A key focus in cancer immunotherapy is to investigate the mechanism of efficacious vaccine responses. Using HIV-1 GAG-p24 in a model PD1-based DNA vaccine, we recently reported that vaccine-elicited CD8+ T cells conferred complete prevention and therapeutic cure of AB1-GAG malignant mesothelioma in immunocompetent BALB/c mice. Here, we further investigated the efficacy and correlation of protection on the model vaccine-mediated antigen spreading against wild-type AB1 (WT-AB1) mesothelioma. We found that this vaccine was able to protect mice completely from three consecutive lethal challenges of AB1-GAG mesothelioma. Through antigen spreading these animals also developed tumor-specific cytotoxic CD8+ T cells, but neither CD4+ T cells nor antibodies, rejecting WT-AB1 mesothelioma. A majority of these protected mice (90%) were also completely protected against the lethal WT-AB1 challenge. Adoptive cell transfer experiments further demonstrated that antigen spreading-induced CD8+ T cells conferred efficacious therapeutic effects against established WT-AB1 mesothelioma and prevented the increase of exhausted PD-1+ and Tim-3+ CD8+ T cells. A significant inverse correlation was found between the frequency of functional PD1−Tim3− CD8+ T cells and that of MDSCs or tumor mass in vivo. Mechanistically, we found that WT-AB1 mesothelioma induced predominantly polymorphonuclear (PMN) MDSCs in vivo. In co-cultures with efficacious CD8+ T cells, a significant number of PMN-MDSCs underwent apoptosis in a dose-dependent way. Our findings indicate that efficacious CD8+ T cells capable of eliminating both tumor cells and MDSCs are likely necessary for fighting wild-type malignant mesothelioma.


The study aims to reveal the awareness upon the various effects of global warming. In this sense, we tried to reveal social, economic, and environmental effects of the global warming and the awareness related to these effects. In this study, the effects of global warming and awareness issues are discussed in the concept of global warming. Economic, social, and environmental effects of global warming are established, a questionnaire was applied to investigate global warming awareness within the framework of these effects. Five-point Likert scale was used in the questionnaire performed to 1454 participants. The analysis was carried out using the logistic regression model the questionnaire was performed in urban living areas within TR83 Region (Samsun, Amasya, Corum and Tokat).


We propose a formal framework to clarify the import of and the relationship among different notions of similarity. The framework, borrowing from the general E-connections approach, allows to use multiple similarity notions in the same system by relating the domain of discourse to specialized sets of entities even across different logics. In practice, we start form the assumption that (Leibnizian) relative identity is the only local form of similarity, and show that more sophisticated notions can be conceptually understood as the result of transformations across heterogeneous logics. These transformations, called global similarities, are usually motivated by arguments external to the starting system, and can be intertwined to generate a prolific family of similarity relations. We exemplify this framework in the context of shape similarity whose comprehension motivated our work. Finally, the approach developed in this paper sets the basis for a general study of similarity as a group of transformations generated by (primitive) global similarity relations.


The legitimacy of democratically elected governments rests in part on widespread acceptance of the outcome of elections, especially among those who lost. This "losers' consent" allows the winners to govern, and when the incumbent is the losing party, it allows for a peaceful transition of power. What happens in a democratic system when one side not only refuses to concede but also actively perpetuates lies about the outcome? This article studies the evolution of public opinion about Donald Trump's "big lie" using a rolling cross-sectional daily tracking survey, yielding 40 days of polls and more than 20,000 responses from US voters from October 27, 2020, through January 29, 2021. We find that the lie is pervasive and sticky: the number of Republicans and independents saying that they believe the election was fraudulent is substantial, and this proportion did not change appreciably over time or shift after important political developments. Belief in the lie may have buoyed some of Trump supporters' self-esteem. In reaction to the lie and the threat it brought to the transition of power, there was a significant rise in support for violent political activism among Democrats, which only waned after efforts to overturn the election clearly failed. Even if these findings merely reflect partisan cheerleading, we nonetheless find significant and potentially long-term consequences of the lie. A conjoint experiment shows that Republican voters reward politicians who perpetuate the lie, giving Republican candidates an incentive to continue to do so in the next electoral cycle. These findings raise concerns about the fragility of American democracy.


THIS lecture, which I give at your request, will necessarily disappoint you in a number of ways. You will naturally expect me to take a position on actual problems of the day. But that will be the case only in a purely formal way and toward the end, when I shall raise certain questions concerning the significance of political action in the whole way of life. In today's lecture, all questions that refer to what policy and what content one should give one's political activity must be eliminated. For such questions have nothing to do with the general question of what politics as a vocation means and what it can mean. Now to our subject matter.


The first discussion regarding the formation of a pan-African child neurology association took place during the International Child Neurology Congress in Montreal in 2006 between the executive of the Paediatric Neurology and Developmental Association of South Africa (PANDA-SA) and members from the Egyptian societies. The idea was the brainchild of Ahmed Raouf Ibrahim, who was also to be the convenor of the subsequent International Child Neurology Congress in Cairo, Egypt, in 2010. The theme was further developed at a PANDA-SA meeting in Sun City, South Africa, in 2008 as part of the ''Sky is the Limit'' Paediatric Congress. Ahmed Raouf Ibrahim attended this meeting, together with several invited delegates from sub-Saharan countries. At that meeting the formation of an African Child Neurology Association was unanimously accepted. André Venter was elected as chairman of a Steering Committee to drive the process further. Several members from PANDA-SA and the Egyptian Paediatric Neurology Association and delegates from sub-Saharan Africa were elected to serve on the Steering Committee. It was decided that a provisional constitution should be drawn up (based on the current International Child Neurology Association constitution) and that an inaugural meeting was to be held during the International Child Neurology Congress meeting in Cairo, Egypt. On March 27, 2009, a joint meeting was held at the Pyramiso Hotel in Cairo, Egypt, between members of the International Child Neurology Association Executive Board and the Steering Committee. The International Child Neurology Association was represented by Robert Ouvrier (President), Kenneth Mack (Secretary), Orvar Eeg-Olofsson (Treasurer), and Ingrid Tein (Chair: Scientific Committee). Although a different name for the organization was initially selected, the final name to be adopted was the African Child Neurology Association (ACNA). It was also decided that this organization would develop under the umbrella of the International Child Neurology Association. Perhaps as an omen of changes to come in the International Child Neurology Association, it was decided that membership would be free and inclusive to try to reach all health professionals who work in this field in Africa. On Saturday, May 1, 2010, a significant meeting was held at the Rameses Hilton Hotel in Cairo, Epypt. At that meeting the African Child Neurology Association was inaugurated in the presence of over 50 delegates from Africa and beyond (Figure 1). The meeting was also attended by Robert Ouvrier and other members of the International Child Neurology Association Executive Board. At that first meeting of the African Child Neurology Association, the welcome was given by Ahmed Raouf Ibrahim from Egypt and the goals of the association explained by André Venter from South Africa. After that, Jo Wilmshurst, also from South Africa, presented some of the key challenges faced by children with neurodisabilities in Africa, and four talks where then given by doctors from Africa, from Malawi (Mac Mallewa), Uganda (Angelina Kakooza-Mwesige), Nigeria (Robinson Wammanda), and Ghana (Ben Badoe). André Venter was unanimously elected as the President of the African Child Neurology Association (Figure 2), and other members elected to the executive council included Gail Scher from South Africa (Secretary) and Ahmed Raouf Ibrahim from Egypt (President-elect). On the following day an open symposium was held to discuss children at risk—especially in Africa—to highlight the need for trans-African collaboration. It was clear that due to logistics and cost, the African Child Neurology Association would have to perform many of its functions as a virtual organization. The short-term goal therefore was to develop a comprehensive address list and to invite members to join. We have really come a long way as far as this is concerned: especially due to the effective networking and outreach of Jo Wilmshurst, we have been able to identify many colleagues in Africa, who have joined. Currently the African Child Neurology Association has 68 active members. The development of the African Child Neurology Association website by Biju Hameed has also opened new means to communicate and network. Besides endorsing the general aims of the International Child Neurology Association, the vision of the African Child Neurology Association includes the promotion and improvement of:


For the last two decades, scientists have amassed evidence that bisphenol A (BPA) poses a threat to human health. Although scientists have targeted BPA as a public health concern, plastics industry lobbyists have attempted to thwart the efforts of federal, state, and local authorities to reduce exposure to BPA. This paper reviews the major arguments advanced by the plastics industry and debunks them as, "myths," that public health officials must reject. The five topics covered include: The myth of scientific consensus on safety; the myth that only studies complying with, "Good Laboratory Practices," guidelines are adequate for making regulatory decisions; myths about the science of BPA exposure and metabolism; economic myths related to restrictions on BPA's use; and the myth that state-based regulation creates an unmanageable, "patchwork," of rules. After critiquing the facts and policy implications of each issue, the authors conclude with suggestions regarding how federal agencies can coordinate their work to better protect the public from the risks posed by BPA and other endocrine disrupting chemicals.


We investigate new connection-provisioning algorithms to efficiently provide signal-quality-guaranteed connections in an optical wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) mesh network operating with high-speed wavelength channels. In an optical network, a connection is set up to carry a data signal via an all-optical channel (lightpath) from its source to destination node. The optical signal transmitted along the lightpath may need to travel through a number of crossconnect switches (OXCs), optical amplifiers, and fiber segments. While the signal propagates toward its destination, the optical components would continuously degrade the signal quality by inducing impairments. When the signal degradation is so severe that the received bit-error rate (BER) becomes unacceptably high, the lightpath would not be able to provide good service quality to a connection request. Such a lightpath, which has poor signal quality due to transmission impairments in the physical layer, should not be used for connection provisioning in the network layer. With increasing channel bit rate to 10 Gb/s or higher, fiber linear and nonlinear impairments become prominent factors, which affect the signal quality. Thus, new techniques in both physical layer and network layer are necessary for mitigating impairments to accommodate high-speed traffic. Therefore, to ensure service quality of high-speed connections, we develop intelligent impairment-aware routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) algorithms, which automatically consider the effects of high-speed transmission impairment when setting up a lightpath. The main contribution of our paper is that we investigate a novel hierarchical RWA model for high-speed connection provisioning where the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) and polarization mode dispersion (PMD) effect are estimated in the physical layer, and regarded as metrics for lightpath computation in the network layer. The performance of the proposed connection-provisioning strategies is demonstrated to be promising through illustrative numerical examples.


Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty presents new and surprising findings about career differences between female and male full-time, tenure-track, and tenured faculty in science, engineering, and mathematics at the nation's top research universities. Much of this congressionally mandated book is based on two unique surveys of faculty and departments at major U.S. research universities in six fields: biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, mathematics, and physics. A departmental survey collected information on departmental policies, recent tenure and promotion cases, and recent hires in almost 500 departments. A faculty survey gathered information from a stratified, random sample of about 1,800 faculty on demographic characteristics, employment experiences, the allocation of institutional resources such as laboratory space, professional activities, and scholarly productivity. This book paints a timely picture of the status of female faculty at top universities, clarifies whether male and female faculty have similar opportunities to advance and succeed in academia, challenges some commonly held views, and poses several questions still in need of answers. This book will be of special interest to university administrators and faculty, graduate students, policy makers, professional and academic societies, federal funding agencies, and others concerned with the vitality of the U.S. research base and economy.


This thesis is motivated from the fundamental decision problem in today's manufacturing industry which could be summarized as one simple question: how is it possible to achieve economic growth by taking advantage of the latest technologies while protecting the environment? The machine tool has undergone a remarkable change in recent years and the classical concept of an independent, manually operated machine tool, specially dedicated to a particular machining process no longer belongs to the production environment. The increasing usage of computer control and measuring equipment as well as workpiece and tool handling devices has transformed the machine tool into a sophisticated hybrid production system having a lower demand for human supervision of the process. All these efforts are gathered together in order to achieve a high productivity system able to machine different parts respecting quality requirements at the lowest cost. In addition, increasing attention to the environmental and health impacts by governmental regulations and by growing awareness in society is forcing manufacturers to find environmentally friendly designs and machining strategies. The objective of this research is to propose a multicriteria decision aid methodology (MCDA) for evaluation of the use phase of a machine tool system by jointly considering economical, technical and environmental criteria which allows the decision maker to be in a better position to make sustainable decisions. The evaluation is carried out at two levels by addressing the process level with its local cutting area effects and the main activities of the machine tool system by giving full consideration to reduction/elimination of the cutting fluid and reduction of the overall energy consumption. After carefully reviewing previous research, a consistent hierarchical evaluation criteria structure and an entity relationship diagram characterizing the organizational scheme of a database, which stores the data to be used in the evaluation process, is proposed for each level. As a second step, this thesis proposes a model for estimation of the mechanical energy requirements of the cutting subsystem of a machine tool based on the cutter location data, the cutting parameters and the technical specifications of the spindle and feed axes. The MCDA methodology and the energy consumption model were implemented in a software tool using the VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) language and was validated through various tests consisting in the machining of different milling and drilling features of a prismatic part by employing different cutting parameters and cooling/lubrication alternatives. In addition to the cutting tests, an extensive monitoring of the power share amongst the main subsystems of a modern machining center was carried out and a power data collection framework was proposed. The acquisition, interpretation and storage of the experimental data were supported by a measurement platform developed in the LabVIEW environment.


In situ studies with the mouse macrophage (M phi)-specific antibody, F4/80, have shown that resident M phi in femoral bone marrow (RBMM) form hematopoietic islands with immature myelomonocytic and erythroid cells (Hume, D. A., et al. 1983. J. Exp. Med. 158: 1522). We have isolated these islands (clusters) by collagenase digestion, purified them from single cells by velocity sedimentation, and analyzed their cellular content. The clusters, ranging from 5- to 100 cells, constituted approximately 7% of the total nucleated cells, and greater than 70% contained at least one strongly staining, F4/80+ central M phi. In comparison, less than 26% showed reactivity for alkaline phosphatase, a marker of fibroblastoid reticulum cells. Compared with the nonclustering population, clusters were enriched with RBMM, fibroblastoid cells, and immature hematopoietic cells, but depleted of mature granulocytes and erythrocytes. The RBMM population was purified from other cells in clusters by selective adherence to glass and was compared with resident peritoneal M phi (RPM) for morphology and the presence of antigens, receptors, and enzymes. RBMM spread more extensively than RPM and frequently extended delicate plasma membrane processes. These and subsequent differences were not attributable to the collagenase treatment. Both M phi populations stained positively with antibodies F4/80 and 2.4G2 (Fc receptor IgG1/2b), bore mannosyl/fucosyl receptors, and showed reactivity for acid phosphatase and nonspecific esterase I. In contrast to RPM, RBMM had no detectable Mac-1 antigen (CR3) or complement receptors, but bore higher levels of Fc receptors (IgG2a and IgG2b) and Ia antigens. In addition, RBMM possessed a novel hemagglutinin activity for unopsonized sheep erythrocytes, which was not present on RPM. RBMM showed no respiratory burst activity in response to zymosan particles, but ingested them avidly. The growth properties of clustering and nonclustered populations were compared by measurement of [3H]thymidine incorporation and progenitor assays. Cells in clusters incorporated three- to fourfold more thymidine than nonclustered cells even in the absence of exogenous growth factors, and autoradiography demonstrated that RBMM made contact with proliferating cells. In contrast, the clusters contained over threefold fewer granulocyte/M phi progenitors compared with nonclustering cells. When clusters were cultivated for up to 3 d, there was rapid outgrowth of monocytes and fibroblastoid cells. These studies demonstrate that RBMM bear a distinct morphology and phenotype.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)


Localization is highly critical for wireless sensor network applications. The present paper makes the following noticeable contributions. First, an energy confirmable overlapping tracking algorithm for mobile targets is proposed in wireless sensor networks. Different from most target localization algorithms based on compressive sensing, it improves localization accuracy through overlapping area and predicting regions in online tracking phase. Second, theoretical analyses suggest that grids number in an overlapping area is related to energy consumption. By exploiting a common communication schedule, we derive the compressive sensing tracking for the solution and formulate the threshold of grids number and the energy consumption. Third, our algorithm shows good scalability. Since only the network topology information around the unknown nodes is used, it can be applied to large-scale wireless sensor networks. Finally, analytical studies and simulations are provided to show that our proposed approach achieves significant tracking accuracy in four different trajectories.


Homogenous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) is an alternative to Spark Ignited (SI) combustion, which can provide part-load efficiencies as high as compression ignition engines and energy densities as high as SI engines, without high levels of NOx or Particulate Matter (PM). The principle of operation involves reaching the thermal oxidization barrier of a homogeneous air-fuel mixture. This combustion practice is enabled by diluting then compressing the mixture with the Trapped Residual Gases (TRG) to dilute the initial charge thus keeping combustion temperatures down.

Introduction of exhaust gasses in the mixture can be achieved by the use of early exhaust valve closure and late inlet valve opening. The charge is well mixed avoiding particulate emissions, and by using exhaust gasses for load regulation the need for throttled operation is removed allowing the realization of high efficiencies, low pumping losses and a resulting 15 - 20 % improvement in fuel economy. One of the major disadvantages of HCCI is that it can only be used at part load conditions, and so it has been proposed that a 'hybrid mode' engine operation strategy could be used, where the engine uses SI operation at cold start, high load and idle. This demands a closed loop feedback control signal to give a seamless transition between SI (where Start of Combustion (SOC) is dictated by the spark plug) and HCCI (where SOC is unknown).

This paper investigated the use of an ion current sensor to accurately predict the Peak Pressure Position (PPP) and Peak Pressure Magnitude (PPM). This is achieved with the mathematically simple and computationally efficient approach of linear regression. This technique can be used between engine cycles so adjustments can be made to engine strategies to compensate for difficult conditions. The results showed that there is a definite correlation between the two signals and that the ion current can be used to control the engine during HCCI mode. Finally a good balance between computation time and accuracy was obtained using 20 cycles.


Critical Path Method (CPM) is one of the most popular techniques used by construction practitioners for construction project scheduling since the 1950s. Despite its popularity, CPM has a major shortcoming, as it is schedule based on two impractical acceptance that the project deadline is not bounded and that resources are unlimited. The analytical competency and computing capability of CPM thus need to be enhanced by applying some additional techniques like Time-Cost Trade-off (TCT) and Constraint Resource Scheduling (CRS) separately after the initial schedule is determined. Therefore, this paper is focusing on an effective method for considering simultaneously TCT and CRS using a nonlinear integer framework, taking help of Microsoft Project Software (MSP) and Microsoft Excel Solver. Through this method, first, a start delay technique is applied to the baseline schedule to level out the resource over allocation and then the project network diagram is modified according to the resource-leveled schedule. Secondly, a time-cost optimization is used over the resource-leveled schedule network diagram, using MS Excel solver to get the optimum duration associated with the minimum total cost of the project satisfying resource constraint. The proposed framework using overtime for activity expedition, and required less time to generate the final solution compare to the available methods considering TCT+CRS simultaneously.


Diode lasers have many useful properties and have found a variety of uses including CD and DVD players, barcode scanners, laser surgery, water purification, quantum-key cryptography, spectroscopic sensing, etc. Nevertheless, their intrinsic linewidth, or the precision of their emitted wavelengths, is not good enough for many cutting-edge applications such as atom interferometry or high-performance atomic clocks. Using active feedback control we can narrow the linewidth of a diode laser, not allowing the frequency of emitted light to drift away from a reference value. Nevertheless, such feedback designs are challenging because of a lack of first principles models and difficult sensor dynamics. This paper describes our diode laser system and reports our results identifying the system using black-box techniques.


The volume documents the contributions to a conference held by the Moses Mendelssohn Foundation in October 2014 in Darmstadt, the birthplace of the Jewish poet Karl Wolfskehl. The focus of this interdisciplinary conference was not only on the famous poet´s and intellectual´s poetic and essayistic work; rather, it was also and especially on his family, in particular on their far-reaching significance for Darmstadt's history and culture in the 19th and 20th centuries. The lectures shed light on outstanding members of the Wolfskehl family in their life and times and explore whether and how they moved in the traditions and cultural dispositions of German-Jewish bourgeoisie. This legacy was irretrievably destroyed by National Socialism; to paradigmatically bring it to light and contribute to its safeguarding forms the main concern of the authors of this volume.


In this paper, we propose an energy harvesting (EH)-based spectrum access model in cognitive radio (CR) network. In the proposed scheme, one of available secondary transmitters (STs) helps a primary transmitter (PT) forward primary signals to a primary receiver (PR). Via the cooperation, the selected ST finds opportunities to access licensed bands to transmit secondary signals to its intended secondary receiver (SR). Secondary users are assumed to be mobile, hence, optimization of energy consumption for these users is interested. The EH STs have to harvest energy from the PT's radio-frequency (RF) signals to serve the PTPR communication as well as to transmit their signals. The proposed scheme employs incremental relaying technique in which the PR only requires the assistance from the STs when the transmission between PT and PR is not successful. Moreover, we also investigate impact of hardware impairments on performance of the primary and secondary networks. For performance evaluation, we derive exact and lower-bound expressions of outage probability (OP) over Rayleigh fading channel. Monte-Carlo simulations are performed to verify the theoretical results. The results present that the outage performance of both networks can be enhanced by increasing the number of the ST-SR pairs. In addition, the outage performance of both primary and secondary networks is severely degraded with the increasing of hardware impairment level. It is also shown that fraction of time used for EH and positions of the secondary users significantly impact on the system performance.


Exploring ways to measure impact is not a new focus for the third sector or social enterprises, but one that is becoming more of a concern as organisations look for ways to improve what they do and demonstrate their impact to others. In part this requires a shift in thinking from
measuring outputs to measuring outcomes, and the challenge is to find ways of measuring the softer elements related to social inclusion. There is also interest from outside of organisations with pressure from philanthropic funds and public service commissioners to find ways of making
their decisions on how resources are allocated.
Social Impact Measurement (SIM) is the process by which an organisation provides evidence that its services are providing real and tangible benefits to people or the environment (SEEE 2009). Issue 2 of the EEDA Social Impact Measurement (SIM) project examines a range of SIM
models currently adopted by Third Sector Organisations and social enterprises. The aim is "Ultimately …. to gain a better understanding of the various social impact measurement models" (EEDA ITT 2009-082). Through the study of the experiences of a set of organisations, this
research will examine why organisations are measuring impact, how they are doing this, the challenges they face and how these can be overcome. This will involve a review and evaluation of a wide range of tools used by third sector organisations to measure the impact of the work
they do. It will provide guidance to assist Third Sector Organisations in selecting approaches to measuring impact and help public authorities to assess the claims made by those who are using impact measurement tools.
The research has involved a review of the literature and over 40 different methods commonly in use in the UK. Following the development of questionnaires, interviews were carried out with 40 third sector organisations, 32 of whom had carried out social impact measurement. A further 10
organisations or individuals providing training in social impact measurement to organisations in the East of England Region were also interviewed. Data was also collected on the issues raised by the attendees of two training courses on social impact measurement, one covering Social Return On Investment (led by Kate Lee) and one covering Social Accounting and Audit (led by John Pearce) each of which had 12 participants. Finally feedback from participants of two
workshops, each with approximately 50 attendees, has been integrated


This is the reply to Ricardo Salles? criticism of my interpretation of the Stoic compatibilism. Although I partially admit his objections, I intend to show that some texts allow us to think that, even though what depends on us does not necessarily imply alternative actions, this does not mean that it can not imply them. I also endeavour to show that a re-examination of the Chrysippean notion of possibility taking into account desire and belief permits to explain why it is not possible (in the sense of ?specific possibility?) to perform the actions X and Y (or Y instead of X) in a given time, which would indicate that the specific possibility rules out alternative actions as well.


Climate extremes can trigger exceptional re- sponses in terrestrial ecosystems, for instance by altering growth or mortality rates. Such effects are often manifested in reductions in net primary productivity (NPP). Investi- gating a Europe-wide network of annual radial tree growth records confirms this pattern: we find that 28 % of tree ring width (TRW) indices are below two standard deviations in years in which extremely low precipitation, high tem- peratures or the combination of both noticeably affect tree growth. Based on these findings, we investigate possibilities for detecting climate-driven patterns in long-term TRW data to evaluate state-of-the-art dynamic vegetation models such as the Lund-Potsdam-Jena dynamic global vegetation model for managed land (LPJmL). The major problem in this con- text is that LPJmL simulates NPP but not explicitly the ra- dial tree growth, and we need to develop a generic method to allow for a comparison between simulated and observed response patterns. We propose an analysis scheme that quan- tifies the coincidence rate of climate extremes with some bi- otic responses (here TRW or simulated NPP). We find a rel- ative reduction of 34 % in simulated NPP during precipita- tion, temperature and combined extremes. This reduction is comparable to the TRW response patterns, but the model re- sponds much more sensitively to drought stress. We identify 10 extreme years during the 20th century during which both model and measurements indicate high coincidence rates across Europe. However, we detect substantial regional dif- ferences in simulated and observed responses to climatic ex- treme events. One explanation for this discrepancy could be the tendency of tree ring data to originate from climatically stressed sites. The difference between model and observed data is amplified by the fact that dynamic vegetation mod- els are designed to simulate mean ecosystem responses on landscape or regional scales. We find that both simulation re- sults and measurements display carry-over effects from cli- mate anomalies during the previous year. We conclude that radial tree growth chronologies provide a suitable basis for generic model benchmarks. The broad application of coinci- dence analysis in generic model benchmarks along with an increased availability of representative long-term measure- ments and improved process-based models will refine pro- jections of the long-term carbon balance in terrestrial ecosys- tems.


Abstract During an arachnological survey in the Šumava National Park in 2016, two very rare spider species were discovered: Araneus saevus (Araneidae) was recorded for the second time, 45 years after its first report in the Czech Republic. The species is therefore no longer regionally extinct, and can be considered critically endangered. Theridion boesenbergi (Theridiidae) was recorded for the first time in the Šumava Mts. Ecological characterisation of the species is improved, being more psychrophilous than was previously expected. Almost all collected specimens of both species from the Czech Republic are deposited in the National Museum in Prague.


This paper concerns the improved use of ICT in a leading Irish construction company via an Industry-Academia partnership. The partners are Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) and BAM Contractors, who are part of the wider Royal BAM Group based in the Netherlands. The bespoke MSc in Construction Project Management (MScCPM) programme that was developed through this partnership involves a number of modules, including one on 'ICT in Construction'. The majority of the required assessments on the bespoke programme relate specifically to BAM business activities. BAM saw the benefits of getting the participant either individually or in groups to investigate issues that are of importance to the company. Each assessment was designed and agreed by the relevant WIT Module Leader and the associated BAM Expert in line with the agreed MScCPM framework. The processes of aligning the required programme assessments with topics and problems of direct interest to the company may not always have been straightforward, but the potential befits were clear to all concerned. In the case of the 'ICT in Construction' module the WIT Module Leader agreed the topics and approach with the BAM ICT Manager and his team. Essentially the group was divided up into six groups of three people and the other two participants were given individual projects. The group projects concerned the use of COINS, SharePoint, BIM, Project Planning software, ICT on Sites and Mobile ICT Devices. The individual projects related to the use of ICT in two other companies, BAM Nuttall and Suir Engineering. The background to these topics, how they were researched, the publication of the associated reports, the oral presentations to WIT and BAM Senior Management are described in this paper. Most importantly, the subsequent impact of these ICT projects on the BAM people, processes and technologies are also considered.


We study the identification and estimation of large network games where each individual holds private information about its links and payoffs. Extending Galeotti, Goyal, Jackson, Vega-Redondo and Yariv (2010), we build a tractable empirical model of network games where the individuals are heterogenous with private link and payoff information, and characterize its unique, symmetric pure-strategy Bayesian Nash equilibrium. We then show that the parameters in individual payoffs are identified under "large market" asymptotics, whereby the number of individuals increases to infinity in a fixed and small number of networks. We also propose a consistent two-step m-estimator for individual payoffs. Our method is distribution-free in that it does not require parametrization of the distribution of shocks in individual payoffs. Monte Carlo simulation show that our estimator has good performance in moderate-sized samples.


Abstract In this paper we develop an explanation for the health crisis in the former Soviet Union based on social theory. The collapse of the former Soviet Union was marked by a dramatic rise in mortality and morbidity. Epidemiological and sociological explanations to date have focused on explaining the raise in mortality implicating either unhealthy lifestyles, which included heavy smoking, drinking, lack of exercise and poor diets, or individual stress as the primary causes, while acknowledging that the decline of the public health services and the rise in poverty are also likely contributory causes. However, the broader sociological implications of these issues have not been adequately theorised. In this paper we develop and test four explanations of the decline in health in the former in the Soviet Union in the 1990s: that it was due to poverty; that it was due to unhealthy lifestyles; and that it was due to alienation from the social and political system; that it is due to a form of anomie that we term 'transition stress'. We link this to the ruptures in the social, economic and political system, associated with a loss of social cohesion, which have had individual health consequences. We do so utilizing data from a survey carried out in eight post-Soviet countries.


This article reframes fisheries sustainability as a matter of production and consumption. It argues that only a more-than-human approach that takes seriously the entanglement of all oceanic entities—fish, fishers, water—can tackle the sustainability of fish. In order to bring this to fruition, an affective oceanic habitus needs to be mobilized. Drawing on cultural references to the entanglement of humans and oceans, this article attempts to model what such affective habitus might entail.


Many observers have suggested that the strengthening of executives vis-a-vis other political actors, in particular national parliaments, has been one of the principal effects of European integration (and perhaps international cooperation more generally) on national democracies, with democracy being "perverted" and parliaments becoming "rubber stamps." Moravcsik (1994) has argued that there were four theoretical ways in which international cooperation could "strengthen the state," by redistributing institutional power, initiative (agenda-setting), information and ideas in favor of the executive in Europe. However, consideration of domestic politics in Europe shows that elites are already – for exogenous reasons – dominant in institutions, initiative and information. In Europe, therefore, the "strong" executive is not a product of European integration, and the reverse may even be true: that the dominance of the executive in national political systems has been a prerequisite for the success of European integration – that European openness has been built on national political closure. More generally, assessments of the impact of international cooperation on democracy should measure the effect of international cooperation at the margin on the existing characteristics of particular national democratic systems.


Many standardized tests are now administered via computer rather than paper-and-pencil format. The computer-based delivery mode brings with it certain advantages. One advantage is the ability to adapt the difficulty level of the test to the ability level of the test taker in what has been termed computerized adaptive testing (CAT). A second advantage is the ability to record not only the test taker's response to each item (i.e., question), but also the amount of time the test taker spends considering and answering each item. Combining these two advantages, various methods were explored for utilizing response time data in selecting appropriate items for an individual test taker.

Four strategies for incorporating response time data were evaluated, and the precision of the final test-taker score was assessed by comparing it to a benchmark value that did not take response time information into account. While differences in measurement precision and testing times were expected, results showed that the strategies did not differ much with respect to measurement precision but that there were differences with regard to the total testing time.


The housing market has important macroeconomic and macroprudential implications for the euro area economy. In view of the duration of the ongoing upturn in euro area house prices and residential investment, which started at the end of 2013, analysing the state of the housing market is particularly informative. This article discusses the ongoing housing market upturn, from a chronological and fundamental perspective. It also explores a selected set of indicators that can potentially inform on the state of the housing market, elaborating on the demand and supply factors underpinning the current upturn, as well as their relative importance. JEL Classification: E22, E31, E32, R31


This thesis explores how writing is made in two Swedish early childhood classrooms with a focus on how processes of writing are constituted in the writing event and what writings and writers the event offers potentials for. Theoretically, the research project takes its starting point in the assumption that processes of writing are an effect of relations between different elements, where the young writer is only one part of many human and non-human matters that make way for multiple becomings of writing and writers. In this context, the figuration of the nomad thought of Deleuze and Guattari is particularly applicable as it builds on the assumption that everything is always connected, continuously moving. The questions addressed are how the processes of writers, text-like writings and educational writing processes emerge, continue and transform in the writing event, and what writers, text-like writings and educational writing processes the event offers potentials for. The thesis consists of three research articles based on different empirical data. The first article builds on data from the thinking and talking about writing and the writing child in scholarly literature since the 19th century. The second and third articles are based on analyses of ethnographic documentation of sixto seven-yearolds' writing activities in two early childhood classrooms. The ethnographic strategies of the audio and video recordings, field notes, informal interviews and the collection of children's text-like writings were carried out over a period of one and a half year during which the children moved from preschool class to their first year of school. The findings of the first article suggest that the image of the ideal writing and the ideal writer has changed over time. However, the image of the young writer training for adult life predominates over time. The main result of the second article shows in specific ways that the mutual production of stabilizing processes of writing and processes of experimentation are vital components for becomings of writers and writing, irrespective of pedagogical framings. The finding of the third article illustrates how the teaching method of creative writing produced over time creates multiple pedagogical trajectories of "doing method" and "doing creativity". The thesis posits nomadic writing as a way to account for the movement, the connectivity and change in the processes of writing, thus contributing to an understanding of how the processes of writing create potentialities for multiple becomings of writers and writing.


The development of geometrical analysis in the 10th century was partly inspired by the reception of the works of Apollonius, which Arab mathematicians translated as early as the preceding century. Al-Qūhī contributed to this development by writing several collections of problems dealing with Apollonian themes and solved by the method of analysis; however, it seems that they do not all occupy the same place in his work. The author gives here the edition, translation, and mathematical commentary of a short work, entitled The determination of two straight lines from a point along a known angle , which presents the particularity of providing problems as geometrical lemmas to other studies. Indeed, al-Qūhī uses two of these lemmas in more complex constructions which belong to his Treatise on the art of the astrolabe . In this same treatise on the astrolabe, as well as in his Treatise on the perfect compass , this scholar also uses as lemmas several problems solved in another of his works, entitled The generation of points on straight lines according to ratios of which the terms are surfaces . This work is unfortunately lost, and all that remains of it are the traces which subsist in other treatises in which it has been used. This study seems to be necessary if one wishes to understand the organization of the work of al-Qūhī, a mathematician of the first rank who was representative of his time.


In 1835 Charles Darwin's geological observations on Isla Santiago (James Island) in the Galapagos Islands led him to important insights as to the process by which different varieties of igneous rock might be produced from the same volcanic vent. His work figured in a tradition of
interpretation that began with the work of George Poulett Scrope and would end in the twentieth century with the theory of magmatic differentiation of igneous rocks through the process of crystal fractionation. This article reports on the findings of an expedition to Isla Santiago in July
2007 during which we were able to locate samples of igneous rocks similar to those collected by Darwin. We have used these, together with Darwin's original specimens and transcriptions of his field notes, to examine how his
understanding of the separation of the trachytic and basaltic series of magmas developed from his initial field observations through to publication of Volcanic Islands in 1844.


Predatory alien fishes have been widely introduced into streams in the Cape Floristic Region (CFR), South Africa, but little is known about their effect on native fishes. Results from this 2006 study suggest that the presence of alien predatory largemouth bass, Micropterus salmoides, may have influenced abundance and habitat selection of the native Galaxias zebratus at one location in a small CFR mountain stream. Numbers of adults, but not of juveniles, were significantly lower where M. salmoides was present, suggesting a size-specific influence on G. zebratus abundance. Because other studies have found the influence of a predator to be affected by prey size and the diel activity of predator and prey, we measured microhabitat use by adult and juvenile G. zebratus by day and by night. Galaxias zebratus selected deeper, faster-flowing microhabitats more strongly where M. salmoides was present than where it was absent. This suggests that G. zebratus adjusts its habitat use in the presence of M. salmoides, although differences in available habitat, or in interactions with other indigenous species, could be partly responsible for the observed differences. In-stream vegetation presence was strongly positively related to depth and strongly negatively related to velocity at positions where G. zebratus was observed, suggesting that the deeper, slower-flowing microhabitats occupied by G. zebratus were structurally more complex than the shallower, faster-flowing ones.


The mechanisms of molecular motor regulation during bidirectional organelle transport are still uncertain. There is, for instance, the unsettled question of whether opposing motor proteins can be engaged in a tug-of-war. Clearly, any non-synchronous activation of the molecular motors of one cargo can principally lead to changes in the cargo's shape and size; the cargo's size and shape parameters would certainly be observables of such changes. We therefore set out to measure position, shape and size parameters of fluorescent mitochondria (during their transport) in dendrites of cultured neurons using a finite-particle tracking algorithm. Our data clearly show transport-related submicroscopic-size changes of mitochondria. The observed displacements of the mitochondrial front and rear ends are consistent with a model in which microtubule plus- and minus-end-directed motor proteins or motors of the same type but moving along anti-parallel microtubules are often out-of-phase and occasionally engaged in a tug-of-war. Mostly the leading and trailing ends of mitochondria undergo similar characteristic movements but with a substantial time delay between the displacements of both ends, a feature reminiscent of an inchworm-like motility mechanism. More generally, we demonstrate that observing the position, shape and size of actively transported finite objects such as mitochondria can yield information on organelle transport that is generally not accessible by tracking the organelles' centroid alone.


This book presents a careful analysis of pension data collected by the Health and Retirement Study, a unique survey of people over the age of fifty conducted by the University of Michigan for the National Institute on Aging. The authors studied pensions as they evolve over individuals' work lives and into retirement: how pension coverage and plans change over a lifetime, how many pensions workers have by the time they retire and what these pensions are worth, what pensions contribute to individual retirement incomes, and how trends and policy changes affect retirement plans. The book focuses on the major features of pensions, including plan type and participation, ages of eligibility for retirement, values of different pension types, how pension values are influenced by retirement age, how plans are settled when a worker leaves a firm, how well people understand their pensions, the importance of pensions in retirement saving and as a share of household wealth, and the vulnerability of the retirement age population to the current financial crisis. This book provides readers with an invaluable look at the crucial but ever-changing role of pensions in supporting retirees.


We have obtained expressions for the reflectance and transmittance of a scattering medium with weak absorption in terms of a diffusion model, where the source is an incoming beam, whose intensity exponentially decays along the propagation path. We have applied three experimental techniques, one of which is based on the developed model, to determine the transport mean-free-path in translucent samples of Nd:YAG ceramics.


Nowadays, the use of mobile telephony and wire-less devices has become more demanding, generating electromagnetic radiations. Microwave radiation can affect the growth rate of plants. For this study, the aromatic plants i.e. parsley, celery, dill, basil, were chosen as irradiated plants. This study aims to investigate the effects of irradiation with microwave field on polyphenolic compounds from basil, celery and parsley. The extracts were obtained by sonication. Quantitative analysis of polyphenolic compounds was performed by high performance liquid chromatography using an Altima C18 column. The elution was performed in gradient, with acetonitrile (eluent A) and formic acid in water (1%, eluent B). It was observed that in the irradiated plants, the content of polyphenolic compounds was higher than in the controlled plant. This finding suggests that that plants were strongly influenced by stress due to electromagnetic fields.


Industrial applications of semantic technologies in particular ontologies include the integration of heterogeneous information sources and the management of information resources and services. Currently, the adoption of these technologies in large-scaled applications within enterprises is slowed down by their failure to meet some basic requirements of commercial applications. One of those is the support of sophisticated security policies for protecting the knowledge contained in ontologies and their instances from unauthorized use. In this paper, we propose a model-driven approach to enable access control for lightweight ontologies based on a role-based security model and well-known standard technologies.


The interaction between the denationalizing of key economic institutions and spaces, on the one hand, and the renationalizing of politics on the other provides one of the main contexts for immigration policy and practice today. We see a growing consensus in the community of states to lift border controls for the flow of capital, information, services, and more broadly, to further globalization. Yet when it comes to immigrants and refugees, whether in North America, Western Europe, or Japan, we see the national state claiming all its old splendor and asserting its sovereign right to control its borders, a right that is a matter of consensus in the community of states. What does it mean for the state to relinquish sovereignty in some realms and to continue to be sovereign in others? If we accept, as I do, that the state itself has been transformed by its participation in the implementation of laws and regulations necessary for economic globalization, we must accept as a possibility that sovereignty itself has been transformed. Elsewhere (1996b) I have argued that exclusive territoriality - a marking feature of the modern state - is being destabilized by economic globalization and that we are seeing the elements of a process of denationalization of national territory, though in a highly specialized institutional and functional way. Further, the particular combination of power and legitimacy we call sovereignty, which has over the last century become almost synonymous with the national state, is today being partly unbundled, redistributed onto other entities, particularly supranational organizations, international agreements on human rights, and the new emergent private international legal regime for business transactions (Ibid,). With all of this happening, what does it mean to assert, as is repeatedly done in the immigration literature, that the state has exclusive authority over the entry of non-nationals? Is the character of that exclusive authority today the same as it was before the current phase of globalization and the ascendance of human rights as a nonstate-centered form of legitimate power?(1) My analysis focuses largely on immigration in the highly developed receiving countries. I use the notion of immigration policy rather broadly to refer to a wide range of distinct national policies. I should note that it is often difficult to distinguish immigrants and refugees. Yet there is (still) a separate regime for refugees in all these countries. Indeed, there is an international regime for refugees, something that can hardly be said for immigration. The focus in this brief essay is on the constraints faced by the state in highly developed countries in the making of immigration policy today.(2) The Border and the Individual as Regulatory Sites In my reading there is a fundamental framework that roots all the country-specific immigration policies of the developed world in a common set of conceptions about the role of the state and of national borders. The purpose here is not to minimize the many differences in national policies, but to underline the growing convergence in various aspects of immigration policy and practice.(3) First, the sovereignty of the state and border control, whether land borders, airports, or consulates in sending countries, lie at the heart of the regulatory effort. Second, immigration policy is shaped by an understanding of immigration as the consequence of the individual actions of emigrants; the receiving country is taken as a passive agent, one not implicated in the process of emigration. In refugee policy, in contrast, there is a recognition of other factors, beyond the control of individuals, as leading to outflows.(4) Two fundamental traits of immigration policy are, then, that it singles out the border and the individual as the sites for regulatory enforcement. The sovereignty of the state when it comes to power over entry is well established by treaty law and constitutionally. …


The nationalisation of party systems is a topic closely related to processes of party system institutionalisation, an area that has developed its own literature and dimensions of analysis. Institutionalisation is understood to comprise four main dimensions: the growth of stability in the rules and nature of inter-party competition, the development of stable roots in society that help ensure a measure of regularity in how people vote, the acquisition of legitimacy by parties and the electoral process, and the establishment of party organisation that have an independent status and some value in their own right. The idea of party system institutionalisation was first presented by S. Mainwaring and T. Scully in 1995 and has been developed in a range of other publications, mostly by Mainwaring with a number of different contributors. It was first developed in a Latin American context but has an obvious relevance to developments in other newly democratising countries. In terms of outcomes, party system institutionalisation is understood to have a strong impact on the quality of democracy and to reduce tendencies to clientelism, political populism and the growth of anti-politics sentiments, and to foster mechanisms of democratic accountability and effective policy formulation. Over the years, a substantial literature on the process of party system institutionalisation has been produced and, in recent years, a growing proportion of this has concerned systems in Central and Eastern Europe. This paper will, firstly, survey and evaluate some of the most recent literature with a view to establishing what light it sheds on the process in East-Central Europe and, secondly, identify and assess the key data that enable any judgement to be made on the course of this process in the region and to identify the contributions in this area of various data-bases relating to party politics.


In this study a statistical attack against fuzzy commitment schemes is presented. Comparisons of different pairs of binary biometric feature vectors yield binomial distributions, the standard deviations of which are bounded by the entropy of biometric templates. In case error correction consists of a series of chunks, like in the vast majority of approaches, helper data become vulnerable to statistical attacks. Error-correction codewords are bound to separate parts of a binary template among which biometric entropy is dispersed. As a consequence, chunks of the helper data are prone to statistical significant false acceptance. In experimental evaluations the proposed attack is applied to different iris-biometric fuzzy commitment schemes retrieving cryptographic keys at alarming low effort.


A thin film of polymethylmetacrylate (PMMA) acting as a buffer layer has been employed in order to fabricate high-quality pentacene thin-film transistors (TFTs), both in bottom contact and top contact configuration. A PMMA buffer layer allows to reduce the interaction between a π-conjugated system of pentacene and the metal or dielectric substrate. We show that a thin PMMA buffer layer improves crystal quality along the metal contacts' boundaries, while still allowing good ohmic contact. Pentacene TFTs, including a PMMA buffer layer, show very high field-effect mobility, μFE=0.65 and 1.4cm2∕Vs, for bottom and top contact configuration, respectively, and remarkable steep subthreshold region.


Inspired by the collective behavior observed in natural insects, swarm robotics is a new approach in designing control algorithms for a large group of robots performing a certain task. In such robotic systems, an individual robot with only limited capabilities in terms of sensing, computation, and communication can adapt its own behavior so that a desired collective behavior emerges from the local interactions among robots and between robots and the environment. Swarm robotics has been the focus of increased attention recently because of the benefi cial features demonstrated in such systems, such as higher group efficiency, robustness against the failures of individual robots, flexibility to adapt to changes in the environment, and scalability over a wide range of group sizes. In this article we present an adaptive algorithm to regulate the behavior of an individual robot performing collective foraging tasks. Through the interactions between robots, a desired division of labor can be achieved at the group level. Robot groups also demonstrate the ability to improve energy effici ency and its potential robustness in different environments.


Abstract Process philosophy has drawn attention to the world as ambiguous and ever changing, however also enactable. This makes entrepreneurship a processual phenomenon, rightly addressed as 'entrepreneuring'. Recognizing not only their cognitive, yet also affective and conative capabilities, makes it possible for human actors to mobilize forces that bring the world to a standstill long enough to create a venture for value creation. This, however, calls for the insight that is different to universal scientific knowledge – episteme and techne – namely, the situated insights that Aristotle addressed as mētis and phronesis. Mētis then concerns alertness and shrewdness and phronesis is about prudence in the context of action. Academic education can only provide these competencies needed to train for entrepreneuring by letting the students travelling across the boundaries of the university. In addition, the dominance of management as an ideology must be proactively dealt with. Three cases in academic training for entrepreneuring, all in the Swedish context, which show radically different ways of dealing with these challenges, are presented in a comparative analysis. The lessons are summarized in general conditions for providing training that advances entrepreneurship students' situated and actionable insights.


Objective: To test "Stops walking when talking" (SWWT) as a predictor of falls among people with stroke living in the community. Methods: People with stroke were identified through hospital records. Mobility, ADL (activites of daily living) ability, mental state, mood, and SWWT were assessed in a single session. Participants were followed prospectively for six months, using falls diaries and regular telephone calls. Results: Sixty three participants (36 men, 27 women; mean (SD) age 68.4 (10.6)) were recruited. Four subjects had a brainstem lesion, 30 had right hemisphere, and 29 left hemisphere infarctions. Mean time since onset of stroke was 20 months (range 2–72). Twenty six subjects stopped walking when a conversation was started and 16 of them fell during the six month follow up period (11 experienced repeated falls). For all fallers (⩾1) the positive predictive value of SWWT was 62% (16/26), the negative predictive value 62% (23/37), specificity 70% (23/33) and sensitivity 53% (16/30). For repeat fallers (⩾2) the positive predictive value of SWWT was 42% (11/26), the negative predictive value 89% (33/37), specificity 69% (33/48) and sensitivity 73% (11/15). Those who stopped walking were significantly more disabled (p<0.001)—that is, they were more dependent in activities of daily living, had worse gross function as well as worse upper and lower limb function, and had depression (p = 0.012). Conclusions: The specificity of the SWWT test was lower but sensitivity was higher than previously reported. Although the SWWT test was easy to use, its clinical usefulness as a single indicator of fall risk in identifying those community dwelling people with stroke most at risk of falls and in need of therapeutic intervention is questionable.


Accommodation and lodging are an integral component of the tourism and hospitality industry. Given the sectors' growing contribution to resource consumption and waste, there is a growing body of literature on the attitudes, behaviours and practices of consumers, managers, staff and owners of lodging with respect to sustainability. This paper presents the results of a systematic analysis of articles on attitudes, behaviours and practices of consumers and the provision of accommodation with respect to sustainability. The results indicate that there is a dearth of longitudinal studies on the sustainability of practices and behaviours. There are limitations in geographical coverage as well as methods, with research dominated by convenience sampling approaches. It is concluded that while there appear to be improvements in the potential sustainability of lodging with respect to technological approaches, the lack of systematic long-term studies on behavioural interventions represents a significant challenge to reducing the absolute emissions of the sector as well as reductions in energy and water use and waste production. Given the lack of longitudinal studies, it is not known whether observed behavioural changes are sustained over time.


Sedimentation rates in the western Philippine Sea have been determined on three piston cores using the excess (superscript 230)Th method. In the deep basin, the sedimentation rates as determined from two cores are 5.3 and 6.8 mm ka^(-1) at least for the past 70,000 years. Immediately before that time, a disturbed zone which is recognized at one station appears to have coincided with the onset of the last glaciation. Dating back further, the data suggest a higher sedimentation rate of 17.4mm ka^(-1). However, the data are by no means unambiguous; another interpretation suggests a slower rate (10.6mm ka(-1)) between yet another disturbed zone at greater depth and the one just mentioned.
In the southwestern end of the Ryukyu Trench, the excess (superscript 230)Th activities are too low to allow a meaningful treatment with this method. The sedimentation rate is expected to be high due to the geologic environment of the trench. A value of about 13mm ka(-1) with a large uncertainty is obtained when the method is attempted. These sedimentation rates are quite consistent with those obtained in the Philippine Sea by earlier workers.


The kinematics of the Milky Way disc as a function of age are well measured at the solar radius, but have not been studied over a wider range of Galactocentric radii. Here, we measure the kinematics of mono-age, mono-[Fe/H] populations in the low and high [α/Fe] discs between 4 ≲ R ≲ 13 kpc and |z| ≲ 2 kpc using 65 719 stars in common between APOGEE DR14 and Gaia DR2 for which we estimate ages using a Bayesian neural network model trained on asteroseismic ages. We determine the vertical and radial velocity dispersions, finding that the low and high [α/Fe] discs display markedly different age–velocity dispersion relations (AVRs) and shapes σz/σR. The high [α/Fe] disc has roughly flat AVRs and constant σz/σR = 0.64 ± 0.04, whereas the low [α/Fe] disc has large variations in this ratio that positively correlate with the mean orbital radius of the population at fixed age. The high [α/Fe] disc component's flat AVRs and constant σz/σR clearly indicate an entirely different heating history. Outer disc populations also have flatter radial AVRs than those in the inner disc, likely due to the waning effect of spiral arms. Our detailed measurements of AVRs and σz/σR across the disc indicate that low [α/Fe], inner disc ($R \lesssim 10\, \mathrm{kpc}$) stellar populations are likely dynamically heated by both giant molecular clouds and spiral arms, while the observed trends for outer disc populations require a significant contribution from another heating mechanism such as satellite perturbations. We also find that outer disc populations have slightly positive mean vertical and radial velocities likely because they are part of the warped disc.


Since 2000 the cooperation between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states has been governed through the Cotonou Partnership Agreement. This article complements existing research that focuses on Brussels-based stakeholders with an analysis drawing on the existing literature and on stakeholders' perceptions of ACP–EU cooperation and ACP institutions gathered via interviews in nine ACP countries. The findings presented observe a social disconnect between, on the one hand, the Cotonou Partnership Agreement's institutions and Brussels-based representatives, and, on the other hand, the broad-based and multistakeholder partnership they are tasked to promote. The article points to low levels of support in ACP countries, particularly in Africa, to continued ACP–EU cooperation in its present form, and stresses the need for an open and participatory process of reviewing and reshaping ACP–EU relations.


Objects in visual scenes come in a rich variety of transformed states. A few classes of transformation have been heavily studied in computer vision: mostly simple, parametric changes in color and geometry. However, transformations in the physical world occur in many more flavors, and they come with semantic meaning: e.g., bending, folding, aging, etc. The transformations an object can undergo tell us about its physical and functional properties. In this paper, we introduce a dataset of objects, scenes, and materials, each of which is found in a variety of transformed states. Given a novel collection of images, we show how to explain the collection in terms of the states and transformations it depicts. Our system works by generalizing across object classes: states and transformations learned on one set of objects are used to interpret the image collection for an entirely new object class.


The literature review described in this report is part of a larger research project to assess STU performance with respect to treatment of important wastewater constituents. The overall goal of the project is to provide a toolkit and tool-use protocol that is easy to implement and available to a wide range of users to assess STU performance. This literature review is not a preview of tools that we will develop and propose, but rather an analysis of the information and data and the literature, to help guide our tool development. All tools developed will be based on rigorous experimental data and quantitative models verified with field data from operating systems. In some cases, more sophisticated tools (e.g., complex mathematical models) may be warranted depending on the relative complexity of the problem and the relative risk associated with a poor design. This literature review focused on STU performance, key conditions or factors potentially affecting STU performance, and the current best practices for using models and other available tools to predict expected STU performance. The information gained during this literature review will guide the future direction of the project. Constituents of interest include nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), microbial pollutants, and emerging organic wastewater contaminants (OWCs).

Based on this literature review, it is clear that due to the variability of data collected at field sites, simple binary relationships (e.g., C/Co versus depth for various soil types) for statistical predictions of the attenuation of N, P, microorganisms or OWCs cannot be justified. Specific to N, hydraulic loading rate appears to be more important than soil texture or soil depth within the first 30-60 cm, although both soil depth and texture remain important variables. Most of the reported results related to the interaction of P with soil appear to be from laboratory batch tests. Similarly, field-scale evaluations of pathogen removal are limited. Finally, most of the existing OWC work has focused on the occurrence and concentrations of selected compounds in streams, lakes, and groundwater impacted by wastewater treatment plant effluents.

Currently very few models have been developed for movement and treatment processes of N or P in OWTS. However, adapting the CW2D model for STUs that will predict the effect of different soil types (texture, structure, and drainage class) appears promising. CW2D is a module of the well known HYDRUS model designed to simulate nitrogen treatment in a sand filter. This model incorporates most of the features one might consider, including a comprehensive treatment of microbial growth, the impact of oxygen mass transfer on nitrogen transformation, and variable rates of denitrification due to changes in dissolved oxygen concentrations, dissolved organic matter, and microbial growth. The review of existing models demonstrates that simulation of microbial characteristics in OWTS is still largely uncharted territory.

This title belongs to WERF Research Report Series .

ISBN: 9781843393580 (Print)

ISBN: 9781780403564 (eBook)


The primary tool for predicting infectious disease spread and intervention effectiveness is the mass action susceptible–infected–recovered model of Kermack & McKendrick. Its usefulness derives largely from its conceptual and mathematical simplicity; however, it incorrectly assumes that all individuals have the same contact rate and partnerships are fleeting. In this study, we introduce edge-based compartmental modelling, a technique eliminating these assumptions. We derive simple ordinary differential equation models capturing social heterogeneity (heterogeneous contact rates) while explicitly considering the impact of partnership duration. We introduce a graphical interpretation allowing for easy derivation and communication of the model and focus on applying the technique under different assumptions about how contact rates are distributed and how long partnerships last.


This paper presents an analysis of transit accessibility to employment for 11 African cities. The use of identical methodologies and similar data sets allows for the creation of the first benchmark to compare accessibility across urban areas in Africa through different metrics and visuals. The study shows how the spatial pattern of land use and transport systems perform in connecting people to employment opportunities in these various settings. This first comparable benchmark is achieved by overcoming two significant data hurdles that are common in many developing country cities and in Africa in particular: (i) the scarcity of information on the distribution of employment and (ii) the lack of information on transit routes and travel times. These data gaps are filled through a novel methodology to estimate the distribution of employment in urban areas (Employment Opportunity Areas) as well as a comprehensive mapping of informal transit networks. The analysis developed here can be replicated in different cities in the future. The computation of these baseline accessibility studies also opens up the possibility to assess the impacts of future transport investments and/or land use changes, through the use of counterfactual scenarios, which could assist decision makers in these cities. Finally, this analysis can serve as a demonstration that the computation of accessibility metrics is achievable, including in data scarce environments, and should be considered as a progress indicator for Sustainable Development Goal 11.2, which focuses on safe and affordable transport for all, including public transport.


'One of the most remarkable artists of our age' - Mario Vargas Llosa. "The Book of Sand" was the last of Borges' major collections to be published. The stories are, in his words, 'variations on favourite themes...combining a plain and at times almost colloquial style with a fantastic plot'. It includes such marvellous tales as "The Congress", "Undr" and "The Mirror and the Mask". Also included are the handful of stories written right at the end of Borges' life - "August 25, 1983", "Blue Tigers", "The Rose of Paracelsus" and "Shakespeare's Memory".


Over the last few years, exploit kits (EKs) have become the de facto medium for large-scale spread of malware. Drive-by download is the leading method that is widely used by EK flavors to exploit web-based client-side vulnerabilities. Their principal goal is to infect the victim's system with a malware. In addition, EK families evolve quickly, where they port zero-day exploits for brand new vulnerabilities that were never seen before and for which no patch exists. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for categorizing malware infection incidents conducted through EKs by leveraging the inherent "overall URL patterns" in the HTTP traffic chain. The proposed approach is based on the key finding that EKs infect victim systems using a specially designed chain, where EKs lead the web browser to download a malicious payload by issuing several HTTP requests to more than one malicious domain addresses. This practice in use enables the development of a system that is capable of clustering the responsible EK instances. The method has been evaluated with a popular and publicly available dataset that contains 240 different real-world infection cases involving over 2250 URLs, the incidents being linked with the 4 major EK flavors that occurred throughout the year 2016. The system achieves up to 93.7% clustering accuracy with the estimators experimented.


Lu et al. uncovered a role for a netrin UNC-5 receptor, a member of a protein family associated with development of the nervous system, in vascular morphogenesis. Like the nervous system, the circulatory system consists of an intricate network that is found throughout the body. Thus, it is perhaps not surprising that, during blood vessel development, the endothelial tip cells that lead the way to appropriate targets extend filopodia, just as neuronal growth cones do, and respond to many of the same attractive and repellant molecules. Netrins act through two families of receptors, with the deleted in colorectal cancer (DCC) family mediating attractive interactions and the UNC-5 family mediating repulsive interactions. Lu et al. used in situ hybridization as well as a reporter engineered into the Unc5b locus to show that Unc5b, which has had no clear role in mammals, was selectively expressed in the vasculature of embryonic and postnatal mice. More specifically, Unc5b was localized to arterial cells, some capillary endothelial cells, and endothelial tip cells. Unc5b inactivation in mice--or Unc5b or netrin1a knockdown in zebrafish--promoted increased branching of the vasculature, impaired pathfinding, and abnormal endothelial tip cell filopodial extension. In contrast, exposure to netrin-1 inhibited the in vitro migration of primary human umbilical artery endothelial cells (which strongly expressed UNC5B) but not of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (which showed less UNC5B expression). Further, netrin-1 stimulated the retraction of endothelial cell filopodia, an effect that depended on Unc5b expression. Thus, the authors propose that netrin-1, acting through UNC5B, inhibits branching in the developing--and perhaps the adult--vascular system. X. Lu, F. le Noble, L. Yuan, Q. Jiang, B. de LaFarge, D. Sugiyama, C. Bréant, F. Claes, F. de Smet, J.-L. Thomas, M. Autiero, P. Carmeliet, M. Tessier-Lavigne, A. Eichmann, The netrin receptor UNC5B mediates guidance events controlling morphogenesis of the vascular system. Nature 432, 179-186 (2004). [Online Journal]


Due to the limited amount of funding available for maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement of aging Corps structures, the director of civil works, Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (HQUSACE) requested a regional assessment of future modernization needs in 1989. In 1990, the Inland Waterways User's Group began formulating this information into an economic traffic-based national evaluation model. As work on this model progressed, the user's group realized that a structure's condition should also be considered. A multidisciplinary team was assembled by the structures branch of the engineering division at HQUSACE to determine the feasibility of modeling a structure's condition. This team established the basis of a methodology for a reliability-based engineering assessment model for Corps structures. Output from the formulated procedure is now required as input into a risk-based economic model that is used to assess Corps structures under consideration for major rehabilitation.


This paper presents a number of problems that occur when applying the Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement (GUM) to modern instruments. These instruments are often automatic, which makes it complicated to evaluate the uncertainty components in each measurement step because it is difficult to control and analyze them. Many of these instruments try to quantify instrument-specific parameters, which are difficult to compare with others that have the same dimension but are measured using other techniques. Often, these parameters lack traceable calibration, which may result in a large uncertainty component. This paper also considers the human aspect of the measurement process


In this study, we develop and demonstrate an efficient self-consistent calculation schema that computes the electronic structure and optical properties of a single exciton in a spherical quantum dot QD with an interacting pair of electron and hole wave functions. To observe modifications on bands, wave functions, and energies due to the attractive Coulomb potential, the full numeric matrix diagonalization technique is employed to determine sublevel energy eigenvalues and their wave functions in effective mass approximation. This treatment allows to observe that the conduction and valance band edges bend, that the electron and hole wave functions strongly localize in the QD, and that the excitonic energy level exhibits redshift. In our approach for the Coulomb term between electron and hole, the Poisson‐Schrodinger equations are solved self-consistently in the Hartree approximation. Subsequently, exciton binding energies and associated optical properties are computed. The results are presented as a function of QD radii and photon energies. We conclude that all of these numerical results are in agreement with the experimental studies. © 2009 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.3197034


The decades' long relationship between the European Union and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has gone through different stages and phases in response to regional events, developments in the EU and broader global geopolitical trends. While navigating through often troubled waters, the EU has fallen prey to three main false dilemmas or perceived dichotomies regarding its role in the region. These dilemmas have taken on a life of their own and have impinged on the EU's ability to realize its full potential. As such, the promotion of democracy has been perceived in opposition to the stability and security of the MENA countries and ultimately of the EU; the need to cooperate with the MENA governments has come at the expense of true engagement with their societies; and multilateralism and bilateralism have often been portrayed and pursued not as complementary but as alternative choices.


PURPOSE
The potential association between androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) and cardiovascular mortality (CVM) remains controversial. This study assessed mortality outcomes in a large national registry to further elucidate the association between treatment selection and cause of mortality.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
A total of 7,248 men in the CaPSURE registry were analyzed. Treatment was categorized as local only, primary ADT monotherapy, local treatment plus ADT, and watchful waiting/active surveillance (WW/AS). Competing hazards survival analysis was performed for prostate cancer-specific mortality (PCSM), CVM, and all-cause mortality. A propensity score-adjusted and a propensity-matched analysis were undertaken to adjust for imbalances in covariates among men receiving various treatments.

RESULTS
Patients treated with ADT or WW/AS had a higher likelihood of PCSM than those treated with local therapy alone. Patients treated with primary ADT had an almost two-fold greater likelihood of CVM (HR, 1.94; 95% CI, 1.29 to 2.97) than those treated with local therapy alone; however, patients treated with WW/AS had a greater than two-fold increased risk of CVM (HR, 2.46; 95% CI, 1.53 to 3.95). A propensity-matching algorithm in a subset of 1,391 patients was unable to find a significant difference in CVM between those who did or did not receive ADT.

CONCLUSION
Patients matched on propensity to receive ADT did not show an association between ADT and CVM. This suggests that potential unmeasured variables affecting treatment selection may confound the relationship between ADT use and cardiovascular risk. However, an association may yet exist, because the propensity score could not include all known risk factors for CVM.


Ocean currents play an important role in the movement and distribution of organisms and for small animals it is often assumed that their movements in the ocean are determined by passive drift. Here we challenge this assumption by conducting an experiment at the scale of an entire ocean basin to test whether small (∼35 cm) juvenile loggerhead sea turtles Caretta caretta move independently of ocean currents. By comparing the trajectories of 46 satellite tracked turtles (11502 positions, 12850 tracking days) with Lagrangian drifters (3716303 positions, 927529 tracking days) and virtual particles tracked within the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM), we found that in certain areas turtles moved in a similar manner to ocean currents, but in other areas turtle movement was markedly different from ocean currents, with turtles moving to areas thousands of kilometres from where they would have drifted passively. We further found that turtles were distributed in more-productive areas than would be expected if their movement depended on passive transport only. These findings demonstrate that regional variation in directional swimming contributes to young sea turtles reaching more favourable developmental habitats and supports laboratory work suggesting that young turtles have a map sense to determine their location in a seemingly featureless ocean.


Abstract The mobile communication technology is fast gaining enormous popularity offering a wide range of capabilities for distant communication, which forms the basis of its use in all facets of human activities. This work uses the mobile programming technology provided by JAVA to design and simulate an instant message exchanger and language mapping that allows patients to reach out to physicians and have access to health care services. A working model for a mobile chat application using various components such as mobile client terminal, the Internet and server was developed. The model was simulated using JAVA 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) and the JAVA 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE). The tool developed in this work has been tested and usability assessment conducted among medical practitioners and a number of clients. Result shows that the solution will be useful in providing health care services to semi-literates (those who cannot communicate in official language) without a physical contact with the doctors, in a rural setting. Ethical and legal modalities are being worked out for national usage of this solution.


AbstractThe study of the reproductive biology of House Martins Delichon urbica was carried out in the cities of Guelma and Hammam Debagh, Northeast Algeria during two years 2013 and 2014. Birds of this species produce two broods per year and per breeding pair. At both study sites, the egg-laying period lasted for almost four months. Egg weight and volume differed between broods and years. The mean clutch size was 3.87 ± 1.29, 4.19 ± 1.02 in Guelma and 3.93 ± 1.13, 3.64 ± 1.30 in Hammam in 2013 and 2014, respectively, with a seasonal decline. Hatching success reached 69 and 74.25% in Guelma, and 74.20 and 63.39% in Hammam in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Fledging success was 64.57 and 72.62% in Guelma, whereas, in Hammam it was 72.22 and 58.16% in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Hatching failure was the main cause of mortality. The breeding parameters and morphometrics of the House Martin's eggs in Algeria determined during our study differed from those reported in previous studies carried out in different par...


Diabetic wounds are a popular health problem affecting 15% of diabetic individuals. Traditional treatment depends on understanding the relationship between diabetes and wound healing mechanisms. Recent studies tend to use natural products that possess active components for treatments. Luteolin is the most common flavonoids found in many medicinal plants. The study has also highlighted the recent advances in the therapeutic effect of luteolin, particularly, on diabetic wounds healing. Luteolin has demonstrated its anti-inflammatory effect through its impact on fibroblast cell proliferation and migration. Further studies are highly recommended to focus on luteolin as an antiinflammatory agent in human diabetic wounds healing.


We review error resilience techniques for real-time video transport over unreliable networks. Topics covered include an introduction to today's protocol and network environments and their characteristics, encoder error resilience tools, decoder error concealment techniques, as well as techniques that require cooperation between encoder, decoder, and the network. We provide a review of general principles of these techniques as well as specific implementations adopted by the H.263 and MPEG-4 video coding standards. The majority of the article is devoted to the techniques developed for block-based hybrid coders using motion-compensated prediction and transform coding. A separate section covers error resilience techniques for shape coding in MPEG-4.


We describe the use of a range of modern spectroscopic techniques—from terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz- TDS) to high dynamic-range femtosecond optical Kerr-effect (OKE) spectroscopy—to study the interaction of proteins, peptides, and other biomolecules with the aqueous solvent. Chemical reactivity in proteins requires fast picosecond fluctuations to reach the transition state, to dissipate energy, and (possibly) to reduce the width and height of energy barriers along the reaction coordinate. Such motions are linked with the structure and dynamics of the aqueous solvent making hydration critical to function. These dynamics take place over a huge range of timescales: from the nanosecond timescale of diffusion of water molecules in the first solvation shell of proteins, picosecond motions of amino-acid side chains, and sub-picosecond librational and phonon-like motions of water. It is shown that a large range of frequencies from MHz to THz is accessible directly using OKE resulting in the reduced anisotropic Raman spectrum and by using a combination of techniques including THz-TDS resulting in the dielectric spectrum. Using these techniques, we can now observe very significant differences in the spectra of proteins in aqueous solvent in the 3-30 THz range and more subtle differences at lower frequencies (10 GHz-3 THz).


Purpose of reviewSome of the 20% of myasthenia gravis patients who do not have antibodies to acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) have antibodies to muscle specific kinase (MuSK), but a full understanding of their frequency, the associated clinical phenotype and the mechanisms of action of the antibodies has not yet been achieved. Moreover, some patients do not respond well to conventional corticosteroid therapy. Here we review recent clinical and experimental studies on MuSK antibody associated myasthenia gravis, and summarize the results of newer treatments for myasthenia gravis. Recent findingsMuSK antibodies are found in a variable proportion of AChR antibody negative myasthenia gravis patients who are often, but not exclusively, young adult females, with bulbar, neck, or respiratory muscle weakness. The thymus histology is normal or only very mildly abnormal. Surprisingly, limb or intercostal muscle biopsies exhibit no reduction in AChR numbers or complement deposition. However, patients without AChR or MuSK antibodies appear to be similar to those with AChR antibodies and may have low-affinity AChR antibodies. A variety of treatments, often intended to enable corticosteroid doses to be reduced, have been used in all types of myasthenia gravis with some success, but they have not been subjected to randomized clinical trials. SummaryMuSK antibodies define a form of myasthenia gravis that can be difficult to diagnose, can be life threatening and may require additional treatments. An improved AChR antibody assay may be helpful in patients without AChR or MuSK antibodies. Clinical trials of drugs in other neuroimmunological diseases may help to guide the treatment of myasthenia gravis.


The cause of the changes in wing pitch at stroke reversal in Diptera has been investigated. The high compliance of the wing base makes it seem unlikely that pitch changes are caused by active torsion at the wing articulation. The centre of mass of insect wings tends to be behind the centre of torsion of the wing, and it is proposed that wing inertia about the torsional axis alone is responsible for pitch changes as the wing is accelerated at stroke reversal. A simplified inertial model is developed to calculate the angular velocity about the torsional axis that would be caused by wing inertia. The mass distribution and the torsional axis of the wings of two species of flies was found and it was shown that in these animals inertial causesalone could develop the angular velocity in the pitching plane that is observed at stroke reversal. Analysis of the movement of individual regions of the wing shows further that inertial effects will produce the tip to base 'torsion wave' seen inthe wing at stroke reversal.


Struggles over the single-seat preferential election method IRV, Instant Runoff Voting, (a.k.a. AV, Alternative Vote or RCV, Ranked-Choice Voting) go on in many arenas: legislatures, courts, websites, and scholarly journals. Monotonicity failures, i.e. elections (preference distributions) that may allow the startling tactical voting of Pushover or its reverse, has come to the forefront. An analysis of 3-candidate elections concludes that monotonicity failures, while not rare, are hard to predict and risky to exploit; it also explains the scarcity of evidence for effects on election results. A more unfortunate possibility is the No-Show accident; the number of ballots with preference order XYZ grows beyond a critical size and cause Z to win instead of Y. An analysis concludes that this must happen often enough to justify a modification of the rules. Pictograms and constellation diagrams are visualization tools that organize the set of possible elections efficiently for the analysis, which obtains explicit classification of elections where Pushover or a No-Show accident may occur or may already have occurred, and of bounds for the number of voters that must be involved. The analysis takes place in close contact with two frameworks for preferential election methods, one mathematical and one legal/political; these frameworks are themes for two survey sections.


Background Enhancing evidence-based practice and improving locally driven research begins with fostering the research skills of undergraduate students in the medical and health sciences. Research as a core component of undergraduate curricula can be facilitated or constrained by various programmatic and institutional factors, including that of choice. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) provides a framework for understanding the influence of choice on student motivation to engage in research. Aim This study aimed to document the enablers and constraints of undergraduate research at a South African Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS) and to explore how the presence or absence of choice influenced students' engagement with research in this context. Methods An exploratory descriptive design was adopted. Undergraduate students who had conducted research and undergraduate programme staff were recruited through purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed. Findings were interpreted using SDT, focusing on how choice at various levels affects motivation and influences research experiences. Results Many of the programmatic and institutional enablers and constraints–such as time and supervisory availability–were consistent with those previously identified in the literature, regardless of whether research was compulsory or elective. Choice itself seemed to operate as both an enabler and a constraint, highlighting the complexity of choice as an influence on student motivation. SDT provided insight into how programmatic and institutional factors–and in particular choice–supported or suppressed students' needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, thereby influencing their motivation to engage in research. Conclusion While programmatic and institutional factors may enable or constrain undergraduate research, individual-level factors such as the influence of choice on students' motivation play a critical role. The implication for curriculum development is that research engagement might be enhanced if levels of choice are structured into the curriculum such that students' needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are met.