The main aim of this thesis is to show the viability of Extended Theories of Gravity in substituting General Relativity-based cosmological models in the explanation of Universe Dynamics and Origin.
After a brief review of all the questions posed by General Relativity and all the possible solutions to these ones, we start to describe deeper one of the alternative approaches to Gravity and Universe, namely the Extended Theories of Gravity. In this context we have chosen to work with a particular class of these theories, the f(R-
gravity models, so named because of starting from a general gravitational lagrangian, where the classical R term of the Hilbert-Einstein one is substituted by a general function f(R). We will start with a brief review of history, motivations, pros and cons of these approaches.
We also review some results from literature about the cosmological mimicking of dark components as a curvature (i.e. geometrical) e®ect of f(R) geometry and the possibility to explain rotational curves of spiral galaxies.
Then we pass to the original works presented in these pages. We think that we can extract three main characteristics of our work:
- We have never adopted a particular, well de¯ned f(R) model, in contrast with other works; we have always tried to work in the most general hypothesis it was possible.
When we will show results of our analysis on clusters of galaxies, it is important to underline that they only rely on the assumption of an analytical Taylor expandable f(R),
without any other speci¯cation. In the case of cosmological applications, namely in the Cosmography chapter, we could say that we have worked in an even more general
scenario: we chose Cosmography because it is a model independent approach to observational data, so we have no basic hypothesis not only on the mathematical form of
the f(R)- model, but even on the nature of the universe dynamics (General Relativity or f(R) one);
- Starting from previous point we have tried to give constraints to the hypothetical form of the f(R)-theories: we have derived values of some of the parameters that a viable f(R)-model should have to explain some of the question we have explored (mass profile of clusters of galaxies). We have also explored connections between General Relativity-based (dark energy ones) and f(R)-based models (in cosmography) studying their mutual mimicking ability and the possibility of discriminate between them;
² Last, but not least, our analysis has the important merit of having a strong predictive power, so that it can be con¯rmed or confuted by comparing with some tests. From the
Cosmography-based analysis, we are strongly dependent on the experimental possibilities of future surveys: if we will not have measurements within a certain sensibility range we were not be able (or we will have few possibilities) to discriminate what approach is
right and what one is wrong. On the contrary, in the case of clusters of galaxies, we are able to do predicitions on results which could come from the application of f(R)-models
to di®erent scales of gravitational systems (galaxies, solar system). If these predictions were exact, then we would have a solid and well founded theoretical model of gravity in alternative to General Relativity.
Even if many results we had make us con¯dent to be on the right way, it is important to underline also that our work is always built on a conservative hypothesis. We don't think that f(R) gravity is not the theory of gravity (like General Relativity is not), but it is an important
and interesting toy model which can take us nearer an effective and deeper comprehension of gravity.¯


Enterovirus type 70 (EV70) agglutinated human 'O' erythrocytes at 4 degrees C as well as 22 degrees C, but visible agglutination was lost when warmed at 37 degrees C although the virus remained attached to the surface of the erythrocyte. The receptor sites for the virus were neuraminidase-sensitive. A direct involvement of sialic acid on the cell surface in virus-cell interaction was confirmed by the fact that the presence of fetuin or free N-acetylneuraminic acid inhibited the haemagglutinating activity of EV70. Similar numbers of virus particles were required for 1 haemagglutinating unit (HAU) of EV70 and 1 HAU of mengovirus, whereas 2.6-fold or more of virus particles of echovirus type 7 and type 11 gave the same activity. On the other hand, the number of receptor sites on the cell surface for EV70 was found to be sevenfold more than for mengovirus. Therefore, the erythrocyte receptor for EV70 is different from that for common enteroviruses and similar, though not identical, to the cardiovirus receptor. However, serological tests such as neutralization, complement fixation or haemagglutination inhibition did not reveal any common antigen between EV70 and cardiovirus.


This paper explores the hypothesis that language communication in its very first stage is bootstrapped in a social learning process under the strong influence of culture. A concrete framework for social learning has been developed based on the notion of a language game. Autonomous robots have been programmed to behave according to this framework. We show experiments that demonstrate why there has to be a causal role of language on category acquisition; partly by showing that it leads effectively to the bootstrapping of communication and partly by showing that other forms of learning do not generate categories usable in communication or make information assumptions which cannot be satisfied.


A comprehensive review and thoughtful critique of the development of political science as an academic discipline in this century, Ricci's strong indictment of political science will be a source of lively controversy and discussion for years to come. "A provocative, rich and rewarding book that advances a thesis that will be hotly and widely debated by political scientists...Intelligent, lucid, scholarly, [and] well-argued."-Neal Riemer, American Political Science Review "A first class critical examination of political science in American since its beginnings...a century ago. It warrants thoughtful reading by both novices and established professors...A learned, incisive, and balanced work."-Dwight Waldo, Political Science Quarterly "An informative and truly provocative work. The Tragedy of Political Science is both a scholarly study of American political science as an academic discipline and a practical moral argument on behalf of its fundamental reordering...Ricci's book is an extremely interesting work. Its clarity of style and attention to scholarly detail make it an unusually accessible work...Any member of the discipline would benefit from the overview which Ricci constructs. His summaries of the various schools and traditions within American political science are truly impressive."-James L. Wiser, Perspective "A valuable book."-David Morgan, Journal of American Studies "After this work there's no need for another account of the pathos of political science in its American incarnation; it says all that's needed, says its tellingly, and thereby provides a basis for transcending it. A splendid book."-Henry S. Kariel


Objective. To explore experiences and consequences of the process of being diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Design. Qualitative focus-group study. Setting. Two local self-help groups. Subjects. Eleven women diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Main outcome measures. Descriptions of experiences and consequences of the process of being diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Results. Many participants had been suffering for years, and initial response of relief was common. For some, the diagnosis legitimized the symptoms as a disease, for others it felt better to suffer from fibromyalgia rather than more serious conditions. Nevertheless sadness and despair emerged when they discovered limitations in treatment options, respect, and understanding. Some patients keep the diagnosis to themselves since people seem to pay no attention to the name, or blatantly regard them as too cheerful or healthy looking. The initial blessing of the fibromyalgia diagnosis seems to be limited in the long run. The process of adapting to this diagnosis can be lonely and strenuous. Conclusion. A diagnosis may be significant when it provides the road to relief or legitimizes the patient's problems. The social and medical meaning of the fibromyalgia diagnosis appears to be more complex. Our findings propose that the diagnosis was hardly helpful for these patients.


We analyze recordings of seismic events induced by underground mining operations at the Moonee Colliery, located in Australia, and at the Springfield Pike Limestone Quarry, located in the United States. The data were recorded underground in the vicinity of active mining operations and were initially used by the monitoring systems at the two mines to evaluate the potential for roof failure based on the temporal and spatial distribution of the seismic activity. In an earlier study, the roof failures at the two underground mine locations were found to be the result of two distinct failure processes, both of which were correlated with escalated seismic activity before the roof collapsed. In this study, we reexamine the recordings of these seismic emissions for a further assessment of the state of instability in the roof. We estimate the static seismic moment and radiated seismic energy for each recorded seismic event induced by mining operations at the two underground mine locations. These seismic source parameters are estimated from source spectra have been corrected for the instrument response, propagation effects and bandwidth limitations. The apparent stress, which provides an estimate of the stress drop (or stress release) associated with a seismic event, is then determined from the product between the modulus of rigidity and the ratio between the radiated seismic energy and static seismic moment. The validity of constant stress drop scaling for the seismic events at the two underground mine locations is tested. Estimation of the seismic source parameters indicate that the stress drop of the mining induced events increases over three orders of magnitude of increasing seismic moment (10 N·m ≤ M0 ≤ 10 N·m) and indicate a divergence from constant stress drop scaling. When these results are compiled with the results from seven other independent studies, which analyzed the seismicity associated with a variety of seismogenic environments, this trend is found to span over ten orders of magnitude of seismic moment (10 N·m ≤ M0 ≤ 10 N·m). The observation that the mining induced events do not conform to constant stress drop scaling may assist in gaining a better understanding of the evolution of the roof failure process. We have found that the stress drop at one of the studied mines appears to increase through time prior to a roof collapse. More data are necessary to test this hypothesis. If this hypothesis is validated, it would have important implications for monitoring roof stability. Incorporation of near-real-time estimates of the stress drop into the existing seismic monitoring protocol may provide improved warning of imminent roof collapse hazards.


One Day Tafo is a uniquely poetic film, transcending generally accepted form. Being half Danish, half Ghanaian - and thereby a consequence of a marriage of cultures - the filmmaker embarks on a spiritual exploration of what connects people and peoples. It is a film which goes beyond the socio-political and anthropological issues seen in most films about Africa and its relationship to the Developed World.

Through the intimacy of a personal perspective, we are taken to Tafo, a small town in the Akim area of Ghana. This was where the filmmaker spent his early childhood, before moving to Denmark with the family at the age of five.The family situation in Tafo provides a strikingly effective micro-cosmic view of the general transition from the Colonial to the modern world. This view is then re-enforced by the reaction of the filmmaker to his early childhood home, after nearly thirty years.

By incorporating footage shot by his Danish father in the 50s with both documentary and fictional sequences, the end result is a film in which these genre definitions become irrelevant and obsolete.

Whilst experiencing the legacy of slavery, the intimacy of the changes in the former family home, the harsh realities of contemporary life, and a living traditional parable, we travel on a journey through heart and mind, a journey in which we glide effortlessly between inner and outer worlds.


A survey was used to gather information about use of the Internet by researchers at Panjab University, Chandigarh in the sciences, social sciences and humanities. The results indicate that researchers in the sciences are the most positive about the impact of the Internet, while 70% of the social science and 20% of the humanities felt positive about the Internet and its impact. Other survey results contrast the use of electronic journals, access to computers, and other topics.


Introduction: Actually, food sanitation is a guarantee of proper food quality and it is an essential pillar in health promoting of community. The aim of this study was to study of knowledge and attitude among Ilam University of medical sciences students regarding to food sanitation and safety on 2013. Material & method: 430 Ilam University of medical sciences students was determined in present cross-sectional study by stratified random sampling. Data collected through a questionnaire consisting of three parts including personal information, knowledge and attitudes towards food sanitation and safety. The data were used by SPSS16 software and analyzed by MannWhitney and kruskalwallis tests. Findings: overall, results showed that 3.5% of students had good attitude, 77.6% moderate attitude and 18.5% poor attitude. In the field of knowledge 18.5 % had adequate knowledge, 16.2% moderate knowledge and 2.4% poor knowledge about food sanitation. Results showed that there is a significant relation between students ' attitudes regarding food sanitation and safety and their sex (p = .036), and also there isaa significant relation between knowledge (p = .000) and attitude (p = .048) of students and passing the food sanitation course. Discussion & Conclusion: It is proposed that according to relation between knowledge, food sanitation and safety, educational programs to be held in the form of workshops or incorporate food sanitation courses for fields of medical science that does not pass this course.


Multibeam sonar imagery provides evidence of depositional and erosional seafloor features emplaced by a glacial ice stream that flowed through Amundsen Gulf into the Beaufort Sea during the last glaciation.

Figure 1a, c illustrate seafloor features that occur SW of Banks Island in the northwestern part of Amundsen Gulf (Fig. 1b). Water depths in this part of the axial trough range from 350 to 435 m. Prominent seafloor landforms include parallel ridges and grooves that trend northwesterly across the region. Depressions up to 135 m wide and 45 m deep occur as irregular linear and arcuate-shaped interruptions in many of the ridges. The linear interruptions extend across adjoining ridges along trends that lie approximately normal to the trend of the ridges (Fig. 1a, c). Arcuate-shaped depressions (moats) connect with wider inter-ridge valleys trending to the NW. In many instances the linear ridges, apparently undiminished in height adjacent …


In the majority of federations, the judiciary plays a critical role arbitrating conflict between the orders of government. In general, where this institution is considered within federal and conflict management theory, scholars and policy makers argue the institution should be an independent and neutral body, acting as either a restrained umpire or activist guardian. This article reflects on the foundations of this perspective by looking at the linkages between the main approaches of using federalism to manage diversity and theories of the judicial role. Focusing on the linkages between these two sets of theories illuminates the shared flaw with the traditional focus on independence in the umpire and guardian role-perceptions: the inability to effectively account for the inherently contested nature of diverse federations. To help address this shared flaw, the article sketches an institutional model and theory of judicial review that calls on federal arbiters to recognize the validity of competing viewpoints on the nature of a federation. In adopting this approach, federal arbiters can play a critical role of facilitating ongoing negotiation to manage conflict in diverse states. To help ground the discussion and demonstrate how this more facilitative approach can be implemented in practice, the article briefly highlights how the Supreme Court of Canada is increasingly adopting this role.


Molecular optimization is a fundamental goal in the chemical sciences and is of central interest to drug and material design. In recent years, significant progress has been made in solving challenging problems across various aspects of computational molecular optimizations, emphasizing high validity, diversity, and, most recently, synthesizability. Despite this progress, many papers report results on trivial or self-designed tasks, bringing additional challenges to directly assessing the performance of new methods. Moreover, the sample efficiency of the optimization--the number of molecules evaluated by the oracle--is rarely discussed, despite being an essential consideration for realistic discovery applications. To fill this gap, we have created an open-source benchmark for practical molecular optimization, PMO, to facilitate the transparent and reproducible evaluation of algorithmic advances in molecular optimization. This paper thoroughly investigates the performance of 25 molecular design algorithms on 23 tasks with a particular focus on sample efficiency. Our results show that most"state-of-the-art"methods fail to outperform their predecessors under a limited oracle budget allowing 10K queries and that no existing algorithm can efficiently solve certain molecular optimization problems in this setting. We analyze the influence of the optimization algorithm choices, molecular assembly strategies, and oracle landscapes on the optimization performance to inform future algorithm development and benchmarking. PMO provides a standardized experimental setup to comprehensively evaluate and compare new molecule optimization methods with existing ones. All code can be found at https://github.com/wenhao-gao/mol_opt.


Background/aims The MacuScope uses a psychophysical technique called heterochromic flicker photometry to measure macular pigment optical density (MPOD). Our aim was to determine the measurement variability (noise) of the MacuScope. Methods Thirty-eight normally sighted participants who ranged in age from 19 to 46 years (25.7±7.6 years) were recruited from staff and students of Aston University. Data were collected by two operators, HB and JA, in two sessions separated by 1 week in order to assess test repeatability and reproducibility. Results The overall mean MPOD for the cohort was 0.47±0.14. There was a significant negative correlation between MacuScope MPOD readings and age (r=−0.368, p=0.023). Coefficients were 0.45 and 0.58 for repeatability, and 0.49 and 0.36 for reproducibility. For each pair of results, there was a significant positive correlation between mean and difference MPOD values. Conclusions If MPOD is being monitored over time then any change less than 0.58 units should not be considered clinically significant as it is very likely to be due to instrument noise. The size of the coefficient appears to be positively correlated with MPOD.


A University of California faculty committee, the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS), has recommended eliminating achievement tests and requiring only the "New SAT" for admission to the UC system. The proposal to endorse the New SAT has thus far drawn relatively little notice, as it is part of a broader and more controversial set of proposed changes in how UC identifies the top 12.5 percent of California high school graduates who are eligible for admission. Yet the testing proposal deserves much more attention in its own right since, if approved by the Regents, it would reverse a decade of UC research and policy development. In 2002 UC was among the first universities to adopt a formal policy on admissions testing. That policy strongly favored achievement tests, which measure students' knowledge of college-preparatory subjects, over tests of general reasoning such as the SAT. UC research showed that achievement tests predicted student performance in college at least as well as reasoning tests, while having a less adverse impact on low-income and minority applicants. In response to UC, the College Board introduced several changes in the SAT in 2005, including the addition of a writing exam, intended to position the New SAT as more of an achievement test. The UC Regents provisionally approved use of the New SAT on the understanding that BOARS would conduct a careful evaluation of the extent to which the test conformed to UC's 2002 testing policy before the New SAT was adopted on a permanent basis. That evaluation has never been completed. Moreover, a closer look at BOARS' proposal reveals that it is based on questionable and often misleading evidence. Like the old SAT, the New SAT remains a relatively weak predictor of student success at UC and a strong deterrent to admission of low-income and underrepresented minority applicants. Achievement tests remain the better standard for UC admissions.


In recent years, rural electrification and access to television have spread throughout the developing world. The values and cultural norms embodied in television programming have potentially profound implications for influencing behaviour, including reproductive decisions. After replicating Westhoff and Koffman's (2011) finding of a positive correlation between television ownership and contraception using pooled Indonesian data, we proceed to estimate a fixed-effects model. The coefficient on television loses its significance while other policy relevant variables retain theirs. We conclude that the growing corpus of cross-sectional evidence on a link between television and contraception should be interpreted cautiously. JEL-Classification: J13, O12, O33


This year my Colleague, Dr Ana Cabral, and I from the University of Greenwich have had the privilege of working with a group of talented teachers from schools within the Alliance who were all interested to study their own practice in order to enrich the learning of the children they teach. We worked with two core groups. One met at The John Roan School and the other at Thomas Tallis School. The John Roan group was coordinated by Paul Barber and the Tallis group by Andy Smythe. Andy's group of teachers were interested in studying ways to enrich the teaching of science. The John Roan group were interested in enriching the teaching of literacy. Ana and I wanted to introduce the teachers to action research. The classic work by Carr and Kemmis (1986) describe action research as being about:
• the improvement of practice;
• the improvement of the understanding of practice;
• the improvement of the situation in which the practice takes place.

It was important to us that the teachers were systematic about the way they undertook their investigations. Teachers are busy people and the degree to which they applied the methodology varied. We discussed their aims – constructing research questions or identifying the problem they wished to solve. We worked on the best ways of collecting data to inform their actions and we talked about the ethical issues of being an 'insider--‐researcher' and how to address them.

We met with the teachers at least three times during a term and on a number of occasions we went to schools or had telephone conversations when teachers were too busy to attend. The meetings with the teachers were fascinating. The combination of teachers from secondary and primary led to exciting and fruitful professional conversations. Everyone recognised how pedagogy associated with each phase challenged and enriched the other. In some cases, the teachers invited each other into their classes and team teaching took place as a result, bringing forth further rich professional discussions. Research has informed us that the most effective forms of continuing professional development (CPD) (BERA/RSA 2014) involve:
• the use of specialist advisors and external experts
• collaborative enquiry and structured peer support
• the opportunity to explore why things do and don't 'work'
• the exploration and challenging of teachers own beliefs and assumptions (p.25 – 27).
'All the research indicates that enquiry--‐orientated learning is not a quick--‐fix, but needs to be sustained over time to ensure that learning (for both teachers and pupils) actually takes place'. (BERA/RCA 2014: 26)

The RGTSA wants to make this form of teacher-led inquiry part of the practice in their schools. We hope to continue with these powerful projects in the coming years.

In this document we provide the reports from the teachers that describe their work. They document the processes with which the teachers were engaged. In most cases teachers collected information from their own surveys or interviews and/or from reading literature in the area. They then describe the action they felt to be appropriate and conclude with a brief evaluation of the success of their projects. They all demonstrate the teachers' hard work and determination. We would like to extend our thanks to all the teachers and the children involved and especially to Paul Barber and Andy Smythe who helped facilitate the projects. (Andrew Lambirth)


This paper theorizes the widely unexplored informal communication between political actors and journalists. As the crucial characteristic of this type of communication we consider its potential influence on media coverage and political decision-making being non-transparent. The relevance of informal communication between political actors and journalists is initially illustrated by a case-study that explored informal communication during the health-care negotiations of the German Grand coalition in 2006/2007. The findings draw attention on crucial characteristics of informal communication in the German capital. This raises the question how structural conditions and individual characteristics of political actors and journalists shape informal communication in one country. Accordingly, we propose the concept of informal political communication cultures which stresses that the orientations of political actors and journalists towards backstage processes are context-bound. Against this backdrop, we present a model to analyze the characteristics, causes and effects of informal political communication cultures. The center of the model is comprised of four dimensions that enable to characterize informal political communication cultures: proximity vs. distance between political actors and journalists; non-publicity vs. publicity through indiscretion or arranged leaks; cooperation vs. conflicts between political actors and journalists; seclusiveness vs. responsivenss of the politics-media milieu. Potential factors influencing the characteristics informal political communication cultures are systematized by differentiating between the macro-, mesoand micro-level of both the political and the media system. On the macro-level, especially competitive structures appear to have an impact on the characteristics of informal political communication cultures. On the meso-level, editorial resources and resources for political public relations seem to matter. On the micro-level, individual characteristics like the professional experience of political actors and journalists appear as influential. Concerning the effects of informal political communication cultures we assume they have an impact on different levels of political action, not at least in terms of informal negotiations that have to deal with the legitimacy-efficiency dilemma. We expect that the more an informal political communication culture is characterized by proximity, publicity, coopera24 Philip Baugut and Carsten Reinemann tion, and a secluded politics-media milieu, the stronger the media impact on informal negotiations. In summary, our model and derived hypotheses aim to stimulate research on the informal side of the politics-media relationship, which is necessary to provide a deeper understanding of the mediatization of


Open peer review (OPR) is a cornerstone of the emergent Open Science agenda. Yet to date no large-scale survey of attitudes towards OPR amongst academic editors, authors, reviewers and publishers has been undertaken. This paper presents the findings of an online survey, conducted for the OpenAIRE2020 project during September and October 2016, that sought to bridge this information gap in order to aid the development of appropriate OPR approaches by providing evidence about attitudes towards and levels of experience with OPR. The results of this cross-disciplinary survey, which received 3,062 full responses, show the majority (60.3%) of respondents to be believe that OPR as a general concept should be mainstream scholarly practice (although attitudes to individual traits varied, and open identities peer review was not generally favoured). Respondents were also in favour of other areas of Open Science, like Open Access (88.2%) and Open Data (80.3%). Among respondents we observed high levels of experience with OPR, with three out of four (76.2%) reporting having taken part in an OPR process as author, reviewer or editor. There were also high levels of support for most of the traits of OPR, particularly open interaction, open reports and final-version commenting. Respondents were against opening reviewer identities to authors, however, with more than half believing it would make peer review worse. Overall satisfaction with the peer review system used by scholarly journals seems to strongly vary across disciplines. Taken together, these findings are very encouraging for OPR's prospects for moving mainstream but indicate that due care must be taken to avoid a "one-size fits all" solution and to tailor such systems to differing (especially disciplinary) contexts. OPR is an evolving phenomenon and hence future studies are to be encouraged, especially to further explore differences between disciplines and monitor the evolution of attitudes.


Pipeline distribution systems account for the vast majority of the physical infrastructure in the water industry. Their effective management represents the primary challenge to the industry, from both an operational and public health standpoint. Biofouling has a ubiquitous presence within these systems, and it can significantly impede their efficiency, through an increase in boundary shear caused by characteristic changes in surface roughness dynamics. Nonetheless, conventional pipeline design practices fail to take into account such effects, partially because research findings that could contribute to upgraded and optimised design practices appear inconsistent in the literature. The overall aim of this study was to improve the current scientific understanding of biofouling within water and wastewater pipelines; for the purpose of instigating a step-change in pipeline design theory by incorporating biofouling, thereby enabling future pipelines to be as sustainable as possible. The nature of the problem, necessitated the need for a multidisciplinary approach, based upon engineering and microbiological principles and techniques.
The primary focus of this study was to investigate the impact of biofouling on surface roughness, mean flow structure and sediment transport within wastewater systems. To this effect biofilms were incubated with a synthetic wastewater on a High Density Polyethylene pipe, within a purpose built pipeline facility for 20 days, at three steady-state flow regimes, including the average freestream velocities of 0.60, 0.75 and 1.00 m/s. The physico-chemical properties of the synthetic wastewater were purposely designed to be equivalent to the properties associated with actual wastewater found within typical European sewers. The impact of biofouling on flow hydrodynamics was comprehensively identified using a series of static pressure tappings and a traversable Pitot probe. Molecular and image analysis was also undertaken to support the observations derived from the aforementioned measurements, particularly with regards to the structural composition and mechanical stability of the biofouled surfaces. The study has confirmed that the presence of a low-form gelatinous biofilm can cause a significant increase in frictional resistance and equivalent roughness, with increases in friction factor of up to 85% measured over the non-fouled values. The reported increases in frictional resistance resulted in a reduction in flow rate of up to 22% and increased the pipe's self-cleansing requirements. The structural distribution of a biofilm was shown to play a key role in its overall frictional capacity and strength, which in turn was found to be a function of the biofilms conditioning shear. In particular, it was found that a biofilm conditioned at higher shear will have less of an impact on a pipe's overall frictional resistance, although, will be stronger and more difficult to remove than a biofilm conditioned at lower shear. The biofilm's impact on frictional resistance was found to be further compounded by the fact that traditional frictional relationships and their derivatives are not applicable to biofouled surfaces in their current manifestation. In particular, the von Karman constant, which is an integral aspect of the Colebrook-White equation is non-universal and dependent on Reynolds Number for biofouled surfaces. It was found that the most suitable manner to deal with the dynamic and case-specific nature of a biofouled surface was to quantify it using a series of dynamic roughness expressions, the formulation of which were the culmination of this study, and should be the focus for further research.
The influence of different plastic based pipe materials and flow regimes on biofilm development within drinking water distribution systems was also briefly investigated using a series of flow cell bioreactors and molecular analysis techniques.
Keywords: Biofilm; biofouling; pipe; hydraulic efficiency; equivalent roughness; von Karman constant; Colebrook-White equation; drainage network; wastewater; drinking water.


Image captioning is a challenging task where the machine automatically describes an image by sentences or phrases. It often requires a large number of paired image-sentence annotations for training. However, a pre-trained captioning model can hardly be applied to a new domain in which some novel object categories exist, i.e., the objects and their description words are unseen during model training. To correctly caption the novel object, it requires professional human workers to annotate the images by sentences with the novel words. It is labor expensive and thus limits its usage in real-world applications. In this paper, we introduce the zero-shot novel object captioning task where the machine generates descriptions without extra training sentences about the novel object. To tackle the challenging problem, we propose a Decoupled Novel Object Captioner (DNOC) framework that can fully decouple the language sequence model from the object descriptions. DNOC has two components. 1) A Sequence Model with the Placeholder (SM-P) generates a sentence containing placeholders. The placeholder represents an unseen novel object. Thus, the sequence model can be decoupled from the novel object descriptions. 2) A key-value object memory built upon the freely available detection model, contains the visual information and the corresponding word for each object. A query generated from the SM-P is used to retrieve the words from the object memory. The placeholder will further be filled with the correct word, resulting in a caption with novel object descriptions. The experimental results on the held-out MSCOCO dataset demonstrate the ability of DNOC in describing novel concepts.


About the book:
Migration is an inescapable issue in the public debates and political agendas of Western countries, with refugees and migrants increasingly viewed through the lens of security. This book analyses recent shifts in governing global mobility from the perspective of the politics of citizenship, utilising an interdisciplinary approach that employs politics, sociology, anthropology, and history.

Featuring an international group of leading and emerging researchers working on the intersection of migrant politics and citizenship studies, this book investigates how restrictions on mobility are not only generating new forms of inequality and social exclusion, but also new forms of political activism and citizenship identities. The chapters present and discuss the perspectives, experiences, knowledge and voices of migrants and migrant rights activists in order to better understand the specific strategies, tactics, and knowledge that politicized non-citizen migrant groups produce in their encounters with border controls and security technologies. The book focuses the debate of migration, security, and mobility rights onto grassroots politics and social movements, making an important intervention into the fields of migration studies and critical citizenship studies.


This document describes authentication methods and security mechanisms
of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). This document
details establishment of Transport Layer Security (TLS) using the
StartTLS operation. This document details the simple Bind
authentication method including anonymous, unauthenticated, and
name/password mechanisms and the Simple Authentication and Security
Layer (SASL) Bind authentication method including the EXTERNAL
mechanism. This document discusses various authentication and
authorization states through which a session to an LDAP server may
pass and the actions that trigger these state changes. This document,
together with other documents in the LDAP Technical Specification (see
Section 1 of the specification's road map), obsoletes RFC 2251, RFC
2829, and RFC 2830. [STANDARDS-TRACK]


Web-based corporate training is increasingly being used by virtue of the fact that companies need to train their personnel equitably by imparting large amounts of knowledge in an affordable manner. However, it is difficult to establish the precise nature of the key success factors in these endeavors. In other words, companies are not aware of what factors actually influence the final outcome of this kind of initiative. Therefore, this research seeks to investigate some critical success factors associated with a Web-based corporate training program deployed by one of the largest insurance groups in Brazil. As a result, one may conclude that constructivist pedagogical philosophy, authentic task orientation and integral metacognitive support, applied in conjunction, are critical factors for the success of these endeavors. Furthermore, one may also conclude that an intrinsic source of motivation as well as open structural flexibility, applied singly, have some influence on the success of Web-based corporate training.


Summary This paper reviews the policy debate on development issues and examines the economic prospects for developing countries at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is specifically concerned with the question of whether developing countries will be able to meet the employment and poverty reduction goals set by the World Summit for Social Development, held in Copenhagen in 1995. What policies at the national and international level will be most helpful in this respect? The introductory part of the paper notes that the Social Summit coincided with one of the worst financial crises up to that time in developing economies—Mexico's "Tequila Crisis" in 1994 and 1995. It is suggested that, notwithstanding that crisis, the immediate economic prospects for developing countries in 1995 appeared much brighter than they do today in the wake of recent economic and financial crises in Asia, Latin America and Russia. The paper notes that, in contrast to the uneven economic performance of the economies of developing countries in the period since the Social Summit, the policy debate has in many ways taken a definite step forward. The main part of the paper provides a systematic investigation of the factors that determine whether or not developing countries will be able to eradicate poverty and achieve full employment with rising productivity and real wages. The paper looks specifically at the following aspects. First, it considers the economic record of developing countries and policy issues raised by this analysis. Second, it examines the complex interrelationships between economic growth, unemployment, poverty reduction and income inequality, both conceptually and empirically. This analysis gives attention to the notion of full employment, the relationship between technical change and unemployment, the economic significance of the information and communications technology revolution, and labour market theories of unemployment and inflation. Third, the paper looks at the changed historical conjuncture for economic development and for the development policy debate. The following themes and related analytical and policy questions are emphasized: Liberalization and globalization—Contrary to theoretical expectations, why has the actual experience of many developing countries with liberalization and globalization been negative rather than positive, i.e. why has it often resulted in crises rather than faster growth? Also, are these failures simply a matter of incorrect policies, or are there more fundamental flaws from the perspective of developing countries, with respect to the institutional arrangements of the world economy under liberalization and globalization? Washington Consensus—Has the Washington Consensus failed? What lessons should be learned from the implementation of that policy programme? Asian financial and economic crisis—A very important and influential thesis concerning the Asian crisis suggests that the failure of Asian countries during 1997-1999 can be ascribed mainly to the dirigiste and corporatist model of capitalism that many of these countries were following. The paper examines this thesis critically. A central policy implication of these analyses is that developing countries need to attain a trend increase in their growth rates, possibly to their pre-1980 long-term rates of about 6 per cent per year. This would enable them to achieve and maintain meaningful "full employment" in the spirit of the Social Summit, with rising real wages and increasing standards of living. Although faster growth will help to reduce poverty, the latter is affected by other important variables as well—notably inflation, inequality of income and asset distribution, instability of economic growth and government fiscal policies. Women, in particular, are adversely affected by macro-economic instability. In the absence of adequate social security systems, the burden of women's paid as well as unpaid work increases during economic downturns. What is required, therefore, to meet the employment and poverty reduction goals of the Social Summit is not only fast growth, but also better quality growth. The last part of the paper highlights the shortcomings of the present institutional arrangement of liberalization and globalization. It indicates why and how these arrangements make it difficult for developing countries to achieve high rates of economic growth. Indeed, it is suggested that this regime is sub-optimal for both developing and developed countries. It is argued that, today, the main constraints on faster long-term economic growth in both developing and developed countries do not lie on the supply side but on the demand side. In principle, the world has the technological and intellectual capacity, as well as the human and material resources, to achieve the fast growth required to fulfil the aims of the Social Summit. The paper suggests that such growth will, however, only be realized in practice if the alternative strategy outlined is adopted. This involves the pursuit of faster growth of real world demand through co-ordinated expansion by industrialized countries and the introduction of special and differential treatment for developing countries in a number of key spheres. In brief, an essential argument of this paper is that, instead of the present organization of the world economy, a global Keynesian regime of managed world trade and controlled global capital movements is more likely to benefit both developed and developing countries. Together with genuine international co-operation as well as more harmonious relations between employers, employees and governments nationally, this would deliver both fast growth and high quality growth. Such growth would help bring full employment and rising wages in both groups of countries. In analytical terms, the paper stresses the significance of co-ordination failures on the demand side as the main obstacles to economic progress, rather than supply-side deficiencies. In order for the rate of growth of real world demand to be compatible with production possibilities on the supply side, new institutions are required to resolve the co-ordination problems on a sustained, long-term basis.


Patients with haematological diseases are entitled to supportive care. Considering organisational and technological development, support in the form of caring communication provided through the web is today a possible alternative. The aim of this thesis was to examine the usefulness and importance of a web-based counselling service to patients with haematological diseases. The basis for the thesis was a development project funded by the Swedish Cancer Society, which provided an opportunity to offer patients communication with a nurse through a web-based counselling service.Four studies were performed from a patient perspective. Study I had a cross-sectional design, measuring occurrence of anxiety and depression, and these variables' associations to mastery, social support, and insomnia among patients with haematological diseases. Study II was a qualitative content analysis focusing on conditions for provision and use of the web-based counselling service. Study III used a qualitative hermeneutical approach to focus on patients' experiences of using the counselling service. Study IV was a qualitative deductive analysis examining how communication within the web-based counselling service can be caring in accordance to caring theory.The results revealed that females of 30-49 years of age are vulnerable to experiencing anxiety. Low sense of mastery and support are associated with anxiety and/or depression. Being able to self-identify the need for support as well as appreciate the written medium are necessary conditions for the web-based counselling service to be used. The counselling service must also be part of a comprehensive range of supportive activities and web-based services to be useful. The main importance of the communication is that the patient's influence on the communication is strengthened, and that the constant access to individual medical and caring assessment can imply a sense of safety. When patients share their innermost concerns and search for support, nursing compassion and competence can substantiate in explicit written responses.A conclusion is that there is a caring potential in communication within a web-based counselling service. To make this form of communication possible, nurses should take possession of and ensure that this medium for communication is offered to patients. Nurses should also increase their knowledge of caring communication in writing and how this possibly can impact patients.


In 1903, Alexander Graham Bell developed a design principle to generate lightweight, mechanically robust lattice structures based on triangular cells; this has since found broad application in lightweight design. Over one hundred years later, the same principle is being used in the fabrication of nanolattice materials, namely lattice structures composed of nanoscale constituents. Taking advantage of the size‐dependent properties typical of nanoparticles, nanowires, and thin films, nanolattices redefine the limits of the accessible material‐property space throughout different disciplines. Herein, the exceptional mechanical performance of nanolattices, including their ultrahigh strength, damage tolerance, and stiffness, are reviewed, and their potential for multifunctional applications beyond mechanics is examined. The efficient integration of architecture and size‐affected properties is key to further develop nanolattices. The introduction of a hierarchical architecture is an effective tool in enhancing mechanical properties, and the eventual goal of nanolattice design may be to replicate the intricate hierarchies and functionalities observed in biological materials. Additive manufacturing and self‐assembly techniques enable lattice design at the nanoscale; the scaling‐up of nanolattice fabrication is currently the major challenge to their widespread use in technological applications.


LEE, MITCHELL Design and Fabrication of an Autonomous Solar Powered Airship. Department of Mechanical Engineering, June 2011. ADVISOR: David Hodgson, PhD The purpose of the project was to design and build a prototype small scale photovoltaic (PV) powered autonomous airship. The principle reason for the construction of the unmanned airship was to investigate the possibility of using self-guided, lighter-than-air aircraft as an alternative to earth observational satellites for the purposes of terrain mapping and imaging. The necessary electrical energy was produced by single crystal photovoltaic solar cells. The airship was designed to carry an onboard battery in order to provide power generation in the case of intermittent cloud coverage. It was also designed to interface with an Arduino prototyping board which would supply the artificial intelligence necessary for self navigation. Radio controlled capabilities were included in case of malfunction or emergency. The airship design process was assisted by computational design tools written in MATLAB language. These scripts made it possible to define the geometry, lift, aerodynamic drag, and envelope (balloon) membrane stresses of potential airship designs. The results from the computational programs, and additional calculations, were used to create a complete CAD rendering of the airship using SolidWorks. All airship components were fabricated and assembled, except for the envelope. Preliminary testing results are included, as well as, recommendations for design improvements.


If a monopoly supplies a perishable good, such as tickets to a performance, and is unable to price discriminate within a period, the monopoly may benefit from the potential entry of resellers. If the monopoly attempts to intertemporally price discriminate, the equilibrium in the game among buyers is indeterminate when the resellers are not allowed to enter, and the monopoly?s problem is not well defined. An arbitrarily small amount of heterogeneity of information among the buyers leads to a unique equilibrium. We show how the potential entry of resellers alters this equilibrium.


The Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act and Postmarketing Commitments Because rare but potentially serious adverse events of prescription drugs are often discovered only after market approval,1 observational postmarketing studies constitute an important part of the US drug safety system.2 In most instances prior to 2007, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could only request that drug manufacturers voluntarily agree to conduct postmarketing safety studies.2 An Office of Inspector General report3 in 2006 found inadequacies in drug companies' fulfillment of these postmarketing studies and weaknesses in FDA's regulatory authority to enforce these commitments. In 2007, Congress passed the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA), which authorized the FDA to require postmarketing studies for a prescription drug's approval and mandate adherence to study deadlines.2,4 We examined how fulfillment of these postmarketing studies has changed over time.


Public corporations live in a dynamic and ever-changing business environment. This paper examines how courts and legislators should choose default arrangements in the corporate area to address new circumstances. We show that the interests of the shareholders of existing companies would not be served by adopting those defaults arrangements that public officials view as most likely to be value-enhancing. Because any charter amendment requires the board's initiative, opting out of an inefficient default arrangement is much more likely to occur when management disfavors the arrangement than management supports it. We develop a 'reversible defaults' approach that takes into account this asymmetry. When public officials must choose between two or more default arrangements and face significant uncertainty as to which one would best serve shareholders, they should err in favor of the arrangement that is less favorable to managers. Such an approach, we show, would make it most likely that companies would be ultimately governed by the arrangement that would maximize shareholder value. Evaluating some of the main choices that state corporate law has made in the past two decades in light of our proposed approach, we endorse some but question others. The arrangements we examine include those developed with respect to director liability, state antitakeover statutes, and the range of permitted defensive tactics.