Why doesn't a woman who continues to have unwanted pregnancies avail herself of the free contraception at a nearby clinic? What keeps people from using free chlorine tablets to purify their drinking water? Behavioral economics has shown us that we don't always act in our own best interests. This is as true of health decisions as it is of economic ones. An array of biases, limits on cognition, and motivations leads people all over the world to make suboptimal health choices. The good news is that human nature can also be a source of solutions. Through her studies in Zambia exploring the reasons for unwanted pregnancies and the incentives that would motivate hairdressers to sell condoms to their clients, the author has found that designing effective health programs requires more than providing accessible, affordable care; it requires understanding what makes both end users and providers tick. By understanding the cognitive processes underlying our choices and applying the tools of behavioral economics--such as commitment devices, material incentives, defaults, and tools that tap our desire to help others--it's possible to design simple, inexpensive programs that encourage good health decisions and long-term behavior change.


Dynamic brittle fragmentation is typically described using analytical and computational approaches for tensile stress-states. However, most fragmentation applications (e.g., impact, blast) involve very large initial compressive stresses and deformations. In this study, the compressive fragmentation of brittle materials is investigated experimentally across a range of materials: silicon carbide, boron carbide, spinel, basalt and a stony meteorite. Analysis of our experimental results suggests that there exists two different regimes in the fragment size distributions, based on two brittle fragmentation mechanisms. The first is a mechanism that produces larger fragments and is associated with the structural failure of the sample being tested. This mechanism is influenced by the loading conditions (rate, stress state) and sample geometry. The second fragmentation mechanism produces comparatively smaller fragments and arises from the coalescence of fractures initiating and coalescence between defects in regions of large stresses and contact forces (e.g., between two fractured surfaces from the larger fragments). A framework is developed for comparing experimental compressive fragmentation results with tensile fragmentation theories. The compressive experimental results are shown to be adequately described by the theories using the new framework.


This paper extends three decades of work arguing that instead of focusing only on (adult) human minds, we should study many kinds of minds, natural and artificial, and try to understand the space containing all of them, by studying what they do, how they do it, and how the natural ones can be emulated in synthetic minds. That requires: (a) understanding sets of requirements that are met by different sorts of minds, i.e. the niches that they occupy, (b) understanding the space of possible designs, and (c) understanding the complex and varied relationships between requirements and designs. Attempts to model or explain any particular phenomenon, such as vision, emotion, learning, language use, or consciousness lead to muddle and confusion unless they are placed in that broader context. in part because current ontologies for specifying and comparing designs are inconsistent and inadequate. A methodology for making progress is summarised and a novel requirement proposed for human-like philosophical robots, namely that a single generic design, in addition to meeting many other more familiar requirements, should be capable of developing different and opposed viewpoints regarding philosophical questions about consciousness, and the socalled hard problem. No designs proposed so far come close.


Conversational modeling is an important task in natural language processing as well as machine learning. Like most important tasks, it's not easy. Previously, conversational models have been focused on specific domains, such as booking hotels or recommending restaurants. They were built using hand-crafted rules, like ChatScript [11], a popular rule-based conversational model. In 2014, the sequence to sequence model being used for translation opened the possibility of phrasing dialogues as a translation problem: translating from an utterance to its response. The systems built using this principle, while conversing fairly fluently, aren't very convincing because of their lack of personality and inconsistent persona [10] [5]. In this paper, we experiment building open-domain response generator with personality and identity. We built chatbots that imitate characters in popular TV shows: Barney from How I Met Your Mother, Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, Michael from The Office, and Joey from Friends. A successful model of this kind can have a lot of applications, such as allowing people to speak with their favorite celebrities, creating more life-like AI assistants, or creating virtual alter-egos of ourselves. The model was trained end-to-end without any hand-crafted rules. The bots talk reasonably fluently, have distinct personalities, and seem to have learned certain aspects of their identity. The results of standard automated translation model evaluations yielded very low scores. However, we designed an evaluation metric with a human judgment element, for which the chatbots performed well. We are able to show that for a bot's response, a human is more than 50% likely to believe that the response actually came from the real character. Keywords—Seq2seq, attentional mechanism, chatbot, dialogue system.


Atrazine is the most commonly used herbicide in the United States, with 80 million pounds applied annually, making it the most common contaminant of ground and surface water nationwide . It has been shown to act as a potent endocrine disrupter in amphibians, causing altered somatic and gonadal development in the ecologically relevant part per billion range; as a result, it has been hypothesized that atrazine may be a major factor behind amphibian declines. However, responses of different species to the chemical vary widely, and have made predicting susceptibility difficult. Recently, it has been shown that life history can serve as a strong predictor of vulnerability, as the speed of somatic development and the timing of gonadal differentiation may determine the effects of exposure . However, previous studies leading to these conclusions have examined atrazine under stable laboratory conditions, although it is widely accepted that chemical contaminants can interact synergistically with natural stressors in the wild, producing exaggerated effects. To test whether more stressful conditions alter the effects of atrazine with respect to existing data, we raised Bufo american us tadpoles under more stressful conditions, including a high larval density and simulated pond drying, and exposure to ecologically relevant doses of atrazine (0, 0.1, 1, 25 ppb) . We measured markers of somatic development (mass, time, survival at metamorphosis) and gonadal differentiation (ovarian stage in females, presence of testicular oocytes in males) . Our results do not suggest that stressful conditions worsen the effects of atrazine, as only mass at metamorphosis was affected by exposure. Our results are interesting, however, in that they support the hypothesis that atrazine displays a non-monotonic dose-response curve, with very low concentrations (0.1, 1 ppb) producing the most severe effects, an important implication for any conservation policy regarding the chemical.


Al-Si 11.8 wt% alloy which classified to eutectic Al-Si composition usually used to produce a flat casting product with high pressure die casting process. Alloying element become an important things to determine behavior and characteristic of aluminum. Copper added into aluminum to improve strength and hardness, but there has no many studies on the effect of copper on fluidity. This fluidity study is using vacuum suction test method and the microstructure is observed with SEM/EDS. Spectrometer test has been used to find out chemical composition of sample. The result of this study shows that with copper addition from 2.25 wt% to 3.11 wt%, the fluidity value has increased 24.11% on 680oC pouring temperature. On 3.11 wt% copper composition, fluidity value has increased 14.38% from 640oC pouring temperature to 700oC pouring temperature.


The aim of this book is to provide an evidence-based guide to the management of patellofemoral pain. We envisage this book being used in real world clinical settings to help practitioners manage their patients rather than being used exclusively by students in university libraries. The book draws from the collective experiences of a number of world leading researchers/doctors who have written and published extensively on different aspects of the research as well as clinical management of patients suffering from patellofemoral pain. Although biomechanics has historically been important in developing our understanding of this condition, it does not provide a holistic understanding of the condition, nor does it provide a singular successful management approach to this notoriously difficult, complex and sometimes very recalcitrant condition. The authors have carefully reviewed the evidence and a number of important psychosocial factors are presented, which may help clinicians design appropriate management strategies for their patients.
The book is presented in two sections: Section One covers the assessment process and looks at how you interact with your patients when they first walk through the clinic door, seeking help for their patellofemoral pain. Section Two covers the management and treatment processes, and includes a chapter on appropriate imaging. (Imprint: Nova Biomedical)


The authors use the COVID-19 crisis as an example to highlight two dimensions of beta instability that have been largely overlooked: First, the relative order in stock betas could change drastically when entering a crisis as the nature of market risk shifts. Second, although the relative order in beta may remain stable throughout a crisis, the absolute market risk sensitivity could also display significant changes from day to day in how individual stock returns react to the market news. These two dimensions of beta instability pose challenges for risk hedging. The authors compare the efficacy of a few approaches that hedge this systematic risk. Using a generic momentum portfolio as an illustration, the authors find that an optimized portfolio approach that maximizes/minimizes the momentum signal while matching the beta and sector exposures of the long and short legs can reduce the worst daily return and the volatility during the COVID-19 crisis by more than 60%. Their findings extend beyond this crisis period and can help investors address beta instability and hedging more broadly. TOPICS: Security analysis and valuation, quantitative methods, risk management, financial crises and financial market history Key Findings ▪ Both sector beta and relative riskiness of individual stocks within a sector could be unstable, as evidenced in the COVID-19 crisis. ▪ The magnitude of systematic reaction could also change from day to day. ▪ An optimized portfolio approach proves flexible and efficient in hedging systematic risk exposures.


This volume provides a new analysis of the Greek traditions with regard to Xerxes' expedition, offering novel views on the naval factors influencing Persian policies, on Persian naval strength, on the operations culminating in the battle of Salamis, and on the battle itself.


This paper reports the use of visible/near‐infrared reflectance spectroscopy (Vis‐NIRS) to predict pasture root density. A population of varying grass root densities was created by growing Moata ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.) for 72 days in pots of Ramiha silt loam (Allophanic) and Manawatu fine sandy loam (Recent Fluvial) (60 pots for each soil) differentially fertilized with nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in a glass house experiment. At harvest, the reflectance spectra (350–2500 nm) from flat sectioned horizontal soil slices (1.3 cm depth), taken from 57 selected pots, were recorded using a portable spectroradiometer (ASD FieldSpec Pro, Boulder, CO). Root densities within each of the soil slices were measured using a wet sieving technique. A large variation in root densities (0.46–5.02 mg dry root cm−3) was obtained from the glass house experiment as plant growth responded to the different soils and rates of N and P fertilizer treatment. Pots of the Manawatu soil contained greater ryegrass root densities (1.76–5.02 mg dry root cm−3) than pots of the Ramiha soil (0.46–3.84 mg dry root cm−3). Each soil had visually distinct reflectance spectra in the range 470–2440 nm, but different root masses produced relatively small differences in reflectance spectra. The first two principal components (PC1 and PC2) of a principal component analysis of the first derivative of the spectral reflectance accounted for 71.3% of the spectral variance and clearly separated the Ramiha and Manawatu soils. PC1, which accounted for 58.4% of the spectral variance, was also well correlated to root density. Partial least squares regression (PLSR) of the first derivative of the 10 nm spaced spectral data against measured root densities produced calibration models that allowed quantitative estimates of root densities (without removing outlier, r2 cross‐validation = 0.78, ratio of prediction to deviation (RPD) = 2.14, root mean squares error of cross‐validation (RMSECV) = 0.60 mg cm−3; with removing outliers, r2 cross‐validation = 0.85, RPD = 2.63, RMSECV = 0.47 mg cm−3). The study indicated that spectral reflectance measurement has the potential to quantify root density in soils.


This thesis uses an energy-based approach to develop new analytical solutions for the time-dependent creep response of deeply embedded cavities. The new models developed here can be used for the initial design of tunnels and for other applications such as underground storage caverns and problems outside the field of geomechanics. The objective of using this energy-based approach is to develop models that can provide a quick estimate of cavity closure and that can be applied to different design situations and material behaviour.

For the first time a three-dimensional analytical solution has been developed for the time-dependent response of a cavity embedded in a viscoelastic medium. The cavity is excavated quasi-instantaneously from an infinite body with an initial isotropic stress field. The problem is three-dimensional due to the effect of a tunnel face. This new solution can predict the full interaction between the tunnel and the surrounding creeping rock and thus can be incorporated with field monitoring data in an expert system for tunnel design. The accuracy of this model is comparable with finite element analysis.

A new class of thermodynamically consistent constitutive models have been developed, which couple viscoplasticity and damage, describing both the secondary and tertiary stages of creep behaviour. Models were derived for both frictionless and frictional materials within the framework of hyperplasticity. The frictional model provided a good fit to data obtained from the triaxial compression testing of sandstone, illustrating its capability of describing creeping rock.

These new constitutive models were incorporated into the energy-based method for cavity analysis, using a two-dimensional plane strain cylindrical cavity for demonstration purposes. A parametric study was carried out and results were also compared with FE analysis. Findings show that the models successfully describe the secondary and tertiary stages of creep behaviour.

These new solutions only require a simple text file as an input and need minimal skill to operate. The formation of an initial geometry or finite element mesh is not necessary. This is shown through the creation of a standalone program for the three-dimensional model. The new solutions can take into account a wide range of different material behaviour, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional problems and due to their thermodynamic consistency are able to simulate other time-dependent processes, such as relaxation. This shows the flexibility of this approach and its applicability to different geomechanics problems.


Contents: Preface Part 1 Empirical Bases: Geographical offender profiling: applications and opportunities, David Canter and Donna Youngs A multivariate analysis of serial murderers' disposal site location choice, Samantha Lundrigan and David Canter Offender characteristics and spatial mobility: an empirical study and some policy implications, Thomas Gabor and Ellen Gottheil The environmental range of serial rapists, David Canter and Paul Larkin The road to robbery: travel patterns in commercial robberies, Peter J. van Koppen and Robert W.J. Jansen. Part 2 Stylistic Variations: Crime scene and distance correlates of serial rape, Janet Warren, Roland Reboussin, Robert R. Hazelwood, Andrea Cummings, Natalie Gibbs and Susan Trumbetta An examination of the relationship between distance travelled and motivational aspects of arson, Katarina Fritzon The journey to rape: geographic distance and the rapist's method of approaching the victim, James L. LeBeau Characteristics of serial arsonists and crime scene geography in Japan, Masayuki Tamura and Mamoru Suzuki. Part 3 Investigative Directions: Predicting serial killers' home base using a decision support system, David Canter, Toby Coffey, Malcolm Huntley and Christopher Missen Linking commercial burglaries by modus operandi: tests using regression and ROC analysis, Craig Bennell and David Canter Predicting home location of serial offenders: a preliminary comparison of the accuracy of human judges with a geographical profiling system, Brent Snook, David Canter and Craig Bennell Commentary a " confusing operational predicaments and cognitive explorations: comments on Rossmo and Snook, et al., David Canter A comparison of the efficacy of different decay functions in geographical profiling for a sample of US serial killers, David Canter and Laura Hammond: Bibliography of geographical profiling Index.


Local authorities in North Carolina, and subsequently in at least 23 other states, have enacted laws intending to reduce predatory and abusive lending. While there is substantial variation in the laws, they typically extend the coverage of the Federal Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (HOEPA) by including home purchase and open-end mortgage credit, by lowering annual percentage rate (APR) and fees and points triggers, and by prohibiting or restricting the use of balloon payments and prepayment penalties. This paper provides a detailed summary of various local predatory lending laws that are effective as of the end of 2004. We also create an index that captures differences in the strength of the local laws along the two important dimensions of coverage and restrictions. In addition, our univariate results show that there is substantial heterogeneity in the observed market responses to the local laws.


Abstract The aim of the Round Table was to compare British and Czech experiences with railway regulation and competition introduction and to determine which lessons can be learnt. Special attention was paid to the question of whether the very complex British reform can be an inspiration for further liberalisation of the railway sector in the Czech Republic or whether there are any reform mistakes that are best avoided. Based on two introductory presentations and subsequent plenary discussion, some consensus emerged. The participants agreed that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to railway regulation and that the introduction of competition should take into account the different circumstances of a particular country. Franchising in passenger operations in Britain successfully stimulated demand but also increased costs to the industry, so its implementation should be completed with care. It seems very unlikely that open-access competition would be a viable solution for the whole passenger rail market because it is limited to a few commercially attractive routes, and as Czech experience suggests, it creates many new problems. Finally, it was confirmed that a strong and dedicated regulator is needed in a newly liberalised environment in order to solve many emerging conflicts and disputes.


DoD's transportation activities incur USD 11+Billion expenditure anually. Optimal resource allocation under uncertainty provides huge opportunity for improvement and commensurate cost savings. Stochastic optimization techniques are used to incorporate uncertainty in the data to arrive at robust resource allocations. The application of stochastic optimization extends to a broad range of areas ranging from finance to production to economics to energy systems planning. We study the DoD Air Mobility Command's airfleet assignment problem that schedules 1300+ aircrafts to deal with combat delivery, strategic airlift, air refueling, aeromedical evacuation operations, etc. around the world. Our formulation of the airfleet allocation problem for a small time horizon shows that annual average cost benefits of 3% can be obtained by using stochastic integer optimization. Despite the potential cost benefits, use of stochastic integer optimization has remained intractable because the computational complexity of the problem prevents rapid decisions. Modern supercomputers can attain performance of several petaflops and hence can enhance solution tractability for use in a highly dynamic decision environment. We start with a conventional parallel decomposition of the problem, analyze the challenges and address a number of performance optimizations like cut retirement and scenario clustering. We then present results from a novel branch-and-bound based design that converges to an optimal integer allocation for large problems while allowing evaluation of tens of thousands of possible scenarios. We believe that this is an interesting and uncommon approach to harnessing tera/petascale compute power for such problems without decomposing the linear programs further.


Random Fourier features are a powerful framework to approximate shift invariant kernels with Monte Carlo integration, which has drawn considerable interest in scaling up kernel-based learning, dimensionality reduction, and information retrieval. In the literature, many sampling schemes have been proposed to improve the approximation performance. However, an interesting theoretic and algorithmic challenge still remains, i.e., how to optimize the design of random Fourier features to achieve good kernel approximation on any input data using a low spectral sampling rate? In this paper, we propose to compute more adaptive random Fourier features with optimized spectral samples (wj's) and feature weights (pj's). The learning scheme not only significantly reduces the spectral sampling rate needed for accurate kernel approximation, but also allows joint optimization with any supervised learning framework. We establish generalization bounds using Rademacher complexity, and demonstrate advantages over previous methods. Moreover, our experiments show that the empirical kernel approximation provides effective regularization for supervised learning.


The Ramsey game we consider in this paper is played on an unbounded set of vertices by two players, called Builder and Painter. In one move Builder introduces a new edge and Painter paints it red or blue. The goal of Builder is to force Painter to create a monochromatic copy of a fixed target graph $H$, keeping the constructed graph in a prescribed class ${\cal G}$. The main problem is to recognize the winner for a given pair $H,{\cal G}$. In particular, we prove that Builder has a winning strategy for any $k$-colorable graph $H$ in the game played on $k$-colorable graphs. Another class of graphs with this strange self-unavoidability property is the class of forests. We show that the class of outerplanar graphs does not have this property. The question of whether planar graphs are self-unavoidable is left open. We also consider a multicolor version of Ramsey on-line game. To extend our main result for $3$-colorable graphs we introduce another Ramsey type game, which seems interesting in its own right.


In this paper, we show that there is substantial comovement between prices of primary commodities such as oil, aluminum, maize, or copper and real exchange rates between developed economies such as Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom against the US dollar. We therefore explicitly consider the production of commodities in a two-country model of trade with productivity shocks and shocks to the supplies of commodities. We calibrate the model so as to reproduce the volatility and persistence of primary commodity prices and show that it delivers equilibrium real exchange rates that are as volatile and persistent as in the data. The model rationalizes an empirical strategy to identify the fraction of the variance of real exchange rates that can be accounted for by the underlying shocks, even if those are not observable. We use this strategy to argue that shocks that move primary commodity prices account for a large fraction of the volatility of real exchange rates in the data. Our analysis implies that existing models used to analyze real exchange rates between large economies that mostly focus on trade between differentiated final goods could benefit, in terms of matching the behavior of real exchange rates, by also considering trade in primary commodities.


Uncertainty arises in preference aggregation in several ways. There may, for example, be uncertainty in the votes or the voting rule. Such uncertainty can introduce computational complexity in determining which candidate or candidates can or must win the election. In this paper, we survey recent work in this area and give some new results. We argue, for example, that the set of possible winners can be computationally harder to compute than the necessary winner. As a second example, we show that, even if the unknown votes are assumed to be single-peaked, it remains computationally hard to compute the possible and necessary winners, or to manipulate the election.


Methacrylonitrile (MAN) is structurally similar to the known carcinogen acrylonitrile (AN), has similar industrial uses, and is occasionally used as its replacement. In contrast to AN, minimal information is available on the toxicity, carcinogenicity, or metabolism of MAN. Earlier work in this laboratory demonstrated that, in rats, MAN is primarily eliminated in the expired air as unchanged MAN, acetone, and CO2. Two mercapturic acids were identified in the urine of rats and mice treated with MAN. In the present work, the common bile duct of anesthetized rats was cannulated. The animals received a single gavage dose of 58 mg/kg 2-[14C]MAN. Bile was collected before and after MAN administration. Bile flow and MAN-derived radioactivity were determined at each time point. MAN had a minimal effect on bile flow and 4 to 6% of the administered MAN dose was excreted in the bile within 6 hr after dosing. HPLC analysis of bile showed two major metabolites, which were identified as 1-(S-glutathionyl)-2-propanone and 1-(S-glutathionyl)-2-cyanopropane by using NMR spectra and chemical synthesis. The ratio of the two metabolites in MAN-treated rats was approximately 2:1. Pretreatment of rats with sodium phenobarbital caused minimal quantitative or qualitative changes in the biliary excretion of MAN metabolites. In contrast, pretreatment of rats with beta-diethylaminoethyl diphenylpropylacetate before MAN administration resulted in a significant decrease in the ratio of 1-(S-glutathionyl)-2-propanone to 1-(S-glutathionyl)-2-cyanopropane (1:2). These data, especially the identification of 1-(S-glutathionyl)-2-propanone, indirectly demonstrated that MAN is metabolized via an epoxide intermediate (1-cyano-1-methyloxirane). Modulation of MAN metabolism by the P450 modulators suggested that this metabolic pathway is catalyzed via the cytochrome P450 enzymes. This work also confirms that MAN undergoes direct reaction with reduced glutathione via a Michael addition. Because of earlier work demonstrated that AN undergoes similar metabolism, MAN might have a qualitative toxicity profile similar to that of acryonitrile.


Although realist perspectives seem challenged to explain European choices and preferences, realism retains great utility with its stress on states and states' concern for their national interests. Traditional realist analysis of European security policy err, rather, by focusing on balancing and related concepts such as soft balancing and balancing for autonomy. These accounts are theoretically and empirically flawed. Whilst balancing perspectives shed some light on European security policy predispositions, bandwagoning better explains trans-Atlantic contemporary security cooperation and increases the explanatory power of realist theories. The case for European bandwagoning is illustrated here by the empirical experience of prominent European Union military initiatives and the French defence reforms in the post-Cold War period. The tendency to bandwagon shows that European attempts to increase capabilities are strengthening rather than weakening transatlantic ties. Contrary to dominant realist views, through bandwagoning NATO benefits from European security and defence policy, becoming more durable and stronger than traditional realism expects.


This thesis looks at the social significance of dance in Dakar, Senegal, both as an everyday practice and as a performing art. The boundaries commonly drawn between stage and mundane performance are shown to be irrelevant, as people circulate between performance spaces and dance forms. The dance itself is described as an elusive and ever-changing way of constructing identity, which is renewed every time it is performed. Most importantly, this thesis introduces dance as a vehicle of social mobility in its multiple dimensions, as an instrument in the politics of ethnicity in Senegal, and as a site of negotiation of gender relations. The complex interplay between the agency of local dancers and global performing circuits is also examined. Transformations in social status of performers are traced through time, space and across three genres of performance: the sabar, which is central in what I call "women's dances", folkloric performance, and recent choreographic experiments, lumped under the misleading label of "contemporary dance". The sabar and women's dance events are examined both as the local movement style that informs some of the choreographic work displayed on stage, and as a central space in which alternative gender relations are experimented with. I suggest that urban dance events have become increasingly dominated by women, for whom the dance is a convenient way of excluding men from their sociality, or including them on their own terms. Women are thus able to retain the control of important aspects of social life (the socialization of young girls, marriage negotiations, exchanging secrets on how to "tie" a husband), engage in trade and coach each other into small-scale business. Alongside the celebration of female solidarity, dance events are also moments of intense female competition. This is achieved through fashion, sexually explicit dancing and elaborate manipulation of the body. I argue that in a depressed economic climate which has turned to the disadvantage of most men, women are discreetly using their favourite form of sociality the dance to make advances into the socio-economic domain. The argument on the performer's status through time takes the pre-colonial status stratification, particularly the figure of the Griot-performer, as a starting point. I suggest that the international career opportunities generated by the development of the folkloric genre from the 1960s onwards have helped modify the perception of the performer, albeit on a moderate scale. Further improvement has recently been achieved with the emergence of "contemporary dance". This is because the most successful performers within this experimental genre have benefited from the opportunity to promote themselves as individual artists. Moreover, when on tour abroad they are usually paid more and perform in more prestigious theatres than they do with folkloric performance, which often remains confined to "African festivals" and tourist resorts. In Senegal, they engage in collaborative work with visiting artists from Europe, North America or Japan. By contrast with the elitist character of the genre in its early days, in the 1970s, "contemporary" Senegalese dance is gradually becoming popularized, as people promote themselves as artists with a social consciousness. But the thesis also emphasizes that social mobility is not equally available to all, and that success, far from being a linear process, also contains the possibility of its own downfall: touring abroad may lose much of its appeal once people realize that they are being exploited. For performers who experiment with "contemporary" forms, social recognition can easily turn into accusations of doing "White people's stuff". This may partly explain why these performers are so keen to make their "local" grounding explicit, and why they nurture a fascination with "tradition". In a broader sense, this study also highlights the complexities of globalization processes in performance. It hints at the risks of the forms of globalization that reinforce power imbalances. Indeed, the renewed interest in the "contemporary" arts of Africa may be seen as part of a more general movement towards exploiting the creativity of African cultures. I examine people's ambivalent attitudes towards this, and argue that people perceive their own lives, as well as their status in the wider world, as deeply entangled with the representations of Africa which are projected onto the worldwide stage.


Mineral Policies provides a record of an art residency organized by ZETA Center for Contemporary Art in the mining region of Bulqiza in northeastern Albania, where four artists and activists from Albania, Blerta Hoçia, Diana Malaj, Pleurad Xhafa, and Ergin Zaloshnja, created a collective body of works in close proximity with the local miners, while still maintaining their own discrete sphere of action. This residency followed by a public exhibition, Each Strike Leads to the Next, featuring video works produced during the residency as well as a series of object, curated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, director of the Department of Eagles in Tirana. This publication includes documentation of the residency and the exhibition, as well the record of a public discussion between curator Van Gerven Oei, former Minister of Finance Arben Malaj, mining engineer Genc Myftiu, and mining worker Bardhul Alla, moderated by cultural journalist Elsa Demo and an interview of cultural theorist Jonida Gashi and Van Gerven Oei with the artists. Mineral Policies documents an important attempt of present-day Albanian artists to reflect on and align themselves with workers and labor activities within a political climate in which neoliberal extractivism and mafia-controlled local and national government have seriously compromised modes of solidarity and survival.


Critical algorithm scholarship has demonstrated the difficulties of attributing accountability for the actions and effects of algorithmic systems. In this commentary, we argue that we cannot stop at denouncing the lack of accountability for algorithms and their effects but must engage the broader systems and distributed agencies that algorithmic systems exist within; including standards, regulations, technologies, and social relations. To this end, we explore accountability in "the Generated Detective," an algorithmically generated comic. Taking up the mantle of detectives ourselves, we investigate accountability in relation to this piece of experimental fiction. We problematize efforts to effect accountability through transparency by undertaking a simple operation: asking for permission to re-publish a set of the algorithmically selected and modified words and images which make the frames of the comic. Recounting this process, we demonstrate slippage between the "complication" of the algorithm and the obscurity of the legal and institutional structures in which it exists.


High arsenic level in natural waters, and in the ground, is nowadays a worldwide problem. Soil stabilization is a low-cost technology aiming to reduce the arsenic mobility in soil preventing the migration of the contaminant into the environment.
Addition of iron oxides to arsenic contaminated soils has been proposed as an effective remediation technique. The aim of the present work was to re-use iron ore broken pellets, i.e. a waste from mining industry, to immobilize arsenic within soil. A treatment was developed to increase the surface area of the iron ore broken pellets and therefore increasing its adsorption efficiency. Four different iron oxides were evaluates: metallic iron grid, fine magnetite powder, iron ore broken pellets and broken pellets modified by the developed treatment. Spherical nanoparticle aggregates covering the surface of the broken pellets were observed upon the application of the developed treatment.
The immobilization performance of the iron oxide materials was evaluates for soil with and without plants. Soil pore water samples were collected and analysed after 11, 30 and 54 days. At the end of the experiment, the trace-element content of the plant shoots was analysed and a sequential extraction was performed for bulk and rhizosphere samples.
While the zerovalent iron significantly reduced the mobility of arsenic in the contaminates soil, both in the presence and absence of plants, the other three iron oxide amendments did not significantly reduced the mobility of arsenic in the soil.


Both superantigens (SAG) and many anti-TCR monoclonal antibodies (mAb) have specificity for the V beta region of the TCR encoded by TCRBV genes. For instance the bacterial SAG staphylococcal enterotoxin E (SEE), the retroviral SAG MTV-9 and the mAb OT145 each react with human T cells expressing BV6S7. This BV gene encodes two common alleles. We found that SEE and the mAb preferentially activate T cells expressing BV6S7*1 as opposed to BV6S7*2, but Mtv-9 activates T cells expressing either allele. Thus binding to the TCR differs between the two SAGs. A mutation in the TCR HVR-4 region of BV6S7*1 (G72E), where the two BV6S7 alleles differ, indicated that HVR-4 is a component of the binding site for SEE and for the mAb OT145. BV6S7*2 has a charged E72 which may result in electrostatic repulsion of SEE, as SEE contains a similarly acidic aspartic acid residue at a TCR interaction site (204D).


The field of extrasolar planets is still, in comparison with other astrophysical topics, in its infancy. There have been about 300 or so extrasolar planets detected and their detection has been accomplished by various different techniques. Here we present a simple laboratory experiment to show how planets are detected using the transit technique. Following the simple analysis procedure describe we are able to determine the planetary radius to be 1.27 ± 0.20RJ which, within errors, agrees with the established value of 1.32 ± 0.25RJ.


Microbial chemical factories (MCFs) have become an attractive platform for producing valuable drugs, chemicals, and biofuels due to increasing environmental concerns, energy demands, and the difficulties associated with chemically synthesizing complex molecules. However, the potential of using microbes to produce many valuable products has not been fully realized due to low productivity and yields. Production may be enhanced through the dynamic control of metabolic pathways to alleviate metabolic imbalances and toxic product build-up, but very few tools are available to broadly implement this paradigm. I aim to expand this toolbox by developing tunable sensor-regulator devices that act as feedback controllers for toxic intermediate formation by responding to cues of cell health for improved production. Elastin-like polypeptide (ELP) will act as the sensing domain of the controller to indirectly sense toxic metabolite accumulation through changes in intracellular pH. ELPs make ideal sensors since they exhibit a sharp, inverse phase transition to indicators of cellular health such as pH and ionic strength, and external stimuli such as temperature. In this research, a library of ELPs that exhibit pH sensitivity and transition under various conditions was made and purified using a new organic solvent extraction method. It is hypothesized that fusion of ELP to orthogonal transcription factor will allow for the controlled expression of target genes in response to stimuli without disrupting native processes. As proof of concept, an ELP fusion to orthogonal sigma factor was designed to drive the expression of a fluorescent reporter protein. Initial designs successfully alter gene expression by 21% in response to temperature. To improve this response, an alternative feed-forward loop architecture was modelled, which predicted an improved response of 35% and increased ultrasensitivity. Refinement of this design and combinatorial construct libraries will generate various regulators with diverse outputs that may be integrated in bioproduction pathways for improved performance.


We study the sensitivity of a MAP configuration of a discrete probabilistic graphical model with respect to perturbations of its parameters. These perturbations are global, in the sense that simultaneous perturbations of all the parameters (or any chosen subset of them) are allowed. Our main contribution is an exact algorithm that can check whether the MAP configuration is robust with respect to given perturbations. Its complexity is essentially the same as that of obtaining the MAP configuration itself, so it can be promptly used with minimal effort. We use our algorithm to identify the largest global perturbation that does not induce a change in the MAP configuration, and we successfully apply this robustness measure in two practical scenarios: the prediction of facial action units with posed images and the classification of multiple real public data sets. A strong correlation between the proposed robustness measure and accuracy is verified in both scenarios.


Despite great conceptual promise, the use of microarrays in typing approaches has not yet gained wide acceptance. The establishment of proper criteria for determining discriminatory power as well as typability and the accuracy of microarray data remains to be solved. Purely experimental estimations of these parameters would far exceed what is experimentally practical. We therefore used simulations in combination with experimental results in parameter estimations. Our assay was based on 26 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identified in the Campylobacterjejuni Multi Locus Sequence Typing (MLST) database (http:///pubmist.org/campylobacter/). The SNPs were detected using a single nucleotide extension (SNE) typing microarray. Unknown isolates were assigned to the known sequence type(s) by calculating weighted sum of matches minus a weighted sum of mismatches between predicted and candidate genotype. The weights were set according to the Bayesian posterior probability of the SNP classification. These studies showed that any typing or profiling method based on binary data requires an accuracy of <2-3% error for each datapoint (in our case SNPs) to classify the isolates to the correct allelic profile in 90% of the cases. The classification error for our experimental data was 3.2% (after removing 5 high error SNPs). We therefore conclude that SNE microarrays are promising for future high-throughput typing of bacteria.


The commitment of lecturers as indicated
in their loyalty and performance plays a very important role in achieving
organizational goals. The researcher formulates the problem as follows;. What
is the personality of the theological school lecturer in West Java? 2. How is
the performance of theological school lecturers in West Java? 3. How is the
commitment of theological school lecturers in West Java? 4. How much influence
does the personality and performance of the lecturers have on the
organizational commitment of theological school in West Java? The purpose of
this study was to examine the influence of personality, lecturer performance on
commitment to the theological school lecturer organization in West Java. 124
lecturers who were sampled were taken from 8 theological schools in region II
Bogor. Data collection techniques obtained by conducting interviews. The data
were analyzed using quantitative methods, descriptive statistics, linkert scale
and path analysis. Then the results show that there is a positive direct effect
of personality on organizational commitment by having a positive direct
influence on the path coefficient ρ31 = 0.169, Lecturer performance on
organizational commitment with a positive direct effect by having a positive
direct influence on the coefficient ρ32 = 0.267, Dosendan performance and
personality. performance together against organizational commitment ρ32 =
0.436. So the conclusion is that the personality and high performance of the
lecturers greatly influence organizational commitment


The diverging requirements from various vertical industries have driven the paradigm shift in the next‐generation (5G) mobile networks, where network slicing has emerged as a major paradigm for this purpose by sharing and isolating resources over the same 5G physical infrastructure. To truly fulfill the different quality‐of‐service (QoS) requirements imposed by different network slices for different vertical applications, it is essential to introduce a programmable data plane that is aware of QoS and is configurable to enforce the QoS commitments. In this paper, we focus on designing, prototyping, and evaluating a novel QoS‐aware data‐plane network slicing framework for the edge and core network segments of a 5G network. The proposed framework is capable of dealing with differentiated services through hardware‐based traffic classification, priority configuration, and traffic scheduling. By leveraging the latest open‐source field‐programmable gate array platform, we prototype the proposed framework and empirically evaluate the performance of the prototyped system. Experiment results demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed framework in terms of achieving QoS‐aware network slicing at the data plane.


Compulsory School Curricula of South Africa (RNCS1, 2002) and Sweden (Lpo 294).AbstractThe aim of this paper is to analyse the compulsory school curricula of South Africa and Sweden. It focuses on contexts for their introduction, main actors in the process, democratic values they contain and their similarities and differences. Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is used for analysis. The curricula and references to other literatures show similarities and differences. Contextual similarities are that both countries were once under oppression and their masses were isolated from the education process and more resources were invested on their elites. At present the curricula of both countries strives for democratic education. A major difference is equal opportunities for the students to attend a school of their choice are higher in Sweden than in South Africa. The Swedish curriculum is more concrete on issues related to students, teachers and other school staff's rights and responsibilities, and on relations between school, home and society.Key words: South Africa, Sweden, Curricula, and Democratic values


Having a brother or sister with special health needs not only impacts parents but siblings as well. Support available for these siblings has been found to be limited in the literature. One particular program designed to provide support to these children is a program called Sibshops. This study completed a program evaluation of Sibshops conducted at a Midwest Children's hospital between 20112012 in order to assess the effectiveness of this program. Qualitative and quantitative data were obtained using parent feedback surveys. Results from the surveys showed that parents felt Sibshops provided their children with a positive experience, allowed them a sense of feeling they were not alone, caused positive attitude changes, increased their child's knowledge about their brother or sister's disability, and allowed for their healthy children to feel recognized in a special way. Additionally, the data also suggested that the five goals in the Sibshop curriculum were being met. While this study would suggest that Sibshops may be effective in providing support to siblings, further research including direct feedback from the children themselves may be beneficial in allowing social workers as well as other professionals working with siblings additional knowledge and insight into the benefits and challenges of having a brother or sister with special health needs.


Distributed in-memory application data caches like memcached are a popular solution for scaling database-driven web sites. These systems increase performance significantly by reducing load on both the database and application servers. Unfortunately, such caches present two challenges for application developers. First, they cannot ensure that the application sees a consistent view of the data within a transaction, violating the isolation properties of the underlying database. Second, they leave the application responsible for locating data in the cache and keeping it up to date, a frequent source of application complexity and programming errors.
This thesis addresses both of these problems in a new cache called TxCache. TxCache is a transactional cache: it ensures that any data seen within a transaction, whether from the cache or the database, reflects a slightly stale but consistent snapshot of the database. TxCache also offers a simple programming model. Application developers simply designate certain functions as cacheable, and the system automatically caches their results and invalidates the cached data as the underlying database changes.
Our experiments found that TxCache can substantially increase the performance of a web application: on the RUBiS benchmark, it increases throughput by up to 5.2× relative to a system without caching. More importantly, on this application, TxCache achieves performance comparable (within 5%) to that of a non-transactional cache, showing that consistency does not have to come at the price of performance. (Copies available exclusively from MIT Libraries, Rm. 14-0551, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307. Ph. 617-253-5668; Fax 617-253-1690.)


In an effort to improve our nation's underperforming schools, education reformers are designing programs to educate and empower urban school parents. Parent involvement can be critical to a child's academic success, yet the education community still knows very little about the impact of specific parent programs. We evaluated a parent program that was part of a major school-university partnership. A responsive evaluation approach initially guided the design of our qualitative case study evaluation. Our social justice-oriented values, however, prompted us to revise our approach and adhere more closely to a social justice evaluation model. This change caused us to highlight the perspectives of low-income Latina mothers and emphasize the gap between parents' and educators' notions of empowerment. In this article, we describe our evaluation and highlight key findings that offer insightful implications for education practitioners, researchers, and evaluators. The findings pertain to the challenge of educators sharing power with urban parents and developing partnerships that are sensitive to the social and cultural factors that affect parents' values, goals, and modes of participation. We also emphasize the relationship between evaluation theory and practice and point to the potential impact of social justice evaluation in education.


Despite the acute shortage of cadaveric organs for kidney transplantation, more than 10% of cadaveric kidneys are discarded each year because of marginal quality. Transplant recipients' access to these kidneys and to information about their quality is limited. A Monte Carlo model was developed to simulate the operations of an organ procurement organization over a 10-yr period. Donor and recipient characteristics were generated from the United States Renal Data System. Kidneys were assigned one of five possible grades, which were determined by calculating the relative risk of graft failure associated with donor characteristics and HLA matching for every donor-candidate pair. Modeled were recipient decisions to accept or reject a kidney on the basis of the relative change in quality-adjusted life years (QALY). Compared were the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) policy, the UNOS expanded donor criteria policy, two benchmark policies (one equity driven and the other efficiency driven), and a hybrid policy that incorporated recipient choice into the UNOS algorithm. Sensitivity analyses for major input variables were performed. Compared with UNOS, an algorithm that incorporated recipient choice predicted a 6% increase in QALY, a 12% decrease in median waiting time, a 39% increase in the likelihood of transplantation, and a 56% reduction in the number of discarded kidneys. Benefits were observed across categories of age, gender, and race. Incorporating recipient choice in kidney transplantation would improve equity, efficiency, and QALY of the end-stage renal disease population.


Software maintenance, program analysis and transformation tools almost always rely on static source code analysis as the first and fundamental step to gather information. In the past, two different strategies have been adopted to develop tool suites. There are tools encompassing or implementing the source parse step, where the parser is internal to the toolkit, developed and maintained with it. A different approach builds tools on the top of external, already available, components such as compilers that output the abstract syntax tree, or make it available via an API. We present an approach and a tool, XOgastan, developed exploiting the gcc/g++ ability to save a representation of the intermediate abstract syntax tree into a file. XOgastan translates the gcc/g++ format into a graph exchange language representation, thus taking advantage of the high number of currently available XML tools for the subsequent analysis phases. The tool is illustrated and its design is discussed, showing its architecture and the main implementation choices.


Purpose: Taking a literature review as a point of departure, the main aim of this paper was the identification of the behavioural indicators of innovators at the workplace, and their classification.  Design/methodology/approach: A literature review was addressed by means of a search in Elsevier's Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. By applying inclusive and exclusive criteria, references were obtained with the search protocol. After filtering and scanning, there was a selection of references plus other articles added by the snowball effect. The final phase undertaken was the classification of the main indicators raised in the publications selected. Findings: Our main contribution was the identification of the behavioural indicators of innovators at the workplace and their classification in five dimensions. Practical implications: This research may yield some light on the assessment of innovative workplace performance of individuals in organisations, as well as on the development of the innovative competence of students in academic institutions as a challenge to meet the needs of both professionals and Higher Education institutions. Originality/value: Some authors have studied the characteristics of innovative people mainly focusing on cognitive abilities, personality, motivation and knowledge. We have sought to offer a better understanding of the phenomenon of individual innovation in organisations, through the analysis of behavioural indicators, an issue that has not been studied from this perspective previously.


The aim of the present study was to determine the optimal visual target to be used in stabilometry. The sway of the body (total length and area of the center of pressure) was measured on 30 healthy subjects while they were shown 8 kinds of visual targets at random, placed 2 m infront. The body sway was also measured on subjects with their eyes closed in light conditions; and with their eyes open but with no target.The results showed that, in contrast to the reports by other authors, the body sway was smallest when there was no target. The body sway was largest with the eyes closed, as previously reported. The results obtained using different target shapes (closed circle or cross) or sizes were not significantly different.We speculate that when the subject focuses on a specific target, his/her attention is concentrated on the central view, and input from the periphery may be reduced. Thus, we conclude that it is optimal for the subject to gazes at no specific visual target in stabilometry.


Calreticulin is considered a resident protein of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), where it participates in protein folding and calcium homeostasis. Shaffer et al. show that in an in vitro translation and translocation system (containing rough microsomes), a small but detectable fraction of mature processed calreticulin, but not prolactin, appears not to be translocated into the microsomes. This difference in localization of prolactin and calreticulin resulted from differences in the efficiency of translocation into the microsomes, which reflected differences in the signal sequences of the two proteins. Exchange of the signal sequences resulted in complete translocation of calreticulun with the prolactin signal sequence and incomplete translocation of prolactin with the calreticulin signal sequence. Five percent to 20% of the calreticulin had a cytoplasmic localization when calreticulin was overexpressed in transfected cells, depending on the cells and conditions. Calreticulin functions as an inhibitor of transcriptional activation by steroid hormone receptors. Expression of wild-type calreticulin, which produces a small fraction of cytosolic Crt, or the Prl-Crt fusion protein, which is essentially all translocated into the ER, in Crt—/— mouse embryo fibroblasts (MEFs) allowed the effect of cytosolic calreticulin on a glucocorticoid reporter gene to be assessed. Cells with wild-type calreticulin exhibited substantially less reporter gene expression than cells expressing the fully translocated Prl-Crt protein. Thus, inefficient translocation and the production of a small, but functionally important, population of cytosolic calreticulin appears to mediate an inhibitory effect on glucocorticoid receptor signaling. K. L. Shaffer, A. Sharma, E. L. Snapp, R. S. Hegde, Regulation of protein compartmentalization expands the diversity of protein function. Dev. Cell 9, 545-554 (2005). [PubMed]


This thesis uses two frameworks for effective gamification and makes a realization of part of them, with the aim of proposing a stage before gamification itself: the enterprise anticipation of gamification, which can be either of optimism or apathy. It can reveal to an enterprise willing to foster people's motivation which gamification elements are more likely to succeed due to the uncertainties that the concept still carries. A survey was used as an instrument to measure people's expectations towards game elements to increase the psychological satisfaction according to the Self Determination Theory, and shaped by an instrument to measure maturity in lean. The result of the survey in a company showed that there is an overall interest in gamification elements to increase autonomy and competence, but not relatedness, and also that even if people are aware of a gamification project their expectations are not significantly different from those who are not. Future studies should compare if the anticipation towards game elements are correspondent with the actual feelings when using a gamified solution.


Since its inception, arti cial intelligence has relied upon a theoretical foundation centred around perfect rationality as the desired property of intelligent systems. We argue, as others have done, that this foundation is inadequate because it imposes fundamentally unsatis able requirements. As a result, there has arisen a wide gap between theory and practice in AI, hindering progress in the eld. We propose instead a property called bounded optimality. Roughly speaking, an agent is bounded-optimal if its program is a solution to the constrained optimization problem presented by its architecture and the task environment. We show how to construct agents with this property for a simple class of machine architectures in a broad class of real-time environments. We illustrate these results using a simple model of an automated mail sorting facility. We also de ne a weaker property, asymptotic bounded optimality (ABO), that generalizes the notion of optimality in classical complexity theory. We then construct universal ABO programs, i.e., programs that are ABO no matter what real-time constraints are applied. Universal ABO programs can be used as building blocks for more complex systems. We conclude with a discussion of the prospects for bounded optimality as a theoretical basis for AI, and relate it to similar trends in philosophy, economics, and game theory.


This research has accomplished a clarification of what exactly constitutes semantic analysis using the specification language NORMA. Having clarified the essential elements of the language, this work has shown how the language can be put into practice. The technique has been exemplified on three applications. This process of indicating how the technique can be applied to a case is necessary if we are to show the practical usability. Another important contribution has been the setting out of more precise rules for the constraints; the sketching out of a metaschema. Although more work is needed here to express the full range of metaphysical relationships that underlie any semantic schema in NORMA, a start has been made. This work will support the building of a computer system to aid the analyst. With the large range of constraints and fundamental assumptions associated with NORMA, the need for a method of applying them was paramount. In this work we have attempted to set out a rational agenda of work comprised in the performing of semantic analysis, and in a manner which is easily accessible. A simple set of ten stages in the work spans the range of tasks that are required. At no stage has there existed such a straightforward introduction, rather, the tendency has been to point to the possibility of beginning the analysis in a number of ways. As a further contribution this work has examined some of the examples of semantic analysis and identified a few 'classic' errors. The importance of this is to focus on what are likely to be common mistakes that spring from an inadequate grasp of the language, which if corrected can lead to better results quite quickly and avoid a significant part of the problems associated with the 'learning curve'.


This paper describes a set of experimental measurements and theoretical calculations designed to recover both the surface-spectral reflectance function and the illuminant spectral-power distribution from the image data. A multichannel vision system comprising six color channels was created with the use of a monochrome CCD camera and color filters. The spectral sensitivity of each color channel is calibrated, and the dynamic range of the camera is extended for sensing a wide range of intensity levels. Three algorithms and the corresponding results are introduced. First, a method of choosing the appropriate dimension of the linear model dimensions is introduced. Second, the illuminant parameters are estimated from the sensor measurements made at multiple points within separate objects. Third, the sensor responses are corrected for highlight and shading variations. The body reflectance parameters, unique to each surface, are recovered from these corrected values. Experimental results with a small number of test surfaces and a simple illumination geometry demonstrate that the illuminant spectrum and the surface-spectral reflectance functions can be recovered to within typical deviations of 1% and 4%, respectively.


Three of the articles included in this issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - Ron Amundson and Shari Tresky's "On a Bioethical Challenge to Disability Rights"; Rachel Cooper's "Can It Be a Good Thing to Be Deaf?"; and Mark T. Brown's "The Potential of the Human Embryo" - interact (in various ways) with the concepts of disability, humanity, and personhood and their normative dimensions. As one peruses these articles, it becomes apparent that terms like "disability," "human being," and "person" carry with them great normative significance. There is, however, much disagreement concerning both the definition and the extension of such terms. This is significant because different terms and definitions are associated with different sets of normative requirements. In what follows we reconstruct the argument of each of the articles, and then offer some brief critical analysis intended to stimulate further thought about and discussion of the issues that each raises.


In 4 experiments, instructions to plan a task (water jugs) that normally produces little planning altered how participants solved the problems and resulted in enhanced learning and memory. Experiment 1 identified planning strategies that allowed participants to plan full solutions to water jugs problems. Experiment 2 showed that experience with planning led to better solutions even after planning was no longer required, whereas control participants showed little improvement. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that although the most recent planned solution could be recalled following a long filled retention interval, retroactive interference (RI) between successive problems resulted in much lower recall of earlier solutions. RI during plan generation could also explain participants' choice of depth-first planning strategies.


Isolation of bacteria was done from potentially metal-contaminated areas close to the automobile repair workshops of Karachi, Pakistan. Forty three (43) bacterial strains were isolated which were coded as CMG2K 1-43 and characterized further. Few CMG stock strains were also selected on the basis of their high heavy metal tolerance behavior. These included Enterobacter sp. strain CMG457 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain CMG466 which were found to tolerate heavy metals. In case of heavy metals 62.8% of the newly isolated strains showed tolerance against chromate and copper each, and 51.2% against nickel. Isolated strains were also checked for resistance to eight antibiotics: 97.7% of the strains showed tolerance to streptomycin, 44.2% to neomycin, 27.9% to ampicillin, 25.6% to tetracycline, 13.9% to chloramphenicol, 9.3% to kanamycin and novobiocin each, and 2.3% were tolerant to rifampicin. Characterization of all the isolated strains on the basis of different parameters was conducted which include stab culture record, colonial morphology, cellular morphology and their growth curve patterns. Strains were also analyzed for their heavy metal accumulation capabilities and some strains were found to accumulate nickel and copper but none found to accumulate both the heavy metals simultaneously indicating that the mechanisms of accumulation for nickel and copper are different.

Attempt was made to find out correlation between heavy metal tolerance and antibiotic tolerance of these strains with the assumption of multiple stress tolerance of bacteria. Statistical analysis showed positive correlation between heavy metal tolerance and antibiotic tolerance of these strains, t-test at to.05 level of significance has verified positive correlation. Transposon (I©) Omegon kanamycin containing kanamycin tolerance gene did not hybridize with a Bacillus strain CMG2K8 which has shown tolerance up to 1500 µg/ml of kanamycin, when colony hybridization was performed through DIG labelled probe, this result has signifies that mechanism of tolerance to kanamycin of the strain CMG2K8 is different from the one found in Transposon (I©) Omegon-kanamycin.

Genetic basis of heavy metal tolerance was analyzed by first screening for the known genes related to heavy metal tolerance within the genome of isolated strains. The genes screened included pco, cop, cueAR operons for copper tolerance and ncc and cnr operons for nickel tolerance. Bacillus cereus strain CMG2K4 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain CMG466 that tolerated high concentration of nickel and copper respectively did not indicate presence of any of the related operons Absence of such inducible operons, was confirmed by growth patterns of these strains, which showed similar growth when seeded with overnight cultures grown with and without metal, indicating a constitutive mechanism of tolerance. Most of the heavy metal tolerance mechanisms reported are plasmid borne but in case of these two strains CMG2K4 and CMG466, tolerant against nickel and copper respectively, did not harbor any plasmid confirming that the genes involved in heavy metal tolerance are located on chromosome.

Sequencing of pcoB from CMG457 (Pco operon containing Enterobacter sp. From CMG stock strain) was conducted and same gene was cloned in pGEM-T easy vector and transformed into E. coli JM1 09. SOS-PAGE of crude cell extract of Bacillus cereus strain CMG2K4 in presence of nickel revealed i€s36 kDa band which was consistent in log phase culture and stationary phase culture both in control and test, speculated to be the band of a protein involved in nickel tolerance behavior of CMG2K4. N-terminal sequencing yielded 10 amino acid sequence of this i€™36 kDa protein showed 100% homology with flagellin protein of several Bacillus cereus strains when MPsrched in Uniprot database of EBI. Multiple sequence alignment has revealed variability in the amino acid sequences of different strains of Bacillus cereus flagellin protein, especially at the C-terminal half of the sequence. MALDI Mass Spectrometry yielded several mass peptide peaks, some of which showed homology in Swissprot database with flagellin protein peptide masses of a number of Bacillus cereus strains.


Abstract Post-mining workings, especially after the exploitation of the rocks, become attractive mainly because of their landscape forms. These new forms of landscape can be an important element of tourist interest, and can cause the regional tourist revival. Quarries, as a quite specific forms, may, however, be received by individuals, as more or less attractive. The existing methods of landscape attractiveness evaluation cannot be directly applied to assess the attractiveness of abandoned quarries without the introduction of some partial criteria. The article attempts to present the methodological basis of the procedure for evaluating the attractiveness of the landscape of the quarries by setting new criteria for such an assessment. To do this, the method of semantic differential, called the Osgood's Method, was used, as well as principles of entropy and point bonitation. The evaluation of the attractiveness of the quarries' landscape consists of the results of these methods. On such basis, four classes of the attractiveness of the landscape of abandoned quarries have been defined.


The paper analyzes the influence of credit-, labor-, and product market deregulation policies on economic growth in more than 70 economies over a period of 30 years. It addresses both the issues of reform measurement and its endogeneity. Specifically, by combining a difference-in-difference strategy with an IV approach to the endogeneity of the reform timing, this work finds that deregulation contributed to the per capita GDP levels of the early reformers relatively more than to the ones of the late reformers. However, the paper also finds that accelerating credit market reforms leads to a large growth acceleration effect for the late reformers, which points to large dynamic welfare gains from deregulation. The latter result suggests that a large-scale credit market re-regulation in the aftermath of the Great Recession is a misguided approach to deal with the consequences of the financial crisis.


The issue of whether neuronal degeneration is a primary factor in activation of astrocytes during epileptogenesis was addressed using the kindling model of epilepsy. No degenerative changes specific to the kindling process were observed in brain sections from kindled animals, sampled from the olfactory bulbs through to cerebellum and processed with the degeneration-sensitive cupric silver stain. Also, examination of lectin-stained sections did not reveal any reactive microglia. At the same time, reactive astrocytes, as judged by an increase in glial fibrillary acidic protein immunoreactivity and a de novo vimentin immunoreactivity, were prominent in amygdala, piriform cortex, entorhinal cortex and hippocampus. These results suggest that loss of neurones is not a prerequisite for establishment of epilepsy-prone state, that seizures of short duration do not necessarily result in neuronal death, and that in kindling, astrocytes are activated by factors that are not related to neuronal degeneration, but which are likely associated with abnormal neuronal activity.


ABSTRACT A new species of hump-backed semionotiform fish, Lophionotus sanjuanensis, gen et sp. nov., is described based on specimens recently and previously collected from the Upper Triassic Church Rock Member of the Chinle Formation of southeastern Utah. It is characterized by a deep body with a large postcranial hump, and dense tuberculation on the posterodorsal margin of the skull that continues into the dorsal ridge and dorsolateral flank scales. The vertical preoperculum bears a short and broad paddle-like ventral process. The infraorbital series expands ventral to the suborbital and contacts the anterior ramus of the preoperculum, although this character has also been observed in other deep-bodied semionotiform taxa. This taxon represents the first newly described semionotiform fish species from the western United States in over 45 years, and adds to knowledge of Triassic fishes biodiversity.


In this paper, we are interested in phased-array imaging of an unknown area using narrowband RF signals and arrays synthesized by an unmanned vehicle. Typical phased array imaging approaches use fixed or pre-determined array configurations for imaging, which are not usually informative for the whole area. In this paper, we then propose an iterative adaptive imaging approach where we identify the uncertain regions in an initial image that need to be sensed better, find the optimal array location and orientation for such a sensing task and finally combine the new image with the initial image to obtain a better overall imaging quality. Such an approach is easily enabled by using robots to synthesize arrays. We validate our proposed approach with numerical simulations and show that an adaptive approach improves the imaging quality as compared to imaging with fixed arrays.


A simple but successful strategy for building a discrete diffusion operator in finite volume schemes of industrial use is to correct the standard two-point flux approximation with a term accounting for the local mesh non-orthogonality. Practical experience with a variety of different mesh typologies, including non-orthogonal tetrahedral, hexahedral and polyhedral meshes, has shown that this discrete diffusion operator is accurate and robust whenever the mesh is not too distorted and sufficiently regular. In this work, we show that this approach can be interpreted as equivalent to introducing an anisotropic operator that accounts for the preferential directions induced by the local mesh non-orthogonality. This allows to derive a convergence analysis of the corrected method under a quite weak global assumption on mesh distortion. This convergence proof, which is obtained for the first time for this finite volume method widely employed in industrial software packages such as OpenFOAM, provides a reference framework on how to interpret some of its variants commonly implemented in commercial finite volume codes. Numerical experiments are presented that confirm the accuracy and robustness of the results. Furthermore, we also show empirically that a least square approach to the gradient computation can provide second order convergence even when the mild non-orthogonality condition on the mesh is violated.


Abstract Following the recent thermal expansion work of Hovis et al. (2008) on AlSi3 feldspars, we have investigated the thermal expansion of plagioclase, Ba-K, and Ca-K feldspar crystalline solutions. X-ray powder diffraction data were collected between room temperature and 925 °C on six natural plagioclase specimens ranging in composition from anorthite to oligoclase (and as well on their Kexchanged equivalents) and five synthetic Ba-K feldspars with compositions from 25 to 99 mol% BaAl2Si2O8. The resulting thermal expansion coefficients for volume (αV) have been combined with earlier results for end-member Na- and K-feldspars. Unlike AlSi3 feldspars, Al2Si2 feldspars, including anorthite and celsian from the present study, and Sr- and Pb-feldspar from other workers, show essentially constant, and relatively limited, thermal expansion. In the context of structures where the Lowenstein rule requires Al and Si to alternate among tetrahedra, the proximity of bridging Al-O-Si O atoms to divalent neighbors (ranging from 0 to 2) results in Ca-O (or Ba-O) bonds that are especially short. It is suggested that short bonds such as these have a partly covalent character resulting from the requirement for local charge balance. This, in turn, stiffens the structure. For feldspar series with coupled substitution, the change away from a purely divalent M-site occupant gives the substituting (less strongly bonded) monovalent cations increasingly greater influence on thermal expansion. Overall, thermal expansion in the feldspar system is well represented on a plot of αV against room-temperature volume (VRT), where one sees a quadrilateral bounded by data for: (1) AlSi3 feldspars whose expansion behavior is governed largely by the size of the monovalent alkali-site occupant; (2) Al2Si2 feldspars whose expansion is uniformly limited by divalent cations having stronger, partially covalent, bonds to bridging Al-O-Si O atoms; and (3,4) plagioclase and Ba-K feldspars where expansion behavior across the series transitions from one control to the other. Overall, the coefficient of thermal expansion in any binary feldspar series is a linear function of VRT between the pertinent end-members. This makes it possible to predict the thermal expansion behavior of any feldspar simply from knowledge of its chemical system and room-temperature volume


ABSTRACT
 A new actinopterygian species from lacustrine Lower Permian deposits of the Krkonoše Piedmont Basin (Bohemian Massif, Czech Republic) is assigned to the genus Igornichthys Heyler, 1972. Present study of this new species reveals several anatomical structures that markedly advance our knowledge and make the generic diagnosis of Igornichthys more precise. Characters that include sharply pointed spines on the scales, a supraorbital sensory canal continuing from the frontal on to the dermopterotic, a maxilla with the maxillary plate protruding at a ventro-posteriorly angle, dentition forming a single row of similar conical teeth, and an oblong operculum are diagnostic of the new species. Igornichthys is placed within Igornichthyidae Heyler, 1977 together with Igornella Heyler, 1969, Setlikia Štamberg & Zajíc, 1994 and Commentrya Sauvage, 1888 from the Stephanian and Lower Permian of the French Massif central and the Bohemian Massif. Analysis of the anatomical features of Igornichthys and other members of Igornichthyidae demonstrates clear differences from other actinopterygians occurring in the lacustrine basins of the Carboniferous and Lower Permian. The occurrence of very closely related species within Igornichthys and genera included in Igornichthyidae and Amblypteridae Romer, 1945, documents an extensive interconnection among the lacustrine basins of the French Massif central, the Saar Nahe Basin and the Bohemian Massif in the Late Carboniferous and particularly in the Early Permian.


The Glasgow Digital Library (GDL) Project has a significance over and above its primary aim of creating a joint digital library for the citizens of Glasgow. It is also both an important building block in the development of a planned and co‐ordinated "virtual Scotland" and a rich environment for research into issues relevant to that enterprise. Its creation comes at a time of political, social, economic and cultural change in Scotland, and may be seen, at least in part, as a response to a developing Scottish focus in these areas, a key element of which is a new socially inclusive and digitally driven educational vision and strategy based on the Scottish traditions of meritocratic education, sharing and common enterprise, and a fiercely independent approach. The initiative is based at the Centre for Digital Library Research at Strathclyde University alongside a range of other projects of relevance both to the development of a coherent virtual landscape in Scotland and to the GDL itself, a supportive environment which allows it to draw upon the research results and staff expertise of other relevant projects for use in its own development and enables its relationship to virtual Scotland to be both explored and developed more readily. Although its primary aim is the creation of content (based initially on electronic resources created by the institutions, on public domain information, and on joint purchases and digitisation initiatives) the project will also investigate relationships between regional and national collaborative collection management programmes with SCONE (Scottish Collections Network Extension project) and relationships between regional and national distributed union catalogues with CAIRNS (Co‐operative Academic Information Retrieval Network for Scotland) and COSMIC (Confederation of Scottish Mini‐Clumps). It will also have to tackle issues associated with the management of co‐operation.


Wind farms are a supply of renewable and environmentally friendly energy however they are met with growing opposition from a range of social groups. This opposition has resulted in a number of wind farm proposals being rejected. In 2010 alone, 48% of proposed wind farms in England and Wales were discarded. As public attitudes have a significant influence on the ultimate decision of a wind farm build, there is much to be researched on how the public perceives wind farms.
This dissertation has concentrated on the contrasting and comparable public attitudes between an established wind farm site and a proposed wind farm site. The chosen sites being Scout Moor wind farm and the proposed and subsequently rejected Denshaw Moor site. The research for this study has been obtained by the means of a number of questionnaires and a selected interview. The responses collected have been analysed with the aim to realise how attitudes between the two sites vary. The significant outcomes of this study have realised that public attitudes compare in regards to renewable energy and wind farms although once a wind farm is recognised, public attitudes distinguish. Public concerns for wind farms have also been comprehended with landscape being a sizeable concern. The results of this study have been supported by existing work and provide an insight into how perception of a wind farm can alter with experience.


Anthocyanins, synthesized via the flavonoid pathway, are a class of crucial phenolic compounds which are fundamentally responsible for the red color of grapes and wines. As the most important natural colorants in grapes and their products, anthocyanins are also widely studied for their numerous beneficial effects on human health. In recent years, the biosynthetic pathway of anthocyanins in grapes has been thoroughly investigated. Their intracellular transportation and accumulation have also been further clarified. Additionally, the genetic mechanism regulating their biosynthesis and the phytohormone influences on them are better understood. Furthermore, due to their importance in the quality of wine grapes, the effects of the environmental factors and viticulture practices on anthocyanin accumulation are being investigated increasingly. The present paper summarizes both the basic information and the most recent advances in the study of the anthocyanin biosynthesis in red grapes, emphasizing their gene structure, the transcriptional factors and the diverse exterior regulation factors.


Natural fiber reinforced composites is an emerging area in polymer science. These natural fibers are low cost fibers with low density and high specific properties. These are biodegradable and nonabrasive. The natural fiber composites offer specific properties comparable to those of conventional fiber composites. However, in development of these composites, the incompatibility of the fibers and poor resistance to moisture often reduce the potential of natural fibers, and these draw backs become critical issue. Wood-plastic composites (WPC) are a relatively new class of materials and one of the fastest growing sectors in the wood composites industry. Composites of wood in a thermoplastic matrix (wood–plastic composites) are considered a low maintenance solution to using wood in outdoor applications. WPCs are normally made from a mixture of wood fiber, thermoplastic, and small amounts of process and property modifiers through an extrusion process. In this study, Wood–plastic composites (WPC) are produce by adding a maleic anhydride modified low density polyethylene coupling agent to improve interfacial adhesion between the wood fiber and the plastic. Mixing is done with twin screw extruder. Subsequently, tensile strength, the modulus of elasticity, % elongation, hardness, Izod impact strength, melt flow index (MFI), and heat deflection temperature (HDT) are determined. Thermal transition temperatures and microstructure are determined with DSC and SEM, respectively. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2009


In Viola odorata two inferior anthers have connective appendages (nectaries) projecting into the corolla spur. Nectaries are approx. 4 mm long, elongate, with the top of the nectary bending to the lateral wall of the spur. In the top part and in the abaxial surface of middle part of the nectary all cells have papillae. Nectar is secreted through the modified stomata distributed mainly in the top of nectary The nectary consists of single-layered epidermis, nectary parenchyma and subnectary parenchyma. Features of the nectary parenchyma cells, like dense cytoplasm containing numerous mitochondria and large nuclei, are connected with high metabolic cell activity. The vascularization includes both phloem and xylem. A slight amount of starch in the nectary cells, the profusion of plasmodesmata connecting secretory cells and the presence of vascular bundles suggest that sugars secreted in the nectar were delivered by the phloem sap.


We analyze how a patent-holding pharmaceutical firm may strategically use advertising of existing drugs to affect research and development (R&D) investments in new (differentiated) drugs, and thereby affect the probability distribution of future market structures in the industry. Within a fairly general model framework, we derive exact conditions for advertising and R&D being substitute strategies for the incumbent firm and show that it may overinvest in advertising to reduce the incentive for an entrant to invest in R&D, thereby reducing the probability of a new product on the market. In a more specific setting of informative advertising, we show that such overinvestment incentives are always present and that more generous patent protection implies that a larger share of the patent rent is spent on marketing, relative to R&D.


Within all religious or philosophical schools of thought where order and moral goodness are the foundations and substance of existence, the concept of evil is problematic. If the ground of existence is ordered and good, then all that comes from the ground is good - there would seem to be no room in existence for a rebellion against good. The rebellion would simply be a part of the order and goodness of existence, and so also be good. One way of dealing with the problem of evil is to view it as coming from the limitations of human knowledge: what we call evil is really good, though we do not see it as good because of our limited perspective. Thus, evil does not truly exist. If one wants to take evil seriously, however, this answer is not convincing. Another approach has been taken throughout the history of Western Philosophy, beginning in Socrates, carried on in another form by Augustine, and also present in Kant's moral theory. This view conceives of evil as a privation: evil is not a substance, but a lack of substance. For Socrates, to know the Good is to do the Good, and so if a person is committing evil, this is due to a lack or privation of knowledge, the result of which is an enslavement to the less real world of appearances - the life in the cave. For Augustine, the movement toward evil is a deficiency of the will that has lost itself in the things of this world (more will be said on Augustine below). For Kant, moral evil is to act according to the incentives, rather than according to the rational good will; this is to lack the freedom and autonomy necessary for good moral action. In each of these renditions of evil as privation, the process of moving from the substance of life (whether the Good, God, or rational self-determination), leaves a person's life weakened and disordered. Thus, evil is a kind of disintegration - an evil person lacks integrity. The Danish philosopher S0ren Kierkegaard is critical of this view of evil. He finds this view to be an inadequate explanation of the power of moral evil that we experience in the world. The effects of evil we experience are not simply due to evil's destructive tendencies, according to Kierkegaard, but due to a powerful integrity within the nature of moral evil itself. No doubt there are forms of evil that move in the direction of privation and lack, but I will argue in this essay that Kierkegaard has provided an analysis of a more actualized from of evil, by giving positive content to the notion of moral evil. I will begin this analysis by briefly looking at the privation view of evil, specifically in terms of Augustine. This will give a picture of how human actualization and integrity are generally conceived within this view. This leads to an analysis of Kierkegaard's understanding of human self-actualization. In this analysis I look at the movement of the self through the well-known Kierkegaardian existence-stages: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. The analysis will center not around the nature of these stages, but on the tensions within each stage that lead to self-becoming or self-actualization. Thus, I emphasize how these stages confront despair - the limit or boundary each stage runs up against, and so founders upon. It is at these points of foundering that human actualization takes place. It will be important for us to see that for Kierkegaard human actualization takes place not as a matter of course, but in choices- selfactualization takes place in an interplay between self-consciousness and freedom. Therefore, human self-actualization, as well as the integrity of the self, consists of a growth in both self-consciousness and freedom. The Privation Approach to the Problem of Evil Ultimately the privation view of evil stems from a view that the ground of human existence is ordered (or order itself). All that exists arises out of and can be explained by this ground. Thus, that which remains closely related to the ground has the most actuality, and is the most ordered or rational (is well-integrated with what lies within and outside the self). …


Risk of livestock losses to poisonous plants can be reduced on many ranges through prudent management based on application of existing knowledge. Poisonous plants can be categorized using both acceptability to livestock and a plant's toxic potential. Acceptability encompasses forage qualities such as taste and chemistry (i.e., nutrient and toxin concentrations) and postingestive feedback from an animal's daily and long-term (e.g., body condition) nutritional and toxicological state. Toxic potential reflects aspects of plant chemistry, including seasonal or other changes in concentration or functionality of the toxin(s), and type of toxicity (i.e., acute or chronic). Persistent livestock losses to poisonous plants may indicate that ranges are over-grazed or improperly managed. Aggressive management schemes that employ high stocking rates and grazing intensities may yield greater returns, but may also increase risk if poisonous plants are present. Plants may be ranked according to toxicity and acceptability. Six interrelated categories of plants are discussed: 1) always toxic and acceptable to livestock; 2) always toxic and not acceptable; 3) always toxic and acceptable at certain times; 4) toxic only at certain times and acceptable to livestock; 5) toxic at certain times and unacceptable; and 6) toxic at certain times and acceptable at certain times. Each category involves differing risk and uncertainty. Within this management matrix, strategies for dealing with specific poisonous plants can be customized depending on how much and when the plant is eaten by livestock, and when the plant is most toxic. DOI:10.2458/azu_jrm_v55i3_pfister


In the last decades the market for organic food was well developed in Western European Countries and com-parable markets like the US or Canada. While these markets more or less approach market saturation, other markets still have huge potentials and are of special interest for exporting companies. In this paper we analyze demands, knowledge and expectations in the emerging market Russia. It is well documented that the Russian market for organic food has much higher growth rates compared to Western markets. According to the USDA, the market rose from about 640 million Rubel in 2004 to about 7.4 billion Rubel in 2011 (about 155 Mio €). This dramatic boost in sales might also be due to a significant change in Russians' consumer behavior. Howev-er, some challenges have to be considered when entering the Russian market with premium products (organic food is usually sold at comparable high prices in Russia). (1) There is a huge number of low-income consumers who are not able to pay for premium products. (2) Up to now, there are no official organic labels available in Russia. Therefore, it is likely that the Russian population has a lack of knowledge on what organic food is and which requirements are connected to the organic production process. Considering these restrictions, it was interesting to analyze important factors for the food choice on the one hand and the knowledge of Russian consumers about organic food on the other. This contribution will present results for one specific product (organic potatoes) which can be considered to be a typical alternative to low priced, conventional products. A conjoint analysis was conducted in Saint Petersburg investigating the importance of buying attributes con-nected to organic potatoes (n = 300); obviously, the results are not representative for the whole Russian mar-ket. But the results impressively show how different consumers' attitudes are compared to Western markets and how low the average knowledge about this product category still is. The findings deliver valuable infor-mation for all members within the supply chain who want to enter a market with high growth rates but also with obvious shortcomings.


This paper empirically examines the short- and long-run finance-growth nexus during the
post-1997 financial crisis in the ASEAN-4 countries (i.e., Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and
the Philippines) by employing battery of times series techniques such as the autoregressive distributed
lag (ARDL) model, the vector error correction model (VECM), the variance decompositions
(VDCs) and impulse-response functions (IRFs). Based on the ARDL model, the study
documents a long-run equilibrium between economic growth, finance depth, share of investment
and inflation. The study also finds that the common sources of economic progress/regress
among countries are price stability and financial development. Granger causality tests based
on the VECM further reveals that there is: (i) no causality between finance and growth in Indonesia,
which confirms "the independent hypothesis" of Lucas (1988); (ii) a unidirectional
causality running from finance to growth in Malaysia, thus supporting the "finance-growth
led hypothesis" or the "supply-leading view"; (iii) a bidirectional causality between finance
and growth in Thailand, in accord with the "feedback hypothesis" or the "bidirectional causality
view"; and (iv) a unidirectional causality stemming from growth to finance in the Philippines,
the finding echoing the "growth-led finance hypothesis" or the Robinson's (1952) "demand-
following view". Based on VDCs and IRFs, the study discovers that the variations in the
economic growth rely very much on its own innovations. If policy makers want to promote
growth in the ASEAN-4 countries, priority should be given to long run policies, i.e., to the enhancement
of existing financial institutions in the banking sector as well as the stock market.