Thus, the possible influence of data mining and visualizations on elementary research techniques like reading and interpreting raises urgent and far-reaching questions. Demonstrating that data's performativity relies on the materiality of tools and machines as well as accompanying narratives and specific blind spots, the article refers to anamorphosis and anagnorisis as complementary visual and poetic concepts. They are organized along an interrelation of superiority and fragmentation that speaks of certainty rather deferred than ensured. This ambiguity and fragility allows for an aggregation of libidinal, discursive, and political forces. However, this strategic inconsistency is not part of big data's popular image. Quite on the contrary, as art market visualizations often demonstrate. Frequently, they operate as symbolic machines that promise economic and visual productivity. Mutually reinforcing, visual observation and economic efficiency conjoin with the idea of abundant knowledge. Consequently, the main focus of this article lies on the rhetoricity of knowledge promises.


A part of the accretionary wedge associated with the Lesser Antilles arc system is exposed in an area of approximately 50 km² in northeastern Barbados. Zircon separates from sandstones collected from the Scotland District, Barbados, W. I., were analyzed using the fission track technique in order to assess the spectrum of source areas from which these terrigenous sediments were derived and to better constrain the timing of deposition. Results yielded a mixture of ages with strong groupings from 25–80 Ma, 200–350 Ma, and greater than 500 Ma. The youngest population indicates that some of the Scotland beds, previously dated by paleontologic methods as Eocene, may actually be as young as late Oligocene. Possible source areas include the Lesser Antilles arc, the Netherlands-Venezuelan Antilles arc, and the Caribbean Mountains of Venezuela. The 200–350 Ma population may reflect partially annealed cratonic material, an Andean component, and/or material associated with a Triassic rifting event. The oldest zircons (>500 Ma) and metamict zircons were likely derived from the South American craton. Detrital feldspars separated from sandstone at the base of Chalky Mount were analyzed by the 40Ar/39Ar age spectrum technique. Results yield what is interpreted to be a slow cooling gradient from 1350 Ma to 925 Ma and provides additional evidence of a cratonic source for the accreted sediments. Based on results from this study, and paleogeographical constraints, it is proposed that source areas for the Scotland sandstones of Barbados may have included the Guayana shield, Central Cordillera, uplifted areas of coastal South America, and the Lesser Antilles volcanic arc. We speculate that in Late Oligocene time an immense "proto-Orinoco" river system flowed in a northeasterly direction from the shield through the northern Venezuelan mountain system (Cordillera de la Costa and Araya-Paria) finally emerging into the Caribbean Sea in the area now occupied by Unare depression. Sediments comprising this deltaic complex and deep sea fan were either deposited directly into the trench or onto the sea floor where they were soon after caught up in the accretionary wedge of the Lesser Antilles arc system. This article contains supplementary material.


This is a manual on supervision with video recordings and role-play. The manual provides points of reference for reflecting in a team on the implementation of the work and learning from each other by means of video recordings and role-play. We know that the quality of the care provided is directly related to the outcomes for clients. And we know that learning from each other helps to improve this quality. Using this manual, a team can get to work on this.


In recent years the development of the applications in the field of telecommunications, data processing, control, renewable energy generation, consumer and automotive electronics determined the need for increasingly complex systems, also in shorter time to meet the growing market demand. The increasing complexity is mainly due to the mixed nature of these systems that must be developed to accommodate the new functionalities and to satisfy the more stringent performance requirements of the emerging applications. This means a more complex design and verification process. The key to managing the increased design complexity is a structured and integrated design methodology which allows the sharing of different circuit implementations that can be at transistor level and/or at a higher level (i.e.HDL languages).In order to expedite the mixed systems design process it is necessary to provide: an integrated design methodology; a suitable supporting tool able to manage the entire design process and design complexity and its successive verification.It is essential that the different system blocks (power, analog, digital), described at different level of abstraction, can be co-simulated in the same design context. This capability is referred to as mixed-level simulation.One of the objectives of this research is to design a mixed system application referred to the control of a coupled step-up dc-dc converter. This latter consists of a power stage designed at transistor-level, also including accurate power device models, and the analog controller implemented using VerilogA modules. Digital controllers are becoming very attractive in dc-dc converters for their programmability, ability to implement sophisticated control schemes, and ease of integration with other digital systems. Thus, in this dissertation it will be presented a detailed design of a Flash Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC). The designed ADC provides medium-high resolution associated to high-speed performance. This makes it useful not only for the control application aforementioned but also for applications with huge requirements in terms of speed and signal bandwidth. The entire design flow of the overall system has been conducted in the Cadence Design Environment that also provides the ability to mixed-level simulations. Furthermore, the technology process used for the ADC design is the IHP BiCMOS 0.25 µm by using 50 GHz NPN HBT devices.


BACKGROUND
Apolipoprotein (APOE) epsilon4 allele has been associated with cardiac dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease and beta-thalassemia. We investigated the association between APOE genotypes and left ventricular dysfunction in a population of community-dwelling elderly subjects.

METHODS
This study was performed in the Rotterdam Study, a population-based prospective cohort study among elderly subjects. For 2206 participants, a baseline echocardiogram and blood specimens for APOE typing were available. Cardiac dysfunction was considered present when fractional shortening was <or=25%. Multivariate logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratios (ORs). The epsilon3/epsilon3 genotype served as a reference category.

RESULTS
In participants who were homozygous for the epsilon4 allele, the odds of cardiac dysfunction was increased 3-fold (OR, 3.1; 95% CI, 1.2-8.1), whereas the odds of cardiac dysfunction in persons with APOE epsilon3/epsilon4 was not significantly increased (OR, 1.5; 95% CI, 0.9-2.5). There was a significant allele-effect relationship for the epsilon4 allele (P-trend <.05). These elevated odds remained after adjustment for cholesterol levels and atherosclerosis parameters. Risks associated with APOE epsilon4/epsilon4 and APOE epsilon3/epsilon4 were more pronounced in participants aged >or=65 years.

CONCLUSION
The APOE epsilon4 allele is an independent risk factor for cardiac dysfunction in elderly people. Besides well-known effects on atherosclerosis and cholesterol levels, there may be other mechanisms, such as apoptosis, through which this allele exerts negative effects on myocardial performance.


The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-ray Observatory is an extensive air shower detector operating in central Mexico, which has recently completed its first two years of full operations. If for a burst like GRB 130427A at a redshift of 0.34 and a high-energy component following a power law with index 1.66, the high-energy component is extended to higher energies with no cut-off other than from extragalactic background light attenuation, HAWC would observe gamma rays with a peak energy of ∼300 GeV. This paper reports the results of HAWC observations of 64 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by Swift and Fermi, including three GRBs that were also detected by the Large Area Telescope (Fermi -LAT). An ON/OFF analysis method is employed, searching on the time scale given by the observed light curve at keV–MeV energies and also on extended time scales. For all GRBs and time scales, no statistically significant excess of counts is found and upper limits on the number of gamma rays and the gamma-ray flux are calculated. GRB 170206A, the third brightest short GRB detected by the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor on board the Fermi satellite (Fermi -GBM) and also detected by the LAT, occurred very close to zenith. The LAT measurements can neither exclude the presence of a synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) component nor constrain its spectrum. Instead, the HAWC upper limits constrain the expected cut-off in an additional high-energy component to be less than 100 GeV for reasonable assumptions about the energetics and redshift of the burst.


A prominent feature of the dynamics of large neuronal networks are the synchrony- driven collective oscillations generated by the interplay between synaptic coupling and synaptic delays. This thesis investigates the emergence of delay-induced oscillations in networks of heterogeneous spiking neurons. Building on recent theoretical advances in exact mean field reductions for neuronal networks, this work explores the dynamics and bifurcations of an exact firing rate model with various forms of synaptic delays. In parallel, the results obtained using the novel firing rate model are compared with extensive numerical simulations of large networks of spiking neurons, which confirm the existence of numerous synchrony-based oscillatory states. Some of these states are novel and display complex forms of partial synchronization and collective chaos. Given the well-known limitation of traditional firing rate models to describe synchrony-based oscillations, previous studies greatly overlooked many of the oscillatory states found here. Therefore, this thesis provides a unique exploration of the oscillatory scenarios found in neuronal networks due to the presence of delays, and may substantially extend the mathematical tools available for modeling the plethora of oscillations detected in electrical recordings of brain activity.


For the CLIN28 shared task, we evaluated systems for spelling correction of high-quality text. The task focused on detecting and correcting spelling errors in Dutch Wikipedia pages. Three teams took part in the task. We compared the performance of their systems to that of a baseline system, the Dutch spelling corrector Valkuil. We evaluated the systems' performance in terms of F1 score. Although two of the three participating systems performed well in the task of correcting spelling errors, error detection proved to be a challenging task, and without exception resulted in a high false positive rate. Therefore, the F1 score of the baseline was not improved upon. This paper elaborates on each team's approach to the task, and discusses the overall challenges of correcting high-quality text.


Abstract Scholars have mainly studied the formation of political parties on the macro-level, but to explain the conditions of successful party establishment it is important to understand the motivational underpinnings of voting for a new party on the individual level. Using cross-national voter surveys and long-term panel data from Germany (2005–2013) and the Netherlands (1998–2002), this study contrasts the implicit assumptions about voter behaviour of equilibrium- and protest-based theories on party emergence. Although proximity to a new party matters, the evidence does not support the equilibrium perspective's tenet that new parties gain votes from citizens whose views were not represented in the preceding election. Moreover, political discontent was identified as fertile soil for new parties to gain electoral support, but the relationship between discontent and voting is more complex than theoretically suggested. These findings on individual voter behaviour may inform further theoretical work on the successful establishment of new political parties.