There is considerable national interest in the use of commercial microbially derived products for controlling the rate of accumulation of the contents of pit latrines. Manufacturers claim that some of these products can reduce accumulation rates, prevent the pit from ever filling up, or even result in decreases in pit contents volume. Prior to this research, there have been no scientific publications that have conclusively supported or refuted these claims. This project undertook to perform reproducible laboratory tests that would quantify the effect of commercial pit latrine additive products. Protocols were developed and tested on a range of different commercial products sold for their ability to control the rate of accumulation of pit latrine contents. The effect of commercial additives on mass loss from VIP sludge in 300 g honey jars was compared to mass loss from similar units subjected to no treatment and treatment with water. The purpose of these experiments was to separate and quantify the effect of micro-organisms or enzymes originating from commercial pit latrine additives from the effect of natural processes within the pit latrine sludge (including digestion by micro-organisms in the VIP sludge and dehydration) and the effects of other actions associated with treatment, such as the addition of water. Results indicated that insignificant mass loss occurred in all anaerobic test units, while significant mass loss occurred in all other test units. However, there was no statistically significant difference between any of the different treatments in the aerobic units. Investigation of analytical data from the test units indicated that mass loss in aerobic units was due to a combination of dehydration through evaporation of moisture and biological stabilisation processes, and that the latter were not significantly enhanced by the addition of commercial pit latrine products. It was concluded that there was no evidence to support claims that pit latrine additives could extend the life of a pit latrine.


The problems and prospects of democratic peace have attracted both scholars of international relations and policy makers in recent years. The main argument is that the promotion of democracy will lower the probability of war because democracies have not yet gone to war against each other. The promotion of democratic governance therefore became one of the cornerstones of the foreign policies in both the U.S. and the member countries of the European Union (EU) in the 1990s. South Asia can surely be regarded as a region where the benefits of democratic peace would be more than desirable. South Asia's image as a region of chronic instability was only to be seconded by U.S. President Clinton's remarks in March 2000 that the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir is the 'most dangerous place in the world'. The events following September 11 and the growing tensions between India and Pakistan after the attacks of Islamic militants on the Indian parliament in December 2001 have again increased the probability of a nuclear war in this part of the world. But the overall picture of the region is more complex. Besides the well-known conventional and nuclear security risks, South Asia is also among the poorest and least developed regions in the world according to international social and economic indicators. Despite these developments there are remarkable traditions of democratic rule at the same time. During most of the 1990s, South Asia was the biggest democratic region after the transition from authoritarian rule in Pakistan (1988), Nepal (1990) and Bangladesh (1990). Moreover, South Asia is the only region where western political institutions go hand in hand with a variety of non-western civilisations and where religion plays an active role in current politics. The only forms of Hindu and Islamic democracies are to be found in Nepal and Bangladesh, and Buddhism received a foremost place in the Sri Lanka constitution. In contrast to other Asian regions there is a strong commitment by South Asian countries to follow the development model that is included in the democratic peace debate. There is a great consensus for democracy and economic liberalisation. The constitutions of South Asian countries promote individual rights in contrast to community rights that created the debate on "Asian values" in parts of East and Southeast Asia some years ago. The ambivalent picture of conflict, poverty, and democracy offers an interesting test case for the theoretical assumptions of the democratic peace debate. In how far have periods of democratic governance on the domestic level as well as on the bilateral level brought about greater periods of peace as suggested by the theoretical debate? Will widespread democratisation and economic interdependence improve the prospects for peace and stability in the region? In order to address the problems and prospects of the democratic peace argument in South Asia, I will first give a short overview about the theoretical argument. In the second part, I will look at the domestic situation, the bilateral relations at the regional level and the role of economic interdependence and international institutions. Finally, I will draw conclusions about the applicability of the democratic peace argument for South Asia.


A theoretical and experimental study is conducted for the direct-detection Doppler Lidar developed by the Service d'Aéronomie du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Thanks to a specific design, the double-edge technique that applies primarily to Rayleigh scattering can also be employed in presence of aerosols backscatter. We focus on a careful estimate of the particle-induced error on the wind measurements. With a theoretical model for the Fabry-Perot interferometer and two sets of calibration measurements, the true spectral properties of the interferometer and the calibration curves are recovered. Furthermore, the particle-induced error is estimated for varying values of the scattering ratio at 532 nm. When applied to real atmospheric signals, this error is shown to be negligible. A comparison between ancillary data and the wind and backscatter ratio as retrieved from the Doppler lidar signals confirms our estimate.


Bringing together the latest data to chart recent and emerging trends, this atlas offers a major new profile of the state of health worldwide. In clear, full-color graphic displays and concise, informative text, it maps the causes and incidences of the major diseases as well as the economic, social, and environmental factors that shape health around the globe. In addition, it shows how health needs are identified, how health policy is developed and delivered, and how the quality of health services varies from country to country. "The State of Health Atlas" covers a range of timely topics including: life expectancy; malnutrition and obesity; water and sanitation; cancer, heart disease, and diabetes; tobacco and alcohol use; migration and refugees; climate change; infectious diseases from malaria to HIV/AIDS; mental health; SARS; avian flu and pandemic planning; urbanization; and antibiotic resistance.


This special issue presents a series of articles that examine different aspects of migration, drawing on evidence from the African continent. Their aim is not simply to provide new empirical material but also to offer fresh theoretical insights that can unsettle, challenge and refine existing theories that frame the emerging field of migration studies. By bringing together this collection of papers from Africa, our intention is to help redress the balance of research on migration that is heavily skewed towards the interests and preoccupations of the wealthier regions of the world. In particular, we argue that the basic concepts of migration and the hypotheses concerning linkages between these concepts have been largely developed on the basis of research and experience beyond Africa. As a result, in very general terms, the continent tends to be a consumer of theory, which is produced from the production-line of analysis of migration from Mexico to the USA, across the Mediterranean, to the Gulf, and so on. In Africa, migration theory has tended to be delivered as a package to be empirically tested and proven in the 'field'. But when it fails, it is taken back to the Western laboratory for further refinement before being shipped out again for another test run.


Seismic velocities are often polluted by acquisition or processing artifacts which should be identified and removed as they may have a non-negligible impact on subsequent processing such as migration, stack, angle analysis (AVO), litho-pressure analysis, time to depth conversion, etc. Artifacts encountered in seismic velocity data sets can be parted into: § acquisition artifacts, mainly footprint effect § processing artifacts such as white noise due to software picking resolution, inline oriented picking effect, smoothing operator imprint, etc. Factorial kriging is a geostatistical filtering technique developed by Georges Matheron in 1982, which enables to extract artifacts from a velocity data set. Factorial kriging relies on a simple additive model where the spatial variable under study is modeled by a random function, V(x), which is parted in terms of independent factors: V (x) = V1 (x) V2(x) … Artifacts extraction issues can be easily handled into the framework of this model, as far as the artifacts part of a data set can be considered independent of a complementary geological part: V (x) = VARTIFACTS (x) VGEOL (x) In such a way, factorial kriging, by estimating VGEOL(x), allows to filter out the artifacts component VARTIFACTS (x) of the data set. During recent years in the petroleum industry, factorial kriging has been applied with success for removing artifacts from seismic velocity data sets. Nevertheless it appeared sometimes limited when faced with non-stationary artifacts, i.e. of intensity or geometrical characteristics varying spatially. M-GS (Moving-GeoStatistics) is an innovative technology which is fully dedicated to the local optimization of parameters involved in variogram-based models. By optimizing spatially varying model parameters, M-GS guarantees a better adequacy between geostatistical model and data. This paper demonstrates how M-GS technology, combined with factorial kriging process, provides an optimal way for extracting properly non-stationary artifacts from velocity data sets. The computation of local structural parameters related to the artifacts part of data, as well as the gain in quality obtained by this approach, are illustrated on a real migration velocity cube.


PURPOSE: To test the safety and efficacy of acupuncture in reducing hot flashes in men with advanced prostate cancer (CaP) undergoing androgen deprivation therapy. METHODS: A single-arm, pilot study was undertaken to evaluate acupuncture treatment for hot flashes experienced by CaP patients undergoing hormonal therapy. Sixteen advanced CaP patients undergoing androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) received standardized full body and auricular acupunc-ture 1x/week for 14 weeks. Patients were evaluated at 0, 7, 14, and an additional 14-wk follow-up (F/U) (28-wks). Safety was measured by monitoring for adverse events over the treatment period. Serum testosterone was measured at 0 and 14-wks. Quality of life (QOL) was measured by the hormone domain of the Expanded Prostate Index Composite (EPIC), at the 0, 7, 14, and 28-wks and patient reported hot flash frequency was assessed weekly. Safety endpoints were serum testosterone and analysis of adverse events. Efficacy endpoints were scores on the EPIC and the number of pa-tient reported hot flashes. RESULTS: 17 patients were enrolled and 15 completed the trial. Of 15 evaluable patients the median age was 68 ± 8.19. Serum analysis demonstrated no change in testosterone at baseline 9.5 ng/ml ± 8.9 vs. end-point 14 ± 8.78 (p = 0.101). No adverse events were reported. Data analysis of the EPIC demonstrated a trend toward improvement after 7 wks and a significant improvement following 14 wks of acupuncture (p = 0.01). Analysis of patient reported frequency showed a significant reduction in the number of hot flashes at 7-wk (6, p = 0.04), 14-wk (2.6, p = 0.001), and 28-wk F/U (3.2, p = 0.01) as compared to baseline 9.57 ± 3.98. CONCLUSIONS: The administration of acupuncture in men with advanced CaP appears to significantly decrease the frequency of hot flashes. No serious ad-verse events were noted and serum testosterone levels were unchanged from baseline suggesting that the mechanism of action of acupuncture for hot flash amelioration is not via increase in testosterone.


This paper reports the results of the analysis of eddy covariance CO2 data obtained at a successional forest of maple and aspen at Camp Borden in southern Ontario, Canada, between July 1995 and December 1997. Main findings are (1) The Michaelis-Menton model explains .50–65% of the observed variance of the daytime net ecosystem carbon exchange (NEE) during the growing season; leaf wetness appears to be an important variable contributing to the remaining variance. (2) The whole-ecosystem respiration rate as a function of the 5-cm soil temperature shows a seasonal "hysteresis" (higher rate in the later part of the year), suggesting a nonnegligible contribution by deep soil/roots and the influence of litter age. (3) There is evidence of photosynthetic activities immediately after the spring snowmelt/soil warming, but the daily NEE did not switch sign till about 40 days later; our best estimates of the annual net carbon uptake by the ecosystem (net ecosystem production (NEP)) are 21.0, 21.2, and 22.8 t C ha yr for the periods July 19, 1995, to July 18, 1996, January 1 to December 31, 1996, and January 1 to December 31, 1997, respectively, with an uncertainty of 60.4 t C ha yr. (4) The higher NEP value in 1997 than in 1996 was caused by lower growing season soil temperature, cooler spring and fall transitional periods, and higher photon flux in 1997; possible enhancement in canopy photosynthetic capacity may also have played a role. In addition, three main sources of uncertainties, data gap, fetch, and mass flow, are discussed. It is suggested that collective use of the methods available for assessing the whole-ecosystem respiration (friction velocity threshold, mass flow theory, and dark respiration from the forest light response) may increase the confidence level of NEP estimates.


Abstract This unpublished symposium paper presents ideas on possible uses of colonoware inspired by ethnoarchaeological research in Sierra Leone in 1991 and 1993. An earlier version of this paper was presented in the Symposium Can't We Just Throw It Away? Approaches to Plain Pottery. 63rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, March 25-29, 1998, Seattle, Washington. The author is a Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina. Recommended Citation Ferguson, Leland (2007) "Early African-American Pottery in South Carolina: A Complicated Plainware," African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter: Vol. 10 : Iss. 2 , Article 1. Available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/adan/vol10/iss2/1  Download


DNA dynamics in tight spaces challenge nature's nanomachines Polymers are ubiquitous and occur in many diverse forms, including cross-linked synthetic polymers (e.g., rubber and plastic) and biopolymers such as DNA and proteins. DNA has long been used as a model system for polymer science because long, chemically well-defined DNA chains can be prepared using its ability to self-replicate, and because it can be analyzed at the single-molecule level. For instance, the relaxation dynamics of a distorted DNA molecule eventually reverting to its lowest-energy configuration have been investigated extensively (1). There has been growing interest in understanding the relaxation of spatially confined polymers. How biopolymers such as DNA and proteins behave under high spatial confinement is important because they often experience such conditions—for example, when DNA passes through a narrow pore during viral packaging or bacterial conjugation. With the advent of nanotechnology (DNA is 2 nm in diameter), it has now become possible to study the relaxation dynamics of DNA confined in one (2) and two (3) dimensions. Berndsen et al. (4) have undertaken the first characterization of DNA relaxation under extreme confinement in three dimensions. Remarkably, they find that DNA relaxation under such circumstances is slowed by a factor of more than 60,000, presenting a daunting challenge for the biological machines that need to compact DNA reliably into tight spaces.


A system, designed to give maximum flexibility and portability, has been developed to collect wave, current and other physical data within the dynamic environment from the surf zone to the edge of the shelf. The system consists of a radio-linked shore station, housed in a mobile van and as many as six shelf stations mounted in bottom referencing spars. A shelf station can be deployed from a small boat with minimum diver time. The ease of deployment of the shelf stations coupled with the mobile self-contained shore station, allows the use of a modern data acquisition system, and rapid deployment of sensors, for the field study of remote coastal areas. Each of the shelf stations is designed to accomodate as many as fifteen sensors. All simultaneous sensor outputs are digitized and transmitted by radio to the mobile shore station, where the received signals are processed and selected for recording on strip charts or digital magnetic tapes for computer analyses. Very high sampling rates and a real time system are used to insure precise time correlation between all data channels including those from separate shelf stations. A single shelf station would transmit data from an array of wave sensors, thus providing continuous wave climate including the two dimensional wave spectra. Some different combinations of shelf station ensembles are shown.


Ethylene is generally an inhibitor of plant growth and it is produced in increasing amounts when plants are exposed to abiotic stress. A number of rhizobacteria which contain the enzyme 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate deaminase (ACCd) can hydrolyse ACC, the immediate precursor of ethylene, and thus decrease root ACC concentration and root ethylene evolution. Whilst promotion of plant vegetative growth by ACC-d containing rhizobacteria has been observed in different plant species, only a few studies examined the influence of this group of bacteria on plant development such as flowering time. This work presented here aims to study effects of the ACC-d containing rhizobacterium (Variovorax. paradoxus 5C-2) on the growth and development of Arabidopsis, and also investigate the role of ethylene in regulating the interactions between V. paradoxus 5C-2 and plants by using wild type plants and a group of ethylene related mutants. Soil inoculation with V.paradoxus 5C-2 promoted growth of Columbia wild type (WT) and the ethylene overproducing mutant eto1-1, and also enhanced floral initiation of WT plants. However, these effects were not seen in ethylene insensitive mutants (etr1-1, ein2-l). Soil inoculation with V. paradoxus 5C-2 decreased foliar ACC concentrations of wild type plants and foliar ethylene emission in both WT and etol-1 plants. Taken together, these results suggest V. paradoxus 5C-2 inoculation promotes Arabidopsis growth and flowering via an ethylene-dependent pathway. The effect of V. paradoxus 5C-2 on wheat (Triticum aestivum cv. Ashby) was also assessed at seedling stage (with 3 leaves), but no growth promotion was observed in wheat either in well watered or drying soil. Further experiments investigated interactions between ABA and ethylene in stomatal regulation of wheat. Abscisic acid (ABA) is a key signal which regulates plant response to stress, particularly in regulating stomatal responses to drought. It is suggest that older leaves (3 weeks old) lose stomatal sensitivity to ABA. Recent studies indicate that ethylene can close stomata when ABA levels are relatively low; but antagonize ABA induced stomatal closure such that they can remain open when ABA levels increase. The work described here explored the role of ethylene in regulating stomatal responses of leaves of different growth stages to ABA, and to soil drying followed by rehydration. Furthermore, the hypothesis that lack of stomatal response to ABA in older leaves occurs via effects of leaf aging on ethylene production and/or sensitivity. Similar results as described by earlier report were obtained, whereby older, more mature leaves lost their ability to close stomata in response to exogenous ABA treatments and soil drying followed by rehydration, while young mature leaves closed stomata more fully in response to changes in water availability. Pretreating plants with 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) which antagonizes ethylene receptors, or soil inoculation with rhizobacterium V. paradoxus 5C-2 restored the ability to close stomata after soil drying-rehydration treatments, indicating that ethylene is involved in the sluggish stomatal response to ABA in older leaves. Further work suggests that stomata of older leaves are more sensitive to ethylene compared to young leaves, explaining the relative insensitivity of stomatal closure to both ABA and drought/rehydration in older leaves. Therefore, improving stomatal response of aged leaves to soil drying via rhizobacteria or chemical (1-MCP) application can be useful to increase water use efficiency during plant vegetative growth period in agriculture practice.


This thesis argues that M!ori popular music, regardless of genre, is a valuable resource in the formulation of a vibrant and relevant M!ori rangatahi (youth) identity. Specifically, the research investigates the complex relationship between popular music, social space, and M!ori culture and community in Aotearoa. The researcher interviewed six participants from within the M!ori music community and practiced participant observation at popular music events. The findings of this qualitative research are framed by an in-depth literature review into questions of M!ori identity, as well as an application of ethnomusicology theories on the relationship of music to place and community. The research output includes both a 30-minute documentary and this accompanying exegesis, which frames the documentary within relevant fields of scholarship and presents a critical analysis of its successes and weaknesses. The researcher elected to create a documentary in recognition of the medium's ability to maintain the voice of the research participants, capture the dynamism of the M!ori popular music scene, and increase the potential for the research to reach a wider audience. The use of documentary also allows for an exploration of the relationship between music and documentary, and begins a discussion on the potential of socially-conscious rockumentaries to reveal crucial social issues. Finally, the exegesis questions the ethics of outsider filmmaking, and explores how the concept of 'Kaupapa M!ori filmmaking' influenced the process of making the film.


Glass and polyethylenterephthalate (PET) bottles filled with sunflower oil were stored under both light and dark and with/without headspace to determine the effects of light, air, packaging materials and storage time on the stability of sunflower oil. Peroxide value (PV), free fatty acids, soap content and iodine number were measured to determine stability of sunflower oil every 3 months until 9 months. Glass bottles recorded lower oxidation values than oils packaged in PET. The oxidation proceeded faster in packages stored in light than in darkness, and in those with headspace. The best quality oil was found stored in the dark, free of air and packed in glass and then in PET. Even though glass gave the best protection against oxidation, PET bottles offer adequate protection (especially in the dark). This study showed that air, packaging and storage time all have an effect on the stability of sunflower oil.


The object of the DESEAS Project, funded by the EC, was to gather preliminary data on the abundance and maximum depth distribution of the rose shrimp Aristeusantennatus in the Mediterranean Sea. An exploratory survey was therefore designed with that goal in mind and conducted on the R/V Garcia del Cid, sampling the maximum depths in three specific areas in the central and western Mediterranean, one off Ibiza (Balearic Islands), one off Calabria (western Ionian Sea), and one off the southern Peloponnesian Peninsula (Gulf of Kalamata, eastern Ionian Sea). The depths sampled ranged from 600 to 4000 m, with specimens of A. antennatus being collected down to 3300 m. There were three distinct boundaries marking the abundance of this species: -2 ); 1000-1500 m, relatively moderate abundance (up to 300 ind km -2 ); and > 1500 m, relatively low abundance ( -2 ). The known population structure of this shrimp species, with increasing proportions of males and juveniles with depth, was also recorded in the deep-sea regions in other areas of the Mediterranean. No evidence of any differences in gonad development or in the presence of spermatophores carried by females was found in any of the three sampling areas. Lastly, a tendency for the relative proportion of juveniles to increase with depth was also observed.


The present paper is concerned with the numerical simulations of the turbulent flow and heat transfer in circular pipes using a low Reynolds number model for turbulence kinetic energy and its dissipation rate. Unlike the high Reynolds number turbulence models, the present solution procedure requires no special treatments near the pipe walls; i.e., no wall functions are needed to simulate the turbulent flow and heat transfer at the pipe walls. It is well known that the type of the wall function has been criticized on the basis that the obtained solution is essentially dependent on some adjustable tuning model constants. The present low Reynolds number model takes the solution up to the walls without any abrupt changes in the axial velocity and temperature profiles. Finite-volume equations are derived for the conservation equations of the mass continuity, axial and radial velocity components, temperature, turbulence kinetic energy and its dissipation rate. The resulting finite-volume equations are solved iteratively using a tri-diagonal matrix algorithm. The obtained results are considered converged when the errors are less than 0.1 percent. The converged radial profiles of the gas temperature, the axial velocity and the axial profiles of the Nusselt number, mean bulk temperature and wall heat flux are presented for six fixed values of the Reynolds numbers. Moreover, the axial profiles of the Nusselt number are presented for six values of the Reynolds number. The


We present a new method and a large-scale database to detect audio-video synchronization(A/V sync) errors in tennis videos. A deep network is trained to detect the visual signature of the tennis ball being hit by the racquet in the video stream. Another deep network is trained to detect the auditory signature of the same event in the audio stream. During evaluation, the audio stream is searched by the audio network for the audio event of the ball being hit. If the event is found in audio, the neighboring interval in video is searched for the corresponding visual signature. If the event is not found in the video stream but is found in the audio stream, A/V sync error is flagged. We developed a large-scaled database of 504,300 frames from 6 hours of videos of tennis events, simulated A/V sync errors, and found our method achieves high accuracy on the task.


Regions tend to become the relevant space for the analysis of public funding of innovation, as emphasised by numerous recent works. However, it is still to be demonstrated that the regional level is really the right spatial scaling for implementing innovation public policies. The aim of this paper is to provide a series of analytical and empirical elements that could help clarify this issue. The paper builds first on a review of the literature dedicated to territorial innovation systems (TIS), showing that beyond their extreme diversity, there are several criteria that provide a basis for a tentative typology of TIS. We then examine how and on which grounds there has been a shift of focus from the notion of National Innovation System (NIS) to that of Regional Innovation System (RIS). The paper also provides a rationale for considering the region as being at the core of TIS, but as part of a multiscalar and dynamic territorial setting. Building on these analytical grounds, the paper turns to an empirical investigation based on the French innovation system case. The specific features of this system and its recent evolution towards more "regionalisation" display particular patterns of how public policies, and more specifically regional policies, play a nodal role in initiating, supporting and coordinating innovation processes and projects at the regional level. But the leveraging effects of theses policies on territorial innovation dynamics are subject to various contingent conditions related both to the funding mechanisms mobilised and to the timing of the support to innovation projects according to their development stages. We conclude the paper by identifying some crucial pending issues and suggesting directions for further investigation on the role of regional innovation policies in various territorial and sectoral contexts.


In the Supreme Court's 1997 Term, the Supreme Court had decided a record number of statutory discrimination cases. However, that record was exceeded in the Supreme Court's 1998 Term with the Court addressing issues arising under Title VII, which covers discrimination in employment; Title IX, which covers discrimination in schools; and most significantly, the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability. Overall, the term scored significant victories for employers who were given considerable latitude to set their own physical characteristic standards and who were, to a large extent, immunized from liability for punitive damages. There was an unmistakable federalism motif playing in the background of some of these discrimination cases, which are discussed within this Article.


Student evaluations of teaching are a common fixture at American law schools, but they harbor surprising biases. Extensive psychology research demonstrates that these assessments respond overwhelmingly to a professor's appearance and nonverbal behavior; ratings based on just thirty seconds of silent videotape correlate strongly with end-of-semester evaluations. The nonverbal behaviors that influence teaching evaluations are rooted in physiology, culture, and habit, allowing characteristics like race and gender to affect evaluations. The current process of gathering evaluations, moreover, allows social stereotypes to filter students' perceptions, increasing risks of bias. These distortions are inevitable products of the intuitive, "system one" cognitive processes that the present process taps. The cure for these biases requires schools to design new student evaluation systems, such as ones based on facilitated group discussion, that enable more reflective, deliberative judgments. This article, which will appear in the Winter 2007 issue of the St. John's Law Review, draws upon research in cognitive decision making, both to present the compelling case for reforming the current system of evaluating classroom performance and to illuminate the cognitive processes that underlie many facets of the legal system.


As computers are increasingly more integrated into our daily lives we become more dependent on software. This situation is exploited by villainous actors on the Internet that distribute malicious software in search for fast financial gains on the expense of deceived computer users. As a result, computer users need more accurate and aiding mechanisms to assist them when separating legitimate software from its unwanted counterparts. However, such separations are complicated due to a greyzone of software that exists between legitimate and purely malicious software. The software in this greyzone often vaguely labeled spyware. This work introduce both user-aiding mechanisms and an attempt to clarify the greyzone by introducing the concept of privacy-invasive software (PIS) as a category of software that ignores the users' right to be left alone. Such software is distributed with a specific intent (often of commercial nature), which negatively affect the users to various degree. PIS is therefore classified with respect to the degree of informed consent and the amount of negative consequences for the users. To mitigate the effects from PIS, two novel mechanisms for safeguarding user consent during software installation are introduced; a collaborative software reputation system; and an automated End User License Agreement (EULA) classification. In the software reputation system, users collaborate by sharing experiences of previously used software programs, allowing new users to rely on the collective experience when installing software. The EULA classification generalizes patterns from a set of both legitimate and questionable software EULAs, so that computer users can automatically classify previously unknown EULAs as belonging to legitimate software or not. Both techniques increase user awareness about software program behavior, which allow users to make more informed decisions concerning software installations, which arguably reduces the threat from PIS. We present experimental results showing the ability of a set of machine learning algorithms ability to perform automated EULA classification. In addition, we also present a prototype implementation of a software reputation system, together with simulation results of the large-scale use of the system.


It is hay-making time on the Wookey farm. Two brothers are building the haystack, but thinking about other things - about young women, and love. There are angry words, and then a fight between the brothers. But the work goes on, visitors come and go, and the long hot summer day slowly turns to evening. Then the sun goes down, covering the world with a carpet of darkness. From the hedges around the hayfield comes the rich, sweet smell of wild flowers, and the hay will make a fine, soft bed ...


The cesam code is a consistent set of programs and routines which perform calculations of 1D quasi-hydrostatic stellar evolution including microscopic diffusion of chemical species and diffusion of angular momentum. The solution of the quasi-static equilibrium is performed by a collocation method based on piecewise polynomials approximations projected on a B-spline basis; that allows stable and robust calculations, and the exact restitution of the solution, not only at grid points, even for the discontinuous variables. Other advantages are the monitoring by only one parameter of the accuracy and its improvement by super-convergence. An automatic mesh refinement has been designed for adjusting the localisations of grid points according to the changes of unknowns. For standard models, the evolution of the chemical composition is solved by stiffly stable schemes of orders up to four; in the convection zones mixing and evolution of chemical are simultaneous. The solution of the diffusion equation employs the Galerkin finite elements scheme; the mixing of chemicals is then performed by a strong turbulent diffusion. A precise restoration of the atmosphere is allowed for.


The present status of development of data assimilation techniques for high resolution limited area models is reviewed and various candidates for a new generation of a data assimilation system are compared. It is concluded that data assimilation based on 3-dimensional or 4-dimensional variational techniques is the most promising approach. Further investigations are needed, however, to find out whether variational data assimilation is feasible over "limited" model integration areas or whether global/hemispheric model integration areas have to be introduced for high resolution limited area data assimilation purposes. The main problem in this connection is the rapid propagation of forecast errors on a global or at least hemispheric atmospheric scale within a time-scale of a few days.


On January 20, 2009, essentially 200 years after the enactment of the embargo against the slave trade, 40 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th President of the United States of America. Using the one drop rule for racial designation which has prevailed in the USA for most of its history, America had elected its first black President. Using the new standard created by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000, America now had its first commonly acknowledged bi-racial President. All can agree that Obama is not "wholly white,"--he is a "man of color" and therein lays the milestone; someone other than a white male was President of the United States of America. Analysts on the right were quick to declare that the US had overcome the challenge of race and the term "post-racial" abounded--from their perspective, race as a barrier to social justice had clearly been overcome. While acknowledging the achievement and progress of the major milestone, analyst on the left adamantly rejected the term "post racial" and argued that race still mattered with respect to one's life chances of success. (1) The ultimate purpose of this paper is to analyze the validity of these competing claims. In order to contextualize this debate, a brief explication and analysis of the historical quest for African American equity will be provided. A crucial part of this analysis will include analysis of the internalist (conservative) and externalist (liberal) perspectives which became especially distinctive after the post WWII civil rights movement, i.e., the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 and the demise of segregation as mandated by Alexander v Holmes County Board of Education in 1969. Finally, before dealing with its ultimate purpose, this work will offer a brief analysis of the Obama campaign and his presidency as it relates to the goal of social justice. The Quest for African American Equity: The Pre-Slavery Era to the Age of Obama According to Hegel, the dialectic is a clash of opposites in which every idea is opposed by a contrary idea. The dialectic is comprised of the first idea, the thesis, the opposing idea, and the antithesis. Out of the struggle between the two ideas comes a third idea, the synthesis. This process is a continuing one and is dynamic: as the synthesis becomes a thesis, which creates a new antithesis which results into a new synthesis and so forth. Since the civil rights movement, the competing thesis centered on the role of race and one's life chances. Internalists emphasize the progress while the externalists focus on the continuing challenges. Obama's election was indeed a prima facie boost for the internalists, thus, "The Age of Obama," yet a close analysis provides evidence for the externalists. "The Age of Obama" is preceded by seven (7) distinctive era of American history. With respect to the quest for equity, each of these periods, may be characterized as either neutral, facilitative, or repressive. The periods are as follows: (1) The Pre-Slavery Era (1619-1641); (2) The Era of Slavery (1642-1865); (3) The Era of Reconstruction (1865-1877); (4) The Nadir (1877-1909); (5) The Era of the NAACP (1910-1954); (6) The Post World War II Civil Rights Movement (1955-1969); and (7) The Post Civil Rights Movement Era (1970-2008.) (2) With respect to their state sanctioned designations, the Pre-Slavery Era had no specific designations but slowly deteriorated into slavery by colonial governments. Approximately 223 years of state sanctioned slavery was followed by over 100 years of state sanctioned discrimination. The Post Civil Rights Movement Era provided, for the first time in the history of the country, a state policy of being on the record for providing equal protection of the law for all, including African American citizens. Whether or not this policy was successfully implemented was debated vigorously between 1970 and Obama's election in 2008. …


The facilities management industry in the UK is relatively young but has experienced a rapid growth within the past two decades. This rapid development has increased the number of players in the industry and consequently, the need for greater market responsiveness. Despite this reality, an extensive literature search could not find any empirical study addressing the issue of marketing orientation in the industry. It was the aim of this study to fill the above gap in the marketing literature. The study aimed to reconceptualise marketing orientation and broaden-its dimensions in order to accommodate the paradoxes that are emerging as new contexts are focused. The boundary conditions for this reconceptualisation is a young industry such as Facilities Management, that lacks a well established industrial culture, is presently experiencing market turbulence and rapid growth, and operating within a period of intersection of the modem and postmodern cultures. The limits of present conceptualisation of marketing orientation as applicable to nascent industries are explored. Attempts to overcome these limits revealed a new conceptual framework for businesses trying to create and sustain a competitive advantage in the industry. The study also aimed to address implementation problems being faced in the industry by identifying useful antecedents that can enhance or impede the implementation process. The later part of the study was devoted to developing a benchmarking model that can be used by managers, to benchmark their organisations against the best practices in the field, in terms of marketing orientation. The study depended heavily on a positivist paradigm, where the quantitative research approach was heavily used. In-depth interviews were conducted in the later part of the research to explore some of the issues arising from the quantitative approach. It is hoped that this methodological triangulation will correct some of the inherent flaws of one-sided methodological approaches. Various methodological issues affecting the study were considered and necessary action taken. These methodological issues include, self assessment, reverse score items, non response bias, scope of study, sample frame, reliability and validity issues, interviewer effect, and others. Mail survey was used to collect data for the quantitative aspect of the research and 107 responses were used in the analysis.Being exploratory in design, the study sought to develop a scale that can adequately capture the operationalisation of the marketing concept within the facilities management industry. This was achieved by identifying aspects of marketing orientation that are not properly accommodated by the marketing literature, leading to the construction and validation of a new model of measurement. The scale development process provided empirical evidence that all components should be given equal weighting whencalculating the level of marketing orientation of an organisation. This confirms empirically what was previously assumed only from theoretical conceptualisation. Three new antecedents to marketing orientation were identified, namely; structural flux, employee flexibility, and teamwork orientation. The study established a higher level of marketing orientation pro-activity among firms with a formal customer service plan than those without. Paradoxically, the existence of a written customer service guideline was not found to have any significant impact on organisational marketing orientation stances. A benchmarking model that can be used by managers was developed and validated.


In this paper, we discuss the application of hierarchical matrix techniques to the solution of Helmholtz problems with large wave number {kappa} in 2D. We consider the Brakhage–Werner integral formulation of the problem discretized by the Galerkin boundary-element method. The dense n x n Galerkin matrix arising from this approach is represented by a sum of an Formula -matrix and an Formula 2-matrix, two different hierarchical matrix formats. A well-known multipole expansion is used to construct the Formula 2-matrix. We present a new approach to dealing with the numerical instability problems of this expansion: the parts of the matrix that can cause problems are approximated in a stable way by an Formula -matrix. Algebraic recompression methods are used to reduce the storage and the complexity of arithmetical operations of the Formula -matrix. Further, an approximate LU decomposition of such a recompressed Formula -matrix is an effective preconditioner. We prove that the construction of the matrices as well as the matrix-vector product can be performed in almost linear time in the number of unknowns. Numerical experiments for scattering problems in 2D are presented, where the linear systems are solved by a preconditioned iterative method.


We present the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) method for determining the dispersion curves of the refractive index and extinction coefficient of absorbing thin films by using the transmittance spectrum in the visible and near infrared regions at room temperature. The CWT method is performed on the transmittance spectrum of an a - Si(1-x)C(x):H film, and the refractive index and extinction coefficient of the film are continuously determined and compared with the results of the envelope and fringe counting methods. Also the noise filter property of the method is depicted on a theoretically generated noisy signal. Finally, the error analyses of the CWT, envelope, and fringe counting methods are performed.


This report examines the great progress made in availability and adoption in the broadband market over the past few decades and shows how Californian residents and businesses have come to use broadband widely. The policy issues involved with continuing the tremendous strides already made are discussed, along with recommendations for policy-makers. The report begins by documenting the rapid growth of Internet usage in the U.S. and California. There is a review of the current state of competition in voice and broadband markets, discussing the decline of traditional telephone service, which is rapidly approaching irrelevance, and the rise of wireless and Internet services. California consumers dropped one in five of their remaining traditional voice lines in 2013, leaving only 9 percent residential voice lines in California as traditional POTS lines. As of the first half of 2014, 47 percent of U.S. households relied only on wireless phones. The report discusses policy issues of availability and adoption of broadband, both overall and broken out by race, ethnicity, poverty status, age, and size of business. Since availability is nearly ubiquitous, policy focus should switch to the remaining barriers to adoption. State and federal policy toward universal service (CASF, CAF, Lifeline) is reviewed. The report presents detailed statistics on the availability of broadband in California. Growth in availability since 1999 to today's nearly ubiquitous coverage is presented. Broadband has been growing at an annualized rate of 30.4 percent since 1999 and more than 130 broadband providers have entered the market in the state. Mobile broadband now accounts for 70 percent of broadband connections. The data show rapidly increasing quality of service, with speeds rising from 7 Mbps in 2008 to 55 Mbps in 2015. Over the same time period, there was a significant decline in the quality-adjusted price for broadband, from $12.89/Mbps in 2008 to $3.42 in 2015.The report concludes with policy recommendations to expand broadband access and adoption, including deploying low cost options to achieve broadband parity, coordinating state and federal rural access subsidies to prevent waste, and updating state and federal Lifeline programs to support broadband. Other policy implications discussed include the need to remove barriers to deploying broadband infrastructure such as access to municipal rights of way, and retargeting CASF funds to unserved (rather than underserved) areas.


We study the noise correlations of one-dimensional binary Bose mixtures, as a probe of their quantum phases. In previous work [Phys. Rev. A 80, 023619 (2009)], we found a rich structure of many-body phases in such mixtures, such as paired and counterflow superfluidity. Here we investigate the signature of these phases in the noise correlations of the atomic cloud after time-of-flight expansion, using both Luttinger liquid theory and the time-evolving block decimation (TEBD) method. We find that paired and counterflow superfluidity exhibit distinctive features in the noise spectra. We treat both extended and inhomogeneous systems, and our numerical work shows that the essential physics of the extended systems is present in the trapped-atom systems of current experimental interest. For paired and counterflow superfluid phases, we suggest methods for extracting Luttinger parameters from noise correlation spectroscopy.


Using new survey data from the Netherlands, we find that non-immigrants are more likely to volunteer for secular organisations than guest worker immigrants and postcolonial citizen immigrants. In contrast, non-immigrants are less likely to engage in religious volunteering than both immigrant groups. We explain differences in the likelihood of religious and secular volunteering between immigrants and non-immigrants in the Netherlands by differences in level of individual resources, religiosity and having been asked to volunteer.


We estimate a panel error correction model for loan loss provisions, using unique supervisory data on flow of funds into and out of the allowance for loan losses of 25 Dutch banks in the post-2008 crisis period. We find that these banks aim for an allowance of 49% of impaired loans. In the short run, however, the adjustment of the allowance is only 29% of the change in impaired loans. The deviation from the target is made up by (a) larger additions to allowances in subsequent quarters and (b) smaller reversals of allowances when loan losses do not materialize. After one quarter, the adjustment toward the target level is 34%, and after four quarters is 81%. For individual banks, there are substantial differences in timing of provisioning for bad loan losses. We present two model-based metrics that inform supervisors on the extent to which banks' short-term provisioning behaviour is out of sync with their target levels.


This item is part of: Boarin, P., Haarhoff, E., Manfredini,
M., Mohammadzadeh, M., Premier, A., (2021). Rethinking Sustainable Pacific Rim
Territories. Proceedings of the 2020 APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes Hub
PhD Symposium, Future Cities Research Hub, School of Architecture and Planning
of the University of Auckland. ISBN: 978-0-473-53616-9ABSTRACT The research found that the coffee value chain operates in a long linear path and has not adopted the local wisdom point of view. The real actors in the primary stage are community-based stakeholders. To employ the circular economy framework as the latest sustainable approach to the value chain, then the gap of the social value of the societal structure and the culture in a circular economy that mainly unexplored must be developed. Vernacular architecture represents the social and cultural value. This value has to be understood, translated, and employed in the framework. This research aims to create a framework for the community-based coffee value chain by adapting a circular economy framework with added social value and culture. It is done by analyzing the vernacular architecture values and the coffee culture where both are in the same frame of the cultural landscape, with case study Toraja. Furthermore, this paper will focus on the value of the carving motifs of Toraja vernacular architecture, which are part of the vernacular architecture's material symbols and its meaning in the social value and its interweaving with the coffee culture. The research employs a qualitative research methodology with a case study approach.


We consider the task of optimizing an objective function subject to inequality constraints when both the objective and the constraints are expensive to evaluate. Bayesian optimization (BO) is a popular way to tackle optimization problems with expensive objective function evaluations, but has mostly been applied to unconstrained problems. Several BO approaches have been proposed to address expensive constraints but are limited to greedy strategies maximizing immediate reward. To address this limitation, we propose a lookahead approach that selects the next evaluation in order to maximize the long-term feasible reduction of the objective function. We present numerical experiments demonstrating the performance improvements of such a lookahead approach compared to several greedy BO algorithms, including constrained expected improvement (EIC) and predictive entropy search with constraint (PESC).


Can women capture the benefits of equal citizenship in a legal system that does not mandate necessary accommodations for pregnant workers? This article argues that current pregnancy discrimination law, which bases the right to work on full capacity, systematically deprives women of equal opportunity to make use of their innate capacities and talents in the workplace. This failure, in turn, compromises the quest for equal social citizenship - the right of equal access to paid work - that has been a cornerstone of the modern women's movement.This article first examines the nature and extent of conflicts between pregnancy and work, concluding that such conflicts have escalated in number and degree as women have expanded their labor force participation in many different respects. It next turns to the concept of substantive citizenship, with a particular focus on work and social citizenship, as a framework within which to assess gender inequality generally and, more specifically, the effects of the law's failure to provide sufficient accommodation for the needs of pregnant working women. The article then examines pregnancy discrimination law, tracing the shift from an era of exclusion to an era of access brought about, in large part, by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA). The PDA was part of a broad social movement designed to guarantee equal employment opportunities for women, but was specifically designed to dismantle a system in which states and employers excluded or restricted pregnant workers based on false assumptions about their capacity. Unquestionably, the PDA opened workplace doors for pregnant women. The plight of pregnant workers today, however, rests not primarily in false assumptions about their incapacity, but in the failure of current law to account for the physical, medical, and social realities of pregnancy. Pregnancy discrimination law provides absolute protection for women only if they retain full work capacity during the period of pregnancy and childbirth. In cases of partial incapacity, it provides only a comparative right to accommodations that can be limited in nature and difficult to enforce. In the final section, this article thus argues that equal citizenship requires not only legal protection from unjustified exclusion from the workforce, but also protection for a pregnant woman's right to work despite the potential temporary physical limitations of pregnancy. Only with a greater right of accommodation can women make full use of their innate talents and capacities at work.


In late 2017, JPR published a major study of attitudes towards Jews and Israel among the population of Great Britain, a project supported by the Community Security Trust and the Department for Communities and Local Government. We regard it as a groundbreaking piece of work - the first study conducted anywhere that empirically demonstrates a clear connection between extreme hostility towards Israel and more traditional forms of antipathy towards Jews.

This report explores this connection yet further, focusing specifically on two particularly prevalent ideas that are often experienced by Jews as antisemitic: the contention that Israel is 'an apartheid state' and that it should be subjected to a boycott.

In the first instance, the study finds that large proportions of people actually have no view at all on these ideas, either because they do not know anything about the issues, or because they are simply unsure of where they stand on them. This is particularly the case for young people and women - knowledge levels improve and opinions sharpen the older people are, and, as has been found in numerous other studies, women tend to be less opinionated than men on these types of political issues.

However, among those who do have a view, 21% agree with the contention that 'Israel is an apartheid state,' 5% strongly so, and 10% endorse the argument that 'people should boycott Israeli goods and products (3% strongly so). About the same proportion (18%) disagrees with the apartheid contention as agree with it, but a much higher proportion disagrees with the boycott one (47%) than agrees with it.

Disagreement with the boycott idea is higher in older age bands than in younger ones, increasingly so among those aged 40-plus, a phenomenon that is not found in relation to the apartheid contention. But the ideas are not particularly sensitive to educational level - both agreement and disagreement with both contentions increase the higher the educational qualification achieved.

However, clear distinctions can be found when looking at the data through the lens of religion, with Muslims much more likely than other groups to support both contentions.

The report goes on to explore the correlations between these views and more traditional anti-Jewish ones, and finds clear links between the two, although this is more the case with the boycott idea than the apartheid one. However, it also notes that the correlation is stronger with other anti-Israel beliefs, particularly those arguing that Israel exploits the Holocaust for its own purposes, and those claiming that Israel is excessively powerful or the primary cause of troubles in the Middle East.


In Italian, main stress can be found on any of the last three syllables of a word.
There is general consent that this is due to lexical stress. The analyses on default
stress assignment diverge. Authors disagree on whether the language is quantitysensitive
or not and on whether default stress falls on the second- or third-last
syllable. In this paper, I present data from a nonce word test conducted with native
speakers that show that speakers face the same dilemma as linguists do when
analysing the system. They divide into three groups, speakers who consistently
stress the third-last syllable, speakers who consistently stress the second-last
syllable and those who show variation with an even split between the two options.
All speakers consistently stress penultimate heavy syllables. Intra-speaker variation
is analysed in the framework of Optimality Theory as ad hoc rankings of
unranked constraints.


We consider the problem of stable determination of a harmonic function from knowledge of the solution and its normal derivative on a part of the boundary of the (bounded) solution domain. The alternating method is a procedure to generate an approximation to the harmonic function from such Cauchy data and we investigate a numerical implementation of this procedure based on Fredholm integral equations and Nyström discretization schemes, which makes it possible to perform a large number of iterations (millions) with minor computational cost (seconds) and high accuracy. Moreover, the original problem is rewritten as a fixed point equation on the boundary, and various other direct regularization techniques are discussed to solve that equation. We also discuss how knowledge of the smoothness of the data can be used to further improve the accuracy. Numerical examples are presented showing that accurate approximations of both the solution and its normal derivative can be obtained with much less computational time than in previous works.


This article reviews the outcomes to date of a collaborative project at Sheffield Hallam University to develop clear progression routes into higher education (HE) for further education (FE) students studying on Advanced Diploma, Higher National Certificate (HNC) and Higher National Diploma (HND) courses in childcare and education. Since 2002, students from partnership colleges have been eligible for enrolment on the BA (Hons) Early Childhood Studies degree at Sheffield Hallam, starting at Level 5 or Level 6, depending on previous attainment and performance at interview. While the numbers involved during the past four years have been small, student retention has been high and attainment has equalled that of their traditional‐entry colleagues. The results support the notion that it is possible to widen participation without lowering standards or suffering high rates of attrition, but there are implications for students and staff alike.


This chapter examines megaproject design and planning in two "shrinking cities" – Philadelphia, PA and Detroit, MI – and concludes that megaproject "metastasis," or repeated expansions into surrounding urban fabrics, is promoting the reduction of downtown into a series of self-contained enclaves. While political coalitions are constructing megaprojects, or large public works and/or single buildings, in cities around the world, in the United States, single-building megaprojects motivated by "growth coalitions" of public and private development actors have proliferated in downtowns since 1990. The urban design impacts of these megaprojects on the surrounding urban fabric have been little studied. Data on the institutional history, physical expansion, and relationship of the megaprojects to the urban fabric is combined with a qualitative analysis of megaproject theory and its application to the American condition, as well as to the political economy of development in American shrinking cities. The chapter concludes that megaprojects such as convention centers and casinos tend to expand inexorably once they are introduced into the American downtown. This metastasis results in the destruction of existing older buildings and street networks, the consolidation of street blocks into ever-larger superblocks, and the eventual physical restructuring of downtowns into enclaves of older fabric amidst clusters of megaproject superblocks. Applying Jacobs' (1992) theory of "moral hybrids" between "commerce and politics" to megaproject metastasis, the chapter argues that while megaprojects may be inevitable in American downtowns, they should be sited away from active, small-scale urban fabrics to reduce the negative impacts of future metastases. The chapter takes a design-oriented perspective on a phenomenon that is almost always understood from a political economy perspective alone. Megaprojects are significant physical entities, and the chapter clarifies their physical impacts on the urban fabric while indicating urban design policy directions to reduce these impacts in future.


The continuous demand for high data return in deep space and near-Earth satellite missions has led NASA and international institutions to consider alternative tech- nologies for high-data-rate communications. One solution is the establishment of wide- bandwidth Earth-space optical communication links, which require (among other things) a nearly obstruction-free atmospheric path. Considering the atmospheric channel, the most common and most apparent impairments on Earth-space optical communication paths arise from clouds. Therefore, the characterization of the statistical behavior of cloud cover- age for optical communication ground station candidate sites is of vital importance. In this article, we describe the development and deployment of a ground-based, long-wavelength infrared cloud imaging system able to monitor and characterize the cloud coverage. This system is based on a commercially available camera with a 62-deg diagonal field of view. A novel internal-shutter-based calibration technique allows radiometric calibration of the camera, which operates without a thermoelectric cooler. This cloud imaging system pro- vides continuous day-night cloud detection with constant sensitivity. The cloud imaging system also includes data-processing algorithms that calculate and remove atmospheric emission to isolate cloud signatures, and enable classification of clouds according to their optical attenuation. Measurements of long-wavelength infrared cloud radiance are used to retrieve the optical attenuation (cloud optical depth due to absorption and scattering) in the wavelength range of interest from visible to near-infrared, where the cloud attenuation is quite constant. This article addresses the specifics of the operation, calibration, and data processing of the imaging system that was deployed at the NASA/JPL Table Mountain Facil- ity (TMF) in California. Data are reported from July 2008 to July 2010. These data describe seasonal variability in cloud cover at the TMF site, with cloud amount (percentage of cloudy pixels) peaking at just over 51 percent during February, of which more than 60 percent had optical attenuation exceeding 12 dB at wavelengths in the range from the visible to the near-infrared. The lowest cloud amount was found during August, averaging 19.6 percent, and these clouds were mostly optically thin, with low attenuation.


Homogeneous Viologens for Use as Catalysts in Direct Carbohydrate Fuel Cells Dane Cameron Hansen Department of Chemical Engineering, BYU Doctor of Philosophy Deriving electrical energy from glucose and other carbohydrates under mild conditions is an important research objective because these biomolecules are abundant, renewable, and can provide 12 to 24 electrons per molecule, yielding substantial electrical power. It was previously observed that disubstituted viologens, salts of N,N'-disubstituted 4,4'-bipyridine, are able to oxidize glucose under alkaline conditions. Building on that initial result, the objective of this work was to understand and quantify the effectiveness and utility of viologens as catalysts for use in direct carbohydrate fuel cells. The extent that viologens oxidize carbohydrates, the conditions under which that oxidation occurs, and the mechanism for the oxidation were examined using oxygen-uptake and other methods. Viologens were found to catalytically oxidize carbohydrates extensively in alkaline solution. Viologens were also found to react with the enediol form of the carbohydrate, initiating carbohydrate oxidation with subsequent reduction of the viologen. If the viologen/carbohydrate ratio is low, electron transfer from the carbohydrate to the viologen becomes limiting and the carbohydrates undergoing oxidation rearrange into unreactive intermediates such as carboxylic acids and alcohols. At high catalyst ratios, excess viologen more rapidly oxidizes the carbohydrate and minimizes formation of unreactive intermediates. We also found that viologen polymers were more efficient than an equivalent concentration of monomers, suggesting that the higher localized concentration in polymeric viologen acts to efficiently oxidize carbohydrates and simulates high viologen/carbohydrate ratios. Monoalkyl viologens, aminoviologens, indigo carmine, and methylene blue were investigated by the method of cyclic voltammetry to inform their use as catalysts in the oxidation of carbohydrates. Redox potentials, diffusion coefficients, and heterogeneous electron-transfer rate constants were determined. Stability in alkaline solution and aqueous solubility were also examined in a semi-quantitative fashion. A comparison between the catalysts was made and viologens were found to be superior based on the examined parameters. The catalytic oxidation of carbohydrates by viologen was also examined using a fuel celllike device. For the conditions in which a test cell was operated, oxidation efficiencies of up to 33% were observed, compared to previously reported values from about 2.5% to 80%. Anode polarization curves were obtained and used to determine the behavior of the viologen-controlled anode as a function of pH, viologen and carbohydrate concentration, and carbohydrate identity. pH was found to have a stronger effect on the performance at the anode for carbohydrates with a higher number of carbons than those with a lower number.


This article critically assesses the scholarly representation of community-based restorative justice (CBRJ) schemes in Northern Ireland. These schemes, which emerged in working-class areas following the republican and loyalist ceasefires of the 1990s, have been the subject of intense political debate and a growing body of academic literature. I argue that the academic depiction of the schemes in republican areas ignores the substantial progress made by revisionist political scientists and historians in understanding Provisional republicanism. By failing to take that research into account, CBRJ scholars are in danger of not simply promoting vague, de-contextualised policy prescriptions, but of actively reproducing republican understandings of political developments.


This paper describes fat processing and rendering systems as it relates to the activities of the European Fat Processors and Renderers Association (EFPRA). The paper is laid out in sections. Firstly a general section deals with all common aspects relating to the activities of EFPRAmembers. Secondly, specific issues are discussed with regard to a) fat processing, b) animal by-products not intended for human consumption. Finally, a summary is given, which concludes that given the state of science today ; a) the activities of EFPRAmembers are vital to the sustainable operation of the animal livestock-food chain and to the environment ; b) the products from the industry may be regarded as safe if the following standards are applied - safe sourcing, safe processing, safe use ; c) the application of these principles will allow the re-entry of certain products manufactured by EFPRA members into the food chain.


Stream temperature is a hydrological factor which affects the habitat suitability of many aquatic species, and is therefore of great concern in the actual context of climate change. Its prediction in ungauged basins is usually based on statistical approaches, such as multi-linear regression models or machine learning techniques. These models typically predict temperature metrics corresponding to yearly aggregates, such as the popular annual maximum weekly mean temperature (MWMT). As a consequence, they are often unable to predict the annual cycle of stream temperature, nor can the majority of them forecast the inter-annual variation of stream temperature. This study presents a new model to estimate the monthly mean stream temperature of ungauged rivers over multiple years in an Alpine country (Switzerland). Contrary to the current statistical approaches, this model rests upon the analytical solution of a simplified version of the energy-balance equation over an entire stream network. This physically-based approach presents some advantages, among which the possibility to interpret the model coefficients from a physical point of view, hereby enabling the restriction of their calibration range. The evaluation of the model over a new data set shows that the monthly mean stream temperature curve can be reproduced with a root mean square error of 1.3°C, which is similar in precision to the predictions obtained with standard multi-linear regression models. We illustrate through a simple example how the physical basis of the model can be used to gain more insight into the stream temperature dynamics at regional scales.


Much of society's resources are devoted to dealing with, or preparing for the possibility of, crime. The dominance of concerns about crime also hints at the broader implications that offending has for many different facets of society. They suggest that rather than being an outlawed subset of social activity crime is an integrated aspect of societal processes. As an introduction to this themed issue of Contemporary Social Science, a brief review is undertaken of some of the direct and indirect social impacts of criminality, proposing that this is worthwhile, not just in terms of understanding crime but also because of how it elucidates more general social considerations. A range of studies that examine the interactions between crime and society are brought together drawing on a wide range of countries and cultures, India, Israel, Nigeria, Turkey and the USA, as well as Britain and Ireland. They include contributions from many different social science disciplines, which complement each other. Taken together the 11 papers reviewed do demonstrate that the implicit and direct impact of crime is very widespread indeed.


The economy for the common good (ECG) has been developed as a practical economic model, starting in Austria, Bavaria, and South Tyrol in 2010. Nowadays, ECG is considered a viable approach for sustainable transformation across Europe, and also worldwide. Within economic policy, ECG expands social market economy concepts; from a theoretical perspective of economics the question arises, of whether the implicit theoretical model refines the neoclassical paradigm or actually transcends it. During the first scientific conference on the ECG, at the end of 2019 at the University of Applied Sciences Bremen, some 150 participants concluded that an investigation of ECG practices was necessary, and that the fundamental theory needs to be developed in an explicit and systematic way. This article is a first attempt at contrasting the theoretical basis of the ECG model with neoclassical economics, using core concepts and cornerstones of the latter's paradigm. The outcome is the cornerstone of common good economics.


This study aims to understand whether the gender of mutual fund managers impacts investors' capital allocation decisions to US mutual funds. This study uses net alpha as an indication of proper capital allocation, as higher net alpha indicates not enough capital, and uses value added (gross alpha multiplied by fund size) as an indication of skill, as higher value added indicates higher skill given that capital is allocated properly (Berk and van Binsbergen 2015). This research utilized the Morningstar database to gather information on 5,000 US mutual funds to compare net alpha and value added between male funds and female funds. The present research found that female managers have statistically significantly higher net alpha and higher value added, compared to male managers, likely indicating that females are not allocated enough capital but have higher skill, as they are able to extract high value added even without proper capital allocation.


Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is a serious recessive genetic disorder caused by a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the ß-globin gene (HBB). Sickle hemoglobin polymerizes within red blood cells (RBCs), causing them to adopt an elongated "sickle" shape. Sickle RBCs damage vasculature, leading to severe symptoms, ultimately diminishing patient quality of life and reducing lifespan. Here, we use codelivery of a pre-formed Cas9 ribonucleoprotein complex (RNP) and a singlestranded DNA (ssDNA) oligonucleotide donor to drive sequence replacement at the SCD SNP in human CD34+ hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs). Corrected HSPCs from SCD patients produce less sickle hemoglobin protein and correspondingly increased wild-type hemoglobin when differentiated into erythroblasts. When injected into immunocompromised mice, treated HSPCs maintain editing long-term at therapeutically relevant levels. These results demonstrate that the Cas9 RNP/ssDNA donor approach can mediate efficient HSPC gene editing and could form the basis for treatment of SCD by autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation.


The global financial crisis is expected to have a negative impact on the Bolivian economy. Effects will transmit into the economy through lower export prices and quantities, reduced amount of remittances and depressed foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. These shocks will bring about deficits in the current account and fiscal balances, foreign exchange reserves losses, sluggish economic growth and higher unemployment rates. The latest data available show that the economy is already experiencing the effects of the economic downturn, in the form of decreased exports revenues, sharp reductions in the rates of growth of foreign of exchange reserves and bank lending and a tendency towards a re-dollarisation of financial assets and liabilities. The Bolivian economy, however, is well prepared, at least in the short run, to cope with the negative effects of the crisis. The commodity export boom experienced between 2005 and 2008 has permitted the country to run sizable external and fiscal surpluses and accumulate foreign exchange reserves. The financial system has exhibited more prudent behaviour in recent years, by not expanding credit too much and increasing investments in highly liquid public bonds. Therefore, although banks are expected to be affected by the global financial crisis, they have high liquidity ratios and are not extremely exposed to risk. The capacity of the Bolivian economy to offset the negative effects of the global crisis will depend on several factors, such as the severity and duration of the crisis and, above all, the quality of the policies that policymakers will implement to cope with the crisis. The government faces several trade-offs in implementing policies in order to cope with the effects of the crisis. The central bank, for instance, is committed to maintaining a fixed exchange rate, in order to reduce inflationary pressures and to avoid a re-dollarisation of the financial system. However, a fixed exchange rate policy has already brought about an exchange rate appreciation, which is hurting competitiveness of tradable activities. Furthermore, the government has room to implement countercyclical fiscal policies, by resorting to the deposits accumulated in the central bank during the export boom years. During 2009, the government is planning to expand public investment and to increase direct transfers to the population. However, these policies are not likely to offset the negative effects that the crisis will have on growth and employment. More efforts should be made to improve the quality of public spending, in order to maximise its impact on economic growth, employment creation and poverty reduction.


Necrosis is cell death that results from injury or cell stress and is biochemically and morphologically distinct from apoptosis, or programmed cell death. In the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, activated mutants of degenerin channels, such as the Na+ channel, can cause necrotic cell death in the cells expressing the mutant channels. Xu et al. identified calreticulin in a screen for mutations that suppress necrosis in a degenerin Na+ channel mutant background. Calreticulin mutants suppressed necrosis in neurons and muscles and in response to two different necrosis-inducing stresses: activated Na+ channels and ectopic expression of activated Gαs. Calreticulin mutants could not suppress necrosis induced by activated Ca2+ channels, suggesting that calreticulin was affecting calcium homeostasis not protein synthesis. Loss of function mutants of the inositol triphosphate receptor or the ryanodine receptor [two calcium release channels in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER)] or suppression of expression of calnexin were all also able to suppress necrosis in the activated Na+ channel mutants. Pharmacological manipulations that decreased ER calcium levels or ER calcium release also inhibited necrosis. Thus, ER calcium release and buffering capacity controlled by the calcium binding proteins calreticulin and calnexin appear essential for stimulating necrosis by stresses not involving calcium influx across the plasma membrane. K. Xu, N. Tavernarakis, M. Driscoll, Necrotic cell death in C. elegans requires the function of calreticulin and regulators of Ca2+ release from the endoplasmic reticulum. Neuron 31, 957-971 (2001). [Online Journal]


Abstract. The heterogeneous reaction between gas phase glyoxal and ammonium sulfate (AS) aerosols, a proxy for inorganic atmospheric aerosol, was studied in terms of the dependence of the optical, physical and chemical properties of the product aerosols on initial particle size and ambient relative humidity (RH). Our experiments imitate an atmospheric scenario of a dry particle hydration at ambient RH conditions in the presence of glyoxal gas followed by efflorescence due to decrease of the ambient RH. The reactions were studied under different RH conditions, starting from dry conditions (~20% RH) and up to 90% RH, covering conditions prevalent in many atmospheric environments, and followed by consequent drying of the reacted particles before their analysis by the aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS), cavity ring down (CRD) and scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS) systems. At λ = 355 nm, the reacted aerosols demonstrate a substantial growth in optical extinction cross section, as well as in mobility diameter under a broad range of RH values (35–90%). The ratio of the product aerosol to seed aerosol geometric cross section reached up to ~3.5, and the optical extinction cross-section up to ~250. The reactions show a trend of increasing physical and optical growth with decreasing seed aerosol size, from 100 nm to 300 nm, as well as with decreasing RH values from 90% to ~40%. Optically inactive aerosols, at the limit of the Mie range (100 nm diameter) become optically active as they grow due to the reaction. AMS analyses of the reaction of 300 nm AS at RH values of 50%, 75% and 90% show that the main products of the reaction are glyoxal oligomers, formed by acetal formation in the presence of AS. In addition, imidazole formation, which is a minor channel, is observed for all reactions, yielding a product which absorbs at λ = 290 nm, with possible implications on the radiative properties of the product aerosols. The ratio of absorbing substances (C-N compounds, including imidazoles) increases with increasing RH value. A core/shell model used for the investigation of the optical properties of the reaction products of AS with gas phase glyoxal, shows that the refractive index (RI) of the reaction products are n= 1.68(±0.10)+0.01(±0.02) at 50% RH and n = 1.65(±0.06)+0.02(±0.01) at 75% RH at 355 nm. The observed increase in the ratio of the absorbing substances is not indicated in the imaginary part of the products at RH 50% and 75%. A further increase in the ratio of absorbing substances and a resulting increase in the imaginary part of the RI at higher RH values is expected, and may become even more substantial after longer reaction times, possibly in cloud or fog droplets. This study shows that the reaction of abundant substances present in atmospheric aerosols, such as AS, and gas phase glyoxal alters the aerosols' optical, physical and chemical properties and may have implications on the radiative effect of these aerosols.


To research the management of risk and cost in the cladding industry, this work has evaluated current practice and deficiencies, concentrating on the lack of integration or standardisation resulting in inaccurate cost estimates, unacceptable risks and loss of profit in cladding manufacture. The research presents an approach for integrating process- and technology-orientated improvements into a knowledge-based model to improve a cladding manufacturing SME's performance. The research also presents a management method for the selection, integration, control and implementation of this approach. Controlling data transfer between systems produces a knowledge-based model, allowing cladding industry designers and estimators to take more accurate decisions, with the objective of reducing risk and improving company profitability. This model, with the addition of external supply chain elements, is a management framework, which can be termed an agile manufacturing system.

The development of this framework has raised the following data certainty questions:

• What is the measured uncertainty of that data?
• How can the industry control and structure high data volumes transferred between systems to produce more accurate cost models?

The answers to these questions were found by applying a structured methodology for the selection, integration and control of technology in the cladding industry, but involving the human factor. In this approach, the principle of entropy was adopted to measure data uncertainty. The structured methodology was made possible by a new categorisation into Innovative, Standard and Semi-Standard cladding projects.

The research applied this structured methodology, combining qualitative and quantitative methods for validating assumptions, to a cladding industry SME case-study. The case-study investigated the validity of real cost and project data and calculated data uncertainty for specific projects, categorised as described, using a risk factor percentage predicted on entropy principles, based on historical data fed back from the SME's ERP system. This risk factor approach was similar to that previously used in the insurance and banking industries. The risk percentage formulae used were based on assumptions extracted from qualitative and quantitative methods applied to the SME, its partner companies and industry specialists. Assumptions about the gross margins for UK metal cladding projects formed part of the risk percentage formulae.

The results of this case-study found that gross margins varied from 5% in standard projects to 40% in the Innovative projects. An entropy scale was proposed as a basis for comparing risk calculation results, with the highest entropy equalling 100%, signifying the highest risk possible. It was found that risk rises in the case-study were from 23% for Standard to 93% for Innovative projects.

This principle of a risk factor percentage was tested in the UK cladding manufacturer SME case-study and its value to the SME was demonstrated.


A fluorescent sensor for the determination of Ag+ by time-gated mode is proposed. The method is based on Ag+-induced formation of quantum dot/DNA/gold nanoparticle complexes. Two ssDNA strands (strand A and strand B) are designed which contain C–C mismatched base pairs that can specifically react with Ag+. The water-soluble long-lifetime fluorescence quantum dots (Mn:CdS/ZnS) functionalized with strand A are selected as the fluorophore. The gold nanoparticles (GNPs) which are labeled with strand B, acted as the quencher. When Ag+ is absent in the sample solution, DNA-modified GNPs and Mn:CdS/ZnS were in the freedom state, the fluorescence signal of Mn:CdS/ZnS is obviously strong. When Ag+ are present in the sample solution, a DNA duplex is formed because of the strong binding ability between Ag+ and cytosine bases and formed stable C–Ag+–C structures. As a result, the Mn:CdS/ZnS and the GNPs are brought into close proximity, which caused the fluorescence quenching of the Mn:CdS/ZnS due to the nanometal surface energy transfer (NSET) between the Mn:CdS/ZnS and GNPs. This fluorescent sensor could present a satisfactory specificity and selectivity for Ag+. Meanwhile, the detection limit of Ag+ was estimated to be 7.9 nM.


"Currently, the construction industry is experiencing recruitment difficulties due to limited sourcing of labour from its traditional applicant group of primarily young males aged between 16-21. As a response to this, recent efforts have attempted to recruit women into the industry. However, these efforts have had little success. Foreign labour is being used as a temporary measure to fill the skills shortage. Instead the need for a long-term skilled workforce, which is home-grown, will ensure lasting sustainability and success for the UK construction industry. To achieve this goal, the recruitment of women is no longer simply an issue of gender representation, it is now a practical necessity. The aim of this study is to create a framework for the integration of more female employees into the UK construction industry. Furthermore, reassessment of the existence of career and recruitment barriers will be explored to identify practical requirements that a viable framework
must overcome. Secondly, the consideration of flexible working hours and their applicability to the construction industry will be identified. In this study a qualitative research methodology has been chosen due to the subjective nature of the investigation. The research aims to gather an in-depth understanding of perceptions and experiences from a range of participants regarding females in the construction industry. Altogether, 4 semi-structured interviews were carried out with male and female construction employees in the North-West area of England. The interviews were then analysed using a content analysis method. This research is important for the progression of equality in the UK construction industry, assessing the relevant barriers faced by women today and determining a suitable solution for inclusivity. The dominant core finding from the study was that the introduction of more women into the UK construction industry will create a self-perpetuating pattern. By highlighting the achievements of these females they will become role models to younger women who are considering a career in the construction industry. It was concluded that time and money spent on attracting an initial cohort of female employees will result in significant added value in the form of future female recruitment and
retention in the UK construction industry.


Human water use has significantly increased during the recent past. Water withdrawals from surface and groundwater sources have altered terrestrial discharge and storage, with large variability in time and space. These withdrawals are driven by sectoral demands for water, but are commonly subject to supply constraints, which determine water allocation. Water supply and allocation, therefore, should be considered together with water demand and appropriately included in Earth system models to address various large-scale effects with or without considering possible climate interactions. In a companion paper, we review the modeling of demand in large-scale models. Here, we review the algorithms developed to represent the elements of water supply and allocation in land surface and global hydrologic models. We note that some potentially important online implications, such as the effects of large reservoirs on land–atmospheric feedbacks, have not yet been fully investigated. Regarding offline implications, we find that there are important elements, such as groundwater availability and withdrawals, and the representation of large reservoirs, which should be improved. We identify major sources of uncertainty in current simulations due to limitations in data support, water allocation algorithms, host large-scale models as well as propagation of various biases across the integrated modeling system. Considering these findings with those highlighted in our companion paper, we note that advancements in computation and coupling techniques as well as improvements in natural and anthropogenic process representation and parameterization in host large-scale models, in conjunction with remote sensing and data assimilation can facilitate inclusion of water resource management at larger scales. Nonetheless, various modeling options should be carefully considered, diagnosed and intercompared. We propose a modular framework to develop integrated models based on multiple hypotheses for data support, water resource management algorithms and host models in a unified uncertainty assessment framework. A key to this development is the availability of regional-scale data for model development, diagnosis and validation. We argue that the time is right for a global initiative, based on regional case studies, to move this agenda forward.


Introduction: Pulpectomy is the treatment alternative in rescuing the pulpally involved carious primary teeth. Various obturating materials are being used to conserve an infected deciduous dentition. The present study documents the use of a novel obturating material in primary molars due to the disadvantages associated with of the currently used materials. Objective: To evaluate clinically and radiographically the success rate of the mixture of zinc oxide powder and nanohydroxyapatite with saline as an obturating material in primary molars and also to compare its efficiency with Endoflas. Material and Methods: Thirty pulpectomy indicated primary molars were randomly divided into two equal groups; Group I (mixture of zinc oxide powder and nanohydroxyapatite with saline) and Group II (Endoflas FS). The teeth were evaluated using various clinical and radiographic criteria at 3, 6 and 9-month intervals. The obtained results were statistically analyzed (P <0.05). Results: The overall present study findings revealed 100% clinical success in both the groups. Whereas radiographically, success reported was 66% for Group I and 100% for Group II at the end of 9 months follow-up. The difference in the radiographic success rate between the two groups was statistically significant (P <0.05). Conclusion: Endoflas FS had demonstrated high success rate both clinically and radiographically when compared to the novel combination of a mixture of zinc oxide powder and nanohydroxyapatite with saline as obturating material.KeywordsEndoflas; Mixture of zinc oxide and nanohydroxyapatite; Obturating material; Pulpectomy; Primary molars; Endoflas.


The purpose of this paper is to analyse the use of different community-based learning spaces and environments as a pedagogical resource for student learning through university community engagement. It draws on the findings from a recently completed community engagement and service learning action research project, where students responded to NGO community requests for assistance to work in small teams with grass roots communities. The methodology included initial consultations between NGO communities and the participating students, with follow-up observations and interviews with students, the NGOs and, where possible, their grass roots community participants. This paper reports on three case studies of the action research project and compares the student, NGO and community reflections of the community engagement experience. The findings suggest that the learning spaces and environments enabled students and community members to engage in mutual learning, through a dialogic and reflective process that enabled application of discipline-based theory, as well as broader learning, related to power dynamics and sharing of knowledge between community members and students. However, the engagement initiatives require considerable preparatory discussions and ongoing dialogue between the different agencies.


Ultrafast transient-absorption and steady-state fluorescence measurements have been performed on dinucleotides comprising the fluorescent adenine analogue 2-aminopurine and guanine, adenine, cytosine, thymine or hypoxanthine, respectively. Two oligodeoxyribonucleotide duplexes that were site-selectively substituted with a single 2-aminopurine moiety were also studied. A strong quenching of the steady-state fluorescence was observed in all samples. The transient-absorption spectra were remarkably similar to those of the isolated 2-aminopurine (Larsen et al.; O. F. A. Larsen, I. H. M. van Stokkum, M.-L. Groot, J. T. M. Kennis, R. van Grondelle and H. van Amerongen, Chem. Phys. Lett., 2003, 371, 157–163), exhibiting both a fluorescent and a non-fluorescent excited state. There was no evidence for significant amounts of charge-separated states in the transient-absorption spectra. The probability that an excitation of 2AP leads to stable charge transfer products was estimated to be very low (∼0.1%). In the systems we studied, the observed fluorescence quenching can largely be explained by a shift of the equilibrium between the two excited states in 2AP, in which the non-fluorescent state is favored.


Xavier Herbert is one of Australia's outstanding novelists and one of the more controversial. In his time, he was also an outspoken public figure. Yet many young Australians today have not heard of the man or his novels. His key works Capricornia (1938) and Poor Fellow My Country (1975) won major awards and were judged as highly significant on publication, yet there has been relatively little analysis of their impact. Although providing much material for Baz Luhrmann's blockbuster film Australia (2008), his works are rarely recommended as texts in school curricula or in universities. Gough Whitlam took a particular interest in the final draft of Poor Fellow My Country, describing it as a work of 'national significance' and ensuring the manuscript was sponsored to final publication. In 1976 Randolph Stow described it as 'THE Australian classic'. Yet, a search of the Australian Literature database will show that it is one of the most under-read and least taught works in the Australian literary canon. In our view, an examination of his legacy is long overdue. This collection brings together new scholarship that explores the possible reasons for Herbert's eclipse within public recognition, from his exposure of unpalatable truths such as interracial intimacy, to his relationship with fame. This reevaluation gives new readings of the works of this important if not troublesome public intellectual and author.


The Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system is the second largest estuarine area in the United States. This system consists of 2 large coastal lagoons (Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds) with their associated fringing habitats (beaches, marshes, bluffs, and swamp forests) and rivers (Neuse, Pamlico, Pungo, Alligator, Roanoke and Chowan). Other environmental features of the Albemarle-Pamlico system vary regionally to create local habitats of quite different character. This paper discusses the title subject in terms of water quality, biological characteristics, and environmental processes.