This article, based on a keynote address delivered at the University of Toledo Law Review Symposium "Gender Equality: Progress and Possibilities," takes up the task of theorizing gendered aspects of the current chasm between progressive elites on one hand and rural and working-class whites on the other. Pruitt offers observations that aim to cultivate empathy and ultimately temper elite derision toward these populations. The article also lays the groundwork for robust consideration of how feminist legal theory has failed rural and working class white women. Perhaps most importantly, Pruitt begins to think practically about what progressive feminists can and should do to bridge the current divide and, in so doing, cultivate a broad, inclusive sisterhood that better transcends spatial, racial, and socioeconomic differences.
The article proceeds by outlining evidence of our nation's burgeoning metro-centricity, as well as our ongoing denial of and inattention to issues of socioeconomic disadvantage when they intersect with white skin privilege. Pruitt offers these observations with special attention to the context of the legal academy and legal scholarship. Part II discusses how this neglect of white working-class and rural populations evolved into disdain during the 2016 election season and has hardened into contempt in the era of Trump's presidency. Part III is a brief overview of socioeconomic and public health trends among these increasingly vulnerable populations, with a particular focus on what has been happening to rural and working class white women since Pruitt began writing about them more than a decade ago. Part IV summarizes what we know about the female vote in election 2016, with some attention also to gendered voting patterns in the special election for the Alabama U.S. Senate seat in 2017. Part V digs into media profiles of female Trump voters, which reveal some themes Pruitt has addressed in prior work, including the understudied and widely ignored tension among various strata within what is broadly perceived as a monolithic white working class. This part also scratches the surface of a major issue in the wake of the 2016 election: the liberal elite tendency to label as "racist" anyone who voted for Trump, as well as the disconnect between this usage and many communities' far less capacious understanding of the term. Before concluding with thoughts on how to bridge the divide between elites and the white working class, Pruitt uses a personal story (a la Hillbilly Elegy) in an effort to humanize female Trump voters. The postscript holds up the successful West Virginia teachers' strike of 2018 as a model for cross-class coalition building.


In global market the demand for cosmeceuticals have shown an appreciable amount of enhancement over the past few years, especially the novel technology is more explored by the researchers as well as the marketers. Nanotechnology provides a wide platform for innovation and variation, the nanocosmeceuticals have shown an amplifiable amount of growth. Nanocosmeceuticals such as nanogels, nanoemulsions, liposomes, niosomes, solid lipid nanoparticles etc. have been used widely due to targeted delivery of the active ingredient, modification in shape, size, colour, penetration into the skin, controlled release delivery of the actives and much more. In global market there are a lot many Nanocosmeceuticals based products exist. Especially, Nanogels are three dimensional polymer network systems and they provides favourable characteristics to formulate, incorporate & fabricate hydrophilic as well as hydrophobic formulations which are required in many cosmeceuticals products. Nanogels can easily replace the conventional cosmeceuticals due to substantial amount of benefit which it provide such as their stimuli responsive behavior, pH responsive mechanism of drug release, small particle size, high water imbibing capacity, tremendous bio compatibility. The various applications of the nanogels in cosmeceuticals has been discussed in this review along with the general properties of the nanogel.


This exhibition's large-scale charcoal and pastel drawings address issues of social allegory, myth, irony and death. The brief essay draws an analogy between Wedman's investigation of belief structures and the larger search on the part of West coast artists to identify an authentic experience in an isolated environment where historic elements are alien and displaced. Reflecting the exhibition, the catalogue culminates in Wedman's large, 18-panel drawing, "Death Ray" (1987).


AbstractWe have determined to combine the automatic interpretation of horizons in a seismic cube with a space/time framework to construct a chronostratigraphic model that matched seismic events and could be used later, without having to rework it in reservoir modeling and seismic characterization. A large number of single seismic events were automatically extracted from the cube as horizon patches. Each patch was associated to an individual isogeologic time constraint. An optimization process then proposed a geologically coherent model in the volume, filling the gaps in the area where no patch was extracted, and taking into account additional geologic information, such as unconformities, fault displacement, or well information. Furthermore, this process generated a seismic flattened volume used to check the quality of the model and revealed some geologic features such as unpicked faults, channels, lobes, and splays. We evaluated a use case in which this method was successfully tested on a complex faulted ...


The technology that supports Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) tools is inherently intrusive, since it changes the behavior of base application code. Advice weaving performed by AspectJ compilers must introduce crosscutting behavior defined in advice into Java programs without causing great performance overhead. This paper shows the techniques applied by the ajc and abc AspectJ compilers for around advice weaving, and identifies problems in code they produce. The problems analyzed are advice and shadow implementation repetition and context variable repetition .P erfor- mance gain provided by solving these problems is discussed, showing that bytecode size, running time and memory consumption can be reduced by these optimizations. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with AOP and AspectJ constructs.


The solubility of Mn in soil solution depends on soil pH, redox potential (Eh), amount and type of higher valency Mn oxides, and a variety of organic and inorganic soil constituents. Laboratory experiments were conducted to determine the extent of salt-induced Mn release from a variety of California soils. To investigate the effect of salinity and time of incubation on Mn release, Redding (fine, mixed, thermic Abruptic Durixeralf) clay loam and Hanford (coarse-loamy, mixed, nonacid, thermic Typic Xerorthent) sandy loam soils were saturated with 0, 75, and 150 mol m⁻³ NaCl-CaCl₂ solution (prepared on an isoequivalent basis) and incubated in a glasshouse for 0, 2, 4, 7, and 10 d. The Mn concentration in the soil saturation extract increased 2- to 4-fold with time of incubation at all levels of salt solution and 7- to 16-fold with increasing salt concentrations (ionic strength) at a given incubation time. Increases in [Mn] with time and increases in pH in the nonamended soil suggest reduction of Mn oxides while increases in [Mn] with increasing salt levels implicates the release of Mn into soil solution through reduction of Mn oxides, displacement by Na⁺ and Ca²⁺ and/or ligand (Cl⁻) complexation processes. In another experiment, Mn release by NaCl-CaCl₂ salinity was investigated in 20 California soils varying in pH, easily reducible Mn (hydroquinone + NH₄OAc), total Mn (HF-HNO₃-HClO₄), and in total C concentrations. These soils were saturated with 0, 37.5, 75.0, 112.5, and 150.0 mol m⁻³ NaCl-CaCl₂ solution and extracted after 5 d of incubation in a glasshouse. Depending upon soil pH, easily reducible and total soil Mn levels, the [Mn] in soil saturation extracts increased from 10 to 4000 mmol m⁻³ for 150 mol m⁻³ NaCl-CaCl₂ levels over the nonsaline (deionized water) treatments. Although the order of magnitude of salt-induced Mn release was high in soils low in pH and high in easily reducible Mn, a significant salt effect was noted for even high pH (above 7.0) soils. Multiple regression analysis showed that Mn solubility in salt-amended soils was mainly related to soil pH, easily reducible and total Mn (R² = 0.68***, significant at p < 0.001). This indicates that factors related to geochemical environments in which soils exist might explain the variations in Mn solubility in salt-amended soils.


In the last decades the promotion of democracy and governance became a major component of western governments' and multilateral organisations' foreign policies. Gradually external democracy promotion became a vast field of research in political science and transformation studies. While much scientific research focuses on instruments and strategies of multilateral donor institutions, such as the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU), the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) is to date subject to few researches. The thesis offers new empirical insights into actors' implementation and strategies of development and political aid to Morocco, with a strong focus on the actors' orientation, identity and will and contributes to a more systematic research on non-western actors' role in external aid. The focus lies on the different conceptualisation and implementation of EU and AfDB democracy and governance assistance regarding the donors' operational and strategic orientations. Morocco was chosen as an appropriate country cases study, because the country is the largest recipient of EU bilateral aid within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the most important regional client of the AfDB. The thesis demonstrates that donors adopt technocratic approaches and understandings of democracy and governance. Consequently, objectives of democracy and governance promotion are conflicting or competing and political aid, including democracy and governance promotion, becomes more technocratic and depoliticised. Thus, the actors' orientation and modes of interaction limit the implementation of external political aid to a technical-operational level.


The Triassic time scale is poorly constrained due to a paucity of high-precision radiometric ages. We present a 206 Pb/ 238 U age of 230.91 ± 0.33 Ma (error includes all known sources) for zircon from an ash bed in the upper Carnian (Upper Triassic) of southern Italy that requires a major revision of the Triassic time scale. For example, the Norian stage is lengthened to more than 20 m.y. The section containing the ash bed is correlated with other Tethyan sections and, indirectly, with the Newark astronomical polarity time scale (APTS). The dating provides also a minimum age for some important climatic and biotic events that occurred during the Carnian. We note a coincidence between these events and the eruption of the large igneous province of Wrangellia, but the possible link between volcanism and climatic and biotic events requires further scrutiny.


Abstract. A database containing the global and diffuse components of the surface solar hourly irradiation measured from 1 January 2004 to 31 December 2010 at eight stations of the Egyptian Meteorological Authority is presented. For three of these sites (Cairo, Aswan and El-Farafra), the direct component is also available. In addition, a series of meteorological variables including surface pressure, relative humidity, temperature, wind speed and direction is provided at the same hourly resolution at all stations. The details of the experimental sites and instruments used for the acquisition are given. Special attention is paid to the quality of the data and the procedure applied to flag suspicious or erroneous measurements is described in detail. Between 88 and 99  % of the daytime measurements are validated by this quality control. Except at Barrani where the number is lower (13 500), between 20 000 and 29 000 measurements of global and diffuse hourly irradiation are available at all sites for the 7-year period. Similarly, from 9000 to 13 000 measurements of direct hourly irradiation values are provided for the three sites where this component is measured. With its high temporal resolution this consistent irradiation and meteorological database constitutes a reliable source to estimate the potential of solar energy in Egypt. It is also adapted to the study of high-frequency atmospheric processes such as the impact of aerosols on atmospheric radiative transfer. It is planned to update regularly the current 2004–2010 database, which has been placed on the PANGAEA repository (doi: 10.1594/PANGAEA.848804 ) and contains the individual meteorological and irradiation data files of the eight stations.


It is common in the synchronic literature on Modern Spanish to distinguish so-called Hanging Topic Left Dislocations from Clitic Left Dislocations on the basis of syntactic properties such as the category of the left-dislocate, island sensitivity, the distribution of these structures etc. This paper scrutinizes the posited syntactic properties of these Left Dislocations for Old Spanish in comparison to Modern Spanish. It is demonstrated that Left Dislocations in Old Spanish differ considerably from the Modern Spanish ones, for example in their sensitivity to syntactic islands. The distinction between Hanging Topic Left Dislocations and Clitic Left Dislocations becomes thus difficult to uphold for Old Spanish given the current criteria.


Without the need of single-layer graphene, the graphite nano-sheet powder electrochemically exfoliated from graphite foil can also be employed as a stable saturable absorber and mode-locker for fiber lasers. High-quality graphite nano-sheets containing few graphene layers can be obtained by slow electrochemical exfoliation without the need of post annealing procedure. With reducing the electrochemical exfoliation bias of the graphite foil based anode from + 6 and + 3 volts, the electrochemically exfoliated graphite nano-sheets reveals a decreased D-band intensity in Raman scattering spectrum, and the 2D-band intensity is concurrently enlarged by two times to support the improved quality with suppressed oxidation during the exfoliation reaction. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy also confirms the suppression of the C-O bonds in the graphite nano-sheets obtained with decreasing the exfoliation bias. After centrifugation, the average diameter of the exfoliated graphite nano-sheets extracted from the acetone solution is shrunk from 7 μm to 100 nm as the anode bias decreases from 6 to 3 volts. Both the quality and size distribution of the graphite nano-sheets are improved with such slow but refined electrochemical exfoliation. In application, the graphite nano-sheets obtained at different exfoliation bias show relatively stable saturable absorption and passive mode-locking performance in Erbium doped fiber lasers (EDFLs). Benefiting from the advantages of high-gain and strong pulse compression in the EDFL, the graphite nano-sheets with different modulation depths only behave as a mode-locking starter and show trivial influence to the pulse shortening in the mode-locked EDFL, indicating that the strong soliton compression mechanism dominates the generation of 430-450 fs pulsewidth in the EDFL passively mode-locked by graphite nano-sheets.


Efficient rowing requires both physical and technical abilities of the human. Teaching and learning of the technical abilities is thereby mainly restricted to on‐water training. The aim of this project was to develop a rowing simulator. This simulator should serve as a high‐level indoor training tool that can be used by rowing novices and professionals. The users should perceive acoustic, visual, and haptic cues about their current performance and their environment in real time. The newly‐developed rowing simulator consists of a rowing boat hull equipped with multiple position sensors attached to the oar and seat. The boat hull was mounted on a podium placed inside a Cave setup. The Cave comprises projection screens, a loudspeaker system, and actuated winches for visual, acoustic, and haptic feedback, respectively. A mathematical real‐time rowing model was developed, which computes the boat velocity and the oar force as a function of the movement of the oar and the user. All relevant boat, oar, and user parameters can be arbitrarily set, thus allowing the simulation of different boat types. The rowing model was validated by comparing results of the simulation with data from on‐water measurements. Both the boat velocity and the oar force predicted by the model correlated highly with the experimentally‐obtained data. Furthermore, the rowing simulator was successfully tested with professional rowers who rated the level of realism and the applicability of the simulator for indoor training as high. Based on the feedback of the rowers, various hardware and software extensions are planned for the simulator, including an increase of the number of actuated degrees of freedom of the boat and the oar, in order to improve the haptic feedback.


A non-parametric Bayesian model is proposed for processing multiple images. The analysis employs image features and, when present, the words associated with accompanying annotations. The model clusters the images into classes, and each image is segmented into a set of objects, also allowing the opportunity to assign a word to each object (localized labeling). Each object is assumed to be represented as a heterogeneous mix of components, with this realized via mixture models linking image features to object types. The number of image classes, number of object types, and the characteristics of the object-feature mixture models are inferred nonparametrically. To constitute spatially contiguous objects, a new logistic stick-breaking process is developed. Inference is performed efficiently via variational Bayesian analysis, with example results presented on two image databases.


The research was commissioned by Action for Children and carried out by the Centre for Child and Family Research, Loughborough University. The aim of the research was to explore the costs of short break services for disabled children and their families. The study also sought to understand the contracting and commissioning process, including the factors that inform decision making processes and the management of budgets.


The aim of this research is to investigate the application of nonlinear programming
techniques to multipurpose reservoir systems. A multipurpose multiple reservoir
operation problem is a typical nonlinear large scale optimization problem. The
currently applied techniques overcome the nonlinearity and dimensionality problems
through simplification. To model the problem more closely, a successful trial is made in
this study to apply the most efficient and suitable nonlinear programming techniques.
Although research in large scale nonlinear optimization has been in recent'years a
major subject of interest within the mathematical programming community, its
application to reservoir systems is very limited. As a result of these activities software
packages, as Lancelot, have been developed. Lancelot is a general purpose software
package designed for solving large-scale nonlinear optimization problems. It uses
Augmented Lagrangian and Conjugate Gradient methods. This software is used here
successfully to solve an optimization problem formulated for a major river system, the
Blue Nile in Sudan. The system has two in series reservoirs used for hydropower
generation, maintaining minimum downstream flows and irrigation. For optimization,
some features of the system have been modelled. These are sedimentation,
evaporation, demand and flow. To represent the effect of sedimentation a model is
fitted and verified. To include the effect of evaporation a model that estimates the total
evaporation losses is fitted using Penman approach and verified using water balance.
To cope with flow uncertainty the Blue Nile flow has been modelled. ARMA(1,1) has
given the best fitting. Irrigation requirements have been estimated using Penman-
Monteith approach. Efficiency of water use has been investigated and other possible
demand scenarios resulting from efficient water use are obtained. The results of flow
and demand modelling are used as direct input to the optimization model while
sedimentation and evaporation models are incorporated in the model.
The objective of this model is to maximise power benefits on condition that certain
irrigation and downstream requirements be met. To solve this problem a double
precision version of Lancelot was installed in a hp-UNIX system. For the problem a specification and a standard input format, SEF, files were written and put under the
same directory with Lancelot to run the program. The problem was solved successfully
in few minutes. The solution includes values for the objective function, decision
variables (releases and storage volumes), penalty parameter, Lagrange multipliers and
slack variables. The optimization output is affected by reservoir sedimentation.
Therefore the developed optimization and sedimentation models have been linked to investigate sedimentation effect on optimization on output along the course of reservoir operation.
Results have shown that this approach can be used to investigate the effect of
sedimentation on reservoir optimum output.
In, a multipurpose reservoir system, the optimization output for one purpose is
affected by the efficiency of water use for other purposes. Therefore the effect of
efficient water use in irrigation on power benefits is investigated. Results have shown
an increment in benefits due to using irrigation water efficiently. This approach can be
applied to systems where priority is given for one purpose over the others.


Demand for organic foods is partially driven by consumers' perceptions that they are more nutritious. However, scientific opinion is divided on whether there are significant nutritional differences between organic and non-organic foods, and two recent reviews have concluded that there are no differences. In the present study, we carried out meta-analyses based on 343 peer-reviewed publications that indicate statistically significant and meaningful differences in composition between organic and non-organic crops/crop-based foods. Most importantly, the concentrations of a range of antioxidants such as polyphenolics were found to be substantially higher in organic crops/crop-based foods, with those of phenolic acids, flavanones, stilbenes, flavones, flavonols and anthocyanins being an estimated 19 (95 % CI 5, 33) %, 69 (95 % CI 13, 125) %, 28 (95 % CI 12, 44) %, 26 (95 % CI 3, 48) %, 50 (95 % CI 28, 72) % and 51 (95 % CI 17, 86) % higher, respectively. Many of these compounds have previously been linked to a reduced risk of chronic diseases, including CVD and neurodegenerative diseases and certain cancers, in dietary intervention and epidemiological studies. Additionally, the frequency of occurrence of pesticide residues was found to be four times higher in conventional crops, which also contained significantly higher concentrations of the toxic metal Cd. Significant differences were also detected for some other (e.g. minerals and vitamins) compounds. There is evidence that higher antioxidant concentrations and lower Cd concentrations are linked to specific agronomic practices (e.g. non-use of mineral N and P fertilisers, respectively) prescribed in organic farming systems. In conclusion, organic crops, on average, have higher concentrations of antioxidants, lower concentrations of Cd and a lower incidence of pesticide residues than the non-organic comparators across regions and production seasons.


We describe a particle filtering method for vision based tracking of a hand held calibrated camera in real-time. The ability of the particle filter to deal with non-linearities and non-Gaussian statistics suggests the potential to provide improved robustness over existing approaches, such as those based on the Kalman filter. In our approach, the particle filter provides recursive approximations to the posterior density for the 3-D motion parameters. The measurements are inlier/outlier counts of likely correspondence matches for a set of salient points in the scene. The algorithm is simple to implement and we present results illustrating good tracking performance using a 'live' camera. We also demonstrate the potential robustness of the method, including the ability to recover from loss of track and to deal with severe occlusion.


Integration of Sight, Hearing and Touch in Human Cerebral Cortex by Nafi Yaşar While each individual sensory modality provides us with information about a specific aspect about our environment, our senses must be integrated for us to interact with the environment in a meaningful way. My thesis describes studies of the interactions between somatosensation, vision and audition using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) of normal human subjects as the primary method. In order to study somatosensation with fMRI we first built an MRI-compatible tactile-stimulation apparatus. This apparatus was then used for four separate studies. In the first study, we investigated tactile responses in lateral occipital lobe, a brain region traditionally considered "visual" cortex. We found that visual area MST, but not visual area MT, responded to tactile stimulation. In the second study we investigated a possible homologue to a macaque multisensory area that integrates visual, auditory and tactile information, called the Superior Temporal Polysensory area (STP). We found responses to tactile stimuli co-localized with auditory and visual responses in posterior superior temporal sulcus. This is likely to be a human homologue to macaque STP. In the third study, we used Multi Voxel Pattern Analysis (MVPA) to demonstrate that this homologue of macaque STP (along with traditional "somatosensory" areas) can predict the location of tactile stimulation from fMRI data. In the fourth study we used psychophysical techniques to analyze the effects of auditory stimuli on tactile perception. We found that auditory stimuli can influence detection, frequency perception, and the perception of the spatial location of vibrotactile stimuli. Two additional projects are also briefly described. The results of an effort to develop an MRI compatible Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) device are included. Also a project I worked on during my summer internship in which I debugged a system capable of both stimulating and recording from cortical tissue at the same time is also discussed.


This study explored the variation in physiological oxidative status of West African Dwarf (WAD) goats as the rainy season progressed in a humid climate in south-west Nigeria. A total of 24 growing WAD bucks, averaging 10.5 kg + 0.78 liveweight, were reared under intensive and semi-intensive management systems during the rainy season. Twelve (12) bucks were used for each management system. Animals raised intensively were fed Megathyrsus maximus hay ad libitum , while those reared semi-intensively were allowed to graze freely in a fenced paddock. Their diets were supplemented with a maize grain-based concentrate. Blood samples were collected at the onset of the experiment and fortnightly throughout the 16-week experimental period. Oxidative stress biomarkers in blood were measured and analysed separately for each rearing system using repeated measures analysis. Means of oxidative stress biomarkers measured at the beginning and end of the rainy season were compared using a T-test. Results showed that intensively managed goats had significantly higher levels of bilirubin and uric acid in the early season than in the late rainy season. In semi-intensively managed goats, bilirubin, uric acid, and glutathione (GSH) levels were significantly higher at the start compared with the end of the rainy season. It could be concluded that the antioxidant capacity of WAD goats was greater early in the rainy season compared with the late rainy season under both management systems. Thus, during the early raining season WAD goats tend to have higher antioxidant capacity and, consequently, better immune responses, while the opposite is true during the late rainy season. Keywords: bucks, immune response, season


Health system reform is a national priority in the U.S., but it is increasingly being pursued through a mosaic of local initiatives. More and more concerned leaders in cities, towns, and regions across the country are working within their local health systems to achieve better health, better care, lower cost, and greater equity. Such ambitious and widely dispersed ventures, however, are hard to plan, unwieldy to manage, and slow to spread. Further progress could occur if diverse stakeholders were better able to play out intervention scenarios, weigh trade-offs, set aside schemes that are unlikely to succeed, and enact strategies that promise the most robust results. Through the Rippel Foundation's ReThink Health initiative, veteran leaders and creative methodologists are learning what it takes to spark and sustain system-wide improvements in different settings. Interactive simulation modeling and game-based learning support innovators by bringing greater structure, evidence, and creativity to the action planning process. In this paper we provide an overview of the ReThink Health Dynamics simulation model by providing a summary of its structure, intervention options, data sources, user interface, experiences in pilot sites, initial insights, evaluation plan, and possibilities for further development and diffusion.


Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a life-threatening genetic disorder that affects mostly the lungs but also the pancreas, liver and intestine. CF is characterised by chronic pulmonary inflammation resulting in a gradual, progressive decline in pulmonary function. The vast majority of CF patients also have an exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, resulting in inadequate digestion and leading to fat malabsorption and malnutrition. Lung disease and nutritional status are tightly intertwined in which malnutrition, as a result of energy losses due to malabsorption, inadequate caloric intake and increased energy metabolism, is associated with poor clinical outcomes. Therefore, regular evaluation of nutritional status is an integral part of CF care. CF-specific guidelines give recommendations for the monitoring of nutritional intake and growth, strategies to prevent malnutrition and interventions in patients with nutritional failure, as well as for the control of intestinal fat malabsorption.

The aim of this thesis was to increase the knowledge on the effectiveness of nutritional interventions; the daily practice of caloric, fat, vitamin A and vitamin E intake; and pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy, along with their relationship to either growth or pulmonary function in paediatric patients with CF. It also provides insight into caloric, fat, vitamin A and vitamin E intake, and pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy, compared to CF-specific recommendations. Moreover, the use of weight and height measurements, corrected for genetic potential and the bone maturation of children and adolescents with CF, was evaluated.

As the outlook for patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) has dramatically improved over the past several years, CF-care guidelines should evolve accordingly. Children and adolescents with CF had a caloric intake below recommended although significantly higher than healthy controls.In this respect, it now seems to be more prudent to advise a caloric intake slightly above the age-specific intake, with individual adjustments for patients with deviant weight- and height-growth. Moreover, a reduction in saturated fat intake seems appropriate to avoid an increased risk for cardiovascular disease later in life. The pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy has to be determined individually, as there is an enormous variability in the response to the therapy among patients, with no clear correlation between coefficient of fat absorption and pancreatic enzyme dosages. In order to prevent under- or overestimation of the nutritional status, a nutritional status assessment, including weight and height measurements, should be complemented with routine evaluation of height measurements adjusted for genetic components and in those with a delayed height-growth, evaluation of the bone age is advised. Lastly, vitamin A and E supplementation at half the CF-specific recommended dosages resulted in appropriate serum levels; therefore, dosages of 50% of the recommendations could be used, at least initially.


ABSTRACT An isolate of L. monocytogenes Scott A that is tolerant to high hydrostatic pressure (HHP), named AK01, was isolated upon a single pressurization treatment of 400 MPa for 20 min and was further characterized. The survival of exponential- and stationary-phase cells of AK01 in ACES [N-(2-acetamido)-2-aminoethanesulfonic acid] buffer was at least 2 log units higher than that of the wild type over a broad range of pressures (150 to 500 MPa), while both strains showed higher HHP tolerance (piezotolerance) in the stationary than in the exponential phase of growth. In semiskim milk, exponential-phase cells of both strains showed lower reductions upon pressurization than in buffer, but again, AK01 was more piezotolerant than the wild type. The piezotolerance of AK01 was retained for at least 40 generations in rich medium, suggesting a stable phenotype. Interestingly, cells of AK01 lacked flagella, were elongated, and showed slightly lower maximum specific growth rates than the wild type at 8, 22, and 30°C. Moreover, the piezotolerant strain AK01 showed increased resistance to heat, acid, and H2O2 compared with the wild type. The difference in HHP tolerance between the piezotolerant strain and the wild-type strain could not be attributed to differences in membrane fluidity, since strain AK01 and the wild type had identical in situ lipid melting curves as determined by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The demonstrated occurrence of a piezotolerant isolate of L. monocytogenes underscores the need to further investigate the mechanisms underlying HHP resistance of food-borne microorganisms, which in turn will contribute to the appropriate design of safe, accurate, and feasible HHP treatments.


The papers in Volume 29 of Tax Policy and the Economy illustrate the depth and breadth of the taxation-related research by NBER research associates, both in terms of methodological approach and in terms of topics. In the first paper, former NBER President Martin Feldstein estimates how much revenue the federal government could raise by limiting tax expenditures in various ways, such as capping deductions and exclusions. The second paper, by George Bulman and Caroline Hoxby, makes use of a substantial expansion in the availability of education tax credits in 2009 to study whether tax credits have a significant causal effect on college attendance and related outcomes. In the third paper, Casey Mulligan discusses how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) introduces or expands taxes on income and on full-time employment. In the fourth paper, Bradley Heim, Ithai Lurie, and Kosali Simon focus on the "young adult" provision of the ACA that allows young adults to be covered by their parents' insurance policies. They find no meaningful effects of this provision on labor market outcomes. The fifth paper, by Louis Kaplow, identifies some of the key conceptual challenges to analyzing social insurance policies, such as Social Security, in a context where shortsighted individuals fail to save adequately for their retirement.


Purpose: The implications of parenting a child with cerebral palsy (CP) are multifaceted, as parents have to cope with their child's functional limitations and specific needs, and prepare for the possibility of long-term dependence. There has been significant research on the consequences of managing these parenting tasks. This article reviews the literature on the effects of parenting children with CP, and summarises the related factors. Methods: A systematic search of online databases was conducted and, based on the reference lists of selected articles, further studies were identified. Thirty-six articles that met the inclusion criteria were analysed. Conclusion & Implication: Parents of children with CP were found to have lower quality of life, associated with high levels of stress and depression, due to factors such as child behaviour and cognitive problems, low caregiver self-efficacy and low social support. The implications of these findings in relation to the planning and development of interventions addressing the family as a whole are discussed. The aim is to enhance parents' competence and resources so that they are better able to cope with the demands of parenting their children.


As the latest iteration of leveraging private resources to protect and sustain our natural resources, the environmental impact bond (EIB) reflects the growing trend in sustainable development that makes financing available to projects based on the verifiable results of an intervention. These new instruments in global environmental governance are not actually bonds but pay-for-success contracts, in which the risk of success is shouldered by the investor, and financial savings, pegged to the intervention outcome, are prioritized. This examination of EIBs through the lens of accountability aims to elicit debate on some areas of concern and consideration for the design and implementation of outcome-based financing for global environmental governance, including the prioritizing of private over public accountabilities and potential perverse incentives these instruments create. As both public and private accountability goals are evident in EIB, this governance tool runs the risk of exacerbating the paradox of increased accountability but decreased environmental gains.


Citrus is grown in semi-arid regions or subtropical regions in large parts of the world, where rainfall is seasonal and irrigation a necessity. Water is a vitally important element in all ecosystems and as agriculture is the largest user of fresh water resources, it needs to be efficient in the use of water. This is particularly true for the citrus industry, as it has a significant irrigation requirement. Good irrigation scheduling practices rely on accurate estimates of plant water-use (transpiration) for different climatic regions, citrus varieties, tree and canopy size, and choice of rootstock. This usually requires the use of a model, where a thorough understanding of the regulation of transpiration will improve the estimation capabilities of such a model. Results from our study (Quantifying citrus water use and water stress at tree and orchard scale, Water Research Commission Project K5/2275//4) showed that transpiration (T) follows diurnal and seasonal trends and is influenced by sto - matal conductance (g s ) and leaf water potentials ( Ѱ l). Good correlations between T and tem - perature, vapour pressure deficit (VPD) and solar radiation (SR) were found, indicating the importance of the environment in supplying the energy to drive transpiration. There was also a good relationship between canopy size and T, with larger canopies having higher T.


The way of 'crucifixion', the way of people of goodwill mimetically denying their own part, by acts of omission and commission, in the violence of a violent culture, henceforth discomforts us. The latent but life-bearing myth of the victims is henceforth that they deeply belong both to the perpetrator and to those --all those --who survived unscathed. And if we are to find ways to acknowledge this reality together, our divided community needs spaces and relationships where people can acknowledge the victims and perpetrators, all together exploring and consolidating new ways beyond fear and conflict.To meet together, learn and build a new, shared, culture within existing and new public and civic institutions between people from different sides of the fear line is a still fragile and delicate enterprise. For the immediate future, it will still be easier for people to be mimetic in respect of the old cultural wisdom, that 'the Other is not to be trusted', the 'Other is your enemy'. Drawing on documented experiences over three hundred meetings, over a hundred extended courses and many other encounters, this text contends that there is already at work, in respect of past and future time, and in all places of our divided community, a strand of practice that builds experiences together, contrasting with the old cultural ways, and where the other is understood 'to be a gift'. This is what we call 'experiencing the Contrast'.Finding a basis in mimetic theory, the work was influenced by the work of the Dutch Northern Ireland Committee who brought diverse gifts in theology, literature, politics, philosophy and psychotherapy and a style of group work was developed that enabled people from very diverse and conflicting backgrounds to meet together and reflect on their questions and difficulties around living peacefully in the one conflicted place. Some practical working hypotheses on which that work have been based evolved out of our experiences with groups and have informed that practice now for more than 30 years. These inspirations were codified into a series of general principles or working presuppositions guiding our common encountersTo work with groups in a society where many people have traditionally remained apart, is also to risk encountering feelings of isolation and loneliness oneself. The facilitators have experienced times, and places, where bringing people together across lines of enmity has not been welcome. Living, as group members and facilitators did, in the midst of these fears, the facilitator was not immune. The sustaining purpose remains always to give people the possibility of finding their own questions, moving them away from relationships of rivalry and struggle, to share and exchange those experiences that are important for them. In contested societies, people often seek security in the midst of fear and yet the opposite of fear is not security, but trust. The task of peace-making for educationalists within in a contested society is the re-establishment of experiences of trust through the use of models of education whose main contribution to societal change or transforming experiences is to give people the opportunity of being with 'the Other' in an inclusive, freeing way. The 'meeting together' models developed out of the practice of the Corrymeela Community in Northern Ireland since 1965, and the particular forms of practice and understanding derived from the work of Girardian scholars since 1979, have underpinned the reconciliation practice of that ecumenical community and its residential learning programmes, as well as the wider community and institutional practice in localities in Northern Ireland, and beyond. For as long as personal and group relationships are founded on fear and violence, trust in any sort of politics is very difficult. Inversely, when people meet together across traditional barriers and experience trust in which they can be secure and grow, then these experiences, at a pre-political level, model a reality in which new, hopefully inclusive, political structures could, should – and perhaps will – come to embody.


It is a notorious fact that the Master of the High Court often, if not usually, delays in appointing provisional liquidators of companies for a number of weeks or even months. This can leave the company rudderless and at the mercy of individuals in possession of its assets, to the prejudice of creditors. On the other hand, such delays may create an opportunity for creditors who have the fortitude to grasp it, as will be discussed in this article.


The yawn of the black ape appears to be structurally homologous to the behavior pattern widely described for other vertebrates, even in its finer details. The pattern is highly stereotypic, showing only minor structural variants and not exhibiting any tendency to grade continuously into other expressive or communicative behavior patterns. The yawn occurs in many different contexts, in association with a variety of social and nonsocial situations. Yawns tend to be occur in contexts which elicit some level of stress in the performer. Yawns commonly follw "demonstrations" in which a performer vigorously manipulates an environmental object, with the result of producing a loud noise which draws the attention of others. Adult males yawn significantly more frequently than any other age-sex class. The highest ranking or alpha male tends to yawn at a higher rate than other group members, and in at least one case this was found to be true even following a dominance reversal involving alphas. An ontogenetic trend appears in males: yawning rates increase with age. The most dramatic change occurs during adolescence preceding the eruption of permanent canine dentition. Typical adult male rates are probably reached prior to the completed eruption of the canine teeth.


This paper examines the status and role of women in Nigerian Islam, with the case study of Alhaja Sheidat Mujidat Adeoye, the founder and leader of the Fadillullah Muslim Mission, Osogbo, Nigeria. It discusses religious experience of Sheidat Mujidat Adeoye which gave an impetus to the founding of her movement as this has not only changed the nature and form of Nigerian Islam, but it has also introduced a new expression into the tradition, thus causing an alteration in religious stereotypes within a religiously pluralistic community.
The study adopts a multi-disciplinary approach of anthropology, phenomenology and hermeneutics. The significance of this study lies in the tremendous and imposing prominence and huge patronage of Sheidat Adeoye, both by the people of Osogbo and the numerous visitors from several parts of Nigeria. This paper examines the uniqueness of the practices of Adeoye vis-a-vis the religious experience that gave birth to her movement. It investigates her activities and practices, her acceptance within the Muslim religious and Yoruba cultural patriarchal community, and public responses to her movement. The paper assesses the relevance of the movement as an Islamic group in religio-cultural and inter-religious contexts. Gender and Behaviour Vol. 2 2004:117-140


This research aimed at the knowledge of reading and writing practices present in the educational context from 30 students attending the 3rd Grade of a Middle Public School in Campinas, SP. The data were collected through an individual interview. Each interview was recorded and transcribed to data analysis. The answers were classified according to the context nearness. The results showed that reading practices such as remarks from notebooks (22,8%; F=26) and writing practices such as copies from blackboard (33,3%; F=22) are related to academic activities requested in the classroom, although placards reading (13,7%; F=27) and paintings with pitch on the school walls ("pichacoes") (5,7%; F=11) also showed practices present in their daily life. We could conclude that educational literacy is linked to academic practices, it means, to traditional school activities which still prevail in the Middle School related to literacy social practices.


Abstract Risk analysis continues to emphasize price and yield variability as the principal components of the decisionmaker's risk environment. This research demonstrates the relative importance of financial risk for a representative cotton farm in Arizona. For highly leveraged operations, financial risk may account for 70 percent of the total risk faced by the producer. Implications for future risk analysis are discussed in light of these findings.


Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) acutely recruits muscle microvasculature, increases muscle delivery of insulin, and enhances muscle use of glucose, independent of its effect on insulin secretion. To examine whether GLP-1 modulates muscle microvascular and metabolic insulin responses in the setting of insulin resistance, we assessed muscle microvascular blood volume (MBV), flow velocity, and blood flow in control insulin-sensitive rats and rats made insulin-resistant acutely (systemic lipid infusion) or chronically (high-fat diet [HFD]) before and after a euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp (3 mU/kg/min) with or without superimposed systemic GLP-1 infusion. Insulin significantly recruited muscle microvasculature and addition of GLP-1 further expanded muscle MBV and increased insulin-mediated glucose disposal. GLP-1 infusion potently recruited muscle microvasculature in the presence of either acute or chronic insulin resistance by increasing muscle MBV. This was associated with an increased muscle delivery of insulin and muscle interstitial oxygen saturation. Muscle insulin sensitivity was completely restored in the presence of systemic lipid infusion and significantly improved in rats fed an HFD. We conclude that GLP-1 infusion potently expands muscle microvascular surface area and improves insulin's metabolic action in the insulin-resistant states. This may contribute to improved glycemic control seen in diabetic patients receiving incretin-based therapy.


The capacity of humankind to mimic fish-like locomotion for engineering applications depends mainly on the availability of suitable actuators. Researchers have recently focused on developing robotic fish using smart materials, particularly Ionic Polymer-Metal Composites (IPMCs), as a compliant, noise-free, and scalable alternative to conventional motor-based propulsion systems. In this paper, we investigate fish-like self propulsion using flexible bimorphs made of Macro-Fiber Composite (MFC) piezoelectric laminates. Similar to IPMCs, MFCs also exhibit high efficiency in size, energy consumption, and noise reduction. In addition, MFCs offer large dynamic forces in bending actuation, strong electromechanical coupling as well as both low-frequency and high-frequency performance capabilities. The experimental component of the presented work focuses on the characterization of an MFC bimorph propulsor for thrust generation in a quiescent fluid as well as the development of a preliminary robotic fish prototype incorporating a microcontroller and a printed-circuit-board (PCB) amplifier to generate high actuation voltage for battery-powered free locomotion. From the theoretical standpoint, a reliable modeling framework that couples the actuator dynamics, hydroelasticity, and fish locomotion theory is essential to both design and control of robotic fish. Therefore, a distributed-parameter electroelastic model with fluid effects and actuator dynamics is coupled with the elongated body theory. Both in-air and underwater experiments are performed to verify the incorporation of hydrodynamic effects in the linear actuation regime. For electroelastically nonlinear actuation levels, experimentally obtained underwater vibration response is coupled with the elongated body theory to predict the thrust output. Experiments are conducted to validate the electrohydroelastic modeling approach employed in this work and to characterize the performance of an MFC bimorph propulsor. Finally, a battery-powered preliminary robotic fish prototype is developed and tested in free locomotion.© 2012 ASME


We provide a rather general asymptotic scheme for combinatorial parameters that asymptotically follow a discrete double-exponential distribution. It is based on analysing generating functions Gh(z) whose dominant singularities converge to a certain value at an exponential rate. This behaviour is typically found by means of a bootstrapping approach. Our scheme is illustrated by a number of classical and new examples, such as the longest run in words or compositions, patterns in Dyck and Motzkin paths, or the maximum degree in planted plane trees.


A graded river conveys its sediment load without net deposition or erosion. The graded state is thought to represent the long-term response of alluvial rivers to steady external forcing. We show here that alluvial rivers building deltas can be in grade as an autogenic response to steady sea-level fall. Consider an antecedent graded river profile, the upstream end of which consists of an alluvial-bedrock transition, and the downstream end of which is a fixed overfall where constant sea level is maintained. The antecedent graded profile is then drowned by a jump in sea level, after which sea level drops. The result is a new river profile ending in a prograding delta that deposits on top of the antecedent profile. If the rate of sea-level fall is constant and the length of the antecedent reach is sufficient, the new profile eventually becomes parallel or quasi-parallel to the antecedent profile, maintaining grade as it progrades. In the experiments reported here, series of graded river profiles with prograding deltas are created by stacking fluviodeltaic systems; each graded profile and its associated delta is stacked on its immediate predecessor. For each fluviodeltaic system, a graded alluvial profile is attained with any constant rate of sea-level fall, provided that the antecedent profile is of sufficient length. Experiments suggest that this autogenic approach to grade is more rapid for higher rates of sea-level fall, lower rates of sediment supply, and higher water discharges.


"This paper investigates information overload of construction project managers. The aim is to identify its occurrence pattern and predict the occurrence probabilities in a given circumstance, as a project manager's information load is inconstant in nature, fluctuating over time, changing character and source. First, a conceptual definition of information overload is developed, using time as the criterion to describe information load. Information overload for a project manager is taken as occurring when the demands on information processing time exceed the supply of time. Second, the variation of information load throughout the project is structured using the interaction of a project manager with project members through the stages of a project. These two elements are combined in a matrix format where values for information overload are ascribed to cells representing the interaction with each member during each stage of the project. Six key project members, and four project stages are defined. To allow the subjective quantification of information overload, five practical situations of real life information overload are described, of which one must be chosen for each of the twenty four stage-member cells.

 To test the model and calculate the probabilities of information overload, data were collected using a questionnaire survey of 140 project managers in the UK. Respondents were asked to select the relevant situation for each cell in the matrix. The resulting matrices had a weighting system applied and a mean calculated for each circumstance to create an Information Load Point (ILP), presented in an Information Load Matrix (ILM). The application of 'Ordinal Logistic Regression' into the ILP scores provides a predictive outcome, which gives the probabilities of a project manager being in any of the predetermined five information overload situations at any stage with any member. The detailed account of the calculations and the outcome of the analysis are presented.

 The results revealed that the extent and sources of information overload of construction project managers vary throughout the stages of a project. The construction stage has the highest probability of information overload, followed by the design stage. The main sources of information overload are the project participants contributing the key expertise in each stage. In the design stage, the key contributors are architects and consultants, and in the construction stage, contractors and sub-contractors. Architects' and consultants' contributions to information overload show a similar pattern through the project duration, as do those of contractors and sub-contractors.

 This is the first of its kind in construction project management and provides an invaluable source of reference and guidance on the probabilities of the occurrence of information overload in a construction project. The model predicts the situations where information overload is high, moderate, low or non-existent. It is then possible to concentrate on those overloaded areas by using the appropriate means or strategies."


The Hosanna-Tabor case concerns the separation of church and state, an arrangement that is often misunderstood but is nevertheless a critical dimension of the freedom of religion protected by the First Amendment to our Constitution. For nearly a thousand years, the tradition of Western constitutionalism - the project of protecting political freedom by marking boundaries to the power of government - has been assisted by the principled commitment to religious liberty and to church-state separation, correctly understood. A community that respects - as ours does - both the importance of, and the distinction between, the spheres of political and religious authority is one in which the fundamental rights of all are more secure. A government that acknowledges this distinction, and the limits to its own reach, is one that will more consistently protect and vindicate the liberties of both individuals and institutions.The "ministerial exception," at issue in Hosanna-Tabor, is a clear and crucial implication of religious liberty, church autonomy, and the separation of church and state. Because any worthwhile account of religious freedom would respect the authority of religious communities to select freely their own clergy, ministers, teachers, and doctrines, any such account must include something like the ministerial-exception rule. Reasonably constructed and applied, this rule helps civil decision-makers to avoid deciding essentially religious questions. In addition, and more importantly, it protects the fundamental freedom of religious communities to educate and form their members. Although the exception may, in some cases, block lawsuits against religious institutions and communities for discrimination, it rests on the overriding and foundational premise that there are some questions the civil courts do not have the power to answer, some wrongs that a constitutional commitment to church-state separation puts beyond the law's corrective reach. The civil authority - that is, the authority of a constitutional government - lacks "competence" to intervene in such questions, not so much because they lie beyond its technical or intellectual capacity, but because they lie beyond its jurisdiction.


ABSTRACT This article presents the results from a survey on the impact of COVID-19 on domestic workers in 14 Latin American countries. The data reveal a massive employment and social crisis, with about half of respondents having been dismissed or suspended while they had no access to social protection. We further demonstrate the harms on the health and safety of domestic workers, with evidence of pre-existing health conditions making them more vulnerable, lack of adequate protection at the workplace, and an increase in violations of rights. We argue that this situation of extreme vulnerability creates a crisis of social reproduction, making more acute the underlying contradiction between the necessity for domestic workers' labour to sustain the economy and their precarious working and living conditions. This situation has been worsened by COVID-19 to the point that not only jobs, but also lives are being threatened, and with it, the provision of reproductive labour across Latin America.


Context: Traumatic brain injuries present a grave public health problem in developing countries. Guidelines suggest that neuromuscular blockade (NMB) should be avoided in severe head injury. Midazolam is an affordable option for sedation when resources are limited. Aims: We proposed to study whether midazolam as a sedative agent in severe head injury achieved adequate control of intracranial pressure (ICP) and reduced the need for NMB. Settings and Design: A prospective observational study was conducted in 96 consecutive patients with severe head injury needing ventilation in the neurosurgical intensive care unit (ICU) of our hospital. Subjects and Methods: A modification of "Guidelines for the management of severe head injury, Brain Trauma Foundation" was used to control ICP in these patients. A ventricular catheter was inserted for ICP monitoring and an ICP <20 mm Hg was targeted by cerebrospinal fluid venting, mannitol and increasing the level of sedation with midazolam up to 0.15 mg/kg/h. It was planned to monitor the ICP for a minimum of 48 hours. Results: Mean duration of ICP monitoring was 35.80 ± 23.08 hours. In 63 of the 96 patients, the ICP remained ≤20 mmHG in patients on Midazolam infusion without NMB (65.6%). Conclusions: Sedation with midazolam can be used in a severe head injury to control ICP and to reduce the need for NMB, particularly in resource-poor settings.


This title cuts through the hype of the internet revolution without denouncing its significance, it assesses the true nature of the intangible economy and shows that the changes in the world go right to the heart of economics - since what is changing is the very source of value and how it changes over time. The world is on the brink of another leap forward in productive capacity and wealth which is the equivalent of the transformation which took place in our lives with the industrial revolution and the discovery of North America rolled into one - and collapsed into a couple of decades. The results may be a change in our circumstances which will make our lives today every bit as incongruous to the next generation as those of two hundred years ago are to us.


Eight species of alpheid shrimps are reported for the first time from the coral reef systems off Mexico's northern Yucatan Peninsula (Alacranes, Madagascar and Serpiente Reefs). These species are: Alpheus immaculatus ; Alpheus paraformosus ; Alpheus punctatus ; Parabetaeus hummelincki ; Salmoneus depressus ; Synalpheus chacei ; Synalpheus dominicensis ; and Synalpheus elizabethae . The geographical ranges of these species are extended into the southern Gulf of Mexico; most of them are recorded from Mexican territorial waters for the first time. Brief notes on their ecology and taxonomy are provided. Six species are illustrated by colour photographs.


An edge-coloring of a graph G = (V,E) is a function c that assigns an integer c(e) (called color) in {0, 1, 2, . . . } to every edge e ∈ E so that adjacent edges receive different colors. An edge-coloring is compact if the colors of the edges incident to every vertex form a set of consecutive integers. The minimum deficiency problem is to determine the minimum number of pendant edges that must be added to a graph such that the resulting graph admits a compact edge-coloring. Because of symmetries, an instance of the minimum deficiency problem can have many equivalent optimal solutions. We present a way to generate a set of symmetry breaking constraints, called gamblle constraints, that can be added to a constraint programming model. The gamblle constraints are inspired by the Lex-Leader ones, based on automorphisms of graphs, and act on families of permutable variables. We analyze their impact on the reduction of the number of optimal solutions as well as on the speed-up of the constraint programming model.


Australia's first public screening of 'moving pictures' was the story of Christ. Soldiers of the Cross is considered Australia's first feature-length movie, premiering at the Melbourne Town Hall on 13 September 1900 to a crowd of approximately 2,000 people. It was actually an illustrated lecture, combining photographic glass slides with short, dramatised film segments and orchestral or choir music, to relate the episodes of Christ's life. If an illustrated lecture in a church setting sounds eerily familiar then it is another reminder that the more the world changes, the more it stays the same. In the words of ancient proverbial wisdom, 'there is nothing new under the sun'. Or is there? When Commandant Herbert Henry Booth, son of Salvation Army founder William Booth, conceived the film in 1899, he could not have imagined the impact his venture would have on either popular storytelling through moving pictures or on the adaptations film would inspire in portrayals of Christ over the next century.


The physical education teacher education community in Ireland has developed Beginning Teacher Standards for Physical Education (BTSfPE) at the post-primary (secondary) level. This study explored teacher educators' perspectives on how the BTSfPE could be implemented and considered the possible impact on the profession within the discourses of power. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews with teacher educators in physical education (n = 13). Data were analysed inductively and trustworthiness issues were considered. Participants suggested that the teaching standards could serve as a developmental tool to guide individual teacher education programmes and beginning teachers as well as an assessment function to support quality assurance and to hold programmes accountable. The teacher educators were committed to addressing issues of quality and status in physical education in Ireland. However, an agreed vision of how the teaching standards would be used to develop and regulate the profession is necessary to ensure that the intended benefits emerge.


Present-day High Cascades arc magmatism was preceded by ∼40 m.y. of nearly cospatial magmatism represented by the ancestral Cascades arc in Washington, Oregon, and northernmost California (United States). Time-space-composition relations for the ancestral Cascades arc have been synthesized from a recent compilation of more than 4000 geochemical analyses and associated age data. Neither the composition nor distribution of ancestral Cascades magmatism was uniform along the length of the ancestral arc through time. Initial (>40 to 36 Ma) ancestral Cascades magmatism (mostly basalt and basaltic andesite) was focused at the north end of the arc between the present-day locations of Mount Rainier and the Columbia River. From 35 to 18 Ma, initial basaltic andesite and andesite magmatism evolved to include dacite and rhyolite; magmatic activity became more voluminous and extended along most of the arc. Between 17 and 8 Ma, magmatism was focused along the part of the arc coincident with the northern two-thirds of Oregon and returned to more mafic compositions. Subsequent ancestral Cascades magmatism was dominated by basaltic andesite to basalt prior to the post–4 Ma onset of High Cascades magmatism. Transitional tholeiitic to calc-alkaline compositions dominated early (before 40 to ca. 25 Ma) ancestral Cascades eruptive products, whereas the majority of the younger arc rocks have a calc-alkaline affinity. Tholeiitic compositions characteristic of the oldest ancestral arc magmas suggest development associated with thin, immature crust and slab window processes, whereas the younger, calc-alkaline magmas suggest interaction with thicker, more evolved crust and more conventional subduction-related magmatic processes. Presumed changes in subducted slab dip through time also correlate with fundamental magma composition variation. The predominance of mafic compositions during latest ancestral arc magmatism and throughout the history of modern High Cascades magmatism probably reflects extensional tectonics that dominated during these periods of arc magmatism. Mineral deposits associated with ancestral Cascades arc rocks are uncommon; most are small and low grade relative to those found in other continental magmatic arcs. The small size, low grade, and dearth of deposits, especially in the southern two-thirds of the ancestral arc, probably reflect many factors, the most important of which may be the prevalence of extensional tectonics within this arc domain during this magmatic episode. Progressive clockwise rotation of the forearc block west of the evolving Oregon part of the ancestral Cascades magmatism produced an extensional regime that did not foster signifi cant mineral deposit formation. In contrast, the Washington arc domain developed in a transpressional to mildly compressive regime that was more conducive to magmatic processes and hydrothermal fluid channeling critical to deposit formation. Small, low-grade porphyry copper deposits in the northern third of the ancestral Cascades arc segment also may be a consequence of more mature continental crust, including a Mesozoic component, beneath Washington north of Mount St. Helens.


Education 4.0 is a new educational paradigm that intends to address the needs and potentialities of the fourth industrial revolution. Education 4.0 builds on the concept of learning by doing, in which students are encouraged to learn and discover different things in singular ways based on experimentation. This study intends to analyze the role of emerging technologies like serious games and industry 4.0 in the transformation of education 4.0 in higher education. A qualitative methodology was employed based on 25 case studies of innovative projects in Portuguese higher education institutions. The results indicate a residual adoption of serious games and gamification approaches only appear in less than 20% of the projects. It was also possible to identify that most projects involve several stakeholders such as teachers, students and university managers, and typically involve multidisciplinary competencies fields. The main benefits brought to the education context include greater involvement of students in projects, development of their skills and its application in a real context. On the other hand, the main challenges are the simplification of the real world made by these applications, the difficulties inherent to their inclusion in the didactical system and the limited capacities to offer greater interactivity without predefined external stimuli.


Churchill: A Biography. By Roy Jenkins. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001. 1,002 pages. $40.00. Reviewed by Dr. David Jablonsky (Colonel, USA Ret.) Professor of National Security Affairs, US Army War College. Winston Churchill's life spanned a period from the reign of Queen Victoria to that of Elizabeth II--a time of immense change that began with small wars on the periphery of the British Empire and ended with the advent of the hydrogen bomb. Over the years, numerous biographies and memoirs by contemporaries have chronicled his life. Added to this are Churchill's own writings, including his mid-life autobiography, still fascinating and exciting reading after 70 years. Finally, there is Martin Gilbert's comprehensive and definitive multi-volume biography of the British statesman, replete with companion volumes of documents. What, then, can Roy Jenkins bring to a new biography of Churchill, particularly since he acknowledges that he has not unearthed many new facts about the British statesman? The answer is an experienced eye as a politician, historian, and biographer. Jenkins was a leading figure in the Labour Party for several decades and, like Churchill, served as Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. In addition, he is a member of the House of Lords and Chancellor of Oxford University. He is the author of 18 books, including well-received biographies of William Gladstone and Herbert Asquith. The resuit is an unawed, sometimes wry and witty, always elegantly written study that provides new insights on Churchill. The biography is marked throughout by masterful examinations of British governmental culture in Parliament and in the Cabinet. Jenkins is particularly insightful in terms of the House of Commons, capturing the richness of its political traditions and of Churchill's growing and ultimately unswerving devotion to that institution. To this he adds perceptive analyses of the impact of Churchill's speeches, particularly in wartime, while demonstrating how hard that Member of Parliament worked on all his speeches, committing them to memory, but always, after an early disastrous bout of forgetfulness, backed up by notes. At the same time, Jenkins guides the reader expertly through the intricate workings and connections of the British aristocracy which formed an important background to Churchill's life. But as Jenkins also points out, Churchill's ambition and sense of destiny ("We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow worm.") meant that the British statesman never allowed himself "to be imprisoned by the ci rcumstances of his birth." As a historian, Jenkins captures the larger context of the events in Churchill's life, whether it is the origin of Britain's growing involvement in Egypt, which reaches its denouement on the killing fields at Omdurman, or the linkage of Churchill's Mediterranean strategy in World War II to the British way of war. As a writer, he conveys a perceptive appreciation of Churchill's literary style and debt to Macaulay and Gibbon and chronicles the astonishing productivity of a man who primarily dictated his books and articles-a case, as Churchill summed it up, of living "from mouth to hand." Although Churchill was disappointed at not winning the peace award, Jenkins makes abundantly clear why the British statesman was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. At the same time, Jenkins has a writer's ear for contemporary assessments like that of Pamela Plowden, Churchill's first love: "The first time you meet Winston you see all his faults, and the rest of your life you spend in discovering his virtues. …


This study examined the effects of surround luminance on the shape of the spatial luminance contrast sensitivity function (CSF). The reduction in brightness of uniform neutral patches shown on a computer controlled display screen is also assessed to explain the change of CSF shape. Consequently, a large amount of reduction in contrast sensitivity at middle spatial frequencies can be observed; however, the reduction is relatively small for low spatial frequencies. In general, the effect of surround luminance on the CSF appears similar to that of mean luminance. Reduced CSF responses result in less power of the filtered image; therefore, the stimulus should appear dimmer with a higher surround luminance.


An auroral-airglow photometer is described which automatically samples the night sky continuum at a wavelength adjacent to the emission line and subtracts the contribution of the continuum to the total observed signal. The sampling rate of 150 cps permits the subtraction of fluctuations in the continuum. Emission intensities over seven orders of magnitude may be monitored in unattended operation with an over-all response time of 1 sec/decade. Three emission wavelengths are monitored sequentially. The logarithm of the intensity is automatically recorded on a strip chart recorder. Full-scale deflection of the recorder pen corresponds to one decade of light intensity.


When H. L. Mencken talked, everyone listened -- like it or not. In the Roaring Twenties, he was the one critic who mattered, the champion of a generation of plain-speaking writers who redefined the American novel, and the ax-swinging scourge of the know-nothing, go-getting middle-class philistines whom he dubbed the "booboisie." Some loved him, others loathed him, but everybody read him. Now Terry Teachout takes on the man Edmund Wilson called "our greatest practicing literary journalist," brilliantly capturing all of Mencken's energy and erudition, passion and paradoxes, in a masterful biography of this iconoclastic figure and the world he shaped.


Examining interactions between Native Americans and whites in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania, Jane Merritt traces the emergence of race as the defining difference between these neighbors on the frontier. Before 1755, Indian and white communities in Pennsylvania shared a certain amount of interdependence. They traded skills and resources and found a common enemy in the colonial authorities, including the powerful Six Nations, who attempted to control them and the land they inhabited. Using innovative research in German Moravian records, among other sources, Merritt explores the cultural practices, social needs, gender dynamics, economic exigencies, and political forces that brought Native Americans and Euramericans together in the first half of the eighteenth century. But as Merritt demonstrates, the tolerance and even cooperation that once marked relations between Indians and whites collapsed during the Seven Years' War. By the 1760s, as the white population increased, a stronger, nationalist identity emerged among both white and Indian populations, each calling for new territorial and political boundaries to separate their communities. Differences between Indians and whites - whether political, economic, social, religious, or ethnic - became increasingly characterized in racial terms, and the resulting animosity left an enduring legacy in Pennsylvania's colonial history.


In the years to come, a growing global population will require more crop production than ever before. As technological advances improve across all industries, autonomous agricultural vehicles (AAVs) can be part of the solution to the rising demand for food. By improving and transforming conventional farming methods, AAVs have the potential to transform the way farming operations are completed. AAVs are a class of robotic machines that have the ability to complete agricultural tasks without requiring direct and constant control of a human operator. By removing the need for an operator, these agricultural robotic machines allow for new vehicle designs and new opportunities for different vehicle configurations and sizes. A simulation model was developed that calculates the energy requirements of AAVs operating on row crops. This deterministic model was used to quantify the energy needs and energy expenditures of agricultural vehicles, and to investigate the effects of using AAVs in lieu of conventional human-operated agricultural machinery.The energy model was demonstrated using a pre-defined scenario of a typical row-crop farming operation in the Midwest U.S. The purpose of the case study was to compare a conventional crop production operation with operations that have implemented autonomous machines. Four general vehicle configurations were chosen based on the traction machine size: large tractors (e.g.,~greater than 60 kW), small tractors (e.g.,~less than 60 kW), utility vehicles (e.g.,~John Deere Gator), and single row machines. The complete crop production operation was based on a farm size of 607 ha (1,500 acre) with half the land devoted to corn production. The four main operations were fertilizer application, pesticide spraying, no-till planting, and harvesting.First, the energy model was used to compare a whole farm operation with three different machine configurations: using all conventional large machines, using all autonomous large machines, and using all autonomous smaller machines (55 kW tractor). The results show that from an energy standpoint, the most significant savings comes from the decreased amount of agrochemical application associated with AAVs. The total energy consumption of the large tractor AAV configuration is 36% less than the conventional operation (11,081 MJ/ha vs. 7,090 MJ/ha).In order to have a better perspective on the effects of using AAVs, further analysis was conducted on an individual operation basis: fertilizing, pesticide spraying, no-till planting, and harvesting. Because AAVs can work 24-hours per day, the fertilizing operation for the single large tractor AAV could be completed in 1.6 working days, as opposed 2.4 working days for the conventional machine. It only required two small tractor AAVs to meet or exceed the performance of the conventional machine, yet for the same amount of money, four to five small tractor AAVs could be purchased.The greatest benefit to utilizing AAVs is the intelligent application of pesticide, which can allow for 65--95% reduction in chemical use. The spraying operation highlighted the advantages of large machines (conventional and autonomous), namely speed of operation and width. It takes two small tractor AAVs, seven utility AAVs, or 12 single-row AAVs to match their performance. For the no-till planting operation, two small tractor AAVs, seven utility AAVs, or 39 single-row AAVs are required to match the performance of conventional machinery. However, for the same cost as the conventional machine, six small tractor AAVs, 16 utility AAVs, or 55 single-row AAVs could be purchased. The benefit of using higher numbers of AAVs is seen in the amount of time required to complete the planting task, where the swarms of AAVs could finish planting in nearly 1/3 of the time.Harvesting was previously analyzed during the whole farm scenario. In general, the energy consumption and costs are relatively the same between the conventional machine and the large AAV. The advantage of the autonomous harvesting is that is can operate continuously throughout the night. Continuous operation is possible for this scenario because corn can be harvested at night. However, soybeans cannot because the onset of dew at dusk does not allow for proper processing of the crop. Along with the energy model, crop production efficiency metrics were studied that provided an objective method of analyzing the advantages and disadvantages associated with replacing and/or augmenting conventional farming vehicles with AAVs. Energy-per-unit-area shows the amount of energy that is consumed over the entire field, regardless of the task time required. Because labor energy consumption is insignificant compared to the other three inputs, energy-per-unit-area is also independent of the number of machines simultaneously in use. Working days and machinery capital cost are other metrics that proved beneficial when comparing AAVs to conventional machines.Finally, a modeling tool was developed and demonstrated that allows a user to interact with the energy model in an intuitive way. Creating the modeling tool in Microsoft Excel allows for easy distribution to a wide audience, as opposed to using a more expensive software package. The energy model workbook is composed of five spreadsheets that contain instructions, inputs, outputs, and supporting data tables. A GUI was created using Microsoft Excel VBA that lets the user interact with an event-driven program. Data sets can easily be created and modified for the purpose of evaluating different farming operations. Additionally, options within the GUI allow for parameter studies where multiple data sets can be instantly created in order to analyze the effects of changing a single variable.


In recent years, almost all European countries have been provided with one or more studies historicizing their approach to (counter-)terrorism. Until recently, Switzerland was an exception. That has now changed with Aviva Guttmann's Ph.D. thesis turned into a Brill monograph, The Origins of International Counterterrorism. As she notes in her opening chapter, Europe was struck by a series of terrorist attacks in the early 1970s -both by domestic groups and by international terrorist organisations. Mainly due to transnational terrorist operations, Guttmann argues, countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France started to cooperate, bilaterally, and sometimes, in a very ad hoc manner, multilaterally. However, Dutch, Belgian, French and German police officers already exchanged information and intelligence relating to fugitive domestic terrorists like those of the German RAF and, in later years, with the UK on IRA operatives running afoul on the continent. However, with that reservation, Guttmann is correct in noting that governments started to develop more institutionalised policies to counter the threat emanating from international terrorist organisations in the early 1970s. She also correctly notes that the Swiss government played an interesting part in early developments on the intelligence front. This is the history she sought to cover.


Introduction Pineal region glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is a rare disease entity with a generally poor prognosis. We present a case of a patient with an unresectable pineal region GBM treated with chemoradiation with favorable outcome. Case background A 65-year-old patient who was presented with visual symptoms was found to have a pineal region tumor on imaging. A stereotactic biopsy showed a World Health Organization Grade IV GBM, O-6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) promoter methylated, isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 and 2 wild type. The patient was treated with radiotherapy with concurrent temozolomide, followed by adjuvant temozolomide. Disease progression occurred at 58 weeks post-biopsy, which prompted the initiation of bevacizumab. The patient was alive and functioning well as of his last follow up, 166 weeks from the initial biopsy. Discussion On our review of the literature, 24 cases of pineal region GBM have been reported. The median reported survival for these previously reported cases was 6 months (range, 2–24 months). This patient has the longest overall survival reported to date for a patient with this diagnosis. This is the first patient in the literature with pineal region GBM who has been reported to have MGMT promoter methylation. Concluding remarks Although pineal region GBM is a rare disease entity with a generally poor prognosis, long-term survival is achievable for select patients. MGMT promoter methylation may potentially have prognostic value. Favorable control of recurrent disease with the use of bevacizumab is possible.


Section 133 of the Companies Act (71 of 2008) provides for a general moratorium on legal proceedings against a company in business rescue. The section states that, during business rescue proceedings, no legal proceeding against the company, or in relation to any property belonging to the company, or lawfully in its possession, may be commenced or proceeded with except with the written consent of the business rescue practitioner (BRP) or with the leave of the court.


Influenza is caused by highly variable RNA viruses belonging to the orthomyxovirus group. These viruses are capable of constantly changing the genes coding for their surface proteins as well as for their nonsurface proteins. The mechanisms responsible for these changes in type A influenza viruses include recombination (reassortment) of genes among strains, deletions and insertions in genes, and, frequently, point mutations. In addition, old strains may reappear in the population. Influenza viruses of types B and C appear to vary to a lesser degree. The mechanisms responsible for changes in these viruses are not well characterized.


Drug toxicity may cause liver injury, resulting in damage to cells and tissues. This damage can lead to cytotoxic events that may result in an activation of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP). A study was conducted to determine if cocaine and acetaminophen toxicity lead to DNA damage and to the activation of the repair protein, PARP in the liver using the hepatotoxicants: cocaine and acetaminophen (APAP).
A dose-response analysis for cocaine concluded that a dose as low as 20 mg/kg resulted in elevated ALT levels. A higher dose of 60 mg/kg was tested for analyses but resulted in severe hemorrhaging. The dose-response analyses for APAP resulted in no elevated liver enzyme levels for a 75 mg/kg and 150 mg/kg dose. A dose of 50 mg/kg for cocaine, and a dose of 300 mg/kg for APAP were used to analyze temporal trends for both toxicants. Both cocaine and APAP produced incremental increases in ALT at the 2 hour, 6 hour, 18 hour, and 24 hour time points, respectively. PARP activity analysis for cocaine measured the highest activity at the 2hr and 6hr time points. PARP analysis for acetaminophen measured gradual increases until the 18 hour time point where the highest level of PARP activity was measured.
A PARP inhibition analysis was conducted with cocaine and (APAP) to understand the impact of a PARP inhibitor, 1,5-dihydroxyisoquinoline (DIQ), on PARP activity in the liver. A 50 mg/kg dose of cocaine or a 300 mg/kg dose of APAP was administered, followed by a 10 mg/kg dose of DIQ at 1) the time of initial toxicant dose (0 hour), or 2) 1 hour after initial toxicant dose (1hr). The PARP inhibition analysis for cocaine and APAP was conducted at 6 and 18 hours post initial dose, respectively, when the highest levels of PARP were observed. Inhibition analyses determined that ALT declined significantly when DIQ was administered immediately following the initial toxicant dose for both toxicants. DIQ administered 1 hr after initial toxicant dose resulted in slightly higher ALT than the 0 hr time point. Decreases in PARP activity were observed at the 0 hr time point, with slightly higher PARP levels observed at the 1 hr time point. Decreased PARP activity was observed following DIQ treatment with both, a concurrent drug treatment and treatment following drug administration. Cocaine and APAP treatment did not cause DNA fragmentation. A liver glutathione (GSH) analysis conducted for cocaine and APAP did not correlate with DIQ alteration of PARP activity. The mechanism of DIQ effects on drug-induced hepatotoxicity appears to be GSH independent. DIQ was effective in reducing drug-induced hepatotoxicity and preserving organ function.


Most descriptions of service ecosystems, which provide the foundations for value co-creation, focus on resource integration. In contrast, this article emphasizes the actor's key role as the foundation resource for value co-creation by looking at both societal- and individual-focused realms, which include the different social aspects of service ecosystems. Institutional arrangements, positions, schemas as mental models, and practices constitute the basis realms influencing the actor in his or her value creation. Societal- and individual-focused realms are dual structures that are in constant interaction. The interdependency of the realms is made apparent through the service ecosystem's ability to define how resources are understood, assessed, and applied. A thorough examination of the realms that influence the actors embedded in service ecosystems suggests that social forces guide and are guided by actors. This article offers six guidelines for understanding the vital role of actors in service ecosystems.


In this paper we examine for both economic convergence and openness convergence across the global economy and within specific regions. We find that convergence in openness is much more profound than income convergence. Moreover, convergence within regions takes place faster than convergence across the globe. We then examine for the effects of trade openness on income convergence. We use both trade openness indicators based on actual trade volumes as well as indices that rank countries according to trade policy openness. Finally, we consider the effects of such indices on openness convergence. We discuss our results in the context of the regionalism versus globalization debate.


Specifications of blood flow restriction training technique have been widely discussed to create a valid and reliable protocol. One of the unexplored variables is the effect of different initial restrictive pressures (tightness of cuffs, IRP) in combination with resistance exercise on neuromuscular responses and strength. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine any differences in amplitude (RMS) and median frequency (MDF) of electromyography (EMG) signals, as well as changes in strength during knee extension exercises with IRPs of 40-45 mmHg and 60-65 mmHg. METHODS: Twenty male subjects (age = 25.7 ± 4.3 yrs), participated in this study. They were required to attend the lab on 3 different occasions, with the first one being a familiarization session. On the subsequent sessions, participant's upper leg was measured starting from the lateral epicondyle to the greater trochanter of the femur. An EMG electrode was placed at one-third the distance over the longitudinal axis of the vastus lateralis (VL) after shaving, abrading and cleaning with isopropyl alcohol. Initial restrictive pressure was randomly selected and participants completed a pre-exercise maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) test to determine their torque. For dynamic exercises, load was set at 20% MVC and each participant performed one set of 30 repetitions and three sets of 15 repetitions, separated by one minute rest. Post-exercise MVC was performed to assess the changes in leg strength following exercises. RESULTS: Results showed significant main effects (p<0.01) in leg strength for condition (40-45 mmHg vs. 60-65 mmHg) and trial (pre vs. post MVC). A significant main effect was observed for condition for MVC EMG amplitude (p<0.01). In addition, there were significant main effects for contractions (p<0.01) in both EMG amplitude and MDF during dynamic exercises. CONCLUSION: The significant decreases in knee extension strength at IRP of 60-65 mmHg compared to IRP of 40-45mmHg from preto post-exercise suggest that subjects experienced more fatigue at 60-65 mmHg because of the decreased availability of oxygen to the working muscle. The use of different IRP will affect the level of blood flow and oxygen supply to skeletal muscle possibly causing variation in neuromuscular adaptation due to changes in total and type of muscle fiber recruitment.


In his 1873 preface to the second edition of Das Kapital, Marx offers a brief report on the fortunes of his "critique of political economy" following its first submission to the public in 1867. The report is compact and polemical, dismissing in style the substance of a few representatively negative reviews, succinctly exposing their arguments for mere detractions—"with the skill of a great master of verbal fence," as his English gentlemen contenders must have thought. The report occupies itself exclusively with reactions to Das Kapital in the bourgeois press, the official taste-making organs of Burgerthum und seinen doktrinaren Wortfuhrern. "The bourgeoisie and its doctrinaire spokesmen": Marx's acidic motto for opponents from both the right and the left, both the celebrant practitioners of uncritical "politische Okonomie" and their unwitting acolytes among the fashionable German peddlers of "dialectic in its mystified form." In the first English translation of 1886, Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling render this motto as "bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors." "Bourgeoisdom" is not a word that would have tripped lightly from the lips of Marx's Victorian English readers. They had not read it before. Moore and Aveling use it here for the first time in English. Bourgeoisdom. The word is cumbersome, grating and conspicuously jargonistic, stupidly weighed down with the echo of the German dumm, not to mention English boredom. Why did Moore and Aveling coin it? Why sharpen the satiric ring of Marx's phrase? Not, presumably, in order to change the content of a proposition belonging to Marx, but on the contrary, so as to be sure to preserve it. Marx's English translators wanted English readers for Marx; to make sure that those readers would be reading Marx, and not some bad equivalent of Marx, the English translators in this instance rewrote Marx in jargon. (The twentieth century translator of Das Kapital into English, Ben Fowkes, cleaned out the jargon by reverting to the better-established "bourgeoisie.") Moore and Aveling's version is in this instance jargonistic where the original is not; but the translators must presumably have felt that, far from taking any liberty with Marx's text or departing from the spirit of it, they had on the contrary kept that spirit alive. It would have been easy enough to give a warrant for this assurance, had one been demanded of them. The warrant is Marx's own German. Das Kapital itself makes emphatic use of jargon, and even depends on jargon, at some of the most important moments of its argument.


This paper quantifies the joint effect of on-the-job training and workers' on-the-job learning decisions on aggregate employment. We present an Index of On-the-job Human Capital Acquisition (OJHCA), based on data from the OECD Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. The objective of the index is to capture both formal and informal learning in the workplace. We document a strong positive association between the two components of our index, i.e., on-the-job training and on-the-job learning. We also show that the index is positively correlated with employment across OECD economies. To explain these stylized facts, we build a search and matching model with on-the-job human capital acquisition that depends on both on-the-job training provided by firms and on the workers' level of on-the-job learning. We calibrate the model to the Canadian economy and adjust the learning and training marginal costs to match cross-country levels in the human capital index. We compare the model's predictions with the data and we conclude that differences in marginal costs are necessary to match the differences observed in employment rates across countries. We also extend the model including payroll taxes and education. The model is able to reproduce the observed differences in employment rates between countries with the highest and the lowest level of OJHCA.


Traffic congestion in freeways poses a major threat to the economic prosperity of the nation. It not only causes loss of productivity of the workforce but also frustration among the drivers. Traffic incidents such as vehicle crashes, overturned trucks, and stalled vehicles contribute to a significant amount of non-recurrent congestion. Automatic Incident Detection (AID) algorithms have been developed for detecting such incidents in real-time and alerting the drivers. Such incident detection algorithms often rely on generating thresholds based on historical traffic patterns. However, large-scale historical traffic data often poses to be a major challenge in processing these data and automatically generate thresholds for incident detection. This project leverages lambda architecture and cloud computing service to develop an automatic threshold computation module. It is based on the Inter-Quartile Distance (IQD) method for threshold computation and runs on a weekly basis using previous 8 weeks of historical data, amounting to more than 250 GB of traffic data. The incidents detected using the real-time traffic data and the automatically generated thresholds can be used by Traffic Management Centers for real-time incident detection and further analysis such as incident validation and performance tuning.