This research investigates the application of management accounting practices (MAP) for achieving public sector outcomes-based performance management (OBPM) in Queensland
under its Managing for Outcomes (MFO) policy. It identifies specific principles that support a performance-based environment in which outcomes-based performance is measured and for which costs are determined. This research also investigates whether there is support for the proposed MAP and examines the extent to which MAP is adopted. The research approach provides a complementary view of what should be happening with that which is
actually happening in relation to MAP in the agency selected for this research.

An insider research approach was undertaken for this research, drawing on a process of reflexive awareness and careful judgement to reframe, as theoretical knowledge, the tacit knowledge that has become deeply segmented in the Queensland public sector. A mixedmethod approach was used to limit the risk of the insider researcher losing objectivity and to ensure the standards of academic rigour. The approach utilised a group of critical
practitioners, in a co-operative style of reflective inquiry, to co-create knowledge in the development of the theoretical principles. Document analyses and a case study including interviews with participants from two work units operating within one Queensland Government agency were conducted for the purposes of gaining knowledge of the
Queensland Government's MFO policy, the intended-MAP and the MAP-in-use, in particular performance measurement and cost management. An independent interviewer was
employed wherever possible with the aim to limit possible insider researcher bias during the interview process.

Findings suggest a significant gap exists between what the objectives of the MFO policy is seeking to achieve and the operational level at which this policy operates. Consultations with the critical group of practitioners and evidence from an analysis of documentation provide support for the theoretical principles. However, evidence from the case study interviews indicates a limited application of these principles. The "performance story" of the
agency lacks logical links between the services it delivers and the government outcomes to which it contributes. The use of measures is not uniform throughout the agency. The agency's ability to assess the efficiency and effectiveness to which it delivers services is
limited by the fact that it reports mainly output oriented cost information. Thus, any extolments that the agency has improved their cost of delivery are largely rhetoric rather
than anything real based on sound costing information. With an apparent compliance focus by the agency, the implication of these findings is that the costing approach adopted is one that is more likely to be based on its needs to secure sufficient resource allocations through
budgeting processes of the Government.

Opportunities exist to examine the broader social, cultural and political contexts within which Queensland government agencies operate. The findings of this study suggest that the technical merits of the proposed MAP that should be adopted by the Queensland government agencies are not sufficient to motivate agencies to adopt them. Future research that gains a fuller understanding of this aspect seems to be a logical progression.


Microscopic variations in melanin composition can be mapped through linear and nonlinear optical responses. Though instrumentation to measure linear attenuation is simple and inexpensive, the nonlinear response provides more degrees of freedom with which to spectroscopically resolve pigments. The objective of this study is to assess differences in imaging melanin contrast by comparing hyperspectral (linear) versus pump-probe (nonlinear) microscopy of unstained histology sections of pigmented lesions. The images and analysis we have presented here show that pump-probe uncovers a greater variation in pigment composition, compared with hyperspectral microscopy, and that the two methods yield complimentary biochemical information.


We propose a library-framework for optimization algorithms which perform a step-wise, randomized search in the solution space. The optimization problem has to be formulated once, then any of these algorithms can work on this problem. We show that the NP-complete problem of assigning wavelengths to paths in optical networks can be solved (sub-optimally) by framework-based algorithms, and that these algorithms produce acceptable optimization results.


In this article we would like to introduce a three-year Research Project called 'New Local Policies against Social Exclusion in European Cities', financed by the Targeted Socio-Economic Research Program (TSER) of the European Union. We will briefly highlight the entire research project that aims to make a contribution to European debate about social exclusion within social work (see also Washington and Paylor 1998), as well as social work's theoretical knowledge and field projects. The specific emphasis is on analysing the significance of the eco-social environment and citizen participation in disadvantaged residential areas, but related work aims to develop new kinds of action models and research methods. The project started in January 1998 in Finland, Germany, and Great Britain, and it will be completed by the end of 2000. Our research is a unique kind of cross-national comparative case-context research, based on classic ideas of action research and comparative research. Overall, the project aims through a European exchange to develop innovative models of local policies, particularly within community-based social work.


In the Puget Sound region of Washington state, indigenous people and their descendants have a long history of interaction with settlers and their descendants. "Indians in the Making" offers the first comprehensive account of these interactions, from contact with traders of the 1820s to the Indian fishing rights activism of the 1970s. In this thoroughly researched history, Alexandra Harmon also provides a theoretically sophisticated analysis that charts shifting notions of Indian identity, both in native and in nonnative communities. During the period under consideration, each major shift in demographic, economic, and political conditions precipitated new deliberations about how to distinguish Indians from non-Indians and from each other. By chronicling such dialogues over 150 years, this groundbreaking study reveals that Indian identity has a complex history. Examining relations in various spheres of life - labor, public ceremony, marriage and kinship, politics and law - Harmon shows how Indians have continually redefined themselves. Her focus on the negotiations that have given rise to modern Indian identity makes a significant contribution to the discourse of contemporary multiculturalism and ethnic studies.


Whilst an increasing amount of attention is being paid to law's connection or involvement with National Socialism, less attention is focused upon thinking through the links between law and the emergence of antisemitism. As a consequence, antisemitism is presented as a pre-existent given, as something that is the object, rather than the subject of study. In this way, the question of law's connection to antisemitism is presented as one of external application. In this ironic mimesis of the positivist tradition, the question of a potentially more intimate or dialectical connection between law and antisemitism is avoided. This work differs from these accounts by explaining the relationship between law and antisemitism through a discussion of these issues by critical thinkers from the mid-nineteenth century to the present; that is, from Marx to Agamben through Nietzsche, Sartre, Adorno and Horkheimer, Arendt and Lyotard. Despite the variety that exists between each thinker, one particular common critical theme unites them. That theme is the connections they make, in diverse ways, between legal rights as an expression of modern political emancipation and the emergence and development of the social phenomenon of antisemitism. Approaching the question of the relationship between law and antisemitism in this way not only brings into question the popular, but ultimately mistaken, notion of an "eternal antisemitism", but brings into doubt the idea of a monolithic "modern" antisemitism that emerges fully formed, unchanging and static. The tinkers discussed in this work are examined not only for their insights and accounts of the development of antisemitism, but also as expressions of the particular societies in which they were writing. In this way, a further aim of the project comes into focus, that of the impact of the Holocaust upon critical forms of thought itself.


Industry is building larger, more complex, manycore processors on the back of strong institutional knowledge, but academic projects face difficulties in replicating that scale. To alleviate these difficulties and to develop and share knowledge, the community needs open architecture frameworks for simulation, chip design, and software exploration that support extensibility, scalability, and configurability, alongside an established base of verification tools and supported software. In this article, we present OpenPiton, an open source framework for building scalable architecture research prototypes from one core to 500 million cores. OpenPiton is the world's first open source, general-purpose, multithreaded manycore processor, and framework. OpenPiton is highly configurable, providing a rich design space spanning a variety of hardware parameters that researchers can change. OpenPiton designs can be emulated on FPGAs, where they can run full-stack multiuser Debian Linux. OpenPiton is designed to scale to very large core fabrics, enabling researchers to measure operating system, compiler, and software scalability. The mature code-base reflects the complexity of an industrial-grade design and provides the necessary scripts to build new chips, making OpenPiton a natural choice for computer-aided design (CAD) research. OpenPiton has been validated with a 25-core chip prototype, named Piton, and is bolstered by a validation suite that has thousands of tests, providing an environment to test new hardware designs while verifying the correctness of the whole system. OpenPiton is being actively used in research both internally to Princeton and in the wider community, as well as being adopted in education, industry, and government settings.


The subantarctic forests of South America are the world's southernmost forested ecosystems. The birds have sung in these austral forests for millions of years; the Yahgan and Mapuche peoples have handed down their bird stories from generation to generation for hundreds of years. In Multi-ethnic Bird Guide of the Subantarctic Forests of South America, Ricardo Rozzi and his collaborators present a unique combination of bird guide and cultural ethnography. The bird songs, names and stories recorded on the CDs of the guide book includes entries on fifty bird species of southern Chile and Argentina, among them the Magellanic Woodpecker, Rufous-Legged Owl, Ringed Kingfisher, Buff-Necked Ibis, Giant Hummingbird, and Andean Condor. Each bird is named in Yahgan, Mapudungun, Spanish, English, and scientific nomenclature. As a whole, the recordings of this guide book express the voices of multiple species and indigenous, rural and urban cultures, whose lives are interwoven in the temperate forest region of South America.


Abstract This article develops the concept of recombinant urbanization to show how agrarian landed property and land-based caste/class relations shape the production of post-liberalization urban real estate markets in India. I focus on two interrelated but differentiated agrarian property regimes in western Maharashtra to argue that real estate development is building on prior uneven agrarian land markets, which were themselves sociotechnically produced by colonial and postcolonial development politics. Through an examination of the organizational form of sugar cooperatives, which mediated agrarian capitalism in an earlier era, I track how these primary agricultural cooperatives are now being reorganized into real estate companies, sometimes with former sugarcane growers as company shareholders. The same caste-based political and social capital that made sugar cooperatives possible in a capitalist agrarian society is now being leveraged by agrarian elites to ease their own and their constituents? entry into an urbanizing economy. The concept of recombinant urbanization opens new methodological entryways to analyze the entangled agrarian and urban question in predominantly agrarian and late liberalizing societies.


All cells in the human body contains the same genome. Yet, there are hundreds of different cell types, with widely different phenotype, and function. The differential gene expression leading to this diversity is tightly regulated by epigenetics, i.e. modifications to the genome without interfering with the sequence. There are a number of epigenetic modifications. In this thesis, I have studied DNA methylation as a readout for lineage specificity or effector function in cells from the immune system, in clinical settings. In paper I we develop a method based on DNA methylation analysis to determine the lineage commitment of the CD4 + T helper cells. First, we establish a regulatory site in the promotor of the IL17A gene. Next, we use signature genes IFNG, IL13, IL17A and FOXP3, to determine lineage commitment towards corresponding T helper cell subsets Th1, Th2, Th17 and Tregs. We call this method EILA (Epigenetic immune lineage assay), and demonstrate that it is usable in clinical samples from rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. In paper II, we take advantage of the same CD4 + T cell specific loci to investigate the adaptive immune response in and around the tumour microenvironment in specimens derived from patients with urinary bladder cancer (UBC). By sorting and examining CD4 + T cells from blood, tumour and regional lymph nodes, we conclude that patients with higher degree of lineage commitment have a better prognosis. Furthermore, we demonstrate that patients responding to neoadjuvant chemotherapy have a larger proportion of commitment cells, post treatment, compared with the non-responders. In paper III we further examine the same patient material from UBC patients, but instead focus on the cytotoxic features of CD8 + T lymphocytes. We establish a methylation pattern in the perforin gene PRF1 predictive for protein expression and deploy this locus as a readout for cytotoxic functionality. We demonstrate that the tumour infiltrating CD8 + T cells are predispositioned to be cytotoxic through PRF1 demethylation, but that they lack corresponding protein expression, and show signs of exhaustion. The cells demonstrating a TRM phenotype, can still be woken anew, upon in vitro re-stimulation, demonstrating that they are not terminally exhausted. In paper IV we investigate whole blood leucocytes and the DNA methylation status of the glucocorticoid gene NR3C1. In contrast to literature studies on healthy volunteers, our cohort of surgical patients demonstrate a homogeneous pattern of demethylation in the previously described CpG island of NR3C1. As opposed to our hypothesis, we found no correlation between methylation and clinical outcome post-surgery in this patient cohort. Nevertheless, when employing multifactorial analysis to investigating the impact of genotype we found four single nucleotide polymorphisms that influenced the outcome. In conclusion, this thesis demonstrate multiple ways in which DNA methylation analysis can be used to read the immune system, but also that the loci selected for investigation has to be carefully chosen following thorough functional investigations. The results presented herein can contribute to further development of treatments to a variety of clinical conditions. Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional


The research question addressed by this thesis is whether corporate social responsibility is constructed and practiced as an economically rational phenomenon by small to medium sized enterprises. Corporate social responsibility is a deeply contested concept, with ongoing debates over its legitimacy that in turn inform a literature preoccupied by definitional problems and characterized by the search for a link between responsible practice and firm performance. My thesis critiques this approach to CSR and takes an approach more suitable for small to medium sized enterprises. It also seeks to address calls for more critical thought in the fields of business ethics and the sociology of economic behaviour. The qualitative evidence presented here shows that, in contrast to the dominant picture from the literature (dominated by large firm studies), small to medium sized enterprises rarely construct or justify their social responsibility in rational economic terms. Indeed, in many cases their social engagement is not described in terms of corporate social responsibility at all and seems to be legitimized more by the firm's relationship with community. This invites reflections on Karl Polanyi, and cautiously suggests Alastair Maclntyre's pessimism about a 'society of strangers' may be premature. In this study, corporate social responsibility spring from personal contacts and preferences among staff and managers, and could best be described as 'emergent'. Furthermore, I also found that some practitioners questioned the very efficacy of using societal engagement as a managerial intervention in the first place. The raises the question of whether the predominant CSR discourse is making a fundamental mistake in proposing that corporate social responsibility could be an instrumental tool of management at all. This may be uncomfortable news for those in the academy engaged in the search for the elusive link between corporate social responsibility and firm performance since around 1972. I argue that the focus on the 'performance link' has allowed rational economic thought to colonize the academic discourse and has foreclosed debates based on morality as a result. I also argue that my study shows how, in the main, social engagement is legitimized through relations with community rather than with reference to economic performance.


Q Fever is zoonotic disease caused by Coxiella burnetii , an intracellular obligate and negative Gram bacterium with pleomorphic shape (Kaplan and Bertagna 1955). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) classify Coxiella burnetii as potential bioterrorism agent within B rank for its ability and characteristics (CDC 2013). The main reservoir animals for Q fever are ruminants (Maurin and Raoult 1999). Q fever infection whether in animal or human generally occur through inhalation, vector bites, or through oral ingestion—the last two routes are considered as secondary routes (Angelakis and Raoult 2010). Clinical symptoms of Q fever in both animal and human generally asymptomatic. Q fever can cause abortion in the third trimester of pregnancy and pneumonia in ruminants. Whether in human, acute Q fever can cause flu like syndrome and can develop into hepatitis, endocarditis, and for some severe chronic case, it caused death (Fournier et al. 1998).  Office international des epizooties (OIE) classify Q fever into a re-emerging disease group (OIE 2010). Based on OIE data in 2012, the distribution of Q fever in animals occur in almost all country in the world including ASEAN (OIE 2012). Q fever was first discovered in Australia in 1935 (Kaplan and Bertagna 1955). Q fever disease transmission in animal occurs almost in every country in the world. Based on OIE data, Indonesia was classified as no information region (OIE 2012). World Health Organization (WHO) reported that Q fever was first found in cow serologically in Indonesia in 1953 (Kaplan and Bertagna 1955). Q fever in ruminants was again reported by Indonesian researcher between 2006 to 2015 in Bali, West Java, Jakarta, and Medan (Mahatmi et al. 2007; Setiyono et al. 2008; Nasution et al. 2015). Positive Q fever result was obtained especially from ex imported cows, thus it was suspected that cows from abroad might play main role of transmission of Q fever in Indonesia. However, there was also report of positive result in local ruminants, such as Bali cattle, goat, and sheep (Mahatmi et al . 2007). Researches in various country also stated of potential local ruminant as reservoir animal,  among them are Tibet sheep in China, Alpine and Saanen goat in Italia, camel ( Camelus dromedaries ) in Saudi Arabia, or Swedish dairy cattle in Swedia (Mohammed et al. 2014). Based on the historical study of Q fever in Indonesia, this research was performed by taken sample from both ex-import cattle and local ruminants in several region in East Java (Malang, Surabaya, Madura), Central Java (Boyolali), and West Java (Bogor, Bandung, Depok) which are known as regions with high population of ruminants in Indonesia.  So far, surveillance data of Q fever has not been recorded from these regions.


Mowgli, the man-cub who is brought up by wolves in the jungles of Central India, is one of the greatest literary myths ever created. As he embarks on a series of thrilling escapades, Mowgli encounters such unforgettable creatures as Bagheera, the graceful black panther, and Shere Khan, the tiger with the blazing eyes. Other animal stories range from the simple heroism found in 'Rikki-tikki-tavi' to the macabre comedy 'The Undertakers'. A rich and complex fable of human life, Kipling's enduring classic dazzles the imagination with its astonishing descriptive powers and lively sense of adventure.


BACKGROUND
Inhibitors of 5 alpha reductase (5 alpha R), the enzyme that converts testosterone to dihydrotestosterone (DHT), have been shown to retard the growth of hyperplastic prostates. This study evaluates the effects of the 5 alpha R inhibitor, epristeride, on cultured stromal and epithelial cells from benign, hyperplastic adult prostates.

METHODS
[3H]-thymidine incorporation was used as a measure of proliferation. Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) was quantified by ELISA and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).

RESULTS
Stromal cell proliferation in response to testosterone was dose-dependently inhibited by epristeride (1 x 10(-9) -3 x 10(-7) M, P < 0.05). However, epristeride had no effect on DHT-induced growth or the growth of androgen-unresponsive stroma. Upregulation of PSA secretion from epithelial cells by androgens was downregulated by epristeride (3 x 10(-9) M, P < 0.05) in testosterone-treated cells. Transforming growth factor beta-1 (TGF beta-1) secretion was downregulated by testosterone treatment and increased following treatment with epristeride (3 x 10(-9) M, P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS
This demonstrates that epristeride specifically blocks testosterone-induced effects on prostatic cultures. TGF beta-1 may be a marker of 5 alpha reductase activity.


Higher education in Hong Kong has undergone major transformation over the past decade, responding to forces of globalisation, an increasingly knowledge-driven economy and international competitiveness. One significant development has been the growth in community colleges offering self-financed sub-degree programs, in particular the Associate Degree (AD). However, to date, little is known to of the experiences of AD graduates in terms of their articulation and employment prospects and their perceptions of the value of AD programs. This thesis explores how Hong Kong's self-financed post-secondary education sector has served to connect the New Senior Secondary (NSS) system with higher education and the significant parts played by both internal credit transfer and broader market forces. This thesis is a qualitative case study of the perspectives of students, parents, teachers, employers and senior administrators of community colleges. It takes a rich, multi-perspectival approach consisting of semi-structured interviews, policy history, document analysis and recent evaluations of the AD program in Hong Kong in order to identify patterns of experience associated with articulation to higher education and employment post-graduation. The study argues that government policy, the economic situation and institutional and personal factors, such as lea.mer engagement, play an important role in affecting AD graduates' futures. This has implications for public and private managers in relation to quality improvement in the current sub-degree offerings in Hong Kong. The significance of the present study is that it provides qualitative cross-referencing to future developments at this transitional stage from the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) and the A-Level (HKAL) examinations to the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) examination and from community colleges to private universities. The findings from the study have implications for the transfer of AD programs from the traditional education system (HKCEE and HKAL) to the NSS system, marking a progressive shift towards privatisation in Hong Kong higher


Staphylococcus aureus is an important human nosocomial pathogen that can cause a
variety of skin infections and toxin-mediated diseases including gastroenteritis,
staphylococcal scalded-skin syndrome and toxic shock syndrome. Whilst the use of
antibiotics can kill most strains of pathogenic microbes, the increase of multiple drug
resistant S. aureus, especially among hospital patients have been a worrying trend. In
order to treat patients infected with this organism at the earliest time possible and to
prevent further nosocomial outbreaks, it is necessary to rapidly identify the multiple drug
resistant S. aureus, so that the patient can be treated with the correct antibiotic on time
and thus prevent further complications.
S. aureus besides being a nosocomial pathogen causing frequent nosocomial infections
also causes community acquired outbreaks. The increased prevalence of S. aureus
infections may be prevented if the epidemiology of S. aureus is studied, whereby the spread of outbreak clones can be identified and treated with the appropriate drugs.
Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate suitable molecular systems for use in
the rapid identification ofS. aureus and detection of multiple drug resistant S. aureus and
for typing of strain variations for epidemiological understanding ofS. aureus in Malaysia.
In this study, a total of eighty-nine clinical S. aureus isolates obtained from five different
hospitals in Malaysia and from one pathology laboratory were studied. All the isolates
were confirmed for S. aureus by the presence of species-specific Sa442 fragment (s.
aureus specific fragment). Sequencing of the Sa442 fragment from isolates obtained
from the different geographical locations identified this fragment as an epidemiological
marker as it showed a wide variation of 1-10 % in the nucleotide sequences among the S.
aureus isolates studied.
For rapid identification of S. aureus and detection of multiple drug resistant strains, two
molecular assays were utilized. In the first assay, a multiplex peR based strategy was
used, whereby the genes responsible for methicillin (mecA), mupirocin (ites2),
gentamycin (aac(6')-aph(2")), erythromycin(ermA) resistance and species specific Sa442
fragment were amplified. Results of the assay indicated the amplification of antibiotic
resistant genes and Sa442 fragment at the expected sizes of 533,456, 174, 139 and 108bp
respectively. All the amplified products were further confirmed by sequencing. The
second assay was a membrane assay based on an optimized dot blot hybridization
technique. In the dot blot assay, a set of oligonuclotide probes designed from the
antibiotic resistance genes and the Sa442 fragment sequences were highly sensitive and specific for the respective bacterial target genes. The membrane assay developed was
able to detect multiple drug resistant S. aureus isolates in less than two hours after
obtaining pure culture isolates. Detection is also possible in less than two hours from
spiked urine and blood samples, as well as for direct nasal samples. The results obtained
with both polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and membrane assay were found to be similar
whereby, 58.8, 67.7, 97.7 and 1.1% of the isolates carried mecA, aac(6')-aph(2"), ermA
and iles-2 genes respectively. The overall correlation between the antibiotic resistance
(disc diffusion test) and presence of antibiotic resistant genes (PCR and membrane assay)
were found to be 77.3% for methicillin, 73.7 % for gentamycin, 95.4% for erythromycin
and 100% mupirocin.
The molecular epidemiology of local S. aureus was studied using randomly amplified
polymerase chain reaction (RAPD) and repetitive element sequence based PCR (repPCR).
Four out of the 20 arbitrary primers screened were highly efficient for use in
molecular typing of S. aureus isolates. The rep-PCR typing primers designed from the
staphylococcal repetitive sequences (STAR) were also markedly feasible for typing of S.
aureus isolates. The RAPD study for molecular epidemiology showed wide variation in
S. aureus isolates, as seen by genetic distance value based on Jaccard's index ranged
from 0.037 to 0.954545. Similarly, in rep-PCR study, a wide variation in genetic
distance value based on Jaccard's index ranged from 0.037037 to 0.894737. A wide
variation in genetic distance was seen in the clonal diversity of local S. aureus isolates,
where by, isolates were divided into four (4) clones namely Miri, Kuantan, Kota Bharu
and Seremban, with Miri as the most predominant clone. In addition, RAPD was able to distinguish between methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and non-MRSA
isolates, showing the spread of two MRSA clones in Malaysia. RAPD analysis produced
two (2) molecular markers, at positions 500 bp with primer OPAE 14 and 750 bp with
OPAE 15, whereas, rep-PeR produced three (3) molecular markers, positions 500 with
rep primer!, between 1500 and 2000 bp with rep 2, and slightly above 750 bp with rep
primer 3, in most of the S. aureus isolates studied. From the five (5) markers obtained
with RAPD and rep-PCR, the putative 500 bp rep marker was cloned in PCR 2.1 Topo
vector and sequenced. The 500 bp rep marker was selected, as this marker was obtained
through the amplification of S. aureus isolates with the primer designed from S. aureus
genome and also because of the small size. The sequence obtained identified the repmarker
as a 489 bp fragment, showing 95% homology to a region in glyceraldehydes -3phosphate
dehydrogenase (GAP) operon in S. aureus genome, whose coding potential is
unknown. The higher percentage (95%) similarity of the rep marker to S. aureus genome
emphasized the importance of the rep marker in species-specific identification.
To investigate the potentiality of the rep marker in species-specific identification of S.
aureus isolates, a PCR and a membrane assay were developed with primers and probe
designed from the rep sequence. The PCR and membrane assay showed positive signal
for all eighty-nine S. aureus isolates tested and no signal was seen for other Grampositive
and Gram-negative species tested, appreciating the specificity and the sensitivity
of rep primers and probes in species-specific detection of S. aureus isolates. Sequencing
of the rep marker from isolates obtained from different geographical locations, identified
this marker (rep) as a potential diagnostic marker as it is highly conserved in S. aureu genome showing 98-99% sequence similarity among the isolates. Besides for diagnosis,
using two typing procedures (RAPD and rep-peR) to study the clonal relatedness among
the local S. aureus isolates which were developed with suitable RAPD and rep primers,
they were able to correctly type S. aureus isolates according to the geographical location
and also to differentiate between MRSA and non-MRSA. Although the RAPD primers
are commercially available, the rep primers identified are still not published for use in
typing S. aureus. The patterning of the novel rep primers and probe for typing and
diagnosis of S. aureus will be extremely useful in the clinical diagnosis as the primers
and probes innovated are highly specific and ubiquitous in all S. aureus isolates.
These novel achievements made in the study will be of great value in the modern
diagnostic era as the molecular systems optimized could be readily applied in the clinical
diagnosis due to the specificity and rapidity in the detection of multiple drug resistant S.
aureus. The achievements of the current study is especially a significant contribution to
the clinical diagnostics and infectious disease research because the utilization of the
optimized system incorporated as diagnostic kit will enhance the sensitivity and rapidity
of molecular based detection in combination with sub-typing ability. Therefore, the
routine application of the molecular systems optimized and the primers and probes
developed in this study for the rapid identification of multiple drug resistant S. aureus
and to study the epidemiology of S. aureus will definitely contribute towards early
diagnosis of S. aureus infection in clinical laboratories. The epidemiological
investigation will aid in developing more effective strategies in preventing and
controlling the further spread of multiple drug resistant S. aureus clones in Malaysia


A model is presented that describes the average resultant track of a population of male pea moth, Cydia nigricana (F.), flying through a crop to a continuously emitting pheromone trap containing 100 $\mu g$ (E,E)-8,10-dodecadien-1-yl acetate. This model, based on work by C. T. David, J. S. Kennedy, A. R. Ludlow, J. N. Perry and C. Wall J. chem. Ecol. 8, 1207 (1982), and modified for the effect of a crop, has particular reference to a line of interacting pheromone traps equally spaced along the mean wind direction at an emergence site. It is derived after extensive field observations. The model relates to the average flight behaviour of a population of moths, and is compatible with both the anemotactic theory and a system of integrated anemotaxis and longitudinal chemo-klinotaxis. We give two theoretical reasons and cite observational evidence which suggest that, within a wheat crop, a discrete plume breaks up at around 10-15 m from the source and that beyond this distance pheromone exists at a non-zero concentration at all downwind positions. Close to the source moths are assumed to respond to a discrete plume as described by David et al. (1982) and further from it to receive pheromone continuously and fly, on average, upwind. Because of the effects of the crop we suggest that equations of atmospheric diffusion derived to predict time-averaged concentrations of pheromone may hold instantaneously. The average behaviour of a population of responding moths under these conditions is discussed. Far from the source there is a concentration of pheromone below which such moths sampling it are assumed not to respond; this is termed the threshold concentration and the positions where it occurs are termed the threshold contour. The contour is sketched for single and multiple sources. Such moths flying upwind to this contour are assumed to stop and then cast (move in a crosswind direction). This results in the moths either moving inside the contour to a region of concentration above the threshold, and resuming upwind flight, or moving outside the contour and, eventually, not responding further. Net movement in the former is therefore towards the source and such moths may eventually be caught. The model allows for random flight by non-responding moths outside the threshold contour, and for moths to `lose' the discrete plume of one source and continue upwind flight to encounter that of the next source upwind. The model has ten parameters, five relate directly to moth flight behaviour, one to the degree of random flight, one to meteorological conditions, two describe the number and spacing of traps and the last governs numerical accuracy. Predictions from the model of proportional catch in each of a line of traps were made using a computer program. An extensive body of 406 sets of data concerning trap interactions was collected over six years and the model provided excellent fits to this data. Throughout this paper the model is described in biological terms, formulae are provided when necessary.


Sensitive displacement detection has emerged as a significant technological challenge in mechanical resonators with nanometer-scale dimensions. A novel nanomechanical displacement detection scheme based upon the scattering of focused evanescent fields is proposed. The sensitivity of the proposed approach is studied using diffraction theory of evanescent waves. Diffraction theory results are compared with numerical simulations.


We derive unidirectional pulse propagation equations to describe extreme high-intensity and ultrabroadband optical interactions in uniaxial crystals, showing both second- and third-order nonlinear optical susceptivities. We focus our attention on the anisotropic nature of the quadratic and cubic nonlinear response of beta-barium-borate (β-BaB2O4, BBO) crystals. Two nonlinearly coupled first-order (in the propagation coordinate) equations describe the dynamics and interactions of the ordinary and extraordinary field polarizations, and are valid for arbitrarily wide pulse bandwidth. We exploit this model to predict harmonic and supercontinuum generation in BBO crystals under the strong and competing influence of quadratic and cubic susceptivities.


We present TALplanner, a forward-chaining planner based on the use of domain-dependent search control knowledge represented as temporal formulas in the Temporal Action Logic (TAL). TAL is a narrative based linear metric time logic used for reasoning about action and change in incompletely specified dynamic environments. TAL is used as the formal semantic basis for TALplanner, where a TAL goal narrative with control formulas is input to TALplanner which then generates a TAL narrative that entails the goal formula. We extend the sequential version of TALplanner, which has previously shown impressive performance on standard benchmarks, in two respects: 1) TALplanner is extended to generate concurrent plans, where operators have varied durations and internal state; and 2) the expressiveness of plan operators is extended for dealing with several different types of resources. The extensions to the planner have been implemented and concurrent planning with resources is demonstrated using an extended logistics benchmark.


In the field of screw compressors, although the basic operation of such flow systems is well known and the analytical methods for their performance prediction are well established, only few attempts of investigating the flow in screw compressors by means of CFD can be identified in the available literature. The present paper aims at contributing to this field by establishing CFD as permanent tool for compressor design and optimization during the new product development process at a screw compressor manufacturer. The major challenges during this process related to the implementation of a valid meshing technique, as this is a far more unconventional process in the case of screw compressors than any other meshing techniques available within the commercial solvers, due to the very tight interlobe clearances. The definition of an optimum meshing procedure and, subsequently, of appropriate boundary conditions, allowed the successful setup of flow simulations in an oilfree screw compressor and the prediction of the compressor performance, with a good degree of confidence. Within the scope of the present paper, the CFD analysis focused on two main objectives. Firstly, a baseline model for the optimization exercise was determined: the discharge chamber (discharge port, pipe and flanges) of the modular casing of the single-wall/ rolling-element bearing/ compressor, characterized by a rotor diameter of 127 mm. Secondly, the performance of the baseline was assessed against that of several new designs which aimed at improving the gas flow in the discharge chamber. At the comparison stage, the correct definition of accurate performance indicators was very important, as these indicators had to capture the overall flow improvements achieved by the new designs. The flow analysis included both qualitative and quantitative evaluations of parameters like the variation of the pressure and temperature in the discharge chamber, torque, power, and entropy variation. This detailed analysis allowed for design improvements of the discharge chamber to be implemented and "virtually" tested in order to determine an optimized compressor geometry, which will be subsequently incorporated in the actual modular casing of the compressor.


Quasi Delay-Insensitive (QDI) circuits can be created through the procedure of Martin Synthesis, a series of transformations that begin with an executable specification and end in a transistor network. If these transformations are properly applied the circuits will be correct by construction, however if they are improperly applied, finding design errors can be quite difficult. We show that the forward transformations of Martin Synthesis are reversible, and that the inversion of these steps recreates the specification when applied to correctly synthesized circuits. We have created a tool to apply these inversions, and show that it can also be used to verify other compilation methods for QDI circuits. This procedure presents an alternative approach to typical VLSI verification by requiring little designer effort and by reconstructing specifications through transformations.


The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a correction for annihilation photon attenuation in small objects such as mice is necessary. The attenuation recovery for specific organs and subcutaneous tumors was investigated. A comparison between different attenuation correction methods was performed. Methods: Ten NMRI nude mice with subcutaneous implantation of human breast cancer cells (MCF-7) were scanned consecutively in small animal PET and CT scanners (MicroPETTM Focus 120 and ImTek's MicroCATTM II). CT-based AC, PET-based AC and uniform AC methods were compared. Results: The activity concentration in the same organ with and without AC revealed an overall attenuation recovery of 9–21% for MAP reconstructed images, i.e., SUV without AC could underestimate the true activity at this level. For subcutaneous tumors, the attenuation was 13 ± 4% (9–17%), for kidneys 20 ± 1% (19–21%), and for bladder 18 ± 3% (15–21%). The FBP reconstructed images showed almost the same attenuation levels as the MAP reconstructed images for all organs. Conclusions: The annihilation photons are suffering attenuation even in small subjects. Both PET-based and CT-based are adequate as AC methods. The amplitude of the AC recovery could be overestimated using the uniform map. Therefore, application of a global attenuation factor on PET data might not be accurate for attenuation correction.


The epoxy resins are organic matrices with excellent heat, moisture, and chemical resistance and good adhesion to many substrates, therefore they are mostly applied in the field of coatings, adhesives, casting, composites, laminates and encapsulation of semiconductor devises. However, due to their low mechanical properties and high coefficient of thermal expansion value compared with inorganic materials, the epoxy resins cannot meet all the requirements, especially for the electrical and structural applications such as epoxy molding compounds. Thus organic/inorganic materials are frequently employed in order to overcome this limitation. Two separated routes can be followed in order to prepare these hybrid/nanocomposite materials, either the addition of preformed inorganic particles, i.e. layered silicates montmorillonite (MMT), or the in situ growth of siloxane clusters, since both MMT and silica particles are commonly used for the reinforcement of epoxy matrix to lower shrinkage on curing, to decrease coefficient of thermal expansion, to improve thermal conductivity and barrier properties, and to meet mechanical requirements. In order to prepare epoxy based hybrids/nanocomposites materials, the sol-gel method is widely used either to modify preformed nanoparticles (i.e. MMT) or to synthesize siloxane clusters. Therefore, in this study, both organo-siloxane clusters and silylated MMT by sol-gel method were used to prepare epoxy-based hybrids/(nano)composites. Considerable attention was given to the use of coupling agents to make compatible the organic matrix and the inorganic particles and improve the interfacial interactions providing chemical bonds between them. In details the surface modification of Na-MMT was done by the silylation reaction with three different aminosilanes, namely 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (A1100), N-(2-aminoethyl)-3-aminopropyltrimethoxysilane (A1120) and 3-[2-(2-aminoethylamino)ethylamino]-propyl-trimethoxysilane (A1130).
The effects on the Na-MMT d-spacing of three aminosilanes with different chain length were studied in details by combining experimental and computational techniques. Additionally, different routes in terms of reaction temperature and aminosilane concentration was followed to the aim to correlate the final d-spacing between silicates layers and the process parameters. Therefore, with silylated A1100 and A1120 MMT several epoxy-based composites were prepared employing two different dispersion methods, namely the sonication (S) and a combination of sonication and high energy ball-milling (SB). The effect of both the silylation reaction parameters and the dispersion method on the mechanical and thermal properties of composites was evaluated. It was found that the silylation reaction of Na-MMT with aminosilanes is a valuable approach to enhance the interactions between the epoxy matrix and the fillers by means of both the covalent bonds due to the cross-linking reaction and the hydrogen bonding with the hydroxyl groups of opened oxirane rings. In fact, the silylated MMTs provide composites with improved mechanical properties with respect the pristine Na-MMT in terms of increased Tg and elastic modulus in the rubbery region. This improvements is more evident in the sonicated composites since the combination of sonication and ball milling makes compact the interlayer spacing and partially destroys the original layers structures. Additionally the silylated clay composites highlighted an increased fire resistance compared to the pristine epoxy resin as well as to the Na-MMT composite.
The effect of both the coupling agent and sol-gel process parameters on the organo-siloxane domains morphology and mechanical properties of epoxy-based hybrids was evaluated. It was found that the use of large amount of γ-Glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane (GOTMS) as coupling agent represents an available route to tailor the mechanical and thermal properties of epoxy-based hybrids samples. In details, we demonstrated that a suitable choice of functionalized siloxane monomers, amine hardener and reaction conditions leads to the formation of nano-heterogeneous networks with well-organized cage-like structures, up to nearly homogeneous bicontinuous systems. In fact under particular process parameters GOTMS molecules are able to spontaneously arrange to form structures similar to polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane POSS units with well established architecture. Therefore, as the siloxane amount increases the number of cages become high enough to make them bonded with the amine hardener Jeffamine D230. Thus the distance between two neighbouring cages will be determined only by the length of the amine hardener which links them. This ordered arrangement highlighted as distance correlation peak in the SAXS patterns profile of hybrids samples at high siloxane content becomes responsible of the improved thermal and mechanical properties of hybrids samples. In particular, the co-continuous organic-inorganic structure is demonstrated with the achievement of films instead of powders in the pyrolysis experiments. It also affects the viscous-elastic behaviour causing both the Tg and the elastic modulus to increase. Moreover the symmetric shape of the loss factor peak speaks in favour of siloxane structure homogenously dispersed throughout the organic matrix. Whereas the increase of the Tg's value highlights the strong evidence of hindrance the polymeric chains movements during the glass transition. Hence, only the high siloxane content assures the clusters to be bonded highlighting the improved mechanical properties.
To the best of our knowledge it is the first time such cage-like clusters bonded by Jeffamine D230 molecules could be detected assuring the Tg to increase without any phase separation.
Moreover, the effect of two amine hardeners, namely MXDA and Jeffamine D230 on the inorganic network morphology and then on the mechanical and thermal properties of hybrid samples was also evaluated. It was found that MXDA is an organic cross-linker faster than the Jeffamine D230, therefore in the MXDA-based hybrids the organic grows more rapidly than the inorganic network, leaving out the GOTMS siloxanes monomers, as the high content of T0 units in MXDA-based hybrids proved. The presence of T0 units is detrimental in the cured hybrids samples, since it causes a dramatic reduction in Tg values. On the contrary, in the Jeffamine-based samples the Tg is markedly increased with respect to the neat epoxy due to their particular organic-inorganic morphology. In fact the Jeffamine is able to bond two neighbouring siloxane cages building up a co-continuous organic-inorganic structure, as the siloxane amount increases.


In many European countries the number of asylum seekers has increased in parallel with increasing numbers of migrants and refugees. Recent experiences in providing medical assessment, care and corroborating evidence for people seeking asylum in France motivated us to review the basic principles of forensic dermatology, an essential skill for the attribution of skin lesions to different mechanisms of torture and for proposing appropriate diagnosis.


The implementation of public programs to support business R&D projects requires the establishment of a selection process. This selection process faces various difficulties, which include the measurement of the impact of the R&D projects as well as selection process optimization among projects with multiple, and sometimes incomparable, performance indicators. To this end, public agencies generally use the peer review method, which, while presenting some advantages, also demonstrates significant drawbacks. Private firms, on the other hand, tend toward more quantitative methods, such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), in their pursuit of R&D investment optimization. In this paper, the performance of a public agency peer review method of project selection is compared with an alternative DEA method.


Mitotic kinases converge at the mitochondria to promote fission and even distribution of mitochondria in dividing cells. In quiescent cells, mitochondria exist in an interconnected network that exhibits dynamic morphological changes through fission and fusion in response to cellular energy demands and stimuli. In dividing cells, mitochondrial fission is critical to ensure proper distribution of mitochondria in both cells. DRP1 is a large dynamin-related guanosine triphosphatase (GTPase) that is recruited to the mitochondria from the cytosol to mediate fission, and this is associated with phosphorylation of DRP1 by cyclin B/cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (cyclin B/CDK1) complex (see Yamano and Youle). Kashatus et al. report that the mitotic kinase Aurora A also affects mitochondrial fission by controlling the recruitment of the GTPase RALA to mitochondria. A pool of green fluorescent protein (GFP)–tagged RALA colocalized with mitochondrial markers, and immunoblotting experiments showed that this association, as well as the association of DRP1 and the RALA binding partner RALBP1 with mitochondria, was enhanced in cells expressing kinase-active, but not kinase-inactive, Aurora A. A phosphomimetic mutant of RALA also showed increased mitochondrial colocalization, but a Ser-to-Ala mutation at the site phosphorylated by Aurora A decreased the association of RALA with mitochondria. Cells expressing the kinase-active Aurora A also exhibited small, circular mitochondria, in contrast to the cells expressing the kinase-inactive Aurora A, which had long interconnected mitochondria. The long interconnected mitochondrial phenotype and a reduction in the association of DRP1 with mitochondria were also observed in cells in which RALA was knocked down. Consistent with a role in regulating mitochondrial fission during mitosis, the relative abundance of RALA, RALBP1, and DRP1 associated with mitochondria was greater in cells synchronized in mitosis than in unsynchronized cells. Knockdown of RALBP1, but not RALA, reduced the amount of phosphorylated DRP1. RALBP1 or cyclin B immunoprecipitates from mitotic cells phosphorylated purified DRP1, and RALBP1 and cyclin B coimmunoprecipitated in mitotic cells, suggesting that RALBP1 and cyclin B/CDK1 form an active complex in mitotic cells. Chemical cross-linking experiments with mitochondrial fractions from mitotic cells showed that RALA, RALBP1, DRP1, and cyclin B formed a complex. Knockdown of RALA or RALBP1 resulted in unequal partitioning of mitochondria during mitosis and the persistence of interconnected mitochondria throughout mitosis. Collectively, these data suggest that phosphorylation of RALA by Aurora A promotes the redistribution of RALA to the mitochondria, which recruits DRP1 and RALBP1, the latter of which serves as a scaffold to recruit cyclin B/CDK1 to the mitochondria to phosphorylate its substrate DRP1 and stimulate fission. D. F. Kashatus, K.-H. Lim, D. C. Brady, N. L. K. Pershing, A. D. Cox, C. M. Counter, RALA and RALBP1 regulate mitochondrial fission at mitosis. Nat. Cell Biol. 13, 1108–1115 (2011). [PubMed] K. Yamano, R. J. Youle, Coupling mitochondrial and cell division. Nat. Cell Biol. 13, 1026–1027 (2011). [PubMed]


In multichannel system, user could keep transmitting over an instantaneous "on peak" channel by opportunistically accessing and switching among channels. Previous studies rely on constant transmission duration, which would fail to leverage more opportunities in time and frequency domain. In this paper, we consider opportunistic channel accessing/releasing scheme in multichannel system with Rayleigh fading channels. Our main goal is to derive a throughput-optimal strategy for determining when and which channel to access and when to release it. We formulate this real-time decision-making process as a two-dimensional optimal stopping problem. We prove that the two-dimensional optimal stopping rule can be reduced to a simple threshold-based policy. Leveraging the absorbing Markov chain theory, we obtain the optimal threshold as well as the maximum achievable throughput with computational efficiency. Numerical and simulation results show that our proposed channel utilization scheme achieves up to 140 percent throughput gain over opportunistic transmission with a single channel and up to 60 percent throughput gain over opportunistic channel access with constant transmission duration.


Abstract. With increasing urbanization, particularly in the coastal regions of developing countries, the development of disaster management schemes is needed as the losses from a single event can destroy decades of development and threaten local populations, buildings and infrastructure. Geo-environmental suitability is often evaluated systematically in order to assess the nature of hazards and their potential damage to human life, land, buildings and other property. A suitability assessment will indicate the priorities for geological and environmental hazard management. This paper presents a geological environment suitability assessment that aims to identify grading in a current seaside urban development and develop practices to aid in the identification of hidden geological and environmental hazards. The Laoshan area in the city of Qingdao was used as a case study because it constitutes a good example of a developing city with geological and environmental threats. Also, urban plans have been drawn up here with insufficient or absent information on losses from potential natural hazards.


This thesis breaks new ground in investigating the nature and practice of public interest citizen journalism (PICJ) in Saudi Arabia (KSA). It offers a deeper understanding of the role and relevance of Citizen Journalism (CJ) in Saudi Arabia by analysing the coverage by Saudi citizen journalists of key economic events as matters of public interest (PI). This thesis defines, and derives a model for the functioning of, the features of PICJ for economic issues. It identifies the stages of development of CJ in Saudi Arabia and investigates the impact of the Internet and social media (in particular, Twitter) on the production and consumption of journalistic content in the KSA.
A mixed-methods approach combining qualitative and quantitative techniques was employed to achieve the objectives of the research. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Saudi citizen journalists (columnists and public figures with Twitter accounts) and licensed professional Saudi journalists, for a total of 30 individuals. In addition, a thematic analysis of Saudi tweets relating to economic affairs that occurred in 2015-2016 (total number of tweets = 10.346, identified from their hashtags) and a quantitative analysis of tweet frequency on the hashtags considered were carried out. This research identifies the specific characteristics and behaviour of Twitter-based online citizen journalists in the KSA to produce a new model of Saudi PICJ for economic issues.
The findings confirm that the traditional Saudi press increasingly depends on CJ on Twitter. Many citizen journalists who are specialists in their field provide high-quality information which is censored from the traditional press. There is also evidence that in certain instances CJ may adopt an agenda-setting function for traditional media by highlighting the concerns, questions, and views of the citizens. The analysis of the hashtags studied (i.e. those relating to Vision 2030, the so-called 'White Lands' tax, and Royal Decrees 2015/16) demonstrated that Saudi citizen journalists are able to make use of social media platforms to address economic issues they feel are in the public interest and contribute to creating a virtual interactive community for debating these issues. Data analysis results reveal that platforms like Twitter give citizen journalists more freedom of expression than traditional Saudi media and allow for an interactivity, both locally and globally, that helps to shape Saudi public interest in relation to economic issues and overcomes, albeit not fully, the limits imposed by state control of traditional media.
Keywords: Saudi citizen journalism, Saudi public interest, social media, Twitter in Saudi Arabia, Saudi economy


Driven by recent socio-economic developments, manufacturing firms increasingly adapt their business models along two dimensions. Apart from vertically integrating the entire product life cycle, traditionally separated tasks are re-allocated into new forms of horizontal stakeholder collaborations. Incorporating these two dimensions, this article develops a framework of nine business model archetypes that holistically capture the increasing openness of business models towards consumers in the emerging closed-loop value chain. Using illustrative examples, it demonstrates their broad applicability in different industries and derives important managerial implications for firm-consumer relationships, the relevance of consumer communities, new product development activities, and the sustainability of business models.


In the context of an ongoing change, management is required to take the form of a leadership that must be reignited over and over again. The article examines a new art of leadership that may be viewed as an attempt to keep up with these challenges and stay ahead of time. It emerges from a pilgrimage leadership learning laboratory on the road to Santiago de la Compostela. This moving lab creates situations of extraordinary intensity that border on hyperreality and force the leader to find him/herself anew on the verge of him/herself. Conceived as pilgrimage, leadership moves ahead of time as it reaches into and anticipates a future still unknown. In this setting, anticipatory affects and the virtual take up a predominant role. As it emerges here, leadership distinguishes itself not only from leadership in the traditional sense, but also from management and governmentality.


The legitimacy of the administrative state is premised on our faith in agency expertise. Despite their extra-constitutional structure, administrative agencies have been on firm footing for a long time in reverence to their critical role in governing a complex, evolving society. They are delegated enormous power because they respond expertly and nimbly to evolving conditions.

In recent decades, state and federal agencies have embraced a novel mode of operation: automation. Agencies rely more and more on software and algorithms in carrying out their delegated responsibilities. The automated administrative state, however, is demonstrably riddled with concerns. Legal challenges regarding the denial of benefits and rights — from travel to disability — have revealed a pernicious pattern of bizarre and unintelligible outcomes.

Scholarship to date has explored the pitfalls of automation with a particular frame, asking how we might ensure that automation honors existing legal commitments such as due process. Missing from the conversation are broader, structural critiques of the legitimacy of agencies that automate. Automation throws away the expertise and nimbleness that justify the administrative state, undermining the very case for the existence and authority of agencies.

Yet the answer is not to deny agencies access to technology. This article points toward a positive vision of the administrative state that adopts tools only when they enhance, rather than undermine, the underpinnings of agency legitimacy.


In present study, algal groups which are used as indicator to trophic and pollution status of Duhok lake. Data that applied for Nygaard's indices, dominant genus scores, Chlorophyll a and Palmer's index of pollution, were collected from only previous study happened for Duhok lake during 2002. Total 250 algal taxa which have classified into 6 taxonomic groups were identified. Diatoms members constituted the dominant phytoplankton group in terms of species number, out of 115 identified taxa of diatoms; only seven centric taxa were identified. The Nygaard's compound index value and composition of phytoplankton indicate that the trophic state of Duhok Dam Lake was eutrophic. The trophic state indices of Myxophycean and Chlorophycean  in this survey is indicating Eutrophic nature of  lake water and the trophic state indices of Diatoms and Euglenophycean indicate oligotrophic nature of water. As a result of dominant genus scores was (5.7), the lake has a mesotrophic-eutrophic character according to trophic level, in addition, the water quality of Lake Duhok was moderate and moderate polluted in 2002. According to concentration of Chlorophyll-a never fell below (15µg- chl a l-1) and was eutrophic status. The most pollution tolerant species of Euglena, Phacus, Phormidium, Oscillatoria, Scenedesmus, Pandorina, Chlamydomonas, Closterium and Nitzschia identified in lake. These genus are tolerant to pollution depending to Palmer (1969). This communities of algae indicate to that reservoir was highly polluted by organic matter. The total score of Algal genus pollution index was 37 in Duhok lake that indicates to confirm high organic pollution and was eutrophic state.


Sketching in the context of a design process is not a goal in itself, but can be considered as a tool to
make better designs. Sketching as a design tool has several useful effects as: ordering your thoughts,
better understanding of difficult shapes, functioning as a communication tool, and providing an
iterative way of developing shapes. In our bachelor-curriculum Industrial Design Engineering we
developed a series of courses that addresses these effects in particular.
The courses are Sketching and concept drawing (SCT), Product Presentation Drawing (PPT) and
Applied sketching skills (TTV). This line of courses is built on three pillars:
- Learning to sketch; Theory, speed and control of the materials.
- Learning from sketching; Develop a better insight in complex 3D shapes (Figure 1).
- Sketching as a design tool; Communication, ordering your thoughts, iterative working.
As a result we see that students who have finished the courses instinctively start sketching in an
iterative manner, use sketching as a source of inspiration and learn that the whole process of iterative
sketching helps in structuring, developing and communicating the design process. In this way the
students become better sketchers and better designers


We present the general architecture of the error annotation system applied to the COPLE2 corpus, a learner corpus of Portuguese implemented on the TEITOK platform. We give a general overview of the corpus and of the TEITOK functionalities and describe how the error annotation is structured in a two-level system: first, a fully manual token-based and coarse-grained annotation is applied and produces a rough classification of the errors in three categories, paired with multi-level information for POS and lemma; second, a multi-word and fine-grained annotation in standoff is then semi-automatically produced based on the first level of annotation. The token-based level has been applied to 47% of the total corpus. We compare our system with other proposals of error annotation, and discuss the fine-grained tag set and the experiments to validate its applicability. An inter-annotator (IAA) experiment was performed on the two stages of our system using Cohen's kappa and it achieved good results on both levels. We explore the possibilities offered by the tokenlevel error annotation, POS and lemma to automatically generate the fine-grained error tags by applying conversion scripts. The model is planned in such a way as to reduce manual effort and rapidly increase the coverage of the error annotation over the full corpus. As the first learner corpus of Portuguese with error annotation, we expect COPLE2 to support new research in different fields connected with Portuguese as second/foreign language, like Second Language Acquisition/Teaching or Computer Assisted Learning.


EACS 2016 Paper No. 172 (113)Characterisation of both dynamic and quasi-static deformations of suspension bridges is essential to manage their serviceability and to appreciate the internal forces due to the various live loads effects of wind, temperature and traffic. GPS is commonly used for the largest, most flexible structures but the limitations are not well understood and accelerometers cannot capture the extreme low frequency movements. Optical displacement tracking has potential to avoid all these errors but has different types of limitation that need to be evaluated and mitigated. In attempt to cross-validate optical tracking technology against GPS data, a commercial optical system the Imetrum 'Video Gauge' was used at Humber Bridge, after first initial experiments on a short span bridge to identify the most effective way to deploy it in the field for measurements at very long range. Some results are presented illustrating the character of the observed deformations and the limitations of the various forms of deformation monitoring instrumentation. In particular limitations of GPS were highlighted through comparison with Video Gauge and accelerometer data.


We consider a multilingual weakly supervised learning scenario where knowledge from annotated corpora in a resource-rich language is transferred via bitext to guide the learning in other languages. Past approaches project labels across bitext and use them as features or gold labels for training. We propose a new method that projects model expectations rather than labels, which facilities transfer of model uncertainty across language boundaries. We encode expectations as constraints and train a discriminative CRF model using Generalized Expectation Criteria (Mann and McCallum, 2010). Evaluated on standard Chinese-English and German-English NER datasets, our method demonstrates F1 scores of 64% and 60% when no labeled data is used. Attaining the same accuracy with supervised CRFs requires 12k and 1.5k labeled sentences. Furthermore, when combined with labeled examples, our method yields significant improvements over state-of-the-art supervised methods, achieving best reported numbers to date on Chinese OntoNotes and German CoNLL-03 datasets.


Schools, welfare agencies, and a wide variety of other state and local institutions of vital importance to citizens are controlled by attorneys and judges rather than governors and mayors. In this book, Ross Sandler and David Schoenbrod explain how this has come to pass, why it has resulted in service to the public that is worse, not better, and what can be done to restore control of these programs to democratically elected - and accountable - officials. Sandler and Schoenbrod tell how the courts, with the best intentions and often with the approval of elected officials, came to control ordinary policy making through court decrees. These court regimes, they assert, impose rigid and often ancient detailed plans that can founder on reality. Newly elected officials, who may wish to alter the plans in response to the changing wishes of voters, cannot do so unless attorneys, court-appointed functionaries, and lower-echelon officials agree. The result is neither judicial government nor good government, say Sandler and Schoenbrod, and they offer practical reforms that would set governments free from this judicial stranglehold, allow courts to do their legitimate job of protecting rights, and strengthen democracy.


* We thank David Bradford for initiating a conversation that ultimately led to this paper. ABSTRACT This paper measures the economic impact of climate change on US agricultural land. We replicate the previous literature's implementation of the hedonic approach and find that it produces estimates of the effect of climate change that are very sensitive to decisions about the appropriate control variables, sample and weighting. We find estimates of the benchmark doubling of greenhouse gases on agricultural land values that range from a decline of $420 billion (1997$) to an increase of $265 billion, or-30% to 19%. Despite its theoretical appeal, the wide variability of these estimates suggests that the hedonic method may be unreliable in this setting. In light of the potential importance of climate change, this paper proposes a new strategy to determine its economic impact. We estimate the effect of weather on farm profits, conditional on county and state by year fixed effects, so the weather parameters are identified from the presumably random variation in weather across counties within states. The results suggest that the benchmark change in climate would reduce the value of agricultural land by $40 to $80 billion, or-3% to-6%, but the null of zero effect cannot be rejected. In contrast to the hedonic approach, these results are robust to changes in specification. Since farmers can engage in a more extensive set of adaptations in response to permanent climate changes, this estimate is likely downwards biased, relative to the preferred long run effect. Together the point estimates and sign of the likely bias contradict the popular view that climate change will have substantial negative welfare consequences for the US agricultural sector.


Viroids, the smallest known pathogens, consist of small circular single-stranded RNA with non-coding genome but having autonomous replication in their plant hosts. Despite many studies, the mechanism of viroid pathogenesis has still remained unclear. Recently, studying the effects of viroid infection on host gene expression utilizing cDNA microarrays have yielded only a low-resolution snapshot of viroid-host interaction. In the present study, the metabolic profile of susceptible tomato cultivar 'Rutgers' infected by mild variant of PSTVd was compared with those of mock inoculated plants. Three terminal leaflets of the third true leaf of tomato were mechanically inoculated with PSTVd cDNAs and samples were taken from eighth leaf, 19 days post inoculation. Metabolites were extracted, identified and quantified with GC/MS and subjected to statistical analyses. Results showed that 40 unique metabolites showed significant difference over their controls at P≤0.2, which was brought about by changes in 14 metabolic pathways. The affected pathways in PSTVd infected leaves of tomato included five cutin and wax biosynthesis pathways, four pathways that produce defense related compounds, three hormone biosynthesis pathways, an energy generator pathway, and a chlorophyll degradation pathway. As host plant responses to viroid infection are complicated, employing metabolomics approach, viroid-host interaction was studied and changes in biochemical pathways of plant discussed.


Multiresolution shape representation is a very effective way to decompose surface geometry into several levels of detail. Geometric modeling with such representations enables flexible modifications of the global shape while preserving the detail information. Many schemes for modeling with multiresolution decompositions based on splines, polygonal meshes and subdivision surfaces have been proposed recently. In this paper we modify the classical concept of multiresolution representation by no longer requiring a global hierarchical structure that links the different levels of detail. Instead we represent the detail information implicitly by the geometric difference between independent meshes. The detail function is evaluated by shooting rays in normal direction from one surface to the other without assuming a consistent tesselation. In the context of multiresolution shape deformation, we propose a dynamic mesh representation which adapts the connectivity during the modification in order to maintain a prescribed mesh quality. Combining the two techniques leads to an efficient mechanism which enables extreme deformations of the global shape while preventing the mesh from degenerating. During the deformation, the detail is reconstructed in a natural and robust way. The key to the intuitive detail preservation is a transformation map which associates points on the original and the modified geometry with minimum distortion. We show several examples which demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our approach including the editing of multiresolution models and models with texture.


In this study, a content analysis was performed on 815 articles focused on new product development (NPD) published in 10 selected leading marketing, management, NPD, and research and development (R&D) journals from 1989 to 2004. Journals selected were a combination of leading journals in the discipline and publications that included NPD articles. NPD articles were classified by a series of key attributes including methodology employed, domains of knowledge utilized, and broad topics explored. The resulting data were then studied to discern trends over time or common characteristics within domains, methodologies, or journals. The study of NPD has grown since the Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM) was launched in 1984. This study shows strong growth in the number of articles on NPD in each category of journal selected. The research in the articles has changed: The early focus on a few selected success factors or a staged development process has evolved and broadened over the 16-year period. More variables and more sophisticated models are being studied in NPD articles. The study found a continuing evolution in research topics and increased sophistication in quantitative techniques over the 16-year period. Overall this review of the NPD literature uncovers encouraging signs of a maturing discipline. However, there are concerns about continuing issues in methodology, insufficient study of service innovation, and continued focus on process characteristics instead of other antecedents of NPD success. The service sector seems to be understudied, even as the reality of a service economy is generally acknowledged. The call in a recent meta-analysis to focus more on market and product characteristics and less on process characteristics has not yet been heeded, even by marketing researchers.


If advanced fuel cycles are to include a large number of fast reactors (FRs), what should be the transuranic (TRU) conversion ratio (CR)? The nuclear energy era started with the assumption that they should be breeder reactors (CR > 1), but the full range of possible CRs eventually received attention. For example, during the recent U.S. Global Nuclear Energy Partnership program, the proposal was burner reactors (CR < 1). Yet, more recently, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's "Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle" proposed CR [approximately] 1. Meanwhile, the French company EDF remains focused on breeders. At least one of the reasons for the differences of approach is different fuel cycle objectives. To clarify matters, this paper analyzes the impact of TRU CR on many parameters relevant to fuel cycle systems and therefore spans a broad range of topic areas. The analyses are based on a FR physics parameter scan of TRU CR from 0 to [approximately]1.8 in a sodium-cooled metal-fueled FR (SMFR), in which the fuel from uranium-oxide-fueled light water reactors (LWRs) is recycled directly to FRs and FRs displace LWRs in the fleet. In this instance, the FRs are sodium cooled and metal fueled. Generally, it is assumed that all TRU elements are recycled, which maximizes uranium ore utilization for a given TRU CR and waste radiotoxicity reduction and is consistent with the assumption of used metal fuel separated by electrochemical means. In these analyses, the fuel burnup was constrained by imposing a neutron fluence limit to fuel cladding to the same constant value. This paper first presents static, time-independent measures of performance for the LWR [right arrow] FR fuel cycle, including mass, heat, gamma emission, radiotoxicity, and the two figures of merit for materials for weapon attractiveness developed by C. Bathke et al. No new fuel cycle will achieve a static equilibrium in the foreseeable future. Therefore, additional analyses are shown with dynamic, time-dependent measures of performance including uranium usage, TRU inventory, and radiotoxicity to evaluate the complex impacts of transition from the current uranium-fueled LWR system, and other more realistic impacts that may not be intuited from the time-independent steady-state conditions of the end-state fuel cycle. These analyses were performed using the Verifiable Fuel Cycle Simulation Model VISION. Compared with static calculations, dynamic results paint a different picture of option space and the urgency of starting a FR fleet. For example, in a static analysis, there is a sharp increase in uranium utilization as CR exceeds 1.0 (burner versus breeder). However, in dynamic analyses that examine uranium use over the next 1 to 2 centuries, behavior as CR crosses the 1.0 threshold is smooth, and other parameters such as the time required outside of reactors to recycle fuel become important. Overall, we find that there is no unambiguously superior value of TRU CR; preferences depend on the relative importance of different fuel cycle system objectives.


This article questions whether readings of Francis Veber's Le Placard (2001) as simply a parody of political correctness have tended to overlook the allegorical significance of its depiction of a middle-aged executive forced to pretend to be gay, simulating libidinal investments he does not in fact possess, in order to protect his job. It argues that the film merits reinterpretation as being not only a parody of political correctness but also a powerful allegory for the increasing demands placed on employees to invest their most personal affects and aptitudes in their work. Drawing on the work of Yann Moulier Boutang, the article interprets such demands as symptomatic of a regime of 'cognitive capitalism', in which 'immaterial' forms of labour represent the primary source of surplus value. The article thus offers an alternative reading of the film's treatment of questions of work, gender, sexuality, family and nation, before situating Le Placard in the context of a broader range of recent French filmic representations of the contemporary workplace.


BACKGROUND
An inverse relationship between coffee consumption and mortality has been reported in the general population. However, the association between caffeine consumption and mortality in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) remains uncertain.

METHODS
We analysed 4863 non-institutionalized USA adults with CKD [defined by an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) of 15-60 mL/min/1.73 m2 and/or a urinary albumin:creatinine ratio >30 mg/g] in a nationwide study using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999-2010. Caffeine consumption was evaluated by 24-h dietary recalls at baseline and all-cause, cardiovascular and cancer mortality were evaluated until 31 December 2011. We also performed an analysis of caffeine consumption according to its source (coffee, tea and soft drinks). Quartiles of caffeine consumption were <28.2 mg/day (Q1), 28.2-103.0 (Q2), 103.01-213.5 (Q3) and >213.5 (Q4).

RESULTS
During a median follow-up of 60 months, 1283 participants died. Comparing with Q1 of caffeine consumption, the adjusted hazard ratio for all-cause mortality was 0.74 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.60-0.91] for Q2, 0.74 (95% CI 0.62-0.89) for Q3 and 0.78 (95% CI 0.62-0.98) for Q4 (P = 0.02 for trend across quartiles). There were no significant interactions between caffeine consumption quartiles and CKD stages or urinary albumin:creatinine ratio categories regarding all-cause mortality.

CONCLUSIONS
We detected an inverse association between caffeine consumption and all-cause mortality among participants with CKD.


Generous income support programs as provided by European welfare states have often been blamed to hamper employment. This paper investigates the importance of incentives inherent in the tax-benefit system for the individual decision to take up work. Using German microdata over the period 1993-2010 we find that recent reforms in Germany increased work incentives at the extensive margin measured by the Participation Tax Rate (PTR), particularly for low-income individuals. Work incentives are even higher if the time horizon is extended to more than one year, pointing at an overestimation of the disincentives by standard measures. Regression analysis reveals that a decrease in the PTR increases the likelihood of taking up work significantly.


Background : Increased physical activities elevate reactive oxygen species (ROS) leading to dysfunction and integrity of cells thus inducing oxidative stress which intern may affect overall physical performance. Polyphenols are well known for their excellent antioxidant potency. In this study, the effect of selected polyphenols with established health benefits viz., catachin, chlorogenic acid, ellagic acid and quercetin was investigated with respect to swimming performance in rats. Methods : The animals were force fed with aqueous mixture of polyphenols at 25 mg/rat/day and subjected to swimming exercise until exhaustion. Results : Rats fed with poly phenols showed a significant increase in swimming time, and the activities of Lactic dehydrogenase (LDH) and creatine pyruvic kinase (CPK) were lowered. Polyphenols increased the concentration of Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), glycogen in muscle lowered the activities of and. Polyphenols increased the concentration of Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and glycogen in muscle and reduced MDA levels in the liver, muscle and blood but increased DNA and RNA concentration in muscle. Conclusion : The results clearly demonstrated combination of polyphenols used enhanced the swimming performance of the rats. Keywords : Polyphenols, Exercise capacity, ROS, ATP, Catachin, Chlorogenic acid, Ellagic acid and Quercetin


An attempt of developing a chiral luminescent probe for amino acids was described. Two types of chiral iridium(III) complexes were synthesized: [Ir(dfppy)2(R-pep-bpy)]+ (dfppyH = 2-(2′,4′-difluorophenyl)pyridine); R-pep-bpy = 4,4′-bis((R-1,2-dimethylpropyl)aminocarbonyl-2,2′-bipyridine) and [Ir(piq)2(R-pep-bpy)]+ (piqH = 1-phenyisoquinoline). In both complexes, amido groups (R-pep-) were attached to 2,2′-bipyridine with an intension of increasing the affinity for an amino acid. The complexes were optically resolved on a chiral column. When the complexes were adsorbed by the colloidal particles of synthetic saponite, they were highly emissive even in a medium containing water. The remarkable quenching of emission was observed for the combination of [Ir(dfppy)2(R-pep-bpy)]+ and tryptophan methyl ester. By the use of the enantiomeric complexes, the possibility of enantioselective quenching was examined for various amino acid derivatives.


This is a version of a paper delivered at the Beckett centenary conference held at University College Cork, May 26-27, 2006. It was subsequently published under the title 'Stellar Separation or Abstract Machine? Badiou and Deleuze and Guattari on Beckett' in Beckett Re-Membered: After the Centenary, edited by James Carney,Mi chael O'Sullivan, Leonard Madden and Karl White (Cambridge Scholars Press), pp. 92-107, ISBN 1443835005. This is a pre-publication version of the paper as it appeared in the latter publication.

OPENING PARAGRAPH:
In the most important study to date of the respective use of Beckett's writings in the work of Deleuze and Badiou, Jean-Jacques Lecercle concludes by surmising that "Perhaps the close proximity, in the French edition, of Deleuze's essay, 'The Exhausted', to Beckett's own text, is indeed more than a fortunate coincidence: perhaps it is a symptom".1 For, Lecercle, despite his long-term support for Deleuze and indeed despite his misgivings concerning Badiou's characteristically strong reading of Beckett, decides that there may be, after all, something more compelling in the Badiou than in the less consistent Deleuze. This may also be, he suggests, attributable to Deleuze's own modernism as a writer, which, though it gives him greater access to, and understanding of, the materiality of Beckett's writing (Deleuze has, after all, his own ecriture, not least in Anti-Oedipus), also in the final analysis, renders his reading of Beckett somewhat orthodox. By contrast, the defiantly declarative and unhesitatingly dogmatic reading advanced by Badiou, is able to disclose strikingly original insights, not least because of the co-implication and
reversibility of the readings of Badiou-Beckett and Beckett-Badiou. This essay seeks to examine the symptomatology of one text in particular as it operates and produces or
is indicative of symptoms in the work of Badiou and Deleuze respectively.


Throughout history, rivers have run a wide course through human temporal and spiritual experience. They have demarcated mythological worlds, framed the cradle of Western civilization, and served as physical and psychological boundaries among nations. Rivers have become a crux of transportation, industry, and commerce. They have been loved as nurturing providers, nationalist symbols, and the source of romantic lore but also loathed as sites of conflict and natural disaster."Rivers in History" presents the first comparative history of rivers on the continents of Europe and North America in the modern age. The contributors examine the impact of rivers on humans and, conversely, the impact of humans on rivers. They view this dynamic relationship through political, cultural, industrial, social, and ecological perspectives in national and transnational settings.As integral sources of food and water, local and international transportation, recreation, and aesthetic beauty, rivers have dictated where cities have risen, and in times of flooding, drought, and war, where they've fallen. Modern Western civilizations have sought to control rivers by channeling them for irrigation, raising and lowering them in canal systems, and damming them for power generation.The contributors analyze the regional, national, and international politicization of rivers, the use and treatment of waterways in urban versus rural environments, and the increasing role of international commissions in ecological and commercial legislation for the protection of river resources. The case studies include the Seine in Paris, the Mississippi, the Volga, the Elbe, the Rhine, and the rivers of Pittsburgh. "Rivers in History" is a broad environmental history of waterways that makes a major contribution to the study, preservation, and continued sustainability of rivers as vital lifelines of Western culture.


Abstract. The present study suggests that aerosols play a major role in cloud formation and affect significantly the precipitation over a regional scale. The study reveals that there is a high variability of aerosol index during a bad monsoon year 2002, indicating an extension of cycle to more than 100 days from a normal 50 day cycle of absorbing and non-absorbing aerosols over a tropical urban station Pune. Pre-monsoon of 2002 shows a high loading of coarse-mode aerosols (absorbing dust aerosols) which indicate vertical and horizontal temperature variations in turn affecting the seasonal rainfall at a regional scale. Cloud formation highly depends on aerosol concentration, but the activation process is not monotonic. The surface meteorological features help to initiate the cloud process. The surface temperatures were high during the pre-monsoon of 2002 leading to increase of aerosol optical depth as compared to 2001. The effect of surface wind speed, though, complicated to understand, results in low values in 2002 with high aerosol optical depth and vice-versa in 2001.


Abstract. Cover cropping in agriculture is expected to enhance many agricultural and ecosystems functions and services. Yet, few studies are available allowing to evaluate the impact of cover cropping on the long term change of soil hydrologic functions. We assessed the long term change of the soil hydraulic properties due to cover cropping by means of a 10-year field experiment. We monitored continuously soil water content in non cover cropped and cover cropped fields by means of capacitance probes. We subsequently determined the hydraulic properties by inverting the soil hydrological model WAVE, using the time series of the 10 year monitoring data in the object function. We observed two main impacts, each having their own time dynamics. First, we observed an initial compaction as a result of the minimum tillage. This initial negative effect was followed by a more positive cover crop effect. The positive cover crop effect consisted in an increase of the soil micro- and macro-porosity, improving the structure. This resulted in a larger soil water retention capacity. This latter improvement was mainly observed below 20 cm, and mostly in the soil layer between 40 and 80 cm depth. This study shows that the expected cover crop competition for water with the main crop can be compensated by an improvement of the water retention in the intermediate layers of the soil profile. This may enhance the hydrologic functions of agricultural soils in arid and semiarid regions which often are constrained by water stress.


In order to help predict the effects of anthropogenic stressors on shallow water carbonate environments, it is important to focus research on regions containing natural oceanographic gradients, particularly with respect to interactions between oceanography and ecologically sensitive carbonate producers. The Galápagos Archipelago, an island chain in the eastern equatorial Pacific, spans a natural nutrient, pH, and temperature gradient due to the interaction of several major ocean currents. Further, the region is heavily impacted by the El Niño—Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Galápagos exhibited widespread coral bleaching and degradation following the strong ENSO events of 1982–1983 and 1997–1998. These findings are coupled with reports of unusually low abundances of time-averaged benthic foraminiferal assemblages throughout the region. Foraminifera, shelled single-celled protists, are sensitive to environmental change and rapidly respond to alterations to their surrounding environment, making them ideal indicator species for the study of reef water quality and health. Here, statistical models and analyses were used to compare modern shallow water benthic foraminiferal assemblages from 19 samples spanning the Galápagos Archipelago to predominant oceanographic parameters at each collection site. Fisher α diversity indices, Ternary diagrams, Canonical Correspondence Analysis, regression tree analysis and FORAM-Index (FI; a single metric index for evaluating water quality associated with reef development) implied a combined impact from ENSO and upwelling from Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) waters to primarily impact foraminiferal abundances and drive assemblage patterns throughout the archipelago. For instance, repeated ENSO temperature anomalies might be responsible for low foraminiferal density, while chronically high nutrients and low aragonite saturation and low pH—induced by EUC upwelling and La Niña anomalies—likely inhibited post-ENSO recovery, and caused foraminiferal assemblages to exhibit a heterotrophic dominance in the southern archipelago. What resulted are low FI values in the southern collection sites, indicating environments not conducive to endosymbiont development and/or recovery.


Although China seeks to improve its image as a legitimate participant in the global intellectual property ("IP") market, Chinese companies continue to produce more than thirty percent of the counterfeit drugs circulating in the world today. The counterfeit pharmaceutical industry profits from efficient and cost-effective production systems by producing counterfeits at an exceedingly low cost. This poses a serious problem because the production and sale of counterfeit drugs leads to negative economic and social health-related effects. China's existing penalties for counterfeit pharmaceutical production are considered a mere cost of doing business in China, rather than a deterrent from engaging in counterfeiting. China's national government has taken several steps to fight against IP infringement, but despite this effort, the growing power and autonomy of local governments has complicated and exacerbated the problem. In order to become a legitimate and reputable force in the international economy, China must take greater steps to limit the production and sale of counterfeit pharmaceuticals. First, China must amend its laws to include penalties that will effectively deter actors from entering the counterfeit market. Second, China must allocate a significant amount of resources to the judicial system to ensure that adjudication is effective and efficient. Third, China must fight localized corruption at its source to increase enforcement of IP rights. Specifically, an agency should be created to target local corruption and to disestablish the counterfeit pharmaceutical market. This agency should have investigative and auditing power and should work to educate both the public and the business community on the problems posed by counterfeit pharmaceuticals and the means used to counter them.


This article makes a case for studying the perceptions that young people have of the ways of speaking of both themselves and others on the supposition that constructions of ambient sociolinguistic variation have an impact on the language development and use of individual language users. Such a study is particularly relevant in multilingual contexts in which differences with regard to social as well as ethnic and linguistic background may generate significantly different perceptions. In a speaker evaluation study, Swedish speech stimuli from 12 young Stockholmers were evaluated by 343 listeners from different backgrounds. The results show that young people may divide and relate to the linguistic space of Stockholm in very different ways and that they vary in their degree of accuracy regarding linguistic self-perception.


This study examines the relationships of stock returns in various international market—the US, UK, Japan, Singapore, China (via Shanghai and Hong Kong)—with those in the Philippines for the period 2000 to 2010. The study uses the Markov-Switching (MS) model to define the structural breaks in the returns. The results indicate that the Philippine stock market integration with the world—whether US, UK or Asia— is low.