Albedo, i.e., the fraction of the incoming sunlight that a surface reflects, has been previously shown to play a key role on the climate system by influencing the energy balance of the Earth's ecosystems. Shifts in land cover, such as deforestation for agriculture, or the creation of grazing lawns by grazers, are likely to alter albedo, which, in turn, can influence the local climate - higher albedos are associated with a net cooling effect, while lower albedos can lead to surface temperature increases. Raises in temperature have been previously linked to woody encroachment, process that can further lead to a warmer effect due to the reduced albedo of woody plants in comparison with grass. In the present study, I investigated how albedo differed between three distinct savanna vegetation types: grazing lawns, tall bunch grassland and woody encroached tall grassland. I showed that grazing lawns have a significantly higher albedo than woody encroached tall grass. Albedo decreased with the amount of bare soil, and increased with the amount of grass. However, it was not affected by woody cover. I also investigated the likelihood of shrub encroachment to happen in lawns and tall bunch grass, and found that it happens more easily in tall bunch grass. This study supports that grazers, particularly megaherbivores, as main drivers of grazing lawns formation and maintenance, can affect the local climate of African savannas. By creating grazing lawns, herbivores also prevent shrub encroachment and the changes in albedo (and consequently, in local climate) that this process provokes. Another important aspect of this study is to supply more empirical data on the importance of a megaherbivore, such as white rhino, to the ecosystem and the possible consequences of its removal, which in light of the recent poaching crisis might be a reality not so far away.


ABSTRACT
 Fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (J. E. Smith) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), infestations in most of North America arise from annual migrations of populations that overwinter in southern Texas and Florida. Cytochrome oxidase I haplotype profiles within the fall armyworm corn strain, the subgroup that preferentially infests corn (Zea mays L.), can differentiate the Texas and Florida populations. We use this molecular metric to show that fall armyworms in central Pennsylvania originate from Texas, indicating the existence of a migratory pathway from Texas to the northeastern United States. These results were compared with historical trapping data for fall armyworm and another migratory noctuid, corn earworm Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), in the Pennsylvania and Maryland corn-producing areas to better define lepidopteran migratory pathways.


This paper proposes an improved and intuitional dual parity placement scheme to enhance the reliability of a disk array system. The presented scheme can tolerate up to two disk failures by using two types of parity information in a matrix of disk block partitions. This scheme can reduce the occurrences of the bottleneck partially because the diagonal parity stripe units are uniformly distributed over the disk array. The encoding algorithm of this scheme is simple and many of the steps of the recovering algorithms can be executed in parallel. This scheme enables a disk array to recover rapidly from any two disk failures, with a single algorithm applied straightforwardly.


In a unique dataset that covers virtually all bank loans granted in Portugal, we find that when a firm borrows from one additional bank, the interest rate on bank loans for this firm decreases on average by 14 to 28 basis points. The result holds for small firms but not for larger firms. We test three theories that are consistent with this finding. More banks relationships may: (1) increase firms' bargaining power, (2) decrease banks' monitoring costs, (3) reduce asymmetric information between borrowers and lenders. We show that our empirical findings are neither consistent with the increase in firm bargaining power nor supportive of the decrease in banks' monitoring costs. Our results are consistent with an important economic role of asymmetric information in the funding of small firms.


Purpose: Seasonal and perennial allergic conjunctivitis represent the majority of cases of ocular allergy. This analysis was designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of once-daily alcaftadine 0.25% in preventing ocular itching associated with seasonal or perennial allergic conjunctivitis. Subjects and methods: Pooled data from two double-masked, multicenter, placebo-controlled studies using the conjunctival allergen challenge (CAC) model of allergic conjunctivitis were analyzed. Subjects randomized to receive treatment with alcaftadine 0.25% or placebo were challenged with seasonal (grass, ragweed, trees) or perennial (cat dander, cat hair, dog dander, dust mites, cockroach) allergens, 16 hours after treatment instillation. The primary efficacy measure was subject-evaluated mean ocular itching at 3 minutes post-CAC. Secondary measures included ocular itching at 5 and 7 minutes post-CAC. The proportion of subjects with minimal itch (itch score  1) and zero itch (itch score = 0), and safety were also assessed. Results: A total of 189 subjects enrolled in the two studies were treated with alcaftadine or placebo. Overall, 129 subjects were challenged with seasonal allergens and 60 subjects were challenged with perennial allergens. Alcaftadine 0.25% achieved a statistically significant reduction in mean itch score at 3, 5, and 7 minutes post-CAC compared with placebo in subjects challenged with seasonal allergens ( P  0.0001 at all time points) and those challenged with perennial allergens ( P  0.0001 at all time points). A higher percentage of subjects treated with alcaftadine compared with placebo achieved minimal itch ( P  0.001 versus placebo at all time points) and zero itch ( P  0.05 at all time points except 7 minutes for perennial) when challenged with either seasonal or perennial allergens. No treatment-related or serious adverse events were reported. Conclusion: Once-daily alcaftadine 0.25% ophthalmic solution was well tolerated and demonstrated effective relief of ocular itching in subjects challenged with allergens classic for triggering either Key topics include: Optometry; Visual science; Pharmacology and drug therapy in eye diseases; Basic Sciences; Primary and Secondary eye care; Patient and Quality of Improvements.


Nowadays Electronic Health Records (EHRs) is a preferred method to store patients' health records. The emergence of cloud computing services provides users with flexible access, large storage capability and low costs, which motivate EHR maintainers to consider migrating EHR data from their own storage to the cloud. However, securing EHRs in cloud is a major challenge. Several security properties need to be satisfied, such as data privacy, fine-grained access control and scalable access between different clouds. In this paper, we propose a secure and scalable framework for EHR data sharing which combines Identity-based Encryption and Attribute-based Encryption together to enforce access control policies. Through this framework a fine-grained access control scheme on EHR can be enforced and scalable access between different clouds is enabled. We also propose a novel design to address the problem of improper data access caused by a user with multiple roles and access rights to an EHR.


The focus of this thesis is the study of manifesto texts and the way they offer collective audiences geopolitical worldviews grounded in mental models. I investigate both propositional and imagistic approaches to conceptual structure suggested in sociological, psychological and linguistic literatures. By reviewing contemporary representational formats for the internal structure of mental models, my aim is to develop a framework for demonstrating conceptual structures encoded in manifesto texts. In different research fields the mental model construct is recognized by multiple terms and is variously referred to as 'collective action frames' in social movement theory, 'situation' and 'context models' in socio-cognitive discourse studies, 'case frames' in frame semantics, 'idealized cognitive models' in cognitive linguistics and 'deictic space models' in cognitive discourse studies. Building on these recent approaches to mental models, conceptual operations such as schematization, categorization, metaphorical projection and mental space construction will be integrated into my suggested theoretical framework. Using two 1960s social movement manifestos as data, I explore the potential for a scenes-and-episodes framework for reconstructing conceptual structures within models. Following other cognitive discourse approaches, this framework assumes that conceptual structures active in both short term memory (STM) and long term memory (LTM) models are embodied. Analysing language from an embodied perspective means that lexical and grammatical constructions are thought to be cuing imagistic simulations that bring internal structure to a mental model. These imagistic simulations are employed by the reader during the construal of situations encoded in the text. In this framework, the sum of these lexical and grammatical constructions are considered to make up a cognitive discourse grammar. Moving toward a more complete understanding of the conceptualisation process, I also explore how online construal operations active during model creation may be interacting with offline categorical structures in LTM. Overall, the aim of this thesis is to provide a framework for modelling meaning construction as it takes place in the minds of text consumers.


Background: Banjarbaru municipality is a DHF endemic area because of the annual occurrence. From the year of 2001 up to 2007 there was always a number of people who was died because of the disease. Effort to control DHF by municipality health office of Banjarbaru was DHF promotion, early awareness on DHF and forming trained cadre of mosquito net control (PSN) of DHF. This was shown from the result of PJB from the year of 2002 up to 2007 and the average of AJB was under 95% and the incident rate of DHF was still up and down every year. The cadre of PSN DHF was expected could stimulate communities' participation in order to implement the PSN so that DHF incident could be suppressed. Objective: This research was aimed to find out the correlation of perception and activity of cadre of PSN DHF in DHF prevention and control in Banjarbaru municipality. Methods: This was an observational research that used cross sectional design. The research variable consisted of independent variable that was internal factor (knowledge, age, education level, job) and external factor (information source, information media) and the confounding variable was perception on cadre of PSN DHF and the dependent variable was activity of PSN DHF cadre. The sample was taken with proportional random sampling and the analysis being used was univariate analysis and bivariate analysis with t test and regression linear was used to examine the correlation strength. Results: The research result showed that respondent's perception was already good (81,08%) and respondent's activity was also good (77,36%). There was a significant correlation between respondent's knowledge on DHF disease with perception of PSN DHF cadre (p 0,05). There was an unsignificant correlation between analysis of information source and information media with perception of PSN DHF cadre (p>0,05). Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between cadre's perception with cadre's activity (p < 0,05). Conclusion: Perception and activity of PSN DHF cadre in the municipality of Banjarbaru was already fine. There was a correlation between internal factor that was knowledge with cadre's perception, while the other internal factor (age, education level, and job) did not have correlation with perception. External factor (information media and source of information) was not related with perception of PSN DHF cadre. Indeed, there was a correlation between perception and cadre's activity. Keywords: perception, activity, cadre of PSN DHF


Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (b. 1813, d. 1855) was a profound and prolific writer in the Danish "golden age" of intellectual and artistic activity. His work crosses the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism, devotional literature and fiction. Kierkegaard brought this potent mixture of discourses to bear as social critique and for the purpose of renewing Christian faith within Christendom. At the same time he made many original conceptual contributions to each of the disciplines he employed. He is known as the "father of existentialism", but at least as important are his critiques of Hegel and of the German romantics, his contributions to the development of modernism, his stylistic experimentation, his vivid re-presentation of biblical figures to bring out their modern relevance, his invention of key concepts which have been explored and redeployed by thinkers ever since, his interventions in contemporary Danish church politics, and his fervent attempts to analyse and revitalise Christian faith.


Although individual neurons can be highly selective to particular stimuli and certain upcoming actions, they can provide a complex representation of stimuli and actions at the level of population. The ability to dynamically allocate neural resources is crucial for cognitive flexibility. However, it is unclear whether cognitive flexibility emerges from changes in activity at the level of individual neurons, population, or both. By applying a combination of decoding and encoding methods to simultaneously recorded neural data, we show that while maintaining their stimulus selectivity, neurons in prefrontal cortex alter their correlated activity during various cognitive states, resulting in an enhanced representation of visual space. During a task with various cognitive states, individual prefrontal neurons maintained their limited spatial sensitivity between visual encoding and saccadic target selection whereas the population selectively improved its encoding of spatial locations far from the neurons' preferred locations. This 'encoding expansion' relied on high-dimensional neural representations and was accompanied by selective reductions in noise correlation for non-preferred locations. Our results demonstrate that through recruitment of less-informative neurons and reductions of noise correlation in their activity, the representation of space by neuronal ensembles can be dynamically enhanced, and suggest that cognitive flexibility is mainly achieved by changes in neural representation at the level of population of prefrontal neurons rather than individual neurons.


The deployment of containers as building modules has grown in popularity over the past years due to their inherent strength, modular construction, and relatively low cost. The upcycled container architecture is being accepted since it is more eco-friendly than using the traditional building materials with intensive carbon footprint. Moreover, owing to the unquestionable urgency of climate change, existing climate-adaptive design strategies may no longer respond effectively as they are supposed to work in the previous passive design. Therefore, this paper explores the conceptual design for an upcycled shipping container building, which is designed as a carbon-smart modular living solution to a single family house under three design scenarios, related to cold, temperate, and hot–humid climatic zones, respectively. The extra feature of future climate adaption has been added by assessing the projected future climate data with the ASHRAE Standard 55 and Current Handbook of Fundamentals Comfort Model. Compared with the conventional design, Rome would gradually face more failures in conventional climate-adaptive design measures in the coming 60 years, as the growing trends in both cooling and dehumidification demand. Consequently, the appropriate utilization of internal heat gains are proposed to be the most promising measure, followed by the measure of windows sun shading and passive solar direct gain by using low mass, in the upcoming future in Rome. Future climate projection further shows different results in Berlin and Stockholm, where the special attention is around the occasional overheating risk towards the design goal of future thermal comfort.


Medical and bioethical issues have spawned a great deal of debate in both public and academic contexts. Little has been done, however, to engage with the underlying issues of the nature of medicine and its role in human community. This book seeks to fill that gap by providing Christian philosophical and theological reflections on the nature and purposes of medicine and its role in a Christian understanding of human society.

The book provides two main 'doorways' into a Christian philosophical theology of medicine. First it presents a brief description of the contexts in which medicine is practiced in the early 21st century, identifying key problems and challenges that medicine must address. It then turns to issues in contemporary bioethics, demonstrating how the debate is rooted in conflicting visions of the nature of medicine (and so human existence). This leads to a discussion of some of the philosophical and theological resources currently available for those who would reflect 'Christianly' on medicine. The heart of the book consists of an articulation of a Christian understanding of medicine as both a scholarly and a social practice, articulating the philosophical-theological framework which informs this perspective. It fleshes out features of medicine as an inherently moral practice, one informed by a Christian social vision and shaped by key theological commitments. The book closes by returning to the issues relating to the context of medicine and bioethics with which it opened, demonstrating how a Christian philosophical-theology of medicine informs and enriches those discussions.


The challenges of delimiting and identifying marine invertebrate species impede estimations of true biodiversity. This is particularly true in the case of gorgonian diversity, in which only classical morphological characters (e.g. branching pattern, size and colouration of the colony and sclerites, etc.), which can be homoplastic and continuous, have been used. In this study, using an integrative taxonomic approach, we analysed two morphs initially considered as two eco-typical variants of Leptogorgia alba Duchassaing and Michelotti, 1864, living sympatrically in the littoral area of Ecuador. We explored the use of classical morphological and morphometric characters to delimit species in combination with the analyses of molecular markers (mtMutS, CoxII-Igr-CoxI, ITSs, and 28S rRNA) to infer phylogenetic relationships. Based on our results, two species should be considered, L. alba and a new species, L. manabiensis n. sp., which showed distinguishing morphological features that cannot be attributed to phenotypic plasticity. Both species also showed significant differences in morphometric, non-correlated characters in all size classes. The phylogenetic analyses showed a polyphyletic L. alba - L. manabiensis n. sp. species complex, and ancestral polymorphism and incomplete lineage sorting as possible evolutionary processes leading to this pattern. In conclusion, the combination of morphological and morphometric evidences provides the best support for the identification and delimitation of these challenging species. In addition, molecular analyses, mainly supported by nuclear markers, allow fundamental aspects of the evolutionary history of these organisms to be discerned.


One hundred years ago in Japan, study abroad was limited to an elite few who traveled on Japanese government scholarships or private funds. As to studying art overseas, almost all of the elite Japanese went to Paris to learn Western painting or sculpture. They stayed in Paris for several years and then returned to Japan, where they became Western-style painters or sculptors, or taught at colleges of art. In those days, few Japanese thought of coming to New York to study art. Most of the Japanese immigrating to the United States were manual laborers. They wanted to make their fortune in the country where they believed "the American Dream" was not a fantasy but a reality. They hoped that, once they accumulated a fortune, they would return to Japan as rich men. Regrettably, however, their high hopes often turned into nightmares in California and other parts of the United States. Yet some of the Japanese immigrants found that they had artistic talent and went to art schools in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, and New York. Between the two world wars, namely in the period of "the Lost Generation," at one time, in New York City alone, there were some one hundred Japanese who were artists or who were trying to become artists. Incidentally, in Of Time and the River, Thomas Wolfe writes about the multiracial city of New York: "The mongrel compost of a hundred races-the Jews, the Irish, the Italians ... as well as Chinese, Japs, and dapper little Filipinos--a hundred tongues, a thousand tribes ... the great web of America ..." (535-36). In pre-World War II New York, the Gachoukai was a club or association of Japanese sculptors and painters. Among Japanese artists who lived in in the city while Wolfe was there, the most renowned were Gozo Kawamura, (1) Yasuo Kuniyoshi, (2) and Isamu Noguchi. (3) They were well known in New York in the 1930s when Wolfe wrote the story of Katamoto, (4) a "Microscopic Gentleman from Japan" (You Can't 28). Gozo Kawamura was born in Nagano in 1884. He did not want to be drafted into the Japanese military, so he came to the United States in 1904. He finally settled down in New York in 1906 and began studying sculpture at the National Academy of Design, graduating in 1909. The next year, he went to Paris. There he met American sculptor Frederic William MacMonnies, who lived in a suburb of Paris at that time, and became his assistant. Kawamura entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1912. In 1916 he left Paris and returned to New York. From then on, with MacMonnies, Kawamura worked on many public monuments. For instance, New York City commissioned MacMonnies to create statues for the Washington Square Arch. MacMonnies and Kawamura worked together on the project, and those statues have been part of the arch since 1918. Then, in 1922, they created Civic Virtue for the New York City Hall. In 1935 Kawamura and James E. Fraser created Justice for the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. Kawamura was only 5'2", yet he created these huge public monuments. Meanwhile, in 1924, Wolfe accepted a teaching position at Washington Square College of New York University. Between 1924 and 1930, he lived near the university campus and Greenwich Village, where he would probably have seen and met Japanese artists staying in and around the Village. Presumably, Wolfe knew of Gozo Kawamura from seeing the public monuments at Washington Square and at City Hall. Or Aline Bernstein, Wolfe's Jewish mistress, may have told him about the Japanese sculptor. In those days, many Jews in New York were kind to young artists, so it is likely that young Japanese artists in the city were assisted in one way or another by Jewish people. For instance, Yasuo Kuniyoshi was married to Catharine Schmitt, a Jewish woman who helped him become a major American painter and a true American artist. Yasuo Kuniyoshi was born in Okayama in 1889. He came to America in 1906 as a manual laborer with no art training at home and with no intention of becoming a painter. …


We draw on panel data from a randomized field experiment to assess the effects of a flexibility/supervisor support initiative called STAR on turnover intentions and voluntary turnover among professional technical workers in a large firm. An unanticipated exogenous shock—the announcement of an impending merger—occurred in the middle of data collection. Both organizational changes reflect an emerging employment contract characterized by increasing employee temporal flexibility even as employers wield greater flexibility in reorganizing their workforces. We theorized STAR would reduce turnover intentions and actual turnover by making it more attractive to stay with the current employer. We found being in a STAR team (versus a usual practice team) lowered turnover intentions 12 months later and reduced the risk of voluntary turnover over almost three years. We also examined potential mechanisms accounting for the effects of these two organizational changes; STAR effects on reducing turnover intentions are partially mediated by reducing work-to-family conflict, family-to-work conflict, burnout, psychological distress, perceived stress, and increasing job satisfaction. The effect of learning about the merger on increasing turnover intentions is fully mediated by increased job insecurity. STAR also moderates the negative effects of learning about the merger on turnover intentions for different subgroups. Findings provide insights into the effectiveness of an organizational intervention, the dynamics of organizations, and how competing logics of two organizational changes affect employees' labor market expectations and behavior.


Around 1587 the Brescian nobleman Count Marc'Antonio Martinengo di Villachiara, who was renowned for his political and military experience as well as competence in both music and poetry, wrote a madrigal text, set it to music, and sent it to seventeen composers in different parts of Italy. Published under the title of L'amorosa Ero (Brescia, 1588), the collection gives the opportunity to compare some of the most influential composers such as Marenzio, Luzzaschi, Ingegneri, Striggio, and many others. The first part of the article focuses on the historical background to this collection, with special attention given to the musical activities in Brescia and in other cities (Cremona, Verona, Parma, Turin, and Rome). Martinengo's political and military career and the music patronage of his family are discussed in detail, followed by an in-depth survey of most of the composers of L'amorosa Ero (particularly Alfonso Ferabosco, Claudio Merulo, Marc'Antonio Ingegneri, and Antonio Morsolino) to unveil their personal relationships with Martinengo. The hierarchy of composers represented in the madrigal collection turns out to be quite elaborate and reflects their political relevance in their time. The second part of the article is dedicated to the musical content of the collection.  Given that L'amorosa Ero consists of the compositional responses of multiple composers to the same text—which, moreover, they all set in the same mode—the collection offers a unique opportunity to compare composers' styles. Starting with a close examination of Martinengo's poem, including its formal and emotional aspects, we follow with a comparative analysis, restricted to the first section of eight emblematic madrigals by Martinengo, Fiorino, Bertani, Ingegneri, Marenzio, Zoilo, Giovannelli, and Luzzaschi. The main analytical tool is the definition of tonal space, that is to say a dynamic articulation of mode that emerges through the interaction of such elements as melodic contour and cadences. Our analysis shows that, despite the limitations of mode and text, the music of the collection is strikingly diverse, ranging from traditional to more innovative styles.


An indoor climate is closely related to human health, well-being, and comfort. Thus, indoor climate monitoring and management are prevalent in many places, from public offices to residential houses. Our previous research has shown that an active plant wall system can effectively reduce the concentrations of particulate matter and volatile organic compounds and stabilize the carbon dioxide concentration in an indoor environment. However, regular plant care is restricted by geography and can be costly in terms of time and money, which poses a significant challenge to the widespread deployment of plant walls. In this paper, we propose a remote monitoring and control system that is specific to the plant walls. The system utilizes the Internet of Things technology and the Azure public cloud platform to automate the management procedure, improve the scalability, enhance user experiences of plant walls, and contribute to a green indoor climate.


Linking elements occur in compound nouns and derivatives in the Indo-European languages as well as in many other languages of the world. They can be described as sound material or graphemes with or without a phonetic correspondence appearing between two parts of a word-formation product. Linking elements are meaningless per definition. However, in many cases the clear-cut distinction between them and other, meaningful elements (like inflectional or derivational affixes) is difficult. Here, a thorough examination is necessary.
 Simple rules cannot describe the occurrence of linking elements. Instead, their distribution is fully erratic or at least complex, as different factors including the prosodic, morphological, or semantic properties of the word-formation components play a role and compete. The same holds for their productivity: their ability to appear in new word-formation products differs considerably and can range from strongly (prosodically, morphologically, or lexically) restricted to the virtual absence of any constraints.
 Linking elements should be distinguished from singular, isolated insertions (cf. Spanish rousseau-n-iano) or extensions of one specific stem or affix (cf. ‑l- in French congo-l-ais, togo-l-ais, English Congo-l-ese, Togo-l-ese). As they link two parts of a word formation, they also differ from word-final elements attached to compounds like ‑(s)I in Turkish as in ana‑dil‑i (mother‑tongue‑i) 'mother tongue'. Furthermore, they are also distinct from infixes, i.e., derivational affixes that are inserted into a root, as well as from confixes, which are for bound, but meaningful (lexical) morphemes.
 Linking elements are attested in many Indo-European languages (Slavic, Romance, Germanic, Baltic languages, and Greek) as well as in other languages across the world. They seem to be more common in compounds than in derivatives. Additionally, some languages display different sets of linking elements in both compounds and derivatives. The linking inventories differ strongly even between closely related languages. For example, Frisian and Dutch, each of which has five different linking elements, share only two linking forms (‑s- and ‑e-).
 In some languages, linking elements are homophonous to other (meaningful) elements, e.g., inflectional or derivational suffixes. This is mostly due to their historical development and to the degree of the dissociation from their sources. This makes it sometimes difficult to distinguish between linking elements and meaningful elements. In such cases (e.g., in German or Icelandic), formal and functional differences should be taken into account. It is also possible that the homophony with the inflectional markers is incidental and not a remnant of a historical development. Generally, linking elements can have different historical sources: primary suffixes (e.g., Lithuanian), case markers (e.g., many Germanic languages), derivational suffixes (e.g., Greek), prepositions (e.g., Sardinian and English). However, the historical development of many linking elements in many languages still require further research.
 Depending on their distribution, linking elements can have different functions. Accordingly, the functions strongly differ from language to language. They can serve as compound markers (Greek), as "reopeners" of closed stems for further morphological processes (German), as markers of prosodically and/or morphologically complex first parts (many Germanic languages), as plural markers (Dutch and German), and as markers of genre (German).


Palestinian energy sector has a big challenges which arises due to rapid increase in electrical demand, limited in traditional energy sources due to unstable conditions and high cost of fuel used to generate electricity. Recently, implementation of renewable energy resources such as photovoltaic systems (PVs) used as a solution to reduce the prices and utilities dependency on suppliers. There is significant potential for the use of the photovoltaic solar energy in countries like Palestine which receive abundant amounts of solar radiation around the year. The radiation in the surface of the sun 3.838*1023, 1400w/m2 at the boundary of atmosphere and 1000w/m2 as global standard test condition (STC).There are many researches concerning photovoltaic systems executed in Palestine by individuals and utikities, the main projects summarized as follows: 1- Dead sea project: in Jericho, established in 2014 as on land project, with power capacity of 708 KW. 2- JICA project: in Jericho, established in 2012 as on land project, with power capacity of 30KW. 3-Coca Cola Co: in Ramallah, established in 2016 as roof top project, with power capcity of 300KW. 4- Al-AHLI Hospital: in hebron, established in 2015 as roof top project, with power capacity of 200KW. 5- Hebron University: in Hebron, established in 2016 as roof top and on land project with power capacity of 230KW. 6- MLR CO: In Bethlehem, established in 2016 as roof top and on land project, with power capacity of 200KW.This paper dicuss modification of implemented Dead Sea PV project in Jericho (-300 below the sea level, latitude 31.86 and longitude is 35.46) that executed by JDECO company in 2014, with power rating of 708KW, constructed on 10000m2 land and consists of 2360 panel and 13 inverter. The goal of this modification is to increase thw capacity of this station up to 1MW on the available limited area and convert it into hybrid station and to increase the overall capacity of the station from 1200MWH/year to 1801MWH/year.


Where is logic heading today? There is a general feeling that the discipline is broadening its scope and agenda beyond classical foundational issues, and maybe even a concern that, like Stephen Leacock's famous horseman, it is 'riding off madly in all directions'. So, what is the resultant vector? There seem to be two broad answers in circulation today. One is logical pluralism, locating the new scope of logic in charting a wide variety of reasoning styles, often marked by non-classical structural rules of inference. This is the new program that I subscribed to in my work on sub-structural logics around 1990, and it is a powerful movement today. But gradually, I have changed my mind about the crux of what logic should become. I would now say that the main issue is not variety of reasoning styles and notions of consequence, but the variety of informational tasks performed by intelligent interacting agents, of which inference is only one among many, involving observation, memory, questions and answers, dialogue, or general communication. And logical systems should deal with a wide variety of these, making information-carrying events first-class citizens in their set-up. The purpose of this brief paper is to contrast and compare the two approaches, drawing freely on some insights from earlier published papers. In particular, I will argue that logical dynamics sets itself the more ambitious diagnostic goal of explaining why substructural phenomena occur, by 'deconstructing' them into classical logic plus an explicit account of the relevant informational events.


Mexico, the United States, and Spain approach maternity rights and benefits from differing perspectives within diverse legal frameworks. Maternity and pregnancy deserve legal protection in the workplace by virtue of their vital role to society. Women worldwide share a concern for maternity rights and benefits, but countries approach legal rights related to motherhood and pregnancy from differing perspectives. The laws in Mexico and Spain regarding maternity share many similarities, including protecting not only the mother and fetus, but also the infant and father. In contrast, the laws in the United States solely protect the mother and unborn fetus. The laws in the United States dealing with maternity tend to be more general than their Mexican and Spanish counterparts. The key to this difference lies in the foundation and rationale on which each legal regime is based. While Mexican and Spanish maternity rights are grounded in the unique circumstances of childbearing, the laws of the United States focus on establishing equality among workers. In seeking to address the needs of American families, the United States can learn much from Mexico's approach to maternity rights.


Institutions matter in antitrust, at least as much as ideas. Most antitrust arguments, and especially the contretemps currently enjoying some attention in the popular press, imagine that antitrust problems are short- or medium-term matters, and that they can be corrected with local doctrinal steps. I suggest there is a deeper problem, a phenomenon more deeply inherent in the nature of competition itself. The problem will cyclically recur, so long as institutional brakes are unavailable to keep it at bay. Specifically, it seems that competitive markets are difficult to preserve without some prospective, no-fault rule to control concentration for its own sake. At least nominally, American antitrust has such a rule in its basic merger law, Clayton Act § 7, but the rest of it consists of retrospective, fault-based, law-enforcement rules that in their application are by nature somewhat piecemeal. A prospective concentration rule is needed because once markets become concentrated, situations are common in which neither disciplinary new entry nor retrospective conduct remedies can restore competition. The deeper problem inherent in competition policy, which demonstrates the significance of institutions as well as ideas, is that such a rule is also most difficult to enforce. That is so because markets in their ordinary operation are confusing and contradictory to watch, and the hardest interventions for government to defend to a skeptical public are those that are prospective. Finally, however, it so happens that one institutional correction currently on the legislative agenda could conceivably do some good in correcting for this problem—a specific plank in congressional Democrats' "Better Deal" platform.


In lieu of an abstract, below is the first paragraph of the paper. In strife-torn Caribbean nations such as Haiti, hope is hard to come by. Poverty and political conflicts throughout its history too often overshadow the islands' stunning beauty and color. In these warm-climate islands that cry out for structure, only sport responds. In the Caribbean, the calendar year isn't split by the season's winter, spring, fall and summer, but "into cricket season and football season" (Hislop qtd. in Ferguson vii). Football, the proper and logical term for what America calls soccer, provides an opportunity that is often sought for, but rarely found. While cricket plays its part in the Caribbean, football as a unifying force is a commonality shared all over the world, capable of helping the most troubled areas. In this group of Caribbean nations that is divided no more geography than by political-strife and poverty, football provides hope, unifies the people and nations, and offers cultural pride as shown through Haiti as a lens. This article is available in The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research: https://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/ur/ vol10/iss1/3 Hope is Round and Leather: Football Unifies a Strife-torn Haiti


SUMMARY Biostratigraphical data frequently consist of tables indicating the presence, absence or relative abundance of taxa in a sequence of rock units or time units such as biozones or various chronostratigraphic units. Spreadsheet programs provide a simple means for managing this data and can be used for archiving and disseminating it, in addition to manipulating it. A simple spreadsheet ('GrapEl') is used to link the biozonal ranges of graptolite taxa to illustrations of representative or type specimens. Use of the filtering function enables the rapid selection of species from particular biozones, or species belonging to particular genera, and is intended to assist workers with a limited working knowledge of the faunas concerned. This approach is briefly compared to other uses of spreadsheets and databases in the management, analysis and distribution of graptolite biostratigraphical data.


Restorative justice conferencing for young offenders is a legislated response to youth offending, which has been in place in all Australian states and territories for nearly two decades. Restorative justice conferences are meetings between young offenders, their victims and supporters to discuss the offence, its impact and what the young person can do to repair harms caused by the offending behaviour. There is now a substantial body of research that has examined the impact restorative justice processes have on participants (eg how young offenders and victims judge the process). Results are largely positive, showing that participants view restorative justice processes as fair and they are satisfied with outcomes. Given the highly conversational nature of restorative justice conferencing processes however, this paper reviews research on oral language competence and youth offending. It raises questions about the need to refine preparatory work with young offenders and victims, to better understand young offenders' capacities to effectively communicate in conference processes. It suggests that improved preparation (where language impairments in young offenders are identified and addressed) will lead to better outcomes for young offenders and victims.


Wrap-around invisibility cloak An invisibility cloak can be used to conceal an object from view by guiding light around it. Most cloaks developed so far have bulky structures that are difficult to scale up for hiding large objects. To design a thin invisibility cloak that can be wrapped around an object such as a sheet or skin, Ni et al. designed a two-dimensional metamaterial surface. Such flexible, highly reflective materials could be manufactured at large scale to hide large objects. Science, this issue p. 1310 A metamaterial surface can be designed to operate as an invisibility skin cloak. Metamaterial-based optical cloaks have thus far used volumetric distribution of the material properties to gradually bend light and thereby obscure the cloaked region. Hence, they are bulky and hard to scale up and, more critically, typical carpet cloaks introduce unnecessary phase shifts in the reflected light, making the cloaks detectable. Here, we demonstrate experimentally an ultrathin invisibility skin cloak wrapped over an object. This skin cloak conceals a three-dimensional arbitrarily shaped object by complete restoration of the phase of the reflected light at 730-nanometer wavelength. The skin cloak comprises a metasurface with distributed phase shifts rerouting light and rendering the object invisible. In contrast to bulky cloaks with volumetric index variation, our device is only 80 nanometer (about one-ninth of the wavelength) thick and potentially scalable for hiding macroscopic objects.


Film theory and philosophy have in recent decades rightly critiqued earlier theorists' claims for the fundamentally realist nature of the cinema, and of photography generally. While cognizant of the problematic status of "realist" representationof photography being somehow purely or naively representative-this essay nevertheless deliberately recuperates a realist discourse with which to value some forms of nonfiction film. The essay sees "nonfiction film fragments" as a form of witnessing, and tries to articulate our experience of such film in terms of memorializing the people and events it bears witness to. The essay goes even further in its claims on behalf of a realist cinematic memory, suggesting that nonfiction fragments constitute a mode of perception that affords trustworthy historical witnessing. That is, the fragmentary status of some film is what paradoxically restores "wholeness" to the person or place of which it is a glimpse. In a Bazinian and Cavellian mode of writing, this introductory essay to the phenomena of nonfiction film fragments aims as much to be evocative of our experience of film as public memory, as critical of it.


College students (N = 112) completed the Noctcaelador Inventory, a measure of psychological attachment to the night-sky, and estimated various night-sky watching related activities: frequency and duration of night-sky watching, astro-tourism, ownership of night-sky viewing equipment, and attendance of observatories or planetariums. The results indicated that a substantial percentage of the sample (62.5%) purposefully looked the night-sky at least once per week. An average of 19.6% indicated engaging in some form of astro-tourism, owning night-sky viewing equipment (i.e., telescopes), and attendance of planetariums or observatories. All variables were significantly related to scores on the Noctcaelador Inventory. ----- For much of recorded history, many humans have watched the night-sky (Hawkins, 1983). While there is evidence suggesting that the night-sky has been deemed as important to various cultures historically (Brecher & Feirtag, 1979), little empirical study has attempted to determine whether this historical importance has been for a few select individuals, or a larger percentage of the population. Kelly (2003) cited evidence that over 700 Internet groups existed on one Internet search engine (Yahoo) devoted to amateur astronomy. However, determining the number of actual subscribers to these groups is difficult. Further there may be many individuals who engage in night-sky watching who are not a part of organized groups. As an attempt to study attitudes towards night-sky watching, Kelly (2003) conducted a study using a small sample of college students. Those findings suggesting that many individuals hold positive attitudes towards the night-sky and enjoyment in watching the night-sky. Apart from these limited findings little is known about the number of college students who actually engage in night-sky watching and the frequency of this behavior. This study was intended to partially fill this void by directly investigating self-reported night-sky watching frequency among college students. METHOD After obtaining informed consent, 112 (96 female) college students (M age = 26.8 years, SD = 7.7) enrolled in undergraduate psychology courses were asked to respond to questions reflecting the following content: 1) how often they typically make it a point to look at the night-sky (10 possible responses were provided ranging from "never" to "several times per night"); 2) the average length of time they look at the night-sky per viewing (16 possible responses were provided ranging from "fleeting glimpse" to "6-8 hours");" 3) engagement in astro-tourist activities (i.e., had they ever traveled away from their city of residence to engage in astronomy or stargazing activities); 4) ownership of night-sky viewing equipment, such as telescopes; 5) attendance of planetariums or observatories in the past five years. The latter three questions were responded to as "yes" or "no." Participants also completed the Noctcaelador Inventory (NI; Kelly, 2004), a psychometrically sound measure of interest in, and psychological attachment to, the night-sky. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The most frequent response to how often participants intentionally looked at the night-sky was "every two or three nights, " endorsed by 29.5 % of the sample. The next frequent response was "once a week" (15.2%). Additionally, 10.7% and 7.1% responded they viewed the night-sky "once a night" or "several times a night, " respectively. Only 3.6% indicated they never intentionally looked at the night-sky. Collapsing the categories indicated that 16.1% responded they looked at the night-sky "never" to "every 6 months;" 21.5% responded between "every two months" to "every 2 weeks;" and 62.5% indicated viewing the night-sky between "once a week" and "several times a night." Frequency of night-sky watching significantly correlated with scores on the NI, r = .58, p & .0001. To compare frequency of night-sky watching among individuals lower and higher in noctcaelador, a median split for NI scores was used to create high and low noctcaelador groups. …


OBJECTIVE
The objective of our study is to determine the mean values of right ventricular (RV) dP/dt and to compare it with other right ventricular function parameters by echocardiography.

METHODS
This observational study consisted of 112 healthy subjects who had trivial tricuspid regurgitation. Full echocardiographic examination was performed. RV systolic function was assessed by using myocardial performance index (RV MPI), tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion (TAPSE), myocardial acceleration during isovolumic contraction (RV IVA), RV fractional area change (RV FAC), tissue Doppler-derived tricuspid lateral annular systolic velocity (Tri S`) and RV dP/dt (dP/dt). Pearson correlation test was used in examining the correlation between parameters. Differences between correlations were compared with Fisher's z transformation.

RESULTS
The mean of RV dP/dt (0.5-2) was 1016±421 mmHg/s (95% CI=891-1142) and the mean of RV dP/dt (1-2) was 1524±573 mmHg/s (95% CI=1354-1694). RV pulse Doppler MPI and RV tissue Doppler imaging MPI were negatively correlated with RV dP/dt (0.5-2) (r=-0.482 and r=-0.504, p<0.01). Tri S' was positively correlated with RV dP/dt (0.5-2) (r=0.667, p<0.01) and with the RV dP/dt (1-2) (r=0.312, p<0.05). TAPSE was positively correlated with RV dP/dt (0.5-2) (r=0.585, p<0.01) and with the RV dP/dt (1-2) (r=0.323, p<0.05). RV IVA was positively correlated with RV dP/dt (0.5-2) (r=0.512, p<0.01). FAC (%) was not correlated with both RV dP/dt (0.5-2) and RV dP/dt (1-2).

CONCLUSION
The results of our study were as follows: 1) we described the mean of RV dP/dt (0.5-2) and RV dP/dt (1-2) in healthy population; 2) the correlation between dP/dt (0.5-2) and RV function parameters was better than between dP/dt (1-2) and RV function parameters.


The global agenda on sustainable development will require a process to inspire individual and organization SDG†related actions and commit to report progress on until 2030. It will be powerful for example to know how actions of university students will change as they become leaders, and how universities will align their actions to the challenges of communities and governments. This commentary characterizes a 5†stage process to inspire individual, collective and institutional actions for sustainable development. In 2016, over 500 students in seven universities in South Sudan underwent the first four stages. They reviewed milestones and took the journey into the future to 2030 and 2063. They articulated the future South Sudan they want as 'one that is peaceful, inclusive and prosperous, with strong institutions that prioritize the interest of her citizens'. They then prioritized the SDGs that resonate to that future as Goals 16, 4 and 1 in that order. Finally they pledged to 'undertake inter†university dialogue, research and innovation for Sustainable Development'. In 2017, the leadership of universities and students will commit to SDG†actions and to report on progress as a basis for sharing and learning each year until the year 2030 when the agenda is concluded.


User communities represent a unique organizing structure for the exchange of ideas and knowledge. They are organizations composed primarily of users working collaboratively, voluntarily, and with minimal oversight to freely and openly develop and exchange knowledge around a common artifact. The prevalence of user communities appears to be on the rise, as evidenced by communities across a variety of fields ranging from software to Legos to sports equipment. In this essay, we discuss how firms can benefit from working with user communities––that is, we discuss the opportunities for firms to leverage user communities as a source of open innovation. We theorize the conditions under which user communities will emerge and function, and discuss the benefits that user communities can provide and the challenges they can create for firms, thereby illustrating the relevance and import of user communities to firms and the strategic management literature.


This nonparametric event study questions the current symmetric price limit mechanism imposed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange. Price limits are usually instituted to control the volatility of daily stock price movements through establishing price constraints and providing time for rational reassessment of investment decisions during times of panic trading. This study asserts that such limits prove the opposite and can have three delirious consequences: (1) they can be the source of higher volatility on subsequent trading days, (2) they can delay full incorporation of information into prices, or they can (3) interfere with trading activities of investors.


Riemannian manifolds provide a principled way to model nonlinear geometric structure inherent in data. A Riemannian metric on said manifolds determines geometry-aware shortest paths and provides the means to define statistical models accordingly. However, these operations are typically computationally demanding. To ease this computational burden, we advocate probabilistic numerical methods for Riemannian statistics. In particular, we focus on Bayesian quadrature (BQ) to numerically compute integrals over normal laws on Riemannian manifolds learned from data. In this task, each function evaluation relies on the solution of an expensive initial value problem. We show that by leveraging both prior knowledge and an active exploration scheme, BQ significantly reduces the number of required evaluations and thus outperforms Monte Carlo methods on a wide range of integration problems. As a concrete application, we highlight the merits of adopting Riemannian geometry with our proposed framework on a nonlinear dataset from molecular dynamics.


Over the past decade, academic research has revealed innovativeness to be one of the core components effecting SME performance. This research aims to study the linkage between innovativeness and "familiness" in family SMEs. The paper employs a qualitative approach and exploratory case studies, in collecting data on three categories of firms manufacturing, trading and servicing companies in order to identify how "familiness" effects the innovativeness of their family SMEs. To identify how "familiness" either accelerates or decelerates innovativeness in family SMEs, we adopted the F-PEC scale as a tool to study the connection between family and business values and also the impact of family commitments to the company. We found that power, experience and culture accelerate innovativeness in family SMEs. The paper illustrates the important role of family in firm innovativeness and how this can bring competitive advantage and success to family SMEs.


This study empirically investigates the daily MYR/USD exchange rate return series in the light of the random walk hypothesis. Recent breakthroughs pertaining to non-linear dynamics and chaos, coupled with the rapid acceleration in computer power, have made it possible to more robustly test for the random walk in financial and economic data. This study uses a new non-linear statistical test, namely the Brock-Dechert-Scheinkman (BDS) test to examine whether the MYR/ USD exchange rate return series are random walk with the property of being independent and identically distributed. The results overwhelmingly reject the hypothesis that the MYR/USD data examined in this study are random, independent and identically distributed since some cycles or patterns show up more frequently than would be expected in a true random series. These results may have implications for the weak form market efficiency, if the underlying structure can be profitably exploitable, which remains an avenue for further research.


Abstract In January 2012 a moral panic about 'hoon cyclists' erupted after sports celebrity Shane Warne had an altercation with a cyclist on St Kilda Road, Melbourne. Warne took to Twitter and posted an account of the event. The altercation served to focus tensions around the positioning of the cyclist in Australian automobility. The concept of 'acute event' is combined with a longer history of other kinds of media event, such as 'moral panics', to better understand events that are discursively mediated. The role of Warne in the resulting 'cyclist hoon' moral panic acute event is an example of the organisational role of 'celebrity' in participatory media. Warne's account of cycling affectively resonates with the other car drivers as the privileged subjects of Australian automobility. This affective resonance organised the discursive field of the moral panic acute event. In this case, the techniques of social media celebrity (to produce an authentic 'ordinariness') also produce an affective resonance of Warne's experience of cyclists as a driver. The folk devil figure of the 'hoon cyclist' challenges the hegemonic norms of car-based automobility.


Security incidents like targeted distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on power grids and industrial control system (ICS) hacks in factories are on the increase. This short paper unpacks where emerging security threats lie for industrial internet of things, considering both engineering and regulatory perspectives. We frame our analysis with the example of the smart energy supply chain, from exploration to consumption, examining emerging threat landscape for industrial IoT, particularly where new vulnerabilities may arise.
Changes deriving from the EU Network and Information Security (NIS) Directive 2016, the GDPR and UK/EU Cyber Security Strategies are key considerations. We argue industrial IoT bring four security elements to the fore, namely: the shift from offline to online, temporal dimensions of security, the implementation gap for best practice, and challenges of managing infrastructural complexity.


Although the specifics of water utility ownership, regulation and management culture have been explored in terms of their impact on economic and customer value, there has been little meaningful engagement with their influence on the risk environment and risk management. Using a literature review as the primary source of information, this paper maps the existing knowledge base onto two critical questions: what are the particular features of regulation, ownership and management culture which influence the risk dynamic, and what are the implications of these relationships in the context of ambitions for resilient organizations? In addressing these queries, the paper considers the mindful choices and adjustments a utility must make to its risk management strategy to manage strategic tensions between efficiency, risk and resilience. The conclusions note a gap in understanding of the drivers required for a paradigm shift within the water sector from a re-active to a pro-active risk management culture. A proposed model of the tensions between reactive risk management and pro-active, adaptive risk management provides a compelling case for measured risk management approaches which are informed by an appreciation of regulation, ownership and business culture. Such approaches will support water authorities in meeting corporate aspirations to become 'high reliability' services while retaining the capacity to out-perform financial and service level targets.


Powder of Ti-46at%Al alloy was synthesized through mechanical activation (MA) and then sintered and concurrently consolidated in a short sintering time of 900 s by using spark plasma sintering (SPS) process. The XRD and SEM profiles show that the microstructures of TiAl alloys contained γ TiAl and small amount α-2 Ti3Al phase, whose amount can be controlled by the sintering temperature. The compacts retained the original fine-grained fully densified bodies by avoiding an excessively high sintering temperature. The alloys sintered at higher temperature with this process showed a coarser microstructure. So it is possible to produce dense nanostructured TiAl alloys by mechanically activated spark plasma sintering (MASPS) within a very short period of time.


The development of thin-film phosphors with good color and brightness characteristics is one of the most important aspects in improving the technology of field emission displays. This paper discusses how doping with zinc and laser annealing affects the properties of thin films of europium-doped yttrium oxide. It is shown that doping makes it possible to improve the purity of the luminescence color, while laser annealing substantially increases the cathodoluminescence intensity. © 2005 Optical Society of America


In these lab activities, students perform conventional PCR and real-time PCR to simulate pathogenic E. coli detection. The labs were designed to complement a previously published virtual PCR classroom activity in which students are asked to design a PCR-based diagnostic test for a pathogenic strain of E. coli. In the virtual PCR activity, students use bioinformatics to discover that the Shiga toxin genes (stx1 and stx2) are unique to the Enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) strain O157:H7. Thus they come to the conclusion that doing PCR with primers designed for shiga toxin should be able to differentiate O157:H7 from other strains of E. coli. In the lab activity described here, students actually perform the PCR assay. Performing PCR enhanced student understanding of the technique beyond what was accomplished through the virtual PCR classroom activity and is recommended as an addition to the case study.


Data are reported on a series of short‐form (SF) screening scales of DSM‐III‐R psychiatric disorders developed from the World Health Organization's Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI). A multi‐step procedure was used to generate CIDI‐SF screening scales for each of eight DSM disorders from the US National Comorbidity Survey (NCS). This procedure began with the subsample of respondents who endorsed the CIDI diagnostic stem question for a given disorder and then used a series of stepwise regression analyses to select a subset of screening questions to maximize reproduction of the full CIDI diagnosis. A small number of screening questions, between three and eight for each disorder, was found to account for the significant associations between symptom ratings and CIDI diagnoses. Summary scales made up of these symptom questions correctly classify between 77% and 100% of CIDI cases and between 94% and 99% of CIDI non‐cases in the NCS depending on the diagnosis. Overall classification accuracy ranged from a low of 93% for major depressive episode to a high of over 99% for generalized anxiety disorder. Pilot testing in a nationally representative telephone survey found that the full set of CIDI‐SF scales can be administered in an average of seven minutes compared to over an hour for the full CIDI. The results are quite encouraging in suggesting that diagnostic classifications made in the full CIDI can be reproduced with excellent accuracy with the CIDI‐SF scales. Independent verification of this reproduction accuracy, however, is needed in a data set other than the one in which the CIDI‐SF was developed. Copyright © 1998 Whurr Publishers Ltd.


When the first gusher blew in at Spindletop, near Beaumont, Texas, in 1901, petroleum began to supplant cotton and cattle as the economic engine of the state and region. Very soon, much of the workforce migrated from the cotton field to the oilfield, following the lure of the wealth being created by black gold.The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed the development of an oilfield culture, as these workers defined and solidified their position within the region's social fabric. Over time, the work force grew more professionalized, and technological change attracted a different type of laborer.Bobby D. Weaver grew up and worked in the oil patch. Now, drawing on oral histories supplemented and confirmed by other research, he tells the colorful stories of the workers who actually brought oil wealth to Texas. Drillers, shooters, toolies, pipeliners, teamsters, roustabouts, tank builders, roughnecks . . . each of them played a role in the frenzied, hard-driving lifestyle of the boomtowns that sprouted overnight in association with each major oil discovery.Weaver tracks the differences between company workers and contract workers. He details the work itself and the ethos that surrounds it. He highlights the similarities and differences from one field to another and traces changing aspects of the work over time. Above all, "Oilfield Trash "captures the unique voices of the laboring people who worked long, hard hours, often risking life and limb to keep the drilling rigs "turning to the right."


Motivated by the possibility of formulating a strings/black hole correspondence in AdS space, we extract the Hagedorn behavior of thermal AdS3 bosonic string from 1-loop partition function of SL(2, R) WZW model. We find that the Hagedorn temperature is monotonically increasing as the AdS radius shrinks, reaches a maximum of order of string scale set by the unitarity bound of the CFT for internal space. The resulting density of states near the Hagedorn temperature resembles the form as for strings in flat space and is dominated by the space-like long string configurations. We then argue a conjectured strings/black hole correspondence in AdS space by applying the Hagedorn thermodynamics. We find the size of the corresponding black hole is a function of the AdS radius. For large AdS radius a black hole far bigger than the string scale will form. On the contrary, when the AdS and string scales are comparable a string size black hole will form. We also examine strings on BTZ background obtained through SL(2, Z) transformation. We find a tachyonic divergence for a BTZ black hole of string scale size.


Objective Smoothened (SMO), a coreceptor of the Hedgehog (Hh) pathway, promotes fibrogenic repair of chronic liver injury. We investigated the roles of SMO+ myofibroblast (MF) in liver regeneration by conditional deletion of SMO in α smooth muscle actin (αSMA)+ cells after partial hepatectomy (PH). Design αSMA-Cre-ERT2×SMO/flox mice were treated with vehicle (VEH) or tamoxifen (TMX), and sacrificed 24–96 h post-PH. Regenerating livers were analysed for proliferation, progenitors and fibrosis by qRT-PCR and quantitative immunohistochemistry (IHC). Results were normalised to liver segments resected at PH. For lineage-tracing studies, αSMA-Cre-ERT2×ROSA-Stop-flox-yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) mice were treated with VEH or TMX; livers were stained for YFP, and hepatocytes isolated 48 and 72 h post-PH were analysed for YFP by flow cytometric analysis (FACS). Results Post-PH, VEH-αSMA-SMO mice increased expression of Hh-genes, transiently accumulated MF, fibrosis and liver progenitors, and ultimately exhibited proliferation of hepatocytes and cholangiocytes. In contrast, TMX-αSMA-SMO mice showed loss of whole liver SMO expression, repression of Hh-genes, enhanced accumulation of quiescent HSC but reduced accumulation of MF, fibrosis and progenitors, as well as inhibition of hepatocyte and cholangiocyte proliferation, and reduced recovery of liver weight. In TMX-αSMA-YFP mice, many progenitors, cholangiocytes and up to 25% of hepatocytes were YFP+ by 48–72 h after PH, indicating that liver epithelial cells were derived from αSMA-YFP+ cells. Conclusions Hh signalling promotes transition of quiescent hepatic stellate cells to fibrogenic MF, some of which become progenitors that regenerate the liver epithelial compartment after PH. Hence, scarring is a component of successful liver regeneration.


This paper describes the first SemEval task to explore the use
of Natural Language Processing systems for building dictionary
entries, in the framework of Corpus Pattern Analysis. CPA is a
corpus-driven technique which provides tools and resources to
identify and represent unambiguously the main semantic patterns
in which words are used. Task 15 draws on the Pattern
Dictionary of English Verbs (www.pdev.org.uk), for the targeted
lexical entries, and on the British National Corpus for the
input text. Dictionary entry building is split into three
subtasks which all start from the same concordance sample: 1)
CPA parsing, where arguments and their syntactic and semantic
categories have to be identified, 2) CPA clustering, in which
sentences with similar patterns have to be clustered and 3) CPA
automatic lexicography where the structure of patterns have to
be constructed automatically. Subtask 1 attracted 3 teams,
though none could beat the baseline (rule-based system).
Subtask 2 attracted 2 teams, one of which beat the baseline
(majority-class classifier). Subtask 3 did not attract any
participant. The task has produced a major semantic
multidataset resource which includes data for 121 verbs and
about 17,000 annotated sentences, and which is freely
accessible.


Genetic improvement in soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] yield has been associated with both assimilate and N accumulation [especially from dinitrogen (N 2 ) fixation] during the seed-filling period (SFP). Therefore, the physiological factors associated with genetic improvement may be dependent on abundant assimilate and N supply. The objectives of this study were to quantify genetic improvement in yield under: (i) assimilate limiting conditions, (ii) under low N fertility, and (iii) when either inorganic N fertilizer or N 2 fixation is the main source of N. A randomized complete block experiment was conducted at two locations in 1998 and one in 1999. The main plot factor included no shade or a 63% shade treatment imposed after the R4/R5 developmental stage. The split plot factors were three N treatments: (i) inoculated, (ii) uninoculated with no additional fertilizer, and (iii) uninoculated plus fertilizer N. The split-split plots were four cultivars, representing a pair of older and a pair of newer cultivars. Shading reduced dry matter (DM) accumulation, and both shading and N limitation reduced N accumulation and seed yield. However, the newer cultivars consistently maintained their yield advantage over the older cultivars under both shading and N limiting conditions as well as when the source of N was soil available N or N 2 fixation. The results of the study suggest that the physiological factors that contribute to genetic improvement in yield are not dependent on the level of incident radiation during the SFP, or the source or availability of N during the SFP.


When Dead Tongues Speak introduces classicists to the research that linguists, psychologists, and language teachers have conducted over the past thirty years and passes along their most important insights. The essays cover a broad range of topics, including cognitive styles, peer teaching and collaboration, learning disabilities, feminist pedagogy, speaking, and writing. Each contributor addresses a different problem in the learning process based on his or her own teaching experience, and each chapter combines a theoretical overview with practical examples of classroom activities. The book was developed for classroom use in Greek and Latin methodology classes in M.A. and M.A.T. programs. It will also appeal to Latin and Greek language instructors who wants to get current with the latest scholarship and pedagogical models.


Pro-poor opportunities are rapidly unfolding in South Asia, spurred by new lifestyles and tastes, stimulated by increasing incomes, spreading urbanisation, and expanding globalisation. Dietary patterns are changing of both the poor and the rich, as well as rural and urban consumers, from staple foodgrains to high-value-commodities such as fruits, vegetables, milk, meat, eggs, and fish. The real challenge is how to grab these opportunities to alleviate poverty and improve quality of life, particularly for smallholders. This book, comprising contributions by experts from various countries, provides a range of information, analysis, and the beginnings of pathways to accelerate agricultural diversification and facilitate inclusiveness of small holders through correcting incentives, evolving institutions, and developing infrastructure.


Humans do not always make the most rational decisions. As studies have shown, even when logic and reasoning point in one direction, sometimes humans "walk" to the opposite route, motivated by personal bias or simply "wishful thinking." This paradoxical human behavior has resisted explanation by classical decision theory for over a decade. Scientists have shown that a quantum probability model can provide a simple explanation for human decision-making. In military, decision-making process is considered to be the most neuralgic one. With the recent interest in quantum computing and quantum information theory, there has been an effort to recast classical game theory using quantum probability amplitudes, and hence study the effect of quantum superposition, interference and entanglement on the agents' optimal strategies. Apart from unsolved problems in quantum information theory, quantum game theory and decision –making, may be useful in studying quantum communication since that can be considered as a game where the objective is to maximize effective communication. This paper discusses the idea of using quantum theory to decision making. 1 HellemicArmy 14, Kanigos Str., Piraeus 18534, Greece.


Background: Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) provides an acceptable alternative for aortic valve replacement in the elderly, but needs accurate pre-procedural imaging to optimise intervention. Objectives: To evaluate an alternative manual aortic valve calcification scoring system with computed tomography, for patients undergoing TAVI. We hypothesise a correlation between the Free State aortic valve calcium computed tomography score (FACTS) scoring system, valve plaque density and procedure-related complications. Methods: Twenty patients suitable for TAVI were selected according to standard international guidelines and received multimodality imaging prior to intervention. Images were reviewed by two reviewers who were blinded to each other's scores. Where large inter-individual score variations existed, retraining was done and scores repeated, using a double-blinded method. Matched scores were included in the final analysis. Rosenhek calcification scores were used as a standard of reference. Results: The study comprised 9 (45%) men and 11 (55%) women, with a median age of 83.5 years. Median EuroSCORE was 15.5. FACTS scores ≥6 were associated with the presence of a paravalvular leak ( p = 0.01). Procedure-related complications (left bundle branch block, repositioning of the valve and anaemia) were seen in patients with plaques measuring ≥1000 HU ( p = 0.07). Conclusion: The FACTS score and averaged valve plaque HU showed potential for predicting a paravalvular leak and procedure-related complications, and could be valuable in the future for optimising patient selection for TAVI.


Tin oxide thin films of differentmolarities were successfully deposited by spray pyrolysis technique on preheated glass substrates at a temperature of 500°C. The Effect of molarity concentration on film properties was investigated. All deposited films were characterized by various techniques such as X-ray diffraction for structural characterizations, weight difference density method for thickness measurement, the two probe conductivitymeasurements for electrical characterization. The X- ray diffraction (XRD) patterns showed that the film of 0.1 M tin chloride pentahydrate has amorphous structure. With increasing the molarity concentration of the films to 0.3 M and 0.5 M the patterns showed a polycrystalline structure with preferential orientation along (110) direction. Results showed that the resistivity increases remarkably as the molarity increases. The variation of electrical conductivity as a function of temperature increases with increasing temperature, and tend to decrease with increasing the molarity concentration to 0.5 M. The activation energies increased with increasing the molarity concentration. Hall measurements showed that all films are n-type. The charge carrier concentration, Hall mobility, drift velocity, and mean free path decreases with increasing molarity concentration.


The purpose of this study is to examine the potential limits to growth among selected countries within the Nile River Basin region based on actual and projected estimates of population growth and water resource adequacy between 1994 and 2100. The projected disparity between population growth and water resource adequacy within the region raises serious questions about the adequacy of water resources given current population rates and the timing of potential intraregional conflict. This study, by employing a system dynamics model for the region, projects extreme water scarcity by mid-century with potentially catastrophic human implications. Egypt is likely to encounter a severe water crisis by mid century and as early as 2020 under conservative modeling assumptions. Averting a potential crisis in the Nile River Basin region will require the formulation and evaluation of plausible solutions to water resource issues. The impact of this crisis can be attenuated only by reducing birth rates, reducing per capita water consumption, or increasing water supply. Desalination, one method for increasing the water supply in Egypt, is not sufficient to divert this potential crisis. Future study is required to examine the internal dynamics of water and population collectively, and for each country, in the Nile River Basin. Limits to Growth in the Nile River Basin


The AdS/CFT correspondence and its extensions to more general gauge/gravity dualities have provided a powerful framework for the study of strongly coupled gauge theories. This thesis explores properties of a large class of thermal strongly coupled gauge theories using the gravity dual. In order to bring the holographic framework closer to Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), we study theories with matter in the fundamental representation. In particular, we focus on the holographic dual of SU(Nc) supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory coupled to Nf ≪ Nc flavours of fundamental matter at finite temperature, which is realised as Nf Dq-brane probes in the near horizon (black hole) geometry of Nc black Dp-branes. We explore many aspects of these Dp/Dq brane systems, often focussing on the D3/D7 brane system which is dual to a four dimensional gauge theory. We study the thermodynamics of the Dq-brane probes in the black hole geometry. At low temperature, the branes sit outside the black hole and the meson spectrum is discrete and possesses a mass gap. As the temperature increases, the branes approach a critical solution. Eventually, they fall into the horizon and a phase transition occurs. At large Nc and large 't Hooft coupling, we show that this phase transition is always first order. We calculate the free energy, entropy and energy densities, as well as the speed of sound in these systems. We compute the meson spectrum for brane embeddings outside the horizon and find that tachyonic modes appear where this phase is expected to be unstable from thermodynamic considerations. We study the system at non-zero baryon density nb and find that there is a line of phase transitions for small nb, terminating at a critical point with finite nb. We demonstrate that, to leading order in Nf/Nc, the viscosity to entropy density ratio in these theories saturates the conjectured universal bound η/S ≥ 1/4π. Finally, we compute spectral functions and diffusion constants for fundamental matter in the high temperature phase of the D3/D7 theory.


Suppose certain data points are overly contaminated, then the existing principal component analysis (PCA) methods are frequently incapable of filtering out and eliminating the excessively polluted ones, which potentially lead to the functional degeneration of the corresponding models. To tackle the issue, we propose a general framework namely robust weight learning with adaptive neighbors (RWL-AN), via which adaptive weight vector is automatically obtained with both robustness and sparse neighbors. More significantly, the degree of the sparsity is steerable such that only exact k well-fitting samples with least reconstruction errors are activated during the optimization, while the residual samples, i.e., the extreme noised ones are eliminated for the global robustness. Additionally, the framework is further applied to PCA problem to demonstrate the superiority and effectiveness of the proposed RWL-AN model.


The Scamander Slate and Quartzite consist essentially
of a succession of stratified slates, quartzites
and sub-greywackes with a few siltstone bands,
which probably form part of the Mathinna Group.
They contain primitive plants (Hostimella (?) and
are regarded to be of Siluro-Devonian age. They
are intruded by a Devonian (?) quartz monzonite
batholith, and possibly at a later date by St.
Marys Porphyrite, which may however prove to be
a dacitic fiow. At present their structure is confusing;
close parallel folding occurs which is overfolded
from the west and complicated by numerous
minor fault breaks. Major faulting in the area
occurred in lower Tertiary, isolating the coastal
plain physiographic unit from the hinterland.
The Permian System which follows unconformably
has been divided into the following six formations:-
1. Sisters Granule Conglomerate.
2. Lohrey's Gully Sandstone and Calcareous
Mudstone.
3. Enstone Park Limestone.
4. Binn's Gully Mudstone.
5. German Town Tillite.
6. Rays Hill Arkose.
The structure of these sediments is controlled
by the Mt. Nicholas dolerite sill which intrudes
them, and the concomitant faulting developed at
the time of its emplacement in the Jurassic.
Lower Tertiary faulting and sedimentation during
the Cainozoic resulted in the development of
Tertiary wash covering the coastal plain to 350 feet
above sea level, and probably the alluvial tin
deposits at st. Helens were formed at this time.
Economic considerations reviewed include potential
tin, tungsten, and copper deposits.


We investigate the extent to which clustering algorithms are robust to the addition of a small, potentially adversarial, set of points. Our analysis reveals radical differences in the robustness of popular clustering methods. k-means and several related techniques are robust when data is clusterable, and we provide a quantitative analysis capturing the precise relationship between clusterability and robustness. In contrast, common linkage-based algorithms and several standard objective-function-based clustering methods can be highly sensitive to the addition of a small set of points even when the data is highly clusterable. We call such sets of points oligarchies. Lastly, we show that the behavior with respect to oligarchies of the popular Lloyd's method changes radically with the initialization technique.


We present the first cosmological parameter constraints using measurements of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) from the Dark Energy Survey Supernova Program (DES-SN). The analysis uses a subsample of 207 spectroscopically confirmed SNe Ia from the first three years of DES-SN, combined with a low-redshift sample of 122 SNe from the literature. Our "DES-SN3YR" result from these 329 SNe Ia is based on a series of companion analyses and improvements covering SN Ia discovery, spectroscopic selection, photometry, calibration, distance bias corrections, and evaluation of systematic uncertainties. For a flat ΛCDM model we find a matter density . For a flat wCDM model, and combining our SN Ia constraints with those from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), we find a dark energy equation of state , and . For a flat w0waCDM model, and combining probes from SN Ia, CMB and baryon acoustic oscillations, we find and . These results are in agreement with a cosmological constant and with previous constraints using SNe Ia (Pantheon, JLA).


The ages of nine alluvial units, identified by the integration of data obtained from five trenches at the southern termination of the Alhama de Murcia Fault (AMF) (eastern Betics, Spain), are constrained using luminescence dating based on the Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) from quartz, Infrared Stimulated Luminescence (IRSL) at 50°C, and post‐IR elevated temperature (225°C) IRSL signals from K‐feldspar. All signals pass the routine tests associated with the Single Aliquot Regenerative (SAR) protocol, including the recycling ratio, recuperation, and dose recovery tests. The equivalent doses (De), residual doses and anomalous fading rates ('g'‐values) of the IRSL at 50°C (IR50) and post‐IR IRSL at 225°C (pIRIR225) from K‐feldspar are compared for 16 samples. The residual doses in laboratory‐bleached samples suggest that there is no significant unbleachable residual dose using these signals; the residual doses are 0.17±0.15 Gy and 0.93±0.80 Gy, respectively. For both signals, the residual doses appear to depend on the corresponding natural doses; that is, the larger the natural doses, the larger the residuals, an observation made for the first time for IRSL signals. The average fading rate for the pIRIR225 (0.94±0.07%/decade, n = 48) is markedly lower than that for IR50 (2.08±0.16%/decade, n = 48), indicating that the age correction for the pIRIR225 is much smaller than that for IR50. The agreement between the quartz OSL, corrected IR50, and corrected pIRIR225 for the two youngest samples suggests that the pIRIR225 is an accurate dating signal in this age range (<25 ka). The oldest age obtained using the corrected pIRIR225 signal is 320±20 ka for sample 098807; the corrected IR50 age is only 154±15 ka. Although this suggests that the pIRIR225 signal circumvents the effect of anomalous fading to a great extent, the resulting age cannot be regarded as necessarily accurate because of the limitations of the fading correction model used, and the absence of independent age control for the old samples. Nevertheless, our luminescence ages provide the first age constraints on the seismic activity of the southern termination of the AMF.


Should customs officers be able to search laptop computers at international borders the same way they inspect suitcases and packages? This short article - prepared for the Richmond Law Review's 2009 Allen Chair Symposium - argues that suspicionless border searches of laptops and other electronic storage devices generally are permissible under the Fourth Amendment. It begins by surveying the competing interests that are implicated by laptop searches at the border, including the government's need to combat terrorism and child exploitation, as well as travelers' interests in privacy and free expression. Next, the article discusses the Supreme Court's border-search doctrine. "Non-routine" border searches (e.g., invasive searches of the body) are subject to the reasonable-suspicion standard, but "routine" searches (e.g., searches of property) need not be based on any individualized suspicion at all. The article then considers how the border-search doctrine might apply to laptops. Lower courts generally hold that customs can inspect laptops without reasonable suspicion, and this consensus is essentially correct. To be sure, laptops differ from other kinds of property: They contain a greater volume of material, the data they store is intensely personal, and digital searches can leave a permanent copy of the data in the government's hands. But those differences generally do not justify a special exception to the border-search doctrine. In fact, laptop searches have the potential to be less, not more, intrusive than traditional border inspections of physical objects. Finally, the article discusses possible legislative or administrative reforms that might better balance travelers' interests against the government's needs. It might be appropriate to protect laptop owners' privacy interests at the border, not through traditional "collection limits" (which restrict the government's ability to gather information in the first place), but with "use limits" (which restrict the government's ability to share or otherwise employ the information it does gather).


Why is it optimal not to tax capital income in the long-run in Chamley (1986) and Judd (1985)? This paper demonstrates that the answer follows standard intuitions from the commodity tax literature. In the steady state, Engel curves for consumption are linear in labour earnings, irrespective of the utility function adopted. Thus, in the steady state, consumption demands in each period become equally complementary to leisure over time. This renders taxes on capital income redundant, since they cannot alleviate distortions from taxing labour income. The argument that taxes on capital income should be zero because distortions explode in finite time is relevant only if restrictions are imposed on the utility function. We show how these restrictions imply that consumption demands in each period are equally complementary to leisure over time. We also demonstrate that the optimal tax on capital income is zero irrespective of whether the gross interest rate is endogenous. This contradicts arguments that the entire burden of capital income taxes is shifted to labour through general equilibrium effects on the interest rate.


Plant Phenotyping is a set of methodologies for measuring and analyzing characteristic traits of a plant. While traditional plant phenotyping techniques are labor-intensive and destructive, modern imaging technologies have provided faster, non-invasive, and more cost-effective capabilities for plant phenotyping. Among different image-based phenotyping platforms, I focus on phenotyping with image data captured by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and ground vehicles. The crop plant used in my study is sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench]. In this thesis, I present multiple methods to estimate plot-level and plant-level plant traits from data collected by various platforms, including UAV and ground vehicles. I propose an image plant phenotyping system that provides end-to-end RGB data analysis for plant scientists. I describe a plant segmentation method using HSV color information. I introduce two methods to locate the center of the plants using Multiple Instance Learning (MIL) and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). I present three methods to segment individual leaves by shape-based approaches in both Cartesian coordinates and Polar coordinates. I propose a method to estimate leaf length and width for overhead leaf images. I describe a method to estimate leaf angle from data collected by a modified wheel-based sprayer with a sensor boom vehicle, Phenorover. Methods are tested and verified on image data collected by UAV and ground vehicle platforms in sorghum fields in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. Estimated phenotypic traits include plant locations, the number of plants per plot, leaf area, canopy cover, Leaf Area Index (LAI), leaf count, leaf angle, leaf length, and leaf width.


The construction of efficient parallel graph algorithms is important for quickly solving problems in areas such as urban planning, social network analysis, and hardware verification. Existing GPU implementations of graph algorithms tend to be monolithic and thus contributions from the literature are typically rebuilt rather than reused. Recent work has focused on traversal-based abstractions that efficiently execute a single breadth-first search or enact algorithms in the "think like a vertex" paradigm. However, graph analytics such as the all-pairs shortest paths problem, diameter computations, betweenness centrality, and reachability querying require the execution of many such graph traversals. Typically, these traversals are independent of one another and can thus be executed in parallel. This paper presents multi-search, a simple abstraction that is designed for graph algorithms requiring many breadth-first searches that can be executed simultaneously. Although algorithms have implicitly leveraged this abstraction in the past, we provide an explicit, reusable implementation that efficiently maps this abstraction to the GPU, performing more than twice as fast as previous approaches on large graphs of varying diameter. This approach allows us to scale our APSP implementation to graphs with millions of vertices using a single GPU whereas prior approaches were either constrained to much smaller graph instances or required large supercomputers to process graphs of similar size. To show the flexibility of our abstraction, we use it to express betweenness centrality and achieve more than a 5.82x average speedup over parallel CPU implementations from existing frameworks and a 2.24x average speedup over a manual, highly optimized GPU implementation of the algorithm.


Injecting vitally stained blood cells into the ventral aorta of unrestrained, cannulated fish, and rapid freezing in liquid nitrogen, permitted the examination of the effects of oxygen supply, epinephrine and acetylcholine on branchial lamellar perfusion. Compared to the conditions in resting fish in air-saturated water, hypoxia and injection of epinephrine significantly increased the proportion of secondary lamellae receiving stained cells, and acetylcholine caused a significant reduction, but hyperoxia did not significantly affect the proportion of lamellae containing stained cells. Perfusion of the filamental central compartment was not affected by the treatments. It is concluded that trout can respond to changes in oxygen supply by varying the number of secondary lamellae perfused with blood, and that the distribution of blood flow is regulated by cholinergic and adrenergic receptors. It is suggested, however, that lamellar recruitment would not be useful in minimizing the costs of osmo- and iono-regulation.


Autistic traits can help people gain and sustain power, and has probably done so throughout history, says the present paper. A number of testable claims follow from this assumption. First, the powerful should have more autistic traits than others – which they do appear to have. Among other things, powerful people, and those with many autistic traits, tend to prefer solitary activities and are often aloof. Moreover, they are often rigid and socially insensitive, low on empathy and with low scores on the trait of agreeableness – and as a rule they do not have many friends. Both groups are also more self-centered than others, more honest, less submissive, more sensitive to slights, and with a stronger tendency to engage in abstract thinking. They tend to behave in bossy or dominant ways, and their moral judgment is more based on rules than on feelings. In addition to experimental evidence, I cite biographies showing that a surprising number of presidents, prime ministers and other powerful people seem to have had traits like those in question – and interestingly, in animals, leaders are often rigid and insensitive to group members' needs and feelings, mostly acting the way they are themselves inclined to, not responding much to others. Problem solving is important in leadership, and people with many autistic traits appear often to be better thinkers than typical subjects with similar IQs. However, these and other congruities could be coincidences. Hence the question of whether traits the two groups have in common also have a common cause constitutes a strong test of the paper's thesis – and a common cause does appear to exist, in the form of testosterone's effects on the central nervous system. Finally, there is evidence that, other things equal, powerful men have more reproductive success than others. If men wielding power do indeed have more autistic traits than those less powerful, this will lead to, other things equal, such traits becoming more common – which can help explain the prevalence of autistic traits.


Abstract In this article I posit a pragmatic model of how sound-patterning in poetry contributes to interpretation, with particular attention to the cognitive processes involved. The model is based in cognitive pragmatics (relevance theory) and psycholinguistics (spreading activation models), and the focus here is largely on segmental patterning such as rhyme and alliteration, though there is also some reference to metrical features. The article draws on relevance theory notions of literary language conveying a range of weak implicatures and thus resulting in diffuse and non-propositional impressions (Sperber and Wilson 1995 [1986]), notions used so far in relevance theory approaches to literary features such as repetition and metaphor. The article develops Pilkington's (2000) argument that poetic form, in slowing down lines and anticipating rhyming words, allows for longer access and deeper exploration of information associated with lexical concepts. Such exploration can lead to a potentially wide range of interpretive material. Here I focus on associative, iconic, and mimetic effects, which, I argue, are enabled through the spreading of semantic properties along sequences of relatively contiguous similar sounding words, and through the association of formal properties with semantic and encyclopaedic information. Through the analysis, my aim is also to account for the instability of poetic interpretation. The argument is presented with reference to poetry by Pope and Keats.


This article details the long-standing struggle within the American far right between those whose mission it is to resist the perceived subversion of international communism and its neo-Soviet successors now in power in the Kremlin and those whose mission is dedicated to preserving the White Race from the twin threats of miscegenation and marginalization from the corridors of power. Using the metaphor of the 1984 low-budget spectacular Red Dawn and noting the current pattern of Russian interference in the election and contacts with the Trump campaign, it traces the struggle from the ascendancy of anti-communism in the 1950s and 1960s to the current triumph of the race warriors and conspiracy theorists who championed the candidacy of Donald Trump. "Red Dawn Is Now" concludes with the observation that, for those who most fear foreign subversion, the revelations about Russian penwetration of the American election process and the Trump presidency represents a 21st-century version of the Soviet occupation that the young patriots of Red Dawn fame successfully repelled. If this is so, it suggests the possibility that Thomas Jefferson's observation that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants" may be prophetic and that the fifth wave of terrorism might at long last be at hand.