Kinetic Energy Recovery System, commonly abbreviated KERS, is a system to recover the Kinetic energy of a moving vehicle under braking. This system stores the kinetic energy in the form of potential energy and converts it back to kinetic energy when needed. When riding a bicycle it becomes too tiresome to start the bicycle again after braking. If the bicycle is provided with a kinetic energy recovery system then the rider will have two power sources that he can use at his will. When brakes are applied kinetic energy is wasted because the kinetic energy converts into heat energy due to friction at the contact surface and the heat energy dissipates into the atmosphere due to thermal radiation. Vehicles equipped with KERS devices are able to take some of its kinetic energy out slowing down the vehicle. This is a form of braking in which energy is not wasted, instead gets stored in some device. Using a proper mechanism, this energy that is stored in terms of potential energy can be converted back into kinetic energy to give the vehicle an extra boost of power. In the literature review, different types of available KERS systems are compared and a mechanical based KERS system is found to be the best suitable for a bicycle. Mechanical KERS system there are of two types, one is a clutch based and another is a CVT based K.E. recovery system. In this project, a hybrid of the above two type of KERS systems is designed. Instead of CVT a variable sprocket ratio is used to make the power transmission smoother. Finally, the complete manufacturing process of this KERS system is explained elaborately so that any researcher can follow those steps and design a KERS system for his/her bicycle.


Invasive predators are a key driver of biodiversity decline, and effective predator management is an important conservation issue globally. The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) poses a significant threat to wildlife, livestock and human health across Eurasia, North America and Australia. Despite worldwide investment in red fox management, decision makers still lack flexible tools for predicting control efficacy. We have developed FoxNet, a spatially explicit, individual‐based model (IBM) framework that can be customised to predict red fox population dynamics, including responses to control and landscape productivity. High‐resolution models can be run across northern and southern hemisphere landscapes. We present four case‐study models to verify FoxNet outputs, explore key sensitivities and demonstrate the framework's utility as a management planning tool. FoxNet models were largely successful in reproducing the demographic structure of two red fox populations in highly contrasting landscapes. They also accurately generated the relationship between home‐range size and fox‐family density for home‐range sizes between 1.0 and 9.6 km², and captured the rapid decline and seasonally driven recovery of a red fox population following poison‐baiting. An exploration of alternative poison‐baiting scenarios for a conservation reserve predicted that current management suppresses red fox density by ~70% and showed that frequent baiting is required to combat recolonisation. Baiting at higher densities or establishing a baited buffer would further reduce red fox density. Predictions were sensitive to home‐range and litter size assumptions, illustrating the value of region‐specific data on red fox movement and biology. Synthesis and applications. We have developed a versatile individual‐based model framework to guide management of the red fox, a globally significant invasive predator. Our framework, FoxNet, can be customised to generate realistic predictions of red fox population dynamics in diverse landscapes, making it immediately applicable to the design and optimisation of predator control programmes at scales relevant to management. Future extensions could explore competitor and prey responses to red fox control and the effects of habitat disturbance on predator population dynamics.


ABSTRACT There is now a growing body of literature which is centred upon the negative outcomes that occur for many families, and by extension, children who experience the imprisonment of a father. Typically, families suffer the consequences of living with stigma and financial difficulties, while children are often affected by the accompanying secrecy and are provided with limited information about what has happened to their incarcerated parent. These factors can combine to increase the chances of children and family members in this position developing mental and physical health issues and other associated difficulties. Drawing on the findings from the lead author's research on the impact of indeterminate sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPPs) upon families, the authors will argue that for families where fathers are serving IPPs, the potentially negative effects of parental incarceration are considerably magnified. The evidence gathered suggested a worrying picture, as the unique nature of the IPP sentence has resulted in a severely detrimental impact upon families and children. With no definite release date, there is an absence of hope, which can quickly lead to despair for IPP prisoners and their families who have very little understanding of the gravity of their predicament.


Anxiety disorders are the most common psychological and emotional disorders in children. Anxiety disorder can disrupt the routine life, school performance and friendly relationship. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of animation program with cognitive behavior approach on anxiety symptoms of children with 7 or 8 years old. The present study was a single subject design using A-B-A for participants. 3 primary school children with anxiety symptoms participated in this study. The treatment plan was consisted of 12 secessions implementing animation program that each participant received the program individually. Multiple measurements were done at pre-test, during the treatment and post-test. The instrument of the present study was the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS) (1999). The gathered data were analyzed with chart analysis. According to the results of the present study include that animation program was affective on reducing the anxiety symptom of the primary school children.


The marginalization or exclusion of women from economic theory has a long and distinguished pedigree. Michele A. Pujol, in her groundbreaking study Feminism and Anti-Feminism in Early Economic Thought (1998), wryly observes that whilst Adam Smith devotes an entire page to the question of women's economic activity in his Wealth of Nations , women 'are nowhere mentioned in Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation and in Malthus's Principles of Political Economy ' (Pujol 1992:17-23). In similar fashion Groenewegen, in Feminism and Political Economy in Victorian England (1994), notes that 'there have been few women contributors to … economic literature' (Groenewegen 1994:16). Indeed, as far as the first half of the nineteenth century is concerned, only two women - Jane Marcet and Harriet Martineau - seem to have written on political economy. Both wrote as expositors and popularizers of existing theoretical knowledge, content to repeat rather than challenge established orthodoxies, and as a result neither has commanded much more than a footnote in the history of economic thought. Martineau enjoys somewhat more of an enhanced reputation in the field of literary studies but even here attention tends to focus on A Manchester Strike at the expense of her other economic fictions. The present discussion, then, attempts to expand the field of vision with regard to Martineau by examining four of her economic tales: The Rioters (1827), The Turn-Out (1829), The Hill and the Valley (1832) and A Manchester Strike (1832). The first two of these were written prior to Martineau's 'conversion' to political economy, whilst the latter two appeared as part of Illustrations of Political Economy (a series of twenty-three tales published in twenty-five monthly parts between 1832 and 1843). As a way of exploring the disjuncture between economic theory and narrative events within these tales, the narratives themselves are read as implicit commentaries on (as well as 'illustrations'of) aspects of political economy, thereby allowing Martineau to emerge as a much more complex and problematic writer than is usually acknowledged. Also under examination here are the economic ideas of Frances Wright, another early nineteenth-century woman writer, particularly her critique of the existing economic order (which sharply differentiates her from Martineau) and her proposals for a new 'feminine' economy. The intention is to show that women writers on economics were not confined to the role of 'dutiful intellectual daughter, repeating … the words of her intellectual fathers' (David 1987:35)--to borrow Deirdre David's characterization of Martineau in Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy --but were capable of articulating a thoroughgoing critique of existing theoretical models.


The dynamics of stem cell replacement at the bottom of the intestinal crypt is visualized and quantified. [Also see Report by Vermeulen et al.] We mostly think of evolution as a process that has the power to build structures of incredible beauty and functionality, like multicellular organisms, the nervous system, and human language. But evolutionary dynamics can also lead to processes that are not wanted, such as cancer, because they oppose the survival interests of the organism. The somatic evolution of cancer is a consequence of our cells being individual replicators. Upon acquiring mutations, cells can revert to their primitive program of proliferation, competition for survival, and selection of the fittest. On page 995 of this issue, Vermeulen et al. (1) demonstrate how multicellular organisms keep this unwanted evolution in check. By quantifying the effects of mutations that frequently occur during colorectal tumor development, the authors show that intestinal tissue architecture acts as a suppressor of selection.


The IEEE 802.15.4 network is gaining popularity due to its wide range of application in Industries and day to day life. Energy Conservation in IEEE 802.15.4 nodes is always a concern for the designers as the life time of a network depends mainly on minimizing the energy consumption in the nodes. In ZigBee cluster-tree network, the existing literature does not provide combined solution for co-channel interference and power efficient scheduling. In addition, the technique that prevents network collision has not been provided. Delay and reliability issues are not addressed in the QoS-aware routing. Congestion is one of the major challenges in IEEE 802.15.4 Network. This network also has issues in admitting real time flows.
 The aim of the present research is to overcome the issues mentioned above by designing Energy Efficient Cluster Scheduling and Interference Mitigation, QoS Aware Inter-Cluster Routing Protocol and Adaptive Data Rate Control for Clustered Architecture for IEEE 802.15.4 Networks. To overcome the issue of Energy efficiency and network collision energy efficient cluster scheduling and interference mitigation for IEEE 802.15.4 Network is proposed. It uses a time division cluster scheduling technique that offers energy efficiency in the cluster-tree network. In addition, an interference mitigation technique is demonstrated which detects and mitigates the channel interference based on packet-error detection and repeated channel-handoff command transmission.
 For the issues of delay and reliability in cluster network, QoS aware intercluster routing protocol for IEEE 802.15.4 Networks is proposed. It consists of some modules like reliability module, packet classifier, hello protocol module, routing service module. Using the Packet classifier, the packets are classified into the data and hello packets. The data packets are classified based on the priority. Neighbour table is constructed to maintain the information of neighbour nodes reliabilities by Hello protocol module. Moreover, routing table is built using the routing service module. The delay in the route is controlled by delay metrics, which is a sum of queuing delay and transmission delay. For the issues of congestion and admit real-time flows an Adaptive data rate control for clustered architecture in IEEE 802.15.4 Networks is proposed. A network device is designed to regulate its data rate adaptively using the feedback message i.e. Congestion Notification Field (CNF) in beacon frame received from the receiver side. The network device controls or changes its data rate based on CNF value. Along with this scalability is considered by modifying encoding parameters using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to balance the target output rate for supporting high data rate. Simulation results show that the proposed techniques significantly reduce the energy consumption by 17% and the network collision, enhance the performance, mitigate the effect of congestion, and admit real-time flows.


Proteins play a central role in the signal transmission in living systems since they are able to recognize specific biomolecules acting as cellular receptors, antibodies or enzymes, being themselves recognized by other proteins in protein/protein interactions, or displaying epitopes suitable for antibody binding. In this context, the specific recognition of a given protein unlocks a range of interesting applications in diagnosis and in targeted therapies. Obviously, this role is already fulfilled by antibodies with unquestionable success. However, the design of synthetic artificial systems able to endorse this role is still challenging with a special interest to overcome limitations of antibodies, in particular their production and their stability. Molecular Imprinted Polymers (MIPs) are attractive recognition systems which could be an alternative for the specific capture of proteins in complex biological fluids. MIPs can be considered as biomimetic receptors or antibody mimics displaying artificial paratopes. However, MIPs of proteins remains a challenge due to their large size and conformational flexibility, their complex chemical nature with multiple recognition sites and their low solubility in most organic solvents. Classical MIP synthesis conditions result in large polymeric cavities and unspecific binding sites on the surface. In this review, the potential of the sol-gel process as inorganic polymerization strategy to overcome the drawbacks of protein imprinting is highlighted. Thanks to the mild and biocompatible experimental conditions required and the use of water as a solvent, the inorganic polymerization approach better suited to proteins than organic polymerization. Through numerous examples and applications of MIPs, we proposed a critical evaluation of the parameters that must be carefully controlled to achieve sol-gel protein imprinting (SGPI), including the choice of the monomers taking part in the polymerization.


Mobile device software applications play an ever increasing role in the interaction with ubiquitous computing environments. To grow the acceptance of the mobile product-lines among the developers, the technology used to implement them should be easy to implement and introduce. This dissertation addresses mobile product-line development related issues in three dimensions. First, based on the success of the software container component technology for server-side enterprise applications, a software container abstraction for mobile applications, called a mobile container, is introduced to organize the common functionality of mobile product-lines. Mobile containers serve as a central point to organize the functionality needed by the mobile applications. A mobile container is defined as a hybrid client- and server-side container. A mobile application communicates with the rest of a ubiquitous computing environment as a client of one or more server-side services. Mobile containers organize the common functionality of a mobile product-line as a set of services used by mobile clients, and by server-side applications. Server-side applications contain mobile client specific code to adapt the data and the services requested by the mobile clients based on the limitations that exist in mobile devices, e.g., low screen resolution. Second, attributes are used to model the container services declaratively in the source code. Attributes are known from technologies, such as .NET and Java, where they are used to decorate the program elements of the language, e.g., classes and methods. Attributes extend the language without having to maintain its compiler and are used to emulate domain-specific abstractions (DSA). Attribute families are used as a means to model the domain variability. A lightweight language extension is created that enables accessing and manipulating the annotated code. Languages that contain attribute transformation support, as part of their core functionality, will be called Generalized and Annotated Abstract Syntax Tree (GAAST) languages. GAAST-languages enable better language support for the code transformations applied in the context of the Model-Driven Architecture (MDA). Third, a structured modularization of attribute-driven transformers is introduced to ease the interpretation of attribute-based DSA. Specialized attribute transformers connect the attribute-based DSA with the container services, exposed as object-oriented (OO) libraries. Attribute-driven transformers are horizontally modularized based on the characteristics of the modeled domain. The semantics of the domain assets, expressed as attribute families, are used to determine the transformation workflow. A uniform composition model for transformers based on the inner attributes is developed. Transformers state their dependencies declaratively by decorating the processed elements with arbitrary information in the form of inner attributes. This information is used to coordinate the code processing by successor transformers. The hardwired OO language meta-model is utilized to introduce a vertical modularization of the attribute-driven transformers. The transformation strategy is structured according to the nesting of the structural elements found in the language meta-model. The layering strategy is enforced by operations, specialized for every supported element of the language meta-model. These operations form a specialized language for attribute-driven transformations. Common attribute operations, such as, checking for attribute dependencies, are declaratively specified and factored out of the individual transformers by using meta-attributes. Meta-attribute enable the decoration of attributes themselves with arbitrary semantics that can be automatically processed. The proposed technology is evaluated by an extensible mobile container framework for Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) applications of the Java 2 Mobile Edition (J2ME), that run in small mobile devices. Several technical MIDP concerns are addressed, e.g., data persistence, session and screen management, and networking, resulting in a simpler and more declarative programming model, that preserves the architecture of the domain in the individual applications.


A hard-edged elliptical aperture is described approximately by a tensor form, which can be expanded as a finite sum of complex Gaussian functions. An analytical propagation expression for a decentered elliptical Gaussian beam (DEGB) through an axially nonsymmetrical optical system with an elliptical aperture is derived by using vector integration. The approximate analytical results are compared with numerically integral ones, and it is shown that this method can significantly improve the efficiency of numerical calculation. Some numerical simulations are illustrated for the propagation properties of DEGBs through apertured and nonsymmetrical optical transforming systems.


»Nicht alle Krisen wirken sich negativ auf das Ansehen der Regierung aus. Die globale Wirtschaftskrise und der Fall Schweden«. Not all crises have the same impact. In this article the argument is made that we should make a distinction between a "homemade" and an "externally" caused crisis when analyzing the implications of an economic downturn. The case is Sweden and the analyses include both citizens' and MPs' attitudes towards democracy before and after the economic crisis of 2008. The article also makes an effort to compare the economic crisis of 2008 to a previous economic crisis that occurred at the beginning of the 1990s. Both crises were related to international turmoil, and they had a clearly negative impact on the Swedish economy. Yet, the crises were also very different. In the crisis of the 1990s, Sweden was seen as one of the countries that suffered the most, while in the aftermath of the economic crisis 2008, Sweden was seen as one of the most successful countries in handling the crisis. By comparing the two crises, we can get a better understanding of the extent to which attribution of responsibility depends on the context of the crisis.


In this work, NIST's Core Product Model (CPM) and the Open Assembly Model (OAM) are extended to integrate product information including function and behavior, with an emphasis on assembly, throughout all phases of product development. The consistency validation of product information, and the verification of modified product information are discussed. These processes ensure that the product information has no contradictions and allows tracing through associations without any deficiency or disconnection. In other words, the information model has to be complete in terms of traceability of function, behavior, spatial relationships, etc., in order to support all information exchange activities. The product information representation provides a mechanism for capturing product information and storing it in a database. This representation schema also provides necessary information for any future decision making activities at the End_Of_Life (EOL) environment, such as the replacement or reuse of any part or subassembly. When there is a need to replace one artifact with another, one must consider all of the associations of the existing artifact with other artifacts and the environment, not just functional and space requirements, and the relevant modification(s) of the associated objects has to be verified. So one can manage product lifecycle activities in different perspectives by knowing how the product information is interconnected in various domains and how its characteristics affect each other.


This study aim is to examine the efficiency in the Takaful industry of Bangladesh. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to explore the contributions of technical and efficiency changes to the growth of productivity in the Takaful industries of Bangladesh by using descriptive statistics such as mean, median, standard deviation, minimum & maximum and efficiency (Constant Returns to Scale & Variable Returns to Scale) applying the generalized output-oriented Malmquist index for the years 2009-2011. The output-input data consists of a panel of all (06) Takaful companies in Bangladesh. This study utilizes two inputs and two outputs, namely, commission and management as well as premium and net investment income, respectively. In the DEA technique, efficiency is measured by the Malmquist index. The Malmquist efficiency measures have two components: the efficiency change and technical change index. Efficiency change is again combined by pure efficiency and scale efficiency. It is found that, on geometric mean, the TFP of the Takaful industry is mainly due to both efficiency and technical changes where the main source of the efficiency change is scale efficiency rather than pure efficiency. Our finding indicates that in the Takaful industry of Bangladesh, the smaller the size of the companies, the higher the probability for the companies to be more efficient in utilizing their inputs to generate more outputs. We believe our work is beneficial for researchers and practitioners to better understand the Bangladeshi Islamic insurance industry. Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA); Takaful; Malmquist Index; Efficiency; Technical Efficiency; Scale Eficiency; Pure Efficiency.


This study estimated energy, environmental and consumer economic impacts of U.S. Federal residential energy efficiency standards that became effective in the 1988-2006 period, and of energy efficiency standards for fluorescent lamp ballasts and distribution transformers. These standards have been the subject of in-depth analyses conducted as part of DOE's standards rulemaking process. This study drew on those analyses, but updated certain data and developed a common framework and assumptions for all of the products in order to estimate realized impacts and to update projected impacts. It also performed new analysis for the first (1990) fluorescent ballast standards, which had been introduced in the NAECA legislation without a rulemaking. We estimate that the considered standards will reduce residential/ commercial primary energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in 2030 by 4percent compared to the levels expected without any standards. The reduction for the residential sector is larger, at 8percent. The estimated cumulative energy savings from the standards amount to 39 quads by 2020, and 63 quads by 2030. The standards will also reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by considerable amounts.The estimated cumulative net present value of consumer benefit amounts to $241 billion by 2030, and grows to $269 billion by 2045. The overall ratio of consumer benefits to costs (in present value terms) in the 1987-2050 period is 2.7 to 1. Although the estimates made in this study are subject to a fair degree of uncertainty, we believe they provide a reasonable approximation of the national benefits resulting from Federal appliance efficiency standards.


Callisphyris apicicornis (Fairmaire & Germain) (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Necydalinae) is a native, xylophagous, and polyphagous longhorned beetle, currently having the status of an increasing pest in some fruit orchards in Chile which needs a control strategy. However, no efficient methods have been developed against C. apicicornis. Since pheromone- based strategies are promissory against these types of pests, it is necessary to understand the chemical communication within this species in order to collect and identify the pheromonal compounds as the first step to develop pheromone- based control tactics. The objectives of this work were to study behavioral and electrophysiological responses of males to con-specific females and its extracts, to seek out evidence of chemical communication in the intraspecific relationship of C. apicicornis. In field, we collected 112 males using 8 baited traps with alive females in two separate experiments. However, neither males nor headspace (HS) extracts were attractive for either sex in field, no males were captured in those treatments (16 traps). On the other hand, in laboratory bioassays males showed significant electroantennographic responses to females' volatiles extracts (1.46 mV) and gland extracts (1.15 mV). Likewise, behavioral bioassay showed significant olfactometric preference for females' volatiles and gland extracts. Our results strongly suggest a female- produced sex attractant occurs within this species, so further studies should attempt to identify and quantify the chemicals compounds with this role


Policy gradient algorithms have proven to be successful in diverse decision making and control tasks. However, these methods suffer from high sample complexity and instability issues. In this paper, we address these challenges by providing a different approach for training the critic in the actor-critic framework. Our work builds on recent studies indicating that traditional actor-critic algorithms do not succeed in fitting the true value function, calling for the need to identify a better objective for the critic. In our method, the critic uses a new state-value (resp. state-action-value) function approximation that learns the relative value of the states (resp. state-action pairs) rather than their absolute value as in conventional actor-critic. We prove the theoretical consistency of the new gradient estimator and observe dramatic empirical improvement across a variety of continuous control tasks and algorithms. Furthermore, we validate our method in tasks with sparse rewards, where we provide experimental evidence and theoretical insights.


This study deals with the comparison of numerically and experimentally determined collision kernels of water drops in air turbulence. The numerical and experimental setups are matched as closely as possible. However, due to the individual numerical and experimental restrictions, it could not be avoided that the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate of the measurement and the simulations differ. Direct numerical simulations (DNS) are performed resulting in a very large database concerning geometric collision kernels with 1470 individual entries. Based on this database a fit function for the turbulent enhancement of the collision kernel is developed. In the experiments, the collision rates of large drops (radius > 7.5μm$> 7.5\,\text{\textmu{}m}$) are measured. These collision rates are compared with the developed fit, evaluated at the measurement conditions. Since the total collision rates match well for all occurring dissipation rates the distribution information of the fit could be used to enhance the statistical reliability and for the first time an experimental collision kernel could be constructed. In addition to the collision rates, the drop size distributions at three consecutive streamwise positions are measured. The drop size distributions contain mainly small drops (radius < 7.5μm$< 7.5\,\text{\textmu{}m}$). The measured evolution of the drop size distribution is confronted with model calculations based on the newly derived fit of the collision kernel. It turns out that the observed fast evolution of the drop size distribution can only be modeled if the collision kernel for small drops is drastically increased. A physical argument for this amplification is missing since for such small drops, neither DNSs nor experiments have been performed. For large drops, for which a good agreement of the collision rates was found in the DNS and the experiment, the time for the evolution of the spectrum in the wind tunnel is too short to draw any conclusion. Hence, the long-time evolution of the drop size distribution is presented in a submitted paper by Riechelmann et al.


We investigate Beauville's conjecture on the Chow ring of irreducible symplectic varieties. For special irreducible symplectic varieties we relate it to a conjecture on the existence of rational Lagrangian fibrations, which proves Beauville's conjecture in many new cases. We further apply the same techniques to reduce Beauville's conjecture to Picard rank two.


The contribution of joint rotations to endpoint velocity was investigated in golf shots to submaximal and maximal shot distances using a 41degrees of freedom (DOF) kinematic model. A subset of 16 DOFs was found to explain 97%-99% of endpoint velocity regulation at club–ball contact. The largest contributors, for both groups at every shot condition, were pelvis and torso twist rotation among the most proximal DOFs, elbow pronation/supination and wrist flexion/extension among DOFs in the left arm, and shoulder internal/external rotation and wrist flexion/extension among DOFs in the right arm. The contributions from pelvis obliquity, left wrist flexion/extension, left wrist ulnar/radial deviation and right shoulder flexion/extension differed significantly between the advanced and intermediate group.


Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) is the under-masculinization of individuals with XY sex chromosome karyotypes. A broad clinical spectrum of AIS exists, from mild to partial to complete AIS. Mouse models of complete AIS have been used to study aspects of sexual development, physiology, and behavioural outcomes in the absence of androgenic signaling. There is currently no animal model of partial AIS (PAIS), and the novel mouse strain described in this research satisfies the clinical description of human PAIS patients, appearing outwardly male with additional feminine characteristics. My research on the PAIS mouse model focuses on the anatomical features and endocrinology of this unique strain, and the role of partial androgen signaling as a cause of behavioural anxiety. -- Anatomically, PAIS male mice have similar body size and weight to wild-type (WT) males, but they have an intermediate anal-genital distance that is shorter than WT males, but longer than WT female mice. The PAIS males do possess intra-abdominal testes, but they are infertile, as they lack internal reproductive structures such as the seminal vesicles, prostate, epididymis and vas deferens. Androgen-responsive organs are significantly smaller in mature PAIS males compared to age-matched WT males, including the testes, preputial glands and kidneys; however, this phenotype did not correlate with a lack of testosterone (T) synthesis, since T concentrations were not different between WT and PAIS males as juveniles (30 d) or young adults (50 d). Following an androgen sensitivity test, androgen-responsive growth of the preputial glands in castrated males was significantly reduced in T-supplemented PAIS versus WT males, indicating partial androgen insensitivity. A defect in androgen sensitivity was further indicated by the elevated serum gonadotropin concentrations at 30 d of age (follicle stimulating hormone (FSH)) and 50 d of age (FSH and luteinizing hormone (LH)), suggesting a failure of negative feedback regulation at the level of the hypothalamic-anterior pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis. Behaviourally, the PAIS mutation significantly decreased male-typical behaviours (aggression and sexual interest) and increased anxiety-like behaviour in a standard paradigm for measurement of rodent anxiety - the elevated plus maze. One assay of social behaviour showed no difference in social interactions between PAIS and WT male mice. This novel rodent model of PAIS satisfies the criteria for human PAIS patients, and will serve as an excellent tool to further explore the potential consequences of PAIS to male health.


The purpose of this study is to reveal how to have an effect the critics of the modern paintings written by novelists & poets or critics such as Lym-Whoa & Gyeun-Gu-Hyun on the building up the Korean Modern Fine Art and Modern literature. This paper also wants to show analysing the relationships between the theory of transplantation modem art(I-Sik-Mi-Sul-Non) and the theory of transplantation modern literature (I-Sik-Moon-Wha-Lon). This study shows that novelists & poets or critics were participated to write the critics of paintings are influenced the traditional thought which was poem, calligraphy and paintings are constructed one thing as the work for the intellectuals. So the literature stuff writers had played an important role to build up the modern fine art from traditional calligraphy & drawings. The conclusion of this thesis are shows two kinds of the facts. One thing is that The critics of the modern paintings written by novelists & poets or critics such as Lym-Whoa, Gyeun-Gu-Hyun & Lee-Tae-June had made Korean modem novels were realized the value of description and art has gotten self-regulation. The Other thing is that the specific characters as the Korean style in the most genre of arts should created during modernization in order to overcome the theory of transplantation modem art(I-Sik-Mi-Sul-Non), the theory of transplantation modem literature(I-Sik-Moon-Wha-Lon) and the process of civilization. Find art and literature were cooperated each others. However some critics did not known what is the points of dissimilarity between paintings and literatures. But still their participations of critics on fine arts could helped the period of the enlightenment in Korean modern literatures.


The average person in America watches four hours of television per day and spends the equivalent of nine years of his or her life in front of the television set. If the attention most people devote to popular culture - listening to the news, watching soap operas, reading the comics-were added up, it would reveal that most people spend an enormous amount of time with popular culture which becomes in large measure, their culture. "Manufacturing Desire" is a study of how the mass media broadcast or spread various popular arts; further how the media and popular arts play a major role in shaping our everyday lives.The television shows we watch, the movies we see, the radio programs we listen to, and all the comic strips we read influence social behavior. They give us ideas about what is good and evil, about how to solve problems, and about how we should relate to others. If we understand this, says Berger, then the way we think about our media-influenced culture will be far different than if we see popular culture as mindless entertainment. Berger provides an analysis of the way popular culture and the mass media simultaneously reflect and affect various aspects of American culture and society. He examines commercials, television shows, comics, film, humor, and everyday life in terms of what beliefs and values are found in them, what attitudes toward ourselves, and our societies are contained in them, how they achieve their effects, and what they reflect about present-day American culture and society.This book is analysis of the impact mass media have across America, cross-culturally, and internationally. "Manufacturing Desire" will provide the general reader as well as specialists in communication and information, sociology, and psychology with a better understanding of the effects of mass media and popular culture on contemporary society.


The use of commodities to hedge inflation risk and diversify portfolios is generally thought to be an important consideration for portfolio management. Direct investment in commodities or commodity derivatives requires that investors have significant assets and/or expertise in these commodities or their respective derivatives markets. As an alternative to direct investment, investors in recent years have increasingly resorted to the use of commodity-based mutual funds. In this article we evaluate the performance, persistence, market timing, and selectivity of four categories of mutual funds whose returns are based on commodity prices. Our period of analysis begins with each fund's inception and ends in December of 2012. Our results indicate that these funds have not been able to create positive alphas for their investors, have negative or insignificant performance persistence, and have no market timing ability. Some of the categories of funds, however, do exhibit some selectivity. We did find that when these commodity-based funds' performance was evaluated during specific time periods of market downturns (e.g., the 2000 stock market downturn and the financial crisis that began in late 2007), their performance was significantly positive, which indicates that these funds provide a good hedge during bear markets/financial crises.


Many important differential equations model quantities whose value must remain positive or stay in some bounded interval. These bounds may not be preserved when the model is solved numerically. We propose to ensure positivity or other bounds by applying Runge-Kutta integration in which the method weights are adapted in order to enforce the bounds. The weights are chosen at each step after calculating the stage derivatives, in a way that also preserves (when possible) the order of accuracy of the method. The choice of weights is given by the solution of a linear program. We investigate different approaches to choosing the weights by considering adding further constraints. We also provide some analysis of the properties of Runge-Kutta methods with perturbed weights. Numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach, including application to both stiff and non-stiff problems.


Water use and access become a more and more important determinant of environmental equity and human development according to the view held by the UN [1]. Water scarcity is one of the major crises which has overarching implications for other world problems especially poverty, hunger, ecosystem degradation, desertification, climate change, threatening world peace and security [2]. In the decades to come, freshwater consumed by human will get to a tipping point. Many projects and concepts have been proposed and implemented for several years to improve the effectiveness of using water. These research activities can be grouped as: desalination plants; water detention (like rainwater tanks for collection and reuse); wastewater reuse; dams and reservoirs. This paper summarized the characters of these water solutions. But these methods can't provide enough fresh water due to limitations imposed by these methods as well as following industry and population's development. To overcome these shortcomings, coastal reservoir strategy is proposed in the paper. This new strategy is technically feasible, environmentally sustainable and cost effective by demonstration and comparison.


Raj Bhala argues that the Doha Round is "a failed counter-insurgency operation." This paper examines and criticizes that claim. The first part examines the traditional "peace through trade" thesis that traces back to the Enlightenment, and discusses contemporary formulations and evaluations of that broad thesis. The second part focuses on Bhala's related "counter-terrorism through trade" thesis. Three questions are raised: first, what exactly is Bhala claiming?, second, is Bhala's thesis a solution in search of a problem?, and most importantly, third, does poverty cause (Islamist) terrorism? In connection with the third question, the paper surveys the current social science literature on the subject. It concludes that there is a broad consensus across disciplines that the link between poverty and terrorism is unproven and perhaps non-existent. Thus, Bhala's defense of Doha fails. While there may be strong arguments in equity or efficiency for adopting Doha, it is a mistake to advocate it as effective counter-terrorist policy.


TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. THE ECONOMICS OF SWITCHING COSTS A. Switching Costs and Competitive Analysis B. Types of Switching Costs II. THE CENTRALITY OF HIGH SWITCHING COSTS, INHERENT AND STRATEGIC, TO THE MICROSOFT BROWSER CASE AND OTHER ANTITRUST CASES A. Switching Costs were Key to the Government Showing that Microsoft had Monopoly Power B. Microsoft Acted Anticompetitively to Increase, Maintain, and Exploit High Switching Costs C. Role of Switching Costs Elsewhere in Antitrust Case Law 1. Role of Switching Costs in Narrowing Market Definition 2. Role of Switching Costs in Assessing Market Power 3. Role of Switching Costs in Exclusionary Conduct III. A COMPARISON OF SWITCHING COSTS: MICROSOFT WINDOWS VS. GOOGLE SEARCH A. Comparison by Types of Switching Costs B. Evidence of Switching Across Generalized Search Engines (GSEs) C. Alternatives to Generalized Search Engines for Searching 1. Evidence on Switching Between Vertical Search and Generalized search 2. Evidence on Switching Between GSEs and Mobile Apps 3. Evidence on Switching Between Social Media Search and Generalized Search 4. Evidence on Arrival Rates at Websites Directly or Indirectly, Not From a GSE 5. Evidence on Competition Between Emerging Technologies and Generalized Search SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION INTRODUCTION Is Google the new Microsoft? Many think that it is, and in particular there has been a chorus of competition complaints (ironically many originating from Microsoft) that assert that Google's conduct and position today is quite parallel to Microsoft's position in the "Microsoft case," the case brought by the Department of Justice in 1998. (1) we contend in this article, however, that there is a central difference which should remain in constant focus in any antitrust analysis. The cost of a user switching from Google Search to another search engine today is trivial compared to the cost of a user switching from Microsoft windows to another operating system in 1998. Moreover, in the Microsoft case, the government's theory was that Microsoft was taking strategic actions to maintain high switching costs by maintaining an "applications barrier to entry." (2) There is no parallel with Google, and the implication as we shall explain is that Google Search, if it poses any threat today, does not pose the same antitrust threat that Microsoft windows posed in 1998. In this article, we explore the importance of high switching costs in the Microsoft case and in antitrust cases more generally, and we explain the criticality of the absence of significant costs for users switching from Google Search. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently decided not to bring a monopolization case against Google Search after a 19month investigation. (3) But this is by no means the end of the matter: the European commission (EC) is "examining proposals put forward by Google to resolve complaints" and expects resolution after the Commission's summer break. (4) The FTC decision notwithstanding, competitors continue to complain to antitrust authorities and urge them to investigate Google Search for anticompetitive conduct. (5) On January 30, 2013, the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace (ICOMP), a coalition including Microsoft Corp., submitted a new dossier of allegations to the European Commission. (6) The most widely reported accusations against Google claim that it biases in favor of its own information or services in search results. (7) Comparisons between antitrust complaints in the Microsoft case with current (so far non-litigated) complaints against Google Search ignore two fundamental differences related to the switching costs facing users of Microsoft Windows and Google Search. First, Microsoft has dominated operating systems for personal computers for nearly 30 years, mainly because switching costs for users and application developers were and are high--prohibitively high for many. …


Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death in most developed countries, but mortality is particularly high in some parts of Britain. These high rates can be lowered only if the causes are understood. Preventive campaigns have concentrated on smoking, hypertension, and hyperlipidaemia. These risk factors explain at most half of all myocardial infarctions.1

Deaths and hospital admissions for coronary heart disease and stroke are higher in winter than in summer in many temperate countries.2 In some winters mortality has been as much as 70% higher than in the summers. The size of the winter excess is related to the difference in environmental temperature. Excess winter cardiovascular mortality has fallen in recent years, but it remains numerically far more important than other causes of winter deaths such as respiratory infections or hypothermia.3 Seasonal fluctuations in cardiovascular events are greater in Britain than in some other countries with wider temperature variations and colder winters, and this suggests that the excess winter deaths may be preventable.2 Lesser seasonal variations may be related to more constant indoor temperatures in those countries. In Britain excess winter mortality is greatest in socially deprived people who have the worst domestic heating and the highest overall mortality.

Seasonal variations in vascular events do not necessarily result in an increase in annual mortality. Deaths …


To investigate the timescales of regolith formation on hillslopes with contrasting topographic aspect, we measured U‐series isotopes in regolith profiles from two hillslopes (north facing versus south facing) within the east‐west trending Shale Hills catchment in Pennsylvania. This catchment is developed entirely on the Fe‐rich, Silurian Rose Hill gray shale. Hillslopes exhibit a topographic asymmetry: The north‐facing hillslope has an average slope gradient of ~20°, slightly steeper than the south‐facing hillslope (~15°). The regolith samples display significant U‐series disequilibrium resulting from shale weathering. Based on the U‐series data, the rates of regolith production on the two ridgetops are indistinguishable (40 ± 22 versus 45 ± 12 m/Ma). However, when downslope positions are compared, the regolith profiles on the south‐facing hillslope are characterized by faster regolith production rates (50 ± 15 to 52 ± 15 m/Ma) and shorter durations of chemical weathering (12 ± 3 to 16 ± 5 ka) than those on the north‐facing hillslope (17 ± 14 to 18 ± 13 m/Ma and 39 ± 20 to 43 ± 20 ka). The south‐facing hillslope is also characterized by faster chemical weathering rates inferred from major element chemistry, despite lower extents of chemical depletion. These results are consistent with the influence of aspect on regolith formation at Shale Hills; we hypothesize that aspect affects such variables as temperature, moisture content, and evapotranspiration in the regolith zone, causing faster chemical weathering and regolith formation rates on the south‐facing side of the catchment. The difference in microclimate between these two hillslopes is inferred to have been especially significant during the periglacial period that occurred at Shale Hills at least ~15 ka before present. At that time, the erosion rates may also have been different from those observed today, perhaps denuding the south‐facing hillslope of regolith but not quite stripping the north‐facing hillslope. An analysis of hillslope evolution and response timescales with a linear mass transport model shows that the current landscape at Shale Hills is not in geomorphologic steady state (i.e., so‐called dynamic equilibrium) but rather is likely still responding to the climate shift from the Holocene periglacial to the modern, temperate conditions.


The Fiat G.91 was an Italian jet fighter aircraft. It was the winner of the NATO competition in 1953 for a light fighter as standard equipment for Allied air forces. It entered in operational service with the Italian Air Force in 1961, with the West German Luftwaffe in 1962, and later with the Portuguese Air Force.
It was in production for nineteen years. 756 aircraft were completed, including the prototypes and pre-production models. The assembly lines were finally closed in 1977. The Fiat G.91 enjoyed a long service life that extended over 35 years. It was widely used by Portugal in the Portuguese Colonial War in Africa.


In the context of recent legal developments in Namibia promoting the common based management of water resources, the main focus of the project underlying this paper was to gain a detailed impression of how the rural communities in the country were dealing with the development of institutional arrangements for the water access and usage. Based on an anthropological fieldwork this paper aims to describe and to analyse the conflict over water a rural community in North-West Namibia is confronted with. From a theoretical perspective, the objective of this paper is to analyse the role of power in the development of institutions by means of Knight's (1992) bargaining theory of institutional development. This paper concludes that the case study provides important evidence that the development of institutions at the local level can be the by-product of a strategic conflict and not the result of the users' attempts to achieve collective goals, as frequently assumed by the mainstream communal natural resource management theory.


This thesis research evaluates post-harvest grain marketing strategies such as basis trading and basis trading with pre-spreads at different cost of carry coverage levels. Although this empirical analysis is done from grain elevators perspective for storing corn and soybeans, these strategies are also applicable to farmers seeking post-harvest period marketing strategies to hedge stored grain. However, considering the volume of grains stored by elevators, and hence the high levels of price risk associated with this business model, the marketing strategies considered in this thesis are most pertinent to grain elevators. Paired t-test results indicate that corn basis trading at harvest and pre-spreading at 150% cost of carry level at pre-harvest time yield statistically similar mean net returns to post-harvest storage (up to 185 days), whereas other corn pre-spreading levels such as 125% and 100% yield significantly lower mean net returns. In addition, basis trading corn results in lower net returns variance than storing it un-hedged, and hence, a less risky post-harvest strategy. Results for soybean storage indicate adverse outcomes from basis trading and prespreading strategies over long storage periods, as cumulative mean net returns tend to significantly decrease beyond trading day 40 of storage period. Although variances of net returns do not significantly change over the 60 day storage period, they do so after this period, especially when hedged with May and July soybean futures contracts. However, soybean results support the use of pre-spreading100 with more deferred contracts approximately for 40 day storage period, where mean returns are significantly higher than basis trading returns. We highlight outcomes from un-hedged storage and find significantly positive mean net returns beyond 60 days. For grain elevators in North Central Illinois un-hedged soybean storage generated significantly positive and increasing returns over a 60-185 day storage period. Although un-hedged corn storage also yielded positive returns 60% of the time (between storage days 60-175), wide confidence intervals close to zero indicate that, on average, net returns over these days are only marginally significant.


Abstract The Tsuji‐Trost Reaction is a palladium‐catalysed allylation of nucleophiles that consists in the reaction of a nitrogen, carbon or oxygen‐based nucleophiles with an allylic substrate bearing a leaving group. Here we present the use of 2‐nitrosulfonamide derivatives as nucleophile, which are reactive under mild conditions. 2‐nitrosulfonyl groups are well‐known dual protective activator groups easy to introduce in any type of amine substrates. The resulting 2‐nitrosulfonamide derivatives are ideal substrates for the Tsuji‐Trost reaction to afford a convenient and flexible access to primary and dissymmetric secondary allyl amines. The optimised procedure is flexible (for solvent, temperature, functional groups) and has been applied with good to excellent yield to access to a wide range of allyl amine derivatives.


The purpose of this study was to determine if selected factors influenced the ability of students in school-based agricultural education programs to generate a correct hypothesis when troubleshooting small gasoline engines. Variables of interest included students' cognitive style, age, GPA, and content knowledge in small gasoline engines. Kirton's Adaption-Innovation Inventory was employed to assess cognitive style and a researcher developed criterion-referenced test was utilized to determine small gasoline content knowledge. Students were assigned randomly, by cognitive style, to generate a hypothesis for either a simple or complex small gasoline engine problem. A similar number of students were able to correctly hypothesize the fault in their assigned engine regardless of cognitive style. However, differences were noted between the more adaptive and more innovative students. A binary logistic regression revealed that as cognitive style score increased, the odds of generating a correct hypothesis decreased. Additionally, older students were more likely to generate an incorrect hypothesis. Teachers should encourage students to hypothesize when engaged in problem solving activities, but should be aware of individual differences such as cognitive style.


Integrin-linked kinase (ILK) has been implicated in the regulation of a range of fundamental biological processes such as cell survival, growth, differentiation, and adhesion. In platelets ILK associates with β1- and β3-containing integrins, which are of paramount importance for the function of platelets. Upon stimulation of platelets this association with the integrins is increased and ILK kinase activity is up-regulated, suggesting that ILK may be important for the coordination of platelet responses. In this study a conditional knockout mouse model was developed to examine the role of ILK in platelets. The ILK-deficient mice showed an increased bleeding time and volume, and despite normal ultrastructure the function of ILK-deficient platelets was decreased significantly. This included reduced aggregation, fibrinogen binding, and thrombus formation under arterial flow conditions. Furthermore, although early collagen stimulated signaling such as PLCγ2 phosphorylation and calcium mobilization were unaffected in ILK-deficient platelets, a selective defect in α-granule, but not dense-granule, secretion was observed. These results indicate that as well as involvement in the control of integrin affinity, ILK is required for α-granule secretion and therefore may play a central role in the regulation of platelet function.


The importance of managing the risk-return balance of information technology (IT) investments has become clearer than ever. Yet, quantitative assessment of IT investment risk and return based on financial measures remains a major challenge. Recently scholars have used event study analysis to measure the value created via IT investment, by examining the abnormal changes in shareholder wealth around the time a specific IT investment is announced. The abnormal return on equity due to such an event is considered a good proxy for the economic value of that event. In the same spirit, this research proposes estimating several forms of IT investment risk, by combining event study analysis with the use of arbitrage pricing theory. In so doing, this research contributes towards the development of an integrated approach for quantifying the risk-return relationship for IT investment so that practitioners can make more informed investment decisions.


PURPOSE
Farmworkers frequently live in rural areas and experience high rates of depressive symptoms. This study examines the association between elevated depressive symptoms and health care utilization among Latino farmworkers.

METHODS
Data were obtained from 2,905 Latino farmworkers interviewed for the National Agricultural Workers Survey. Elevated depressive symptoms were measured using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression short-form. A dichotomous health care utilization variable was constructed from self-reported use of health care services in the United States. A categorical measure of provider type was constructed for those reporting use of health care.

RESULTS
Over 50% of farmworkers reported at least 1 health care visit in the United States during the past 2 years; most visits occurred in a private practice. The odds of reporting health care utilization in the United States were 45% higher among farmworkers with elevated depressive symptoms. Type of provider was not associated with depressive symptoms. Women were more likely to seek health care; education and family relationships were associated with health care utilization.

CONCLUSIONS
Latino farmworkers who live and work in rural areas seek care from private practices or migrant/Community Health Clinics. Farmworkers with elevated depressive symptoms are more likely to access health care. Rural health care providers need to be prepared to recognize, screen, and treat mental health problems among Latino farmworkers. Outreach focused on protecting farmworker mental health may be useful in reducing health care utilization while improving farmworker quality of life.


Research undertaken on students' transition from Higher Education (HE) to employment (Dawson, 2012) highlights the need for HE staff to step back from day-to-day concerns and rethink their approaches to students' preparation from undergraduate status to graduate 'work-ready'. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing that one's journey from student to graduate standing requires high intensity support from both academic and student-centred staff. It claims that stepping outside of our 'student-tutor' stereotype and being perceived as the facilitators, the mentors, who know their field well enough to help students deal with the challenges ahead, assists their development of critical instinct. It also urges members of staff to recognize that we are undoubtedly influential figures on the development of students and that sharing our experiences, whether good or bad, can be invaluable in shaping students own graduate identity.

The findings of this study were validated and evolved (Dawson, 2013 & 2014) into further investigations into students' development and transformation (in terms of ability and skills) whilst still in HE and in preparation for the 'world of work'. The study shows that reviewing, re-engineering and re-applying existing literature and approaches to suit the demand of a new generation of students increases their involvement and empowerment. It also evidenced how building on personal experiences reinforces their efficacy beliefs, improves their self-esteem, social skills and resilience and signposts the path for lifelong learning and a sustainable development.

As a result of these, both students and I have evidenced that the principles of sustainable development apply equally to all aspects of life, from personal, social to economic and professional. Thus, we claim that, through participation in challenging academic activities which provide students with the opportunity to design, deliver and assess their own learning, we gain knowledge which we can and will pass on to others, as a student quotes "…I will never lose sight of the importance of adding value and ensuring my actions have a progressive impact on others.".

In the academic year 2014/15, students embarked a journey on deeper and more critical pathways. They explore personal and social identity, attitude, personality, values and principles which contribute to their transformation from students to graduates and from graduates to employees. Through active and collaborative learning, formative communication with staff and involvement in intellectually stimulating activities, students are seeking answers to questions, such as how to achieve transformation; how to keep a 'positive' attitude and generate a sense of belonging; how to pursue and find happiness in HE and beyond. The realities unveiled from such journeys are invaluable to both students and staff as they signposts the paths for an enriched educational experience for all.


Introduces an optimization criterion for the design of microphone arrays, and derives an optimum filter based on this criterion. The algorithm computes two separate correlation matrices for the signal: one for when only background noise is present, and one for when both noise and signal are present. A filter is then computed based on these matrices, optimizing the proposed weighted mean-square error criterion. A block-recursive version of the algorithm is presented, using LMS-like adaptation of the multichannel filters, with a computational complexity under 40 MIPS for a typical application with four microphones. Simulation results with typical office noise show improvements of up to 20 dB in signal-to-noise ratio, even in low-noise environments.


In this paper we study para-Kenmotsu manifolds. We characterize this manifolds by tensor equations and study their properties. We are devoted to a study of $\eta-$Einstein manifolds. We show that a conformally flat para-Kenmotsu manifold is a space of constant negative curvature $-1$ and we prove that if a para-Kenmotsu manifold is a space of constant $\varphi-$para-holomorphic sectional curvature $H$, then it is a space of constant curvature and $H=-1$. Finally the object of the present paper is to study a 3-dimensional para-Kenmotsu manifold, satisfying certain curvature conditions. Among other, it is proved that any 3-dimensional para-Kenmotsu manifold with $\eta-$parallel Ricci tensor is of constant scalar curvature and any 3-dimensional para-Kenmotsu manifold satisfying cyclic Ricci tensor is a manifold of constant negative curvature $-1$.


Abstract The holy grail of tracking people indoors is being able to locate them when they are not carrying any wireless tracking devices. The aim is to be able to track people just through their physical body interfering with a standard wireless network that would be in most peoples home. The human body contains about 70% water which attenuates the wireless signal reacting as an absorber. The changes in the signal along with prior fingerprinting of a physical location allow identification of a person's location. This paper is focused on taking the principle of Device-free Passive Localisation (DfPL) and applying it to be able to actually distinguish if there is more than one person in the environment. In order to solve this problem, we tested a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier with kernel functions such as Linear, Quadratic, Polynomial, Gaussian Radial Basis Function (RBF) and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), and a Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) in order to detect movement based on changes in the wireless signal strength.


In a social network, adoption probability refers to the probability that a social entity will adopt a product, service, or opinion in the foreseeable future. Such probabilities are central to fundamental issues in social network analysis, including the influence maximization problem. In practice, adoption probabilities have significant implications for applications ranging from social network-based target marketing to political campaigns, yet predicting adoption probabilities has not received sufficient research attention. Building on relevant social network theories, we identify and operationalize key factors that affect adoption decisions: social influence, structural equivalence, entity similarity, and confounding factors. We then develop the locally weighted expectation-maximization method for Naive Bayesian learning to predict adoption probabilities on the basis of these factors. The principal challenge addressed in this study is how to predict adoption probabilities in the presence of confounding factors that are generally unobserved. Using data from two large-scale social networks, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The empirical results also suggest that cascade methods primarily using social influence to predict adoption probabilities offer limited predictive power and that confounding factors are critical to adoption probability predictions.


For Republicans, the 2004 presidential election was little short of miraculous: Behind in the Electoral College tally in the days leading up to the election, behind even on the very afternoon of the vote, the Bush ticket staged a stunning comeback. The exit polls, usually so reliable, turned out to be wrong by an unprecedented 5 percent in the swing states. Conservatives argued-and the media agreed-that "moral values" had made the difference. In his new book renowned critic and political commentator Mark Crispin Miller argues that it wasn't moral values that swung the election-it was theft. While the greatest body of evidence comes from the key state of Ohio-where the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee found an extraordinary onslaught of Republican-engineered vote suppression, election-day irregularities, old-fashioned intimidation tactics, and illegal counting procedures-similar practices (and occasionally worse ones) were applied in Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and even New York. A huge array of anomalies, improper practices, and blatant violations of the law all, by a truly remarkable coincidence, happened to swing in the Bush ticket's favor. This pattern-not one overwhelming fraud but thousands of little ones-is, in Miller's view, the new Republican electoral strategy. This incendiary new book presents massive documentation that the election was stolen and describes the mind-set, among both the major parties and the media, that could permit it to happen again.


In this paper, the polarization dependent optical properties of GaN surface relief grating are investigated using dark field angle-resolved photoluminescence (ARPL) spectrometer. The light extraction efficiency with the transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) pumping source represents a TE polarized dominated property. It is found that the TE and TM waveguide modes cannot be simultaneously coupled out, therefore light extraction is polarization dependent. The ARPL spectrum also reveals that the extraction efficiency is relatively high as the dispersion line of the waveguide mode is coincident with the folded free-photon dispersion of the 1D GaN grating.


We examined the effects of living plant neighbors and litter on the perfor- mance of a native C4 grass, Andropogon gerardi, at five old-field sites that differ in com- munity biomass and soil fertility. We used plant removal experiments in which both living neighbors and litter were manipulated in a factorial arrangement of treatments over one growing season. Andropogon was added to treatment plots as seeds and as established transplants to examine the effects of the surrounding plant community on the recruitment and established phases of its life history. Neighbors negatively affected Andropogon performance at all sites, indicating that resource exploitation by living plants was an important constraint to seedling recruitment and growth across the range of community biomass examined. Plant litter negatively affected recruitment at sites with the greatest community biomass, but had no effect on the growth of established transplants at any of the sites. The total effect of the surrounding plant community on recruitment was positively correlated with community biomass due to an increasing impact of plant litter. However, the total effect of the surrounding community on the growth of established transplants was unrelated to community biomass. The results suggest that it may be during the recruitment phase of the life history, when seeds and seedlings are especially susceptible to the effects of both litter and living neigh- bors, that Andropogon is most sensitive to variation in community biomass. Variation in the effects of litter on recruitment may be important in regulating plant species diversity and the distribution of native C4 grasses along old-field biomass gradients in southwest Michigan.


ABSTRACT Smart city experiments have the potential to reshape urban climate change governance. Smart city initiatives have been supported by international technology companies and the European Union for many years and continue to be promoted by national and municipal governments. In relation to sustainability and climate change, such initiatives promise more efficient use of resources through the use of information and communications technology in energy infrastructure. Experiments with smart city technologies such as urban smart grids have shown the potential to restructure relationships between energy utilities, energy users and other actors by reconfiguring the dynamics of energy supply and demand. But do urban experiments lead to institutional change? The aim of the article is to provide a better understanding of how smart city experiments reshape the urban governance of building energy use. Hyllie, a new city district in Malmö, Sweden, was home to two smart city experiments that contributed to the institutionalization of urban smart grid technology. However, the analysis of Hyllie's policy assemblages shows that this institutional change could redefine sustainability at the expense of energy efficiency.


The Act allows a competent adult to appoint an agent to make health care decisions on his or her behalf. The Act provides the mechanisms for establishing and enforcing a health care agency relationship and a statutory short form durable power of attorney for health care. The Act also defines the responsibilities of health care providers in health care agency situations and provides for penalties, liability, and immunity from liability under some circumstances for both health care providers and agents.


Think Like A Lawyer: Legal Reasoning For Law Students And Business Professionals (ABA Publishing 2013) is a thorough and engaging introduction to legal reasoning that is perfect for law students setting out to acquire the skills that will make them top performers in their field and for established lawyers who are looking to refresh and improve their legal reasoning and analytical abilities. This book focuses on fundamental skills necessary for legal problem solving, such as rule-based reasoning (deductive reasoning), synthesis (inductive reasoning), analogical reasoning, distinguishing cases, and policy-based reasoning. The useful exercises that appear throughout the text enable you to practice the skills you are gaining as you progress through the chapters. The chapters in this book present the different types of legal reasoning, the mini-skills that are related to those types of legal reasoning, and how to use these mini-skills in combination. Chapter One discusses the types of legal reasoning. Chapter Two will teach you how to be an engaged reader and analyze cases. Chapter Three concerns reasoning by analogy, which involves showing how your case is like a precedent case. Chapter Four examines rule-based reasoning and its connection to syllogisms. Chapter Five involves synthesizing cases, which is an important skill in establishing the law. Chapter Six investigates statutory interpretation, which is a type of rule-based reasoning that fills in the details with analogies. Chapter Seven brings the prior chapters together by demonstrating how the different types of legal reasoning relate to the small-scale paradigm (how to organize a simple analysis). Chapter Eight fills in this paradigm by examining how to respond to opposing arguments and distinguish cases. Finally, Chapter Nine serves as a capstone to this book with its presentation of advanced problem solving and creative thinking.The book's preface is attached.


The increasing proportion of older persons in the population has significant implications for mobility in the US and the safety performance of the US highway system. Health problems, loss of dexterity, medication, and slower reaction times are among the factors that affect older-driver-involved highway safety. Based upon time-series data from January 1981 through December 1998 for California, this study estimates multiple order autoregression models to analyse highway crashes involving older drivers. The results indicate that risk exposure is an important determinant of highway safety, with the greatest effects on fatal crashes in total and on alcohol-related fatal crashes when at least one driver is over the legal limit. Other important factors include alcohol availability, hospital accessibility, and the proportion of older drivers. Alcohol-related legislation had little effect on older-driver crashes when at least one driver was over the legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limit and increasing speed limits to 70 mph decreased non-fatal injury crashes at the expense of fatal crashes. © 2005 LSE and the University of Bath


The Mexican fold-and-thrust belt in central Mexico has overall characteristics that fit the critical tectonic wedge model. It is thin-skinned, forward propagating, tapers toward the toe (the east), and displays an overall decrease in deformation toward the toe. The internal structures and heterogeneity of deformation are not typical of fold-and-thrust belts, however, due to the presence of two large carbonate platforms, flanked by more thinly bedded basinal carbonates. Kilometer-scale thrusts dominate deformation in the platform carbonates (a more brittle behavior), and mesoscopic buckle folds and associated cleavage dominate deformation in the basinal carbonates (a more ductile behavior). Total shortening across the belt, including both platforms and basins, is ∼55%–65%, with higher values in the basins than in the platforms and a concentration of deformation near the platform borders. The dominant mechanism of folding in the basinal rocks is buckling, with thin chert horizons behaving as single layers and limestone and shaly limestone interbeds buckling as multilayers, with a dominant chevron style. A significant shear component of the deformation is indicated by monoclinic fold symmetry, with a consistent sense of vergence of top toward the foreland. We estimated strain and strain history from mesoscopic analysis of fold geometry and internal strain distribution at several locations across the basin and used this information used to assess the overall kinematics and progressive deformation in the basins, which involve both shortening and shear components. The implications of this for the kinematics of the fold-and-thrust belt are discussed.


The structure of a commercial mortgage-backed security–the combination of the characteristics of the underlying loans and the design of the cash flow algorithm that creates the bond classes–can affect the performance of the various bond classes. In a simple pass-through, the affects on the resulting bonds are fairly straightforward. Any resulting complications are a function of the lack of homogeneity of the characteristics of the underlying loans. More typical senior/subordinated multi-class structures with several interest-only bond classes often lead to some less-than-intuitive performance results for the bonds, especially when combined with heterogeneous collateral. In this article, the authors explain the impact of structuring on the bond classes of a CMBS structure. They explain why while there are some similarities between the structuring of commercial and residential mortgage pools, the differences in the features of the underlying loans lead to different considerations in creating commercial versus residential mortgage-backed securities.


In CT-RSA 2007, Jarecki, Kim, and Tsudik introduced the notion of affiliation-hiding authenticated group key agreement (AH-AGKA) protocols and presented two concrete AH-AGKA protocols. In this paper, we will show that these protocols have some drawbacks. We will also introduce the notion of affiliation-hiding authenticated asymmetric group key agreement (AH-AAGKA) and present an AH-AAGKA protocol. AH-AAGKA protocols allow the participants of a group to establish a common encryption key associated with several decryption keys; each of which can only be computed by the corresponding legitimate participant. Meanwhile, any party is assured that its affiliation is revealed to the participants that belong to the same group only. Compared with previous AH-AGKA protocols, if invalid players participate in our protocol, legitimate participants can identify these invalid players. In contrast to existing AH-AGKA protocols, our protocol holds perfect forward secrecy, which is proven in a novel security model we proposed. Additionally, we present a new privacy model to prove that our protocol achieves linkable affiliation-hiding property. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Measuring the impact and success of human performance is common in various disciplines, including art, science, and sports. Quantifying impact also plays a key role on social media, where impact is usually defined as the reach of a user's content as captured by metrics such as the number of views, likes, retweets, or shares. In this paper, we study entire careers of Twitter users to understand properties of impact. We show that user impact tends to have certain characteristics: First, impact is clustered in time, such that the most impactful tweets of a user appear close to each other. Second, users commonly have "hot streaks" of impact, i.e., extended periods of highimpact tweets. Third, impact tends to gradually build up before, and fall off after, a user's most impactful tweet. We attempt to explain these characteristics using various properties measured on social media, including the user's network, content, activity, and experience, and find that changes in impact are associated with significant changes in these properties. Our findings open interesting avenues for future research on virality and influence on social media.


The 2001 through 2003 tax cuts, to the extent that they involved a principled, long-term policy view, seem to have been aimed at shrinking the size of government. The idea apparently was to force eventual spending discipline, even (or perhaps especially) with respect to Social Security and Medicare, by turning reduced tax revenues into a political fact on the ground that would be difficult to reverse. In fact, however, the idea that the tax cuts would make the government smaller seems to have rested on spending illusion, or confusion between the actual size of government, in terms of its allocative and distributional effects, and the observed dollar flows that are denominated "taxes" and "spending." Given the long-term budget constraint, which holds that government inflows and outlays must ultimately be equal in present value, and the huge preexisting fiscal imbalance, the tax cuts are likely to be paid for, in the main, through some combination of future tax increases and cuts to Social Security and Medicare. (Other government spending cuts, relative to the case where the tax cuts were not enacted, are likely as well, but cannot contribute nearly enough.) To the extent that the 2001 through 2003 tax cuts lead to future tax increases, the combined effect is likely to make the government bigger both allocatively and distributionally. To the extent that Social Security and Medicare spending bear the brunt, the government still gets larger in the sense of increasing redistribution from younger to older generations, although Medicare cuts might decrease the size of government allocatively.


Unlike their model membrane counterparts, biological membranes are richly decorated with a heterogeneous assembly of membrane proteins. These proteins are so tightly packed that their excluded area interactions can alter the free energy landscape controlling the conformational transitions suffered by such proteins. For membrane channels, this effect can alter the critical membrane tension at which they undergo a transition from a closed to an open state, and therefore influence protein function in vivo. Despite their obvious importance, crowding phenomena in membranes are much less well studied than in the cytoplasm. Using statistical mechanics results for hard disk liquids, we show that crowding induces an entropic tension in the membrane, which influences transitions that alter the projected area and circumference of a membrane protein. As a specific case study in this effect, we consider the impact of crowding on the gating properties of bacterial mechanosensitive membrane channels, which are thought to confer osmoprotection when these cells are subjected to osmotic shock. We find that crowding can alter the gating energies by more than [Formula: see text] in physiological conditions, a substantial fraction of the total gating energies in some cases. Given the ubiquity of membrane crowding, the nonspecific nature of excluded volume interactions, and the fact that the function of many membrane proteins involve significant conformational changes, this specific case study highlights a general aspect in the function of membrane proteins.


Wireless sensor networks have been widely deployed in many social settings to monitor human activities and urban environment. In these contexts, they acquire and collect sensory data, and collaboratively fuse the data. Due to resource constraint, sensor nodes however cannot perform complex data processing. Hence, cloud-integrated sensor networks have been proposed to leverage the cloud computing capabilities for processing vast amount of heterogeneous sensory data. After being processed, the sensory data can then be accessed and shared among authorized users and applications pervasively.
Various security and privacy threats can arise when the people-centric sensory data is collected and transmitted within the sensor network or from the network to the cloud; security and privacy remain a big concern when the data is later accessed and shared among different users and applications after being processed. Extensive research has been conducted to address the security and privacy issues without sacrificing resource efficiency. Unfortunately, the goals of security/privacy protection and resource efficiency may not be easy to accomplish simultaneously, and may even be sharply contrary to each other. Our research aims to reconcile the conflicts between these goals in several important contexts. Specifically, we first investigate the security and privacy protection of sensory data being transmitted within the sensor network or from the sensor network to the cloud, which includes: (1) efficient, generic privacy preserving schemes for sensory data aggregation; (2) a privacy-preserving integrity detection scheme for sensory data aggregation; (3) an efficient and source-privacy preserving scheme for catching packet droppers and modifiers. Secondly, we further study how to address people's security and privacy concerns when accessing sensory data from the cloud.
To preserve privacy for sensory data aggregation, we propose a set of generic, efficient and collusion-resilient privacy-preserving data aggregation schemes. On top of these privacy preserving schemes, we also develop a scheme to simultaneously achieve privacy preservation and detection of integrity attack for data aggregation. Our approach outperforms existing solutions in terms of generality, node compromise resilience, and resource efficiency.
To remove the negative effects caused by packet droppers and modifiers, we propose an efficient scheme to identify and catch compromised nodes which randomly drop packets and/or modify packets. The scheme employs an innovative packet marking techniques, with which selective packet dropping and modification can be significantly alleviated while the privacy of packet sources can be preserved.
To preserve the privacy of people accessing the sensory data in the cloud, we propose a new efficient scheme for resource constrained devices to verify people's access privilege without exposing their identities in the presence of outsider attacks or node compromises; to achieve the fine-grained access control for data sharing, we design privacy-preserving schemes based on users' affiliated attributes, such that the access policies can be flexibly specified and enforced without involving complicated key distribution and management overhead.
Extensive analysis, simulations, theoretical proofs and implementations have been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed schemes. The results show that our proposed schemes resolve several limitations of existing work and achieve better performance in terms of resource efficiency, security strength and privacy preservation.


Its easy to write correct Ruby code, but to gain the fluency needed to write great Ruby code, you must go beyond syntax and absorb the Ruby way of thinking and problem solving. In Eloquent Ruby, Russ Olsen helps you write Ruby like true Rubyists doso you can leverage its immense, surprising power. Olsen draws on years of experience internalizing the Ruby culture and teaching Ruby to other programmers. He guides you to the Ah Ha! moments when it suddenly becomes clear why Ruby works the way it does, and how you can take advantage of this languages elegance and expressiveness. Eloquent Ruby starts small, answering tactical questions focused on a single statement, method, test, or bug. Youll learn how to write code that actually looks like Ruby (not Java or C#); why Ruby has so many control structures; how to use strings, expressions, and symbols; and what dynamic typing is really good for. Next, the book addresses bigger questions related to building methods and classes. Youll discover why Ruby classes contain so many tiny methods, when to use operator overloading, and when to avoid it. Olsen explains how to write Ruby code that writes its own codeand why youll want to. He concludes with powerful project-level features and techniques ranging from gems to Domain Specific Languages. A part of the renowned Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series, Eloquent Ruby will help you put on your Ruby-colored glasses and get results that make you a true believer.


This article focuses on the early history of the probation unit in Inner London that had a
specialist function to resettle the homeless and rootless, particularly on their release from
prison. I worked in this unit from 1984 to 1989 and was able to access material from its
inception. I was involved in researching changes in its function and organisation and
interviewed an Assistant Chief PO (ACPO) from the early days of the unit. This 'rich'
history illustrates the changes that occurred in the wider service, from the time when
individual officers were independent and could 'do their own thing'. It terms of the ACU
it included setting up hostels, running volunteers and controlling their work. Senior staff
worked alongside the main grade and offered casework supervision. They were not
managers in the modern sense of understanding how management has quality control and
accountability responsibilities. Conversely, the management of the unit became the senior
managers of the service as a whole, including the late Sir Graham Smith who became
Chief Probation Officer for Inner London and later Chief Probation Inspector. Initiatives
from key staff within the unit led to specialist programmes in the wider service. Quoted
material is from unpublished archive documents seen by me.


The thickness and the complex refractive index of a moderately thin absorbing film on a transparent substrate of known optical properties can be determined by measuring the values of reflectance of the sample from opposite sides, and the transmittance. The technique and its use in measuring properties of films of RbI in the uv are described. Errors are reduced by averaging the values of thickness obtained at several wavelengths and by iterating the computations.


There has always been a great debate about whether or not homework is really needed in the classroom. Homework policies over the past 100 years have changed drastically. There is a constant battle between advocates for and opponents of homework. Together, they have created a list of positive and negative effects of homework. A review of the literature helps determine what the ideal homework policy would be in order to encourage higher student achievement, and minimize the negative impacts of homework. How do in service teachers' policies stand up against research based policies? Interviews with rural New York State teachers have determined the core components of a homework policy that most teachers have. Some not-so-common policies and researchers' key points to include in a homework policy have also been included. Homework is indeed effective, especially when it is based on research and contains the core components of an effective homework policy in the secondary mathematics classroom.


This paper addresses the structure generation, analysis and synthesis of multiple loop feedback OTA-C filters. A systematic approach is proposed for all-pole filters, and the generation and design of minimum component structures are extensively exemplified. Two general methods for transmission zero realization are also suggested and two architectures with simple design formulas are illustrated. Using the theory many new interesting configurations can be produced alongside some known structures. All the filter architectures contain only grounded capacitors and all internal nodes in canonical realizations have a grounded capacitor. A general method for sensitivity analysis of the structures is formulated. Numerical design examples and simulation results are also presented. The essence of the theory is the establishment of the relationship between the filter structure and the feedback matrix, which makes systematic structure generation and general design equation formulation possible.


Abstract This study was initiated to investigate seasonal and intradiurnal variations in concentrations of airborne fungal spores of the Zarqa area in Jordan based on daily spore trapping. A total of 76 396 fungal spores belonging to 41 genera of fungi were identified. The maximum trapped fungus was Cladosporium (49.39%) followed by Puccinia uredospores (11.14%), Alternaria (7.70%), Ustilago (7.62%) and Drechslera (4.03%). The remainder (20.12%) was attributed to 36 genera of fungi. April was the month with the highest mean daily concentration (27.82 spores/m3), while January was the lowest. Two peaks were recorded, one in April (139.58 spores/m3) and another in June (70.42 spores/m3). Total daily spore counts showed significant positive correlations with maximum and mean temperature and a significant negative correlation with relative humidity. The monthly mean and the total annual counts of fungal spores were both significantly favoured the period 20.00–04.00. It was suggested that results of spore trapping and settle plate exposures (a previous study) can be complementary but not comparable except in the fact that Cladosporium was the most common fungi in both. Most of the recorded fungi have been reported as allergenic or pathogenic for humans, animals and plants, therefore further research on ecological, economical and medical aspects should be encouraged.


The learnability of an API suffers when the official documentation of the API is incomplete. Developers discuss usage scenarios of APIs in the online developer forums. As such, by automatically mining such crowd-sourced documentation of APIs, we can address the shortcomings of API official documentation. We present a framework to automatically mine usage scenarios about APIs from online developer forums. Each usage scenario of an API consists of a code example, a summary description, and the reactions (i.e., positive and negative opinions) of other developers towards the code example. We evaluate our API usage mining framework by producing a benchmark dataset. We observed a precision of 0.947 and a recall of 1.0 with the linking of a code example to an API mention in the forum.


AN INTRAGENERIC AND INTRASPECIFIC STUDY OF MORPHOLOGICAL AND GENETIC VARIATION IN THE NEOTROPICAL COMPSONEURA AND VIROLA (MYRISTICACEAE) Royce Allan David Steeves Advisor: University of Guelph, 2011 Dr. Steven G. Newmaster The Myristicaceae, or nutmeg family, consists of 21 genera and about 500 species of dioecious canopy to sub canopy trees that are distributed worldwide in tropical rainforests. The Myristicaceae are of considerable ecological and ethnobotanical significance as they are important food for many animals and are harvested by humans for timber, spices, dart/arrow poison, medicine, and a hallucinogenic snuff employed in medico-religious ceremonies. Despite the importance of the Myristicaceae throughout the wet tropics, our taxonomic knowledge of these trees is primarily based on the last revision of the five neotropical genera completed in 1937. The objective of this thesis was to perform a molecular and morphological study of the neotropical genera Compsoneura and Virola. To this end, I generated phylogenetic hypotheses, surveyed morphological and genetic diversity of focal species, and tested the ability of DNA barcodes to distinguish species of wild nutmegs. Morphological and molecular analyses of Compsoneura. indicate a deep divergence between two monophyletic clades corresponding to informal sections Hadrocarpa and Compsoneura. Although 23 loci were tested for DNA variability, only the trnH-psbA intergenic spacer contained enough variation to delimit 11 of 13 species sequenced. A morphological and molecular investigation of Compsoneura capitellata showed little discrete morphological variation among populations but significant genetic structure among populations. Phylogenetic analysis of Virola also revealed a deep molecular divergence between two clades having numerous contrasting morphologies. In contrast to Compsoneura, the trnH-psbA intergenic spacer failed to differentiate the majority of Virola species tested. An infraspecific morphological and molecular study of V. sebifera and V. loretensis showed that each of these species contains morphologically and ecologically discrete sympatric morphotypes that likely represent new species. In total, this investigation found 5 provisional new species from fewer than 600 collections at biological stations in Ecuador and Peru where these new species were among the most abundant trees in the forest. This suggests that much diversity likely remains to be described in the Myristicaceae and other tropical plant families.